7 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 74 cantatas, 20 choral works, 3 string quartets, a string
sextet, and more than 100 songs and piano pieces.
Early Years
Tchaikovsky was the second of six surviving children of
Ilya Tchaikovsky, a manager of the Kamsko-Votkinsk
metal works, and Alexandra Assier, a descendant of
French émigrés. He manifested a clear interest in music
from childhood, and his earliest musical impressions
came from an orchestrina in the family home. At age four
he made his first recorded attempt at composition, a song
written with his younger sister Alexandra. In 1845 he began
taking piano lessons with a local tutor, through which he
became familiar with Frédéric Chopin’s mazurkas and the
piano pieces of Friedrich Kalkbrenner.
In 1850 Tchaikovsky entered the prestigious Imperial
School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg, a boarding
institution for young boys, where he spent nine years. He
proved a diligent and successful student who was popular
among his peers. At the same time Tchaikovsky formed
in this all-male environment intense emotional ties with
several of his schoolmates.
In 1854 his mother fell victim to cholera and died.
During the boy’s last years at the school, Tchaikovsky’s
father invited the professional teacher Rudolph Kündinger
to give him piano lessons. At age 17 Tchaikovsky came
under the influence of the Italian singing instructor Luigi
Piccioli, and thereafter Tchaikovsky developed a lifelong
passion for Italian music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don
Giovanni proved another revelation that deeply affected
his musical taste. In the summer of 1861 he traveled outside
Russia for the first time, visiting Germany, France, and
England, and in October of that year he began attending
music classes offered by the recently founded Russian