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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > Romantic music (c 1830 to c 1900)
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Tchaikovsky's Last Days - A Documentary Study (Hardcover, New)
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Tchaikovsky's Last Days - A Documentary Study (Hardcover, New)
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Do we really need a whole book that documents Tehaikovsky's final
illness and rails against the theory that he committed suicide?
Poznansky, author of an unsatisfying 1991 Tchaikovsky biography,
assembles much of the relevant evidence here but fails to shape it
into either a commanding argument or an involving narrative.
Scornful of speculation that the composer took his own life to
avoid a homosexual scandal, Poznansky contends that Tchaikovsky was
comfortable with his homosexuality in later years; that a gay
lifestyle was no great problem in upper-class, artistic Russian
circles; and that the powers-that-be would have protected the great
composer from any serious repercussions. The bulk of the book is a
week-by-week chronicle of Tchaikovsky's last month (October 1893),
chiefly presented through underedited excerpts from letters,
diaries, memoirs, and newspaper reports. Poznansky points out that
the composer was busy and cheerful, making future plans, prior to
falling ill with cholera. He scoffs at "idle and naive" debate
about the "'secret' programme" behind the Sixth Symphony (the
"Pathetique"), which premiered two weeks before the composer's
death. And he finds nothing improbable in the sketchy, inconsistent
record of Tchaikovsky's illness, noting that he was hardly the only
aristocrat to succumb during that period. Finally, the rumors of
self-annihilation and coverup - including the familiar "Russian
roulette" tale of Tchaikovsky insisting on drinking a glass of
unboiled water - are elaborately, if not conclusively discounted.
(He attributes such rumors to a bohemian milieu "fraught with a
peculiar mixture of philistinism and libertinage and singularly
prone to the perpetuation of all manner of gossip and real or
imagined psychodramas.") Future biographers will appreciate the
gathering of materials here, some of which Poznansky discovered in
Russian archives. Non-scholras - aside from those with special
interest in cholera - will find this an unengaging patchwork,
without enough texture, drama, or ingenuity to hold the documentary
pieces together. (Kirkus Reviews)
Tchaikovsky's death in October 1893 in St Petersburg, shortly after
the premiere of his sixth symphony, The Pathetique, is one of the
most thoroughly documented deaths of a prominent cultural figure in
modern times. He was treated by no fewer than four physicians and
surrounded by a group of relatives and friends. The official
account of the circumstances of his death was that he died from
cholera, possibly by drinking infected water. But almost since the
day of his death there have been rumours that it was not
accidental. It is alleged that Tchaikovsky was forced to commit
suicide in order to avoid the scandal and disgrace of being
unmasked as a homosexual. Alexander Poznansky is the first Western
scholar to have gained access to the Tchaikovsky archives in Klin,
Russia. He here provides much hitherto unknown documentary material
- memoirs, diary entries, letters, and newspaper reports - and adds
his own commentary on the status of homosexuality in
nineteenth-century Russia and on various conspiracy theories that
have been advanced to account for Tchaikovsky's death. His
conclusion is that there is no factual evidence to support the
notion that Tchaikovsky's death was brought about by anything other
than cholera.
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