Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyMay 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893
Pyotr was born in a small town in present-day Udmurtia, Russia. His father, Ilya Petrovich, was the son of a Ukrainian government mining engineer. His mother, Alexandra, was a Russian woman of partial French ancestry. Pyotr began piano lessons at age four and could read music as well as his teacher within three years. However, in 1850 the family sent him to a school for the "lesser nobility" to secure him a career as a civil servant. 
His interest in music continued and within a month of his mother’s death in 1854, he was making his first serious efforts at composition, a waltz in her memory. Students at the school were taken to the theater and the opera regularly where he became fond of works by Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Mozart. In 1855, Pyotr’s father funded private music lessons for his son with a well-known piano teacher from Nuremberg. However the professor did not see much potential in the lad. Pyotr was told to finish his course work, then try for a post in the Ministry of Justice. 
"The Five” were very critical of the Western style of Anton Rubinstein. Since Pyotr became Rubinstein's best known student, he was also initially a natural target for attack. This attitude changed slightly when Rubinstein left the St. Petersburg musical scene in 1867 and Tchaikovsky entered into a working relationship with one of The Five. The result was his first masterpiece, the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, a work The Five wholeheartedly embraced. His Second Symphony, nicknamed the Little Russian, in its initial form was also received enthusiastically by the group. When his father retired he accepted a position to teach at the Conservatory in Moscow and at the same time wrote music criticism and continued as a professional composer. 
Tchaikovsky's ill-fated and brief marriage to one of his former composition students, Antonina Miliukova may have actually enhanced his creativity. The resulting intensity of personal emotion flowing through his works was entirely new to Russian music. A commission for some chamber pieces by a wealthy Russian widow allowed him to resign from the Moscow Conservatory in October 1878 and concentrate primarily on composition. Assured of a regular income from von Meck, he traveled extensively around Europe and rural Russia.
In 1885 Tsar Alexander III conferred upon Tchaikovsky the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class) with which he received a lifetime pension of 3000 rubles per year, making him the premier court composer, at least in practice if not in actual title. Additionally, in 1893, the University of Cambridge awarded Tchaikovsky an honorary Doctor of Music degree.
He died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893, nine days after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. His death has traditionally been attributed to cholera, but some have theorized that his death was a suicide.
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