Peter Tchaikovsky

Composer

Russian composer Peter (Pyotr) Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most-recognized melodies of classical music, and his ballet The Nutcracker endures as a winter holiday favorite. He began composing in St. Petersburg in the 1860s, while studying and teaching music at the Conservatory. By the 1870s he was gaining public notice, and after 1878 he devoted himself to composing full time. Tchaikovsky's expressive melodies and orchestrations made him an audience favorite beyond Russia, and his international travels included an American tour in 1891. Many of his works are part of the canon of classical music of the Romantic era, including the opera Eugene Onegin, the ballet Swan Lake, the overtures Romeo and Juliet and 1812 Overture and his Sixth Symphony, known as Pathétique.

Tchaikovsky had a personal reputation as emotionally fragile. His brief 1877 marriage to a woman he barely knew is now considered an ill-fated attempt to mask his homosexuality, and possibly led to what has been called a nervous breakdown. The issue of his sexuality is also considered by some modern scholars to have played a part in his untimely death. Originally it was held that Tchaikovsky died from cholera, a result of drinking tainted water. Further research a century later led to the suggestion that he may have deliberately poisoned himself, forced to by a "court of honor" as punishment for his relationship with a young male aristocrat.

Extra credit: From 1877 to about 1890 Tchaikovsky received financial support from Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow who admired but did not know him... Cambridge University made him an honorary Doctor of Music in 1893... Transliterations of his name include Petr, Piotr and Peter, and Tschaikowsky and Chaikovsky.

Other composers include Ludwig van Beethoven, G. F. Handel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.