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\u2018You can\u2019t imagine how blissful I feel in the conviction that my time is not yet passed, and to work is still possible\u201d. Tchaikovsky\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> comment to his nephew Vladimir \u2018Bob\u2019 Davydov in February 1893 captures the elation he experienced composing what would ultimately become his sixth and final symphony<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n It also hints at the difficulties that writing the new work had created. A first sketch was completed before Tchaikovsky realised he had composed it \u2018simply for the sake of composing something\u2019, and the music had no interest. Deflated, he even began wondering if he should \u2018go into retirement and start to live out my days quietly\u2019.<\/p>\n Fortunately, however, the programme Tchaikovsky had outlined for the new symphony still existed, and fermented in his imagination. \u2018Second part love\u2019, it read in part. \u2018Third disappointments; fourth ends dying away\u2019. There, in outline, were the starting points for three of the four movements Tchaikovsky now began casting as an entirely new work in the solemn key of B minor.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Ideas for the music quickly germinated. \u2018All my thoughts are now taken up with a new composition\u2019, the composer wrote, \u2018and it\u2019s very difficult for me to break away.\u2019 From an early stage he seemed especially affected by the mood of the new piece he was creating. It would \u2018be suffused with subjectivity\u2019, he commented. \u2018While composing it in my head, I wept a great deal.\u2019<\/p>\n Tchaikovsky wrote the bulk of the manuscript in a house he rented out in Klin, a town 60 miles north-west of Moscow. \u2018The work went so furiously and quickly,\u2019 he wrote, \u2018that in less than four days the first movement was completely ready, and the remaining movements already clearly outlined in my head.\u2019 A rough draft was completed in three weeks, and by the end of August the finished symphony was ready.<\/p>\n