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Tchaikovsky: A Biography

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A bold look at a difficult man. Tchaikovsky, terrified that his sexuality would become a topic of scandal, split his powerful sexual response between (a) male members of his family on whom he showered very intense affection and (b) young men, sometimes young boys, who were often rough-trade prostitutes. Anthony Holden offers a succinct, persuasive, well-written portrait. Although short on analysis of Tchaikovsky's music (the man was a genius at representing emotion), Holden is especially good at examining the composer's emotional relationships and the causes of his death: did he die of cholera or arsenic? by infection or suicide? If you like biographies of musicians, you'll love this one.

Many kudos to Mr. Holden for this spectacular effort! This is what biography is to be! A careful reconstruction of a life, with logical extrapolation of missing points and a compelling analysis of historical inconsistencies in this unique figure. I especially appreciated the author's relative absence from the narrative (i.e., he was not telling us constantly how he felt about the facts of the biography). Gratefully, he did not editorialize about the biographies central issue: Tchaikovsky's homosexuality. The issue too often derails serious historical research, either to condemn or to convert to the cause. A sheer delight of a read.

"The notion that one day people will try to probe into the private world of my thoughts and feelings...is very said and unpleasant." So said Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the most famous composers of all time, in 1880. Fortunately for Tchaikovsky fans of today, Anthony Holden has done just that and has done it well. Tchaikovsky: A Biography (Random House, 1996) provides a laymen's view of the turbulent life of the ill-fated composer, approaching both the music and the man equally. Holden's analyses of prominent works do not, as most might fear, rely heavily on knowledge of musical theory, but stem mostly from events that took place in the composer's life at the time a work was written. Commentary on Tchaikovsky's personal life and anecdotal references are written humorously and with the kind of cleverness that comes with true enthusiasm for the subject. Holden uses, as much as possible, direct quotes from those who knew the composer best, working them into the text with a narrative style. The often told of and bizarre relationship that Tchaikovsky had with his long time benefactress Nadezhda von Meck, is also brought to light in great detail. Unlike many biographers, who believe that Meck withdrew financial support upon discovering the composer's homosexuality, Holden contends that Meck's assertions of financial ruin were in fact true, owing to blackmail from her son-in-law!

As with any biography of Tchaikovsky, the most intriguing moments come with the discussions of his homosexuality and his questionable death. Like a detective presenting a scenario, Holden writes the last two days of Tchaikovsky's life with the audience directly watching, "We find Tchaikovsky at the library, looking up a score..." He follows the detailed and highly questionable testimony of Tchaikovsky's brother, Modest, who was with him in the last few days of his death. On the question of death, Holden sides (tentatively) in the recently presented "court of honor" theory, which suggests that a handful of Tchaikovsky's fellow alumni gave him a three-prong ultimatum in censure for his homosexuality. Obsessively in fear of being "outed", Holden believes that the composer chose the last of the options and poisoned himself with arsenic rather than live in disgrace. Given the obvious problems with the testimony of Modest, Holden suggests that the composer's brother knew about the suicide and was covering it up for fear that the "court of honor" might turn on him (Modest was also homosexual).

In all, Anthony Holden's work is not just an excellent example of investigative history, but a wonderfully told story tarnished only by the unfortunate end of its main subject.

Holden captures the essence of Tchaikovsky's inner turmoil. To label him simply a homosexual is to grant him legitiimacy in our current liberated sexual construct. In fact he was not merely a homosexual. He was a lover of boys which is today as illegitimate, or more so than it was in the 19th century. Holden surmizes that the great copmposer's preference was for 15 year old adolescents. If correct this would make him technically an ephebephile - a lover of adolescent young men; however, he also enjoyed the sexual company of small boys according to Holden, starting with his own brothers when they were 9 and 11, and he 19. All of this in no way diminishes Tchaikovsky's brilliance and lustre as a monumental figure in the Western classical repertoire, but it did confound and plague him through his days. P.I. referred to it as his XXX. Would he have achieved the heights of introspection and musical genius that he did without having had this "affliction"? Perhaps not, which if true, makes his tortured sexual journey a gift to us and to posterity.

I was pleasently surprised with the author's candid reporting of Tchaikovsky's early childhood, and school days. I understand better how and why his pecular behavior developed and influenced relationships the remainder of his adult life.

Kudos to Anthony Holden for this absolutely stunning view into the life and times of perhaps Russia's greatest composer. The author certainly has done his homework on this beautiful, deeply touching, telling of this great man's life. From his troubled childhood and on up through his years of education and early job post through his further study of music and composition, and his deeply painful struggle to get his works accepted both by his peers and also within the Russian community. Always, and easily accepted outside Russia, his works seemingly took forever to find acceptance "at home". How much this was the fault of the "Mighty Five" we probably will never completely know, but certainly they had a great hand in it.

The background behind the frontal stage of Tchaikovsky's life, the inner workings within his deeply dysfunctional family and with his friends and acquaintances are fascinating to look at, and quite informative as to why and how come he was the man that he was, and his withdrawn, deeply insecure thoughts, feelings and way of presenting both himself and his works gave me such an awakening to this man that I have completely changed my view of both him and his works. I have a new understanding and value for/of his works...how wonderful to have a revelation like this!

In the interest of keeping this short, please read through some of the other reviews here....we, as a group, and also separately, reflect both the quality of writing by Anthony Holden, his level of deeply investigative research, and assembly of it into this truly VERY GREAT biography of this musical genius.

Anybody interested in music, biography, history, the arts in general, or even the psychological interaction of people will enjoy this deeply reflective biography of Pytor Tchaikovsky.

Because of this book I visited Tchaikovsky's grave and wept shamelessly. It has the only bust of the composer in all of Russia.
Why is this book not available today-- at least in paper-back?

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was the best-known composition student of pianist/composer Anton Rubinstein, and he is one of the rare classical composers who has written some works that are "recognizable" by popular audiences. Holden's biography contains a wealth of detail that illumines the life of the composer.

Not necessarily "immediately" popular in his own lifetime, Anton's brother Nikolay Rubinstein called Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto (perhaps now his most popular piece) "Worthless ... trite ... vulgar," and more. Tchaikovsky wrote several religious pieces, yet "To Tchaikovsky, religion was more a prophylactic against his woes than an intellectual conviction." "A chronic incomniac, he increasingly sought solace in coffee and card games, liquor and cigarettes---four 'vices' he would indulge all his life, often chiding himself in his diaries."

Tchaikovsky's homosexuality is widely-known these days, of course. (Holden notes that fifteen was "the age at which, all his life, he found young men at the height of their sexual allure.") His secrecy about his proclivities is understandable, since "Homosexuality was not merely illegal in Russia, punishable by public disgrace, loss of civil rights and exile to Siberia; it was widely regarded, even in the most liberal of circles, as a 'vice.'" He briefly married a composition student of his, but they broke up after about three months (even though remaining legally married). "It was, in his own mind, his homosexuality which had caused 'an unbridgeable gulf' between him and the rest of society. 'It lends my personality an aloofness, a fear of company, excessive shyness, a mistrust of everyone---in sum, a thousand qualities which make me ever more unsociable." He even concluded that "My whole life has been a chain of misfortunes because of my sexuality." He had even urged his younger brother to "cure" himself of his homosexual leanings "before it is too late."

Tchaikovsky died nine days after the premiere of his 6th Symphony ("Pathétique). His death was supposedly due to contracting cholera from drinking unboiled water; Holden comments that "that Tchaikovsky died of cholera, the result of a tragic accident---inevitably became the received wisdom ... it was believed by the outside world for the best part of a century." However, Holden argues that Tchaikovsky took his own life, by ingesting arsenic in the form of rat poison; it took four horribly painful days for him to die.

Holden's biography is richly detailed, and delves in detail into the various "controversies" about the composer's life, and is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

If Anthony Holden is correct in his assessment that David Brown's four-volume is the best "critical and biographical survey" of Tchaikovsky's musical output, then Holden himself--a prolific and accomplished biographer--has probably written here the best-researched and most insightful biography of the composer himself. Holden begins by pointing out that the biography written by Tchaikovsky's brother Modest is in many respects not to be believed, since Modest--himself a homosexual--went to great lengths to conceal the fact of his brother's homosexuality. Modest also did everything he could to propagate an unlikely story: that his gifted brother killed himself--either carelessly or deliberately--by drinking an unboiled glass of water and contracting cholera. Why would Tchaikovsky have done this, knowing full well that there was a cholera epidemic in St. Petersburg? Having just conducted the first performance of his Pathetique Symphony, in excellent health, and financially secure now for the first time in his career, would he really have been so careless--or so suicidal--as to throw his life away just as his reputation was becoming secure? Holden posits an intriguing alternative: that Tchaikovsky was essentially murdered--forced either to take his own life, or to be "outed" and ruined--by a conspiracy which included other jealous Russian composers. An excellent read, and an insightful and sympathetic look at a man whose torments--which so informed his music--may also have led, ironically, to his premature death.

For most of my life, the accepted story of Tchaikovsky's sudden death aged 53 was that he had drunk a glass of unboiled water during a cholera epidemic in St Petersburg, either through carelessness or by way of playing some kind of Russian roulette. According to what I started to hear when Anthony Holden's biography first appeared, a completely different story, current in several variations but all on the same theme, was known to everyone who mattered in St Petersburg. If it does not seem callous to say so, the episode is God's own gift to a biographer with a tale to sell. It forms a natural climax to a story that was already interesting, it gets the best of both worlds by bringing us scholarly journalism, and it leaves us latitude to form our own conclusions. `Mordre wal out' says Chaucer. It may or may not have been murder or at least forced suicide, but it says a lot for the power and determination of a lie-machine that it took a century for what was well known locally to reach a wider public.

The more Tchaikovsky's reputation grew as a composer, the more anxious he became to avoid public disclosure as a homosexual. He was a right old roarer apparently, specialising in boys in their early to mid teens. When I recently read Julian Clary's novel The Devil in Disguise I assumed that the character Simon must be a literary exaggeration -- overblown one might almost say: now I would be prepared to believe that he could have been modelled on Tchaikovsky. It takes no effort to believe either that such neurosis found expression in his music. Good heavens, you can hear neurosis loud and clear in it without knowing the first thing about his biography. Holden has far more sense and far more taste than to try to identify specifically homosexual characteristics in melodies, harmonies, orchestration or whatever, although when it comes to opera any biographer with any pretensions as a musician is going to have to look for a few links between his subject's life and his dramatic creations.

Tchaikovsky never found a partner to share his life, and from this credible-seeming account I doubt he ever really looked for one. However two women dominated his adult existence, and neither actually strikes me as being a surrogate for the rather cold and distant mother he had adored as a child. He actually married a woman who seems to have been downright unbalanced. This was a `cover-story', and it went wrong from the word go, although Antonina pestered him all his life, ending in an asylum herself. The other story is simply weird, and like the tale of Tchaikovsky's death it shows Holden as the right kind of biographer - evidence is marshalled carefully and tentative conclusions are not claimed to be more than tentative. Holden fortifies his narrative (as elsewhere) with copious citations of letters, and until the abrupt end of their relationship Tchaikovsky and Nadeshda von Meck are depicted as I have always seen them depicted - she passionately enamoured of him and showering him with largesse, but determined that they should never meet. Strange but to all appearances true, because never disputed that I know of. Her huge fortune, inherited from her late husband's railway enterprises, funded the composer's career for decades, until something went wrong. She had a huge brood of offspring too, they were less successful in commerce than their father had been, and she had a son-in-law with aspirations as a composer who tried Tchaikovsky's patience sorely with his talentless efforts. She also had a guilty secret, namely that one of her children was not her husband's, and the discovery seems to have killed him. Holden obviously suspects that the son-in-law was blackmailing her, that he resented Tchaikovsky's low opinion of his work, and that he may have both prompted the sudden end of Tchaikovsky's allowance from her and intercepted his later letters. I shouldn't wonder in the least, but Holden does not claim to have proved his suspicions, and rightly not.

It also brought out the worst in Tchaikovsky, who moaned hysterically to his main remaining confidant, his brother Modest, alleging `betrayal' by the woman who had been his fairy godmother through no right of his. In general he was a holder of grudges, but this one is really spectacular, and it is not a case where the evidence is in any way ambiguous. Come to the circumstances of his death, and Holden has to argue the case at several levels. Throughout the book Holden warns (giving his reasons which are good ones) against being too credulous where Modest is concerned. There is also, of course, the whole issue of Russian secrecy and censorship. I myself take the `cholera from unboiled water' business as an invention, connived at by doctors, although I see no evidence that they administered poison to the composer or that the Tsar told them to. Arsenic poisoning can look like the symptoms of cholera, especially if we are prepared to overlook discrepancies as to the date of the supposed symptoms and even of the composer's death. The cholera story seems to be creaking everywhere - the epidemic was over its worst, and it mainly affected the slums, to make two relevant points.

Holden favours the version that has a certain nobleman writing a letter to the Tsar denouncing Tchaikovsky's dalliance with his son, the letter getting into the hands of an unscrupulous lawyer who saw a career opportunity, and the convoking of an `honour court' of Tchaikovsky's erstwhile schoolmates to `preserve the honour' of the School of Jurisprudence. Stage homophobia was then turned on, and Tchaikovsky was given an ultimatum and some arsenic.

It's neither proved nor claimed as proved, but I can believe it. I like Holden's wry comment that the Tsar would not have been bothered anyway. There was only one Tchaikovsky and plenty of noblemen, he apparently said, doubtless knowing some of their proclivities.