Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, (1840-93). Russian composer: He became a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1866. For many years he corresponded with Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow who supplied him with money but whom he never met. In 1877 he made a disastrous marriage, which lasted only a month, to a music student; the breakdown of the marriage was caused by Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. He became universally famous for the ballets Swan Lake (1876), The Sleeping Beauty (1890), and The Nutcracker (1892), the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet (1880), his six symphonies, and his first piano concerto. His death was officially attributed to cholera contracted from drinking unboiled water; more recent research suggests that he probably committed suicide to avoid a homosexual scandal.