Those of us ever curious about what composers wanted to express with their music may think we have all the answers in Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. After all, didn’t the composer write down a detailed program about the meaning of each movement in his work? Everyone who loves Tchaikovsky should know this fascinating document, contained in a letter dated March 1, 1878 from the composer to his friend and benefactor Nadezhda von Meck (to whom the symphony is dedicated). In the original, Tchaikovsky even included a number of musical examples to illustrate his points.

In our symphony there is a programme (that is, the possibility of explaining in words what it seeks to express, and to you and you alone I can and wish to indicate the meaning both of the work as a whole, and of its individual parts. Of course, I can do this here only in general terms).

The introduction is the kernel of the whole symphony, without question its main idea. This is Fate, the force of destiny, which ever prevents our pursuit of happiness from reaching its goal, which jealously stands watch lest our peace and well-being be full and cloudless, which hangs like the sword of Damocles over our heads and constantly, ceaselessly poisons our souls. It is invincible, inescapable. One can only resign oneself and lament fruitlessly. The disconsolate and despairing feeling grows ever stronger and more intense. Would it not be better to turn away from reality and immerse oneself in dreams? O joy! A sweet, tender dream has appeared. A bright, beneficent human form flits by and beckons us on. How wonderful! How distant now is the sound of the implacable first theme! Dreams little by little have taken over the soul. All that dark and bleak is forgotten. There it is, there it is—happiness!

But no! These were only dreams, and Fate awakens us from them. And thus, all life is the ceaseless alternation of bitter reality with evanescent visions and dreamed-of happiness….There is no refuge. We are buffeted about by this sea until it seizes us and pulls us down to the bottom. There you have roughly the program of the first movement.

The second movement of the symphony expresses a different aspect of sorrow, that melancholy feeling that arises in the evening as you sit alone, worn out from your labors. You’ve picked up a book, but it has fallen from your hands. A whole procession of memories goes by. And we are sad that so much already is over and gone, and at the same time we remember our youth with pleasure. We are weary of life. How pleasant to relax and look back. Much comes to mind! There were blissful moments, when our young blood seethed and life was good. And there were bitter moments of irretrievable loss. It is at once sad and somehow sweet to lose ourselves in the past…

The third movement does not express definite feelings. These are, rather, capricious arabesques, fugitive images which pass through one’s mind when one has had a little wine to drink and is feeling the first effects of intoxication. At heart one is neither merry nor sad. One’s mind is a blank: The imagination has free rein and it has come up with these strange and inexplicable designs….Among theme all at once you recognize a tipsy peasant and a street song….Then somewhere in the distance a military parade goes by. These are the completely unrelated images that pass through one’s head as one is about to fall asleep. They have nothing in common with reality; they are strange, wild and incoherent…

The fourth movement. If you can find no impulse for joy within yourself, look at others. Go out among the people. See how well they know how to rejoice and give themselves up utterly to glad feelings. But hardly have you succeeded in forgetting yourself and enjoying the spectacle of others’ joys, when tireless Fate reappears and insinuates itself. But the others pay no heed. They do not even look around to see you standing there, lonely and depressed. Oh, how merry they are! And how fortunate, that all their feelings are direct and simple. Never say that all the world is sad. You have only yourself to blame. There are joys, strong through simple. Why not rejoice through the joys of others? One can live that way, after all.

Yet no sooner had Tchaikovsky written down these thoughts than he felt them to be woefully inadequate. So he added the following post-script to his letter:

Just as I was putting my letter into the envelope I began to read it again, and to feel misgivings as to the confused and incomplete program that I am sending you. For the first time in my life I have attempted to put my musical thoughts and forms into words and phrases. I have not been very successful. I was horribly out of spirits all the time I was composing this symphony last winter, and this was a true echo of my feelings at the time. But only an echo. How is it possible to reproduce it in clear and definite language? I do not know. I have already forgotten a good deal. Only the general impression of my passionate and sorrowful experiences has remained…

The feelings described in Tchaikovsky’s program, then, seem to be no more than a stepping stone for the composer’s musical imagination. In addition, some of the images Tchaikovsky used derive from musical sources in the first place: when he spoke about “Fate,” he didn’t mean “fate” in general but “Fate” as it was said to have been portrayed in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. (As Tchaikovsky wrote in the same letter to Mme von Meck, “The work is patterned after Beethoven’s Fifth, not as to musical content, but as to the basic idea.”) He may have been thinking, as well, of his destroyed early symphonic fantasy Fatum. Similarly, when he said “go out among the people,” he probably thought about the people rejoicing to the sound of folk dances in Beethoven’s Sixth, or perhaps about the millions embraced by Beethoven in his Ninth. These seemingly extra-musical images clearly came to Tchaikovsky filtered through a musical tradition in which they were thought to have found expression.

In his finale, Tchaikovsky “embraced the millions” by quoting the Russian folksong “In the fields there stands a birch-tree.” Commentators have made much of the extra two beats Tchaikovsky added to the tune to make its rhythmic structure more regular; that is something his erstwhile mentor Mily Balakirev, who had used the same melody earlier in an overture, had not done. But then, Balakirev never subjected the folksong to nearly as many ingenious transformations as did Tchaikovsky who, combining “The Birch-tree” with a vigorous and dynamic first thematic group, developed one of his most rousing symphonic finales out of that simple little song.Of course, the Fourth Symphony’s program had a more immediate personal level, one that Tchaikovsky didn’t need to spell out to his friend. Mme von Meck knew all about the turmoil Tchaikovsky had gone through at the time of writing the symphony: 1877 was the year of his disastrous marriage to Antonina Milyukova, which only lasted a few days. Tchaikovsky’s correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck (he was never to meet her in person) also began in 1877; the knowledge that there was someone who could truly understand him only made the outburst of his emotions more intense. Still, even here we cannot separate the music from the verbalized emotions, or tell which came first.

Ultimately, what makes Tchaikovsky’s Fourth a masterpiece is neither the presence of a program nor the successful musical expression of one. Its impact is due, rather, to the sheer musical power of its themes, the force with which they are developed, and the boundless imagination displayed in tonality, rhythm, orchestration, and musical character.

— Peter Laki