‘The victim of death-rays from Mars’: An evaluation of ‘gap-filling’ in Tchaikovsky biographies

This article assesses the perils of biography through two contentious events in life nineteenth-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93). Investigations into historical often mandate that biographers ‘fill gap’ narratives they are to construct when met with an absence unequivocal traces, thus rendering prized truth rather elusive. has been particularly so for whose death – first studied this sparked immediate debate remains unabated modern-day music research. The second exploration concerns sudden cessation Tchaikovsky’s patron Nadezhda von Meck which had implications biographers’ narrative relationship dynamics between and patron. Rather than seeking establish ‘truth’, itself function serve overarching presented by numerous biographers.