A number of researchers, based on the memoirs of Nikolai Kashkin, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, suggest that in 1877, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky made a suicide attempt and attribute it to the composer's stay in Moscow between September 11 (September 23) and September 24 (October 6), 1877. He went into the cold water of the Moskva river with the firm intention of falling ill with a severe cold or pneumonia. The circumstances of this event are described in the memoirs of Nikolai Kashkin, the composer's colleague and friend, which were written shortly after the composer's death. The publication of their journal version in the Russkoye Obozreniye began in September 1894 and was completed in December 1895 (issues 29-36). In 1920, in the collection The Past of Russian Music. Materials and Studies, Nikolai Kashkin's article From Memories of P. I. Tchaikovsky was published. In it, he described in detail the circumstances under which Tchaikovsky himself, according to Kashkin's assertion, described the circumstances of an attempted suicide.
Kashkin's story attracted the attention of several publicists. The scene of the composer's suicide attempt appears in the two-part feature film Tchaikovsky, directed by Soviet director Igor Talankin in 1969, and in British director Ken Russell's 1971 film The Music Lovers.
Circumstances
Nikolai Kashkin
In the 1860s and 1870s, Nikolai Kashkin regularly attended meetings of the Moscow circle of musicians headed by Nikolai Rubinstein. This group consisted of teachers of music classes at the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society, and later at the Moscow Conservatory, which was formed on their basis in 1866. Tchaikovsky's works were often performed and discussed at its meetings. For several years, a close friend of both, Herman Laroche, who had studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the first half of the 1860s, was an intermediary in correspondence between Kashkin and the composer, who lived in St. Petersburg. It was Nikolai Kashkin who initiated Tchaikovsky's invitation to teach music theory classes in Moscow. The personal acquaintance of Kashkin and Tchaikovsky took place in January 1866 after the composer's arrival in Moscow.
During the composer's residence in Moscow, Kashkin and Tchaikovsky constantly met at classes at the Moscow Conservatory, at evenings at the "Artistic Circle" and at meetings of the Conservatory's teachers' circle, and they often played four-hand arrangements of symphonic works. When difficulties arose during his work at the Conservatory, Tchaikovsky usually turned not to Rubinstein, at whose apartment he lived, but to Kashkin. After the composer's departure from Moscow in 1877, Kashkin and Tchaikovsky corresponded, but their meetings were no longer regular. Nevertheless, Kashkin claimed: "the shortness of our relationship allowed us to understand each other with half a word," and the composer highly valued his friendship with him. Tchaikovsky's brother Modest wrote that Laroche and Kashkin came to visit the composer most often in Maidanovo. Kashkin spent two months at the composer's Frolovskoye estate in the summer of 1890.
Tchaikovsky would fill his friend in on his creative plans and details of his work, and in some cases, he asked for advice. At Tchaikovsky's request, Kashkin made an arrangement of Swan Lake for piano and then worked with the composer to revise and correct it to make it easier to perform. The communication between the two musicians went beyond the professional sphere. During their meetings, they discussed works of Russian literature, publications in literary magazines related to the "Russian intellectual movement," and attended performances at the Maly Theater.
Kashkin's memories Among Tchaikovsky's contemporaries, only Nikolai Kashkin, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, claimed that the composer attempted suicide in 1877. He described the circumstances of the suicide very briefly in his book Memories of P. I. Tchaikovsky. This book was the first detailed biography of the composer published in Russian. Memories of P. I. Tchaikovsky was written shortly after his death. The publication of their journal version in the Russian Review began in September 1894 and was completed in December 1895 (issues 29-36). In 1896, an edition of Kashkin's memoirs by Peter Jurgenson was published as a separate book. A reprint of the book was published in 1954, with slight reductions undertaken by the publishers, which they claimed did not affect the 1877 events.
After the October Revolution, Kashkin "joined the revolutionary-minded intellectuals... deeply believed in the emerging new... Soviet system...". He continued his musical and literary work, but the articles he created were not published at that time. In 1919, he unexpectedly received a proposal from the Music Department of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR to publish the articles he had created in recent years.
In 1920, in the collection The Past of Russian Music. Materials and Studies, Nikolai Kashkin's article From Memories of P. I. Tchaikovsky was published. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and one of the founders of Soviet musicology, Boris Asafyev (under the pseudonym Igor Glebov), in the introductory article to the collection, expressed gratitude to the author for his memories and even contrasted them with the memories of Modest Tchaikovsky, which he considered "somewhat outdated" and "myopic". Kashkin's memoirs, published in the collection, were, according to Asafiev, an account of "an extremely important and the darkest event in the composer's life — his marriage".
At the very beginning of his narrative, Kashkin informed his readers that in the pre-revolutionary edition of his memoirs, he, "for various reasons about which there is no need to talk", had to summarize as briefly as possible this episode, which had a fateful significance for the composer's further biography and work. Kashkin claimed that his new article was based on Tchaikovsky's own recollections. They were, according to the professor, a "coherent sequential narrative" which he had heard "without any initiative on his part".
Kashkin did not specify the exact date when he heard the story but reported that the matter took place in Klin at the composer's house, where he usually came for Holy Week. The conversation took place after a walk when Tchaikovsky and his companion returned to the house. It was not yet late, but it was beginning to get dark. Both sat at the round table in silence. Tchaikovsky looked through the letters for a while, and Kashkin read newspapers. The composer invited him to read a letter from Antonina Miliukova, and then began the story of his attempt at suicide:We were in silence for a while. The darkness in the room had thickened to such an extent that the face of my interlocutor was not quite clear to me. Without any introduction, Tchaikovsky began his story in a flat, as if fallen voice, quite unexpectedly, and carried it on, all the time without changing his tone, as if fulfilling something obligatory...
Tchaikovsky, as he began his story, carried it through to the end in a steady voice, almost without raising intonation. At the same time, one could hear that he was very worried, and that this evenness of tone was the result of a great effort to restrain himself and not give free rein to his nerves. It probably took quite a long time, for it was completely dark, and we could barely see each other by the end.Nikolai Kashkin claimed that there was no exchange of remarks about what they had heard either that day or any time later. They both had dinner, and the evening was spent reading or playing four-hands pieces. The author of the memoirs insisted that the composer's brothers Modest and Anatoly had received information about these events (unlike himself) not from Tchaikovsky, but from third parties. He claimed that he reproduced Tchaikovsky's story almost verbatim, and even if he shortened something in it, he never added anything to it. That is why, according to him, Kashkin in this fragment of his memoirs began to narrate in the first person (on behalf of Tchaikovsky) and based his memoirs on the notes he made during the composer's story.
Kashkin's account of the attempt
On September 11 (September 23), 1877.In the 19th century, the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars was 12 days. In the 20th and 21st centuries the difference is 13 days.Valery Sokolov gave a different date, September 12 (September 24), 1877. Tchaikovsky returned to Moscow from Kamianka. Nikolai Kashkin believed that the attempted suicide was not the result of a coincidence of circumstances. He wrote in his book Memories of P. I. Tchaikovsky that the thought of suicide appeared in Pyotr Ilyich "while still in Moscow." In Kashkin's opinion, the composer believed that "death was the only way out for him, but at the same time, thoughts of his relatives, of how they would be struck by his open suicide, made him seek death as if by accident". In a book of reminiscences about Tchaikovsky, he wrote: "Later he told me that during the cold nights of September, when the frost had already begun, he took advantage of the darkness to go near the ,By the mid-19th century, the Vsekhsvyatsky (or Bolshoi) Stone Bridge over the Moskva River had become dilapidated. In the 1850s, it was decided to demolish the structure Engineer Nikolai Voskoboynikov built a new structure, designed by engineer Alexander Tannenberg and made of metal. However, it retained the name of the Big Stone Bridge. The river span was spanned by arches, and the sidewalk was covered with gunmetal slabs. The Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge was dismantled in Soviet times due to the construction of the Moscow Canal (1932-1937) and rising water levels in the river. dressed in the river almost to the waist and remained in the water as long as he had the fortitude to bear the brokenness of the cold water; but probably his extremely excited state protected him from a fatal cold, and therefore his attempt remained without any result at all for his health".
Kashkin wrote that none of his colleagues or himself had any idea of the events that were taking place in 1877. As usual, Tchaikovsky was teaching at the Conservatory in September, although he was characterized at this time by "concentrated taciturnity" and a desire to avoid talking to his colleagues. At the end of September, he appeared "with a distorted face, said that he was immediately summoned to St. Petersburg by E. F. Napravnik, showed us a telegram and hurriedly left, referring to preparations for departure. A few days later we learned of his serious illness, and then of his departure for an indefinite time abroad".
Nikolai Kashkin claimed that the composer himself told him the story of his suicide attempt in this way, which he recounted on his behalf in the article From Memoirs of P. I. Tchaikovsky, published for the first time in the year of the composer's death (1920) in the collection The Past of Russian Music. Materials and Studies": once on such night I went to the deserted bank of the Moskva river, and the thought occurred to me of the possibility of getting a deadly cold. To this end, unseen by anyone in the darkness, I went into the water almost waist-deep and stayed as long as I could stand the brokenness in my body from the cold. I came out of the water with the firm conviction that I was not going to die of inflammation or any other cold disease, and at home I told them that I had taken part in night fishing and had accidentally fallen into the water. My health was, however, so strong that the ice bath passed for me without any consequences". The composer, according to Kashkin, admitted to him that he did not make similar attempts afterwards.