How did Tchaikovsky really die?
Did Tchaikovsky commit suicide? — D. Bringen Dex replies: As you may be aware, D., there are a couple of theories on this subject. The official story was always that the great Russian composer died of complications from cholera, and this version of events still has its adherents today. But rumors that he’d taken his own life have been around nearly since his death in 1893. And with the emergence of long-suppressed documents following the collapse of the Soviet Union, most Tchaikovsky scholars have come to accept a hypothesis first put forth in the late 1970s by the musicologist and archivist Alexandra Orlova – namely, that Tchaikovsky killed himself not strictly out of despondency but because he was coerced into it. His tormented life, as we currently understand it: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia. His childhood was miserable. Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky (1795-1880), his father, was a civil servant and member of the lesser nobility; his mother, Alexand
