Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Study [Hardcover]

Alexander Poznansky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 21, 1996

Tchaikovsky's death in October 1893 in St. Petersburg, shortly after the first performance of his masterpiece, the Path�tique symphony, is one of the most thoroughly documented deaths of a prominent cultural figure in modern times. He was treated by no fewer than four physicians and surrounded by a group of relatives and friends. The official account of his death was that he died from cholera. But almost since the day of his passing there have been rumors that it was not accidental. It is alleged that Tchaikovsky was forced to commit suicide in order to avoid the scandal and disgrace of being unmasked as a homosexual.

Alexander Poznansky is the first Western scholar to have access to the Tchaikovsky archives in Klin, Russia. In this fascinating new book, the product of five years' research, he provides a definitive account of the circumstances preceding the composer's death. On the basis of much previously unknown material, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and newspaper reports, he traces in minute detail the composer's activities during the last weeks of his life and finds no evidence to support the notion that Tchaikovsky's death was brought about by nything other than cholera.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What or who killed the famous Russian composer Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky? Was it cholera, as his doctors recorded at his death in 1893 and most historians have since believed? Or was it self-administered poison, the enforced exit from a scandalous homosexual affair with a member of the Russian royal family? Versions of this latter account, which began as a swirl of rumors immediately after the composer's death, have had a long and curious afterlife, through the Czarist and Soviet periods into the heated sexual-political debates of our own time.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery, Alexander Poznansky's Tchaikovsky's Last Days shifts carefully through a wealth of documentary evidence, including Russian archival material formerly inaccessible to scholars. His conclusion comes by way of a fascinating look at the sexual life of 19th-century Russia and a reflected glance at the sexual mythmaking impulses of the present.

From Library Journal

Intended primarily to refute several recent publications (e.g., Anthony Holden's Tchaikovsky: A Biography, LJ 3/1/96) that attribute Tchaikovsky's death to suicide in order to cover up an illicit homosexual liaison, this study concentrates on the last 20 days of the composer's life. To tell his version, Poznansky, librarian at Yale University Library's Slavic and East European Collection, presents numerous quotes from a variety of sources. His analyses, summaries, and conclusions are delivered with occasionally impassioned, sometimes pompous, often pedantic prose, while the documents provide a series of tiny, colorful snapshots of the artistic society in Russia during the late 19th century. Effective, if not overwhelming, the specialized text should be considered only by larger libraries that already possess Holden and other Tchaikovsky biographies.?Timothy J. McGee, Univ. of Toronto
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First edition (November 21, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019816596X
• ISBN-13: 978-0198165965
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,485,706 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A Much needed contribution to Tchaikovsky studies", May 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Study (Hardcover)

As a youngster I read some generic collection of composer's lives that was meant to be inspiring and edifying. Tchaikovsky's story ended with a strange tale of suicide committed by intentionally drinking a disease tainted glass of water in a restaurant. I was only about eleven years old and I distinctly remember thinking that the story was totally unbelievable, ridiculous and outrageous. What an inane theory. Many years later in the Nineteenth Century Music journal I read a brilliant article by Alexander Poznansky. With the thrilling determination and detail of a Grisham mystery thriller, using Petersburg medical statistics and even coroner's reports Poznansky pieces together Tchaikovsky's final weeks and establishes to any jury's satisfaction that the suicide theory is complete fantasy. Over the next few months the magazine was a maelstorm of scholarly discussion with Poznansky always taking the day. Even the new Grove Dictionary supports this suicide by water glass theory this time with a dash of arsenic, which is patently ridiculous on face value, except they add a "top secret" judicial tribunal from Tchaikovsky's high school that supposedly orders his demise. The theory being that Tchaikovsky, a world travelled, rich, renowned, and successful man, was so attached to his high school that even thirty five years later their poor opinion could precipitate his willing suicide. How could Grove's publish such nonsense? So is this book necessary? Absolutely. This book takes those original articles as its kernel with a great deal of expansion and refinement. It is a vital piece of Tchaikovsky scholarship and is a wonderful reading experience. It has a wonderful array of Tchaikovsky photos and documents not available elsewhere. There are not many scholarly books that are page turners, but this one is.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing, July 18, 2005

By 

Cam "Pedro Sánchez Palma" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Study (Hardcover)

Before I bought this book I had read the first reviewer. I recognize I was not sure about the contain of the book due to the comments of the first reviewer.

Now, just finishing of reading and after reading a dozen of books about Tchaikovsky I can give you my opinion:

Mr. Poznansky offers a magnific recopilation of data about the last two weeks of the composer. It is very impresionant the detail which he has collected in him study about the composer.

I encouragely recommend this reading in the case you love strongly the composer becasuse you will feel very near as a man a what is more, you will have enough data to compose your own opinion about the final: suicide or illness.

I think the answer is VERY clear after reading the book.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Truley not worth a Tchaikovsky lover's time, January 9, 2005

By 

Amadeus Salieri "E.M.L" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Study (Hardcover)

The only reason this author doesnt believe that Tchaikovsky was murdered is because he doesnt believe that such things could happen in the "civilized society" ( no offense intended to those of Russian decent) that Russia was in Tchaikovsky's time.

The author does not adequatlely account for the inconsistencies in the cholera story, which really seems to have been concocted to hide the truth and to avoid the stigma of suicide. Everyone who was at his deathbed gave conflicting accounts of what happened and even one of the doctor's accounts suggests that he died one day sooner than reported.

Pozanansky only dismisses the accounts of Bertenson and others because they were reported orally after their own deaths.

Granted, when each claim is examined on it's own, it is admittedly 'weak', but since all of the accounts confirm one another despite coming from different sources, they all add up to 'strong' evidence; in my opinion and seemingly the opinions of others.

For in November,1993, on the BBC broadcast documentary on the death of Tchaikovsky('Pride or Prejudice') various experts on Russian history concluded largley in favor of the theory that Tchaikovsky had been sentenced to death, ordered to do the right/decent thing.

Even Dr. John Henry of Guy's Hospital, who work in the British National Poison Unit, concluded that all the reported symptoms of Tchaikovsky's illness 'fit very closley to arsenic poisoning', and he suggested that people would have known that acute diarrhoea, dehydration, and kidney failure resembled the manifestaions of cholera which would help them put the death over as a case of cholera.

In the end, its a weak "documentary" that sounds as if it is afraid to even consider the fact that Tchaikovsky was murdered. That is not a good "study" of the composer's last days or even life. A good biographer would look at all theories and explain or dismiss them with enough evidence to make it credible; this author didnt do that. He just said HE didnt think it could have happened. That is not fact right there; that is opinion.

This book actually got my hopes up in thinking that it would be a good book/study about the composer. It completely enraged me when it provided such weak evidence to back up an opinion!

Is is a weak and biased book. I only gave it one star for the good pictures in it; thats about all it's worth looking at for, the photographs of the composer.