Composition Tchaikovsky started writing this symphony in March 1866. Work proved sluggish. A scathing review by
César Cui of the cantata he had written as a graduation piece from the
St. Petersburg Conservatory shattered his morale. He also composed day and night. All these factors strained Tchaikovsky's mental and physical health tremendously. He started suffering from insomnia, from pains in his head which he thought to be strokes, and became convinced he would not live to finish the symphony. A successful performance of his revised Overture in F in St. Petersburg lifted his spirits. So did a change of scenery for the summer with his family. Nevertheless, he soon worked himself again into nervous and physical exhaustion by continuing to compose day and night. A doctor declared him "one step away from insanity," ordering complete rest. Tchaikovsky complied. Despite his lack of progress, Tchaikovsky sought the opinion of his former teachers,
Anton Rubinstein and
Nikolai Zaremba, when he returned to St Petersburg at the end of August. He had hoped for their approval of what he had written as well as accepting at least part of it for a St Petersburg concert of the
Russian Musical Society (RMS). Neither situation happened. Both men were negative, refusing to perform any of the symphony. He stopped work to fulfill his first public commission, a
festival overture based on the Danish national anthem to celebrate the Moscow visit of the future
Tsar Alexander III of Russia with his new Danish bride. Once the commission was finished, Tchaikovsky completed the symphony before the conservatory's Christmas break. This included modifications requested by Rubinstein and Zaremba as a condition for reconsidering the work. Tchaikovsky resubmitted the manuscript to Rubinstein and Zaremba during the Christmas break. Even with their insisted changes, they still disapproved of the symphony on the whole; however, this time they passed the
adagio and
scherzo as "being fit for performance". These two movements were played at an RMS concert in St Petersburg on February 23, 1867, with no success. Tchaikovsky, who had looked upon St Petersburg as the premier musical location in Russia and been obsessed with having his symphony performed there first, was thoroughly disillusioned — not only with St Petersburg audiences, but also with the critical judgments of both his former teachers. He discarded all the revisions they had demanded, standing with one exception by his original version. The exception, it turned out, was unavoidable. At Zaremba's insistence, he had composed a new second subject for the opening movement. He had discarded the papers that contained his original second subject, and he could not remember what he had originally composed. Tchaikovsky had to let the second subject as approved by Zaremba stand as it was. Back in Moscow, Anton's brother
Nikolai was willing to perform the symphony; only the composer's insistence on a St Petersburg performance held him back. Tchaikovsky now allowed him to conduct the
scherzo at a
Moscow concert of the RMS on December 22. Though the scherzo met with little success, Rubinstein was still ready to perform the complete work. This finally took place on February 15, 1868, to great success. Surprisingly, though, the symphony would have to wait 15 years for its next performance. The first performance of the revised version took place in Moscow on December 1, 1883, under the baton of
Max Erdmannsdörfer.
Struggles with form Tchaikovsky freely confessed later in life that he could not write within the proper rules of Western
sonata form—the rules of exposition and organic growth and development of themes pioneered by Germanic composers such as Haydn and Mozart. Anton Rubinstein was a slavish follower of those rules in his own works. That may in turn have been a handicap for Tchaikovsky in writing
Winter Dreams. He could not write a symphony that would please Rubinstein by staying firmly within a classical format while writing music that would stay true to his strengths as a composer. This does not mean that Tchaikovsky was completely unable to work within
musical form. While his natural aptitude for organic symphonic procedures may have certainly been limited, he may have actually done himself less than full justice. This was Tchaikovsky's first large-scale work, and Rubinstein and Zaremba's interference did not help; they only added to anxieties Tchaikovsky would have naturally had in any case. The First Symphony forced Tchaikovsky to face these facts in one very important way. Before beginning it, he had been content to mould his music as best he could to the practice of previous composers.
Winter Dreams forced him to realize he would have to work "around the rules" for him to grow and develop as a composer. This meant adapting
sonata form and symphonic structure to accommodate the music he was gifted to write. He showed tremendous resourcefulness in doing this, even as early as this symphony. As musicologist David Brown wrote, "The opening stretch of the first movement is enough to scotch the hoary old legend that Tchaikovsky was devoid of any real symphonic aptitude." ==Influences==