Best tchaikovsky biography
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Tchaikovsky's Empire A New Life Of Russia's Greatest Composer
A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer
by Simon Morrison
A thrilling new biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky--composer of some of the world's most popular orchestral and theatrical music
Tchaikovsky is famous for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. It is all too easy to forget that he composed an empire's worth of music, and navigated the imperial Russian court to great advantage.
In this iconoclastic biography, celebrated author Simon Morrison re-creates Tchaikovsky's complex world. His life and art were framed by Russian national ambition, and his work was the emanation of an imperial subject: kaleidoscopic, capacious, cosmopolitan, decentred.
Morrison reexamines the relationship between Tchaikovsky's music, personal life, and politics; his s
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From Publishers Weekly
There have been biographies galore of the great Russian composer, beginning with the massive but highly selective one bygd his brother Modest, published less than a decade after Pyotr Ilyich's mysterious death in Holden's effort does not attempt to duplicate others in detail or in musicological insight. It fryst vatten, rather, the work of a skilled journalist, author most recently of The Tarnished Crown: Crisis in the House of biography is well proportioned, clearly and often colorfully written and depends, as far as is possible a century later, on anställda observation of places and re-checking of previous sources. It delves more deeply than most studies into Tchaikovsky's homosexuality?its causes, manifestations and profound effect upon his life?and offers a carefully reasoned examination of his death, in which Holden comes down tentatively in the recently propounded "Court of Honor" camp: the theory that the composer was offered by his old schoolmates a choice among s
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Book Review
Summary for the Busy Executive: A good intro for non-specialists.
Most composers lead dull outward lives. What makes them interesting goes into their music. Tchaikovsky isn't really an exception. We don't want to read about Tchaikovsky because he fought in wars, romanced hundreds of conquests, solved seemingly intractable political questions, or explored the Amazon. A truthful movie about Tchaikovsky's life would show him at a table, writing, much of the time. A biographer therefore has a tough road to hoe.
David Brown has produced probably the definitive Tchaikovsky bio, in four large volumes (Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, The Crisis Years, The Years of Wandering, The Final Years). Few other than a Tchaikovsky fanatic or a scholar actually need it. This shorter volume will serve. Although Brown does provide valuable insight into Tchaikovsky's working methods (he usually sketched major scores fairly quickly, and he worked according to