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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Analysis

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky once said that, “Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy”. Composing dozens of notable pieces, it is recognizable that Tchaikovsky was a man who poured his soul and life into his passion of music. The book, The World of Great Composers, states, “Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky remains the most famous and most popular of all Russian composers. The fact alone is a distinction not easy to ignore, especially in view of the vicissitudes through which this composer’s music has passed in the half century and more since his death. There has been no one in music quite like him, and certainly there had been no music with so remarkable a history of fortune and misfortune” (The World of Great Composers).
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However, the marriage lasted a brief amount of time, for Tchaikovsky did not love Antonina and he only married her to cover the rumors of his sexuality. Years later, he entered upon a new relationship with Nadezhda von Meck, who was a wealthy widow. Although, Tchaikovsky never met Meck face-to-face, she assisted him financially until she unexpectedly and suddenly cut him off in 1890. During the time that Tchaikovsky was assisted by Meck, he was able to travel all throughout Europe and quit his post at the Moscow Conservatory. He worked diligently with his music and published many works, such as his first and most noble ballet The Swan Lake (The World of Great …show more content…

These pieces include an overture, a march, and several waltzes. Each piece ranges from thirty seconds up to roughly seven minutes. The ballet is scored for a grand orchestra consisting of flutes, piccolos, oboes, clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons, trumpets, trombones, tubas, timpani, triangles, tambourines, cymbals, basses, drums, glockenspiel, castanets, piano, harps, violins, cellos, double basses, and the not so well known celesta. Gavin Plumley writes in his article A Spoon Full of Sugar, that Tchaikovsky was not sure how he could make the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy unique, so he added in the celesta to give it what that character needed. It is also said that Tchaikovsky received a lot of attention for using this instrument, as the Nutcracker Suite is the first suite to use the celesta (Gavin

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