Tchaikovsky's Tongue-In-Cheek Suicide Note

Part One

A Programme About Nothing

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky is among the 19th century's most esteemed composers. Known for bombastic style and explosive dynamics, his compositions have stood the test of time as powerful, expressive dissertations on life, death, struggle, and suffering and they serve as physical incarnations of the indomitable human spirit.

Like many greatly admired and fantastically impressive artists, Tchaikovsky's story ends in tragedy. The composer lived as a closeted homosexual for his whole life, as virtually proven by his personal diaries and letters to close friends and family. And due to the tragic and unclear nature of his death, in the many decades since his passing it has come under question whether the notable artistic struggles which lead to his final symphony in 1893 were related to his passing and possible suicide.

The ever-burning question with Tchaikovsky may always be the nature of his death, whether it was cholera from unclean water, a life of smoking and drinking, a suicide by poisoning, or anything else that may have happened. But in tandem with this mystery is the riddle of Tchaikovsky's final symphony, Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, also known as the Pathétique Symphony.

From 1891 to 1893, Tchaikovsky struggled with what would be some of his final compositions, and until Pathétique he had not written a full symphony since 1888. In the years preceding February to August of 1893 when he composed Pathétique, the composer struggled with immense dissatisfaction over his works, falling into an artistic rut. But inspiration struck when he began the Pathétique, in a letter to his nephew Vladimir "Bob" Davydov, for whom the symphony would be dedicated, Tchaikovsky wrote:

"During my journey I had the idea for another symphony, this time with a programme, but such a programme that will remain an enigma to everyone— let them guess."

Tchaikovsky became entirely engrossed by this composition, and was very particular about what it was to mean. In modern parlance, a programme is nearly equivalent to a concept album, it's the metatextual meaning and intention behind a work. For his sixth symphony, Tchaikovsky intended the programme to be a question of it's own existence. The composer intended for the work to draw the audience to the very question of it's significance, towards his authorial intent. I argue that Tchaikovsky's "secret" programme, was the very idea of a secret programme in the first place. Tchaikovsky wanted people to agonize over what the Pathétique Symphony was meant to represent, and for that display of critical analysis to be it's own point.

Or was it?

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Part Two

Passionate or The Pathetic

In that very same February 1893 letter to his nephew, Tchaikovsky wrote:

The programme of this symphony is completely saturated with myself and quite often during my journey I cried profusely. [...] There will still be much that is new in the form of this work and the finale is not to be a loud allegro but the slowest adagio.

By my understanding, Tchaikovsky is revealing his explicit inspirations for the Pathétique Symphony, he seems to prove what many have retrospectively foisted as the true programme of his 6th symphony-- a dictation of his struggles as a gay man in 19th century Russia. By this interpretation, the structure of the Pathétique Symphony tells a story of struggle; of brilliant joy in the love between two men being snuffed by the unquenching and stifling pressure of society. And that final line, "not to be a loud, allegro but the slowest adagio," it's referring to one of the most notable and beloved aspects of Symphony No. 6. In a highly unusual fashion, Pathétique Symphony both opens and closes on a minor key. Tense and dramatic, this alone could established the tone of the composition, that of a wholly undeserved and unacceptable tragedy. But more than that, it refers to the ending of the fourth movement, where the symphony ends not in a climax, not in any sort of flourish, but in a desolate and funereal drone of decaying strings, a slow progression towards inevitable conclusion.

So Pathétique Symphony at it's musical core, is a work dedicated to development, a shifting but ceaseless tread towards a known end. It's movements are characterized by their differing meters, from the second movement's lilting waltz to the third's ecstatic march, and finally plunging to the fourth movement's slow, sombre decline.

It is on this interpretation that I can begin to explain my click-bait title. It seems all too fitting that a such an unusually depressing symphony was not just the last of Tchaikovsky's works, but one which was first performed a mere nine days before his death. We do not know for certain how Tchaikovsky died, it may have been a suicide, it may not have been. Nor do we know for certain that even if it was one, that he had the forethought to compose his final symphony as a appropriate requiem for his own death. But as the theory goes, it may well have been that the Pathétique Symphony was Tchaikovsky's attempt at dealing with his imminent passing, far earlier than anyone could know that it would happen.

There are plenty of opponents to this argument, those who look at the romantic notion that Tchaikovsky's wrote his final symphony as his own suicide note, and reject them outright. Besides the obvious fact that the composer's death was not theorized to be a suicide until nearly a century had passed, opponents to this interpretation reference the reverie that Tchaikovsky had entered after finally breaking through his artists block. By the accounts of those who knew him and by his letters, in the months leading up to his death the composer appeared in high spirits, he seemed to be rejuvenated.

Perhaps it is the cynic in me, but I'm only reminded of the medical concept of Terminal Lucidity, when terminal patients seem to miraculously improve only days or hours before finally succumbing to death.

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Part Three

Terminal Lucidity

Every one of Tchaikovsky's letters from this period could surely reveal something of his psyche or compositional process. But much like any given interview with an artist in the modern day, they can't always be bothered to tell the whole story, or even the truth. There may be no reason to suspect Tchaikovsky of deceiving his brother or nephew, but when his letters all point towards conflicting inspirations behind Pathétique Symphony, it becomes difficult, nigh impossible to decide on a single correct interpretation.

So we can see that there are in fact two unanswerable questions surrounding Tchaikovsky's final years. Is Symphony No. 6 in B Minor simply an extension of the programmes of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 5, works which ponder on the spirit of humanity and the difficult hand we are handed? Or is it an intimate reflection on the clash of beauty and despair of Tchaikovsky's life, a compositional headstone? Or was all of this-- genuinely all of it-- Tchaikovsky's ultimate wish: the century of arguing and disagreement, the speculation and theories.

The theory I first presented, if you'll recall, declares that more than anything, Tchaikovsky wanted Pathétique Symphony to inspire curiosity towards it's secrets. Endless and forever unending, I think he inarguably succeeded. How about you?

-Paul Taylor

(Assistant News Director at WXOU)