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But there is no question: the Symphonie pathetique, Tchaikovsky's Sixth and last, is his masterpiece, one which will endure as long as any of his music is known. Nowhere else has he approached the burning intensity and the sable splendor of this score. In no other place has he revealed himself with equal completeness and mastery of expression. The Symphony pathetique made such an impression upon the public that for a time it was overplayed. Thereafter it was underpraised. It remains a human document of immense pathos and tragedy. Some are repelled by the hysteria and self-laceration of pages of the music. To this it can only be replied that each of us has a right to the music we like, and vice-versa; and that so far as Tchaikovsky was concerned, he never could compose from a safe place. He had a profound humanity and a native sweetness and tenderness, with a tortured sensibility. And he was a very gifted composer. Suffering and knowledge overwhelmed him. The eyes of his spirit saw things that they would fain not have seen. He tells us what they saw in a voice that often chokes with rage and pity.

This symphony was Tchaikovsky's swan song. Nine days after its first performance, which he conducted, he died of cholera, and the circumstances of his taking off were so sudden as to give rise to the theory, still widely believed, that following his tonal deposition he committed suicide. There is, however, no reason to doubt Modeste Tchaikovsky's account of his brother's end, told in one of the most fascinating of musical biographies. Tchaikovsky drank a glass of unboiled water and contracted the disease that sent him quickly to his grave. Some curious coincidences gave added color to the suicide theory, such as the fact that the composer had busied himself in the months preceding with the clearing up of documents, revisions of scores, and the destruction of personal records. These, however, appear only as the actions of a methodical worker. Existence had been cruel enough to furnish Tchaikovsky with more material for a tragic symphony. His essentially noble and compassionate nature, his strange and frustrated realtions with life, were sufficient to darken any spirit. The man's inordate craving for affection had been cruelly wounded by the estrangement of Nadeja von Meck, whose name Tchaikovsky uttered reproachfully in his dying delirium. He did not know that his former benefactress and dearest friend had become the victim of mental derangement, nor was he the man to believe that on the other side of the grave the needful word of understanding could be uttered.

Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky was happy in the creation of this symphony. He knew that he had achieved his truth, and produced a great work, despite its cold reception at its first performance. Some historians, Modeste[Tchaikovsky] among them, say that the coldness of the audience was due to the fact that Tchaikovsky conducted. He was not an effective leader or interpreter even of his own music. He could not face an orchestra with confidence, still less force it to do his exact bidding. A musician who played under him has told us of a rehersal with the composer on the conductor's stand--frightened, apologetic, and ever anon furitively reaching to his back pocket for a flask of courage. But Rimsky-Korsakov heard the first performance of the pathetique; he says that the only fault was the public's slowness to appreciate such an original score. Be all that as it may, Tchaikovsky was well aware that his Sixth Symphony was "the best, especially the most open-hearted of all my works." To his collegue Ippolitov-Ivanov he wrote:"I told you I had completed a symphony which suddenly displeased me, and I tore it up. Now I have composed a symphony which I certainly will not tear up." He sends a similar message to Jurgenson, the publisher: "I give you my word that never in my life have I been so contented, so proud, so happy, in the knowledge that I have written a good peice." It is hard to dismiss regretful thoughts of what Tchaikovsky might have accomplished, now that he had fully discovered himself as an artist, if he had lived beyond fifty-three.

Tchaikovsky let it be known that this symphony had a story, but he did not tell what the story was, which is fortunate, since the work is so much greater than any plot could be. But there was the question of naming the symphony--which, by the way, he had sketched on the ocean during his return to Russia from America in 1891. The morning after the first performance of the work from manuscript in what was then St. Petersburg, October 28 1893, Modeste Tchaikovsky found his brother at a tea-table with the music in his hand. The composer wanted to bestow some title more definite than "Symphony Number Six" before sending it to the publisher. What should it be? Should it be, for example, "ProgramSymphony"? But what did that signify if the symphony was given no program? Modeste suggested "Tragic," the other side of the word "Pathetic" came to him, and he returned. Tchaikovsky was delighted."Splendid Modi, bravo! 'Pathetic'"--"And he wrote in my presence," says Modeste,"the title that will always remain."...

...This symphony is the last utterance of a great artist and an unfortunate man.

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another review of the symphony with more details about the music itself

comments on the structure and form of the symphony