However, this effect was but fleeting: his imagination drew him into another world, and amongst all the musical realms that of Bach was one of the most alien to him. Laroche gives an interesting account of these lessons, in which Bach of course figured prominently: "Pyotr Ilyich's poetic and impressionable soul could not fail to be struck by the majestic sound of the instrument, the inexhaustible variety of its resources, and indeed the very atmosphere in which the lessons were conducted, namely in the deserted and mysteriously dark SS. Tchaikovsky's teacher in the theory classes, Anton Rubinstein, arranged for his gifted student to have organ lessons with the famous German organist Heinrich Stiehl (1829–1886), who was based in Saint Petersburg at the time. Thus, in his 1893 obituary of the composer he observed that during their years at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory (1862–65), Tchaikovsky had not only showed no interest in the 16th- and 17th-century Belgian and Italian contrapuntists, whose works Laroche was then studying assiduously, but he "did not even like Bach". Herman Laroche, in his various reminiscences of Tchaikovsky, lamented somewhat that his late friend had been so indifferent to Bach. Tchaikovsky never really warmed to Bach's music in later years either, but it is interesting that after starting to attend Zaremba's lessons he would frequently play fugues by Bach on the piano at home, as his brother Modest would later recall. Indeed, his musical horizons had been very narrow until then, being confined mainly to a passion for Italian opera (see his Autobiography of 1889), so that he knew very few works even by such composers as Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, who would eventually come to mean so much to him. Until he started taking harmony lessons with Nikolay Zaremba in the autumn of 1861, as part of the newly established classes of the Russian Musical Society, Tchaikovsky had had no idea about Bach. 3.1 In Tchaikovsky's Music Review Articles.2.1 In Tchaikovsky's Music Review Articles.
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