Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 25 April, 1840 at the small town Votkinsk in the province Viatka to a family of a mining engineer. Tchaikovsky passed his early years in the Ural region. Music was favored in the family: Tchaikovsky’s mother often played excerpts from Mozart on an orchestrion for him and the boy began taking piano lessons when he was five. When Tchaikovsky was 10, his parents sent him to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg. During the three years he spent at the school Tchaikovsky maintained a connection to music – he sang in a choir, took piano lessons under Rudolph Kündinger, studied music theory, attended concerts. Tchaikovsky joined music classes organized by the Russian Musical Society in 1859 and in 1862 he enrolled in the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and became one of its first students in the composition class.
Tchaikovsky decided to give up civil service and fully devoted his life to music. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1865 with a silver medal, the highest award offered to students. While at the Conservatory he wrote the cantata “Ode to Joy” on Schiller’s ode, the overture to the play “The Storm”, and “Dances of the Hay Maidens”, the latter were afterwards included in his opera “The Voyevoda”. At the beginning of 1866, Tchaikovsky at the behest of the conservatory director Rubinstein took the post of a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. From 1867 to 1878, Tchaikovsky combined his professorial duties with music criticism while continuing to compose fruitfully. At that time he got acquainted and remained on friendly terms with the members of “The Five” (“The Mighty Handful”) – Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev and others. He was introduced by his friends to the circles of writers, musicians and publishers. During this period he wrote three operas, his first three symphonies, a few quartets, the piano concerto “The Seasons”, some romances and other chamber and instrumental pieces. The works of the Moscow period bore a strong influence by the Russian folklore and scenes from nature.
The successful premier of “Swan Lake” took place on 20 February, 1877 at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater. The work differed greatly from everything he had written before. His Moscow period was very productive in a creative sense. In 1871 an educational book on harmony by Tchaikovsky was published. It was the first manual of this kind written by a Russian author. The composer was a truly scrupulous pedagogue and his role in the development of the professional musical education in Russia cannot be overestimated.
At the end of 1877, after his ill-fated marriage feeling tired and depressed, Tchaikovsky left his homeland and went to Europe. In Italy he completed his Fourth Symphony and the opera “Evgenii Onegin”. From 1880 to 1890 he created a number of symphonic and chamber works: his symphonic piece “Manfred”, the Fifth Symphony, the tone poem “Hamlet”, the opera “The Queen of Spades” and numerous romances. During the 1880s Tchaikovsky went on several successful concert tours in Europe. In 1891 he was invited to the USA for the grand opening of Carnegie Hall. In 1891 Tchaikovsky settled in Klin near Moscow. There he created his Sixth Symphony which was premiered on 16 October, 1893 in Saint Petersburg.
Pyotr Ylyich Tchaikovsky contracted cholera and died on the morning of October 25, 1893, nine days after the premier.