Pyotr Tchaikovsky (Critical Lives) - Softcover

Bullock, Philip Ross

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780236549 ISBN 13: 9781780236544

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2016

Synopsis

When Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky died of cholera in 1893, he was without a doubt Russia’s most celebrated composer. Drawing extensively on Tchaikovsky’s uncensored letters and diaries, this richly documented biography explores the composer’s life and works, as well as the larger and richly robust artistic culture of nineteenth-century Russian society, which would propel Tchaikovsky into international spotlight.
            Setting aside clichés of Tchaikovsky as a tortured homosexual and naively confessional artist, Philip Ross Bullock paints a new and vivid portrait of the composer that weaves together insights into his music with a sensitive account of his inner emotional life. He looks at Tchaikovsky’s appeal to wealthy and influential patrons such as Nadezhda von Meck and Tsar Alexander III, and he examines Russia’s growing hunger at the time for serious classical music. Following Tchaikovsky through his celebrity up until his 1891 performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall and his honorary doctorate at the University of Cambridge, Bullock offers an accessible but deeply informed window onto Tchaikovsky’s life and works.          
 

About this title

About the Author

Philip Ross Bullock is professor of Russian literature and music at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor in Russian at Wadham College, Oxford. He is the author of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and coeditor of Music’s Nordic Breakthrough: Modernity, Aesthetics, and Cultural Exchange, 1890–1930, with Daniel M. Grimley.

Edition details

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780236549
• ISBN 13: 9781780236544
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224