Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk on 7 May 1840. At the age of four he began piano lessons, and showed great talent, but his parents decided to have him trained for a career as a civil servant, and sent him away at the age of ten to study.

In 1854 his mother died from cholera, and a few weeks after this, Tchaikovsky wrote a waltz in her memory - his first serious attempt at composition.

He graduated from school in 1859 and spent three years in the civil service. In his spare time he took music theory classes from Nikolai Zaremba, and followed Zaremba to the St Petersburg Conservatory. When his father agreed to support him, Tchaikovsky gave up his job and from 1862 he studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Zaremba and instrumentation and composition with the conservatory's director and founder, Anton Rubinstein, who was impressed by the young man's talent.

On graduation he was given a teaching job at the Moscow Conservatory by Nikolai Rubinstein, Anton's younger brother. He steered an independent path, away from Mily Balakirev's nationalistic ideas and the conservative faction at the conservatories, although his first major achievement - the fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet, was the result of a working relationship with Balakirev.

He was married briefly to a former student, Antonina Millukova, but most scholars believe that he was gay.

From 1877 until 1890 he received financial support from Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow and patron of the arts, and they wrote more than 1,200 letters to each other.

Tchaikovsky became well-known outside of Russia, but was classed as something of a renegade within his own country, until 1880, when the prevailing wind changed, and things began to go well for him.

His music is generally cosmopolitan, but often includes Russian traditional tunes and dance forms.

Tchaikovsky died in St Petersburg on 6 November 1893, just a few days after the first performance of his Symphony No 6, the Pathétique. The cause of his death is usually attributed to cholera, possibly from drinking contaminated drinking water, but some believe that he killed himself.