Introduction

Introduction It is hard to imagine how such a large—indeed impressive—number of letters, offi cial papers, and notes related to someone as beloved, famous, and familiar as Tchai kovsky could have remained, until recently, unknown. Moreover, it’s not as if these documents have been sitting, for more than a century, in an abandoned attic waiting for some lucky person to come along and discover them. On the contrary, they have been faithfully preserved at one of Russia’s most esteemed cultural institutions: the archive of the Pyotr Ilyich Tchai kovsky State House-Museum in Klin. Why then did these important documents remain either unpublished for many years or published only in part, with deliberate distortions and omissions? The reasons are simultane- ously public and private, cultural and political, specifi cally Russian and more or less general. Tchai kov sky’s monarchism, his adherence to the Russian Orthodox tradition, and his homosexuality have pre- sented, at different times, different but similarly uncomfortable topics for the composer’s biographers. Some taboos were implemented over the course of Tchai kov sky’s lifetime, others after his death in 1893, and most of them under the Soviet regime. The Soviet historians usually dismissed out of hand Tchai kov sky’s ardent patriotism toward Imperial Russia and his sincere loyalty to Al- exander III, whose patronage the composer enjoyed in his later years.1 ix Y7320-Kostalevsky.indb ix 12/19/17 1:18:14 PM x Introduction Needless to say, during the Soviet period, this kind of ideological “makeover” was methodically applied to all famous Russian fi gures of the past. In order to enter the Soviet pantheon, the Russian greats had to be purifi ed of their ideological and moral “errors.” In Tchai kov sky’s case, his respectful references to the Russian monarchy and its policies were deliberately erased from any public discussion of the composer’s life. As a result, the notifi cation letters of awards and gifts sent to Tchai kov sky from the offi ce of Alexander III were not published until recently.2 The same ideologically motivated approach was applied to his musi- cal heritage. It is telling that in the Soviet Union, Tchaikov sky’s 1812 Overture (from 1880) was performed without its climactic section, the old Russian national anthem “God Save the Tsar” [Bozhe, Tsarya khrani]. The new and “improved” version of the famed overture was reworked with the help of a Soviet composer, Vissarion Shebalin, who replaced the “God Save the Tsar” section with the chorus “Glory” [Slav’sya] from Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin. In all likelihood, the irony of such a rearrangement would not have escaped the well- educated and intelligent Shebalin: the original title of Glinka’s opera had been A Life for the Tsar, and the original opening line of his chorus used to be “Glory to Our Tsar.”3 In similar fashion, Tchai kovsky’s sacred works, such as the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1878) and the All-Night Vigil (1882), were excluded from performance in the atheist Soviet Union, and his contribution to the art of Russian Ortho- dox music was consciously ignored.4 The central prohibition concerning Tchai kov sky’s life has been his homosexuality—public discussion of the topic has been taboo in his home country for almost a century. Ironically, in early Soviet publications from the archive of the Tchaikov sky House-Museum in Klin, the editors regarded the composer’s homosexuality as a matter that should not be excluded from scholarly study of his life.5 But aside from a few such exceptions, Tchai kov sky’s intimate life was zealously concealed by his family members, by au courant music scholars, and by the offi cials of such opposing regimes as the Romanov empire and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In the eyes of the authorities, it would have been unthinkable to accept the idea that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikov sky, Russia’s national treasure, was a homosexual. Therefore, he wasn’t. Outside of Russia, also, the issue was not properly addressed for a long time. Y7320-Kostalevsky.indb x 12/19/17 1:18:15 PM Introduction xi Though the fact of Tchai kov sky’s homosexuality was fairly known in the West and often mentioned in studies of the composer, his biographers did not elaborate on it any further.6 In general, even apart from this point, an interval between the fi ftieth anniversary (in 1943) of Tchaikov sky’s death and the last decades of the twentieth century cannot be considered particularly fruitful for research on Tchaikov sky in the West.7 A signifi cant exception during this period of calm seas is David Brown’s monumental four-volume study of the composer’s life and music from his early to his fi nal years.8 The discourse on Tchai kovsky started to pick up steam in the late twentieth century, when homosexuality and related issues had fi nally become a legitimate part of scholarly inquiry. It has notably benefi ted from the most recent historical and sociological methods in biographical studies and put the issue of Tchaikov sky’s sexuality in the relevant sociocultural context. As it happened, the new direction in Tchai kovsky scholarship has been additionally energized by a whiff of sensa- tionalism resulting from the publication of articles by an émigré musi- cologist from the Soviet Union, Aleksandra Orlova.9 According to her interpretation of the circumstances surrounding Tchai kov sky’s death, he committed suicide in order to avoid a public homosexual scandal that was about to break. Orlova’s version has provoked “the great suicide debate,” which has involved energetic participants from opposite camps.10 Years later, Richard Taruskin, who refuted the idea of the suicide plot in favor of the offi cial “death in the time of cholera” scenario, expertly provided analysis of the debate within its broader setting.11 Yet another expert in Tchaikov sky studies, Roland John Wiley, has also summed up the pros and cons of the theories about Tchaikov sky’s death and come to a more cautious conclusion: “the singular failing of the cholera theory is that it cannot disprove that Tchai kov sky poisoned himself with something similar in its effect.”12 The most comprehensive study of Tchaikov sky, his homosexuality, and the question of his death has been produced by Alexander Poz- nansky, who had the chance to examine, back in the 1980s, the origi- nals of Tchai kov sky’s intimate letters, kept in the Tchai kov sky House- Museum Archive. Poznansky effi ciently used his fi ndings to shape the biographical narrative in his book, Tchai kovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man.13 He followed this infl uential volume with a number of publications focused on discrediting the suicide theory. Y7320-Kostalevsky.indb xi 12/19/17 1:18:15 PM xii Introduction Meanwhile, the Tchai kov sky archive began more and more actively to publish previously unknown materials, including some concealed or censored letters of the composer. These commendable, though argu- ably belated, efforts led to the publication of Neizvestnyi Chai kov- skii—the original for our translation.14 Unquestionably, this edition of the archival documents accompanied by precise references to pri- mary sources fi lled in conspicuous gaps in both public knowledge and research. Both the Russian and English versions are composed of correspondence between Tchai kovsky’s parents; letters from his governess, Fanny Dürbach; Tchai kov sky’s letters to his brothers, friends, and associates; and some offi cial papers. Taken together, they remind us that Tchai- kovsky was a product of a cultural environment that encompassed not only important characteristics of his own time but also sensibilities of the preceding century.15 The fi rst part of the book, the letters of the composer’s parents, offers an intimate glimpse into the everyday life of a family from the Russian gentry in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century. More im- portantly, it brings us closer to understanding Pyotr Tchai kovsky as a man born into this milieu. Regarding the fi rst point, these letters, writ- ten between April 1833 and September 1851, clearly demonstrate an established social practice of privileged classes everywhere in Europe, including the vast Russian Empire, where travel and letter writing came—literally—with the territory. For the members of the Russian nobility, frequent travel, either in government service or for personal reasons, shaped in many ways the dynamics of relations with family and friends. Letters, of course, were the common form of communication during periods of absence. At the same time, the practice of correspondence became the best answer not only to the diffi culties of separation but also to the aesthetic challenge of writing a text and went hand in hand with the sentimental style in literature. Similar to its visual model of the family portrait eulogizing emotional ties between husbands and wives, and parents and children, an epistolary adaptation of the sen- timentalist trend also relied on an image of the family as emotional unit.16 Metaphorically speaking, within the domestic universe of Sen- timentalism, the familiar letters acted as a reassuring representation of the gravitational force that held all family members together. Y7320-Kostalevsky.indb xii 12/19/17 1:18:15 PM Introduction xiii For families that were well off, writing letters didn’t require a special occasion, but was part of daily activities and as customary as a cup of tea in the morning and a shot of stronger drink in the evening.

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