Books: Queer Musician

"BELOVED FRIEND"—Catherine Drinker Bowen & Barbara von Meek—Random House ($3). Any musician runs the risk of being thought queer, but Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky ran a bigger risk than most. Just how queer he actually became was related last week by Authors von Meek & Bowen, in a full-dress, 484-page biography that Tchaikovsky addicts will find sympathetic, non-musical readers interesting if partly incomprehensible. With only a slight stiffening of technical talk and musical illustration, "Beloved Friend" is a revealing human document on the genus musician, Russian species. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, known to...