Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Although effort was made to censor any suggestion of homosexuality from Tchaikovsky's surviving letters, thanks to the work of historians and biographers he is now widely acknowledged to be a homosexual. Seen positively as a "Queer Composer," the evidence suggests that Tchaikovsky was most romantically and sexually drawn to youthful features and young males in their teens and 20s. Notably, however, his attraction and intense affection for his nephew, Vladimir Lvovich "Bob" Davydov, when Bob was around 13-16, has been heavily documented.

In letters written when Bob was 13, Tchaikovsky wrote: "All day Bob was a sight to behold; how incomparably sweet he looks"; "As soon as I stop [...] I start to long for Bob and to miss him. I love him so terribly"; "Afterwards sat on the roof with Bob (where I would only venture for the sake of this angel!) [...] After supper I played, at Bob's request, a special game — secret — a most silly game."

Debauched Genius: The Loves of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (2021), uses the novel form to narrate his sex life and sexual attractions, in the wake of newly available documents published in 2018. Extensively researched, a book review states that "the word 'boy' is used 250 times." More specifically:

[W]hen Eduard Zak tells Tchaikovsky that he can’t help being attracted to women any more than Tchaikovsky can help being attracted to men, Tchaikovsky replies, “Boys. I am attracted to boys.” When Shilovsky asks Tchaikovsky what more he can do to get him to stay with him, “Pyotr squeezed his eyes shut and sadly said, ‘Be fifteen again!’” Near the end, in chapter 42, Tchaikovsky is listening while some men bring up his past sexual encounters with boys and young men (I won’t spoil the exact circumstances). When he protests that these affairs were consensual, one man retorts, “My God, man, we are speaking of sodomy. You used our children to sin against God!” Finally, when Modest and Bob are going through Tchaikovsky's papers in 1895, Modest says, “We have to change every compromising ‘he’ to a ‘she.’ We need to obfuscate ages as well as sexes."

Dozens of examples like these can be found throughout the book, giving evidence to the fact that, though homosexuality per se is the pivotal matter of apprehension, Gutzman also saw Tchaikovsky's pederasty as its principal manifestation.

Eduard Zak (sometimes spelled "Sack" in English) was a student and friend of Tchaikovsky's, a homosexual who took his life at the age of nineteen. Although their relationship was known to be close, its extent has been questioned. Some entries from Tchaikovsky's diary from 1887, written after Zak's death, suggest a romantic attraction.

Other notable romnances include Sergey Kireyev, Tchaikovsky's his first crush, who Tchaikovsky met when he was 16 and Sergey 12. They met again in 1867, when Kireyev was 22, and Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Anatoly, "How sweet he is, though not so handsome as formerly." Later, Tchaikovsky and Joseph Kotek began a romantic affair in 1877 when Kotek was 21 and Tchaikovsky was 37, though Tchaikovsky had known him for six years by that time. A letter indicates that although claimed to "feel disgusted if this wonderful youth stooped to sex with an aged and fat-bellied man," he was nevertheless successful and Kotek returned these feelings:

I made a total confession of love, begging him not to be angry, not to feel constrained if I bore him, etc. All of these confessions were met with a thousand various small caresses, strokes on the shoulder, cheeks, and strokes across my head. I am incapable of expressing to you the full degree of bliss that I experienced by completely giving myself away.

Unfortunately, Kotek died of tuberculosis in Switzerland in 1885, causing Tchaikovsky tremendous grief.

There has been a historic legend around Tchaikovsky alleged attempting suicide, analyzed and refuted by scholars such as Alexander Poznansky. The plot of the legend, according to which the scandal erupted because of Tchaikovsky's acquaintance on a steamship with the 13-year-old nephew of Count Stenbock-Fermor, reproduces the real story of Tchaikovsky's friendship with 14-year-old Vladimir (Volodya) Sklifosovsky (the son of a famous surgeon) in April 1889, which caused a stir.

In Tchaikovsky's diaries during his stay in Klin, one can find numerous entries of an erotic nature about peasant children, whom he, in the words of Poznansky, “corrupted with gifts.” However, according to him, Tchaikovsky's erotic attraction towards them was platonic, amounting to aesthetic appreciation.

Tchaikovsky's death is now attributed to cholera, caused by drinking unboiled water at a local restaurant.