Tchaikovsky was born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russian Empire, to a mining engineer and the second of his three wives, a Russian woman of French ancestry. Musically precocious, he began piano lessons at the age of five. He obtained an excellent general education at the School of Jurisprudence and was a civil servant before entering the St Petersburg Conservatory from 1862 (the year of its foundation) to 1865. In 1866, he was appointed professor of theory and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory, established that year. He held the post until approximately 1878. From 1878, Tchaikovsky focused primarily on composition. Tchaikovsky toured the United States in 1891 conducting performances of his works. In 1893, Tchaikovsky was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Cambridge University. Tchaikovsky died nine days after the premiere of the Sixth Symphony, the “Pathétique”. Most of his biographers have considered his death to have been caused by cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water several days earlier. In recent decades, however, various theories have been advanced by some sources that his death was a suicide. According to one version of the theory, this represented a sentence imposed by a “court of honour” of Tchaikovsky’s fellow alumni of the St Petersburg School of Jurisprudence, in censure of the composer’s closet homosexuality. | |
