One need not be a Slavophile to admire Russian patriotism. The love of
the Russian for his country is a passion. And from lips parched by the
desire of liberty--though persecuted, exiled, imprisoned--this passion
is still voiced with unabated intensity. What eloquent apostrophes
have been addressed Russia by her great writers! How Turgenieff
praised her noble tongue! The youngest among the European nations,
herself a nation with genius, must possess a mighty power thus to
arouse the souls of her children. Russia right or wrong! seems to be
the slogan, even of those whom injustice and cruelty have driven to
desperation. It is the land of neuroses, and the form that patriotism
assumes there may be one other specimen. Yet the Russian is a
cosmopolitan man; he is more French than the Parisian, and a willing
dweller in the depths of German thought. The most artistic of Russia's
novelists, Turgenieff, was cosmopolitan; and it was a frequent
reproach made during his lifetime that the music of Tschaikovsky was
too European, not sufficiently national. Naturally, Anton Rubinstein
suffered the same criticism; too German for the Russians, too Russian
for the Germans. It was altogether different in the case of Modeste
Moussorgsky.
To enter into sympathy with Russian music we must remember one thing:
that the national spirit pervades its masterpieces. Even the so-called
"cosmopolitanism" of Peter Ilitch Tschaikovsky is superficial. To be
sure, he leaned on Liszt and the French, but booming melancholy and
orgiastic frenzy may be found in some of his symphonies. According to
the judgment of the Rubinsteins he was too much the Kalmuck; Nicolas
Rubinstein severely criticised him for this trait. But of all the
little group that gathered about Mila Balakirev fifty years ago there
was no one so Russian as a certain young officer named Modeste
Petrovitch Moussorgsky (born 1839, died 1881). Not Rimsky-Korsakof,
Borodine, Cesar Cui were so deeply saturated with love of the Russian
soil and folk-lore as this pleasant young man. He played the piano
skilfully, but as amateur, not virtuoso. He came of good family,
"little nobles," and received an excellent but conventional education.
A bit of a dandy, he was the last person from whom to expect a
revolution, but in Russia anything may happen. Moussorgsky was like
other well-nurtured youths who went to Siberia for a mere gesture of
dissent. With Emerson he might have agreed that "whoso would be a man
must be a non-conformist." With him rebellion against law and order
revealed itself in an abhorrence of text-books, harmony, and
scholastic training. He wished to achieve originality without the
monotonous climb to the peak of Parnassus, and this was his
misfortune. Two anarchs of music, Richard Strauss and Arnold
Schoenberg, reached their goals after marching successfully through
the established forms: and the prose versicles of Walt Whitman were
achieved only after he had practised the ordinary rules of prosody.
Not so with Moussorgsky, and while few youthful composers have been so
carefully counselled, he either could not, or would not, take the
trouble of mastering the rudiments of his art.
The result almost outweighs the evil--his opera, Boris Godounow. The
rest of his music, with a few notable exceptions, is not worth the
trouble of resuscitating. I say this although I disagree with the
enthusiastic Pierre d'Alheim--whose book first made me acquainted with
the Russian's art--and disagree, too, with Colvocoressi, whose study
is likely to remain the definitive one. I've played the piano music
and found it banal in form and idea, far less individual than the
piano pieces of Cui, Liadow, Stcherbatchef, Arensky, or Rachmaninof.
The keyboard did not make special appeal to Moussorgsky. With his
songs it is another matter. His lyrics are charming and
characteristic. Liszt warmly praised La Chambre des Enfants, one of
his most popular compositions. Moussorgsky would not study the
elements of orchestration, and one of the penalties he paid was that
his friend, Rimsky-Korsakof "edited" Boris Godounow (in 1896 a new
edition appeared with changes, purely practical, as Colvocoressi
notes, but the orchestration, clumsy as it is, largely remains the
work of the composer) and La Khovanchtchina was scored by
Rimsky-Korsakof, and no doubt "edited," that is, revised, what picture
experts call "restored." So the musical baggage which is carried by
Moussorgsky down the corridor of time is not large. But it is
significant.
He was much influenced by Dargomyjski, particularly in the matter of
realism. "I insist that the tone will directly translate the word,"
was an axiom of this musician. His friend and follower often carries
this precept to the point of caricature. There are numerous songs
which end in mere mimicry, parody, a pantomime of tone. The realism so
much emphasised by the critic Stassow and others is really an enormous
sincerity, and the reduction to an almost bare simplicity of the
musical idea. His vigorous rhythmic sense enabled Moussorgsky to
express bizarre motions and unusual situations that are at first blush
extramusical. Many of his "reforms" are not reforms at all, rather the
outcome of his passion for simplification. The framework of his
opera--Boris Godounow--is rather commonplace, a plethora of choral
numbers the most marked feature. In the original draught there was an
absence of the feminine element, but after much pressure the composer
was persuaded to weave several scenes into the general texture, and
let it be said that these are the weakest in the work. The primal
power of the composition carries us away, not its form, which, to tell
the truth, is rather old-fashioned.
His stubbornness is both a failure and a virtue. His sincerity covers
a multitude of ineptitudes, but it is a splendid sincerity. His
preference for unrelated tones in his melodic scheme led to the
dissociated harmonies of his operatic score, and this same Boris
Godounow has much influenced French music,--as I have pointed out
earlier in this volume--a source at which Claude Debussy drank--not to
mention Dukas, Ravel, and others--whose more sophisticated scores
prove this. Of Moussorgsky, Debussy has remarked that he reminded him
of a curious savage who at every step traced by his emotions discovers
music. And Boris Godounow is virgin soil. That is why I have called
its creator a Primitive. He has achieved the naive attitude toward
music which in the plastic arts is the very essence of the Flemish
Primitives. Nature made him deaf to other men's music. In his savage
craving for absolute originality--the most impossible of all
"absolutes"--he sought to abstract from the art its chief components.
He would have it in its naked innocence: rhythmic, undefiled by
customary treatment, and never swerving from the "truth" of the poem.
His devotion to the verbal text and dramatic action out-Wagners
Wagner. Moussorgsky did not approve of Wagner's gigantic orchestral
apparatus; he wished to avoid all that would distract the spectator
from the stage--for him Wagner was too much "symphonist," not enough
dramatist. Action, above all, no thematic development in the academic
sense, were the Russian's watchwords. Paul Cezanne is a Primitive
among modern painters, inasmuch as he discards the flamboyant rhetoric
and familiar points d'appui of the schools and achieves a certain
naivete. The efforts of Moussorgsky were analogous. He employed
leading motives charily, and as he disliked intricate polyphony, his
music moves in massive blocks, following the semi-detached tableaux of
the opera.
But a man is never entirely the master of his genius, and while
Moussorgsky fought the stars in their courses, he nevertheless poured
out upon paper the richest colours and images, created human
characters and glorified the "people." He "went to the people," to the
folk-melody, and in Pushkin he found the historical story of Czar
Boris, neuropathic, criminal, and half crazy, which he manipulated
to serve his purpose. The chorus is the protagonist, despite the
stirring dramatic scenes allotted to Boris. After all, the "people,"
that mystic quantity in Russian art, must have a spokesman.
Notwithstanding this every tune to be found in Pratsch's Russian
anthology, and utilised by the new men, was composed by an individual
man. Art is never democratic, but it is all the stronger when it
incarnates the woes and joys of the people--not quite the same thing
as being composed by the "people." The tree is rooted in the soil, but
the tree stands alone in the forest. The moujik dominates the stage,
even after the generous lopping from the partition of some of the
choruses.
The feeling for comedy which is to be found in many of the songs is
not missing in the stage work. Moussorgsky loved Gogol, set his Le
Mariage to music (only one act) and savoured the salty humour of the
great writer. But the composer has his tragic side, and therein he
reminds me of Dostoievsky--both men died during the same year--who but
Dostoievsky, if he had been a composer, could have written the
malediction scene in Boris? As a matter of fact he did write a play on
the same historical subject, but it has disappeared. There are many
other contacts with Dostoievsky--intense Slavophilism, adoration of
Russia; its very soil is sacred; carelessness as to the externals of
their art--a Chinese asymmetry is present in their architectonic; they
both excel in portraying humour, broad, vulgar, uproarious,
outrageous, reckless humour; and also in exposing the profundities of
the Russian soul, especially the soul racked by evil and morbid
thoughts. Dostoievsky said: "The soul of another is a dark place, and
the Russian soul is a dark place...." The obsession of the abnormal is
marked in novelist and composer. They are revolutionists, but in the
heaven of the insurgent there are many mansions. (Beethoven--a letter
to Zmeskell--wrote: "Might is the morality of men who distinguish
themselves above others. It is my morality, anyhow.") Dostoievsky and
Moussorgsky were not unlike temperamentally. Dostoievsky always
repented in haste only to sin again at leisure; with Moussorgsky it
was the same. Both men suffered from some sort of moral lesion.
Dostoievsky was an epileptic, and the nature of Moussorgsky's
"mysterious nervous ailment" is unknown to me; possibly it was a mild
or masked epilepsy. Moussorgsky was said to have been a heavy
drinker--his biographer speaks of him as being "ravaged by alcohol"--a
failing not rare in Russia. The "inspissated gloom" of his work, its
tenebrous gulfs and musical vertigoes are true indices of his morbid
pathology. He was of a pious nature, as was Dostoievsky; but he might
have subscribed to the truth of Remy de Gourmont's epigram: "Religion
est l'hopital de l'amour." Love, however, does not play a major role
in his life or art, yet it permeates both, in a sultry, sensual
manner.
Boris Godounow was successfully produced January 24, 1874, at the St.
Petersburg Opera with a satisfactory cast. At once its native power
was felt and its appalling longueurs, technical crudities and minor
shortcomings were recognised as the inevitable slag in the profusion
of rich ore. A Russian opera, more Russian than Glinka! It was the
"high noon," as Nietzsche would say, of the composer--the latter part
of whose career was clouded by a morose pessimism and disease. There
is much ugly music, but it is always characteristic. Despite the
ecclesiastical modes and rare harmonic progressions the score is
Muscovite, not Oriental--the latter element is a stumbling-block in
the development of so many Russian composers. The melancholy is
Russian, the tunes are Russian, and the inn-scene, apart from the
difference of historical periods, is as Russian as Gogol. No opera
ever penned is less "literary," less "operatic," or more national than
this one.
Rimsky-Korsakof, who died only a few years ago, was the junior of
Moussorgsky (born 1844), and proved during the latter's lifetime, and
after his death, an unshaken friendship. The pair dwelt together for
some time and criticised each other's work. If Balakirev laid the
foundation of Moussorgsky's musical education (in composition, not
piano-playing) Rimsky-Korsakof completed it; as far as he could. The
musical gift of the latter was more lyrical than any of his fellow
students' at Balakirev's. Without having a novel "message," he
developed as a master-painter in orchestration. He belongs in the
category of composers who are more prolific in the coining of images
than the creation of ideas. He "played the sedulous ape" to Berlioz
and it was natural, with his fanciful imagination and full-blooded
temperament, that his themes are clothed in shining orchestration,
that his formal sense would work to happier ends within the elastic
form of the Liszt symphonic poem. He wrote symphonies and a
"symphoniette" on Russian themes, but his genius is best displayed in
freer forms. His third symphony, redolent of Haydn, with a delightful
scherzo, his fugues, quartet, ballets, operas--he composed fifteen,
some of which are still popular in Russia--prove him a past master in
his technical medium; but the real engaging and fantastic personality
of the man evaporates in his academic work. He is at his top notch in
Sadko, with its depiction of both a calm and stormy sea; in Antar,
with its evocation of vast, immemorial deserts; in Scheherazade, and
its background of Bagdad and the fascinating atmosphere of the Arabian
Nights.
The initial Sunday in December, 1878, at Paris, was a memorable
afternoon for me. (I was then writing "special" stories to the
Philadelphia _Evening Bulletin_, and the rereading of my article in
print has refreshed my memory.) I heard for the first time the music
of Rimsky-Korsakof, also the name of Modeste Moussorgsky. The
symphonic poem, Sadko, was hissed and applauded at a Pasdeloup concert
in the Cirque d'Hiver, for the new music created, on the whole, a
disturbing impression. To quiet the rioting in the audience--it came
to shouts and fisticuffs--the conductor, Jacques Pasdeloup (whose real
name was Jacob Wolfgang) played Weber's Invitation to the Valse,
arranged by Berlioz, which tribute to a national composer--neglected
when alive, glorified after death--put the huge gathering of musical
"chauvinistes" into better humour. Sitting next to me and rather
amused, I fancy, because of my enthusiasm for Sadko, was a young
Russian, a student at the Sorbonne. He liked Rimsky-Korsakof and
understood the new music better than I, and explained to me that Sadko
was too French, too much Berlioz, not enough Tartar. I didn't, at the
time, take all this in, nor did I place much credence in his
declaration that Russia had a young man living in St. Petersburg, its
greatest composer, a truly national one, as national as Taras Boulba,
or Dead Souls. Moussorgsky was his name, and despite his impoverished
circumstances, or probably because of them, he was burning the candle
at both ends and in the middle. He had finished his masterpieces
before 1878. I was not particularly impressed and I never saw the
Russian student again though I often went to the Sorbonne. I was
therefore interested in 1896 when Pierre d'Alheim's monograph appeared
and I recalled the name of Moussorgsky, but it was only several
seasons ago and at Paris I heard for the first time both his operas.
In 1889 Rimsky-Korsakof directed two concerts of Russian music at the
Trocadero and Paris fell in love with his compositions. He not only
orchestrated the last opera of his friend Moussorgsky, but also
Dargomyjski's The Stone Guest, and with the assistance of his pupil,
Glazounow, completed the score of Prince Igor, by Borodine. He was an
indefatigable workman, and his fame will endure because of "handling"
of gorgeous orchestral tints. He is an impressionist, a stylist, the
reverse of Moussorgsky, and he has the "conscience of the ear" which
his friend lacked. Praised by Liszt, admired by Von Buelow, he revealed
the influence of the Hungarian. Profound psychologist he was not; an
innovator, like Moussorgsky he never would have been; the tragic
eloquence vouchsafed Tschaikovsky was denied him. But he wielded a
brush of incomparable richness, he spun the most evanescent and
iridescent web, previous to the arrival of Debussy: he is the Berlioz
of Russia, as Moussorgsky is its greatest nationalist in tone.
I make this discursion because, for a period, the paths of the two
composers were parallel. Tschaikovsky did not admire Moussorgsky,
spoke slightingly of his abilities, though he conceded that with all
his roughness he had power of a repellent order. Turgenieff did not
understand him. The opera La Khovanchtchina, notwithstanding the
preponderance of the chorus--in Russia choral singing is the
foundation of musical culture--I found more "operatic" than Boris
Godounow. The Old Believers become as much of a bore as the
Anabaptists in Meyerbeer; the intrigue of the second plan not very
vital; but as a composition it is more finished than its predecessor.
The women are more attractive, the lyric elements better developed,
but the sense of barbaric grandeur of Boris is not evoked; nor is its
dark stream of cruelty present. Doubtless the belief that Modeste
Moussorgsky is a precursor of much modern music is founded on truth,
and while his musical genius is not to be challenged, yet do I believe
that he has been given too lofty a position in art. At the best his
work is unachieved, truncated, a torso of what might have been a noble
statue. But it will endure. It is difficult to conceive a time when,
for Russia, Boris Godounow will cease to thrill.