Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer whose music is among the most popular of its period. Tchaikovsky was thirty-one years old when he wrote a one-act fairy-tale dance piece. He wrote it for the children of his sister, Alexandra Davydova, and named it Swan Lake. Four years later, he received a commission from the Moscow Theater to make a ballet of the same title.