Władysław Pachulski (c. 1855 – 1919) was a Polish violinist, pianist and amateur composer who was the secretary to and later son-in-law of Nadezhda von Meck, the patroness for 13 years of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
In 1877 Tchaikovsky left the Conservatory to become a full-time composer, with the ongoing financial support of a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck.
[3] Pachulski considered himself extremely gifted,[3] and von Meck also had an exaggerated opinion of his musical talents, due no doubt to her personal regard for him;[4] he was a constant topic of her correspondence with Tchaikovsky through 1878.
[5] He wrote to his brother Anatoly in August 1879 that Pachulski "has certain features of a Turgenevan hero, who has genuine and ardent desires to fulfill grandiose plans but ..." (leaving unsaid the inference that he does not possess the artistic capacity to do so).
[6] Pachulski made himself invaluable to von Meck, and she described him as an exemplary secretary; she later said she would never find another like him; she taught him everything he knew about travel, foreign languages and financial affairs.
[7] After the first performance of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony on 10 February 1878, which was dedicated to Nadezhda von Meck, Władysław Pachulski spoke about nothing else for days and constantly played excerpts on the piano, which helped her understand the work more deeply.
[8] Claude Debussy, then a struggling composition student from the Paris Conservatoire, was employed in the von Meck household on three occasions between 1880 and 1882, as house pianist and music master to her children.
This was a relatively trivial incident in itself, but it enabled Tchaikovsky to release some of the built up irritation he had long felt towards Pachulski junior, even if it was now visited upon his relatively innocent father.
[15] In March 1885, Nadezhda von Meck asked Tchaikovsky to use his good offices to find Pachulski's younger brother Henryk a teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory.
Von Meck regarded this as "a great grief", not because of any negative feelings about Pachulski, but because she would be losing a daughter "who is essential to me, without whom my existence is impossible".
[21] On 1 July 1890, without any explanation, Nadezhda von Meck sent Tchaikovsky his entire annual allowance of 6,000 rubles in advance; she had always previously paid it in smaller instalments.
[25] Some have conjectured the reason for the break was that von Meck had never been aware of Tchaikovsky's homosexuality and had suddenly been informed of it, which offended her puritanical moral code.
It is more plausible that someone threatened to ruin Tchaikovsky by publicly exposing his homosexuality, if she did not comply with their wishes to withdraw her support for him; and that her acquiescence in this was purely from a desire to protect his reputation and allow him to continue composing uninterrupted.
[26] That Władysław Pachulski was the main instigator of this affair was a charge made by Tchaikovsky's devoted servant Alyosha Sofronov in a letter of 13 October 1890; by Yuri Davydov; by Nadezhda von Meck's granddaughter Olga Bennigsen; and by many later commentators.
[27] On 3 January 1891 Pachulski wrote to Tchaikovsky, blaming himself for the situation they were in, and saying that his admiration and respect for the composer, and that of the whole von Meck household for him, was undiminished.
[28] Anna (Davydova) von Meck, Tchaikovsky's niece, who had married Nadezhda's son Nikolai, later provided evidence that Pachulski was playing one side off against the other through what Poznansky names an "outright lie".
So, while it cannot be conclusively proven that Pachulski instigated the stopping of the subsidy, there is no doubt that he made sure the break between patroness and composer became total and bitter and permanent.
It was not so much that she did not personally write to him anymore, because he knew she was chronically ill, but that the messages he received from Pachulski about her ceased to include any enquiries from her about his welfare, his music or his life, and they were reduced to meaningless politenesses.
Tchaikovsky made it very clear to Pachulski that he wanted and needed his relationship with Nadezhda to continue unchanged in the slightest degree, despite the cessation of her financial support.