![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |
![]() |
![]() Culture is a constant battle between the elite who shape taste and the masses who confer fame. All music is sublimated emotion, but Tchaikovsky pushed the envelope just enough for staid concert-goers to be genuinely thrilled without being scandalized. Tchaikovsky's final work was his Symphony # 6 in b minor, dubbed by his brother Modeste, with the composer's approval, as the "Pathétique" (in the sense of "pathos," not "pathetic"!). Robert Simpson aptly observed, "No other work has survived so many critical burials." Its popular appeal is indeed immortal, displaying, as with all Tchaikovsky's great work, a complex texturing of emotion – sorrow leavened with hope and happiness tinged with a foreboding of despair. Indeed, in retrospect the Pathétique can be seen as a reflection and culmination of the composer's deeply discordant life, the details of which have only recently emerged from the historical gauze of suppression. Tchaikovsky died nine days after the premiere – he drank a glass of unboiled water at the height of an epidemic of cholera, to which he succumbed in great agony. The official explanation was that he had made a grievous mistake. The most far-fetched yet now widely-accepted view is that the composer had been condemned by a "court of honor" of former schoolmates and pressured to kill himself in fear that one of his affairs was about to be exposed and reported to the Czar. Tchaikovsky was a life-long homosexual in a rigid society in which such behavior was harshly condemned. (So was Modeste, in whose otherwise thorough 3-volume biography not a hint of sexuality was mentioned.) Indeed, he lived in perpetual dread of disclosure and relied upon the discretion of a huge number of people, including myriad male students to whom he had been attracted. It's ironic that the love life of the composer best known for his ardently romantic music was such a thorough mess. He had only two significant relationships with women. Both began at age 37 and were quite bizarre. The first was a brief and disastrous marriage to an infatuated former student who threatened to kill herself if he spurned her. Tchaikovsky later claimed that he could not have borne the guilt of her suicide, but biographer Anthony Holden suggests that he seized upon matrimony as a drastic but logical therapy for his homosexuality, which at the time was considered a curable malady. The same year he began an equally odd but far more suitable relationship with Nadazhda. van Meck, a wealthy older widow who idolized him. Their agreement – she would provide generous support but they were never to meet. Even when she furnished him with a villa next door, they carefully coordinated their schedules to avoid direct contact. Rather, they poured their souls into copious correspondence – up to 300 letters per year – which provide us with a detailed map of Tchaikovsky's feelings. Tchaikovsky was shattered. As with his doomed marriage, he fled, this time to New York, where he was feted in a series of concerts to dedicate Carnegie Hall. Upon his return to Russia, he launched into a new work which he described as a symphony of life, loss, disillusionment and death. Although he abandoned that effort, it's program is often mistaken for an outline of the Pathétique, leading to speculation that he intended the work as an autobiographical requiem in anticipation of his demise. The Pathétique, too, had a narrative plan, but this time Tchaikovsky wouldn't elaborate, saying only that it was "impossible to put into words." Even so, Modeste regarded the work as cathartic and recalled that his brother wept often as he wrote it. The symphony that emerged was his most progressive and suggests that he was on the verge of rebuilding the emotional turmoil of his life into even greater art. Indeed, the Pathétique leaps from one novel wonder to the next. The first movement adheres to traditional symphonic sonata form, but you'll barely notice – as with Tchaikovsky's potent tone-poems, the interplay of sharp, angular commotion and lush, sensual longing attains a compelling but uneasy balance between the comfort of scalar passagework and the aching tension of figures based on the ambiguous interval of the fourth. The drama surges at the mid-point, as Tchaikovsky throttles down the volume to an unprecedented notation of pppppp to prepare for a startling full outburst. The second is a "limping waltz," Next comes a vivid march that builds repeatedly over tense, chattering strings to a rousing brass-fueled climax so thrilling that audiences invariably burst into spontaneous applause. But the Pathétique isn't over. Instead, in his most visionary touch of all, Tchaikovsky concludes with a slow movement that thrashes and seethes with stressful emotion before finally fading away into restless exhaustion. In the words of composer Arnold Schoenberg, the finale "starts with a cry and ends with a moan." Of all the work's innovations, surely this was the most influential. Never before had a symphony (nor, for that matter, any major work) ended in abject despair. (Haydn had concluded his 1772 Symphony # 45 ("Farewell") with a slow movement, but it was a mere gimmick appended to a standard form to symbolize his orchestra's discontent with their working conditions. If a fully authentic Pathetique demands a Russian sensibility, it's well-represented on record. Mravinsky's tightly-controlled emotion provides a fulcrum for other interpretations. Also widely admired for their detached styles are classic stereo accounts by Pierre Monteux and the Boston Symphony (BMG 61901), Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony (RCA LP), Igor Markevitch and the London Symphony (Philips 38335) and Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony (RCA 61246). But, having poured so much of himself into his Pathétique, Tchaikovsky gains when his interpreters follow suit. Serge Koussevitzky A sensation in its time, Perhaps the most controversial and unabashedly personal of all Pathétiques is by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic (DG 419 604). Broadened to a glorious 58 minutes, Bernstein's conception is one of grand effects – grueling tempos, massive climaxes and ardent phrasing, crowned by a profoundly dark finale that lingers for nearly double the standard timing. Detractors quipped that he wasbeing paid by the minute, but this is a unique and fascinating vision. Perhaps Bernstein found a release for his own conflicted life in the work with which Tchaikovsky ended his own. Copyright 2003 by Peter Gutmann |
For a note about the illustrations, please click here.
![]() ![]() | |
![]() copyright © 1998-2003 Peter Gutmann. All rights reserved. |