Nearly everyone immediately recognizes the chords of the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker Suite, the cannon leitmotif of the 1812 Overture, and the allegro gusto of the opening of Swan Lake. These works – as well as numerous other ballets, operas, overtures, symphonies, and concertos – mark Pyotr Tchaikovsky as the greatest Russian (at least) composer of all time.

Born in May 1840 AD, Tchaikovsky’s compositions created while he was a teen were first performed in public in 1865. Pyotr was the second eldest of six surviving children of Ilya and Alexandra (who died of cholera when Pyotr was 14). When he turned 21, although he had honored his parent’s desires for a steady income by taking a clerk’s post in the Ministry of Justice, he enrolled in the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1863, Tchaikovsky moved to Moscow where he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory.

Now employed, he thus launched a prolific composing career, turning out a dozen works – some to critical acclaim and some to public indifference. With the financial success of Swan Lake in 1876, he resigned his post at the conservatory in 1878 to devote himself entirely to composing without the distractions of students and demanding creditors. Eventually, he would churn out 169 pieces, including The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and The Nutcracker (1892) near the end of his life.

His personal life was somewhat less successful. Struggling to repress his homosexuality, frowned upon by Russian society, he married a young music student named Antonina in 1877. The marriage lasted only a few weeks. During the resultant nervous breakdown, Pyotr attempted suicide. For the next dozen years he swung through bouts of depression. Tchaikovsky died in 1893 alone in St. Petersburg.