s Sixth Symphony or better known as the Pathetique Symphony. He said, "I love it as I have never loved any one of my musical offspring." Tchaikovsky works include concertos for both violin and piano, symphonies, operas, quartets, ballets, and overtures. His music was always filled with passion and emotion. While he didn't opt for the gigantic orchestras of the time, like his fellow composers, Tchaikovsky concentrated on adding color to his music, which he was extremely successful at. Truly, Tchaikovsky was one of the greatest composers of the Romantic Period, and his music will continue to delight audiences for years to come.CHAPTER SYMPHONY IN F MINOR: PERSONAL LISTENINGThe first movement of the symphony starts out in almost an official style, more like a march. This initially leads one to think that the piece is going to turn out to be a more militaristic type of music with a lot of rigid melodies, confined to a certain space or tone or something like that. But Tchaikovsky doesn't do that. He starts that way, then suddenly drops all of the crescendo and forte to make the music softer and slower. It was hard at first to describe my feelings about this particular piece up to this point because in my head, I hadn't visualized any type of mental imagery to follow the music along with. It took me a couple of listenings to really get a picture or idea of that first movement. One thing that I really didn't notice until after the first few times through was the tempo of the first movement. It stays quite fast through the whole thing. It wasn't until the fifth or sixth listening of the piece that the first movement began to take on shape in my mind. To me, it began to sound like a chase, someone chasing someone else. It this chase, the person fleeing starts out running to get away from his pursuer, pauses for a moment to rest, then the chase once again resumes. About five minutes into the piece, the music tells me that the indi...
