Last night Maddie and I went to an interesting event put on by the Department of Music at UCSD in collaboration with the John A Majda, MD Fund and the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Richard Kogan, who is a concert pianist, clinical professor of psychiatry at Cornell Weill University and the artistic director of the Cornell Music and Medicine program, presented Tchaikovsky: Music & Melancholy, a lecture and performance analyzing the mental illness and presumed suicide of the great Russian composer P.I. Tchaikovsky. We learned that Tchaikovsky was deeply depressed for most of his life and he had multiple conflicts throughout his life that shaped his music. He composed music as the only way he could emote his feelings, that is when he wasn't self medicating with copious amounts of alcohol. He was deeply conflicted with his homosexuality as it was and still is toxically illegal in Russia. In the days of the Czars, homosexuals were banished to Siberia and put into gulags. He was a long tormented figure, who was only able to tell his life's story thorough his compositions. I've put a youtube link to his greatest hits below. We know about his life as he was a prolific journaler and he wrote lots of letters (5,392 to be exact) to his brothers, sisters and patrons. He lived to the age of 53 and it is now widely believed that he committed suicide as an alternative to being turned over the the Czar for his homosexual indiscretions with a nobleman's son. He was probably the most famous Russian at the time of his death and he was famous the world over for his symphonies, ballets and concertos. I am also enclosing a link to the Tchaikovsky Research project if you'd like to know more about his life. I think it would make a good movie.
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