Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a nineteenth-century Russian composer. He did not write plays or musicals, but his music for dance is everywhere on stage. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are two of the most performed ballets in the world, and companies of every size, from big city troupes to school and community groups, stage them each year. His melodies are so familiar that many people know them before they ever see a ballet.

Tchaikovsky wrote for the orchestra, and his ballet scores are built to tell a story without words. Dancers act through movement while the music sets the mood: eerie and moonlit in Swan Lake, sparkling and playful in The Nutcracker. His tunes are easy to hum, with big sweeping themes for romance and quick, bright dances for fun. Each ballet is a full evening, usually two or three acts with an intermission, and many productions bring in local children for roles such as party guests, mice and tiny angels. The Nutcracker is a holiday tradition for many families, with a Christmas party, a magical journey and a parade of dances from faraway lands. You do not need to know anything about ballet to enjoy the music. Some productions also reimagine the score in a new style, such as the hip hop version of The Nutcracker, which keeps the famous melodies but changes the dancing.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in 1840 in a mining town in Russia and trained first for a government job before turning to music. He studied at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory, then taught in Moscow, where he began writing in earnest.

He composed symphonies, concertos, operas and songs, but the ballets are what bring him to the stage today. Swan Lake was first presented at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877. It did not win lasting favor at once, and the version most companies dance today comes from a later staging after his death. The Nutcracker, written for the Imperial theaters in St. Petersburg, premiered in 1892.

He died in 1893 in St. Petersburg. His ballet scores have outlived the original productions and are now danced in countless versions, along with new works that borrow his music, such as the hip hop Nutcracker created by choreographer Jennifer Weber.