'Now, on my journey, the idea of a new symphony came to me, this time one with a programme, but a programme that will be a riddle to everyone. Let them try and solve it.'
So wrote the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in a letter to his nephew Vladimir ‘Bob’ Davydov in February 1893. The work that Tchaikovsky mentions would become his sixth and final symphony, the famous 'Pathétique'.
If Tchaikovsky sounds cheerful, even defiant here, the truth is that giving birth to the 'Pathétique' was a painful process. A first sketch was completed before Tchaikovsky realised he had composed it ‘simply for the sake of composing something’, and the music had no interest. Deflated, he even began wondering if he should ‘go into retirement and start to live out my days quietly’.
Fortunately, however, the programme Tchaikovsky had outlined for the new symphony still existed, and fermented in his imagination. ‘Second part love’, it read in part. ‘Third disappointments; fourth ends dying away’. There, in outline, were the starting points for three of the four movements Tchaikovsky now began casting as an entirely new work in the solemn key of B minor.
‘While composing it in my head, I wept’
Ideas for the music quickly germinated. ‘All my thoughts are now taken up with a new composition’, the composer wrote, ‘and it’s very difficult for me to break away.’ From an early stage, Tchaikovsky seemed especially affected by the mood of the new piece he was creating. It would ‘be suffused with subjectivity’, he commented. ‘While composing it in my head, I wept a great deal.’
Tchaikovsky wrote the bulk of the manuscript in a house he rented out in Klin, a town 60 miles north-west of Moscow. ‘The work went so furiously and quickly,’ he wrote, ‘that in less than four days the first movement was completely ready, and the remaining movements already clearly outlined in my head.’ A rough draft was completed in three weeks, and by the end of August 1893 the finished symphony was ready.
Tchaikovsky himself conducted the premiere of the 'Pathétique', in Saint Petersburg on 28 October 1893. He personally rated the work highly, calling it ‘the best, and in particular the most sincere of all my creations’. Audience reaction at the premiere was, though, somewhat muted. ‘Something strange is happening with this symphony!,’ he wrote. ‘It’s not that it displeased, but it has caused some bewilderment.’
‘I’m more proud of it than any of my other works’
That ‘bewilderment’ centred particularly on the symphony’s final movement, where life itself appears to slowly ebb away in a slow, lingering song of lamentation. It was a far cry from the up-tempo, often triumphant finale of a typical 19th-century symphony, and it dramatically thwarted expectations. Tchaikovsky himself, however, knew the full value of what he had created. ‘I’m more proud of it than any of my other works,’ he commented.
But just nine days after the Sixth Symphony’s premiere Tchaikovsky died, reportedly of cholera contracted from unboiled drinking water. Before long, rumours circulated.
Was the 'Pathétique' a 'suicide note'? Did he drink the water deliberately? Was he depressed or suicidal? Had he been forced to take his own life by a secret ‘court of honour’ formed to sanction him for being homosexual?
There is plenty of evidence that Tchaikovsky, for all his apparent stoicism, was disillusioned, having lost faith in the possibility of finding happiness either in love, thwarted by the 'perversion' of his homosexuality, or even in friendship, his long-term patroness Nadezhda von Meck having abrurply ended the relationship-by-letter he had so cherished.
After Tchaikovsky's death, the Pathétique was heard as a swan song
Three weeks after its premiere, the Sixth - now entitled ‘Pathétique’ at the request of Tchaikovsky’s younger brother Modest – was played again at a memorial concert for its composer on 18 November. Many listeners now heard the music as ‘a sort of swan song, a presentiment of impending death’ leaving a ‘tragic impression’, as one reviewer put it.
There is little if any evidence that Tchaikovsky viewed the Sixth in this narrowly biographical way. But there is no doubting the special affection he felt for the piece, and the pride he took in having composed it. ‘I love it,’ he remarked, ‘as I have never loved any of my other musical offspring.’
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6 'Pathétique’: three great recordings
Symphonies 4, 5, 6 Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra / Yevgeny Mravinsky
Taut and emotionally supercharged, these performances by legendary conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Phil are among the most revered in the catalogue. The recordings followed the orchestra's tour of Britain in 1960, at the height of the Cold War, for a series of performances that drew ecstatic reviews - and the discs manage to bottle much of that energy and excitement.
'These Tchaikovsky performances convey a highly-strung raw energy that remains undimmed up to the present day', said our review. And this disc features in our rundown of the 50 greatest recordings of all time.
Symphonies 4, 5, 6 Leipzig Gewandhaus / Kurt Masur
'Masur’s Tchaikovsky probably won’t appeal if you prefer the customary heart-on-sleeve approach to these symphonies, but his unexaggerated, candidly objective re-enactments have much in their favour,' writes our reviewer Michael Jameson. 'His Pathétique is economically conceived, yet never tight-lipped concerning the tragic content of the work.'
Symphony 6 / 'Romeo and Juliet' Philadelphia Orchestra / Eugene Ormandy
'The emotional fabric of this music draws a warm response from Ormandy and the Philadelphia to produce fine accounts of both the Sixth Symphony and Romeo and Juliet,' is our reviewer Nicholas Rast's verdict. 'The introduction to the Sixth is suitably full of expectation, and the third movement full of vitality. Both the playing and sound quallty are superb.'
Want more like Tchaikovsky's 'Pathétique'?
Here are six great symphonies to explore after Tchaikovsky's Sixth.
Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony
The terrific first movement of this much overlooked symphony presents in effect the drama of the Sixth. Based on Byron's semi autographical poem, the movement's doom-laden musings are juxtaposed with a tender muted-string theme associated with Manfred's beloved Astarte. Unfortunately, its long and rather tedious final movement has put many conductors off programming the original work.
Conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov's edition, by removing an uninspired fugue and replacing a specious apotheosis with the return of the first movement's doom-laden final theme, brings the Manfred Symphony closer to the pessimism of Byron's original poem.
Essential recording: Berlin Philharmonic / Yevgeny Svetlanov Testament SBT 21481
Glazunov: Symphony No. 4
A month after Tchaikovsky had conducted the Sixth Symphony's premiere, Glazunov was putting the finishing touches on his own Fourth. Previously hidebound by Russian tradition, Glazunov started to feel his own way with this three-movement work.
The Adagio first movement echoes the mood of the Pathétiqie, its autumnal tone set by the sublime but mournful theme of its opening. While more upbeat in general, the following two movements are also punctuated by soulful interludes, a nagging feeling of angst that simply won't disappear.
Essential recording: Royal Scottish National Orchestra / José Serebrier Warner Classics 2564 63236-2
Myaskovsky: Symphony No. 1
Bedevilled by a life that was as tragic as it was dramatic, Nikolay Myaskovsky reflected much of his dark, dismal existence in his 27 symphonies. Over those 27 he would go on to forge his own distinct voice, but the first premiered in 1910 unmistakably harks back to the Russian composers of the late 19th century.
He was, in fact, inspired to become a composer on hearing a performance of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique in 1896. As with the Pathétique, Myaskovsky's First opens with dark, ominous broodings on the strings and bassoon, before developing into a movement of dramatic peaks and troughs. A poignantly lyrical Larghetto follows before a finale that, while not as bleakly desperate as Tchaikovsky's, is nonetheless full of unease.
Essential recording: USSR State Symphony / Evgeny Svetlanov Warner Classics
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6
Prokofiev, hearing Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony in 1925 for the first time in years, noted his impressions: he thought the first movement magnificent, found the Scherzo superbly put together and mostly very beautiful, but its ending he thought 'bad'. Some 20 years later, he composed his own tragic sixth symphony.
Like the Tchaikovsky, the first movement of Prokofiev's Sixth has a troubled Allegro opening theme followed by a calm but static lyrical melody. There is strong kinship, too, between Tchaikovsky's lyrical first movement theme and the expressive secondary theme in Prokofiev's slow movement. Prokofiev's finale, like Tchaikovsky's Scherzo, is initially bustling and builds to a would-be triumphant procession. Prokofiev, however, creates a quite different ending.
Essential recording: Cleveland Orchestra / Vladimir Ashkenazy Decca 470 5282 (2 discs)
Mahler: Symphony No. 9
Mahler once described Tchaikovsky's symphony as 'no better than salon music'. Yet towards the end of his life, having avoided conducting the work, he programmed it no fewer than six times within a year. Furthermore, there are structural similarities between Tchaikovsky's Sixth and Mahler's Ninth, composed 1908-09.
Could it be that, aware of his own mortality - he'd recently been diagnosed with a heart condition - Mahler suddenly appreciated the emotional source of Tchaikovsky's work? Certainly, there are parallels in the sequence of movements. Tchaikovsky's limping second-movement waltz is matched by Mahler's Ländler, and his increasingly ferocious march by Marla's manically violent Rondo-Burleske, and both works end softly with muted strings.
Essential recording: Berlin Philharmonic / Claudio Abbado DG 471 6242
Ives: Symphony No. 1
Among the many talents that the obscenely gifted Charles Ives had at his disposal as a Yale student was an ability to mimic the great composers in expertly crafted works of his own. One example was his first symphony, begun in 1898.
It's the cor anglais solo of the second movement that really gives Ives's game away - think Dvořák's 'New World' Symphony - but the finale also bears uncanny similarities to the Scherzo of Tchaikovsky's 'Pathétique'. Like Tchaikovsky, Ives hurtles along, accompanied by manic runs in the woodwinds and strings and urgently striding trombones, but while Tchaikovsky crashes headlong into his cataclysmic last movement. Ives resolves matters with a grand, confident finish.
Essential recording: Dallas Symphony / Andrew Litton Hyperion CDA67525
