Klarinet Archive - Posting 000269.txt from 1998/10

From: avrahm galper <agalper@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] TCHAIKOVSKY AND SKELETONS
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 20:09:00 -0400

TSCHAIKOVSY AND SKELETONS

Talking about skeletons, I picked up a book at the library, a book of
anecdotes about the musical world.
There was a story about Tschaikovsky. We now know that he was gay.
But in those days it was not that well known.

Apparently he was having some profound influence on a son of the Grand
Duke (related to the Czar) and the Grand Duke was not happy about it.

Tschaikovsky's former law student friends called him (he studied law
when he was young) and had a confrontation with him.

The law at the time was: a person discovered to be gay was deprived of
his citizenship and exiled to Siberia.

They gave him an alternative: commit suicide to avoid this fate.

This is why there is the story of Tschaikovsky drinking unboiled water
in a restaurant during an epidemic and dying of cholera.

At his funeral, the big named composers looked at the open casket and
Rimsky-Korsakov was heard saying, "Don't they keep these coffins
hermetically closed when one dies of cholera?"

The story shook me. I asked a Russian musician living in Toronto about
it and he said that it was true. Tschaikovsky drank poisin to avoid the
penalty.

When one listens to the last movement of the pathetique, one can hear
the depth of grief he must have been subjected to. He may have written
this before this event.
Still one of my favorite composers.

Avrahm Galper
THE UPBEAT BAERMANN MELODIC SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS
http://www.sneezy.org/avrahm_galper/index.html

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