By Bruce Hershfield, MD
[Winter 2007; Vol. 33, No. 2; Pg 3]
On
October 7, 2006, Richard Kogan, MD, the Director of the Human Sexuality Program
at NY Presbyterian-Cornell Medical Center, talked about Piotr Tchaikovsky’s
life and work, and played some of his piano pieces for a large audience that
included many MPS members. This was the third in a series–-Schumann and
Gershwin were the earlier ones–-that Dr. Kogan has presented to the MPS and
the Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry at Goucher College in Towson.
Tchaikovsky was “pretty much always depressed”, dysthymic with major depressive episodes superimposed, Dr. Kogan began. The composer himself said that he was suffering from a “disorder of the spirit” and that “death is really the only blessing.” However, except for one brief episode, he was always able to compose; “without music I would go insane.”
He was born in 1840, the child of a mining engineer and of a mother who was, Dr. Kogan concluded, quite depressed. Shortly after his mother died when he was 14 he wrote his first musical composition. He prepared for a career as a lawyer, but two years after he graduated he decided to become a musician. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, then went to Moscow to teach.
He dreaded that others would discover that he was homosexual, stating in one letter, “We must fight against our natures with all of our strength.” When he was 29 he found himself attracted to a 15-year-old boy, who committed suicide four years later.
He also had difficult relationships with women. In 1877 a young woman ”threw herself at him”; they married and he found that for the only time in his career he could not write music. A doctor who examined him advised that he stay away from his wife, who was institutionalized for the last 20 years of her life. He established a relationship with a 46-year-old woman, Mme. Van Meck, who decided they should never meet even though they exchanged hundreds of letters. Eventually, they broke off their relationship for reasons that were never clarified.
Dr. Kogan described Tchaikovsky’s tendency to involve himself in other destructive and even predatory relationships. The composer eventually started seeing another teenaged boy, whose uncle wrote a letter, which resulted in a committee of law school alumni convening to discuss the situation. Faced with a choice of being “outed” or of committing suicide, Tchaikovsky took poison; the word spread that he had suddenly died of cholera.
Throughout his talk, Dr. Kogan played examples of Tchaikovsky’s works, culminating in his “piano concerto”. The audience vigorously applauded each of the performances. He concluded his presentation by answering questions from the audience, including those that asked him to speculate about how treatment for depression would have affected Tchaikovsky’s music and why the composer had not chosen to resolve the last crisis of his life in some other way, such as going into exile in another country.
The
presentation was followed by a dessert reception. A good lecture, good
music, good food, and a chance to meet with colleagues....We can hope that Dr.
Kogan will return.
