We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic.
The context
In 1877, Tchaikovsky married a former student, Antonina Miliukova. The marriage was a disaster: they lived together for only two and a half months before he left, overwrought. His brother Anatol took him abroad to recover, and he settled first at Clarens, on Lake Geneva. He was there again in March 1878 when he wrote to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, about how he composed: “So far I have never had any opportunity of confiding to anyone these hidden utterances of my inner life.”
Music that moves us, he told her, does come from inspiration. But inspiration is a guest that “does not always respond to the first invitation.” A few days earlier, he reminded her, he had written that he was working every day without any. He kept going, and “to-day I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration.” Had he given in to his disinclination, he wrote, he would have “drifted into a long period of idleness.” Ten days later he told his publisher that a new violin concerto was “rapidly nearing completion.” It is now one of his most popular works.
Why it matters
Tchaikovsky was writing about music, but the trap he describes is everywhere. We wait to feel like exercising, writing, apologising or starting the hard task, and the feeling doesn’t come, so neither does the work. Waiting for the mood is a quiet way of never starting.
His answer is to meet the mood half-way: start first, and let the feeling catch up. He calls it patience, believing “that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.” It’s a habit, not a burst of willpower.
About Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Russian composer, 1840–1893
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.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from Letter to Nadezhda von Meck, Clarens (Rosa Newmarch's English edition, 1906), 17 March 1878.
The full passage:
There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.
We matched the quote word for word against the Project Gutenberg text of Rosa Newmarch's 1906 English edition, in the letter headed "To N. F. von Meck. Clarens, March 5th (17th), 1878". Newmarch gives each date in both the Russian (Old Style) calendar and the western one, which were then 12 days apart, so 17 March is the western date. Tchaikovsky wrote in Russian, and Newmarch's edition is abridged; she says she sometimes condensed letters. These are her English words, not his exact ones, and other translations word it differently. She italicises "always" and "disinclination". We last checked this on 30 October 2026.