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Last year, 1940, marked the hundredth anniversary of Tschaikowsky's birth. This man, of distinctly unique mental organization in the history of music and one of its over-lords, offers unrivaled opportunities for investigating that most baffling of all psychological problems: the nature of the creative processes and personality in the realm of tone.
Peter Ilich, with his usual profound insight, epitomized the Dionysian art to which he was consecrated in this wise: “Music is no illusion, but rather a revelation. Its triumphant power lies in the fact that it reveals to us beauties we find in no other sphere; and the apprehension of them is not transitory, but a perpetual reconcilement to life.”
Lange-Eichbaum has vividly phrased the psychological truth that furnishes the master-key to the understanding of genius, especially as revealed and enshrined in the great works of the musical imagination: “Man is the tragedy of the animal world, rent in sunder to the inmost depths of his being, embodied disunion.”
Of this truth Tschaikowsky is a superlative case study. His psychosexual variations have been the subject of common talk in musical circles for many decades, being in no way a contemporary discovery. Yet, strangely enough, there has hitherto been conspicuously absent a portrayal of this remarkable personality from the point of view of the professional psychologist.
Nothing would seem to be more self-evident than that the artist