The life of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) exhibits as close a link as you will find anywhere between an artist's inner world and the outward products of that artist's creative activity. As a man, Tchaikovsky was defined by and indivisible from his music, which became an outlet for all the shifting moods of his turbulent soul. As Professor Robert Greenberg says, "If Tchaikovsky felt it, it found a way into his music." As an artist—and it is worth recalling that he was the first full-time, formally trained, professional composer in Russian history—Tchaikovsky walked a fine and difficult line between his Romantic penchant for expression and the demands of Classical structure. This delicate balancing act—between heart and head, emotion and reason, release and control, Russian expressive content and German technique—is a key to his music that you find amply illustrated by Professor Greenberg's musical selections and commentary. Course Lecture Titles
- Introduction and Early Life
- A Career in Music
- The First Masterworks
- Maturity
- Three WomenTatyana, Antonina, and Nadezhda
- My Great Friend
- A Free Man
- The Last Years, or Don't Drink the Water
Author
Robert M. Greenberg is an American composer, pianist and musicologist. He has composed more than 50 works for a variety of instruments and voices, and has recorded a number of lecture series on music history and music appreciation for The Teaching Company. Greenberg earned a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University and received a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He has served on the faculties of UC Berkeley, Californiz State University, East Bay, and the San Franciso Conservatory of Music, where he was chairman of the Department of Music History and Literature as well as Director of the Adult Extension Division. Dr. Greenberg is currently Music Historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances.
