For the work of a composer often criticized for insincerity and bombast, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #6 is a remarkably personal statement. It is his last completed piece, crowning a career that focused on symphonic music (the earlier symphonies plus several impressive tone poems and important concertos for the piano and violin), ballet (with The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty remaining repertoire staples), and opera (particularly the masterful Eugene Onegin). Among the symphonies, the Sixth is distinctive for extreme emotional contrasts – even by Tchaikovsky’s standards – and a high degree of coherence in the melodic material, with several important themes being based on descending scales.
The unique position of the “Pathétique” Symphony, however, is inevitably tied to the eerie circumstances of its composition – most centrally, that Tchaikovsky died six days after the work received its first performance, in spite of having been in apparently good health while conducting the premiere himself. Certain facts are well established, while other questions remain controversial. We know that the composer began planning the work at least one year before its premiere, intending to call it “A Program Symphony,” by which me meant a symphony motivated by a particular story or extramusical association. He steadfastly refused to disclose the program to anyone, even his brother Modeste, with whom he was very close. After the composer’s death, however, a page with the symphony’s “program” was discovered:
The following is a sketch of the symphony – Life! The first movement – all
impetus, confidence, thirst for action.
Must be short.
(Finale – death – the result of destruction.) (2nd movement – love; 3 – disillusionment; 4
– dies away towards the end, also short.)
It is apparent that the Symphony #6 grew away from this program as it evolved, particularly in the length of the first movement, which, at twenty minutes, can hardly be considered “short.” But many of the original elements were preserved, including the “thirst for action” of the first movement, the “disillusionment” of the self-consciously bombastic third, and the undercurrent of death in the finale. Tchaikovsky found his labors on the symphony to be deeply moving and at times disturbing. In letters to his nephew, he wrote, “When composing it in my mind during my wanderings, I often shed bitter tears” and “I am positive in holding it to be the best and, above all, the ‘most genuinely sincere’ of all my works. I love it as I have never loved any of my other musical children.”
The audience at the work’s premiere was puzzled, particularly by the last movement, which ends in quiet resignation. Traditionally, the last movement of a symphony was fast and brought a definitive sense of closure; if the piece had started in a minor key, the finale would often end in the major, signifying the artist’s triumph over conflict. Tchaikovsky was saddened by the audience’s lukewarm reception, but he attributed this partly to his having billed the work as a “program symphony” without disclosing the program. It was after the premiere that Modeste (who still did not know what program his brother had intended) suggested the nickname “Pathétique,” which the composer adopted immediately.
Addressing the question of how or why the composer died,
mere days after the first performance, is where the controversy begins. Officially, Tchaikovsky died of cholera, the
same disease that had claimed his mother when he was fourteen. That cholera was present in
Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality, which was considered sinful and
illegal in late nineteenth-century
This resolution, however, falls far short of answering many of the disturbing questions surrounding the piece. If Tchaikovsky was facing the prospect of having an affair exposed, even if he would not be subject to legal punishment, what would it mean for his psyche? He had gone through great pains throughout his life to conceal or even “correct” his homosexuality, including entering into a short-lived, disastrous marriage with a student he met at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, leading to an earlier suicide attempt. How would his career survive such a further public disgrace? And if the program of the symphony was “life,” with Tchaikovsky’s deep affection for it surely suggesting an autobiographical nature, what do we make of the bleak, utterly resigned finale? It seems irresistible to conclude that, while Tchaikovsky may not have literally been intending suicide, he wrote the Symphony #6 in a deep state of depression and with the belief that the most fruitful part of his life was over.
In any case, the piece has plenty to offer even if one rejects the hypotheses about the composer’s troubled state of mind. The first movement, evolving from a poignant melodic fragment first presented by the bassoon in a lugubrious introduction, contrasts nervous energy with soaring lyricism in one of Tchaikovsky’s most epic large-scale structures. The second movement has the feel of a waltz, but whereas the rhythmic pulse of a waltz goes in groups of three beats, this lilting dance alternates “steps” of two and three beats – resulting in a peculiar, but still somehow graceful, meter in five. The third movement is both a scherzo and march, with the march tune being among Tchaikovsky’s best known melodies. The finale is uncommonly expressive, with extensive dissonances between the string and wind sections, a second theme full of yearning and nostalgia (marked “with sluggishness and devotion” by the composer), and a magnificent chorale for the low brass just before the haunting final section. Some of the questions surrounding Tchaikovsky’s life may never be answered, but his music will always be able to survive on its own.