Chaikovsky and the Economics of Art Music in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia

Abstract

As Russia’s first professional, conservatory-trained composer, Petr Il'ich Chaikovsky operated in the rapidly evolving social and economic context of post-emancipation Russia, identifying ways to interact with Russia’s musical institutions—its opera houses and theaters, its concert organizations and publishers—to fashion a career that was as successful financially as it was critically. Yet the myth of Chaikovsky’s financial incompetence persists, and the image, whether popular or scholarly, is still one of Chaikovsky as a spendthrift, unable to manage his income or regulate his outgoings. This article challenges such views by drawing on the recently published complete correspondence between Chaikovsky and his publisher, Petr Iurgenson, as well as on financial records preserved in the composer’s archives. In particular, this article analyzes the relationship among Chaikovsky, Iurgenson, and the operation of Russia’s musical “marketplace” at the level of genre, examining the interaction between financial considerations on the one hand and Chaikovsky’s decision to work in particular musical forms on the other. By examining the connections among Russia’s nascent musical institutions, Chaikovsky’s particular collaboration with his publisher, and the relative status of different musical genres, it becomes possible to establish the nature of Russia’s musical “art world” in the second half of the nineteenth century. In proposing a more nuanced and systematic account of Chaikovsky’s economic agency than has been attempted previously, this article thus contributes to a growing body of work on the institutional structures that shaped the Russian arts in the nineteenth century.