Tchaikovsky

Photo Credit: Émile Reutlinger, Tchaikovsky by Reutlinger, 1888, print, Wikimedia link.

Introduction

Welcome to Making History Gay Again's Inaugural post; I am so excited to be sharing this piece as our official start! Tchaikovsky, most famously known for composing ballets, operas, and orchestral pieces such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, is also the subject of intense historical debate surrounding his sexuality. 

As a teenager, learning about Tchaikovsky's sexuality was one of the first times I ever considered that people in the past weren't always straight. Having worked through several of his pieces in piano lessons, it was fascinating (and so comforting as someone struggling with their own sexuality) to learn that many historians were actively talking about Tchaikovsky's sexuality, especially regarding what terminology was appropriate to use. Exploring the historical debates surrounding what words were acceptable to label historical figures as, what aspects of 'queerness' could be speculated on, what types of evidence historians could utilize, etc. was enthralling in both an eye-opening, as well as anger-inducing, way. This ultimately drew me into the world of history. Being able to trace queerness and aspects of modern LGBTQ+ identity throughout history, as well as understanding the power of perseverance and advocacy was crucial to me feeling connection to the LGBTQ+ community and becoming comfortable in my own identity, and I know that statement rings personally true for a lot of other individuals. 

That is part of the reason we chose Tchaikovsky to start this blog with, as a nod to my own beginnings in history and historical research, as well as the prominence surrounding the historical and state-sponsored erasure of Tchaikovsky's sexuality and the continued effects this has on access to sources; in this current political climate, this concept feels all too timely.  

A note on language: You will notice in this post, and in other posts, we primarily utilize one term intentionally to refer to Tchaikovsky's sexuality, in this case homosexuality. This is both in respect to how Tchaikovsky himself referred to his sexuality, as well as an intentional choice to meaningfully consolidate a complicated notion for readers to both understand and put into conversation with other historical works. Due to the continuous marginalization of the LGBTQ+ community throughout history, there will likely never be a perfect, all-encompassing term to describe LGBTQ+ individuals collectively without drawing on terms that have been used to harm others. This is, ultimately, one of the major difficulties in the field of history: studying violence and cruelty to understand how to avoid these occurrences in the present, while also trying to avoid perpetuating the terminologies and thought processes of oppressors. This blog does not utilize these terms such as 'homosexuality' and 'queer' lightly, and recognizes the complex and persistent history of harm these words and many others hold to members of our community; however, we also recognize the numerous ways historically LGBTQ+ individuals have been purposefully erased and destroyed within the historical narrative, and the significance in naming and identifying these individuals through recovery work is more crucial than ever. 

Tchaikovsky's Impact

Born in 1840, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was raised in Western Russia to socially and politically well-connected parents, beginning his musical career early through composition and piano lessons. At age 8, Tchaikovsky’s family began moving back and forth between Western Russia and St. Petersburg, where Tchaikovsky gained access to piano lessons and further musical experiences through choirs and performances. He attended the School of Jurisprudence, a boarding school that many musical scholars point to as the ‘formation’ of Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. While we will be unpacking this concept later, it is important to note that through school, Tchaikovsky gained further access to musical training and began composing more seriously.

After his schooling, Tchaikovsky secured a clerkship position and began to engage more actively in homosexual relationships, until a scandal threatened to expose him in his career. A few years later, Tchaikovsky quit his position within the Ministry of Justice, and enrolled full-time at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, a newer music school that gave Tchaikovsky access to teaching roles, conducting roles, and performance roles in addition to composition practice.

After his graduation, Tchaikovsky continued composing while working and traveling with other composers, such as Shilovsky, who is also the subject of debate surrounding his sexuality. With a failed engagement to a French opera singer, as well as a few other works written, Tchaikovsky spent a fair bit of time composing, where he gained slow fame through the unusual composition choices he employed, often to the frustration of his mentors.

Towards the late 1870s, Tchaikovsky began to more seriously address his sexuality, writing to his brother that teaching music and his homosexuality could not go hand in hand, and that he would marry a woman to suppress the urges. In 1877, an old acquaintance of Tchaikovsky, Antonina, reached out and expressed her love for him, and the two began a relationship, culminating in an engagement after Antonina threatened suicide should Tchaikovsky refuse. While only living together for a few months before ultimately splitting, the two never got divorced, and Tchaikovsky continued to pay her a pension even after his death.

Prior to this marriage, Tchaikovsky had secured a benefactor through Nadezhda von Meck, which allowed him to focus primarily on composition and his creative work. He spent the 1880s and early 1890s composing and performing throughout Russia, Europe, and the United States of America. After suffering from a sudden onset of cholera, Tchaikovsky passed away from complications in October 1893, leading to a rapid renewed interest in his compositions, as well as rumors speculating on a potential suicide.

As a member of the upperclass in Russia during the late 1800s, Tchaikovsky’s music quickly spread as art throughout Russian, European, and American cultures, highlighting the social influence of music, as well as the broader class-based undertones that come into play when analyzing accessibility to music throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The Sexuality Debate 

So why is Tchaikovsky's sexuality important? Through evidence of his brother’s autobiography, as well as a relatively recent uncovering of some of Tchaikovsky’s personal letters, most modern historians are comfortable acknowledging Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. However, this was not always the case, and a large movement to minimize Tchaikovsky’s sexuality grew out of Russian propaganda to promote a more morally approachable composer. 

Polina E. Valdman and Marina Kostalevsky, authors and translators of The Tchaikovsky Papers: Unlocking the Family Archive note the Soviet “ideological makeover” that occurred to purge important Russian historical figures of and moral wrongdoings. In addition, Tchaikovsky’s surviving family members and fellow musicians attempted to conceal certain aspects as well, censoring his sexuality from the very archive they were constructing through the preservation of his work and papers. 

While various scholars had initially questioned Tchaikovsky’s death, wondering if the threat of exposure and the fear of public backlash surrounding Tchaikovsky’s sexuality had led him to commit suicide through poisoning, a recent study on the social attitudes of Russian homosexuality and homophobia in the late 1800s show that was likely not the case. While the illegality of sodomy was still codified into Russian law at the time, many scholars note that amongst the social elite and wealthy in Imperial Russia, homosexuality was rarely criminalized, which does not directly support this posited theory of a suicide. However, this idea does highlight the continued criminalization of homosexuality (not just in Russia, but in other colonial powers such as the U.S. and many European countries as well), which would come to a much more prominent head in the trial of Oscar Wilde a few years later. 

Although scholars do not believe Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality led him to commit suicide, they do acknowledge the emotional weight Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality held for him, his brother, and fellow composers who also engaged in homosexuality during this time. While noting his exposure to homosexuality in his boarding school, not much can truly be claimed about this supposed origin without relying on stereotypes. What we can argue and prove throughout his letters to his brother, is that Tchaikovsky engaged in homosexual relationships in his early life, and through the threat of exposure and social under pinnings on teaching and music, believed it was something he could suppress through marrying a woman. 

While medicalization had not yet taken off formally in the United States, medical professionals had begun to study homosexuality as a psychological illness as early as the 1860s, and many understood the social implications that medicalization held; namely that homosexuality was an illness needing to be cured. Tchaikovsky’s social status and influence as a composer at the time, might have protected him from the fallout of a scandal, as many authors have argued; however, it is likely he still felt the weight of homophobia and understood what his attraction to other men meant within the broader social messages being taught. While Tchaikovsky held enough social capital through his family and prominence as a respected musician to likely have survived a scandal (similar to the case of Oscar Wilde), focusing solely on this aspect of survival ignores a significant portion of social homophobia and internal homophobia that Tchaikovsky did face. 

Historical Erasure

Tchaikovsky’s role in history, while prominent as a composer, also holds weight in the history of sexuality. By actively creating sources that directly and indirectly named, showed, and created archival space for his sexuality, Tchaikovsky’s insights provide a lot of important context surrounding sexuality in the late 19th century Russia. Additionally, the purposeful exclusion of letters into the archive, and suppression of them through the Soviet state, highlight this broader history of source material being purposeful destroyed and rendered inaccessible to researchers. 

The desire to preserve Tchaikovsky’s status as a composer, while erasing what the Soviet state deemed as an ‘unmoral trait’, is a popular practice throughout preservation, and results in further discourse surrounding homosexuality. The belief that homosexuality is a modern invention, or that being a part of the LGBTQ+ community is a phase and an invalid identity, are ultimately validated through the purposeful destruction and exclusion of historically queer/homosexual voices from the archive, and only be re-centering and recovering these sources can we help to showcase these queer voices and individuals throughout history. 

Concluding Thoughts

Tchaikovsky’s popularity as a composer who actively acknowledged, engaged with, and subverted notions of homosexuality in the late 19th century Russia makes his significance within broader studies of queer history very important to consider. Thank you so much for reading! Next post, we will look at Alexander the Great, and analyzing the difference in perceptions surrounding homosexuality in Ancient Greek and Macedonian societies, as well as how these differences in perceptions affect the broader historical record. See you then!

Sources

Amico, Stephen. Roll over, Tchaikovsky!: Russian Popular Music and Post-Soviet Homosexuality. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2014.

Adler, Jack. Soulmates from the Pages of History: From Mythical to Contemporary, 75 Examples of the Power of Friendship. New York: Algora Pub., 2013.

Bullock, Philip Ross. “Ambiguous Speech and Eloquent Silence: The Queerness of Tchaikovsky’s Songs.” 19th-Century Music 32, no. 1 (2008): 94–128. https://doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2008.32.1.094.

Jackson, Timothy L. “Aspects of Sexuality and Structure in the Later Symphonies of Tchaikovsky.” Music Analysis 14, no. 1 (1995): 3–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/853960.

Kearney, Leslie, ed. Tchaikovsky and His World. Course Book. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400864881.

Poznansky, Alexander. “Tchaikovsky: The Man behind the Myth.” The Musical Times 136, no. 1826 (1995): 175–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/1004168.

Slonimsky, Nicolas. “Further Light on Tchaikovsky.” The Musical Quarterly 75, no. 4 (1991): 70–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/741834.

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich, and Polina Vaĭdman. The Tchaikovsky Papers : Unlocking the Family Archive. Edited by Marina Kostalevsky. Translated by Stephen Pearl. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.

The Observer (London). “Tchaikovsky and the Secret Gay Loves Censors Tried to Hide; New Volume Includes Once-Hidden Passages about the Composer’s Homosexuality.” 2018.