Tchaikovsky’s orchestral works were not always as successful as his elevated position in today’s concert-hall pantheon would suggest. While he may have been regarded as Russia’s greatest symphonist and arguably its most talented composer during his lifetime, his ballet scores, overtures, and concertos often received responses ranging from pedestrian to outright disdain. Tchaikovsky endured periods of crushing self-doubt, exacerbated by the critical responses to his music. It was largely during the 20th century, after the composer’s death, that his reputation as an audience favorite became firmly established.
When Tchaikovsky began composing his Symphony No. 5 in the summer of 1888, it was with a mixture of determination and paralyzing uncertainty. “I want so much to show not only to others, but to myself, that I still haven’t expired,” he wrote to his patron and friend Nadezhda von Meck. It had been 10 years since his Fourth Symphony and he was resolved to prove that his inspiration had not dried up.
The initial sketches for this new work came to him only with difficulty, but he found some creative momentum as he was working on the instrumentation. When the new symphony was completed in August 1888, he exclaimed with some relief, “Thank God, it is no worse than my previous ones.” The following week, he reiterated, “it has turned out well.”
At its premiere the following month, the audience and his close friends received the piece enthusiastically, but the critics were harsh at subsequent performances. Tchaikovsky unfortunately believed the critics rather than his friends and concluded after three performances that the work was a failure. “There is something repellant in it,” he lamented, “some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication.” It was not until the following year, when Brahms heard a performance in Hamburg and expressed his admiration for the new work, that Tchaikovsky finally admitted this colorful, emotional, patchwork-quilt of a symphony had any merit. “I have started to love it again,” he wrote to his nephew. “My earlier judgment was undeservedly harsh.”
Tchaikovsky claimed that the Fifth Symphony was not programmatic, but his early sketches included comments about “fate,” “providence,” and “faith.” Perhaps he was thinking of Beethoven’s famous “Fate” symphony—also a Fifth—and had planned a similar symphonic trajectory for this work. Those initial sketches were eventually rejected, though, and unlike a true programmatic symphony the piece holds together well without a specific narrative program when heard simply in terms of its musical discourse and development. And in that regard, it might resemble Beethoven’s Fifth even more closely.
A single theme—perhaps a leitmotif of fate—appears in each of the four movements, suggesting a journey or gradual metamorphosis, culminating in a conclusion that can be heard as either triumphant or ominous. At the Symphony’s opening (Andante), this dotted-rhythm theme is presented in a slow introduction—a mournful funeral march. Then the clarinets and bassoon introduce the Allegro con anima section with a variant on the theme that, while lilting and more animated, even dance-like at times, still bears the emotional weight of the portentous introduction. If this is indeed a “Fate” theme, then the fatal narrative has already been set, and cannot be avoided. A less-troubled second idea only serves to intensify the storm of the contrapuntally dense development, where the dotted-rhythm figure relentlessly reemerges. After the main theme is reprised, the waltz-like second theme is brought back in E major, but the coda re-establishes the funeral-march connotations with a repeated lament bassline and a total dissipation of energy.
Out of the darkness of the low strings, the harmonies turn to D major in the Andante cantabile second movement, a nocturne whose ravishing horn melody was later adapted to the popular song “Moon Love.” This melody is dramatically interrupted by the Fate motif, but gradually regains its composure, reaching an almost-triumph before Fate cruelly silences it once more. The lyrical melody can then only limp to a defeated close. A short waltz (Allegro moderato), instead of the usual third-movement scherzo, transforms the horn melody into an oasis of untroubled delight before the Fate motif returns, again, to shroud the closing.
The finale opens (Andante maestoso) and proceeds much as the first movement did, with a dramatic dialogue between Fate and Joy, except the Fate theme is now in E major. With repeated references to other motifs from the inner movements, the dramatic momentum arches toward a seemingly triumphant victory, the Fate motif now an exultant brass fanfare, hammered home with Beethovenian repetitions of tonic major harmony.
And yet the Symphony’s conclusion feels less victorious than it should. Is it Tchaikovsky’s wishful thinking—a forced victory paralleling the composer’s own fears and hopes for this work? As a commentator of the day remarked, if Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was “Fate knocking at the door,” then Tchaikovsky’s Fifth might represent “Fate trying to get out.”
—Luke Howard
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