Page 216 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Figure 12.6
Peter Tchaikovsky
for a horror movie. But it all works. Here again is an instance of a creator, a ge- nius, breaking the rules and stepping outside the box of conventional art; yet he does so in a way that produces a wholly integrated, unified, and ultimately satis- fying work. The separate effects may be revolutionary and momentarily shock- ing, but they are consistent and logical among themselves when heard within the total artistic concept. Had Berlioz never written another note of music, he would still be justly famous for this single masterpiece of Romantic invention. As the German Romantic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said, “A person of talent hits a target no one else can hit; a genius hits a target no one else can see.”
But how did Berlioz’s drama really end? In truth, Berlioz did meet and marry Harriet, but the two lived miserably together ever after. He complained about her increasing weight, she about his infidelities. After Harriet died in 1854, Berlioz promptly married his longtime mistress. When the composer himself died in 1869, he was buried next to his second wife. But a century later, during the cente- nary commemorating his death, Romantic enthusiasts repositioned the remains of star-crossed Hector and Harriet. Today they lie side by side in the Parisian cemetery of Montmartre.
Peter Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) and Ballet Music
The Romantic passion for program music continued throughout the nine- teenth century, most notably in the tone poems of Peter Tchaikovsky. A tone poem is a one-movement work for orchestra that captures the emotions and
events of a story through music. Thus a tone poem is really no different from a program symphony, except that everything happens in just one move- ment. Today the best-known tone poems are Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra (1896; see Chapter 1) and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (1869). Yet Tchaikovsky was unique among the major composers of the nineteenth century. He excelled in an artistic genre that others did
not: ballet.
Tchaikovsky (Figure 12.6) was born in 1840 into an upper-middle- class family in provincial Russia. He showed a keen ear for music in
his earliest years and by the age of six could speak fluent French and German. (An excellent musical ear and a capacity to learn foreign languages often go hand in hand—both involve processing pat- terns of sound primarily in the temporal lobe of the brain.) As to his career, his parents determined that law would provide the saf- est path to success. But, like Robert Schumann before him, Tchai- kovsky eventually realized that music, not law, fired his imagina- tion, so he made his way to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory of Music. When he graduated in 1866 Tchaikovsky was immediately offered a position at the newly formed Moscow Conservatory, that
of professor of harmony and musical composition.
194 chapter twelve romantic orchestral music
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