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Tchaikovsky,
the indefatigable traveller,
spent the last winter of his
life, 1892-93, moving from
Moscow to St. Petersburg to
Berlin to Basle to Nice to
Brussels to Paris to Odessa
and back to Moscow. He was
giving a few concerts and
visiting friends; he cannot
have been avoiding his country
home outside Moscow since he
adored it even in winter and
could work happily there. Yet
his endless peregrinations do
reinforce our picture of a man
fleeing from himself,
distraught with self-loathing.
Of the symphony he was about
to write he later said: “I can
tell you in all sincerity that
I consider this symphony to be
the best thing I have ever
done”. How many times did he
say that about every large
work he ever wrote? How many
times did he later record his
appalled dissatisfaction with
the selfsame work? The
difference in the case of the
Sixth Symphony is that he did
not live long after its first
performance. Some people
assert that he took his own
life (though that question may
never be answered) - the
ultimate expression of
dissatisfaction with himself.
We can only pray he would
never have turned his scorn on
this masterpiece as he had on
so many of his others.
The idea
for the symphony came to him
in Paris that winter. It was
to be based on a secret
programme “full of subjective
feeling; so much so that while
mentally composing it during
my travels I frequently burst
into tears”. Of course all
symphonies had been subjective
to some degree, certainly all
Tchaikovsky’s, but this was to
go further than any in
declaring its meaning to be
personal and in portraying the
agony of his private life. The
torrnenting conflict between
society and his sexuality was
at the root of his sufferings,
yet this was to be a secret
from all but those who knew
the composer well. At the same
time the suffering is more
public and heartrending than
that of any other composer.
Whereas Beethoven’s model of a
symphony is unequivocally
optimistic and positive,
Tchaikovsky unhesitatingly put
his slow movement at the end,
and not just a normal slow
movement: it drains the cup of
lamentation and despair. The
pain may have been personal
but it survives for posterity
as a symbol and an echo of all
suffering everywhere,
particularly of loneliness and
private grief.
Tchaikovsky’s
brother Modest offered the
subtitle “Pathétique” and won
the composer’s approval,
though it scarcely conveys his
purpose. Nor is all the
symphony unrelievedly gloomy.
Its opening, certainly, sets a
more than despondent tone, as
the lower instruments struggle
to give utterance to those
fragmentary shapes. The third
movement, a march of demonic
force, carries a deeply
disturbed message behind all
the activity and the
assertiveness.
Perhaps
only the second movement is
innocent of the psychodrama
going on all around it. A
lopsided pulse of 5/ 4 might
be regarded as unbalanced, it
is true, but Tchaikovsky
imparts to it all the grace of
his best ballet music, as
though there was no metrical
or muscular difficulty in
beating or dancing five to a
bar. Only in the trio section
of that movement does the
pathos come to the surface
again. The first movement
quite properly covers the
broadest canvas, over an
astonishing range of emotion
from hysteria to resignation.
In the coda the emptiness of
Tchaikovsky’s condition - of
the human condition, maybe -
is starkly laid before us.
Early in
his career, on the other hand,
Tchaikovsky was able to treat
tragedy with more detachment.
Romeo and Juliet,
composed in 1869, was the
first proclamation of
Tchaikovsky’s orchestral
genius. The idea, like so many
ideas passed round by Russian
composers, came from
Balakirev, the guiding spirit
of The Five; Balakirev’s
detailed criticism and a first
hearing in Moscow persuaded
Tchaikovsky to revise the work
quite substantially the
following year (he made a
further, final revision in
1880). In the last year of his
life, long after Romeo and
Juliet had become one of
his best-known works, he
adapted the love music to a
Russian translation of
Shakespeare’s verse; whether
he ever intended this duet to
form part of a larger work,
perhaps an opera, is not
known.
No
symphonic poem (Tchaikovsky
whimsically called it
“overture-fantasy”) ever
brought Shakespeare so vividly
to life as this, or gave such
feeling to the destruction of
love by uncontrollable tragic
forces. By presenting the
dramatic elements so clearly
and allowing conflict to
generate the action,
Tchaikovsky satisfied both
musical and dramatic
necessities with the utmost
skill. Friar Laurence's solemn
chords at the opening suggest
that the city of Verona is
tranquil, especially when the
harp’s chords spread serenity
all around. But a heightening
tension is soon felt, and the
Allegro erupts in gusty
street-fighting as Capulets
and Montagues clash swords.
After the skirmishers
gradually vanish, a magical
modulation leads to the love
scene where the melody comes
first and the atmospheric
background, Shakespeare’s
“blessed, blessed night”,
evoked by dense, rocking
string harmonies, follows
after.
Then
events (and themes) take their
inevitable course. Details of
the drama - such as Juliet`s
nurse, the potion and her
burial, the scene in the
Capulets’ vault - are passed
over in the overriding
conflict between the lovers’
passion and the inevitability
of catastrophe. The tragic
solemnity of the final pages
(in the major key) has a touch
of splendour that
Shakespeare’s lovers deserve;
real tragedy, as the
“Pathétique” was later to
show, is bereft of any such
hope or consolation.
Hugh Macdonald
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