TCHAIKOVSKY: THE SLEEPING BEAUTY SUITE

Peter IIyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky did not take up music seriously until he was 22 after studying law and entering the government civil service. But in 1863 he gave up his boring job as a clerk I the Czar’s Ministry of Justice to enter the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory. He later moved to Moscow where he became a music critic and teacher and continued to compose. A brief, unsuccessful marriage when he was 34 led to a nervous collapse. At about this time, he met Madame Nadejda von Meck who became Tchaikovsky’s patroness even though they had never met and probably never did meet. For unclear reasons, she abruptly withdrew her support. By this time, Tchaikovsky was already a world-famous composer. In 1893, he died suddenly after drinking unboiled water in cholera-infested St. Petersburg. Controversy has long raged over whether or not he did it deliberately, but most scholars now believe it was accidental.

Apart from his orchestral works. Tchaikovsky was also a skilled ballet music composer. He used his experience to turning ballet music, which was up until that time nothing more than a sequence of pretty but unconnected tunes, into an organized work like a symphony or opera, outlining the story’s emotional development as well as accompanying the dancer’s steps. He wrote three of the finest ballet-scores in the repertoire: The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.