# Tchaikovsky 6th Symphony (Pathetique)



## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

There are theories on why this symphony was composed.

I think that Tchaikovsky had planned his death and this was like a farewell symphony. 

What does anyone else think?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

My theory is that if (a) enough composers write impressive symphonies and (b) enough composers die under mysterious circumstances that might or might not be suicide, then eventually there'll be a chronological coincidence where for a single composer (b) follows quite quickly from (a). Doesn't mean the two have to be causally connected.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Tchaikovsky left no evidence this would be his last symphony. He had written another prior to it he destroyed; he liked this one. He completed it because he had other work to do. This did not include his death.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Those theories have been debunked. They were spread by people with no actual information or relationship to the composer. The earliest identified written source of the Tchaikovsky suicide rumor is in the as yet unpublished memoirs of one R.A. Mooser, a Swiss writer on music who arrived in St. Petersburg in 1896, well after the composer's death. He was never accepted in the musical circles of the city and Alexander Poznansky, Tchaikovsky's biographer, suggests that this outsider status motivated him to pose as someone with juicy inside knowledge. He claims to have first heard the rumor from an unidentified critic at the St. Petersburg Zeitung. Later he claims to have heard it again from Riccardo Drigo, the ballet conductor at the Mariinsky Theater, and Alexander Glazunov. Since neither of these people could possibly have had any first hand knowledge of the alleged suicide, Mooser's report — even if his highly unlikely claims about Drigo and Glazunov are true — is at best third hand gossip written by a nonentity. Tchaikovsky was quite happy at that stage of his life, in part because the Pathetique was so successful. There is no evidence whatever that he thought this symphony would be his last.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

I had a thought today that, to paraphrase Glenn Gould, _Pathetique _is Tchaikovsky for people who don't like Tchaikovsky. The original comment was about BWV 565, but I think it's very fitting.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Fabulin said:


> I had a thought today that, to paraphrase Glenn Gould, _Pathetique _is Tchaikovsky for people who don't like Tchaikovsky. The original comment was about BWV 565, but I think it's very fitting.


I wouldn't say that I don't like Tchaikovsky-I love the concertos, like the ballet suites well enough-but I will say that the Pathétique is the only symphony of his that has yet made any positive impression on me.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> Those theories have been debunked.


As de La Rouchefocauld (or someone) said, "There is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts."


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> I had a thought today that, to paraphrase Glenn Gould, _Pathetique _is Tchaikovsky for people who don't like Tchaikovsky. The original comment was about BWV 565, but I think it's very fitting.


True in my case. I find the majority of Tchaikovsky to be syrupy, bombastic mush (with some exceptions - Serenade for Strings, Piano Trio, 1st string quartet, Orchestral Suites) but the 6th is in my top 15-20 symphonies. I think he finally solved his problems with working in large-scale form, and it's too bad he didn't get to do more in the genre. And just because it has themes of death doesn't mean the composer knew he was dying. If all artists who made works about death were dying as they did so, our artistic heritage would be much weaker.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Fabulin said:


> The original comment was about BWV 565, but I think it's very fitting.


You mean BWV 971 and BWV 903


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

_""There is a popular myth that composers write the way they feel, which is simply not true. For example, "Tchaikovsky wrote his Pathetique when he was suicidal"- not at all. You cannot write music if you're suicidal. You stay in bed, depressed.""_


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## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

Nereffid said:


> My theory is that if (a) enough composers write impressive symphonies and (b) enough composers die under mysterious circumstances that might or might not be suicide, then eventually there'll be a chronological coincidence where for a single composer (b) follows quite quickly from (a). Doesn't mean the two have to be causally connected.


That's a really complicated way of saying, "it was probably a coincidence"


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Since he went on to begin the third piano concerto after abandoning the 7th symphony, it would seem that the 6th being his farewell is farfetched.


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