Meet Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is one of the most beloved composers of the classical tradition. He was also the first Russian composer to truly touch the heart of Western audiences. He entered the musical landscape at a time when the Russian classical tradition was in a period of self-invention and composers felt responsible for creating a new Russian voice. Tchaikovsky’s own lushly Romantic sound gained him widespread success, bringing his music to an international audience on a level unmatched by any Russian composer before him. During his lifetime, he would be presented by Tsar Alexander III with The Order of St. Vladimir, receive an honorary Doctor of Music from Cambridge University, and have his works widely performed in Europe and The United States.

The young Tchaikovsky would doubtlessly have been surprised by his later fame. The son of a mining engineer, he did not come from a highly musical background. Nevertheless, he had an early interest in music, beginning piano studies at age five and learning to read with alacrity. However, when the family hired a composition instructor, Rudolph Kundinger, for their son, he was unimpressed with Tchaikovsky’s skills. The young composer would not have any serious formal training until later in life. As an adult, he began a career with the Russian Ministry of Justice working as a clerk, until lessons with Nikolay Zaremba of the Russian Musical Society led him back to music. He finally entered The St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862, where he began studying in earnest with conservatory founder and director Anton Rubinstein.

The conservatory gave him a solid foundation in the Western classical tradition. While many of his contemporaries were rejecting the classical approach in favor a more nationalistic sound, Tchaikovsky loved Mozart, Beethoven, and other great Western composers and the culture they represented. His talent manifested itself early: Even before graduating from the conservatory, his work had been conducted by Johann Strauss and publicly performed. After completing his studies, he began working as a harmony professor with The Moscow Conservatory, at the same time steadily building his musical career, finding important supporters like German conductor and composer Hans von Bülow, who helped him make a name for himself in Europe. His career would quickly blossom, and he would soon find himself on the international stage, being compared to contemporaries like Camille Saint-Saëns and appearing at American and European premiers, even serving as a guest conductor at Carnegie Hall’s inaugural performance!

Despite Tchaikovsky’s immense professional successes, his personal life had a somewhat tragic trajectory. He lost his mother to cholera at age fifteen and spent a great deal of time in poverty, overspending even when his income should have left him comfortable. He struggled throughout his life with his homosexuality, undertaking a poorly conceived marriage in 1877 which ended in separation in less than two weeks and eventually led him to a near breakdown. He spent a fair amount of time in Europe and was known for his wanderlust. He died in 1893 after drinking unboiled water and contracting cholera, nine days after the premiere of his last publicly performed composition, Symphony No. 6, also known as the Symphonie Pathétique.

Throughout his life, he relied on music as an emotional outlet. Perhaps it is because of the passion behind his music that audiences remain so moved by his works. According to Oxford Music Online, he is the second most popular composer of the 20th century, ranked only by Beethoven. Timeless favorites like The Nutcracker remain in heavy circulation and have entered so completely into popular culture that they can be found referenced in media like film, TV, and even video games. Other well-known works include Swan Lake, the 1812 Overture, his tragic opera Eugene Onegin, and many of his symphonies.

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See these great links for more information on Tchaikovskys’ life:

 Green, Aaron. “A Profile of Pyotr Tchaikovsky”, About.com Guide. 

Klevantseva, Tatyana. “Pyotr Tchaikovsky”, Russiapedia Music Prominent Russians.  

Wiley, Roland John. “Tchaikovksy, Pyotr Il’yich”, Oxford Music Online.“

“Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Biography”, Classic Cat. 

The Harmonium, Lost Instrument of the 19th Century?

by Eliza Waldman

 (Click for Source)

            The harmonium is an instrument largely unfamiliar to modern-day ears. It might surprise you to hear, however, that it was all the rage back in the 1800’s. Similar to the pipe organ, the harmonium is a keyboard instrument which uses bellows operated by the feet. Instead of pipes, though, the harmonium is driven by free reeds and is somewhat smaller than the conventional organs of the time.

While the harmonium’s true origins are unknown, the earliest Western free reed instruments are often linked to the Chinese sheng and other Eastern instruments which were imported to Europe sometime before the end of the 18th century. German professor Christian Kratzenstein and his associate Franz Kirschnik are generally credited as the originators of the Western free reed and are thought to have been influenced by the sheng, though recent studies have put such claims up for dispute. Kratzenstein was awarded the annual prize of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg in 1780 for his machine built with free reeds to study the usage of tones in speech. The free reed was subsequently taken up by organ builders and used in the making of instruments, but it was not till 1840 that the harmonium was patented by the Parisian native Alexandre Dubain.

The harmonium gained immediate popularity, largely due to its sophistication and increased convenience factor. It had a greater capacity for dynamic expression than the pipe organ, which made it popular with musicians. It also quickly gained a place in both amateur households and churches, where it was seen as a cheaper, smaller alternative to the organ. Composers were also fond of it; Liszt is known to have kept a harmonium for his personal use, and composers such as Camille Saint-Saens, César Franck, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and of course Giaochino Rossini all wrote for the harmonium. Arrangements and transcriptions of the works of Chopin, Strauss, and many others for harmonium remain, leaving the instrument with a wide and varied repertoire. It also found a place in ballet and even in the silent films of the times as an alternative to piano accompaniment.

The harmonium eventually spread to the United States, where an American version, called the reed organ or American organ, was first produced around 1860 by Mason & Hamlin. The American organ featured suction bellows instead of the European pressure system and produced a softer sound which appealed to the amateur audience. This model became prevalent in America and parts of Europe.

Sadly, the widespread success of the harmonium was short-lived. Around the turn of the century, changing views and tastes, as well as technological innovations, soon left the harmonium behind. It was seen as old-fashioned, with a certain air of kitsch to it. Musicians hunted for more modern sounds. In sacred settings, the electronic organ and smaller, more portable organs, which were more convenient, began to take its place, while in popular music, the accordion was seen as a more playful, modern addition to groups and ensembles than the harmonium.

Nowadays, the harmonium is hard to come by, and performances of works for harmonium are rare. Still, interest in the instrument is increasing, as what might have seemed kitsch to listeners at the beginning of the 1900’s adds a small flavor of the 19th century to our ears today.

Read more about the harmonium at these great sites:

“Rossini’s ‘Little Mass’, Odd, Little Heart, Gets a Big Presence Here” by David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer, Feb. 8, 2013

IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library

“The Classical Harmonium” by Henry Doktorski, 1998

“History of the Reed Organ” by Louis Huivenaar

“Western Free Reed Instruments” by P. Missin, 2002-2010

The New International Encyclopedia, “Harmonium”, 1905 edition

“The Mason and Hamlin Story”