THE RUSSIAN NATIONALISTS
The founders of the 'Neo-Russian' Nationalistic School:
Balakireff; Borodine--Moussorgsky--Rimsky-Korsakoff, his life
and works--César Cui and other nationalists, Napravnik, etc.
I
The most significant phase in the history of Russian music is that
which represents the activity of the Balakireff group and the founders
of the St. Petersburg Free School of Music. This belongs to the middle
of the past century, when the seed sown by Glinka, Dargomijsky and
partly by Bortniansky began to bear its first fruits. Up to that time
the question of Russian national music had not been aroused. The
country was dominated either by German or the Italian musical ideals.
Art, particularly music, was in every direction aristocratic, academic,
and pedantically ecclesiastic. The ruling class was foreign to the core
and followed literally the timely æsthetic fads of other countries. The
idea that there could be any art in the life of a moujik was ridiculed
and flatly denied. _O, Bóje sohraní!_ a patron of music would exclaim
at any attempts at a national music.
To the middle class and the common people the admission to high-class
musical performances and the opera was legally denied. The concerts
of the Imperial Musical Society and the performances of the Imperial
Opera were meant only for the _élite_, and the direction of those
institutions was in the hands of bureaucratic foreigners. It was at
a critical moment that Balakireff, who had come as a young lawyer
from Nijny Novgorod to St. Petersburg, laid the foundation of the Free
School of Music. This institution was meant to train young Russians,
to arouse in them an enthusiasm for the possibilities latent in their
native music, and at the same time to arrange free concerts for the
people and perform the works of those native composers who were
turned away by the existing organizations. Founded by Balakireff,
the composer, Lomakin, the talented choirmaster, and Stassoff, the
celebrated critic, the free school became the institution of Borodine,
Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. Balakireff, Borodine and Moussorgsky
can be considered as the real founders of the Russian 'realistic'
school of music, if not the pioneers of a new musical art movement
altogether. Upon their principles and examples rest the original vigor
and the subjective glamour of all subsequent Russian music. The vague
initiative given by Glinka and Dargomijsky underwent a thorough process
of reconstruction at the hands of these three reformers; the stamp
set by them upon the Russian music is as unique and as lasting as the
semi-oriental spirit that permeates Russian life and character with its
exotic magic.
The ideal of building up an art out of national material seemed to
hang in the air, for this was the time of a great national awakening
in Russia. Gogol, Lermontov, Pushkin, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in
poetry and fiction, Griboiedoff and Ostrovsky in the drama, Stassoff,
Hertzen, and Mihailovsky in critical literature, and the revolutionary
movement of the so-called _narodno-volts_ in politics were all symptoms
of a vigorous reform period. It should be noted that in this great
and far-reaching movement the Russian church, with all its seeming
supremacy, exercised but little influence over matters of art and
literature. While the church in Western Europe was aristocratic in
its institutions, in Russia it remained throughout the centuries
democratic. A Russian clergyman has remained nothing but a more or
less refined moujik, a man who lives the life of the common people and
associates with the people. As such he has never been antagonistic to
the spirit of the common people, as far as their æsthetic tendencies
and traditions are concerned. He has never tried to make art an issue
of the church. Music, less than any other of the arts, has never been
influenced in any way by ecclesiastical interests. No instrumental
music of any kind has ever been performed in Russian churches. Hence,
unlike those of Western Europe, Russian composers never came under the
sway of the church. The western church was, as we have seen, originally
opposed to the influence of folk music. In Russia, on the other hand,
it favored any assertion of the people's individuality. It was,
therefore, unlike the aristocratic classes, sympathetic to such a work
as that which the Free School of Music made the object of its existence.
Before treating the works of the three great Russian reformers
individually we may remark that none of them made music his sole
profession. Balakireff was sufficiently well off to devote himself to
his art without thought of material gain. Borodine earned his living
as a scholar and pedagogue, and so maintained his independence as a
composer. Moussorgsky alone felt the pinch of poverty; his official
duties were strenuous and left him little leisure for composition. Yet,
like his colleagues, he never compromised with public taste.
The real initiator of this new movement, Mily Alekseyevitch Balakireff,
was born at Nijny Novgorod in 1837. He studied law at the University
of Kazan, though music was his hobby from early childhood on. His
musical ideals were Mozart, Beethoven, and Berlioz. During one of his
summer vacations Balakireff met in the country near Nijny Novogorod a
certain Mr. Oulibitcheff, a retired diplomat and friend of Glinka, an
accomplished musician himself and thoroughly familiar with the classic
composers of every country. It was he who converted Balakireff to the
idea that Russia should have its own music, and that the lines to be
followed should be those indicated by Glinka. With an introduction to
that apostle of nationalism Balakireff journeyed to St. Petersburg in
1855. He found the city under the spell of German and Italian music,
and the masses limited to the musical enjoyment to be derived from
military bands and boulevard artists. With all the youthful energy at
his command Balakireff set himself to combat the foreign influence and
advance nationalistic ideas of music.
Balakireff was an artist such as perhaps only Russia can produce.
Without really systematic study he was an accomplished musician
theoretically and practically. No existing method could measure up
to his ideas of musical study. He had mastered the classics and
made their technique his own; his contemporaries he approached in a
critical spirit, appropriating what was good and rejecting what he
considered wrong. His watchword was individual liberty. 'I believe in
the subjective, not in the objective power of music,' he said to his
pupils. 'Objective music may strike us with its brilliancy, but its
achievement remains the handiwork of a mediocre talent. Mediocre or
merely talented musicians are eager to produce _effects_, but the ideal
of a genius is to reproduce his very self, in unison with the object
of his art. There is no doubt that art requires technique, but it must
be absolutely unconscious and individual.... Often the greatest pieces
of art are rather rude technically, but they grip the soul and command
attention for intrinsic values. This is apparent in the works of
Michelangelo, of Shakespeare, of Turgenieff, and of Mozart. The beauty
that fascinates us most is that which is most individual. I regard
technique as a necessary but subservient element. It may, however,
become dangerous and kill individuality as it has done with those
favorites of our public, whose virtuosity I despise more than mere
crudities.'
The man who launched such a theory at a time when the rest of the world
was merged in admiration of Wagner and his technique was an interesting
combination of a scholar, poet, revolutionist, and agitator.
Wagner, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky were technicians in his eyes,
whose creative power moved merely in the old-fashioned channels of
classicism. Of the rest of his contemporaries Liszt was the only genius
worthy of attention. Between Balakireff, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky
there was continual strife.[12] Rubinstein headed the newly founded
Imperial Conservatory, Balakireff his Free School of Music. On
Rubinstein's side were the members of high society, the music critics
and the bureaucratic power. Balakireff and his group of young composers
were outcasts. Music critics and public opinion stamped him a conceited
dilettante, only a handful of intellectuals subscribed to his creed.
Balakireff's first composition was a fantasia on Russian themes for
piano and orchestra, which he afterward rearranged for an orchestral
overture. In 1861 he composed the music to 'King Lear,' which is his
only work of a dramatic character. An opera, 'The Golden Bird,' which
he commenced some years later, was never completed. One of the most
significant of Balakireff's early works is the symphonic poem 'Russia,'
commemorating the thousandth anniversary of the inauguration of the
Russian empire by Rurik. That his own works are rather limited in
number is explained by the fact that he spent most of his best years
in organizing his campaign and in criticising the compositions of his
followers. The symphonic poem 'Tamara,' some twenty songs and ballades,
'Islamey,' an oriental fantasy for piano, which was one of the most
cherished numbers in Liszt's repertoire, and his symphonic poem
'Bohemia' represent the best fruits of his genius. His First and Second
Symphonies are very beautiful, original and Russian in feeling, but
they have somehow remained behind his above-mentioned works. Very fiery
and popular are his two concertos, the Spanish Overture and a number of
dances. 'Tamara' is a real gem of oriental wickedness and fascination.
In 1869 Balakireff was appointed conductor of the Imperial Musical
Society and later of the court choir. In 1874 he retired from the
directorship of the Free School of Music and the post was taken over
by Rimsky-Korsakoff. From this time until his death Balakireff lived
in seclusion in his comfortable home in St. Petersburg and avoided
society. He died in 1910, having outlived all his contemporaries and
many of his pupils. The last period of his life was overshadowed by
a strange mystic obsession which caused him to destroy many of his
compositions.
An artist of wholly different cast was Alexander Porphyrievitch
Borodine. While Balakireff was the positive type of an active man, a
born organizer and agitator, Borodine was a dreamer and tender-souled
poet, the true Bohemian of his time. He was a most remarkable
combination of very unusual abilities: Borodine the surgeon and
doctor enjoyed a nation-wide reputation; Borodine the chemist made
many valuable discoveries and wrote treatises which were recognized
universally as remarkable contributions to science; Borodine the
philanthropist and educator was tireless from early morning till night;
Borodine the flutist, violinist, and pianist rivalled the best virtuosi
of his time; and Borodine the composer was, according to Liszt, one of
the most gifted orchestral masters of the nineteenth century.
Here is what Borodine writes of his visit to the hero of Weimar in
1877: 'Scarcely had I sent my card in when there arose before me, as
though out of the ground, a long black frock-coat, and long white hair.
"You have written a fine symphony," he began in a resonant voice. "I
am delighted to see you. Only two days ago I played your symphony to
the grand duke, who was wholly charmed with it. The first movement is
perfect. Your andante is a masterpiece. The scherzo is enchanting, and
then, this passage is wonderful--great!"' This was his Second Symphony,
which Felix Weingartner has called one of the most beautiful orchestral
works ever written.
Under what circumstances he produced his enchanting beauties is best
evidenced from one of his letters to his wife in 1873: 'Thursday I
gave two lectures for women [on surgery], received clothes sent from
the institution, had a letter from Butleroff to take dinner with him
and then to attend the meeting of the chemists. I brought there all my
material and gave an account of my experiments. Then, Mendeleyev [the
famous chemist] took me to his house. I worked this morning as usual,
took dinner with Miety at Sorokina. Then Raida and Kleopatra called on
me to request space for a sick man in the hospital.'
Who would believe that a man of such a versatile nature was at the
same time one of the finest composers and musicians of his generation?
In another letter to his wife he writes how he rushes madly from his
laboratory to his musical study, sits furiously at the piano and starts
to pour out the musical ideas that have haunted him day and night. His
friends thought he would never be able to continue such a triple life
for any length of time and urged him to devote himself merely to music.
But to him this change of thought and work seemed a recreation and he
lived in this very turmoil until he died.
Borodine was born in St. Petersburg in 1834. His father was Prince
Gedeanoff, a descendant of the hereditary rulers of the kingdom of
Imeretia in the Caucasus, and his mother, Mme. Kleineke, the widow of
an army doctor in Narva. Borodine's oriental tendency can be traced
back through his family. His nationalism was truly spontaneous and
genuine, in spite of the fact that, unlike his colleagues, Balakireff
and Moussorgsky, he never had an opportunity to come in contact with
the peasantry. Borodine's nationalism is a product of heredity and owes
nothing to environment.
Having studied medicine in the famous Military Surgery School in St.
Petersburg, Borodine became a professor in the same institution after
a short practice as a surgeon in various hospitals of the capital.
He was, even as a student in college, an accomplished virtuoso in
music. At the age of eighteen he had composed a concerto for violin
and piano. But his real musical creative activity started when he met
Balakireff and the members of his circle, to whom he was introduced
by Moussorgsky, then a young officer of the guard in the military
hospital. Though filled with Balakireff's ideals, Borodine was not
close to his teacher. Balakireff's ideas were grand in outline, but
rather rough in detail; Borodine's preferences were toward refinement
in detail and melodic form. Though the opera 'Prince Igor' may be
considered Borodine's masterpiece, he has enriched Russian musical
literature by exquisite examples of orchestral composition--of which
his Second Symphony and the symphonic poem 'In Steppes of Central Asia'
are the best--chamber music, songs and dances. Borodine's orchestral
compositions excel in richness of coloring and in the dramatic vigor of
his melodies. Withal he has an almost mathematical mastery of form and
style.
From all his works emanates a distinctly lyric Slavic-Oriental glow of
sound--brilliant, passionate, gay, and painful in turns. In the words
of a modern Russian composer, 'it is individually descriptive and
extremely modern--so modern that the audiences of to-day will not be
able to grasp all its intrinsic beauties.'
In 'Prince Igor' Borodine has produced a work that has nothing in
common with either Italian or German operas. He employs a libretto
of legendary character, such as Wagner used for his operas, but in
construction and style he follows the very opposite direction of the
German master. The dramatic plot is almost lacking in the conventional
sense, but the interest of the audience is kept in suspense by means of
a unique musical beauty, by stage effects and the dramatic truth that
shows itself in every detail of the action.
As compared with Balakireff and Moussorgsky, Borodine was an
aristocratic figure in thought and inclination. He was more chivalrous
and lyric in his style and more imaginative in his form, therefore less
dramatic and less elemental. Borodine's great significance for Russian
music lies in his individual form of melodic thought and the relation
of that thought to human life. His realism verged on the point of
impressionistic symbolism, in which he surpassed both Balakireff and
Moussorgsky. He gave to Russian music new forms of romantic realism,
forms that have been used and perfected by the composers who have
followed him. Unlike Balakireff and Moussorgsky, Borodine was married
and lived a happy family life. He died suddenly at a costume-ball in
St. Petersburg in 1887.
II
Of all artists one of the most fought and ridiculed, the least
recognized and a figure almost ignored, yet doubtless the greatest
personality in Russian musical history, was Modest Petrovitch
Moussorgsky. It has remained for the present generation, especially
for men like Rimsky-Korsakoff, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, and
Hugo Wolf, to appreciate this most original musical genius of the
last century. Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky spoke of Moussorgsky as of
a talented musical heretic, regarding his compositions as the result
of accidental inspiration, crude in their workmanship and primitive in
their form. Though his name was known through Russia to some extent,
especially after Rimsky-Korsakoff had secured for him some professional
success, he remained always a minor character. This lasted until the
beginning of this century, when a celebrated foreign composer came out
publicly and said: 'What Shakespeare did in dramatic poetry Moussorgsky
accomplished in vocal music. The Shakespearian breadth and power of
his compositions are so original that he is still too great to be
appreciated, even in this generation. A century may pass before he
will be fully understood by composers and music lovers generally. His
misfortune was that he composed music two hundred years ahead of his
time.' After this the whole atmosphere changed. A cult of Moussorgsky
was started at home and abroad. The public began to dig out the tragic
chapters of his life little by little and the neglected genius of
Moussorgsky loomed up to an extraordinary height, as is usually the
case when the sentiments of the public are stirred. However, this cult
of Moussorgsky is merely a timely fad and adds nothing to his real
greatness.
After the composer had met bitter opposition where he had expected
enthusiastic appreciation he wrote to Balakireff: 'I do not consider
music an abstract element of our æsthetic emotions, but a living art,
which, going hand in hand with poetry and drama, shall express the very
soul of human life and feeling. The academic composers and the people
who have grown to love the musical classics take my works for eccentric
and amateurish. This is all because I lack the high academic air and do
not follow the conventional way. But why should I imitate others when
there is so much within myself that is my own? My idea is that every
tone should express a word. Music to me is speech without words.'
Moussorgsky's music reminds us so much of the poetry of Walt Whitman
that we cannot but regard these two geniuses of two different worlds as
intimately related to each other.
'Composers! mighty maestros!
And you sweet singers of old lands, Soprani, tenori, bassi!
To you a new bard caroling in the west
Obeissant sends his love.'
Like Whitman, Moussorgsky broke loose from the conventional rhythm and
verse. Most of his compositions are set to his own words and librettos,
in a kind of poetic prose. He said plainly that he never cared for
verse for his compositions, but merely for a dramatic story to carry a
certain thought. 'Thoughts and words fascinate me more than rhythm and
poetic technique,' he used to say. Every piece of his work bears the
stamp of his individuality; every chord of his music breathes power
and inspiration. It was not a notion to be original that actuated him,
but the irresistible necessity to pour out what came to life in his
creative soul and temperament. In his autobiography Moussorgsky writes
characteristically:
'By virtue of his views and music and of the nature of his compositions
Moussorgsky stands apart from all existing types of musicians. The
creed of his artistic faith is as follows: Art is a means of human
intercourse and not in itself an end. The whole of his creative
activity was dictated by this guiding principle. Convinced that human
speech is strictly governed by musical laws, Moussorgsky considered
that the musical reproductions, not of isolated manifestations of
sensibility, but of articulate humanity as a whole, is the function
of his art. He holds that in the domain of the musical art reformers
such as Palestrina, Bach, Berlioz, Gluck, Beethoven, and Liszt have
created certain artistic laws; but he does not consider these laws
as immutable, holding them to be strictly subject to conditions of
evolution and progress no less than the whole world of thought.'
Moussorgsky's life was no less unique than his thoughts and works. He
was born in 1831 in the village of Kareva in the province of Pskoff,
the son of a retired judicial functionary. He inherited the gift of
music from his mother and from his father the gift of poetry. At the
age of ten he was sent to a military school in St. Petersburg, where
he remained until 1856, when he became an officer of the Preobrajensky
Guard Regiment in St. Petersburg. A handsome young man of chivalrous
manners, he became the romantic hero of the _beau monde_ of St.
Petersburg. His musical studies, begun in the college, were taken up
more systematically and energetically after he became an officer. As
a sentinel in the military hospital he met Borodine, the surgeon, and
the two passionate lovers of music soon grew to be intimate friends. It
was through Borodine that he heard of Balakireff, in whose Free School
of Music he at once became a student. Already in 1858 he composed his
first orchestral work, 'Scherzo,' which was performed two years later
by Balakireff's orchestra.
In 1859 Moussorgsky resigned from the army with the idea of living for
his music alone, but, lacking a systematic musical education, he found
himself an outcast. He was treated as a dilettante by the professional
musicians and the patrons of music, and this closed the way to
earning a living by his art and getting his compositions published or
produced. The situation made him desperate and he was glad to accept a
clerkship, first in the Department of Finance, later in the office of
the Imperial Comptroller. The salary was small and the work hard; he
could only compose during the evenings and on festival days. This made
him bitter about his future. It is rather strange that even Balakireff
did not wholly understand Moussorgsky's genius when he joined the
circle, for Rimsky-Korsakoff writes in his memoirs that Moussorgsky
was always treated as the least talented of all. This was on account
of the peculiarly passive frame of mind into which the composer had
fallen after leaving the army. He even changed in his appearance and
manners. The once handsome, chivalrous young social hero was suddenly
transformed into a dreamy vagabond, who cared nothing for manners and
appearances.
Moussorgsky's masterpieces are his three song cycles of about twenty
numbers each, his few orchestral compositions and his two operas,
_Boris Godounoff_ and _Khovanshchina_. There is hardly a work by
another composer which has upon the listener such a ghastly, hypnotic
effect as some of these works of Moussorgsky. Every chord of them is
like a gripping, invisible finger. His cycle of 'Death Dances,' of
which _Trepak_ is the most popular, are knocks at the very gates of
death, written in the weird rhythms of old Russian peasant dances. In
this work he makes the listener realize the indifference of nature to
human fate. 'Snow fields in silence--so cold is the night! And the icy
north wind is wailing, brokenly sobbing, as though a ghastly dirge.
Over the graves it is chanting. Lo! O behold. Through the night a
strange pair approaches; death holds an old peasant in his clutches.'
Thus sings the composer in the epilogue. The starved peasant is frozen
under the snow. But then the sun shines warmer; spring comes into the
land. The icy fields change into flourishing meadows, the lark soars
to the sky and nature continues its everlasting alternate play as if
individual joys and sorrows never existed.
The descriptive power of Moussorgsky's vocal compositions is
marvellously realistic, and of this his songs of the second and third
active period of his life, such as 'Peasant Cradle Song,' 'Children
Songs,' 'Serenade,' and _Polkovodets_, give the best illustration. In
the first named composition not only does he visualize the rocking of
the cradle, accompanied by a sweet melody, but he also draws, with a
remarkable power, the interior of a peasant's hut, the mother bending
with tenderness over her child; her sigh and dreaming of his future;
the child's breathing and the ticking of a primitive old watch on the
wall. One can almost see the details of an idyllic lonely Russian
village. But Moussorgsky is not only powerful in his gloomy and
melancholy tone pictures, in which he depicts the hopeless situation
of the Russian people in their struggle for freedom; he is also great
in his humorous, gay songs. _Hopak_, _Pirushki_, _Po Griby_, and the
'Children Songs' are full of exultant humor, naughtiness or joy. How
well he could make music a satire is proved by 'Classic,' 'Raek,' and
others, in which pedantic academicism is caricatured in ironic chords.
Moussorgsky's musical activity may be divided into three periods:
First, from 1858 until 1865, when, more or less under the influence
of Dargomijsky, he composed 'Edip,' 'Saul,' _Salâmmbo_, 'Intermezzo,'
'Prelude,' and 'Menuette'; second, from 1865 until 1875, when he was
independent and wrote the 'Death Dances,' 'Children Songs,' _Boris
Godounoff_, _Khovanshchina_, etc.; and the third, during which he
composed the 'Song of Mephisto.' The works of his second period are
overwhelming in their elemental power and boldness of treatment. In
them he surpasses all Russian composers up to his time.
_Boris Godounoff_, finished in 1870, was performed four years later
in the Imperial Opera House. The libretto of this opera he took from
the poetic drama of Pushkin, but he changed it, eliminating much and
adding new scenes here and there, so that as a whole it is his own
creation. In this work Moussorgsky went against the foreign classic
opera in conception as well as in construction. It is a typically
Russian musical drama, with all the richness of Slavic colors, true
Byzantine atmosphere and characters of the medieval ages. Based on
Russian history of about the middle of the seventeenth century, when
an adventurous regent ascends the throne and when the court is full of
intrigues, its theme stands apart from all other operas. The music is
more or less, like many of Moussorgsky's songs, written in imitation
of the old folk-songs, folk dances, ceremonial chants, and festival
tunes. Foreign critics have considered the opera as a piece constructed
of folk melodies. But this is not the case. There is not a single folk
melody in _Boris Godounoff_, every phrase is the original creation of
Moussorgsky.
Although there is nothing in the symphonic development of _Boris
Godounoff_ which approaches the complexities of Wagnerian music drama,
the leading motives are quite definitely associated with the characters
and emotions of the drama. Noteworthy features in the realm of musical
suggestion are those of the music accompanying the hallucinations of
Boris, where Moussorgsky forsakes the conventional custom of employing
the heavy brass and reproduces the frenzy in musical terms by means of
downward chromatic passage played tremolo by strings--an effect which
succeeds because it has a far more direct appeal to the nerves of the
listener than the more abstract commentary of the German operatic
masters.
Moussorgsky's second opera, _Khovanshchina_, which was finished by
Rimsky-Korsakoff after the death of the composer, is in its subject and
broad style far superior to 'Boris,' especially because of its more
powerful symbolism and exalted pathos. But the music, particularly in
the last unfinished acts, lacks the originality and grip of his early
opera. If he had been able to work out this opera under more favorable
circumstances it would have caught more faithfully the psychology of a
nation's life and history in a nutshell of music than anything written
before or later for the stage. Moussorgsky also wrote a comic opera,
'The Fair at Sorotchinsk,' which was partly orchestrated and finished
by Sahnovsky and Liadoff and performed for the first time in the Spring
of 1914.
Moussorgsky's perpetual misery, overwork, and the thought that his
compositions would be hardly understood and recognized during his
lifetime made him so gloomy and desperate that he drifted away from
Balakireff's circle. For some time he lived at the country place of his
brother, and when he returned to St. Petersburg he tried to overcome
the haunting thoughts, but in vain. He began to avoid all society and
everything conventional. In the meanwhile his _Boris Godounoff_ had
been given with great success on the stage. Yet the academic circles
would not recognize him in spite of this public success. The man's
pride was touched and he felt unhappy about everything he had done.
His only contentment he found in playing his works for himself and in
associating with the common people in dram shops, which he visited
with dire results. Shunning every intelligent circle and society, he
grew melancholy, and his mental and physical health was seriously
affected.
[Illustration]
Russian Nationalists:
Modest Moussorgsky Mily Balakireff
Alexander Borodine Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakoff
In 1868 Moussorgsky began to write an opera to the libretto of Gogol's
drama 'Marriage.' This, however, he never finished. He wrote quite
a number of powerful orchestral works of which his 'Intermezzo,'
'Prelude,' and _Menuette Monstre_ are the most typical of all. Having
composed several piano pieces and orchestral works with little
satisfaction to himself, he decided to devote himself only to vocal
music. The period from 1865 to 1875 was the most productive part of his
life. During these ten years he composed his 'Hamlet' songs, ballads,
romances, and operas, every one of which is more or less original and
hypnotizing in its own way.
Moussorgsky's letters to his brother throw a remarkable light on his
unique nature and the change that took place in his mind in regard to
his social environment. They are partly ironic, bitter expressions upon
modern civilization and its wrong standards. Moussorgsky died in 1881
in the Nicholaevsky Military Hospital at the age of forty-two and asked
the nurse that instead of a mass in church his 'Death Dance' be played
for him by a few of his admirers.
III
The most widely known of the 'neo-Russian' group, outside of Russia,
was Nicholas Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakoff. This man, the most prolific
and the most expert of the group, proved himself in some ways one
of the supreme masters of modern music. His command over harmonic
color-painting and his astonishing mastery over all details of modern
orchestration have made him a teacher to the composers of all nations.
Rimsky-Korsakoff was born March 18, 1844, at Tikvin in the department
of Novgorod. On his father's estate he received all the advantages
of a childhood in the open air, and of the best education available.
From the four musicians who furnished music for the family dances he
received his first initiation into the art of his later years. When
he was six he received his first piano lessons, and when he was nine
he was already composing pieces of his own. But it was in the family
tradition that the sons should enter the navy, so when he was but
twelve years of age the boy went to the St. Petersburg Naval School
and entered the long required course. He did not, however, give up
his music during this period; he worked hard at the piano and the
'cello, also receiving lessons in composition from Kanillé. But music
was comparatively meaningless in his life until, in 1861, he met
Balakireff, who had recently come to the capital to undertake the
musical spiritualization of his country. Under Balakireff he worked
for about a year, and during this time came into close contact with
the other members of the famous circle. The contact was profoundly
stimulating. 'They aired their opinions and criticized the giants of
the past,' says Mrs. Newmarch,[13] 'with a frankness and freedom that
was probably very naïve, and certainly scandalized their academic
elders. They adored Glinka; regarded Haydn and Mozart as old-fashioned;
admired Beethoven's latest quartets; thought Bach--of whom they could
have known little beyond the "Well Tempered Clavier"--a mathematician
rather than a musician; they were enthusiastic over Berlioz, while,
as yet, Liszt had not begun to influence them very greatly.' Of
these days the composer has written, 'I drank in all these ideas,
although I really had no grounds for accepting them, for I had only
heard fragments of many of the foreign works under discussion, and
afterwards I retailed them to my comrades at the naval school who were
interested in music as being my own convictions.'[14]
Then, while Rimsky-Korsakoff's technique was still being molded,
while his ideals were unprecise and his appreciations fluid, he was
called away on a long cruise on the ship _Almaz_--a cruise which was
to last for three years and take him around the world. But with the
huge energy for which Russians are so notable, he decided to add music
to his regular official duties. He arranged that he was to send to
Balakireff from time to time the things he would write on shipboard,
and was to receive extended criticisms in return, to be picked up at
the harbors at which his ship should stop. Thus he would maintain
his active pupilship. The work which he managed to accomplish on
shipboard is astonishing. But Rimsky-Korsakoff was endowed with a
capacity for orderly and methodical work which enabled him in later
life to discharge all sorts of onerous artistic burdens and keep his
creative output undiminished in quantity. When he returned from the
cruise in 1865 he brought with him his Symphony No. 1, in E minor,
the first symphony to be written by a Russian. It was performed
under Balakireff's direction at one of the concerts of the Free
School of Music and made a favorable impression. For the next few
years the composer's life was chiefly centred in St. Petersburg, and
his association with the Balakireff group was once more resumed. In
this period, too, began his close friendship with Moussorgsky, which
continued until the latter's death. After composing the first Russian
symphony he produced the first Russian symphonic poem in _Sadko_,
opus 5, which revealed his marked power of musical narration and
scene-painting. Directly he followed with the 'Fantasy on Serbian
Tunes,' opus 6, which gave the first signs of his later brilliancy in
orchestration. This work attracted the attention of Tschaikowsky, who
became his ardent supporter and continued as a personal friend in spite
of the fact that the ideals of the two composers were so disparate that
close association was impossible. In 1870 Rimsky-Korsakoff began his
first opera, _Pskovitianka_ ('The Maid of Pskoff'), which was performed
early in 1873 and was well received. Soon afterwards he completed his
'Second Symphony,' which is in reality rather a symphonic poem--the
_Antar_, op. 9.
This may be taken as closing one period of his creative activity. He
had entered music with all the lively nationalistic ideals of the
Balakireff group, and with its naïveté as to musical technique. Like
his associates, he had written chiefly in an intuitional fashion.
But in 1871 he accepted an invitation to teach at the St. Petersburg
Conservatory of Music. And he has recorded that in attempting to teach
the theory of music he became convinced that it was first necessary for
him to learn it. He became profoundly dissatisfied with his musical
achievement and set out deliberately to acquire an exhaustive knowledge
of musical technique by means of hard work. During one summer he wrote
innumerable exercises in counterpoint and sixty-four fugues, ten of
which he sent to Tschaikowsky for inspection. From this severe period
of self-tuition he emerged with a command of conventional musical
means unsurpassed in Russia, but without any essential loss either to
his individuality or to his nationalism. By some, Rimsky-Korsakoff's
recognition of his need for further technical learning has been
accepted as a recantation of his nationalistic principles. But it was
not this in reality, for his later operas are all drawn from national
sources and the folk-song continues to occupy a prominent place among
them. The enthusiasm for classical learning may have changed his
standards somewhat; many critics feel that the revision to which he
later submitted the Moussorgsky opera scores reveals a pedantic cast of
mind, a failure to appreciate the original genius of his friend. But,
on the other hand, his severe training gave him that fluent technique
which enabled him to accomplish such a great amount of work on such a
high plane of workmanship.
In point of fact, Rimsky-Korsakoff 'recanted' nothing. His ideals and
his fundamental musical method had been formed in his early youth.
Balakireff's enthusiasm for folk-song never left him. The influence
of the early ocean cruise was in his work to the end. Among all
musicians Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the greatest describer of the
sea. The effect of lonely days and nights out in the midst of the
swelling ocean, at a time when his adolescent senses were still deeply
impressionable--this we can trace again and again in his later music.
'What a thing to be thankful for is the naval profession!' he wrote
in a letter to Cui during the first voyage.[15] 'How glorious, how
agreeable, how elevating! Picture yourself sailing across the North
Sea. The sky is gray, murky, and colorless; the wind screeches through
the rigging; the ship pitches so that you can hardly keep your legs;
you are constantly besprinkled with spray and sometimes washed from
head to foot by a wave; you feel chilly and rather sick. Oh, a sailor's
life is really jolly!' We see here the effect of the out-of-door
activity on the young artist--that awakening of sensibilities to the
external life of nature, rather than the introspection of the thinker
who spends his time solely in the study of his art. It was this voyage,
surely, that chiefly helped to make Rimsky-Korsakoff so objective in
his music. He loves to describe the form and color of nature rather
than the experiences of the soul. He paints for us the life of the
senses. We recall the young naval officer in the mighty swell of the
ocean in _Scheherezade_. We cannot doubt the effect of this early
influence toward making Rimsky-Korsakoff the great story-teller of
modern music.
His later life was an extremely active one. He retained his position
at the conservatory for many years, and numbered among his pupils some
of the most talented composers in modern Russian music--among them
Liadoff, Arensky, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff, Gretchaninoff, Tcherepnine, and
Stravinsky. He was an enthusiastic collector of national folk-tunes.
He revised, completed, arranged, or orchestrated many large works,
including operas by Moussorgsky, Borodine, and Glinka. He served for
many years as conductor of the concerts of the Free School, succeeding
Balakireff, and for a time was assistant director of the music at the
Imperial Chapel. A perquisite post as inspector of naval bands, given
him in 1873, enabled him to devote his time to music; for many years he
remained officially a servant of the government. After 1889 and up to
the time of his death in 1908 he wrote twelve operas, and at one period
was looked to to provide one dramatic work each year for one or another
of the great lyric theatres of Russia. Once or twice he was publicly
at odds with officialdom, at one time going so far as to resign his
professorship in the conservatory. But on the whole he was a figure of
whom Russia, both popular and official, was proud. His books on theory
and orchestration have long been standard.
Rimsky-Korsakoff's works, in addition to the fifteen operas already
mentioned, include three symphonies (one of them the _Antar_), a
'Sinfonietta on Russian Themes,' several symphonic poems, including
the 'symphony' _Scheherezade_, the _Sadko_, and the 'Symphonic Tale'
founded on the prologue to Pushkin's 'Russlan and Ludmilla'; several
large orchestral works, including the famous 'Spanish Caprice,' the
'Fantasia on Serbian Themes,' and the 'Easter Overture'; a fine piano
concerto and a violin fantasia; some church music, a limited amount of
piano music and many songs.
Rimsky-Korsakoff's operas are the staple of the Russian opera houses.
They are not works of such genius as those of Moussorgsky and Borodine,
but, taken together, they reveal a creative genius of a high order.
In general their style is lyric rather than declamatory, but in this
respect Rimsky-Korsakoff applied a wide variety of means to his
special problems. Some, like his first, 'The Maid of Pskoff,' follow
loosely the principles laid down by Dargomijsky in 'The Stone Guest,'
in which the libretto is regarded as a spoken text to be followed
with great literalness by the music. Others, like _Snegourotchka_,
are almost purely lyric in character. Yet another, 'Mozart and
Salieri,' is written in the style of the eighteenth century. But
in one way or another the national feeling is in all of them, and
folk-tunes are introduced freely with more or less literalness.
Though Rimsky-Korsakoff could occasionally reach heights of emotional
intensity (as in the last scene of 'The Maid of Pskoff'), his genius
is more properly lyrical and picturesque. The songs and pictures of
_Snegourotchka_ and _Sadko_, in which a huge variety of resource is
brought to achieve vividness and brilliancy of effect, are the work
of a rich imagination. The melody is supple and varied, the harmony
extremely expressive and colorful, but neither is so original as with
Moussorgsky. The orchestration, however, never fails to be masterful in
the highest degree. This suits admirably the legendary and picturesque
subjects which Rimsky-Korsakoff invariably chose. With only one or two
exceptions, his operas have held the stage steadily in Russia, and two
or three of them have become familiar, by frequent performances, to
foreign audiences.
Among Rimsky-Korsakoff's other works the 'Spanish Caprice' and the
_Scheherezade_ symphony have become classics of the concert room.
The former is a virtuoso piece in brilliantly colored orchestration.
The other is one of the most successful musical stories ever told.
In these pieces he is working in his own field, that of national or
oriental color, made vivid by every device of the modern musician. When
he is composing in the more 'absolute' or classical forms, as in the
'Belaieff Quartet,' or the piano concerto, his inspiration seems to
wane. Mention should be made of the songs, which include some of the
most perfect in Russian literature, though in many the slender melody
is weighted down by the richness of the accompaniment. Finally, we
should not forget Rimsky-Korsakoff's great service to Russian church
music, which will be referred to later.
From this brief outline we can see how great was the variety of his
activities. Very little that he did was undistinguished. When he was at
his best, in the exploitation of the resources of the modern orchestra,
in painting natural scenery, the sea or the woods, in narrating a story
of fairies or heroes, he was in the very front rank of composers of the
nineteenth century.
In comparison with Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff was a conservative.
He inclined toward the sensuous and regular melody of Borodine, which
was always somewhat Italian. His harmony was far from revolutionary.
He can show us no pages like that wonderful page of Moussorgsky's,
introducing the Kremlin scene in _Boris Godounoff_, where the light
of the rising sun is painted striking the towers of the ancient
churches--a page which has become historic in connection with modern
French impressionism. On the whole, indeed, he seems rather timid
about venturing off the beaten path. His harmonic heterodoxies,
where they occur, are introduced discreetly, obtaining their
effect rather by their appropriateness than by their originality.
Nor was Rimsky-Korsakoff so instinctive a nationalist as either
Balakireff or Moussorgsky. In a great quantity of his music we find
nothing to mark it as Russian. But when we _listen_ to the music of
Rimsky-Korsakoff we feel that it is daring, novel, and exotic. The
striking difference between this music _seen_ and _heard_ is due
chiefly to the orchestration, which so glitters with strange colors
that we forget how orthodox the musical writing generally is. By tone
coloring the composer gives it qualities of pictorial suggestiveness
and Oriental strangeness which is quite lacking in the piano score.
Sometimes he even covers up musical poverty by his magnificent scoring;
the 'Spanish Rhapsody,' for instance, is a work of little inherent
originality, but is maintained on our concert programs because of its
inexpressible brilliancy of orchestration. If, on the whole, we find
Rimsky-Korsakoff's music thin, we must give due credit to the style
which enabled the composer to write a great quantity of music with easy
facility, while his taste kept him almost always above the level of
banality.
IV
The fifth and last member of the nationalist group was César Cui,
the least distinctive and least important of the five. He occupied a
somewhat anomalous position in the movement. The son of a Frenchman,
he became an enthusiastic nationalist, being the first of Balakireff's
important converts. As a teacher in the Government Engineering School
in St. Petersburg he had little time for active composition, but
exerted great energy in defending the nationalist group in the press
and in pamphlets. In all Russia, with the single exception of Vladimir
Stassoff, there was no more vigorous and overbearing apologist of the
Russian school of composition. Yet his own music is hardly tinged with
Russian elements, being a compound of Schumann and of some of the
most superficial of the French composers, notably Auber. Though he was
undoubtedly a musician of considerable learning and much talent, he has
left nothing of much creative vigor.
His father came to Russia with Napoleon's army, was wounded at
Smolensk, and later became a teacher of French in a private school
at Vilna, near Poland. Here, on January 18, 1835, César Antonovich
Cui was born. He received fairly good instruction in piano and violin
in his early years, and at the age of fifteen was sent to the School
of Military Engineering at St. Petersburg. Here, in a seven years'
course, he distinguished himself so that he was made sub-professor in
the school, and later became a specialist in military fortifications.
(The present czar was at one time his pupil.) All his life he gave
distinguished service in this capacity, and during the war that is
going on at this writing, though he is past eighty years of age, he is
taking a prominent part in the military defense of Russia.
It was in 1856, when he was twenty-one years old, that he was
introduced to Balakireff. He immediately became fired with the latter's
enthusiasm for a Russian school of music. But his first works show
no signs of it. Some early piano pieces are written entirely in the
style of Schumann, and his first dramatic work, an operetta called
'The Mandarin's Son,' is a weak piece in the manner of Auber. His
first important opera, 'The Prisoner of the Caucasus,' finished about
this time though not performed until twenty years later, shows some
originality and an attempt at local color. Early in the 'sixties Cui
was at work on his opera 'William Ratcliff,' which established his
reputation. It was performed in the year 1869 at the Imperial Theatre,
St. Petersburg, and though coldly received at the time was revived
with considerable success many years later in Moscow. But Cui's chief
influence on the music of his time was exerted through his newspaper
articles, which stoutly championed the 'Big Five.' In these he showed
himself an able, but a somewhat dogmatic, commentator. He held his
ground successfully until the music of the new school had ceased to
depend on the written word for its prestige. His pamphlet, 'Music
in Russia,' was the chief source of knowledge of Russian composers
to the outside world for many years. Cui further helped the cause
among foreign lands through the performances of his operas in Belgium
and Paris. In fact, two of his later operas, 'The Filibusterer' and
_M'selle Fifi_, were composed to French texts. The opera 'Angelo,'
performed in 1876 and in some ways his strongest work, was also drawn
from a French source--a play by Victor Hugo. When we have mentioned
'The Saracen,' founded upon a work of Dumas, and 'The Feast in Plague
Time,' based on Pushkin, we have named all his works for the stage. In
these the dramatic element is always subordinate to the lyrical. The
harmony, though often meticulous, is rarely strong or original, and in
general the style is thin and conventional. But Cui had a rich fund of
melody, and in a few scenes, as in the love episodes in 'The Saracen,'
he succeeded to a notable degree in the expression of emotion. But it
is in Cui's songs and small pieces for violin and piano that he shows
his talent most markedly. Here his French feeling for nicety of form
and delicacy of effect revealed itself at its best. We feel that the
pieces were written by some lesser Schumann, but we admire the taste
and judgment displayed in their execution. Further, we must admire
Cui's confining himself to his own style of music. His enthusiasm for
and appreciation of the neo-Russian composers is unquestionable, and
he might have produced much flamboyant nonsense in trying to make
their style his own. As it is he has played an important part in the
development of Russian music, and displayed abilities which are by no
means to be overlooked.
Before leaving the Russian nationalists we should mention several
composers of their generation who were not definitely allied with
them or with their school, but still demand mention in any history
of Russian music. Edward Franzovitch Napravnik was born August 12,
1839, in Bohemia, and moved to St. Petersburg in 1861. He had received
his musical education in his native country and in Paris, where he
studied organ and piano, and later taught. In St. Petersburg he took
charge of Prince Youssipoff's private orchestra, and thereafter became
intimately associated with the musical life of his adoptive country
and worked indefatigably for its improvement and independence. In 1863
he was appointed organist to the Imperial theatres, and assistant to
the conductor. At the time of the latter's illness in 1869 he was
appointed conductor, and this post he held for nearly half a century.
He found Russian operatic life under the complete dominance of the
Italian influence and made every effort to shift the centre of gravity
toward native work. His productions of Glinka's, Tschaikowsky's, and
Rimsky-Korsakoff's operas were notable. He was always distinctly
hospitable to native work, and the subsequent triumph of Russian
musical expression was due in no small degree to his faith and energy.
He further built up the opera orchestra in St. Petersburg until it
became one of the best in all Europe, and restored to the opera house
its old brilliancy of performance. He was also an able and frequent
conductor of orchestral concerts in the capital. His compositions,
though many and varied, show chiefly French and Wagnerian influence,
and are not highly important. He has written four symphonies, among
them one with a program taken from Lermontov; several symphonic poems,
of which 'The Orient' is most important; three string quartets and a
quintet, two piano trios, a piano quartet, a sonata for violin and
piano, two suites for 'cello and piano, a piano concerto; fantasias on
Russian themes for piano and violin, all with orchestral accompaniment;
a suite for violin and numerous vocal and instrumental pieces in the
smaller forms.
His operas, though they were never very popular, are perhaps the
most important part of his work. The first, 'The Citizens of
Nijny-Novgorod,' was produced at the Imperial Opera House in 1868.
It is somewhat in the style of Glinka, but is generally thin and
uninspired except in the choral parts, which make effective use of the
old church modes. 'Harold,' produced in 1886, is more Wagnerian in
form and dispenses with the effects which helped the former work to
its popularity. _Doubrovsky_, produced in 1895, is Napravnik's most
popular work; in it the lyric quality is again most prominent, and the
parts are written with expert skill for the singers. His last opera,
_Francesca da Rimini_, founded on Stephen Phillips' play, was first
presented in 1902. It is musically the most able of his works, though
highly reminiscent of the later Wagner. The music of the love scenes is
touching and expressive. On the whole, we find Napravnik's influence on
Russian music to be notable and salutary, and his original composition,
though not inspired, sincere and workmanlike.
Paul Ivanovich Blaramberg (b. 1841), the son of a distinguished general
of French extraction, came early under the influence of the Balakireff
circle. But a number of years spent in foreign countries impressed
other influences on his style, so that his music vacillated from one
manner to another without striking any distinctive note. Blaramberg was
long active as a teacher of theory in the school of the Philharmonic
Society in Moscow. His works include a fantasia, 'The Dragon Flies,'
for solo, chorus, and orchestra; a musical sketch, 'On the Volga,'
for male chorus and orchestra; 'The Dying Gladiator,' a symphonic
poem; a symphony in B minor; a sinfonietta; a number of songs; and
five operas. His first opera, 'The Mummers,' founded on a comedy by
Ostrovsky, is a mingling of many styles, from the dramatic declamation
of Dargomijsky to the musical patter of opera buffa. 'The Roussalka
Maiden' contains many pages of marked lyric beauty, and 'Mary of
Burgundy' attains some musical force in the 'grand manner.' The last
opera, 'The Wave,' contains a number of pleasing melodies and not a
little effective 'oriental color.'
J. N. Melgounoff (1846-1893) was a theorist rather than a composer
and had some part in the nationalistic movement through his close and
scientific study of folk-songs at a time when the cult of folk-song was
chiefly sentimental. A. Alpheraky (born 1846) was also a specialist
in folk-song, particularly those of the Ukrane, where he was born.
He composed a number of songs, as well as piano pieces, in which the
national feeling is evident. N. V. Lissenko (born 1842) was the author
of a number of operas popular in the Malo-Russian provinces. He was a
pupil of Rimsky-Korsakoff and set music to several texts drawn from
Gogol.
I. N.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] It is rather interesting that, in spite of Balakireff's opposition to
Tschaikowsky's music, they remained good friends throughout their life.
Tschaikowsky even tried to follow Balakireff's method in his symphonic
poem 'Fatum,' which he dedicated to his friend. As the composition did
not please Balakireff, though he performed it for the first time, Tschaikowsky
destroyed it later and it was never published or performed again.
This is what Balakireff wrote to Tschaikowsky after his attempt at modern
composition: 'You are too little acquainted with modern music. You
will never learn freedom of form from the classic composers. They can
only give you what you already knew when you sat at the student's
benches.' As irritable as Tschaikowsky was in such critical matters, he
never took the expression of Balakireff in an offended spirit. How highly
Tschaikowsky appreciated Balakireff is evident from his letter to Mme.
von Meck: 'Balakireff's songs are actually little masterpieces and I am
passionately fond of them. There was a time when I could not listen to
his "Selim's Song" without tears in my eyes.']
[13] 'The Russian Opera.'
[14] 'Reminiscences.'
[15] Quoted by Mrs. Newmarch, _op. cit._