The great russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the context of Western barbarism: pages of history (on the 130th anniversary of the composer's death)

Maksimenko Elena Petrovna ORCID: 0000-0002-8012-2328 PhD in History Associate Professor of the Department of Social Sciences and Technologies of the NUST MISIS 119049, Russia, Moscow, Leninsky Prospekt str., 4/1 maksimenko.ep@misis.ru

Introduction

The world of classical music originated in Europe, mainly in Germany. Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Mozart are the great German–language quartet of the most performed authors in the world. The quintet is named after the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893), who, according to UNESCO, "traditionally occupies the fifth place" ^[8] in this collection of favorites. In 2023, the country will celebrate the 130th anniversary of the composer's death.

Tchaikovsky is a classical all–rounder, he excelled in genres from symphony and opera to chamber music and ballet. Many people begin to get acquainted with classical music through his works, whether it is the ballet "The Nutcracker" (perhaps the most famous among other ballets) or the Solemn Overture "1812".

Tchaikovsky and Russia have long been synonymous words for the whole world. Russian Russian composer Tchaikovsky turned out to be the first widely known Russian composer in the West, avoiding the danger of "remaining unknown abroad", as the famous German conductor, pianist, composer and connoisseur of the Russian school of composition Hans von Bulow (1830-1894) prophesied in 1874 to a young professor at the Moscow Conservatory ^[14].

"Decisive victory"

The widespread dissemination of his music was facilitated by the "time of Tchaikovsky's artistic wanderings in Europe as a propagandist conductor of his own works" that began in 1887 ^{[3, p. 28]}. He made concert trips to Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Great Britain (where he gained extraordinary popularity, exceeded only by the popularity of the composer in the United States), Italy. Tchaikovsky was acquainted with many outstanding musicians, was a guest of foreign music festivals. Widely performed abroad, his works were adapted for foreign audiences with exceptional speed. Tchaikovsky's works were made popular in the West by combining the spirit of European musical culture, which he perceived at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, distinguished by clarity, rigor and consistency, with the Russian intonation nature.

Tchaikovsky is often called a Russian European (by the way, his maternal grandfather was born in a marriage of a Frenchman and an Austrian, so there really were Western European roots in P. I. Tchaikovsky's family ^[15]). Yes, he himself considered himself such ^{[17, p. 53]}. He spoke European languages. He knew European literature. He visited Europe not only on tour, but also liked to travel as a tourist; because of the geographical proximity, he most often visited Germany.

It was from Germany that Tchaikovsky's music began to "conquer" Europe. It was played in Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Wiesbaden and other cities. The right to distribute the composer's works was obtained by the Berlin publishers Bothe and Bock.

Tchaikovsky described his success in Leipzig at the end of 1887, which was of fundamental importance for the Russian composer, in a letter to Yu. P. Shpazhinskaya: "I had great success in Leipzig. I need to tell you that Leipzig is the music center of Germany, that the famous concerts of the Gewandhaus [Leipzig City Concert Hall, one of the first (1781) specialized concert halls in Europe – approx. the authors are extremely conservative and that defeating the prejudice of the local public against new composers in general and Russian in particular was a very important matter for me. The victory was decisive" [19].

Then there was Berlin, and now the daily Berlin newspaper "National Zeitung" in early 1888 notes: "The full hall, intense attention and lively success of the concert on February 8 prove that we also have no shortage of friends of the works of the Russian composer Tchaikovsky." Further, a high assessment is given to the composer, who "owns the most diverse orchestral forms. Unlimited domination over sound colors is at his disposal, and that he does not easily tire and does not know how to be uninteresting is proved by the behavior of the audience of the concert on February 8 (the quartet's andante was repeated)" ^[18].

In a certain sense, the Europeanist Tchaikovsky was an opponent of the composers of the "Mighty Bunch" who were conducting a polemic about the nature of Russian national music. Music critic V. V. Stasov called on the Kuchkists to "say goodbye to the common European music" and write Russian music "great, unheard of, unprecedented", new in form and, most importantly, in content ^[10]. Tchaikovsky did not accept such a position, believing that "it is too far to go to get away from Europe." He did not understand and did not accept the "isolation of Russian music from European", because European musical forms "are instilled and assimilated by us so strongly and deeply that in order to break away from them, you need to force yourself and strain yourself. Where there is violence, there is no inspiration, and where there is no inspiration, there is no art" ^{[17, pp. 53-54]}.

Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin

Since 1885, two years before the start of his "European" career, Pyotr Ilyich lived and worked in the city of Klin and its surroundings: first in the manors of Maidanovo and Frolovskoye, then on the outskirts of Klin, renting the house of a local lawyer. During this period, he wrote the operas "The Enchantress", "Iolanthe", "The Queen of Spades" (finished), the ballets "Sleeping Beauty" and "The Nutcracker", the symphony "Manfred" and the Fifth Symphony. The Sixth Symphony was created in the Wedge – a brilliant "Pathetic" one. "I've never worked so well anywhere...," Tchaikovsky told friends about his house.

After the sudden death of the composer, his younger brother, Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, founded a museum in this house (1894), which was a new type of museum for Russia – a musical memorial, in which not only the household environment of the last years of the composer's life was completely preserved, but also his archive - the most valuable musical and literary heritage, library. In 1916, by the will of M. I. Tchaikovsky, the museum was transferred to the Moscow branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, provided that it would be preserved and maintained following the example of the Mozart houses in Salzburg and Beethoven in Bonn.

After the revolution, in 1918, the Soviet government, despite the ambiguous attitude to the cultural heritage of tsarist Russia, issued a certificate of protection to the museum. On August 26, 1921, by the decree of the SNK of the RSFSR, the Tchaikovsky House in Klin was nationalized and became a state museum.

In the 1930s, systematic work began to study the composer's creative heritage. The museum's activities are flourishing: collections are being actively replenished, new forms of work are being introduced, and ways of development are being sought.

On the eve of the centenary of P. I. Tchaikovsky in 1940, a decree of the USSR Council of People's Commissars was published, in which he was first called "the great Russian composer". The solemn celebration in May 1940 of the 100th anniversary of the birth of P. I. Tchaikovsky contributed to the opening of the composer's museum in his homeland in Votkinsk ^[7]. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, it was in Votkinsk that all the main valuables of the Klin museum were evacuated in a timely manner – autograph manuscripts, music and book library that belonged personally to P. I. Tchaikovsky, his correspondence, the household furnishings of his office and bedroom, a piano, etc.

During the defensive period of the Battle for Moscow in the deep autumn of 1941 The wedge was surrendered to the enemy. For a little over three weeks (November 23 – December 15, 1941), "civilized" Germans hosted the museum. The first floor of the memorial house was turned by them into a garage for motorcycles and a saddlery, on the second floor – in the rooms of Tchaikovsky and his brother – soldiers' barracks were arranged ^[7].

From mass music making to "the most German of the arts"

Germany is the hegemon in classical music, the birthplace of its titans: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) ("Bach absorbed all the achievements of the previous music that was before him and anticipated all the achievements of future music"), Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and many others. Their cantatas and oratorios, preludes and fugues, symphonies and masses, sonatas and rhapsodies, concerts, operas, dance suites and other musical works have become masterpieces of classical music and have gained worldwide fame. The international recognition of the role of German composers, conductors and musicians has been an inexhaustible source of pride for Germany.

By the 20th century, having passed "at least two centuries of continuous professionalization and the movement of professional music-making to the masses" ^[5], Germany had established and well-known traditions in the music world. There were numerous musical unions and professional associations.

The composer and writer N. D. Nabokov described his impressions in essays about the musical life of the Weimar Republic in the very beginning of the 1930s (published in the Paris collections "Numbers"). He noted that in a small Weimar they spend more on a new production than at the Paris Opera in a year, that in every German city there is a conductor – either world–famous or just a good one - giving a series of symphonic concerts, that Germans sing a lot, and they follow the song by notes, etc. From his observations, N. Nabokov concluded that "music is an urgent need for a German, without which he cannot live"; "he feeds on it, it is a necessary condition of life for him, as he needs food, sleep, beer, modernization of houses and apartments, a cigar, family, books, work, dreams – that is, everything that fills the existence of the average German" ^[5].

The musical culture of the Weimar Republic developed between two poles. One was the fashionable avant-gardism, with its musical compositions, very difficult both to perform and to perceive. And the other pole was neoclassicism, whose supporters followed the call of I. F. Stravinsky "Back to Bach". In their works, they widely combined the musical experience of the past with modern ways of musical expression ^{[9, p. 205]}.

As a tool, "the long–term struggle of trends in the musical art - the struggle of the new and the old, progressives and conservatives" was used by the National Socialists, making it "the subject of ideological manipulation and abuse" ^{[4, p. 698]}.  Immediately after Hitler's proclamation as chancellor, the Nazis begin to change the musical world of Germany. They have made the music of non-Aryan composers (primarily Jews), new music (the criterion is a new musical language) and jazz music of African–American origin their target in the field of music policy ^{[4, p. 701]}. The Nazis presented the cleansing of the "most German of the arts" from the so-called musical Bolshevism as a struggle "for the highest artistic ideal, for Beethoven ..., for Wagner, for Bruckner, for the purity and dignity of art" ^{[4, p. 698]}. Richard Wagner was made a musical icon of Hitler's Germany, and music itself was transformed from an international phenomenon in a short time into an art field where only German-speaking composers were recognized.

"Scum of humanity"

During the Klinsko-Solnechnogorsk offensive operation on December 15, 1941, Red Army units entered the Wedge. Accordingly, the Tchaikovsky Museum turned out to be the first cultural monument liberated from the Fascist invaders. On the same day, an "Act on the state of the Tchaikovsky House-Museum in Klin after the stay of fascist barbarians in it from November 23 to December 14, 1941" was drawn up for the Sovinformburo. The act was drawn up by the Soviet German Margarita Eduardovna Rittich, the most competent of the museum's remaining employees in Moscow or Klin, who was appointed acting director in 1941. The document contained a "short list of the acts of German criminals" in the house of P. I. Tchaikovsky. These are the entrance to the museum destroyed by a German tank, the fence and part of the veranda; and furniture, books, sheet music thrown out on the snow; and dirty mattresses, bottles of rum and vodka, empty cans, leftovers of food, garbage and dirt in the rooms of Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest; and a latrine in one of the workrooms; and museum property dumped on the floor, stored in boxes; and the torn wooden paneling of the walls (it, as well as sheet music, engravings, paintings, books, furniture, stoves were heated, although there was enough wood in the yard); and stolen items of the exhibition. A particularly heavy impression was made on the drafters of the act by the barbarously mutilated bust of the composer thrown out of the museum into the snow ^[12].

From the point of view of M. E. Rittikh herself, the act came out "too dry and concise." In her personal diary on December 21 , 1941 , an entry of a more emotional nature appeared: "The house has been turned into some kind of cesspool. The heart is squeezed to the point of pain when you see all this ugly mockery of the memory of P. I. Ch (Aikovo)go. Everything that we packed with such care was dumped out of boxes and bags, torn, dumped in a corner of the lobby, scattered all over the rooms, trampled… The Taneyev piano has disappeared. The portrait of P(etra) and (lich) H (aikovsko) also disappearedit was bought in Leningrad, but the frame remained. Things are broken, mutilated or even burned. A part of the panel in the office of M(Odesta) And (lich) H(aikovsko)go was heated. The fireplace in the study is black, they tried to heat it, although they were warned that it did not work. Threatened with fire. Everyone is alive, except Trezor – he was poisoned, and a white kitten" ^[12].

S. M. Gurari, a special correspondent of the Izvestia newspaper, photographed the evidence of the desecration of the Tchaikovsky house, its previously "clean rooms that shone like mirrors". The pictures appeared in the newspaper the next day, December 16, 1941.

On December 19, a diplomatic mission headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain E. Eden, the Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Great Britain I. M. Maysky arrived in Klin, accompanied by more than twenty foreign correspondents. At a distance of some 80-90 km from the capital, they saw a harsh picture of the front - villages burned by the retreating Germans with long rows of furnaces with pipes that survived the fire, frozen corpses of Germans and Red Army soldiers lying right on the road, in ditches, in clearings, a huge number of overturned trucks, the remains of a wide variety of weapons. The city of Klin itself suffered relatively little, however, according to Maysky's memoirs, "the house where the great composer P. I. Tchaikovsky lived – this shrine for every Soviet person – was in terrible condition. He, however, survived, but inside everything was turned upside down, broken, dirty. One of the rooms on the second floor was turned into a restroom. In other rooms, piles of half-burned books, wooden fragments, and sheets of torn music paper lay on the floor. The German fascists, apparently, in their own way paid tribute to one of the greatest geniuses in the musical history of mankind. Eden and I slowly moved from room to room, noting at every step the traces of the bestial barbarity of the Hitlerite bandits. Finally , Eden could not stand it and with a disgusted look on his face said: "This is what we could expect if the Germans landed on our islands... These are the real scum of humanity"" ^{[11, pp. 580-581]}.

Motorcycles in the house and a bust of the owner of the house with a broken nose, thrown out into the street. Typical barbarism is rudeness, savagery of morals, senseless destruction of cultural values. But it was not the Germanic tribes of Vandals who did all this, but human beings who seriously considered themselves to be a "higher race". It was representatives of the "higher race" who set fire to Tolstoy's House in Yasnaya Polyana during the retreat, occupied by German troops from October 29 to December 15, 1941. (fortunately, the fire was extinguished, and restoration work immediately began on the estate).

Of course, the House-Museum of P. I. Tchaikovsky in Klin or the Museum-Estate of L. N. Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana is only a small fraction of our colossal cultural heritage, which fell under the devastating blow of the invaders during the Great Patriotic War. However, in both cases we are talking about figures of Russian culture, widely known and recognized in the West. It seems unlikely that in the conditions of the massization of musical culture in their country, the German servicemen (those "average Germans") did not know who Tchaikovsky was. Although, on the other hand, the Great Catherine Palace was not saved from destruction by the invaders by the fact that the German Russian tsarina loved to live in it…

After the Second World War, it seemed that the manifestations of barbaric disregard for the cultural heritage of other peoples for the whole world became one of the signs of the essence of Nazism. However, the demonstrative policy of abolishing Russian culture shows that the West has not outlived destructive forms of behavior in the field of culture, trying to disguise its shame with demagogic reasoning. The fact that Western barbarism is part of a mechanism that works for a certain result is also shown by our days, when Tchaikovsky's music and the most important event in the world of classical music associated with his name were under attack.

Tchaikovsky Competition

The International Tchaikovsky Competition has the status of a national treasure of Russian musical culture in Russia. Each time it becomes one of the main events of the social and cultural life of the country. The competition was created in order to identify talents, support them and popularize academic art.

In April 2022, at an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC), 106 out of 116 international competitions – representatives of the USA, Europe, Australia and Japan – defiantly voted (the vote was secret) to exclude the legendary Competition from the federation. Only two supported us, eight more abstained ^[2]. The obvious result of such an act was a reduction in the number of applications for participation in the XVII Tchaikovsky Competition – a total of 742 applications from 41 countries were submitted against 954 applications from 58 countries for the previous, XVI Tchaikovsky Competition held in 2019 (data are provided on the official website of the International Tchaikovsky Competition).

The WFIMC unites the most important music competitions in the world and declares itself as a global network of internationally recognized organizations dedicated to identifying the most promising young talents in music, and declares "artistic excellence, honesty and fairness" as an "internationally recognized standard" by its guiding principles ^[22].

The current president of WFIMC is pianist Peter Paul Kainrath. An Italian citizen, he was born in Bolzano, two-thirds of whose residents have German roots, so his first language is German. Ironically, Kainrath received a professional education as a pianist after graduating from the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory. He also speaks and reads Russian well ^{[20, 21]}, as Tchaikovsky probably spoke and read German.

Justice, honesty, equality are understood by Kainrat and the organization headed by him in a very specific way. From June 19 to July 1, 2023, with the support of the Government of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Culture of Russia, the XVII International Tchaikovsky Competition was held in Moscow and St. Petersburg. On June 27, 2023, the publication of the Chinese journalist Rudolf Tang, a guest of the Contest, was posted on the Musical America website. In response, Mr. Kainrath sent a letter to the editorial office, indicating his "puzzlement" by the position of the author of the "Report from the Tchaikovsky Competition". In particular, the journalist's opinion about the unfair exclusion of the Contest from the WFIMC, admiration for the efforts made to hold the contest, as well as the fact that "two foreign jury members praised the contest to the skies" with "hackneyed words about peacemaking and the conciliatory power of music." Angry reminders, obvious warnings and barely veiled threats were immediately sent to them, to all the participants, all the fans of the Competition from the graduate of our conservatory. Accusing the Contest of spreading propaganda on the grounds that its official website contained a personal appeal from the President of the country in which the Contest was held, Kainrat hastened to publish his personal – purely political – ultimatum regarding the conditions for returning to the WFIMC, which he set before the director of the Contest in 2022 ^[16]. Thus, the stated mission of the federation headed by him was clearly sacrificed to the same Western barbarism for reasons that have nothing to do with musical culture.

On the contrary, the position of the co–chairman of the Organizing Committee of the International Tchaikovsky Competition V. A. Gergiev reflects the main goal of musical competitions of this kind - the identification of new talents. "I believe that the Tchaikovsky Competition has a historic chance to accept young bright musicians who think apolitically, and they need to think only about music, about the profession, about the future, about the composer. Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Brahms, Bach. You are welcome. Choose a tool, there will be an objective jury," Valery Gergiev said ^[6].

Conclusion

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's art focused not only on Russian, but, in fact, the entire world culture. He often drew plots for operas or symphonic poems from foreign literature, "deeply understanding Dante, Shakespeare, Byron, the French," but only solved them "very much in Russian." Russian Russian melody "Being one of the greatest melodic composers, Tchaikovsky combined Russian foundations and transformed song material with pan-European influences in his melody and thereby had a strong Russian influence on the development of melody" ^{[3, p. 35]}. As Tchaikovsky wished "with all the strength of his soul", his music spread and "the number of people who love it, who find comfort and support in it" increased.

For more than a hundred and thirty years, Tchaikovsky's music has delighted the ears of Westerners. But with the beginning of a Special military operation, oddly enough, it was Tchaikovsky's work that became the notorious "litmus paper". Tchaikovsky's true Russianness is so great and majestic that in the eyes of barbarians from culture, neither his Europeanness, nor even his homosexuality (which was a medical fact, and not a tribute to the trend that has now become widespread in the West) were insufficient to "justify" it.

The tendency of a passionate desire to "ban" Tchaikovsky has very loudly declared itself. For those for whom, in the words of the French musician and composer Vladimir Kosm, "the importance of a country is determined by its culture, not its industry or welfare," it has become quite difficult to exist in an anti-Russian politicized environment, where in the heat of destroying cultural bridges, mixing culture with politics, Tchaikovsky's music has come "under attack." The works written by the Russian composer began to disappear from the programs of music festivals, because their performance is "irresponsible". The Prague State Opera in 2022 canceled the planned production of the opera "Cherevichki", considering that the work "supports imperial ideas." In July 2023, the orchestras of the USA decided to break a long-standing tradition and not perform the Solemn overture "1812" before the festive fireworks on Independence Day, so as not to "praise tsarist Russia" (for years this did not frighten anyone in the USA, the uplifting work was played everywhere, in every city where there is an orchestra). The list of "cancellations" and "exceptions" can easily be continued. There was also a cultural shock. So, in December 2022, a screening of the Kiev production of Swan Lake was announced in the German city of Bochum as the "pearl of classical Ukrainian ballet"!

 The fading of Tchaikovsky's works in the "European garden" and on the overseas continent once again illustrated the process of dehumanization going on there. The West turned out to be a banal recidivist. Is there a big difference between the vandals-Hitlerites who trashed the Tchaikovsky House Museum and music officials who maintain their "reputation" by trying to refuse young musicians to start their careers through a highly rated competition or performers for whom Tchaikovsky's music instantly became "toxic"? Is there much difference between the struggle against "degenerate music" and discrediting on the basis of nationality of a composer who died 130 years ago or living Russian musicians?

At the same time, a striking fact is noted: today Tchaikovsky sounds everywhere. "His adoration all over the world has reached some kind of religious level," says Dmitry Vdovin, artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater's Youth Opera Program. Russian Russian opera is being performed in the world's largest theaters: in Brussels and Zurich – "Eugene Onegin", in Frankfurt – "The Enchantress" ^[13], the premiere of "The Queen of Spades" in Russian is scheduled for February at the Bavarian State Opera.

Tchaikovsky's ballets are more than in demand. For example, from December 6, 2023 to January 13, 2024, performances of The Nutcracker will traditionally take place in Covent Garden. And before the International Women's Day in 2024, Swan Lake will return to the stage of the Royal Opera House, announced on the theater's website as "the brightest story of classical ballet about love, betrayal and forgiveness."

Tchaikovsky's musical language is universal, his music is recognizable and loved everywhere. In the words of musicologist A. G. Einbinder, he is a "composer of the world", accepted not only in the West, but also in Asia – in countries of a completely different culture ^{[1, p. 6]}. Repertory ostracism in relation to his works is expensive in the literal sense. It seems that Tchaikovsky's music was divided into the right one – the one about the fate of an individual, and the wrong one – the one about Russia and its victories, its patriotic pride. But after all, at the heart of such a section is the same Western barbarism.

Tchaikovsky is indivisible, all his work expresses the meanings and values of Russian culture. The outstanding Soviet musicologist B. V. Asafyev, in an article dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the death of P. I. Tchaikovsky, wrote in the military 1943: "His name is dear to his homeland. The centenary of Tchaikovsky's birth, which took place in 1940, stirred up popular sympathy for his work. During the Great Patriotic War, these sympathies especially increased. In concerts, in theaters, in amateur music, on the fronts, music and the name of the favorite composer sounds… In our reality, the features of Tchaikovsky's creative image, especially dear to the Russian people, are becoming clearer and more tangible – the sense of patriotism innate to him and his work. His music is deeply folk... Our time, the time of the titanic rise of the people's forces, hears in Tchaikovsky's music the song of the glory of the motherland and the pride of the native country" ^{[3, pp. 35-36]}.

This "song" was heard by the staff of the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin, resuming his musical and educational activities in a short time. Since March 1, 1942, exhibitions have been created here, excursions and concerts, scientific sessions and conferences have been held. And after the return of museum valuables from Votkinsk on May 6, 1945, on the eve of the composer's birthday, the memorial house again opened its doors to visitors. It was the rebirth of the museum.

The next International Tchaikovsky Competition was also held, despite the difficulties and rumors of cancellation. It brought together participants from different countries and from different continents, presented the brightest performances. As always, works by Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart and Tchaikovsky were performed on it. And many other composers whose music belongs to a world ready to accept it. Without barbaric exceptions from the competition program.