Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Great Russian composer of the Romantic era. He introduced first Piano Concerto, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. He was born on 7th of May in 1840 in Kamsko-Votkinsk. Tchaikovsky could read French and German texts at very young age. He wrote verses in French, when he was just seven years old. Pyotr Ilyich was also an author of some of the most popular concert and theatrical music. His current classical repertoire includes the ballets Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture.

Tchaikovsky belongs to a middle-class family; his father was a government servant and worked as a mining engineer. Tchaikovsky was enrolled in the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence in 1850. After that, he became a clerk in the Ministry of Justice in 1859. There Tchaikovsky studied with Nicolai Zaremba until the opening of the new St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862. Later on, Tchaikovsky left his job in the Ministry of Justice in order to continue his full time study at the Conservatory. He got admission in the St Petersburg Conservatory and completed his graduation in 1865. Tchaikovsky was a very hard working student, he prepared for civil services exams despite the musical precocity, which he had demonstrated, but later he again pursued towards a musical career. After his graduation, Pyotr Ilyich went on to teach at the Moscow Conservatory and here he began to compose.

Through out his music career, Pyotr Ilyich wrote music of a lot of genres including symphony, opera, ballet, instrumental, chamber and song. Although Pyotr Ilyich enjoyed many popular successes and was destined to be a great musician his life was not emotionally secure. His whole life was punctuated by many personal crises and periods of depression due to a lot of factors like homosexuality, his disastrous marriage, and a sudden breakdown of his 13-year relationship with Nadezhda von Meck, etc.

In 1868, Tchaikovsky met with a famous group of Russian composers namely "The Five". He also met with Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, who were the members of “The Five". Since 1869 to 1875 Tchaikovsky wrote three more operas and became a well regarded music critic in Russia, Britain and the United States, for newspaper “Russkiye Vedomosti” in 1872. In 1893, Tchaikovsky received an honorary doctorate of music from Cambridge University.

Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich died on 6 November in 1893 and left his music imbued with its sweeping lyricism, richness, danceable qualities and inspiration for choreographers. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but some people attribute his death to suicide.