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Printable Syllabus: PDF format | RTF format

Recommended Reading

Blog posts about Tchaikovsky

Some overall picks for the whole course are below. For specific works, check each week’s syllabus for things you might buy or rent.

  • Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music
    Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music
    by David Brown
  • Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man
    Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man
    by Alexander Poznansky

    No photo? Click here.

  • Tchaikovsky and His World
    Tchaikovsky and His World
    Princeton University Press
  • Tchaikovsky through Others' Eyes (Russian Music Studies)
    Tchaikovsky through Others' Eyes (Russian Music Studies)
    Indiana University Press
  • Defining Russia Musically
    Defining Russia Musically
    by Richard Taruskin
  • On Russian Music
    On Russian Music
    by Richard Taruskin
  • Tchaikovsky: Letters to His Family (An Autobiography)
    Tchaikovsky: Letters to His Family (An Autobiography)
    by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
  • Life & Letters of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
    Life & Letters of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
    by Modest Ilich Chaikovskii
  • "To My Best Friend": Correspondence between Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda von Meck, 1876-1878
    Oxford University Press, USA
  • The Tchaikovsky Handbook: A Guide to the Man and His Music : Catalogue of Letters Genealogy Bibliography (Russian Music Studies Published With the Kind Support of Allen Clowes)
    The Tchaikovsky Handbook: A Guide to the Man and His Music : Catalogue of Letters Genealogy Bibliography (Russian Music Studies Published With the Kind Support of Allen Clowes)
    by Alexander Poznansky

    No picture? Click here to view.

Tchaikovsky Course

6/11/2009 - 7/30/2009 ~ Thursday 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM

This course will give Tchaikovsky his due as a Russian nationalist and reveal how gracefully he navigated between the sometimes rough-hewn Slavocentrism of his contemporaries, “The Five,” and the technical demands of Western cosmopolitanism. With his profound melodic gift, Tchaikovsky also entranced audience after audience and provided us with a living soundtrack for 19th century Russia. Works studied: Swan Lake, the magnificent Pushkin operas Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin, the supposedly autobiographical fourth and sixth symphonies, and more.

Click here to register

Syllabus - Week 1

The course syllabus is in process, but for the first class on Thursday, June 11 we will cover Tchaikovsky at the School of Jurisprudence and the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky and Balakirev. Works discussed: 1st Symphony, 1st String Quartet, and Romeo & Juliet.

Entries in Symphony No. 4 (1)

Saturday
May302009

Interactive Web Sites

From the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Beyond the Score to Michael Tilson Thomas Keeping Score program, these resources combine musical performance with biography to put Tchaikovsky’s music in historical context.

Click to read more ...