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9780198165965

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Recommended not only for students of Tchaikovsky (at all levels) but also for Russia enthusiasts and historians of homosexuality. --Choice. ..makes for a fascinating, if scholarly glimpse into the hidden life of the man who gave us The Nutcraker Suite, Swan Lake, and the 1812 Overture. --Queer Reader. ..[Poznansky] provides an invaluable account of the sexual mores of Russians in the 19th century. --INew York Times Book Review. ..the many primary sources quoted paint a rich picture of Tchaikovsky's generous and wry character...To feel what it was like for a classical composer to be so beloved and important to all classes of a nation, music lovers need only read this book and dream. --hamber Music The author's scrupulous and painstaking inquiry into the oral tradition surrounding Tchaikovsky's death deserves the particular attention of those who continue to profess agnosticism in the matter. --Notes

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)

Recommended not only for students of Tchaikovsky (at all levels) but also for Russia enthusiasts and historians of homosexuality. --Choice<br> .,. makes for a fascinating, if scholarly glimpse into the hidden life of the man who gave us The Nutcraker Suite, Swan Lake, and the 1812 Overture. --Queer Reader<br> .,. [Poznansky] provides an invaluable account of the sexual mores of Russians in the 19th century. --INew York Times Book Review<br> .,. the many primary sources quoted paint a rich picture of Tchaikovsky's generous and wry character...To feel what it was like for a classical composer to be so beloved and important to all classes of a nation, music lovers need only read this book and dream. --hamber Music<br> The author's scrupulous and painstaking inquiry into the oral tradition surrounding Tchaikovsky's death deserves the particular attention of those who continue to profess agnosticism in the matter. --Notes<br>

Author Information

Alexander Poznansky is Librarian at the Slavic and East European Collection, Yale University Library. He is the author of Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man.

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