Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Hello! My name is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and I want to tell you the story of my life, which was filled with music. I was born on May 7th, 1840, in a small town in Russia called Votkinsk. Even as a little boy, melodies would dance in my head. We had a large music box called an orchestrion in our home, and I loved to listen to it play. Sometimes, music would fill my thoughts so much that I couldn't sleep! My parents hoped I would get a serious job as a government worker, but my heart was always listening to a different tune.

I did what my family wished and went to school to study law. For a few years after I graduated in 1859, I worked as a civil servant. The work was fine, but I felt like something important was missing. It was the music! So, in 1862, I made a very brave choice. I quit my job and enrolled at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to study music full time. It was scary to start over, but I knew I was finally following my dream. I studied very hard, learning how to put all the beautiful sounds I heard in my head onto paper so that orchestras could play them for everyone.

After I graduated in 1865, my life became all about music. The next year, in 1866, I became a professor at the new Moscow Conservatory. I loved teaching students, but my real passion was composing. I wrote symphonies, operas, and concertos. It wasn't always easy. Sometimes I doubted myself and wondered if my music was good enough. Around 1877, I received a letter from a wealthy woman named Nadezhda von Meck. She loved my music so much that she offered to pay me a salary so I could quit teaching and spend all my time composing! We became great friends and wrote letters to each other for thirteen years, but we agreed to never meet in person. Her belief in me gave me the freedom to create some of my most famous pieces.

Have you ever heard a story told without any words? That’s what I tried to do with my music, especially my ballets. I wanted the melodies to help you see swans gliding on a lake, a brave prince fighting a mouse king, or sugar plum fairies dancing. I wrote the music for famous ballets like Swan Lake, which was first performed in 1877, and The Nutcracker, which debuted in 1892. I also wrote powerful pieces like the 1812 Overture, which even uses real cannons! My music became popular all over the world, and I even traveled to America in 1891 to conduct a concert in New York City.

I poured all of my feelings—my joys and my sorrows—into my music until the very end. In 1893, just nine days after I conducted the first performance of my final symphony, my life's story came to a close. I lived to be 53 years old. Even though I am no longer here, my music lives on. Every time an orchestra plays The Nutcracker at Christmas, or a ballerina dances in Swan Lake, or you hear one of my symphonies, a piece of my heart is there, sharing a story without words, just for you.