Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Symphony No.6 in B minor, Op.74, "Pathétique"

Adagio – Allegro non troppo
Allegro con grazia
Allegro molto vivace
Finale: Adagio lamentoso

Tchaikovsky’s six symphonies span his career and portray his emotional life with astonishing accuracy and power. There are the two early symphonies, fresh, melodious, and written, like so many 19th Century Russian symphonies, in the spirit of folk music. There is the graceful, classically-proportioned "Polish" symphony; the fruit of Tchaikovsky’s growing interest in Western classical forms. And then there is the final "trilogy" of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies, written between 1878 and 1893, and reflecting with uncanny closeness the tragic drama of Tchaikovsky’s life over those years - his bitter struggle with, and eventual defeat by what he called "Fate". In each of these three symphonies a distinctive motto-theme portrays "Fate", shaping the musical argument and turning what would otherwise be rather loosely-structured pieces into epic emotional dramas. Indeed, the sheer emotional power of these symphonies was too much for many contemporary listeners - to hear an individual wrestling so uninhibitedly with his emotions in response to an abstract "Fate" seemed melodramatic and self-indulgent, and the symphonies were at first coolly received. But their sincerity, colour, and melodic sweep won through, and a century later their absolute emotional authenticity has been validated by our modern understanding of the true nature of Tchaikovsky’s "Fate" – his homosexuality. His desperate struggle for love, in a society in which his feelings, openly expressed, would have seen him imprisoned or exiled, was no "self-indulgence" but a genuine matter of life and death. And in none of his works is this struggle more terrible, or more powerfully expressed, than in his very last work, the Sixth Symphony.

The story behind this symphony, in fact, seems an uncanny example of life following art. The initial ideas for the piece came to him on a journey from Odessa to his home at Klin in February 1893, and he wrote to a friend: "I had an idea for another symphony, this time with a programme, but a programme that will remain an enigma to all…This programme is full of subjective feeling, and quite often, composing it in my mind, I wept copiously…There will be much that is new in this symphony and, incidentally, the finale won’t be a loud Allegro but, on the contrary, a long-drawn Adagio". By the end of August he had completed and orchestrated the symphony, ready for its premiere in St. Petersburg on 28 October. The audience was lukewarm; and three days later Tchaikovsky fell ill. By the 6th November, aged only 53, he was dead, officially of cholera – and at once, the unexplained "programme" of the Symphony, its extreme emotions and slow, despairing finale seemed to make sense. Tchaikovsky himself had left a clue in his notebooks, a scribbled outline from 1892: "The plan of the symphony is LIFE. First movement – all impulsive passion, thirst for activity… (Finale DEATH – result of collapse) Second movement love, third disappointment; fourth ends dying away". So, according to Rimsky-Korsakov, the symphony was immediately seen as the composer’s premonition of his own end and rapidly became "fashionable". A second performance, in mid-November, was a triumph. Tchaikovsky, though, had been far from giving up on life. Something more sinister than a fatal infection had actually killed him. Only since the 1970s has it become open knowledge that he took poison on the orders of a bizarre "honour - court", after his relationship with a young nobleman had threatened to become public knowledge. The court met two days after the premiere of the symphony, so Tchaikovsky cannot have known that he was about to die. Nonetheless, the "Fate" he had always dreaded, the terror of which he expressed so overwhelmingly in the symphony, was closing in on him.

But listening to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony remains a positive, even life-affirming experience. On a purely technical level, it’s one of his most coherent symphonic works, finding the perfect forms for its abundant emotions and achieving a uniquely subtle degree of unity – the "Fate" motif in this symphony is not a distinctive melody, as in the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, but the device of a descending scale, which works its way into melodies and textures throughout the symphony and creates the sense of an all-pervading presence. The idea of a slow finale was absolutely new, and inspired an entire generation of younger symphonists, Mahler foremost amongst them. And the whole piece bursts with inspired ideas and vivid colours. Even at its darkest moments (the very opening, for example, and the tragic climax of the first movement) we are aware of an incredibly vital and communicative creative mind at work; and of course, when the gloom lifts, as it does for large parts of the symphony, no composer can console and charm as warmly as Tchaikovsky.

The first movement carries the bulk of the symphony’s emotional argument. It rises from an Adagio introduction of the blackest despair to a nervous sonata-form Allegro with a huge, romantic second subject, almost a slow-movement in its own right. A violent crash launches the development section, a terrifying, anguished struggle through which trumpets scream, violins sob and the horns intone the ominous sound of an Orthodox funeral chant. After a huge climax, it dies away, the second-subject, con dolcezza, brings consolation, and a quiet cortège brings the movement to a subdued close. Two interludes follow before the drama is resumed, one of Tchaikovsky’s sweet, graceful waltzes and a flamboyant march, both like great showpiece scenes from one of Tchaikovsky’s own ballets. But something is not quite right; the waltz is crippled, and limps in five beats to the bar, and the mood of sorrow returns where there should be a colourful central trio section. And the March builds to a brilliant climax and then stays there slightly too long; its closing crashes are too loud, too triumphant for the third movement of a symphony – it verges on hysteria (and, more likely than not, makes the audience applaud in the wrong place!). The sudden, minor-key dying fall of the final Adagio’s first phrase comes as an upsetting surprise. From then on, despite more music of warm consolation, and another passionate, anguished outburst, the course of the symphony is only downwards, into darkness and finally silence..

The morning after the premiere, Tchaikovsky felt that this was all too personal, that he needed to give some explanation. The title "Programme Symphony" was just too cold. It was his brother Modest who suggested the name by which the symphony is known to this day, and which, without going into unnecessary detail, explains exactly what it is – "Symphonie Pathétique" – a "Symphony full of feeling".


R.G. Bratby, 2002


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