Happy Birthday,Tchaikovsky!

Sublime music.

In Tschaikovsky's case, fueled by the agony of his battle with his nature. In Russia at the time, homosexuality was illegal. Desperate to escape, he married a music student - the marriage was, of course, a disaster, and he attempted suicide within two weeks of the marriage - still on his honeymoon. He fled to Florence, never saw his wife again (though they remained married till her death) and wrote to his brother Anatoly: “Only now, especially after the tale of my marriage, have I finally begun to understand that there is nothing more fruitless than not wanting to be that which I am by nature.”