ymphony, Op. 13. About the end of
1866, he started out with it, only to be again rebuffed and cast down.
The two men whose good opinion he most desired, Anton Rubinstein and
Professor Zaremba, could find nothing good in his latest work, and
the young composer returned to Moscow to console himself with renewed
efforts in composition. Two years later the "Winter Daydreams"
Symphony was produced in Moscow with great success, and its author
was much encouraged by this appreciation. He was, like most composers,
very sensitive to criticism and had a perfect dread of controversy.
Efforts to engage him in arguments of this sort only made him withdraw
into himself.

Tschaikowsky held the operas of Mozart before him as his ideal. He
cared little for Wagner, considering his music dramas to be built on
false principles. Thus his first opera, "Voivoda," composed in 1866,
evidently had his ideal, Mozart, clearly in mind. It is a somewhat
curious fact that Tschaikowsky, who was almost revolutionary in other
forms of music, should go back to the eighteenth century for his ideal
of opera. Soon after it was completed "Voivoda" was accepted to be
produced at the Moscow Grand Theater. The libretto was written by
Ostrowsky, one of the celebrated dramatists of the day. The first
performance took place on January 30, 1869. We are told it had several
performances and considerable popular success. But the composer was
dissatisfied with its failure to win a great artistic success, and
burnt the score. He did the same with his next work, an orchestral
fantaisie, entitled "Fatum." Again he did the same with the score of
a complete opera, "Undine," finished in 1870, and refused at the St.
Petersburg Opera, where he had offered it.

"The Snow Queen," a fairy play with music, was the young Russian's
next adventure; it was mounted and produced with great care, yet it
failed to make a favorable impression. But these disappointments did
not dampen the composer's ardor for work. Now it was in the realm of
chamber music. Up to this time he had not seemed to care greatly
for this branch of his art, for he had always felt the lack of tone
coloring and variety in the strings. The first attempt at a String
Quartet resulted in the one in D major, Op. 11. To-day, fifty years
after, we enjoy the rich coloring, the characteristic rhythms of this
music; the Andante indeed makes special appeal. A bit of history about
this same Andante shows how the composer prize