When the Romantic Agony Became Personal: The Music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Thursday, October 28, 2021
52 mins
Most Americans know Tchaikovsky as the composer of the delightful dances contained within the Nutcracker Ballet. As Fr. John Strickland shows, however, there is much more to be heard in their melodies, and little that was delightful about the emotionally agonized life behind them. Using selections from a variety of works, he explores how the romantic agony came for Tchaikovsky in his boyhood and thereafter never departed. Special attention is given to an analysis of the famous Sixth Symphony, nicknamed Pathetique. First performed just days before the composer's abrupt death, the work brings the generation of the romantics to a heart-rending and emblematic conclusion.
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Transcript
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This is a series of forty reflections on the history of Christian civilization, or Christendom (and will include additional introductory and concluding episodes). It is divided into two halves tracing the “rise” of Christendom in early times and its “fall” in modern times. The entire podcast is organized around the theme of “paradise and utopia” - that is, of the civilization’s orientation toward the kingdom of heaven when traditional Christianity was influential, and of its “disorientation” toward the fallen world in the wake of traditional Christianity’s decline in the west following the Great Schism.
Contributors
Fr. John Strickland