Bob K.:

>I've been noticing lately that PT takes a lot of flak both on this list
>and elsewhere.

Certainly not from me.

>What's the deal? Though he's not a personal fave I've always thought he
>was widely regarded as being right up there with the big boys.  The only
>favorable remarks I've seen here lately were about Sym 6.  We all had a
>week of free-for all on the 1812 ov.  The early syms also take repeated
>beatings.  (I -do- like the Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 w.  Micha
>Rachlevsky/Kremlin CO, Claves CD 509116.)

First, nobody likes everything.  That said, Tchaikovsky has had more
vicissitudes in his rep than most.  In the early part of the century,
it was fashionable to deride Tchaikovsky as popular and overblown at the
same time, particularly among Germanic musicians and composers.  It sounded
so effortless.  The orchestral works were full of rather "unlearned"
counterpoint.  He had trouble with sonata movements - he seemed to fall
short with all the techniques great composers are thought to excel in.
And, of course, let's not forget that everything popular is, a priori,
junk.  People were so eager to point out what was wrong with the music,
they missed what was right about it, as well as what Tchaikovsky had really
achieved (hint: something considerable).  In fact, it took the powerful
figure of Stravinsky to make academic musicologists in particular take
another look.  Most of the railing against Tchaikovsky really echoes
attitudes from about 60 years ago.

I admit that my own attitude toward Tchaikovsky has changed more than
once.  When I was around 9, he was my favorite composer.  As an adolescent,
I thought him cheap and easy - the symbol of all that was wrong with
19th-century music.  At that age, it had to be Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and
Shostakovich.  I didn't like Rachmaninov either - same stupid reaons, but
mine own.  I don't know why I started listening again.  My penchant for odd
little byways probably had a lot to do with it.  But I remember beginning
to rethink Tchaikovsky on hearing the Symphony No. 1 ("Winter Dreams"
with Michael Tilson Thomas) and the Moscow Cantata, sometime in the early
Seventies.  I've since gotten into a lot more Tchaikovsky, including the
stuff that the great unwashed like: the first piano concerto, symphonies
4-6, the violin concerto, the Serenade in C, Swan Lake, and the Nutcracker.
Symphonies 1 and 2 still seem fabulous (never cared for 3), as do the 4
orchestral suites, Manfred, Souvenir de Florence, et al., including the
despised 1812.  On the other hand, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't do
much for me, but I can say the same of every composer.

Tchaikovsky invented an idiom that didn't sound like Beethoven, Brahms,
Wagner, or Liszt, and was able to turn it successfully to extended
composition.  This is an incredible achievement.  In Bruckner, for example,
you hear Wagner.  In Mahler, Bruckner.  In Franck, Liszt.  He also solved
the problem - before Sibelius and Mahler - of how to write the nationalist
song-symphony.  The 19th-century nationalists wanted to base their
symphonies on song and unfortunately the tendency of symphonic construction
works counter to the tendency of song construction.  The symphonic phrase
links; the song phrase "rounds off." How Tchaikovsky solved the main
features of this problem would take more time to relate than I have right
now.  Take a listen to the sixth symphony and then to the Borodin second.
Notice how much longer Tchaikovsky is able to sustain his musical argument.
The Borodin's an attractive work, but it's a bit awkward.  It's always
shutting down and starting up again.  That's the problem Tchaikovsky
solved.

Steve Schwartz