Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck (1831 – 13 January 1894) was a Russian Empire business woman who became an influential patron of the arts, especially music. She is best known today for her artistic relationship with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, supporting him financially for 13 years. TCHAikovsky dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to her. She also gave financial support to several other musicians, including Nikolai Rubinstein and Claude Debussy.
About Nadezhda von Meck in brief
Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck (1831 – 13 January 1894) was a Russian Empire business woman who became an influential patron of the arts, especially music. She is best known today for her artistic relationship with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, supporting him financially for 13 years. TCHAikovsky dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to her. She also gave financial support to several other musicians, including Nikolai Rubinstein and Claude Debussy. She was a capable pianist with a good knowledge of the classical repertoire. She read widely in literature, history, and philosophy, especially the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and the Russian idealist Vladimir Solovyov. She never met the relatives of her children to marry, and never attended any of their weddings. She expected to have her own life and ruled her household despotically. She took her elder servants on periodic tours of her house, never visited the cellar, and chose furniture for her married children’s houses. When she wanted to see her children, she summoned rather than invited them, and she never invited them to her house. She died of a heart attack in 1894, and was buried in a private ceremony in St. Petersburg. She left a will which gave her control of her late husband’s vast financial holdings, including two railway networks, large landed estates, and several million rubles in investments. She sold one of Meck’s railway companies and ran the other one with the help of her brother and her eldest son, Vladimir.
She had eleven children, of whom eleven survived to adulthood. Her husband was a government official, and his investments made him a multi-millionaire. After his death, she concentrated on her business affairs and on the education of the children still dependent on her. Her children were grateful for the extreme degree of their mother’s care, but were not always grateful for her care. She refused to meet her children’s relatives of those her children were marrying, and even refused to attend any weddings of those whom she invited to her home. She would have preferred to see the children of those she did not know to have their own lives and to have a private life and a private education. She lived in seclusion and seclusion, withdrawing into almost complete seclusion. In 1860, there were only 100 miles of railroad track laid in Russia. Twenty years later, there was over 15,000 miles of lines. Much of this explosion was due to Karl Von Meck, and he was responsible for that line, the highly profitable Moscow to Ryazan line, with its effective monopoly of grain transportation from the Black Earth Region of Central Russia. In 1876, he died suddenly, leaving a will that gave Nadezda control of his vast financial interests. She became the sole owner of two railway companies, including one that included that from Kursk to Kiev and the Moscow to Moscow line. She gave seven of their eleven children still at home.
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