Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The son of a mining engineer, Tchaikovsky read law at the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg, while simultaneously taking private singing and piano lessons. After a post as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice, he enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he attended courses in composition, instrumentation, organ and flute, and then, between 1866 and 1877, taught harmony at the Russian Musical Society in Moscow. With a failed marriage behind him, he abandoned all hope of living in society and poured out his sense of tragic grief into music which, by drawing on the tribulations of his turbulent private life, reveals a raw emotionalism of the greatest truth and and sincerity. Between 1878 and 1890, the help of a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, relieved him of his material cares and allowed him to devote himself to composition. His activities frequently led him to western Europe, where he conducted his own compositions to great acclaim. Prestigious titles and honours were heaped upon him, including an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University that was awarded in 1893. The circumstances surrounding his death later that same year remain shrouded in mystery and, although suicide cannot be ruled out, the truth of the matter will probably never be known.