hi and welcome to today's episode of piano tv so we are going to discuss the life of tchaikovsky today which i'm really excited about because he's one of our favorite composers here on the channel now since there's a lot to cover we're breaking this into two parts so this is the first part of tchaikovsky's history we're going to talk about some of his early life and stuff like that and then in the next video we'll talk more of his later years and his death so let's get started [Music] iliac tchaikovsky which is anglicized as peter ilitch tchaikovsky was born in 1840 and lived until 1893 to the age of 53 years old he was a russian romantic-era composer and he was actually the first russian composer to really impact the wider western music landscape tchaikovsky was born in a small russian town to parents named ilya and alexandra ilya tchaikovsky's father was a military man from a long line of military men and his mother alexandra was a german french woman nearly 20 years his junior the tchaikovsky family was always very capable in the arts and that was largely due to living in a small town and having the need and the desire for entertainment tchaikovsky had six siblings and then after his mother died and his father remarried he inherited even more siblings but the siblings that he was the closest to were his sister alexandra and his twin brothers and natalie and modest tchaikovsky was a really smart little child and by the age of six he was fluent in both french and german and then by the age of eight he could sight read music better than his music teacher his parents were supportive of his music musical education and encouraged him but they didn't consider it a serious career path at the time in russia being a musician was kind of like a lower class profession because it didn't yield as much resource money and resources and income so instead they sent him to the imperial school of jurisprudence in st petersburg to you know get a get a legit education it was during tchaikovsky studies in school that his mother died of cholera in 1854 and that inspired him to write his first serious piece of music which was a waltz tchaikovsky and his friends had fun with music outside of their studies like they attended concerts they had impromptu jam sessions they sung in choirs but it wasn't serious for any of them and a lot of tchaikovsky's previous schoolmates were surprised when they had seen that he had become quite a well-known musician over the years once he finished school tchaikovsky went out into the real world and got a real job in 1859 as a civil servant however he did not love doing that and didn't take him long to realize that that wasn't the path for him so he quit that bureaucratic lifestyle and went into the arts the russian musical society was founded in 1859 and that gave tchaikovsky the opportunity to attend russian focused concerts and take some music theory classes eventually the saint petersburg conservatory opened in 1862 and tchaikovsky was one of the first students of this school and it was here that he engaged in serious musical study with renowned musicians such as anson rubenstein the conservatory ended up having a huge impact on tchaikovsky's developing style because it exposed him to a broader range of european music which tchaikovsky would then end up blending into his own personal style which is kind of like a european mix with a largely russian vent his early compositions at the conservatory would also be the beginning of a series of mixed mixed reactions to his compositions people didn't always love everything he wrote and that was true when he was a student and it was also true when he was in the last years of his life for example when tchaikovsky submitted his first symphony to be performed rubenstein and other instructors were like no you have to heavily revise this or else we're not going to play it at all it's not good enough the way it is so tchaikovsky did that they still didn't perform it so tchaikovsky was given an excellent job opportunity when he graduated in 1865. anson rubenstein's brother nikolai offered him the chance to be a professor of music theory at the brand new moscow conservatory it wasn't great pay or anything like that but tchaikovsky was very honored for the opportunity and he was really eager to do it well he taught as a professor he also composed and wrote music criticisms from his critiques in this time period we learned that tchaikovsky really liked beethoven but wasn't keen on brahms we learned that he thought wagner's ring cycle was cool but the music was unlikely nonsense he also wrote about the poor state of russian opera at the time tchaikovsky didn't immediately rise to stardom and this was largely due to the mixed reactions that his music produced in people however there were strong advocates of his work including the piano performer hans von bulau and these people helped tchaikovsky climb the musical ladder the musical landscape was also changing in the late part of the 1800s up until that point music had become really really flashy and full of bombast but people started to crave something that had like more depth and more more meaning maybe a little bit more introspective and that's something that tchaikovsky's music has always been and always had one of tchaikovsky's most well-known compositions was written during this time in 1869 and 1870 he wrote the romeo and juliet symphonic poem and a lot of people are familiar with the music from that this also happened to be one of tchaikovsky's own personal favorites of the music that he wrote throughout his lifetime before we get any further let's delve into tchaikovsky's personal life so we've reached the year 1870 by the time he met his first fiance tchaikovsky would have been about 30 years old by then so the three significant women in his life are desiree arto who was the first fiance antonina miliakova who he actually married temporarily and then his patron nadez devon mek so since tchaikovsky preferred the company of men things failed disastrously with the first two women his brief marriage to antonina was a particular source of stress for tchaikovsky he had to pay her every month and she kind of made his life miserable things with nadezda von mek however were much more productive and she was greatly beneficial to tchaikovsky so she was a widow and she started a male correspondence with him around the time of his imploding marriage with antonina the two of them became fast friends and she financially supported him for 13 years allowing him to travel tour and focus exclusively on composing tchaikovsky's friendship to nedesta was very close but it was also a little bit strange they corresponded only by letters of which they sent over 1200 and they agreed to never meet in person and there was actually a couple times where they encountered each other in public and they just like both booked it without even saying a word to each other it seemed that nedesta might have originally had a romantic interest in tchaikovsky but she was also totally cool with the fact that he was a homosexual it was kind of implied that she knew and she didn't try to pursue him regardless of maybe having feelings for him and tchaikovsky in turn really appreciated this because this is a woman who he could call a friend who wasn't after his heart in the 1870s and 1880s tchaikovsky did a lot of travel across europe he went with his brother modest to paris where he saw bizet's carmen performed he went to a festival devoted to wagner's ring cycle although he didn't actually get to meet fogner but he did get to meet list on his travels he also did a whole bunch of solo traveling especially in rural russia and this was a really especially in the 1880s it was a really reclusive time of czechoslife so i find it rather ironic that that's when his fame really started to skyrocket and that is all for the first part of a history on tchaikovsky stay tuned for the second part which is gonna come out right away and if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up share if it if you like and you can come hang out on social media all the links will be at the end of this video catch you later well-known symphonic poem and then after his father died whoops