Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, Russia, in 1840 and died in Saint Petersburg in 1893. He was first educated for a career as a civil servant, since Russia then had little opportunity for a musical career and no system of music education. When the new Saint Petersburg Conservatory opened, he studied there and graduated in 1865. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression abroad, and Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, the First Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto are still among the most popular works in the classical repertoire.
From 1877 to 1890, the businesswoman and patron Nadezhda von Meck paid him 6,000 rubles a year so he could compose full time, on the condition that they never meet. They exchanged more than 1,200 letters. His life was marked by depression and personal crises, including a marriage in 1877 that lasted two and a half months.