Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique)

Timothy L. Jackson

Tchaikovsky’s final symphony has fascinated generations of music lovers, amateur and specialist alike, since its first performance just over a century ago. Timothy L. Jackson explores sensitively and without prejudice the question of the Pathétique’s program and its relation to Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality and death. The book covers the work’s conception, genesis, and reception, and presents an in-depth analysis of its remarkable formal structure. The reception chapter investigates the Pathétique’s impact on Tchaikovsky’s younger contemporaries, most notably Mahler and Rachmaninoff, and on more recent Russian composers like Shostakovich and Schnittke. Also explored is the dark side of the symphony’s political interpretation in the twentieth century, especially its transformation into a cultural icon of the Third Reich.

Bibliographic Details

6 b/w illus. 17 music examples

Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Pathetic metaphors for sexuality and race, gambling and destiny
• 2. Background and early reception
• 3. Form and large-scale harmony
• 4. The not-so-secret program - a hypothesis
• 5. Compositional genesis: the Six Romances Op. 73 and the Pathétique
• 6. Deconstructing homosexual Grand Passion Pathétique
• 7. Platonic postlude.