Table of Contents

Preface
1: Tchaikovsky's Early Years
2: Childhood and Youth in St Petersburg
3: Civil Service (1859 - 1863)
4: Tchaikovsky at the St Petersburg Conservatory
5: Tchaikovsky's First Years in Moscow
6: Music of the first five years
7: Before the Fall (1871-1877)
8: The Music of 1871-1877
9: 1877-the Year of Tchaikovsky's Marriage
10: The Music of 1877
11: 1878
12: The Music of 1878
13: 1879-1881
14: The Music of 1879-1881
15: 1882-1884
16: The Music of 1882-1884
17: 1885-1888
18: The Music of 1885-1888
19: The Years 1889-1893
20: The Music of 1889-1893
21: The Circumstances of Tchaikovsky's Death
Afterword
Appendix A. Calendar
Appendix B. List of Works
Appendix C. Personalia
Appendix D. Select Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Roland John Wiley is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan and is the author of Tchaikovsky's Ballets.

Reviews

"An important and serious work by a respected Tchaikovsky scholar that is informative, entertaining, and useful in understanding and appreciating the composer's life and music. Highly recommended!" --Slavic and East European Journal
"Roland John Wiley has written a masterful re-evaluation of Tchaikovsky's life and work. He uses sources critically and discusses the music as serious art, worthy of inclusion in the Western canon on its merits. No other biography of Tchaikovsky surpasses his achievement." Robert W. Oldani, Arizona State University
"It is a formidable challenge to present a comprehensive life-and-works study of Tchaikovsky in one volume, but the author has risen to it with aplomb. He presents us with a great deal of new information from previously censored, as well as neglected sources, and his approach throughout is refreshingly clear and objective." Rosamund Bartlett, Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (Simon and Schuster/Free Press, 2004)
"...an intrepid scholar...Wiley's knowledge of primary and secondary sources is extraordinary...tremendously useful..."-Opera News
"...the rare volume that ought to satisfy professional musicians and general readers alike...a smart, questing and refreshingly clear-sighted companion to the man and his work."-The Washington Post
"Offers straightforward, concise synopses, along with analyses of the musical highlights...A valuable research resource."--Opera News
"The reader is granted a more detailed picture of Tchaikovsky's day-to-day life than has been achieved in any single-volume biography of the composer to date...The book is prodigiously well documented and annotated, and can be profitably read as a guide to the vast secondary literature." --Music & Letters