Pathétique Premieres

Tchaikovsky's Sixth ended in a slow lament and premiered nine days before his death in 1893.

Related

RomanticSymphonyPateticoFrench Horn

Time and place

28 October 1893, new style, which was 16 October in Russia, at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg. Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his Sixth Symphony. Nine days later, on 6 November, he died in the city. The title comes from the Russian pateticheskaya, closer to passionate or emotional; the French Pathétique turned it toward the pitiful.

What happened

The four movements avoid the old road from struggle to triumph. The first begins with a gloomy introduction for bassoon and low strings, and its themes rise and fall. The second is a waltz in five beats, the third a march, as if memory had burst in. The finale is a slow lament whose line keeps sinking until it disappears in the low register. There is no victorious close; the orchestra stops in quiet.

What changed

A symphony could end without victory, leaving farewell, exhaustion and incompletion in the last bar. The slow, falling finale became a common way to shape tragedy. The premiere itself went well, but the composer's death nine days later made the work read at once as autobiography and prophecy. That reading shaped how the twentieth century heard Tchaikovsky.

Listen to the turn

Begin with the first movement's introduction, the bassoon sighing while strings press beneath. Then hear the five-beat waltz, its step uneven, and the march that suddenly hardens like military music in a memory. Finally the finale, the line falling step by step, each phrase resting lower. Together they trace a road that never returns to the heights.

Related

This turn belongs to Romantic; see Symphony and Patetico, and French Horn.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry "Symphony No. 6" — premiere and title checked, not quoted
• David Brown, Tchaikovsky, The Final Years (W. W. Norton) — death and reception checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.