Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Relationship To The Romantic Movement In Music

This paper will discuss the life and work of the Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in terms of his relationship to the Romantic movement in music. Tchaikovsky was born in 1840 in the town of Votinsk in Russia. Although he learned to play the piano as a child, his family wanted him to pursue a career as a lawyer. For this reason, Tchaikovsky began attending the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence at the age of 10, and by the age of 19 he obtained a position as clerk in the Ministry of Justice (Gilder 345). However, at the age of 22, Tchaikovsky decided to give up his life as a lawyer in order to become a composer of music. He went to the Conservatory of St. Petersburg for his musical training, and after graduation he got a job
The Romantic movement, which swept Europe during the 19th century, can best be understood in contrast to the Classical period which preceded it. The Classical period, which was characterized by the music of Haydn, Mozart, and early Beethoven, was a time when composers were generally supported by the patronage of the nobility. The musical style of the period was based on the ideas of harmonic proportion which had originally been developed during ancient Greek and Roman times. Thus, it was a style in which elegance and refinement were considered far more important than emotional expression. In contrast, the Romantic period was marked by the dissolution of the European patronage system. The composers, who no longer had to create their works for the pleasure of kings and queens, began to be more emotionally expressive in their music. In addition, the music itself became more expansive, with more chromaticism and tone color than ever before. Two other unique elements in Romantic music were the spread of nationalism, in which composers expressed pride in their home nations, and the use of "program music," in which instrumental music was "inspired by a poem, novel, play, painting, sculpture, or some other extramusical entity, and meant to suggest the essence of that entity to the listener" (Griffel
This work again emphasizes emotional expression and as such it clearly exhibits the depression and pessimism which plagued the composer at that time in his life (Brown 626). As in Romeo and Juliet and the 1812 Overture, this symphony's expressiveness can be seen in the stylistic ele¬ment of mixing loud and soft dynamics, with a "range stretching from ffff to ppppp" (626). The Pathetique Symphony is also typical of the Romantic period in that it focuses on melody and tone color rather than harmony and form, and because it shows a tendency toward "episodic rather than integrated symphonic movements" (Whittall 129). This is in sharp contrast to the way Classical symphonies were generally composed. In addition, a Romantic interest in musical experimentation can be seen in Tchaikovsky's use of 5/4 time in the second movement of this symphony. According to the Classical tradition, the rhythm of this dance movement should have been in 3/4 time. Tchaikovsky's use of harmony in his Pathetique