Composer biography (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) Essay

Composer biography (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) - Essay Example When he was four years old, he composed a song with his younger sister Alexandra. He began piano lessons at the age of four, with a local teacher. He soon learnt to read music as well as his teacher in three years. He became familiar with Frederic Chopin’s mazurkas. In 1850, Tchaikovsky was sent to the prestigious Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St.Petersburg , an all boys school. He studied there for nine years. He was popular among his peers, and had intense emotional ties with several boys. As music was not given much importance in the institute, Tchaikovsky’s father paid for his piano lessons from Rudolph Kundiger outside the School,. In the meantime, Pyotr’s mother died due to cholera., which had a great emotional impact on the boy. When he was seventeen, Tchaikovsky was influenced by the Italian music instructor, Luigi Piccioli. Tchaikovsky loved Italian music, and it influenced his compositions. He admired Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He graduated in 1859 from the Imperial School of Jurisprudence and started working as a junior civil servant. He worked there for three years although he did not like the work. Realizing that his vocation was music, he resigned from the post to study music. According to Daniel.G.Mason, who writes in his â€Å"Personal Life†, Tchaikovsky was a â€Å"ready improviser†, and could play music well for dancing, and was blessed with a â€Å"rich sense of harmony†. When Tchaikovsky joined St. Petersburg Conservatory and studied music, he was one of its first students. After graduating in 1865, he got a job as a teacher of music theory in the Moscow Conservatory. According to Mason, Tchaikovsky now had â€Å"the courage to attempt his first symphony’’, ‘Winter Dreams.’ He was so overwrought by nerves, that he stopped composing anything in the night.. In the first ten years in Moscow, he produced varied kinds of music from operas to string quartets, which built up his reputation His first opera,