At the end of 1876, when his correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck started, Tchaikovsky had reached a turning-point in his career. He was becoming dissatisfied with his post at the Moscow Conservatoire of Music, where he taught harmony and composition. His compositions included the naïve and charming First Symphony; the brilliant Second Symphony, based to a substantial extent on folksongs; and the Third Symphony, in which the outer movements, lacking the initial impetus of folk intonations, are weak. Other orchestral works included the Romeo and Juliet overture, dedicated to the leader of the Petersburg group of composers known as the 'mighty handful', Balakirev, and to a large extent inspired by him; the Symphonic Fantasia 'afterShakespeare The Tempest', based on a scenario prepared by the great critic, librarian, and art connoisseur Vladimir Stasov, who had given many ideas for compositions to the 'mighty handful'; and Francesca da Rimini, which had recently been completed and was to delight Balakirev and his group. The First Piano Concerto had had enormous success in the United States, and the opera The Oprichnik was proving to be successful on the stage, though Tchaikovsky himself was dissatisfied with it. The comic opera Vakula the Smith had won a competition and had just received its first performances. Songs, piano music, and many other less important pieces had been composed.

Tchaikovsky was thirty-six and unmarried. In the late 1860s he had toyed with the idea of marrying the visiting opera singer Désirée Artôt, but this came to nothing. By 1876 he had come to realize that the homosexual inclinations which had first become apparent during his boyhood while he was a boarder at the School of Jurisprudence were probably irreversible. Paradoxically, he wished to marry 'to stop the gossip', as he put it. He wanted a woman who would look after him and make no sexual demands on him, rather like the motherly figure whom his father had married in his old age; she ministered to the old man's needs and, simple soul though she was, the family very much liked her. (To his infinite grief, Tchaikovsky's mother had died of cholera when he was fourteen.)

In the same way as he was approaching an emotional climax in his life . . .