Tchaikovsky

Russia's first fully professional composer and a member of the St Petersburg Conservatory's first graduating class. He corresponded with his patron Nadezhda von Meck for thirteen years and lived on her money, but the two never met. He died in St Petersburg in 1893, nine days after conducting the premiere of the Pathétique; the cause is still argued over.

He gets dismissed as merely tuneful, which misreads him — what makes the melodies work is calculation in the orchestration and the structure. The Pathétique puts its slow movement last and lets the whole symphony disappear rather than end, which was against every convention of the time. The three ballets redefined what ballet music could be: before him it was functional accompaniment, and after him it was symphonic.