By the end of his fairly short life, Tchaikovsky's inner and outer circumstances would appear to have been perfectly splendid. After his triumphant tour of America, and being awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University, he was accepted as a world figure, not a merely national composer but one of universal significance.
Within Russia he became even more than thatβhe was considered a national treasure, and his music admired and adored by all strata of society. He enjoyed the favour of the Imperial court, where he had a number of influential protectors including two Grand Dukes , as well as the personal patronage of Emperor Alexander III , who had granted him a handsome government pension.
Regardless of his homosexual orientation, which to a large extent was already a matter of public knowledge, it cannot be said that Tchaikovsky's inner life had suffered from any prolonged frustrationβrather, to the contrary.
His main emotional involvement in this period, with his beloved nephew Vladimir Davydov , proved to be a source of stability and spiritual happiness. Towards the end of the last century, however, the rumours of Tchaikovsky's homosexuality spread beyond Russia's borders, and this effected a change in attitude to his work within Western musicological circles.
His music began to be criticized as sentimental, romantically excessive, charged with many imperfections, and even pathological. Ironically, it was Oscar Wilde's trial of , with its enormous resonance in the English-speaking world, that precipitated negative tendencies in the reception and critical judgement of Tchaikovsky's art.
