TCHAIKOVSKY ON MUSIC

Here are some famous and not-so-famous quotes by the composer, giving an idea of his views on music and his colleagues.

“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”

“Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.”

“To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is  what I spend my whole life  doing.”

“Life is beautiful in spite of everything!

“There are many thorns, but the roses are there too.”

“NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART

(based on a poem by J.W. von Goethe)

None but the lonely heart

Can know my sadness

Alone and parted

Far from joy and gladness

Heaven's boundless arch I see

Spread about above me

O what a distance dear to one

Who loves me

None but the lonely heart

Can know my sadness

Alone and parted

Far from joy and gladness

Alone and parted far

From joy and gladness

My senses fail

A burning fire

Devours me

None but the lonely heart

Can know my sadness

― Pyotr Tchaikovsky

“Don’t think that I imagine I’ll become a great artist. It’s simply that I want to do that to which I am drawn. Whether I shall be a famous composer or an impoverished teacher, I shall still think I have done the right thing, and I shall have no painful right to grumble at Fate or at people.”

“Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.”

“I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.”

“…You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living.”

“Music is an incomparably more powerful means and is a subtler language for expressing the thousand different moments of the soul's moods.”

“Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.”

“Sometimes it seems to me that Providence, so blind and unjust in the choice of its protégés, has deigned to care for me. Really, I begin at times to perceive in certain coincidences of circumstances not mere chance.”

“I literally cannot live without working, for no sooner has some labor been completed and I begin to think about resting, then instead of rest, instead of the pleasure of a tired laborer who has earned the right to the tempting dolce far ninety, there comes anguish, melancholy, thoughts of the vanity of everything early, fear for the future, fruitless regret for the irrevocable past, agonizing questions about the meaning of earthly existence, in a word, all that poisons the life of a man not engrossed in labor and at the same time inclined to hypochondria—and as a result, there appears a desire to begin at once some new labor.”

“I may way that, under normal conditions, there is no hour of the day in which I cannot compose. Sometimes I observe with curiosity that an uninterrupted activity—independent of the subject of the conversation I may be carrying on—continues its course in that department of my brain which is devoted to music.”

“…an artist lives a double life: an everyday human life and an artistic life, and the two do not always go hand in hand.”

“What a Don Quixote is Wagner! He expends all his strength in pursuing the impossible, and all the time, if he would but follow the natural bent of his extraordinary gift, he might evoke a whole world of musical beauties. In my opinion Wagner is a symphonist by nature. He is gifted with genius which has wrecked itself upon his tendencies; his inspiration is paralyzed by theories he has invented.”

These young Petersburg composers (I.e. Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Balakirev, Cui) are very gifted, but the are all impregnated with the most horrible presumptuousness and a purely amateur conviction of their superiority to all other musicians in the universe. With regard to Mussorgsky, he is “used up”. His gifts are perhaps the most remarkable of all, but his nature is narrow, and he has no aspirations towards self-perfection. He has been too easily led astray by the absurd theories of his set and the belief in his own genius.”

“As regards the Russian element in my works, I may tell you that not infrequently I begin a composition with the intention of introducing some folk melody into it. Sometimes it comes of its own accord, unbidden. As to this national element in my work, its affinity with the folk songs in some of my melodies and harmonies comes from my having spent my childhood in the country, and, from my earliest years, having been impregnated with the characteristic beauty of our Russian folk music.”

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