symphony 6- perhaps most impressive of all of his works, but still, i felt that he had a "miscarriage" in the third movement. I can swear that it felt as if the symphony was over when that movement ended, but then, there is the slow movement.... he should've rewritten the scherzo, i guess he didn't really have the time, too bad.
Wow, I couldn't disagree more. The Sixth is built around an idea in my opinion which Tchaikovsky sketched in one of his other symphonies: "No, no, there is no hope." The first movement's intro-expo-development acts as a sort of overture for the whole work (again purely opinion): expression of profound emotional turmoil, followed by an expression of hope (the second subject) which is built and built until it seems to be winning the day with its lyrical consolation - only to be cut off by a reminder that fate will conquer all, in the most mortifyingly powerful of development sections.
This pattern encompasses the whole symphony: the first movement can be seen as a mirror of its own opening, full of turmoil and despair; the second and third movements as the return of hope and consolation. Eventually we seem on the road to triumph, to success. Our hopes build up - our fortunes rise - as in the first movement's second subject - and we reach a final shatteringly joyous climax, sending us up to the heavens - and
then!
There are only two moments like it in musical history, I think: the first movement of the very same symphony (by design!) and the conclusion of Brahms' Fourth. What makes the irony of the double-pattern of the Tchaikovsky Sixth - the way that the entire symphony's emotional range and content is structured in precisely the same way as the opening half of the first movement - is that unlike in the first statement of the work's structure, when the final return of Fate is the loud, apocalyptic first-mvt. development, in the full work itself the final return of Fate is impassioned, yes, but soft, bittersweet, even more desperate and alone, not in anger but in the sorrow of loss and acceptance of the tragic destiny which awaits ...
- - -
My idea on the Fifth Symphony is similarly strange. I've always felt the final coda seems fake not because it is, but because it's
ironic. To my mind the finale has always been the most tragic part of the symphony, because of some sort of unstated loss, some sort of feeling that this is
not really the end.
Maybe it's just in my head.