The Myth
On October 28, 1893, Tchaikovsky took to the podium to conduct the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, a monumental work as fraught with passion and vulnerability as it is defiant of convention. He died just nine days later. This strange and tragic proximity, especially in light of the symphony’s dark finale, has fueled a proliferation of stories, myths, and interpretations that continues to this day – indeed into the very writing of this program note.
The documented case of death is cholera, brought on by drinking contaminated water, as was the fate of some 200,000 Russians in that same year. Yet shortly after the symphony’s premier, speculations arose that the composer’s death was a suicide, that Tchaikovsky had intentionally poisoned himself. Many since have argued that Tchaikovsky had finally submitted to the burden of living as a gay man in a society where it was impossible to live openly as one. These theories even engendered readings of the Sixth Symphony as a sort of suicide note, an interpretation that remains part of popular imagination today. While provocative, such theories also run the risk of closing us off to the incredible breadth of emotions — including playfulness, joy, and determination — that resonate within the sounds of the sixth symphony.
It was, of course, the composer himself who first gave rise to the mystery surrounding his final symphony – not in reference to suicide, but rather alluding to a “secret” program, or story, underlying the work. Tchaikovsky was, after all, a great storyteller in sound, from ballets like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker to his opera Eugene Onegin, and even to the concert “fantasy overture,” Romeo and Juliette. In the latter years of his life, he proclaimed a desire to focus solely on such programmatic music, writing, “Maybe I could still summon up inspiration to write program music, but pure music — i.e. symphonic and chamber music — I should not write any more.” Yet Tchaikovsky refused to divulge just what manner of story was being told in the Sixth Symphony. When pressed on the matter by conductor Walter Damrosch, he replied, “No, that I shall never tell.” To Vladimir Davidov — his nephew, close companion, and dedicatee of the symphony — he wrote, “Let them guess at it!”
The Mystery
As with any good mystery, there are clues to follow. In the two years preceding the premiere of the Sixth, Tchaikovsky had sketched out an entirely different symphony. In the notebook containing those sketches, he summarized a program.
“The ultimate essence … of the symphony is Life. First part – all impulse, passion, confidence, thirst for activity. Must be short (the finale death – result of collapse). Second part love: third disappointments; fourth ends dying away (also short).”
Tchaikovsky abandoned this symphony-in-progress, writing to Bob that, “I’ve decided to discard and forget it,” but adding, “the subject still has the potential to stir my imagination.” Davidov replied, “I feel sorry of course, for the symphony that you have cast down from the cliff as they used to do with the children of Sparta, because it seemed to you deformed, whereas it is probably as much a work of genius as the first five.” Perhaps spurred on by Bob’s reply, or perhaps still “stirred” by the subject of the abandoned work, Tchaikovsky quickly completed a sketch of the Sixth Symphony, finishing it in just six weeks.
Of this completed symphony, the composer wrote to Davidov, “I definitely consider it the best and, in particular, the most sincere of all my works. I love it as I have never loved any one of my musical offspring before.” Love may itself be part of the work’s program, specifically in light of the composer’s feelings about his nephew. Tchaikovsky’s letters to and statements about Bob reveal a deep affection – one that is widely agreed to be a profession of romantic love. To his brother Modest, Tchaikovsky wrote,
“Seeing the importance of Bob in my life is increasing all the time…. To see him, hear him and feel him close to me will soon become for me, it seems, the paramount condition for my happiness.”
Bob remained with his dying uncle during those final days and would inherit the copyrights to, and royalties from, the composer’s works. He is also the Sixth Symphony’s dedicatee.
The Title
Words are powerful things. The symphony’s nickname – “Pathétique” – continues to call up tragic readings. Yet words are also fluid and elusive. By some arguments, the pity aroused by this title is a product of mistranslation, the Russian word Патетическая (Pateticheskaya) being more accurately translated to “passionate” or “emotional,” albeit with a possible connotation of coincident suffering. Tchaikovsky may also have been alluding to something more specific – the grande passion pathétique of French opera, exemplified by one of the composer’s favorite works, Bizet’s Carmen. The forbidden, tragic love of Don José for Carmen is called up in the second movement of the “Pathétique” symphony, the first strains of which are nearly identical to those of Don José’s aria, La fleur que tu m’avais jetee (The flower you had thrown at me…).
Even the genesis of the name “Pathétique” calls us to a complex, if not fraught, reading of the work. It was in fact the composer’s brother, Modest, who first suggested the title. Tchaikovsky embraced it at first, inscribing it upon the title page. Almost as soon he did, however, he wrote to his publisher and requested that it not be printed. The publisher ignored that request, Tchaikovsky died shortly thereafter, and the word “Pathétique” was writ indelibly upon the work’s history.
The Music
To experience the “secret” story of Tchaikovsky’s final symphony, we have to flip past the title page and face its more elusive and complex inner world. In that world, even the musical notations are at times more emotionally suggestive than they are literal. There are cases where Tchaikovsky asks for musicians to play pppppp, or pianissississississimo (roughly translated as “very, very, very, very, very quietly”), while using registers of their instrument in which it is impossible to do so. To play pianissimo is to whisper; these markings are whisperings of whisperings, things spoken only under the breath, or perhaps things not spoken at all. Are these clues to some hidden meaning? It’s impossible to say for sure, but in the face of such inscriptions, one is compelled to ask the question.
Still, the 6th symphony cannot be understood solely in the context of Tchaikovsky’s death, his final years, or his hidden sexuality. It is the product of a rich musical life, a creativity that gave birth to the fate-themed Fourth Symphony, the heroic Fifth, the playful Nutcracker and the sublime Serenade for Strings. Each of its four movements is a world of passions unto itself. The first is a journey from the dark, solemn opening bassoon solo to the transcendent sunrise of the closing brass chorale. The second is at once a tender aria and an off-camber waltz, circling together around a quiet lament. The third is a playful, almost child-like scherzo, its scurrying theme ultimately transforming into a jubilant victory march.
Here is where Tchaikovsky pivots on the plot line, leading listeners toward an unexpected ending. The third movement of a symphony is supposed to be a break from the drama — a light-hearted dance. The fourth and final movement is where victory should be found, but Tchaikovsky gives it to us early, at the end of the third. It doesn’t feel early in the moment. Instead, its jubilant and cathartic finale leaves us with our guard down, and in that vulnerability we encounter the most turbulent, even tormented, music of the symphony – a finale that begins in grief, gives way to passion, returns to grief, and ends with a funeral march.
It is the ending that devastates us, that so tragically colors the name “Pathétique.” The work as a whole, though, is a lifetime of being human, written out in sound. It is an emotional epic, pouring forth with wonder, joy, fury, and lament – passionate in every sense of the word.
