Subject: Submission: THE 'MURDER' OF TCHAIKOVSKY
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 20:21:04 -0500

A Submission From

THE NEW LESBIAN 
AND GAY VOICE

1747 "S" Street, Northwest
Washington, DC 20009
Telephone: (202) 483-1311
Facsimile:  (202) 265-9737
Internet: [email-masked]

Gay composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky -- who gave the world the Nutcracker
Suite, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and a wealth of popular symphonies,
operas, and concertos -- died prematurely,
and under mysterious circumstances, in 1893.  Until the last fifteen years,
the official verdict was that he died of cholera, after carelessly downing a
glass of unboiled water.  Then, sixteen years ago, a rumor reached the West
that Tchaikovsky had been forced to commit suicide to avoid prosecution for
homosexuality. The rumor touched off a controversy that persists to this day.

Hal Gordon, whose articles have appeared in gay publications nationwide,
explores the controversy in an article of about 1600 words.

This submission by the New Lesbian and Gay Voice is directed primarily to the
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********

								Hal Gordon
								4853 Cordell Ave. #920
								Bethesda, MD  20814
								Phone/Fax: 301-907-8657

	THE "MURDER" OF TCHAIKOVSKY
	by Hal Gordon

	Gay composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky -- who gave the world the Nutcracker
Suite, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and a wealth of popular symphonies,
operas, and concertos -- died prematurely, and under mysterious
circumstances, in 1893.  Until the last sixteen years, the official verdict
was that he died of cholera, after carelessly downing a glass of unboiled
water.  But suicide was whispered almost at once.  Just days before he was
stricken, Tchaikovsky had conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the
well-known Pathetique.  The premiere was unsuccessful; the symphony's tragic
ending bewildered the audience, and the tepid reception of his new work
disappointed the composer greatly.  When the symphony was performed again, at
a memorial concert held less than two weeks after Tchaikovsky's death, the
solemn finale was widely interpreted as a cry of despair.

	Later, an even more sinister rumor was spawned: Tchaikovsky had been
condemned to death by a secret tribunal and forced to  take poison to avoid
being prosecuted for homosexuality.  This rumor reached the West in 1980
shortly after Alexandra Orlova, a Soviet musicologist and Tchaikovsky
scholar, emigrated to the United States.

	According to Mrs. Orlova, the composer had been paying too much attention to
the nephew of Duke Stenbock-Fermor, a powerful noble.  The Duke wrote a
letter of complaint to Tsar Alexander III, which he transmitted through one
Nickolai Jakobi, chief prosecutor of the Russian senate (a judicial rather
than a legislative body).  Homosexuality was then a serious crime under
Russian law; offenders could be stripped of all civil rights, banished to
Siberia, and even beaten with birch rods.  Had Tchaikovsky -- the first
exponent of Russian music to achieve world-wide acclaim -- been subjected to
criminal prosecution, the  scandal would have dwarfed even the Oscar Wilde
affair of two years later.

	But Jakobi had been a law school classmate of Tchaikovsky's.  He could not
prevent the law from taking its course, but he could and did convene a "court
of honor" made of up of eight other former classmates who ordered the
composer to "preserve the good name of the school" by taking his own life.
 One of his judges procured the necessary poison, and the cholera story was
hastily concocted to cover up the truth.

	Jacobi's wife was sworn to secrecy by her husband.  But in 1913, she
unburdened herself to curator and historian Alexander Voitov, telling him
that she had been in the next room while the five-hour "trial" was conducted,
had heard angry voices raised, and had seen Tchaikovsky flee the house
white-faced and agitated.  Voitov, in turn, repeated the story to Mrs. Orlova
in 1966. 

	Mrs. Orlova's account immediately gained wide notice and acceptance.  It
inspired a play, The Assassins, produced in Los Angeles, and an opera staged
in Holland.  It was also included in the article on Tchaikovsky published in
the 1980 edition of the New Grove Dictionary.  Mrs. Orlova said she believed
the suicide story -- even at third hand -- because it confirmed suspicions
she had formed independently when she and her late husband had been permitted
to work on the Tchaikovsky archives between 1938 and 1940.  In addition, the
story was favored by a certain amount of circumstantial evidence.

	There was, for example, the fact that Tchaikovsky initially forbade his
brother Modest to send for a doctor when he was taken ill -- purportedly to
give the poison time to work.  Also, Tchaikovsky's illness, death, and
funeral did not conform to the health practices commonly imposed in a case of
cholera at that time: the house was not quarantined, the dying composer
received a stream of visitors during his last days and, after he died, his
body was laid out for viewing instead of being immediately sealed in a zinc
coffin and removed.  Nor were the regulations against crowded funerals
enforced; 8,000 mourners squeezed into St. Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral for
the memorial service, and the route to the cemetery was lined with masses of
people.

	Three scholars -- Nina Berberova, Malcolm Brown, and Simon Karlinsky --
disputed Mrs. Orlova's version of events, and the controversy was aired in
the pages of High Fidelity, the New York Times, and Dance magazine.  But it
was not until 1988 that Tchaikovsky biographer Alexander Poznansky pulverized
the suicide theory in a twenty-two page brief published in the scholarly
journal, Nineteenth Century Music.

	In withering detail, Poznansky points out the inherent improbability that
Tchaikovsky could have been forced to commit suicide to conceal his sexual
orientation.  To begin with, his "secret" was anything but: the details of
his disastrous marriage (he had fled his nymphomaniac bride within weeks of
the wedding and made an abortive attempt to kill himself) and his partiality
for young men had been the subject of ribald gossip for years.

  	Moreover, hardly anyone cared.  Homosexuality may have been illegal in
tsarist Russia, but it was commonplace among artists and elite members of
society -- up to and including members of the imperial family.  (The Tsar's
own brother, Grand Duke Sergei, lived openly with his adjutant, and the
relationship caused amused comment even outside of Russia.)  Poznansky
declares, "There is not a single known legal proceeding on homosexual grounds
from the entire century in which the principal was a figure of any real
prominence..."

  	Indeed, Tchaikovsky's alma mater, whose "good name" he was supposed to
save by killing himself, was an all-male institution that was notorious for
debauchery of every kind.  Poznansky tells us that there has even survived an
obscene school hymn celebrating the joys of homosexuality.

	Poznansky then takes up the awkward details of the suicide theory --
beginning with the fact that there was no "Duke" Stenbock-Fermor.  There was,
to be sure, a Count Stenbock-Fermor who had a nephew fitting Mrs. Orlova's
description.  But this Count Stenbock-Fermor was equerry to Tsar Alexander.
 He had no need to lodge a complaint through an intermediary like Jacobi.
 Still less would the Count (who, as a court functionary, would have known
all about Grand Duke Sergei) be likely to demand the prosecution of a
prominent homosexual.  

	Even more awkward is the question of the type of poison used by the
conspirators.  Tchaikovsky's illness lasted four full days; if he died by
poison, the poison not only had to be extraordinarily slow-acting, but also
had to induce cholera-like symptoms.  The counter-argument -- that
Tchaikovsky administered the poison to himself in small doses -- assumes that
he did so under the watchful eyes of his brother and the four doctors who
were ultimately summoned to his bedside. 

	Finally, the painstaking Poznansky reveals that the official health
procedures, which the conspiracy theorists say were suspiciously disregarded
in the case of the composer's last illness, had been superseded by a new
health law published earlier that year.  The new law recognized that cholera
was less contagious than had been previously believed, and imposed fewer
restrictions.  Thus, the death bed visitors, the viewing of the remains, and
the mammoth state funeral were entirely within the bounds of law.

	But if there was no "court of honor", no death sentence, and no threat of
exposure, isn't it still possible that Tchaikovsky died by his own hand?  It
is at least an arguable proposition.  He was a moody, complex man who had
known much shame and sorrow and who had attempted suicide at least once
before.  Depressed by the lackluster premiere of his Sixth Symphony, on which
he had placed such high hopes, he may indeed have been acting on a death wish
when he reached for that fatal glass of unboiled water.

	At the same time, he was only fifty-three years old, he was at the height of
his creative powers, he was professionally and financially secure, and he had
ample reasons for feeling satisfied with his life.  In his last years, he had
been literally heaped with honors.  Decorated by the Tsar and acknowledged as
his country's greatest living composer, he had also received international
recognition previously accorded to no other exponent of Russian music: he had
been lionized on a concert tour of the United States, where he took part in
the ceremonies inaugurating Carnegie Hall; Cambridge University in England
had awarded him an honorary doctoral degree; and the French had elected him
to the Academie Francaise.

	There is even evidence that after years of agonizing guilt he had at last
made peace with his own nature.  He had the companionship of his brother
Modest, who shared his homosexual proclivities; visits with his nephew "Bob"
(Vladimir) Davydov, whom he adored; and the fawning attentions of a group of
young male admirers who dubbed themselves his "Fourth" Suite -- so named
because Tchaikovsky had previously composed three popular suites for
orchestra.  Poznansky contends that the composer had "gradually succeeded in
adjusting his inner circumstances to the societal conditions of his time
without experiencing any serious psychological damage."

	Doubtless there are gay activists who prefer to believe that Tchaikovsky
was, either by murder or suicide, the victim of a repressive, unenlightened
society that could not accept a sensitive genius as he really was.  If this
could be proved, it would of course pose a profound moral for a world that is
still less than fully accepting of alternative sexuality.  But perhaps there
is also a moral to be drawn from the fact that despite the gossip, the
smirks, the prejudice, the induced guilt, and the mental anguish that he
suffered for being "different," Tchaikovsky was still able to achieve not
only world-class standing as a creative artist, but a measure of personal
happiness as well.  By the end of his career, he had proved that he was far
more than a sugar-plum fairy. 
______________________________________
Hal Gordon is a freelance writer based in Bethesda, Maryland.