CHAPTER XIII TCHAIKOVSKY Typically Russian by temperament and in his whole attitude to life; cosmopolitan in his academic training and in his ready acceptance of Western ideals; Tchaikovsky, although the period of his activity coincided with that of Balakirev, Cui, and Rimsky-Korsakov, cannot be included amongst the representatives of the national Russian school. His ideals were more diffused, and his ambitions reached out towards more universal appreciation. Nor had he any of the communal instincts which brought together and cemented in a long fellowship the circle of Balakirev. He belonged in many respects to an older generation, the "Byroniacs," the incurable pessimists of Lermontov's day, to whom life appeared as "a journey made in the night time." He was separated from the nationalists, too, by an influence which had been gradually becoming obliterated in Russian music since the time of Glinka--I allude to the influence of Italian opera. The first æsthetic impressions of an artist's childhood are rarely quite obliterated in his subsequent career. We may often trace some peculiar quality of a man's genius back to the very traditions he imbibed in the nursery. Tchaikovsky's family boasted no skilled performers, and, being fond of music, had an orchestrion sent from the capital to their official residence among the Ural Mountains. Peter Ilich, then about six years old, was never tired of hearing its operatic selections; and in after life declared that he owed to this mechanical contrivance his passion for Mozart and his unchanging affection for the music of the Italian school. It is certain that while Glinka was influenced by Beethoven, Serov by Wagner and Meyerbeer, Cui by Chopin and Schumann, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov by Liszt and Berlioz, Tchaikovsky never ceased to blend with the characteristic melody of his country an echo of the sensuous beauty of the South. This reflection of what was gracious and ideally beautiful in Italian music is undoubtedly one of the secrets of Tchaikovsky's great popularity with the public. It is a concession to human weakness of which we gladly avail ourselves; although, as moderns, we have graduated in a less sensuous school, we are still willing to worship the old gods of melody under a new name.