THE RUSSIAN ROMANTICISTS
Romantic Nationalism in Russian Music; Pathfinders; Cavoss and
Verstovsky--Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka; Alexander Sergeyevitch
Dargomijsky--Neo-Romanticism in Russian Music; Anton
Rubinstein--Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky.
I
Russian music as a whole is a true mirror of Slavic racial character,
life, passion, gloom, struggle, despair, and agony. One can almost see
in its turbulent-lugubrious or buoyant-hilarious chords the rich colors
of the Byzantine style, the half Oriental atmosphere that surrounds
everything with a romantic halo--gloomy prisons, wild mountains, wide
steppes, luxurious palaces and churches, idyllic villages and the
lonely penal colonies of Siberia. It really visualizes the life of the
empire of the Czar with a marvellous power. With its short history and
the unique position that it occupies among the world's classics, it
depicts the true type of a Slav, the melancholy, simple and hospitable
_moujik_, with more fullness of color and virility than, for instance,
the German or Italian compositions depict the representative types
of those nations. In order to understand the reason of this peculiar
difference between Russian and West European music it is necessary to
understand the social and psychological elements upon which it is built.
While the West European composers founded their creations upon the
traditions of the masters, Russian music grew out of the very heart,
the joys and the sorrows of the common people. All the Russian
composers of the early nationalistic era were men of active life, who
became musicians only on the urgency of their inspiration. Glinka, for
instance, was a functionary in the Ministry of Finance, Dargomijsky was
a clerk in the Treasury Department, Moussorgsky was an army officer,
Rimsky-Korsakoff an officer of the navy, Borodine was a celebrated
inventor and scholar. Academic musicians are wont to find the stamp of
amateurishness on most of the Russian classic music. To this Stassoff,
the celebrated Russian critic, replied: 'If that is the case, our
composers are only to be congratulated, for they have not considered
the form, the objective issues, but the spirit, the subjective value of
their inspirations. We may be uneven and amateurish as nature and human
life are, but, thank Heaven, we are not artificial and sophisticated!'
Be it a song, instrumental composition, or opera, everything in Russian
music breathes the ethnographic and social-psychologic peculiarities
of the race, which is semi-Oriental in its foundations. Nationalism in
music has been the watchword of most of the Russian composers since
the very start. But, besides, there has been a strong tendency to
subjective individualism, that often expresses itself in a wealth of
sad nuances. This has been to a great extent the reason that foreigners
consider melancholy the predominant racial quality, a view not just
to Russian music as a whole, which is far too vigorous and healthy
a growth to remain continuously under the sway of one emotional
influence. To a foreign, especially an Anglo-Saxon ear Russian
music may sound sometimes too realistic, sometimes too monotonous
and sad without any obvious reason. It has been declared by foreign
academicians lacking in cohesion, technique, and convincing unity.
However, this is not a defect of Russian art, but a characteristic
trait of its racial soul. Every Russian artist, be he a composer,
writer, or painter, in avoiding artificiality puts into his creation
all the idiomatic peculiarities of his race without polishing out of it
the vigor of 'naturalness.' Russian music, more than any other Russian
art, expresses in all its archaic lines, soft shades, and polyphonic
harmonies the peculiar temperament of the nation, which is just as
restless and unbalanced as its life.
The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian music was to
create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school,
but directly from the soul of the masses. Their ideal was to create
life from life. In order to accomplish their tasks they went back to
melodic traditions of early mediæval music, to the folk-songs, the
mythological chants and the folk dances. Since the Russian people are
extremely musical, folk-song is a great factor in the nation's life and
evolution. Music accompanies _moujiks_ from the cradle to the grave
and plays a leading rôle in their social ceremonies. Though profound
melancholy seems to be the dominant note, yet along with the gloom are
also reckless hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl one off
one's feet, as, notably, in Glinka's _Kamarinskaya_. The phenomenon is
startling, for music of the deepest melancholy swings unexpectedly to
buoyant humor and exultant joy. This is explained by the fact that the
average Russian is extremely emotional and consequently dramatic in his
artistic expression. Very characteristic is a passage of Leo Tolstoy on
Russian folk-song in which he writes:
'It is both sad and joyous, on a quiet summer evening, to hear the
sweeping song of the peasants. In it is yearning without end, without
hope, also power invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the faith
in preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our race, which
explains much that in Russian life seems incomprehensible.'
The early Russian composers thus became creators in touch with the
common people, the very opposite of the composers of German and Latin
races, who created only for the salons of aristocracy. The latter
were and remained strangers to the people among whom they lived.
Everything they composed was strictly academic and expressed all the
sentimentality and stateliness of the nobility. Although geniuses of
great technique, in racial color, emotional quickness and spontaneity
they remain behind the Russians.
In spite of the fact that all the early Russian composers were
descendants of aristocracy, they remained in their feelings and in
their themes, like Gogol, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in fiction,
true portrayers of the common people's life. There has never been an
aristocratic opera, a nobility music and salon influence noticeable
in Russian musical development. This may be due to the fact that
the Russian aristocracy is not a privileged superior class of the
autocratic régime, as is that of Germany, Austria, Italy, and England,
but merely an intellectual, more advanced element of the country.
Thanks to Czar Feodor, the father of Peter the Great, who destroyed
all the pedigrees, patents and papers of the nobility, saying that he
did not want to see their snobbery and intrigue in his empire, there
are no family documents in Russia which go back beyond the reign of
Czar Feodor. There is no doubt that this autocratic proceeding has been
beneficial to Russian art, particularly to music, in having made it
democratic in its very foundations.
Though music has been cultivated in Russia since the time of Peter
the Great, the origin of the true nationalistic school belongs to the
Napoleonic era, the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Cosmopolitan
that he was, Peter the Great disliked everything national, and invited
Italian musicians to form a school of systematic musical education in
his empire. But Catherine II became deeply interested in encouraging
native music and herself took an active part in the work. Between
her political schemings and romantic affairs, she took time to write
librettos, to invite musicians to her palace and to instruct them how
to use the themes of the folk plays, fairy tales, and choral dances
for a new Russian stage music. It is said that sixty new operas were
written during her reign and produced on the stage of the newly-founded
municipal opera house. One of them, 'Annette,' is quoted as the first
wholly Russian opera, in librettist, theme, and composer.
A very conspicuous figure of the pre-nationalistic period of Russian
musical history is C. Cavos (1776-1840), an Italian by birth, but a
Slav in his work. He wrote songs, instrumental music and operas, more
or less in Italian style but employing both Russian text and theme. His
opera, 'Ivan Sussanin,' was considered a sensational novelty and the
composer was hailed as a great genius of the country. But his works
died as soon as they had loomed up under the protection of the court
and nothing of his compositions has survived.
Close upon Cavos followed Verstovsky, whose operas 'Tomb of Askold' and
'Pan Tvardovsky' were produced in Moscow when Napoleon invaded Russia
in 1812. The first was built upon an old Slavic saga in which _Askold_,
the hero, and his brother, _Dir_, play the same rôles as do Hengist and
Horsa in Saxon chronicles. The other was founded upon an old Polish
story of adventure somewhat resembling the Faust legend. Besides the
operas Verstovsky composed a large number of songs, ballads, and
dances. By birth a Pole and by education an Italian, his compositions
resemble in many ways those of Rubinstein.
Russian musical conditions in the first half of the past century
were very much like those in America at present. Besides Cavos
and Verstovsky there had been and were a number of more or less
conspicuous imitators of the Italian school. Their works were as
little Russian in character as Puccini's 'Girl of the Golden West'
is American. But the advent of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert in
Germany made a deep impression upon the music-loving Russians. The
men upon whom the romantic German music made the strongest impression
were Glinka and Dargomijsky, both inclined toward romantic ideals and
themes. Their first striking move was to rebel against the Italian
influences. 'Russia, like Germany, shall have its own music independent
of all academic schools and foreign flavors, and it shall be a music
of the masses. Music is more vigorous and more individual when it is
national. We like individuality in life and literature, as in all arts
and politics. Why should the world not cling more to the racial than to
the cosmopolitan ideal? The tendency of Italian music is cosmopolitan.
I believe that the tempo of music must correspond to the tempo of life.
Our duty is to speak for all the nation.' Thus Glinka wrote at the
critical moment.
II
Naturally Glinka's first attempts were ridiculed by contemporary salon
critics and concert habitués, who looked at him as a 'moujik-maniac'
and naïve dilettante. His attempt at something truly national in
character was considered plebeian and undignified for a nobleman. But,
encouraged by Shukovsky, the famous poet of that time and the tutor of
the heir-apparent, later Czar Alexander II, Glinka published in 1833
the first volume of his songs and ballads, based purely on themes of
folk-songs. As he was merely a functionary of the Ministry of Finance,
without any systematic musical training and had no professional
prestige, his work was ignored by the press, while society merely made
fun of him and his songs. It was evident that he could not get any
hearing in this way.
Shukovsky, whose apartment at the palace was a rendezvous of artists
and reformers of that time, suggested to Glinka that he compose an
opera out of the rich material in his unpublished ballads, songs, and
instrumental sketches, and he on his part would take care that it
should be produced on the imperial stage. Shukovsky even outlined a
libretto on an historical subject similar to that used by Cavos and
suggested to name it 'A Death for the Czar.' Baron Rosen, the poetic
private secretary of the Czarevitch, wrote the libretto under the
supervision of Shukovsky and Glinka named it 'A Life for the Czar.'
This was the first distinctly national Russian opera that stands
apart from the Italian and German style. Instead of effective airs
and elaborate orchestration Glinka emphasized the use of choruses and
spectacular scenic methods, which are more natural to Russian life than
the former. When the opera was produced in 1837 for the first time in
St. Petersburg the people went wild about it and the young composer was
hailed as a great æsthetic reformer. The czar appointed him to act as
a conductor of the court choir, the famous _pridvornaya kapella_. The
phenomenal success embittered the professional musicians of Russia and
they began to fight the composer with redoubled vigor.
Fortunately the czar, and especially Shukovsky, were on the side of
Glinka, so that all the intrigues of his enemies failed. Meanwhile he
had composed several songs and a large number of ballads and orchestral
pieces, of which _Kamarinskaya_ and the 'Spanish Overture' are the most
known. Glinka's songs and instrumental pieces are full of melody and
color, and they are still sung and played in Russia, but the best he
has created are his two operas. In 1842 he finished his second opera,
'Russlan and Liudmilla,' which, though more poetic and melodious
than 'A Life for the Czar', failed to arouse the enthusiasm which had
greeted his first opera. The reason for that may have been that it was
distinctly democratic and not historical, and historical pieces were a
fad of that time.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka was born in 1804, in the province of
Smolensk, and his father, a wealthy nobleman, sent him at the age of
thirteen to be educated in an aristocratic college in St. Petersburg.
The young man was intended for the civil service of the government,
but he loved music so passionately that he neglected his other studies
and took lessons in piano and the theory of composition from various
teachers of the capital until he was about to be expelled from the
school. Graduated in 1824, he tried to get a position in the treasury
department, but, failing in this, continued to study music till he
secured it. Beethoven, Weber, and Schubert made a lasting impression
upon his mind and he never ceased to worship them, though he never
imitated them. Byron, Goethe, and Pushkin were the poets that inspired
him most of all, and he used to say if he could be in his native music
what those men had been in their native poetry he would die a happy man.
With all his lack of technical skill, Glinka remains the founder of
the nationalistic school of music of his native land. In spite of his
many shortcomings he is natural and superior to the opera composers
of his time in Italy and Germany. As all Russians have inborn love of
song and as that is expressed in manifold ways in their actual life
more than in the life of any other nation, Glinka's main idea was to
found the Russian opera on combined passages of realistic musical life,
giving them a dramatic character. To emphasize this he made use of
picturesque stage glitter and spectacular scenic effects. This betrays
itself forcibly in the vivid colors that outline the semi-Oriental
architecture of a cathedral, palace, public building or cottage, or in
the picturesque costumes for marriage, for burial and for the various
other social and official ceremonies characteristic of Russia.
In his private life Glinka was just as unfortunate as Tschaikowsky. The
girl he had begun to love passionately married a man of more promising
social career. He married a woman whom he did not love and they were
divorced after some scandal and difficulty. Then the woman whom he had
first loved and who was married to a prominent army officer changed her
mind and eloped with Glinka. In order to avoid a public scandal the
czar forced the composer to relinquish the woman of his choice. Glinka
obeyed and fell into a mood of melancholy which undermined his health
little by little until he died in Berlin in 1857. But, strange to say,
the private life of Glinka did not affect his compositions, for there
is nothing extremely melancholy or sentimentally sad in his music. An
air of sentimental romanticism emanates from his numerous ballads,
songs, and instrumental works. Like the rest of his contemporaries he
is lyric, full of color and sentiment in his minor works. One and all
are distinctly national.
Together with Glinka, Dargomijsky undertook to carry the idea of
nationalism in music into practice, in spite of all the objections of
contemporaries. They met frequently and became close friends. Their
aspirations were the same, though Glinka was socially prominent by
reason of his official position, and Dargomijsky was a mere clerk in
the treasury department and composed chiefly for his own pleasure.
It was much more difficult for him than for Glinka to obtain social
recognition, though the majority of his works are far more national
and artistic than Glinka's. His songs stand close to the heart of the
_moujik_. 'Glinka is an artist of the nobility, I am of the peasants,'
was the way Dargomijsky defined the difference between Glinka and
himself.
Born on February 2, 1813, in the province of Tula, Alexander
Sergeyevitch Dargomijsky was the son of a postal official, who lost his
position and property in Moscow when Napoleon occupied that city. The
boy grew up in great poverty and the only education he received was
that given by his parents. At the age of twenty he made a trip to St.
Petersburg and managed to get the position of clerk in the treasury
department. Here he continued his studies in music, which had been
near his heart since early childhood. After a few years of strenuous
work he realized that it was more important for him to collect and
study folk-music than to acquire the technique and theory of the art of
music, and with this in view he undertook excursions to the villages
during the summer vacation, collecting folk-songs, attending festivals
and social ceremonies of the peasants. In this way he stored up a huge
material and knowledge for his individual work. His first attempt was a
series of songs and ballads. In 1842 Dargomijsky resigned his official
position to devote his time exclusively to music. His first opera,
'Esmeralda,' had a great success in Moscow and gave him some prestige
and courage to undertake the composition of his second opera, 'The
Triumph of Bacchus,' which, however, was a failure.
Dargomijsky's masterpiece is and remains his opera _Russalka_ ('The
Nymph'), which is composed to a libretto based upon a poem of Pushkin.
It takes a listener to the picturesque and romantic banks of the
Dnieper River, where the heroine, Natasha, the daughter of a miller, is
deserted by a princely lover. In despair she flings herself into the
river and is at once surrounded by a throng of the _russalkas_--the
nymphs, with whom Russian imagination has populated every brook, lake,
and river. She herself becomes a nymph and eventually succeeds in
enticing her false lover to her arms beneath the water.
Dargomijsky's last opera, 'The Marble Guest,' for the libretto of which
he used the poetic drama of Pushkin, based on the legend of Don Juan,
was produced only after his death in 1872. It differs from his previous
operas by the predominance of recitative, concerted pieces being almost
banished. Like Glinka, he was not over-prolific in his compositions.
Besides the four operas he wrote only five or six orchestral pieces,
some thirty songs and ballads and a few dances. Tschaikowsky complained
bitterly that he was too lazy, although he admitted that Dargomijsky
was greatly hampered by lack of systematic musical education.
Like Glinka, Dargomijsky was unhappy in his private life. The woman
whom he loved so deeply was the wife of another man, and the one who
loved him found no response on his part. He was relieved of his worries
for daily bread after his _Russalka_ made a success on the stage.
His apartment was the real rendezvous of the group of young Russian
nationalistic composers who surpassed him by far in their works, such
as Borodine, Moussorgsky, Balakireff, César Cui, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and
Seroff. Dargomijsky died in 1869.
III
At the same time that the Balakireff group of Russian nationalists
began its work in St. Petersburg a romantic temple was founded
by Rubinstein. Among the masters of Russian music he occupies an
interesting place, being, as it were, a link between the lyric
Oriental and the nationalistic Slav. In many ways he was a phenomenal
figure. Though he laid the corner-stone of the modern Russian musical
pedagogic system and was a dominant authority of his time, he never
caught the true national spirit of Russia and by no means all his
talented pupils became his followers. He died a man disappointed in
his ideals and ambitions. 'All I care about after my death is that men
shall remember me by this conservatory; let them say, this was Anton
Rubinstein's work,' he said, pointing to the Imperial Conservatory in
St. Petersburg,[8] of which he had been not only the founder but the
director for many years.
During all his influential life Rubinstein was bitterly opposed to
the Russian nationalistic school of music, at the head of which
stood Balakireff, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. He referred to
them as to dabblers and eccentric amateurs. Even toward his pupil,
Tschaikowsky, he assumed a condescending attitude. His veneration of
the classics was almost fanatical. In the genius of his contemporaries
he had no faith. He truly believed that music ended with Chopin. Even
Wagner and Liszt were small figures in his eyes. To the realistic style
initiated by Berlioz and the music dramas of Wagner he was indifferent.
His aspirations were for the highest type of pure music, but he lacked
the ability to transform his own ideals into something real. Lyric
romanticism was all he cared for. The slightest innovation in form,
all attempts at realism in music, upset his æsthetic measuring scale.
But, despite his deficiencies and faults, he deserves more credit from
posterity than it seems willing to accede to him. Saint-Saëns has said:
I have heard Rubinstein's music reproached for its structure, its large
plan, its vast stretches, its carelessness in detail. The public taste
to-day calls for complications without end, arabesques, and incessant
modulations; but this is a fashion and nothing more. It seems to me
that his fruitfulness, grand character and personality suffice to class
Rubinstein among the greatest musicians of all times.'
The outspoken romanticism of Rubinstein's works is in a sense akin to
the spirit of Byron's poems. There is a passionate sweetness in
his melodies that one finds rarely in composers of his type. But in
giving overmuch attention to objective form, he often missed subjective
warmth, especially in his operas and his larger instrumental works. He
achieved the greatest success in his songs of Oriental character, from
which there breathes the spirit of a heavy tropic night. But in these
his best moments he remains exotic and inexplicable to our Occidental
ears.
[Illustration]
Russian Romanticists:
Mikhail Glinka Alexander Dargomijsky
Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky Anton Rubinstein
Romantic as his music was the course of Rubinstein's life. He himself,
according to Rimsky-Korsakoff, blamed the romantic incidents of his
life for his shortcomings. 'I was spoiled by the flattery of high
society, which I received during my first concert tour as a boy of
thirteen,' Rubinstein told his brother composer. 'It made me conceited
and fanatical. The misery that I endured later wasted the best creative
years of my life, and the sudden success which followed my acquaintance
with the Grand Duchess Helen [the sister of the Czar, who loved him]
killed my aspirations for the higher work by making me unexpectedly
the dictator of Russian musical education. If I had worked up step by
step by my own efforts I would have reached the goal of my ambition.'
At any rate the unusual career of Rubinstein explains the psychological
side of his achievements and disappointments. Born in 1829 in the
village of Vichvatinetz, in the Province of Podolia, in southwestern
Russia, he began to study the piano at the age of eight in Moscow.
His teacher, Alexander Villoing, at once realized that his pupil was
a genius and for five years spent his best efforts upon him. When
the boy was thirteen his teacher undertook a concert tour with him,
first through Russia, later abroad. Rubinstein was a pianistic marvel
and was received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm. Chopin and
Liszt declared him a 'wonder child.' After three years of touring he
settled in Paris, lived in princely style and spent all the money he
had earned. Feeling the pinch of poverty, he went to Vienna to secure
the influence of Liszt, who advised him to go to Berlin and gave
him letters of introduction. There he found the city in a state of
revolution and abandoned by society. In despair and almost starving,
Rubinstein pushed on to St. Petersburg, where the once celebrated
prodigy began to earn his living with piano lessons at fifty cents
until by a mere chance he secured the position of pianist in the court
choir. At this time he composed his first opera, _Dimitry Donskoi_,
which was performed with some success.
Rubinstein now undertook another trip to Liszt, at Weimar, and there he
met the Grand Duchess Helen, who at once invited the young pianist to
be her guest in Italy. This was the beginning of his career. In 1856
Rubinstein composed some of his songs and piano pieces and soon after
this the Imperial Conservatory of Music was founded in St. Petersburg
and Moscow with the Grand Duchess as patroness. In 1862 Rubinstein
became the director of the conservatory in St. Petersburg and held the
position until 1867 and later from 1887 to 1891. In 1865 he married
and made his residence at Peterhof, where he lived in close touch with
Russian society. During this period of power and comfort Rubinstein
composed his sonatas, symphonies, operas, and piano pieces, few of
which are ever performed nowadays.
Rubinstein's orchestral and operatic works occupy a place between
Schumann and Meyerbeer. His most popular orchestral compositions are
'Faust,' 'Ivan IV,' 'Don Quixote,' and his Second Symphony, 'Ocean.'
The other five symphonies are rather stately, cold tone pictures
without any definite foundation. More known, and even frequently
performed, are his chamber music pieces, the 'cello sonata in D major,
and the trio in B major. Of his operas and oratorios only one work,
'The Demon,' has survived in the classic Russian répertoire. The rest
are long forgotten. Of longer life than Rubinstein's orchestral and
operatic compositions are his piano pieces, especially his barcarolles,
preludes, études, and dances. All of his larger piano pieces are,
like his orchestral works, prolix, diffuse and full of unassimilated
ideas. Through all his compositions there blows a breath of Oriental
romanticism, something that reminds one of the 'Thousand and One
Nights.' A peculiar sweetness and brilliancy of harmony distinguish
his style, but these particular qualities make Rubinstein unpopular
in our realistic age. It is true that his piano pieces have little
that is individual, but they are graceful and aristocratic. To an ear
attuned to modern impressionism they are nothing but graceful, warmly
colored salon pieces devoid of arresting features. But whatever may
be the fate of Rubinstein's instrumental music, he was a composer of
excellent songs, which will be sung as long as man lives. They are the
very crown of his creations. From among his numerous ballads and songs
'The Asra,' 'The Dream,' 'Night,' etc., are especially enchanting. In
them he stands unmatched by any composer of his time. The number of
his works surpasses one hundred; there are ten string quartets, three
quintets, five concertos, three sonatas for violin and piano, two for
'cello and piano, two for violin and orchestra. According to Russian
critical opinion he was an imitator of Mendelssohn and Schumann. But
the fact is he suffered from the overwhelming influence of the German
classics, whom he did not assimilate thoroughly, and from being one of
the greatest of piano virtuosi of his age, which absorbed most of his
attention and time. It is not unnatural that a great executive artist
should acquire the forms of those composers whose works he performs
most. In following these models Rubinstein simply demonstrated a
psychological rule.
Rubinstein's main importance in Russian music resides in the fact
that he laid the foundation of a nation-wide musical education, so
that now the national and local governments are back of a serious
æsthetic culture. Besides having been twice a director of the Imperial
Conservatory of Music in St. Petersburg, he was from time to time a
director of the Imperial Musical Society and conductor of the St.
Petersburg symphony concerts. He died in 1894 in Peterhof and is buried
in the graveyard of Alexandro-Nevsky monastery, near to his rivals,
Balakireff, Borodine, and Moussorgsky.
IV
An artist of the same school as Rubinstein, yet entirely different in
works and spirit, was Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky. Rubinstein was a
creative virtuoso, Tschaikowsky was a creative genius. They took the
same general direction in form and themes, but otherwise a wide abyss
separated these two unique spirits of Russian music. Tschaikowsky
had Rubinstein's passion and technical skill, the same lyric style,
and, like him, adhered to West European form, but in his essentials
he remains a Russian of the most classic tendencies; his language is
that of an emotional Slav. His music glows with the peculiar fire that
burned in his soul; rapture and agony, gloom and gayety seem in a
perpetual struggle for expression. With all its nationalistic riches
there is nothing in Tschaikowsky's tonal structures that resembles
those of his contemporaries. He is a romantic poet of classic pattern,
yet wholly a Russian. He is altogether introspective, sentimentally
subjective, and ecclesiastically fanatic. With all his Slavic pathos
and subjective vigor Tschaikowsky builds his tone-temples in Gothic
style, which he never leaves. That is very largely the reason why his
music is so phenomenally popular abroad, while his contemporaries have,
despite their originality and greatness, remained in his shadow.
Tschaikowsky's compositions are as strange as his inner self. His
likening his artistic expressions to a violent contest between a
beast and a god no doubt had its psychological reason. That there is
much mystery in his life and its relation to his art is apparent from
the following passage with which Kashkin, his biographer, closes his
book,[9] 'I have finished my reminiscences. Of course, they might be
supplemented by accounts of a few more events, but I shall add nothing
at present, and perhaps I shall never do so. One document I shall leave
in a sealed packet, and if thirty years hence it still has interest for
the world the seal may be broken; this packet I shall leave in the care
of Moscow University. It will contain the history of one episode in
Tschaikowsky's life upon which I have barely touched in my book.'
That seal is still unbroken. All we can guess of the nature of the
secret is that it involves a tragedy of romantic character. We shall
get a closer idea of the great composer when we consider a few
characteristic episodes of his private life in connection with his
career as a musician. Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky was born in 1840,
in the province of Viatka, where his father was the general manager
of Kamsko-Botkin's Mills. He showed already in his early youth a
great liking for music and poetry, but the wish of his parents was
that he should make his career as an official of the government. With
this in view he was educated in the aristocratic law school in St.
Petersburg. Graduated in 1859, he became an officer in the department
of the Ministry of Justice. While he was a student in the law school
he kept up his studies of music by taking lessons from F. D. Becker
and K. I. Karel and did not give them up even when he became an
active functionary with less leisure than before. The desire for a
thorough musical education gave him no peace until he entered the newly
founded Conservatory of Music, where Rubinstein and Zarembi became
his teachers. Though regularly the course was longer, Tschaikowsky
was graduated after three years of study, in 1866, and at once was
invited to become a professor of harmony in the Imperial Conservatory
of Music in Moscow. During the first years of his life as a teacher
Tschaikowsky composed some smaller instrumental and vocal pieces, which
were performed with marked success, partly by his pupils, partly by
touring musical artists. His first large compositions were the First
Symphony, which he composed in 1868, and his opera _Voyevoda_, which he
wrote a year later. Both these compositions were less successful than
his earlier ones. Nevertheless the disappointment did not discourage
the young composer, for he proceeded to compose new operas, 'Undine,'
_Opritchnik_, and 'Vakula the Smith,' besides some music for orchestra.
In 1873 he composed the ballet 'Snow Maiden,' and then followed in
succession his Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies.
Assured of a pension of three thousand rubles ($1,500) a year and an
extra income from the royalty of his published music, Tschaikowsky
resigned his teaching post and devoted all his time to composition.
His Fourth Symphony had to some extent satisfied his ambition as a
symphonic composer, since it had been received enthusiastically by the
public in both Moscow and St. Petersburg; he now threw all his efforts
into opera. In 1878 he finished his _Evgheny Onegin_, his greatest
opera, besides his two ballets.
In spite of his stormy private life and various romantic conflicts
Tschaikowsky was a prolific worker. Besides the above-mentioned operas
he wrote six symphonies, of which the last two have gained world-wide
fame, three ballets, the overtures 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'The Tempest,'
'Hamlet,' and '1812,' the 'Italian Caprice,' and the symphonic
poem 'Manfred.' Besides these he wrote two concertos for piano and
orchestra, one concerto for violin, three quartets, one trio, over a
hundred songs, some thirty smaller instrumental pieces and a series
of excellent church music. They vary in their character and quality.
Some of them are truly great and majestic, while others are of mediocre
merit. _Opritchnik_, _Mazeppa_, _Tcharodeiki_, and _Jeanne d'Arc_ are
dramatic operas, while _Evgheny Onegin_, _Pique Dame_, and _Yolanta_
are of outspoken lyric type. _Tscherevitschki_ and 'Vakula the Smith'
are his two comic operas.
Though Tschaikowsky's ambition was to excel in opera, his symphonic
compositions represent the best he has written, especially his Fourth,
Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies, 'The Tempest,' the _Marche Slav_,
'Manfred,' his piano concerto in B-flat minor, and his three ballets,
'Snow Maiden,' 'Sleeping Beauty,' and 'Swan Lake.' He is a perfect
master of counterpoint and graceful melodies. How well he mastered his
technique is proven by the careful modelling of his themes and figures.
But in opera his grasp is behind those of his rivals. There is too much
of the West European polish and sentimentality, and too little of the
elemental vigor and grandeur of a Russian dramatist.
To the period of Tschaikowsky's last years as a teacher in Moscow,
especially from 1875 to 1885, belong the mysterious romantic troubles
which presumably became the foundation of his creative despair, the
pessimism which has made him the Schopenhauer of sound. Here may lie
the secret of all the turbulent emotionalism from which emanated those
tragic chords, all the wild musical images, that incessant melancholy
strain which characterize his works. In 1877 he married Antony
Ivanovna Millukova, but their married life was of short duration. There
are many strange stories as to his despair on account of an unhappy
love. Tschaikowsky was an affectionate friend of a Mme. von Meck, with
whom he was in perpetual correspondence and who gave him material aid
in carrying out his artistic ambitions, though he had never met her.
Why he did not is a mystery. It is said that he contemplated suicide
upon many occasions. He told his friend Kashkin that twice he had gone
up to his knees in the Moscow River with the idea of drowning himself,
but that the effect of the cold water sobered him. When his wildest
emotions seized him he would rush out and sit in the snow, if it was
winter, or stand in the river until numb with the cold. This cured him
temporarily, but he insisted that he remained a soul-sick man. 'I am
putting all my virtue and wickedness, passion and agony into the piece
I am writing,' he wrote to a friend while composing his _Symphonie
Pathétique_.
In 1890 Tschaikowsky celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his
musical activity and was honored with the degree of Doctor of Music
by Cambridge University. He made a tour of America, of which he spoke
in high terms as a country of new beauties and new life. One of his
remarks is characteristic. 'The rush and roar of that wild freedom
of America still haunts me. It is like fifty orchestras combined.
Although you do not see any Indians running about the streets of New
York, yet their spirit has put a stamp on its whole life. It is in the
everlasting activity and the stoic attitude toward what we call fate.'
One of the peculiar traits of Tschaikowsky was his indifference to
his creations after they had been produced. He even disliked to hear
them and always found fault with his early compositions, especially
with his operas; yet he did not know how he could have improved them.
Exceptions, however, were his Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, his 'Eugen
Onegin,' _Sérénade Mélancholique_, his Concerto in D, and a few other
compositions. While working upon his favorite opera he was also engaged
upon his Fourth Symphony. When 'Eugen Onegin' was first performed in
Moscow, Tschaikowsky whispered to Rubinstein, who was next to him in
the audience: 'This and the Fourth Symphony are the decisive works of
my career. If they fail I am a failure.'
Tschaikowsky died suddenly, October 25, 1893, in St. Petersburg--of
cholera, as it was said officially. But according to men who knew him
intimately he poisoned himself. This, we may be sure, is one of the
secrets sealed by Kashkin.
Tschaikowsky was one of the greatest masters of the orchestra the
world has seen. In effects of striking brilliance and of sombreness
he is equally successful, and it is no doubt in a great measure on
account of this Slavic splendor that his orchestral works have won
the public. Yet he is far more than a colorist. His mastery over
orchestral polyphony is supreme. There is always movement in his music,
a rising and falling of all the parts, a complicated interweaving,
never with the loss of sonority and richness. He is a great harmonist
as well and an irresistible melodist. His rhythms are full of life,
whether they are march, waltz or barbarous wild dances. The movement
in five-four time in the Sixth Symphony is in itself a masterpiece and
has stimulated countless efforts in the directions to which it pointed.
It must be admitted that melody, harmony, and rhythm, all bear the
stamp of the Slavic temperament, and, in so far as they are Slavic or
racial, they are vigorous and healthy; but often Tschaikowsky becomes
morbidly subjective, is obviously not master of his mood, but slave
to it. Hence, after frequent hearings, there comes a weight upon the
listener, an intangible oppression which he would be glad to avoid,
but which cannot be shaken off. One detects the line of the individual
and forgets the splendor of the race.
Yet through Tschaikowsky the glories of Russian music were revealed to
the general public. He occupies a double position, as a Russian and
as a strange individuality, whose influence has been pronounced upon
modern music. The Russian composers unquestionably hold a conspicuous
place among those composers who have been specially gifted to hear
new possibilities of orchestral sound and to add to the splendor of
orchestral music. Many of them denied Wagner. The question of how
far the peculiar powers of the orchestra have been developed by them
independently of Wagner, with results in many ways similar, may become
the source of much speculation. It is quite possible that, thanks
to their own racial sensitiveness, they have devised a brilliant
orchestration similar but unrelated to Wagner.
I. N.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Established by the Imperial Musical Society in 1862.
[9] Kashkin: 'Life of Tschaikowsky' (in Russian).