This course is a biographical and musical study of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), a man defined by and indivisible from the music which became an outlet for all the shifting moods of his turbulent soul.
As an artist—he was the first full-time, formally trained, professional composer in Russian history—Tchaikovsky walked a fine and difficult line between his Romantic penchant for expression and the demands of Classical structure, which give his works their shape.
A highly popular composer, he possessed the unique ability in his day to blend the fire and passion of Russian nationalism with Germanic compositional technique.
These lectures include excerpts from more than a dozen of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, ballets, and other works.