Obituaries and Posthumous notes

Marie Scheikevitch
(? - ?)

Marie Scheikevitch recalls the meeting be- tween her father and Tolstoy one winter's day.

"Tolstoy says: 'Tchaikovsky's dead,' -- and two huge tears (for everything is lager than life with him, she says), rolled down his great cheeks"
(Brown 230)

Anton Rubinstein
(1830-94)

Tchaikovsky's principal teacher in St. Peters- burg Conservatoire. This excerpt was taken from his letter to his sister one month after Tchaikovsky died. For more information about Rubinstein, please refer to here and here.

"What do you say about Tchaikovsky's death? Is it possible this is the will of God? What a loss for music in Russia! Yet you know, he was in the prime of his life, he was only 50 - and all this for a glass of water! What a nonsense are all such tricks - and this life - and creation - and everything, and everything"
(Brown 229)

Herman Laroche
(1845-1904)

Music critic. He was the composer's lifelong friend, starting from their early years at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Laroche was "the most supportive -- and most penetrating -- cri- tic of Tchaikovsky's music"(Brown 18). Here is his obituary for the composer.

(Brown)

Back: Impressions
Credit: taken from David Brown's Tchaikovsky Remembered

1998-9 by Gretchen Lamb
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