Russians on Russian Music, 1880-1917: An Anthology

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CAMPBELL

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917

This second anthology of Russian writing on Russian music begins in 1880 (where the first volume concluded) and ends in 1917. It brings for the first time to an English-speaking readership the thoughts of leading Russian music critics as they react to the Russian music new to them, during a period when all aspects of musical life were developing rapidly. Music criticism had become more sure-footed, if no less opinionated. These reviews demonstrate greater awareness both of music history and of contemporary music abroad. The period covers the late careers of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov as well as late works of Borodin and Balakirev, and the emergence of Musorgsky’s compositions. Works by the intervening generation, including Arensky, Glazunov and Lyadov, are also reviewed and the book concludes with coverage of works by the Moscow School, including Medtner, Rachmaninoff and Skryabin and the early compositions of Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Stuart Campbell is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Music and at the Institute for Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow. He is author of V. F. Odoyevsky and the Formation of Russian Musical Taste in the Nineteenth Century (1989) and editor and translator of Russians on Russian Music, 1830–1880 (1994).

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 An antholog y

Edited and translated by

Stuart Campbell

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521590976 © Stuart Campbell 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 ISBN-13 978-0-511-06799-0 eBook (EBL) ISBN-10 0-511-06799-2 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-521-59097-6 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-59097-3 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

Preface Introduction List of sources Chapter One (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i)

p age ix xi xv T chaikovsky

Laroche: Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (1880) Cui: P. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony (1886) Laroche: [Manfred and Hamlet] (1893) Kashkin: P. I. Tchaikovsky’s new symphony [No. 5] (1889) Laroche: P. T chaikovsky’s Mazep pa(1889) Laroche: P. Tchaikovsky and musical drama [The Enchantress] (1890) Kashkin: The Queen of Sp ades(1890) Laroche: [Symphony No. 6] (1893) Rozenov: [Symphony No. 6] (1896)

1 1 10 13 16 18 24 32 38 40

Chapter Two Rimsky-Korsakov

42

(a) (b) (c) (d)

42 54 60

Laroche: [The Snowmaiden] (1885) Cui: Sadko, op era-b¨ılina (1898) Engel’: Kashchey the Immortal (1902) Petrovsky: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya (1907) (e) Engel’: The Golden Cockerel (1909)

Chapter Three

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle

(a) Cui: [works by Borodin and Musorgsky] (1880) (b) Cui: Borodin’s [First] Quartet (1881) (c) Cui: [works by Musorgsky, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov] (1887)

64 84

92 92 93 95

vii

Contents (d) Kruglikov: [works by Balakirev, Lyadov, Glazunov, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov] (1890) (e) Kruglikov: Prince Igor (1890) (f) Rozenov: Khovanshchina (1897) (g) Engel’: [Balakirev’s Second Symphony] (1909) (h) Kolomiytsev: [Pictures at an Exhibition] (1909)

97 102 124 129 130

Chapter Four

132

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Cui: [Fathers and Sons] (1888) Laroche: A. S. Arensky’s String Quartet (1888) Ossovsky: A. S. Arensky (1906) Engel’: Glazunov as a symphonist (1907) Karat¨ıgin: In memory of A. K. Lyadov (1914)

Chapter Five (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

Moscow and her composers

Kashkin: The Moscow School in Music (1910) Engel’: A Cantata by S. I. Taneyev (1915) Ossovsky: S. V. Rachmaninoff (1904) Engel’: [Rachmaninoff operas] (1906) Yakovlev: S. V. Rachmaninoff (1911) Myaskovsky: N. Medtner (1913) Preobrazhensky: [The ‘new direction’ in church music] (1924)

Chapter Six (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

The Belyayev generation

132 138 141 143 159

168 168 170 175 178 180 185 193

New stylistic directions

198

Engel’: The music of Skryabin (1909) Konyus: Skryabin’s Prometheus (1911) Myaskovsky: [The Firebird] (1911) Myaskovsky: Petrushka (1912) Karat¨ıgin: The Rite of Spring(1914) Myaskovsky: Sergey Prokofiev (1913) Engel’: [Sergey Prokofiev] (1917) Karat¨ıgin: The most recent trends in Russian music (1914)

198 205 207 209 213 219 221 224

Epilogue

234

Asaf’yev: Pathways into the future (1918)

234

Index

259

viii

P R E FA C E

All dates are given in accordance with the Julian calendar, sometimes known as ‘Old Style’. To convert them to the Gregorian calendar used in the West, and after 1918 in Russia too, twelve days must be added in the nineteenth century and thirteen in the twentieth century. In a limited number of cases, such as the first performance of a Russian composition abroad, dates are given in both forms. In footnotes, ‘Author’s note’ refers to the original author of the item, and ‘Editor’s note’ refers to the editor of the publication in which the article appeared for the first time. Other interventions are the work of the editor and translator of this volume. Several colleagues have drawn my attention to worthwhile material, suggested topics to which I had given inadequate notice, or proposed items I had not discovered for myself. I acknowledge gratefully the advice in these various ways of Alexander Belonenko and Georgy Abramovsky of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, and Marina Rakhmanova of the State Central Museum for Musical Culture named after M. I. Glinka in Moscow. For making available newspapers and periodicals, republications in book form and music scores, I gladly thank the librarians of the Russian State Library in Moscow, the State Institute for the Study of the Arts in Moscow, the Russian National Library in St Petersburg, the St Petersburg Conservatoire, the Tchaikovsky House-Museum at Klin, HelsinkiUni versity Library and the British Library. For shedding light in specific dark corners of several texts, I thank: Dr Laura Martin, of the Department of German, and Dr Stephen Rawles, of the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, both in the University of Glasgow; and Fr. Alexander, priest of the Orthodox Community of St Nicholas, Dunblane. For helping a poor foreigner understand especially arcane mysteries in their native tongue, I thank my wife Svetlana Zvereva, and stepson Georgy; without the knowledge and resourcefulness of my other stepson Gleb in the field of computing, this book would have been even longer in the making. Stuart Campbell 25 August 2002 ix

INTRODUCTION

The aims of this book are, firstly, to give a sample of the first Russian critical responses to compositions important to us which were composed, or in some cases first heard, between 1880 and 1917; and, secondly, to represent the work of critics whose work was influential at the time and retains its interest – most likely because it shows insight into the composers’ styles or the climate of thought at the time. The arts in Russia blossomed luxuriantly in the years between 1880 and 1917. That period contained the Silver Age of Russian poetry, with a current of Symbolism stimulating other new waves. The ‘great experiment’ in the fine arts was carried out in those years, with neo-Russian styles existing cheek by jowl with local manifestations of the international phenomenon of Art nouveau. By comparison with the years between 1830 and 1880, covered in the volume entitled Russians on Russian Music published by Cambridge University Press in 1994, this later period is richer in composers and compositions which hold their place in the international repertory. Such standard fare of the concert and recording worlds as substantial parts of the output of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, the larger portion of the work of Rachmaninoff, and the early work of Stravinsky and Prokofiev originated at this time and must be given their due. All the compositions of Lyadov, Skryabin and Taneyev, and by far the greatest bulk of Glazunov’s were likewise created during these years. Prince Igor and Khovanshchina were staged for the first time, after their composers’ deaths. Many other composers had their say, and if their voice has not proved so strong as those of the composers mentioned, their level of technical proficiency bears witness to developments in musical life between the two periods. New concert promoters appeared. Besides the Russian Musical Society and the Free School of Music, series of concerts linked with the names of entrepreneurial individuals took place: Belyayev (from 1885) and Ziloti (1903–13) (in St Petersburg) and Koussevitzky (from 1908) (in Moscow). Evenings of Contemporary Music were held in St Petersburg (1901–12) and xi

Introduction in Moscow from 1909. The Kerzins organized a Circle of Lovers of Russian Music (1896–1912) in Moscow. The Moscow Philharmonic Society had promoted concerts since 1883. Some of the senior generation of critics continued their work – Cui, Laroche and Stasov. A new cadre of reliable chroniclers – Kashkin, Kruglikov and Engel’ – appeared. A lively younger generation with a broad educational background emerged in the persons of Karat¨ıgin and Asaf’yev, whose work was to continue into the Soviet period. The wealth of material, both musical and critical, has made decisions about priorities more acute. Thus, Vladimir Stasov has been progressively excised from the contents; while this is a matter for regret, the consolation is that his earlier opinions are comparatively familiar and accessible, and he did not diverge markedly from them later. In the realm of composition, the most striking phenomenon is its blossoming not only in the newer capital, St Petersburg, but also in Moscow, the historic capital. During the reign of Alexander III (1881–94), confidence in Russian values and traditions increased, and the work of artists reflected this new-found self-assurance. Wealthy, assertive Muscovite businessmen (Mamontov, Morozov, Tret’yakov) turned into generous patrons of the arts, established art collections and inaugurated a private opera company. The founding of the music publisher M. P. Belaieff (Belyayev) was a sign of the same thing: a dynamic capitalist, accustomed to having things his own way, fell in love with the compositions of Glazunov and invested massively in schemes, including publishing, to support them and, by extension, the work of other Russian composers. Koussevitzky inaugurated the high-minded publisher Edition Russe de Musique in Moscow in 1909. Musical development was facilitated at about the same time by the abrogation of imperial monopolies in the fields of church music and opera theatres. This administrative change led to radical diversification in these fields, setting them free from detailed control by the Ministry of the Imperial Court and from the bureaucratic and political intrigue of St Petersburg. The Court Kapella and the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres remained influential, powerful and well-resourced institutions, but their stranglehold was broken. The Moscow Private Opera Company opened in 1885. It redressed an earlier bias against Russian operas – the company summoned into existence most of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas – and initiated the idea of drawing great painters into designing for the operatic stage, anticipating Diaghilev’s later achievements. No matter that the standard of execution (both musical and artistic) was variable – a new era had begun. The Moscow Synodal Choir, along with the Synodal School of Church Music (as reformed in 1886) with which it was intimately linked, brought fresh lustre to the ancient chants of the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin where they sang, and Kastal’sky forged a xii

Introduction new choral style built on those chants and the practices of Russian folksong; the best-known example from within this ‘New Direction’ is Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil. Rachmaninoff represents a further current in Russian music of this time. If earlier great Russian performers had been celebrated only at home – with the exception of Anton Rubinstein, at this period they started to become familiar abroad as well. The singer Chaliapin, the pianists Rachmaninoff, Safonov and Ziloti, and the conductors Koussevitzky and Safonov can trace the beginning of their fame abroad to the years before 1917; after that date, they were followed into the world’s concert halls by an increasing number of Russian musicians. Besides such international stars, Russia was served by a further corps of superbly trained performers whose fame was more local but who nonetheless enhanced the nation’s musical life materially. It is regrettable that, for reasons of space, I have felt obliged to exclude most discussions of performers from the texts which follow. It was in this period that the work of Russian composers began to flood into the rest of the world. Tchaikovsky’s success in territories where German and English were spoken was rapid, especially after his death, while Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Musorgsky fared better in the lands of Francop honie , with orchestral music arriving in advance of theatre music. This process was established before Diaghilev gave it fresh impetus, beginning in 1907. By that time, Russian art could show her neighbours a wealth of creativity – not in music alone, but in ballet, opera, stage design, etc. And with Diaghilev, Russia’s new music leapt across the frontiers of her empire. At first, the repertory comprised works created in and for Russia, albeit with a new coat of paint applied for the export market. Later, with the works of Stravinsky, Russian music began to be brought into being for Europe (with the early ballets) and even in Europe, before it started to enter the mainstream of music of the Western tradition. Our present subject is the reception of Russian music in Russia, and so the reaction to it abroad is not represented here. At the same time, the ways in which the West encountered it, especially the idiosyncratic selection and the unchronological sequence, continues to affect attitudes towards it. Because there was more music to write about, more music worth writing about, and the music was better written about, there is a greater emphasis on composers and compositions than in the earlier volume. Correspondingly, less attention is paid here than in the previous volume to questions of the organization and infrastructure of musical life. The arrangement of chapters in broadly chronological sequence used for the first volume has been abandoned, as for this period it would demand too much interweaving of topics. Instead, the main division is by composer or group of composers. While this xiii

Introduction principle gives a tidier result, it means, for example, that Skryabin looms large in both Chapters 5 and 6, as a representative of Moscow and of modern tendencies respectively. In some of the earlier texts the old battle between proponents of Tchaikovsky, on the one hand, and the ‘Mighty Handful’, on the other, is prolonged. Discussion about the benefits brought by conservatoires subsided as they co-opted members of camps formerly opposed (e.g. Rimsky-Korsakov in 1871) and subsequently won over even Cuito much of their way of thinking. Controversy about Wagner and his ideals continued, in a better informed climate after 1889 when The Ring was first produced in Russia, even if old prejudices did not fall away entirely; indeed the frequency with which Wagner’s name is cited is striking. Among the older generation of critics, one reads statements opinionated to the same degree as before – for example, when Cuiwri tes about the ‘meaningless recitatives in Mozart’s Don Giovanni’ (Chapter 2 (b)), or Laroche refers to Bayreuthomanes as ‘people who sit patiently for four hours in the dark listening to recitatives’ (Chapter 4 (b)); such observations amuse us, but it is not clear that that was the authors’ intention. Awareness of the work of Debussy, Reger, Schoenberg and Richard Strauss informs the discussion of newer Russian compositions, though we may still find entertainment in Karat¨ıgin’s enthusiasm for the compositions of Roger-Ducasse, or Asaf’yev’s evaluation of a Russian composer who has vanished beneath the horizon even more completely than Roger-Ducasse – Miklashevsky. It is, however, for the general angle of vision at which critics viewed contemporary music, as well as for those many instances when they enrich our own understanding, that we read their work nowadays, rather than to calculate the proportion of assessments which coincide (or not) with our own. While the search for material has been extensive, there are some topics which could justifiably have been represented more fully. These topics include: how Russians regarded Diaghilev’s Parisian ventures; Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil; the lesser composers whose names do no more than flit across a page (e.g. Kalinnikov and Stanchinsky). Some important critics are not represented at all (e.g. Sabaneyev and Findeyzen). However, constraints of space meant that compromises were inevitable if the volume was to offer in-depth discussion while simultaneously aiming to cover comprehensively a territory where music was diversifying and pluralizing rapidly.

xiv

SOURCES

The following abbreviations identify the collections from which texts reissued since their original publication between 1880 and 1917 have been drawn. In all other cases, texts have been taken from their original place of publication. Cui = Ts. A. Kyui: Izbrann¨ıye stat’i (‘Selected Articles’) (Leningrad, 1952) Engel’ = Yu. D. Engel’: Glazami sovremennika. Izbrann¨ıye stat’i o russkoy muz¨ıke 1898–1918 (‘Through a Contemporary’s Eyes: Selected Articles about Russian Music’) (Moscow, 1971) Karat¨ıgin = V. G. Karat¨ıgin: Izbrann¨ıye stat’i (‘Selected Articles’) (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965) Kashkin/Tchaikovsky = N. D. Kashkin: Izbrann¨ıye stat’i o P. I. Chaykovskom (‘Selected Articles about P. I. Tchaikovsky’) (Moscow, 1954) Kolomiytsev = V. Kolomiytsev: Stat’i i p is’ma(‘Articles and Letters’) (Leningrad, 1971) Konyus = G. E. Konyus 1862–1933. Material¨ı, vosp ominaniya, p is’ma (‘Materials, Reminiscences, Letters’) (Moscow, 1988) Laroche 2 = G. A. Larosh: Izbrann¨ıye stat’i (‘Selected Articles’), vol. 2 [P. I. Tchaikovsky] (Leningrad, 1975) Laroche 3 = ditto, vol. 3 [Opera and opera theatre] (Leningrad, 1976) Laroche 4 = ditto, vol. 4 [Symphonic and chamber-instrumental music] (Leningrad, 1977) Myaskovsky = N. Ya. Myaskovsky. Sobraniye materialov (‘Collection of Materials’), vols. 1–2, second edition (Moscow, 1964) Ossovsky = A. V. Ossovsky: Muz¨ıkal’no-kriticheskiye stat’i (1894–1912) (‘Music-Critical Articles’) (Leningrad, 1971) Rozenov = E. K. Rozenov: Stat’i o muz¨ıke (‘Articles about Music’) (Moscow, 1982) Stasov 4 = V. V. Stasov: Stat’i o muz¨ıke (‘Articles about Music’), vol. 4 (1887–1893) (Moscow, 1978) xv

CHAPTER ONE

Tchaikovsky

This period witnessed the composition of Tchaikovsky’s last four operas and two ballets, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and Manfred, as well as many works in other genres. It was marked by increasing celebrity at home and ever greater international success.

(a) G. A. Laroche: Liturgy of St John Chrysostom for four-part mixed choir. Composition by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, op. 41 (Moscow: P. Jurgenson). Russian Herald, January 1880, no. 1. Laroche 2, pp. 109–18 The Imperial Court Kapella held a stranglehold over the music of the Russian Orthodox Church by virtue of the requirement that any church music composition be approved by the Kapella’s director for use in public worship before it could be published. The incident described here illustrates the growing perception among musicians that Russian church music had stagnated. The resulting court case broke the stranglehold, leading to the efflorescence of sacred composition in Moscow (see Chapter 5 (g)).

` Among the artists in whom present-day Russia can take pride vis-a-vis Western Europe, a foremost place belongs to the composer whose name appears in the title of this article. Pyotr Il’ich Tchaikovsky has not yet reached the age of forty and was a comparatively late starter: fourteen years ago, at the beginning of 1866, his Concert Overture in F was performed at one of the Moscow concerts of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, which must be considered the start of his career. Since then his name has swept through Germany, Belgium, France, England and the United States. This reputation seems the more remarkable if one recalls that Mr Tchaikovsky is not himself a virtuoso performer; he has not been able to promote his compositions’ success through his own performances of them; he has found himself, so to speak, constantly in the hands of conductors, singers and pianists, and his success has been entirely dependent on the degree of their attention, talent and zeal. A composer so placed is rightly thought to be at a disadvantage; but it is essential to add that by the very kind of composition which has 1

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 made him famous beyond Russia’s borders, Mr Tchaikovsky has had even fewer chances of easy victory than many of his colleagues. Tchaikovsky is the composer of five operas, four of which have been staged. Not one of them is known abroad; only his instrumental works are known, and, although the audience for such compositions is more serious and enlightened than that for opera, it is far smaller in numbers. Just as it is harder for a composer to reach the majority of the public than a virtuoso performer, similarly, it is more difficult for an instrumental composer to win fame than for a composer of operas, and, as far as the West is concerned, Mr Tchaikovsky is for the moment a purely instrumental composer. If, despite all the disadvantages of this position, the young artist has nonetheless managed to win conspicuous and honourable standing, then we are justified in seeing therein evidence of those intrinsic qualities in his music which have overcome the external impediments and difficulties. I shall allow myself to say a few words about these intrinsic qualities. Tchaikovsky is not a master of form in the highest meaning of the word. Taken as an entirety, his compositions (with only a few exceptions) make an impression which is not fully pleasing aesthetically. It is not so much longueurs as the absence of a sustained mood, the absence of unity and the juxtaposition of sections not completely suited to one another which disturb the listener and frequently leave him cold. The demand for unity is perhaps the most pressing of aesthetic demands, but it is in any case not the only one; and the works of the composer with whom we are concerned demonstrate what first-rate jewels there is room for even where that demand is [not] met. Mr Tchaikovsky is above all a wonderful melodist. The nobility, grace, depth of feeling and variety in our compatriot’s abundant melodies set him apart, to extraordinary advantage, from the majority of his coevals (particularly the Germans), in whom one notices, for all their many admirable qualities, a complete absence of melodic invention. Mr Tchaikovsky’s melodies are not only lyrical and easily remembered, but are marked at the same time by an individual stamp by which one can always recognize their composer even without his signature. He possesses ideas of his own, atmosphere of his own, and a world of musical images of his own. Mr Tchaikovsky is, moreover, a superlative harmonist. Though he seldom resorts to those risky, harsh chord progressions by which musicians of our day are so easily carried away, he shows no lack of boldness for all that; the chief merits of his harmony are refined taste and a transparency of part-writing inherited from the founder of Russian music, Glinka. He is able to retain these qualities even in the midst of the most daring chromatic and enharmonic shifts. The third virtue of his writing is an exceptional talent for instrumentation. Not only his orchestral pieces but his piano ones too always excel in their full and brilliant sonority; 2

Tchaikovsky the instrument is used skilfully, in a versatile manner and with many effects which are new and striking. All these external qualities of his work represent a casing for its original inner content which has a well-defined and extremely appealing form. The prevailing mood is an elegiac one, alien to stunning or heart-rending accents – one of reconciliation and harmony, like the sad, gentle colours of a fine autumn day. Mr Tchaikovsky also has moments of triumph and rejoicing; he loves even splendour and brilliance, and there are many successful pages in his works that are by no means all confined within the framework just outlined; but he is nevertheless most true to himself where the graceful melancholy at the root of his nature can pour forth freely. His lyricism is not a matter of ready-made phraseology taken over from others, any more than his melodic writing is a collection of commonplaces picked up in the theatre or the concert hall. One has to approach Mr Tchaikovsky’s compositions with the respect that any manifestation of original creativity inspires. It is understandable that a composer with a talent developing so strongly and gloriously should have aroused the greatest expectations when he turned, in the prime of life and at the zenith of his creative powers, from the secular music which has occupied him exclusively hitherto to sacred music and, moreover, to music intended for a practical function, that of worship. The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom which he has set to music was bound to represent a milestone in his work, a moment of the greatest concentration of an artist’s strength, when he turned his back on the fair of worldly vanities and became engrossed in contemplating an eternal ideal. As the work of a favourite and esteemed artist, the Liturgy would have been met in any event with the keenest interest, even had no exceptional fate befallen it; but an incident unique of its kind has occurred which has given this innocent four-part choral composition an almost political significance. A few days after publication a police officer entered Jurgenson’s music shop and confiscated 141 copies of the edition, in spite of the fact that the Liturgy had been printed with the preliminary censorship’s permission. The shop, of course, surrendered without question all the copies to hand, but nevertheless was visited over the next few days by officials from either the police or the censorship department. Among other things, on one of these visits the censorship copy was demanded. The police went round all the music shops in Moscow and seized all the copies sold to them from the publisher’s warehouse. It soon became known that the Moscow police were acting on the basis of a memorandum received from the director of the Court Kapella. The director of the Kapella demanded that a sequestration order be imposed on the new work based on the legal requirement that the censorship of all religious music compositions belonged by right to him 3

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 exclusively, whereas Mr Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy had gone through only the general censorship. As everyone knows, this misunderstanding has now been cleared up. The right of the director of the Kapella relates not to the publishing but to the performance in public worship of sacred music compositions; even without being permitted to be used in churches, Mr Tchaikovsky’s composition when freely circulating for sale is not unemployed capital. It may be of benefit in domestic worship, to say nothing of concerts of sacred music. The repertory of Russian music has been enriched by a new religious composition and one moreover written by the most celebrated representative of contemporary Russian music. Russian sacred music has up to now led a lonesome existence. Not a single composition for the church has been conspicuous at the summit of art; the leading lights of music have subsisted on activities which were exclusively secular, held back in this one-sidedness, no doubt, by special conditions of censorship whose rigour was no secret to anyone even before the incident involving Mr Tchaikovsky. Sacred music was written by specialists; last century they bore famous names and their talents were recognized both in Russia and abroad; during the current century the level of our sacred music began to decline in inverse proportion to the growth and strengthening of secular music. A composer emerged on the musical horizon in the 1830s who, by his imposing stature, gave Russia for the first time an independent place among the musical nations of the civilized world. Thanks to the creator of A Life for the Tsar, Russia became one of the classical countries of musical creativity: her compositions, though few in number, may stand alongside compositions from nations which have progressed through a school lasting many centuries. Glinka, like his successors, was exclusively a secular composer. The aspiration towards religious art which gripped him near the end of his life was unquestionably genuine and, had it arisen earlier, might have yielded a valuable harvest; but the inspired composer died before he had time to bestow a single composition worthy of his great spirit on the church.1 The composers active at the same time and later did not take even the slightest step towards writing music for worship: one of them, and moreover one on whom Glinka had the strongest influence, Serov, composed for the church, but for the Catholic church: his Stabat Mater will remain an eloquent testimony to the estrangement from his native church in which the creative mind of the Russian composer lives. Since the day of the first performance of A Life for the Tsar, a day which may be regarded as marking an epoch 1

Glinka left only three short compositions: First Litany (?1856), Da ispravitsya molitva moya (?1856) and Resurrection Hymn (1856 or 1857).

4

Tchaikovsky in Russian music, a half-century has passed, during which Russian musical composition worthy of the name of art has served the theatre and the concert hall exclusively; sacred music has been composed detached from art music, in a realm of hackwork or superficial dilettantism, and its standard testifies deplorably to the abyss which this censorship has managed to open up between the ecclesiastical and secular worlds. This is not what has happened in the West. I shall not dwell on the fact that all those composers whose talents have held the public’s attention have worked to a greater or lesser extent for the church as well, or at least have used religious subjects. With the majority – with Schumann, Meyerbeer, Richard Wagner and Verdi – religious compositions occupy only a very subordinate place among their works; in only a few cases, such as MendelssohnBartholdy, is religious music represented by many outstanding scores. Of far greater significance than these solitary diversions of gifted musicians from the concert hall or operatic routes more familiar and precious to them, far more fruitful and important for the fate of music in the future, is the movement in music criticism and history which has arisen and spread over the last fifty years. Choral music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been rediscovered, suddenly becoming visible to researchers in a radiance of imperishable and irresistible beauty. Just as an excavation by an industrious archaeologist is rewarded beyond measure and expectation by the resurrection of an ancient statue, so investigations into musical history, undertaken exclusively in terms of intellectual curiosity, have led us to an inexhaustible source of aesthetic delight. The excitement of scholars has communicated itself to performers: the enthusiasm of performers has begun to infect the public. The names of Palestrina, Vittoria, Luca Marenzio, Orlando Lasso, Gombert, Willaert and Josquin have ceased to be empty words; their works, foreign to our age in technique and evidently even more so in spirit, have begun appearing in choral concerts and churches and to resound with a harmony unusual to ears new to it but nonetheless majestic. Groups dedicated exclusively to cultivating and promoting the masters of the sixteenth century, the era of what is known as strict style, have been formed; expensive multi-volume editions of these masters’ works have begun to appear, at first only occasionally, but later, when success stimulated emulation, with increasing frequency. This overwhelming mass of compositions, brought to light from beneath the dust of three centuries and received with undoubted pleasure – at times even enthusiasm – was bound to make an impact in the end both on critics’ verdicts and composers’ methods, in spite of the complete absence of similarity to the music of our times. Composers succumbed to the influence of sober and austere harmony, restrained in its use of dissonance and not prone to frequent modulation: elements long consigned to 5

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 oblivion as well as melodic turns of phrase unknown in the Viennese period (and little known even in the Neapolitan one) again won the right of citizenship. Critics in their turn began to find that these treasures, wrested from the murk of oblivion and winning unanimous appreciation, were not created to serve as useless ornaments, objects of dilettantish amusement or museum curiosities: they answer the keen demands of the religious spirit; the need for vocal music for the Christian church has found complete satisfaction in them; and a new school of church music must be educated upon these models for too long forgotten. A movement in many ways reminiscent of the cult of Pre-Raphaelite painting has now gripped a significant part of the musical world. A cult of pre-Bach music has arisen and begun to spread. Dissatisfaction with the mediocrity, coldness and sheer ordinariness of the most recent church music has engendered in many people a desire to return to that life-giving source which slaked the thirst of so many and such gifted generations for strict counterpoint. The movement grows with every year, and one can predict that in the near future we shall see the living fruits of a new critical consciousness and hear compositions created under the direct influence of the masters of the ‘strict style’, written in conformity with its exacting and onerous requirements. Something similar to this reaction (meaning by that word a movement to return to a style given up for a time) could be observed even here in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s. The harmonizations of G. A. Lomakin and N. M. Potulov2 and Prince V. F. Odoyevsky’s critical articles3 were expressions of the dissatisfaction here with church music and the aspiration towards the severe simplicity of a time long past. The reform, had they succeeded in bringing it about, would have been of an extremely radical character. The reformers were all plus royalistes que le roi. Prince Odoyevsky’s theories and Potulov’s practice sought to create a style which was even more strict that the ‘strict style’, to bind future composers by draconian rules which would have left no scope for their imagination and reduced musical work to the simple fillingin of a framework laid down in advance by an inexorable law. One cannot fail to admit, however, that even this ascetic tendency was received with a certain amount of sympathy. Lovers of our church chant who adopted a conscious attitude towards it recognized long before Lomakin and Prince Odoyevsky the vanity of spirit and insensitivity to form which over the course of time 2

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G. A. Lomakin (1812–85) was mentioned in RRM vol. 1 as a choirtrainer and director of the Free School of Music. Work with choirs drew him into church music. N. M. Potulov (1810–73) was a pioneer in harmonizing ancient Russian chants using an austere idiom. The articles which Prince V. F. Odoyevsky (1803–69) published in the 1860s articulated his dissatisfaction with the Kapella style, arguing for a treatment of the chants more in tune with their historical origins and more appropriate to worship by virtue of restraint and solemnity.

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Tchaikovsky had crept into both our arrangements of sacred church melodies and our sacred music compositions, and naturally longed for a gifted and inspired hand to erect in place of ephemeral and tawdry constructions a monument filled alike with religious animation and artistic beauty. Shortage of space does not allow me to develop here the idea which I set out just over ten years ago on the pages of the Russian Herald,4 the idea that the ‘strict style’ of the sixteenth century is the method of writing which corresponds entirely to the spirit of the Russian church melodies and the demands of Orthodox worship. I willingly deny myself the pleasure of backing up my thesis here, since a whole series of facts indicate that the general movement of the age will sooner or later lead to it being corroborated. The progress of contrapuntal and historical learning in Germany, Belgium and France, where the ‘strict style’ gains new experts and disciples every year, is beginning to exert a slow but irresistible influence on our Russian musicians as well. One after another, our young composers are turning their attention to works in contrapuntal style and coming before the public with work of that kind. The stimulus given to our music by Glinka retains its momentum to this day and the spirit of the age lends assistance. One may rest assured that Russia’s future church music (not all of it, of course, but the most serious and artistic part of it) will be music in the ‘strict’ style, or, as many people call it, the Palestrina style. But we should not look for these reformist currents in Mr Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy. It stands firmly on the basis of established usage; a performance of it would not startle ears used to our church compositions by anything especially out of the ordinary. Mr Tchaikovsky’s heart, apparently, is not in strict counterpoint; just how much he is in love with free, post-Bachian counterpoint, and how much he is the master of all its resources he proved recently in his superb D minor Suite, played in December last year at one of the symphonic assemblies of the Russian Musical Society. But even free counterpoint finds the smallest, less than modest application in the present work. The same composer who has lavished the riches of fugal and imitative style on many of his works with secular content has here seemingly vowed to forget all his art and be content with the simplest means comprehensible to everyone. Generally speaking, he has kept to the limits within which our nineteenth-century church music has been accustomed to revolve. The voices sing in continuous chords and only very rarely do not all enter simultaneously; the four-part structure is not kept to throughout as the voices divide and form six- and seven-part chords. In choosing chords and chord 4

M¨ısli o muz¨ıkal’nom obrazovanii (‘Thoughts on Music Education’), Russkiy vestnik, 1869, no. 7.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 progressions, the composer has not followed in the footsteps of the Weimar school,5 nor made any attempt to create anything reminiscent of Liszt’s Gran Mass, but still less has he inhibited himself by using constant triads in the diatonic scale after the manner of Mr Lomakin or Mr Potulov: one encounters chords of the seventh with their inversions as well as rather wide-ranging modulation; there is no one-sided parti pris in one direction or the other. The single fugato in the whole composition (to the word ‘Alliluiya’ [no. 14, bars 31–57]) is written very concisely and simply; in other places, such as for instance in the Kheruvimskaya (‘Hymn of the Cherubim’ [no. 6]), there are only gentle, scarcely evident hints of imitation. It goes without saying that, while remaining within the framework laid down and established by use and wont, Mr Tchaikovsky has been able to fill it with such content as nevertheless allows one to sense in many respects that exceptional power, first being applied here to a task left for so many years to the untalented and unskilful. It is sufficient to point to the simple, transparent but deft and graceful construction of the Otche nash (‘Our Father’), with the splendid curve of melody at ‘yako zhe m¨ı ostavlyayem’ (‘as we forgive’) [no. 13, bars 18–20], to note the presence in this score of a genuine artist. The Alliluiya fugato is sketched in a light and carefree way, but even here there is a feature (the bass pedal on A [no. 14, bars 58–61] which shows the true master of part-writing. I shall also point out the fresh, bright modulation after the words ‘Soblyudi nas vo vsey svyat¨ıne, ves’ den’ pouchatisya pravde tvoyey’ (‘Keep us in Thy holiness, that all the day we may meditate upon Thy righteousness’) [no. 15, bars 34–41], where, after A minor, A major enters unexpectedly and to great effect; or to the expressive but perhaps for the church too coquettish melodic phrase at the end of the Dostoyno est’ (‘It is meet’) (at the words ‘Tya velichayem’ (‘we magnify thee’)), the melody in the tenor [no. 11, bars 44–7]. Mr Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy is free of that saccharine, salonish tone which, unfortunately, has held sway hitherto in our church arrangements and compositions. But here and there you are unpleasantly struck by an Italian plagal cadence (a minor triad, a 6–5 chord on the subdominant, followed by a major triad), a legacy of the operas of Donizetti and Verdi, from which it would be more appropriate for church music to abstain. We find this turn of phrase at ‘Gospodi pomiluy’ (‘Lord have mercy’) [no. 1, bars 9–10], at ‘Spasi blagochestiv¨ıya i usl¨ıshi n¨ı’ (‘O Lord, save the pious and hear us’) [no. 3, bars 15–20], at ‘I dukhovi tvoyemu’ (‘and to Thy spirit’) [no. 4, bars 9–11] and at ‘Slava Tebe, Gospodi, Slava Tebe’ (‘Glory to Thee, Lord, glory to Thee’) 5

The ‘Weimar school’, so called because Liszt was based there from 1848 to 1861, denotes all the innovations and new approaches associated with Liszt and Wagner.

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Tchaikovsky [no. 4, bars 12–15]. I would also list among remnants of the manner which prevailed in Russia previously the so-called natural harmony (in the manner of the old horns) which has crept into the work of our composer at the words ‘yedin s¨ıy svyat¨ıya troyts¨ı’ [no. 2, bars 44–5]. This turn of phrase occurs hundreds of times in Bortnyansky and is explained by the eighteenth century’s passion for horns and huntsmen’s fanfares. Small blots like these on the picture do not, however, upset the general impression. Mr Tchaikovsky’s style is in general a serious and noble one, which is more necessary in Russia than anywhere because our church permits only a cappella singing, but where we have not up to now heard such a style. The preparation of suspensions and the frequently used sevenths on all degrees of the diatonic scale impart to the harmony a fresh, steadfast character which has a pleasing effect after the flaccid mellifluousness with which the composers licensed by the Kapella charmed our ears for so many years. As far as one can judge from reading the score without hearing a performance, choral sonority is exploited with skill and effectiveness; unfortunately, the high register predominates, especially in the sopranos and tenors. These constant Fs, Gs and even As give an impression of festive brilliance and magnificence at first, but then lose their fascination as a result of too frequent repetition. What at first seemed a truthful expression of rapture and exultation turns gradually into a purely external embellishment, like gilding on the expressionless face of an icon. The singers tire, while the character of reverent concentration on humility and spiritual peace gains nothing from this loud splendour. I do not consider it superfluous to add that these very high notes often occur on the vowels u, ı¨ and i, and thus can be pitched properly only with the greatest difficulty. To sum up, we have here the work of a conscientious artist whose sublime gift has called him – judging by the sum total of his compositions – to a new sphere of activity and who as a result has brought to his Liturgy an experienced, practised hand and a sense of decorum, rather than powerful inspiration. Mr Tchaikovsky’s composition, wholly satisfactory and estimable though it be in itself, holds only a secondary place among his other works. It does not enhance his profile by a single characteristic trait; it does not introduce any schism, nor any attempt at reform, still less any revolution into our church music. And that is precisely what one should have expected from the uncommon severity with which the privileged censorship office treated the composer. One should have been expecting extraordinary deviations from the accepted norm, audacious endeavours to do something completely new, unprecedented and unheard of. Nothing of the sort has happened, and Mr Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy, with its conciliatory, almost conservative character, ought to have disarmed the censorship rather than caused it to sharpen 9

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 and hone its weapon. But the privileged censorship is implacable. The character of a work has little influence on its verdicts: with rare impartiality it punishes the innocent as well as the guilty, and raises impediments alike to the man who takes the smooth path as to the man who makes efforts to leave it. It acts ‘knowing neither compassion nor wrath’ and, we might add, without doing any particular harm, because it has turned out in the end that in its own eyes it had exaggerated its competence. Whether a religious composition is printed or not does not depend on it, and one may hope that this circumstance now clarified will rouse young Russian talents to follow Mr Tchaikovsky’s example and try their strength in a field which they have until now despised but which offers an inexhaustible wealth of challenge to a musician’s creative imagination.

(b) Ts. A. Cui: P. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony.6 Music Review, 31 December 1886, no. 15, pp. 116–17. Cui, pp. 361–4 Composed in 1886, Manfred was first performed on 11 March 1887 at the Russian Musical Society in Moscow.

The appearance of a large-scale symphonic work by a Russian composer, particularly Tchaikovsky, is a major event; his importance as one of the most highly talented and versatile of present-day symphonists has been firmly established by a whole series of works of that kind. He has written four symphonies, three suites (the second of which has not yet been performed here), two symphonic poems: The Tempest (after Shakespeare) and Francesca da Rimini, and the overture to the play Romeo and Juliet. In these last three compositions he is in successful competition with Franz Liszt (Divina comedia) [i.e. Dante Symphony] and Berlioz (with his symphonies Rom´eo et Juliette and L´elio); in Manfred, his new symphony in four scenes after Byron, Tchaikovsky has found himself in competition with Robert Schumann – in idea, of course, though not in form – because the latter composed music for the play which, apart from the overture, contains no symphonically elaborated movements. Tchaikovsky has cleverly chosen the moments which most lend themselves to musical illustration from Byron’s dramatic poem without regard to their importance in the poem itself. Berlioz made use of similar devices in his Harold symphony; it seems to me that in general that work by Berlioz served our composer as a model in the composition of his Manfred; firstly, in respect of outward form, it is a work with a programme which 6

Editor’s note: We have been supplied with this note concerning the first performance here in Russia of this new symphony by the Russian composer; we willingly publish it in full because in general we entirely share the opinions of its esteemed author which do not differ essentially from the analysis of Manfred in no. 29 of Music Review (first year).

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Tchaikovsky nevertheless retains the usual symphonic structure of four movements; secondly, in its inner contents, the third movement portrays the free life of shepherds who live in the mountains, while the fourth movement represents an orgy. There is no orgy in Byron’s poem, so obviously the composer thought it up to obtain a more animated finale for his symphony. Of all the four movements of Manfred, the first is the most significant; this movement of the symphony, it seems to me, belongs in profundity of conception and unity of development amongst Mr Tchaikovsky’s finest pages, alongside Francesca. The first, main theme provides a masterly description of Manfred’s gloomy, noble image as conceived by Byron: Manfred:

‘But was my own destroyer, and will be My own hereafter’ [Act III scene 4, lines 139–407 ]

The orchestral timbre in which the first theme appears is extremely successful; the dull sound of three bassoons and bass clarinet in unison is interrupted by dry, fitful chords in the violas and the cellos with basses in their lowest registers. Lacking the opportunity of following all the beauties of the main theme’s development in the orchestral score, we confine ourselves to pointing out the second, delightful theme of Astarte (Andante, 34 ), the magnificent pedal-point on C, and the majestic final occurrence of the main theme (Andante con duolo) in the strings in unison, rhythmically accompanied by clarinets, bassoons and horns – a device of instrumentation often employed by Franz Liszt. We must also note here the original and beautiful effect of three flutes in their lowest register combined with strings in unison. It is no more possible to describe the enchanting instrumentation of the second scene (Scherzo) than it would be to paint a picture ‘of the rainbow of spray from a waterfall from which an Alpine fairy appears to Manfred’ [quotation from score]. We shall restrict ourselves to pointing out to the reader the second scene of Act II of Byron’s drama where Manfred describes the Alpine fairy. The Witch of the Alps asks: ‘What wouldst thou with me?’ Manfred replies: ‘To look upon thy beauty – nothing further’ [Act II scene 2, lines 37–8]. As with this reply of Manfred’s, the critic is obliged, referring to this movement of the symphony, to answer the question ‘What wouldst thou with me?’ ‘only by listening’. The trio of this movement, which is well contrasted with the main section (by means of a clearly defined tonality), is nonetheless somewhat insipid in its ideas; on its repetition Manfred’s theme appears. The ending of the Scherzo, that is the fairy’s disappearance, is of ravishing refinement. 7

Quotations from Byron’s Manfred have been checked against Byron: Poetical Works edited by Frederick Page in the new edition corrected by John Jump (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 The third movement is a pastorale, elaborated in various ways using familiar techniques: the sustaining of the tonic and the fifth in the basses. It is very difficult to be original here because the character of the pastorale depends on the use of shepherds’ instruments – bagpipes and shepherd’s horn. We shall allow ourselves at this point to draw the reader’s attention to one place which is particularly interesting as regards harmony. The second section ends in B major [III, bars 35–6]; immediately after that comes an A minor triad [bar 36], forming parallel fifths; and then, in the eleventh bar of the same page [bar 46] the harmony returns afresh to the triad of B minor (again with parallel fifths), which then moves to a dominant seventh in the key of G [bar 47] to serve as transition to the first variation. Manfred’s entrance makes a strong impact; is it not depicting his rescue at the moment when he intends to throw himself into the abyss? The decline of his strength is graphically portrayed by the gradually clearing harmonic progressions – up to the sustained C, in the woodwind [bars 178–91]. In the final movement, the first theme is made out of the second motive of the principal theme of the first movement. This borrowing seems extremely characteristic of subterranean spirits if one recalls that Manfred fell under their influence by his own fault. It also makes a significant impression in combination with the second theme of the infernal orgy (in the form of an oriental dance) and in the fugato (four spirits attacking Manfred – fourth scene of Act II in the play). The sudden breaking-off of the wild dance makes a huge effect. The episode corresponding to that, Lento [IV, bar 161ff.] is very fine; it is based on the main motive of the whole work. Similarly fine is the appearance of Astarte’s shade and the repetition of the excerpt from the first movement Andante con duolo [bar 394ff.]. In Tchaikovsky, Manfred dies unbending, at his full strength, just as in Byron. At the conclusion of this movement, with the organ, the finale’s first motive appears again, but in D major [bar 464] [actually on an E major triad, preceding the final key of B major], as if lightened, that is, depicting his redemption. It is very remarkable that, in portraying the hero’s death, both composers, Tchaikovsky and Schumann, present a scene of his salvation and pardon in addition, which is entirely contrary to Byron’s intentions. The final words of the poem are: Abbot:

‘He’s gone – his soul hath taken its earthless flight; Whither? I dread to think – but he is gone’. [Act II scene 4, lines 152–3]

We can see, therefore, how powerfully an all-forgiving conclusion is demanded by music, the resolution of every discord, even the most inexplicable – the dissonance of life itself. It is superfluous to mention that 12

Tchaikovsky Tchaikovsky’s texture and instrumentation are masterly; we can only thank him for his new contribution to the treasure-store of our nation’s symphonic music.

(c) G. A. Laroche: The concert on 11 August at Pavlovsk, Tchaikovsky’s Manfred and Hamlet. Theatre Gazette, 15 August 1893, no. 7, p. 6. Laroche 2, pp. 155–9 The fantasy overture Hamlet was composed in 1888. This concert was given in pleasure gardens at a distance from the capital.

P. I. Tchaikovsky is at the forefront of contemporary Russian music. But being in the forefront of it now, when musical technique and musical learning have spilled over to an extensive constituency of specialists and a great many talented composers have emerged, is by no means the same thing as it was in the 1860s when Russian composers were very thin on the ground. Along with five or six others, mostly older than him, he is also at the forefront of the music of the whole civilized world – and there too his kingdom, though shared with others, is as little open to question and as gladly acknowledged as it is in Russia. He has attained this eminent position by the intensity and magnetic power of his talent, and not at all by its universality. He has tackled the most varied kinds of music and displayed a colossal gift in every one, but he displays himself completely in only a few. If ever beneficent nature contrived to produce a musical genius as an illustration or practical corroboration of the theory of ‘absolute music’, Hanslick’s theory,8 then that musical genius is Tchaikovsky – so greatly is he filled with music on the one hand, so little on the other hand is he drawn towards musical illustration of poetic content, towards programme music or music drama. To opera, as to programme music, he has devoted a huge share of his time and energy, and as regards opera one may say that, after a whole series of more or less unsuccessful experiments, he at length found a form in complete affinity with his gift, that is one where the present-day demands for musical drama are reduced to a minimum. Maybe some day he will reach the equivalent position in the orchestral fantasy on a poetic subject, that is, in the ‘symphonic poem’. That will be when he finally discards the recently introduced but already long outmoded seasonings which for some reason are considered essential once a title has been taken from some famous poet: long sequences in an uncertain key, pauses, instrumental recitatives, a colossal din 8

The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) set out these ideas in Vom musikalisch¨ schonen (‘On the Musically-Beautiful’), first published in Leipzig in 1854; they offered a viewpoint contrary to that of the ‘Weimar school’. Laroche was a rare Russian subscriber to Hanslick’s ideas.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 on the diminished seventh, unfinished short phrases transposed from key to key and the obligatory tam-tam [Laroche has a play on words: ‘iz tona v ton i . . . tam-tam’]. In rejecting all this and being satisfied with writing music which is melodious and rounded in form, we are reverting to the standpoint of Raff, who calmly composed one symphony after another and gave them such titles as The Fatherland, The Forest, Leonore, Spring and so on. In the eyes of M. A. Balakirev, to whom Manfred is dedicated, that will be the ultimate degradation, the rejection in music of everything poetic, everything ideal. I, on the other hand, do not give a brass farthing for that idealism which comprises instrumental recitative, the diminished seventh and the tam-tam. But Mr Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poems are not all recitative and tamtam. Alongside the direct imitation of Liszt which holds sway in the weakest sections of these compositions, each of them contains a greater or smaller number of pages where the composer apparently forgets altogether the Weimar wisdom, with which he has so little kinship and which he has adopted so superficially. A beautiful melody will be flowing along (generally speaking, the more beautiful it is the less it shares the character of the poem or situation), the orchestration will set itself free from the thunder of the percussion – that invariable sign of the most profound thoughts – and unfold all its magic from pianissimo to fortissimo; you don’t even have time to look round before the real symphonist has awakened and an animated development section begins, with that pungent dissonant counterpoint of which our composer has such an inimitable command. Dante, Byron and Shakespeare are all forgotten. Alas! their turn will come again: like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, they will stand before the composer again and start to eat away at him: ‘What are we doing here? When are you going to get down to poetry? When are scrappy phrases, transpositions, pauses, general pauses and the tam-tam going to come along?’ And, torn forcibly from the world of inspiration and beauty, the composer will again stick to the beaten track, and the protracted ‘programmatic’ proceedings will stretch out before us once more. This inorganic mixture of two mutually alien and irreconcilable elements does not occur in the same way in all Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poems. In this respect Manfred numbers among the most raw and unfinished of his compositions. Harmonic sequences extend over whole pages, going somewhere – but not getting anywhere, leaving an impression of mystery and uncertainty cribbed from Liszt, though cribbed not in a mechanical fashion but with the addition of some of the technical sequins which cost our deft and resourceful composer so little effort. There are particularly many such ultrapoetic pages in the symphony’s first movement which, contrary to convention, is not an Allegro but a huge Adagio with various more or less faster episodes. And, 14

Tchaikovsky while we are on the subject of poetry, why is this first movement scored so loudly? Has Manfred really endured a shipwreck or bombarded Paris? I can understand the percussion instruments being used in the central section of Romeo and Juliet, because the composer was imagining a street fight in the savage Italy of the fourteenth century; I can doubly understand them in Hamlet, for in Shakespearian tragedy material catastrophes, violence and murders take a large place, although we have become used to looking only for philosophical and psychological subtleties; I am ready, finally, to accept the bass drum and cymbals in the finale of Manfred, as it is there that the court of the subterranean king Arimanes is displayed in all its glory. But the first movement, which according to the programme represents something like the quintessence of Manfred’s monologues, not only does not need such cheap seasonings in my opinion, but because of their use distorts the spirit of Byron’s poem and takes on the character of some battle or natural calamity, which is not even so much as mentioned in the English poet. In Byron the drama springs from within, and Manfred’s torments are essentially those of a solitary melancholic and monomaniac haunted by a kind of id´ee fixe; for all his criminality, the hero is a member of the aristocracy of the spirit, and the hellish apparitions with which he habitually holds conversations understand the most subtle speeches and are able in their replies to wound him without resorting to noisy yelling. But along with the ‘programmatic’ side of Manfred, which seems to me false and even prosaic, there is a purely musical side which is barely linked to the other – and here Tchaikovsky may be seen at his full stature, though I cannot say at one of his loftiest moments, not the Tchaikovsky of the Third Suite or the Fourth Symphony, but nonetheless full of melodic warmth and sincerity, rich in graceful harmonic turns, in unforced and euphonious counterpoint, rhythmically interesting and original, inexhaustibly diverse and captivating in instrumentation. To all this part of Manfred (much greater in bulk than the poetic or Lisztian part), one listens with the greatest interest, it is splendid in thematic development even more than in its melodies, has nothing in common with Liszt and, to my way of thinking, nothing in common with Manfred.9 To that category first and foremost belongs all of the third movement – the ‘pastorale’, although the only thing pastoral about it is that there is an episode representing bagpipes, but where the elegance of form and musical development are sublime beyond description. Also to it belongs the so-called trio in the scherzo which has the character of a free 9

Author’s note: To clarify this attitude for the listener by means of a concrete example, I shall point to Schumann’s Manfred. There one finds music which, in my opinion, contains both a Byronic atmosphere in general as well as various episodes in the drama, each one individually conveyed with astonishing vitality and truth.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 expanse of steppe and idle languor, evocative of Gogol, Turgenev or Fet rather than Manfred, but in any case enchanting; to it belongs, lastly (apart from a few short episodes in the first movement, which it would take me too long to enumerate), the superb polyphonic development in the finale, full of movement, fire and compelling interest. Hamlet (which in general terms I place immeasurably higher than Manfred) – is a completely different matter. It was saved, apparently, by the circumstance that it was initially envisaged not as a symphonic poem at all but as the overture to the tragedy which it was intended to perform in Russia in a French adaptation. When performed together with the literary work by which it was inspired, music does not need to cast about for the intelligibility of the spoken word, for the spoken word will itself show in due course wherein the subject lies and what the poet’s individual ideas are. However that may be, Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet is to a significant extent more free than his Manfred from the ballast of the commonplaces of ‘programme music’: it is simply an overture, though not, of course, one composed to a template, though again with an episode in the national Russian style, very well done and completely out of place, but coherent and robust in form with the most superb principal theme,10 slightly Beethovenian in character and with a development section which one can call straightforwardly a work of genius (the harmonic progression before the return of the principal section [from 8 bars before ‘Non si cambia il Tempo’]). The only thing which pains me in this work, which is as inspired as it is masterly, is the loud baying of the orchestra on the diminished seventh, masked not without skill by passing notes, but nevertheless representing a trite illustration of every sort of storm – at sea, on dry land and in the soul. [The rest of the programme and the standard of performance are discussed.]

(d) N. D. Kashkin: P. I. Tchaikovsky’s new symphony. Russian Thought, January 1889. Kashkin/Tchaikovsky, pp. 199–202 The Fifth Symphony was composed in the summer of 1888 and first performed in St Petersburg on 5 November of that year.

[Tchaikovsky’s career goes from strength to strength, despite the hostility of a section of the St Petersburg press.] P. I. Tchaikovsky’s new Fifth Symphony in E minor is made up of the usual four movements, but with the scherzo replaced by a waltz. The symphony’s 10

Author’s note: I regard as the principal theme not that which opens the introduction (Lento lugubre, A minor), but what is known as the principal section (Allegro vivace, F minor).

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Tchaikovsky first movement is preceded by an introduction where the main theme which occurs in every movement is stated, with a change from the minor mode to the major where the symphony ends. The first Allegro opens with a beautiful theme of powerful character which is distantly related melodically to the first theme but completely different in rhythm. The course of the first theme takes it in the normal way to the second theme in the key of the dominant minor. This theme is elegiac in mood and extremely graceful and beautiful, and a third so-called closing section follows it in the key of D major. After the development, the first section of the Allegro returns, but the second theme occurs in C-sharp minor instead of B minor and the closing section in E major. A very significant addition returns to the initial E minor where the first movement ends. The symphony’s second movement is an Andante cantabile, the unusual beauty of whose melody can stand alongside the best works of Tchaikovsky, who is so rich altogether in melodic inventiveness. The whole dreamily passionate colouring of this movement is superbly maintained, with the movement rising in places to moments of the most powerful excitement, shifting with an uncommonly beautiful and powerful modulation based on 64 triads to a calmer, fading mood. The theme of the introduction appears in the second half of the Andante, here with a menacing character, and leads to a repetition of the Andante’s main theme which occurs here in its most powerful statement; the theme of the introduction appears again before the end in a compressed version, then everything dies away and finishes in a scarcely audible pianissimo. This entire movement is so beautiful, so permeated by genuine, deep feeling, that it constitutes a masterpiece in itself. The third movement, a waltz, is kindred to those delightful waltzes found previously in Mr Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and Suite; it represents a moment of tranquillity after the passionate spiritedness of the preceding movement. The waltz contains an abundance of superb harmonic details of refinement and elegance, such as the violins’ rising scale against the theme in progress in the wind instruments. The Trio of the waltz is built on a rapid figure in which the two-beat pattern sometimes gives way to a three-beat one, thus imparting an especial rhythmic savour. The theme from the introduction enters again at the end, but now in a mood of calm reconciliation. The final movement opens with the theme of the introduction, but now no longer in the minor, as on its first appearance, but in the major. From this theme the Allegro of the finale develops, again in E minor. This whole movement is the work of a master of the first order, and although its themes are inferior to those of the previous movements, it nonetheless offers such a

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 wealth of development, such artistic finish as a whole, that one may call it the best of all the movements in the symphony. The new symphony as a whole is the work of a talent which is fully mature and in free and easy command of all the resources of the art of music. With regard to artistic balance, clarity and perfection of form, it occupies, if not the first place, then one of the very first places among Tchaikovsky’s works.

(e) G. A. Laroche: P. Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. Moscow Bulletin, 2 January 1889, no. 22, pp. 3–4. Laroche 2, pp. 129–35 This opera, composed in 1881–3, was staged in the Bol’shoy Theatre in Moscow on 3 February 1884.

Perhaps the reader will resent me telling too hackneyed an anecdote, but I cannot resist quoting an apocryphal dictum of the dying Hegel, so apt to the occasion does it seem. The philosopher – as the legend affirms – said first: ‘Of all my pupils there was only one who understood me’. Then, after a short silence, he added: ‘And even he misinterpreted me’. The original form in which the great writer wrapped his idea is eminently suitable to describe the state of musical drama in present-day Russia. Imitating him, we shall say that, of all present-day Russian composers, Tchaikovsky alone is capable of writing operas, and Tchaikovsky’s operas are in essence not operas at all. When we say that the creator of Cherevichki (‘The Slippers’) is one of those first-class musicians who lack a genuinely dramatic temperament, or that Mr Tchaikovsky’s operas when compared with his other compositions, especially his symphonies, occupy a secondary place, we are placing him in an extremely honourable company. The same may be said of Beethoven and Schumann, who wrote one opera apiece, and of Berlioz, who wrote as many as four. It is true that, in the number of his attempts in this genre and by the strength of will with which he tries again and again to solve the riddle of the sphinx called Russian musical drama, Tchaikovsky differs sharply from the Western masters I have named, whose operas, even those of Berlioz, are merely episodes in an extended field of activity devoted to entirely different ends. Counting Undina, which was never staged anywhere and which, if I am not mistaken, the composer destroyed, Tchaikovsky, who has by no manner of means reached old age yet, has already written eight large-scale operas. It is not open to doubt that he is indebted precisely to them, or to some of them, for a significant part of his fame, or that there is a whole division of his admirers who know him only as the creator of Eugene Onegin. But the very predilection of the public for this opera above all the others by the same composer already provides a partial description of his 18

Tchaikovsky attitude to musical drama. Not one of Tchaikovsky’s other operas shows so few pretensions to drama; in no other does the inspiration flow in such an even, uninterrupted stream. One may say without being paradoxical that, for this intelligent, sensitive and educated artist, so-called dramatic truth in music always comes in inverse proportion to the efforts made to achieve it. I have just spoken about the large number of our composer’s operas, but his taste for drama is demonstrated not by quantitative definitions alone. It is most interesting to cast a glance over his choice of subjects. Leaving his first two operas to one side as youthful works, Eugene Onegin as a score intended initially for production in a conservatoire and consequently written for a particular ensemble with the limitations which such a situation inevitably entails, and The Slippers which was composed for a competition on a prescribed libretto, we are left with four operas written when his talent was more or less at a mature stage in its development and using subjects, obviously, chosen by him in complete freedom. What is immediately striking is the sombre, harrowing character of the plots, the abundance of horrors and blood, the note of melodrama. Born in 1840 and growing up, apparently, like all Russians of our generation, on the peaceful literature of Gogol, Turgenev and Ostrovsky, our composer – as one could reason a priori – ought to have been bound to share the distaste common to people of our time for daggers, scaffolds, scoundrels and red cloaks. But in fact it turns out that, except for the red cloaks, all these ingredients play a significant role in his works: from the horrors of the oprichnina11 to the evil deeds within a family in The Enchantress, a broad river of blood runs through his operas, and the brutality of the dramatist, who in private is of astounding gentleness and placidity, goes so far that even Schiller’s Joan of Arc, whose fate the German poet softened, is again condemned to a terrifying death in the flames. It goes without saying that subjects of this cast (and Mazeppa too belongs among them, with its executions and torturing) require the strongest, harshest, and most staggering means of expression in the music as well. I invariably have the impression of a highly gifted composer doing violence to his talent. I certainly do not wish to say that Tchaikovsky is capable of setting only tender and sentimental scenes. No, he does have energy and breadth of scale, but his energy and broad scale are, if one may put it this way, exclusively major-key. Rejoicing, celebrating, a splendid festive tone – these are what he succeeds magnificently with time and again, and an unconscious sense of his innate power, as it seems to me, tempts him to employ it in exactly the opposite direction, where it almost invariably refuses to serve him. The weakest places in his operas are those where he has to depict dramatic 11

This term refers to a special bodyguard created by Tsar Ivan IV.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 confrontations; among such places in Mazeppa is the scene of the quarrel [no. 6], where constant divergence can be sensed between the situation and the music, where, for example, the big ensemble in C minor, even by the choice of metre ( 98 ) and rhythm, cannot have the dramatic energy for which the composer was evidently striving. Equally alien to Mr Tchaikovsky’s nature, and just as unsympathetic to me in its treatment, is the challenge posed by the prison scene. For all his love of strongly dramatic subjects, our composer takes little interest, apparently, in one of musical drama’s most vital resources. I mean recitative. One can point to many phrases in Mazeppa whose declamation [word-setting] is hard to accept: read the text without the music, adopting the expression suggested naturally by the situation of the characters involved, and very often your declamation will be different from Mr Tchaikovsky’s. If that phenomenon can be observed in recitative, where no demands of cantilena constrained him, then it occurs even more frequently in lyrical and rounded phrases; moreover, there are instances where the initial motive of the cantilena, which is normally composed directly under the influence of declamation, reveals no such influence in Tchaikovsky’s case. The gifted master’s operas, exactly like his symphonic poems, remind us often and eloquently of the too easily forgotten axiom of right-minded aesthetics that music is not an art of expression, that, by forcing her to speak and depict, we are doing violence to her nature, that she finds her true power and beauty where she is completely free of poetic pretensions. The greatest models of musical drama are no more than compromises between the nature of art and our age’s striving to illustrate stage action musically, compromises in which the composer is obliged at every turn to hold the balance between opposing demands, to walk a tightrope. This tightrope-walking calls for a special talent which has become particularly rare in our day and age, and Mr Tchaikovsky is a true child of his time in this, as in many other respects, in possessing this special talent only in the smallest degree. And why should he grieve for it when he has all the others? While, for the most part, displaying major deficiencies in construction and scenario and not exploiting musically even those advantages which are preserved in their libretti, his operas, nonetheless, afford aesthetic enjoyment year in year out to the most musical, most enlightened part of our public. Together with Mr Tchaikovsky’s symphonic scores, albeit to a lesser extent, they are numbered with the noblest creations of Russian art, and the musical beauties so generously strewn through them more than compensate for the absence of that dramatic nerve which present-day criticism pursues so exclusively. An incomparable melodist, who as the years go by acquires even more richness, versatility, succulence and grace in his melody, our composer has displayed 20

Tchaikovsky all the charm, all the poetry of his song even in Mazeppa. It is very characteristic that as soon as Mazeppa himself stops being a bloodthirsty tyrant and becomes simply a baritone in love, the music too at this point becomes superlative, and melodies, each more beautiful than the last, flow from his lips (‘Mgnovenno serdtse molodoye’ (‘A young heart instantaneously’) in Act I [no. 5, Andante], ‘Moy drug, nespravedliva t¨ı’ (‘My friend, you are unjust’) in Act II [no. 11, Moderato assai, quasi andantino], and most of all the arioso which the composer added after the printing of the vocal score [no. 10a]). There are equal melodic pearls in the parts of Mariya, Andrey and even Kochubey, the least richly endowed (‘Tak, ne oshiblis’ v¨ı’ (‘Thus you were not mistaken’) [Act II no. 9]); but the first place among all these inspired pages belongs to the phrase sung by the dying Andrey (‘V glazakh temneyet, budto noch’ kholodnaya lozhitsya nado mnoyu’ (‘My eyes grow darker, as if cold night was falling upon me’) [no. 19]), whose tender and reconciled character forms an amazing contrast with the bitterness and tragedy of the situation, as if before his dying eyes the dawn of a new day, one not of this earth, was already breaking. Unfortunately, this melody, like several others in the opera, is not developed into a coherent number, but breaks off abruptly to satisfy the need for ‘dramatic truth’. What a Moloch is this ‘dramatic truth’, and how much musical beauty, how many composers’ talents it has devoured in our day in its insatiability! With Tchaikovsky, fortunately, his talent is so lively and healthy that no theory can cause it any general organic harm at all; but he makes frequent concessions to this tendency, and one cannot but deplore profoundly even those frequent concessions. Since our composer is principally a symphonist, it would be right to expect the culminating points in his operas to be those numbers which are purely instrumental (the overture, the dances and the Battle of Poltava entr’acte); but in practice it does not work out quite like that and the statement finds least justification as regards the overture. It is strange that the composer of such instrumental masterpieces as the first Allegro of the Third Symphony and the finale of the Second Symphony could fall for the type which the modern French overture represents, that formless and perplexing rhapsody with incessant pause-signs and changes of tempo; but the fact is that even Tchaikovsky cultivates precisely this genre and the overture to Mazeppa, whose opening gives promise of a mighty symphonic work, vanishes thereafter in a mosaic of successive fragments, like a river in sand. The dances in Act I (gopak) [no. 4] display, of course, a more cohesive organization. To tell the truth, I am not a particular admirer of Mr Tchaikovsky’s operatic dances (Swan Lake is a different matter altogether!); it always seems to me that in them he is following in the footsteps not so much of Glinka as of Serov, that in his striving for sharp characterization and strong colours he sacrifices 21

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 that harmonic and contrapuntal side, of which Glinka provided such elegant models in both his operas. Thus even the gopak in Mazeppa opens with a flurry of semiquavers of a burlesque character with (for me) a note which is unpleasantly Serovian; but who will not forgive this opening and a dozen other mistakes (if this is indeed a mistake) when he hears the magical E-flat major melody, captivating in its idle monotony, which suddenly, like a smile on a beautiful face, lights up the whole piece? It remains for me to give an opinion about the ‘Battle of Poltava’ (the entr’acte to the last act [no. 15]), a number which is very extended and composed with evident love. As is well known, ‘battles’ in the repertory for piano and especially for orchestra (above all at the beginning of this century) represent a very widespread phenomenon but, despite the undoubted musicality of the task, there are no examples of it being realized especially successfully, least of all classical examples. The first Allegro of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony could only be classified as a depiction of a battle by stretching the meaning of the term, and his programmatic ‘Wellington’s Victory’ (The Battle of Vittoria) belongs among his weakest compositions. From the whole literature known to me, I can bring to mind only one page which is truly grandiose: it is the battle episode in Paradies und die Peri; but Schumann was not composing a separate symphonic number: his battle amounts to no more than an orchestral ritornello to the chorus which follows. In the end, one can say that in the ‘Battle of Poltava’ we are seeing for almost the first time a serious composer setting seriously about a task which until then had been in the hands of simple artisans writing to amuse the pleasure-garden public. The experiment succeeded brilliantly: from the very first chords one has a sense of formidable, shattering power; the alternating chords in bars 9 to 12 (subsequently repeated a second higher) and the motive in sevenths (F–G–B–C) a few bars later are especially good. The actual plan of the work is very poetic: the composer begins fortissimo, introduces us to the strongest heat of the battle and then in a long, gradual diminuendo depicts the rumble as the hostilities gradually recede. But the execution of the task strikes me as not being on the same level as the conception everywhere: the first pages (in 32 metre) are marvellous; compared to their iron strength, the last section ( 44 ), although called Allegro marziale, suffers from being precisely of too peaceful a character: that is in spite of whistling scales here and there, which suggest peacetime policemen’s training exercises rather than a fight to the death. There is not enough turmoil, chaos, fumes – which are just as capable of being portrayed in a pianissimo as in the most deafening forte. The reader will not ask me to draw a general conclusion from my disconnected remarks because I began by placing it at the start of this column. But justice demands that I give him an opposite proposition. Mr Tchaikovsky’s 22

Tchaikovsky opera is not an opera at all, but nevertheless he is our only composer of operas in Russia. A critic’s task would be very easy if he could approach a living phenomenon with a ready-made yardstick and his only concern were to see whether the work fitted his measurements or not. For such criticism it would be sufficient for each species and genus of artistic work to establish terms, as is done for goods ordered for delivery to the state: so much of suchand-such, the length such-and-such, the width such-and-such, the weight such-and-such. I have colleagues in the musical press who have adopted this very approach to Mr Tchaikovsky: the reviewer will take as the norm some single opera, sometimes of his own manufacture,12 sometimes written by a friend, will look for similarities and differences in Tchaikovsky, where it’s longer and where shorter, where it’s louder and where softer, and will then draw up a balance sheet. To be sure, the creator of Mazeppa presents many difficulties to the conscientious critic who has no wish to get away with just the conventional wisdom. A self-sufficient, independent nature, perhaps sometimes capricious, he submits to classification only with extreme difficulty and not one of the pre-existing frames fits him exactly. Eugene Onegin, as everyone knows, is entitled not ‘opera’ but ‘lyrical scenes’. Should we not extend that title to everything Tchaikovsky has written in the genre of opera? Should we not admit that Mazeppa too, while not forming a coherent opera, is wonderful as a series of lyrical moments, that precisely the lyrical element in it is full of truth and beauty, whereas its dramatic side affords us the spectacle of a powerful talent embarking on a path alien and antipathetic to him? And should we not at the same time abandon once and for all the unjust and tactless complaints that Tchaikovsky’s operas are not written in the manner of Gluck, or Meyerbeer, or Wagner, or Serov, and state that our composer is first and foremost faithful to his personal ‘I’ and with perfect sincerity gives us this ‘I’ in every one of his works? These ‘lyrical scenes’ – not subordinated to modern templates, full of distinctive content and individual life – these lyrical scenes are uneven works far from being beyond reproach: very often the form does not match the idea, even more frequently you wish that the composer would break decisively with modern usage and return to the classical path which suits the cast of his talent far better, but for all the objections which one could level against him, there remains the general impression of a rich nature and a virtuoso master, an inspired poet and a brilliant technician, a musician whose magnificent native powers have not been suppressed and distorted by training but have attained the most fortunate and healthy development. The exemplary type of Russian opera will 12

The most likely target of this barb was probably Cui, though M. M. Ivanov (1849–1927) is another candidate.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 probably be created unbeknownst to the composer of Mazeppa, just as the development of German opera left the creator of Genoveva [Schumann] to one side: but while they do not stand on the main highway of progress ahead, the operas of Tchaikovsky, like Genoveva, will always give the impression of fresh and alluring oases, and their very remoteness from familiar paths will lend them ever greater fascination.

(f) G. A. Laroche: P. Tchaikovsky and musical drama (about The Enchantress). Moscow Bulletin, 8 February 1890, no. 39, pp. 3–4. Laroche 2, pp. 145–55 Composed between 1885 and 1887 to a libretto by I. Shpazhinsky, this opera was staged for the first time at the Mariinsky Theatre on 20 October 1887 and at the Bol’shoy Theatre on 2 February 1890.

The Russian Middle Ages and the Russian Renaissance have only recently, if one leaves [Pushkin’s] Boris Godunov out of account, become the object of truthful artistic representation in verse drama entirely faithful to the national spirit and language and also to history – if not in factual matters, then certainly in matters of everyday life. As has been observed repeatedly, the trends and currents which emerge in poetry are reflected in music as well, but that reflection is always chronologically delayed. Similar or corresponding phenomena in poetry and music are separated from one another sometimes by a quarter of a century (the operas of Glinka constitute an interesting exception, in that they appeared only a few years later than the most mature works of Pushkin, to which they correspond fully). Serov’s [opera] Rogneda, contemporary with Ostrovsky’s first dramatic chronicles, or Aleksey Tolstoy’s Ivan the Terrible, seemed at first sight something similar to them or to the dramas of Mey, which it antedates by a few years; but by our time it has become clear that with its sickly sweetness, abundance of poorly concealed Italianisms and falsely patriotic tone, for all its outward impact and entertaining quality, it corresponds more to Kukol’nik13 than to the poets of the 1850s. What occurred in our spoken drama about 1860 is now taking place or ‘ought to be taking place’ in musical drama. That ‘ought to be taking place’ is a small attempt at constructing history a priori, but I shall now immediately wash myself clean of that sin by appealing to facts. I am intentionally leaving to one side the operas of Rubinstein, which are original, written in masterly fashion, strict in style and truthful in expression. They stand apart by virtue of the cosmopolitanism which saturates all the compositions of the present-day head of Russian musicians, the sharply oppositionist attitude which he adopted towards his age, and, lastly, the 13

N. V. Kukol’nik (1809–68) is best known in literature as a writer of patriotic plays on historical themes and in music as a collaborator with Glinka.

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Tchaikovsky conspicuously energetic individuality which makes itself felt equally in his dramatic and lyrical music as in his vocal and instrumental music. There remain Borodin’s Prince Igor and Tchaikovsky’s The Enchantress14 – two ‘signs of the times’ in the sense that both these operas now await their turn, that The Enchantress was produced in St Petersburg in the autumn of 1887 and is at the present moment being staged in Moscow, and Prince Igor is a posthumous work of Borodin who died in February in the same year of 1887. Although part of the music of Igor is older than The Enchantress, as it was transferred from Mlada written in the 1870s, Igor on the other hand was completed by Borodin’s friends after his death; its orchestration is also for the most part posthumous, and it has not yet been produced and will not be during the current season. In general terms, both The Enchantress and Igor are works of the present moment, and, coming approximately a quarter of a century after Ostrovsky’s dramatic chronicles and Tolstoy’s Ivan the Terrible, may be called phenomena corresponding to those literary works. For a broad drama taken from everyday life in the Russian Middle Ages, Tchaikovsky, of all the musicians of our generation, that is who were born between 1840 and 1855, ought to be the most richly endowed. The Mighty Handful (moguchaya kuchka), comparison with whom suggests itself above all, does not include an outstanding melodist, and outside the Handful – I am still speaking about this specific generation – there are no talents, or almost none. Tchaikovsky’s work shows both Russian subject-matter and cultivated form; in his work melodies and harmonies, orchestration and rhythm are in perfect balance; prolific and indefatigably active in all sorts of music,15 he evidently gravitates towards the dramatic, towards musical tragedy, and in tragedy shows a no less evident preference for Russian subjects. Of his six operas staged before The Enchantress, only one had an overwhelming success; but not a single one passed unnoticed, and, if Tchaikovsky’s reputation is based mainly on Eugene Onegin, then one cannot deny that his other operas have contributed to it too, not excluding that youthful venture The Voyevoda, or that Tchaikovsky’s operas, taken together, have made the composer loved and prized in spheres which neither a suite nor a quartet, neither 14

15

Author’s note: One may place Mr Rimsky-Korsakov’s Maid of Pskov in the same category, although she is already seventeen years of age, if one regards that opera as a pendant not to Mey’s drama of the same name but to his The Tsar’s Bride. In that case, too, one finds a distance of approximately a quarter of a century between the poetic prototype and its musical reflection. Author’s note: Comic opera, operetta, dance music and military music constitute exceptions so far. Like all the musicians of his circle, he will be too fastidious to write operetta and he is not really suited to it by nature. As regards the other three kinds of music mentioned, in my opinion he has an undoubted aptitude for them and could stimulate a fruitful and beneficent advance in any one of them.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 a sonata nor a symphony, can reach. Tested by experience, fostered equally by continual good fortune as a whole and failures in particulars, his talent entered on its most flourishing period at the end of the 1870s and is now – or, what amounts to the same thing, was on the eve of The Enchantress – in the most advantageous circumstances: maturity has been attained, but youth has not yet departed. Mr Shpazhinsky, the author of the libretto, possesses a talent rare here in Russia (and at the present time even rarer in the West) as a master of matters dramatic, a skilful craftsman and purveyor of what is fashionable; he is no less capable than a Frenchman of tying and untying a dramatic knot; it is no wonder that a composer of operas should turn more willingly to him than to the luminaries of contemporary Russian poetry. Poetry’s luminaries have always too much of lyricism or philosophy and rhetoric; in either case, there are too many verses: whole pages of text which captivate one by their beauty when read, coarsen and turn into tedious verbosity under the magnifying glass of music. For a composer of operas, it is not monologues, not dialogues and not the living flesh and blood of a poem in general which are important but its skeleton, that is the plot and its development into a scenario. This skeleton has been solidly and handsomely put together in The Enchantress; the dramatic conflict is striking, the characters are simple and outlined in bold strokes, and the situations are set out naturally. Only Act III offends by an attempt at subtle psychology in the manner of Shakespeare: the scenes of the Prince and Kuma, with the Prince’s rapid transition from hatred to passionate love, recalling the famous scene of Gloucester and Anne in Richard III, is full of interest in a spoken drama but becomes enigmatic and therefore false in a musical drama. In an opera, just as with pantomime in a ballet, the subject must be comprehensible to the eye in its entirety by means of stage action alone, without the aid of a text or at least only with a little occasional help from it. Like ballet, opera is also analogous to the tragedy of the ancients (and therefore also to the ‘pseudoclassical’ tragedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and gains from observing all the conditions of that kind of drama strictly, although they are outmoded for our spoken drama based on Shakespeare. The emergence of a new character (the sorcerer Kud’ma) in the final act, contrary to the rules of classical poetics, violates the integrity of the plot’s development and gives the impression of being a mechanical impulse from outside. Despite these two defects, of which the first (i.e. the lack of clarity in the contents of Act III) is the more important, as a whole, however, The Enchantress represents a task of rare nobility for an opera which inspires a composer by its subject and does not hold things up with dialectical longueurs. I repeat: such a subject in such a composer’s hands could not fail to arouse intense curiosity and high expectations. 26

Tchaikovsky Expectations of that kind are only half-lived up to by the opera’s rich and original music. When you listen at a concert, or play through at home, an individual page or a long individual excerpt from Mazeppa, The Slippers or The Oprichnik, you surrender involuntarily to the fascination of the music’s power and good health combined with such delicate nerves, such thoughtful melancholy, such wealth of colour, such responsiveness to the demands of the age. When, seated in the theatre, you take in for yourself the totality of these pages, these excerpts, in their dramatic sequence, then little by little you begin to feel a certain mysterious awkwardness. Explaining to myself the reason for this contradiction would probably be more difficult for me, with my conservative view of musical drama, than if I were to be simply bored during Tchaikovsky’s operas, finding them insufficiently similar to Musorgsky or Serov. The reflective mood induced in me by Tchaikovsky’s method of composition has nothing in common with complaints founded on the cult of [Serov’s] The Power of the Fiend or with Boris Godunov as set to music. [Laroche reiterates views of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poems found in (c).] I did not set myself the task here[, however,] of analyzing Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poems, where the absence of artistic truth may be demonstrated only by a slow roundabout route; but I have before me the pearls in The Enchantress, which make an irresistible effect at a concert or when read but whose ardour is invariably cooled in a staged performance. Despite its great strength of talent, despite the advantages of education and technique, of graceful and subtle nature and the present-day striving for musical drama, The Enchantress suffers from one affliction – only one, but that affliction is fundamental, organic: the opera lacks ‘truth in sound’. Two years ago the Petersburg Serovians discovered a great resemblance to Serov’s operas in it, and even a direct imitation of them. I do not know what a critical paradox of that kind rests on. Tchaikovsky is free of the majority of Serov’s faults: his formless composition, his weakness in figuration and his mannerism, linked to that weakness, of writing continuous chords or tremolo, his harmonic onesidedness, and, finally, from old-fashioned ‘reminiscences’ of Spontini and Auber, Verstovsky and Gurilyov. [The comparison with Serov is explored further.] In comparison with our master’s preceding operas, The Enchantress is notable for its correct declamation. Declamation is a real hobby-horse of our Russian reviewers and I have confessed more than once that with respect to this hobby-horse I keep to the most ‘open tendency’. Had Tchaikovsky taken a step backwards rather than forwards in his latest opera; had his declamation been as boundlessly wrong and capricious as in Russian folksong or 27

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 in Glinka’s songs and A Life for the Tsar, then I would have had nothing against that so long as the general meaning, the general spirit of the words, had been accurately caught in the music. As I have already said, this happens sometimes, but just as often or more often we see the opposite. With Tchaikovsky there is never that abstract, indifferent music exemplified by many superb contrapuntal workings. There is no impersonal, mercilessly logical architecture of sound combinations in which the subject vanishes. On the contrary everything is warmed by feeling, the pulse of lyrical life beats everywhere; but between the feeling in the musician’s soul and the idea expressed in the poet’s verses, no connection is achieved. In a newspaper column I do not wish to cite a long series of individual examples, so I shall restrict myself to two. Let us take Kuma’s arioso in Act IV [no. 20]. After a whole series of stupendous scenes, on the verge of death, the young woman awaits her beloved (the son of the voyevoda who is in love with her), with whom she intends to flee from his father’s pursuit. The mood in which the audience watches her is well known to anyone who has read the sensationalist (though historical) novels or seen the dramas of Victor Hugo, Dumas-p`ere and their imitators in the theatre. Do not be deceived by the Russian d´ecor and the folksy manner of Mr Shpazhinsky’s language: we are here exactly in the realm of French drama with its finely interwoven horrors. Not mental conflict but crude physical danger oppresses the spectator’s imagination: he is waiting for blood, he is all athirst for the loving couple’s successful flight; he wavers between fear and hope. The music of this whole scene (however it may be split up into separate moments) must be imbued with this alarm, this haste and feverish impatience. The librettist writes thus: Gde t¨ı, moy zhelann¨ıy? Ya zdes’! Poskorey Prikhodi, svet dushi moyey, krasa radost’ ochey! Neterpen’yem goryu ya tebya uvidat’ I k goryachemu serdtsu prizhat’. Bez tebya istomilo mne dushu toskoy, Prikhodi poskorey i umchimsya s toboy M¨ı podal’she otsyuda, ot zol i ot bed. Prikhodi zhe skoreye, moy svet. [Where are you, you that I long for? I am here! come At once, light of my soul, joy of my eyes! I burn with impatience to see you And press you to my burning heart. Without you my soul is weary with anguish, Come at once and let me fly away with you Far from here, from evils and troubles. Come at once, my light.]

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Tchaikovsky The charming music of this number, an Andante in the minor in 98 , is filled with reverie and pensive sadness, but at the same time with such idle languor and northern frost that it loses all verisimilitude on the lips of someone whose life is hanging by a thread. Kuma may say that she is afire with impatience, but she cannot listlessly, in long drawn-out fashion and with repetitions sing at length about this fire which is consuming her as if she were warming herself at a fireside while swaying evenly in a rocking-chair. I shall say, be it to the point or otherwise, that these minor Andantes in Tchaikovsky’s operas (often ensembles), usually occurring at moments when the dramatic situation is very tense, represent one of the greatest sins of his musical expression not only because they are Andantes but still more because they are often in triple metre and this calm rocking metre reduces the spectator’s participation if it is appealing to the listener, and on the contrary forms a hindrance if the spectator continues to gain the upper hand over the listener. Numbers of this kind have a separate Italian origin: although there are many intermediate stages, they stem from the quartet in [Bellini’s] I Puritani or the quintet in [his] Sonnambula which, as we know, made a great impact precisely as lyrico-dramatic moments. I explain the apparent contradiction for myself not by the fact that Bellini’s music has a stronger character than that of Tchaikovsky, but by the difference in ‘form’ (i.e. composition): all this precedes the Italian master’s Andante finale so much as an adjunct, so insignificantly, of such little interest, that it is scarcely listened to. Before the big ensemble marking the culmination of the whole act, the public significantly coughs only intermittently, the conversations in the boxes come to an end, and artists and listeners alike feel that only now has the ‘psychological moment’ arrived. Is that the attitude we are to adopt to our Russian master’s operas where there are interesting details at every turn, where the most precious features (including those for showing character) have already preceded the Andante finale? That is not in fact how we Russians listen to operas: we follow the events on the stage as well as the singing, and the orchestra too, from the first bar to the last. But in Italy, so it is said, the people in the boxes play cards (or did so until very recently) during the performance and forsake the card-table at once for a ‘favourite’ number. What in Bellini is not only pardonable but gives an impression of being perfectly legitimate and reasonable, in a Russian composer of our day, though it be altered in form, though passed through the crucible of Meyerbeer and Schumann, Glinka and Dargom¨ızhsky, is startling in its lack of inner truth. There is nothing more feeble or absurd than the attempts to explain the significance of Tchaikovsky’s operatic style in which St Petersburg newspaper critics entangled themselves both over The Enchantress and earlier over other operas – Onegin, for

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 instance. The late Galler16 (in Talk) went so far as to bewail the composer’s harmonic and contrapuntal talent, assuring him bitterly that ‘even at the conservatoire he wrote his set exercises with the greatest of ease’. Would Onegin have gained greatly, would The Enchantress have gained greatly, if Mr Tchaikovsky’s exercises had been written equally well, but with the greatest of effort or if, in spite of despairing pangs of diligence, they had been as bad as the exercises of Galler himself? But despite the ridiculous form of logic, the newspaper pseudocritics’ complaints contain a grain of truth, albeit a tiny one. Out of those Serovians, in the name of whom they reject The Enchantress or rejected Tchaikovsky’s previous operas, there is not one who could compete with him even in the matter of expression, to say nothing of the absolute side of music. But, regarded as works of our day and age, offered to a listener reared on Verdi, Gounod, Meyerbeer and Rubinstein, and principally on Glinka, Dargom¨ızhsky and Serov, these operas as a whole make an impression, as I have already said, of cooling ardour. The exception is Onegin, because it has no pretensions to well-articulated drama but is woven from a series of scenes forming something like an unfinished novel (as one might have expected from Pushkin’s original). The impression of ardour cooling is made most strongly of all by The Enchantress, where the music is no worse and the declamation is in fact better than in its predecessors, but which with its melodramatic, externally arresting subject, passionate in the French manner, confronted the dreamy elegist wrapped up in his own reveries with a task inherently alien to his own spirit. But this mutual estrangement between the temperament of the librettist and the composer’s favourite realm is only relative. Even in The Enchantress, such an abundant nature as Tchaikovsky can discover itself, catch fire, burgeon and compensate you a hundredfold for all his sins against musical drama. Even out of The Enchantress, he has managed to weave enchanting ‘lyrical scenes’ strung together somehow. If looked at from this point of view, then even Act III, where the excessive subtlety of the psychological analysis is so disadvantageous for the composer (and by the way obliges him to write a whole sequence of numbers in slow tempos), is full of charming details. In matters of detail not only the ideal but also the characterful come easily to Tchaikovsky: in what a masterly fashion can he shade in the feminine irony in Kuma’s speeches; what a gloomy and original figure is Kud’ma, a sorcerer in Act IV, the very same Kud’ma about whose late introduction into the cast we levelled a complaint against the librettist. I shall say nothing about Tchaikovsky’s more special sphere, the pathos of unsatisfied passion, 16

Konstantin Petrovich Galler (1845–88) was a critic of military background who had undertaken some study at the new Conservatoire in St Petersburg.

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Tchaikovsky the sad but not despairing and rather submissive mood, in conveying which Tchaikovsky has the same importance for the Russian public as Gounod has for the French one (or should one say the Italian one?), except that his resources are much more extensive. I shall cite as examples of this unprofound, reconciled but still sorrowful mood ‘Kogda t¨ı gnev v dushe moyey’ (‘When will you [still] the anger in my soul?’) in the duet of Yury and Kuma [no. 17], and Kuma’s arioso already mentioned in another context ‘Gde zhe t¨ı, moy zhelann¨ıy’ (‘Where are you, you that I long for?’), and finally the duet of mother and son ‘Day nam bog v schast’i zhit’’ (‘May God allow us to live happily’ [no. 9]), one of the most successful numbers in the entire score. But that’s enough of details. Behind that Enchantress which I have been analyzing here in my captious manner – I shall not say with implacable impartiality, for I cannot disguise myself in that mantle, but with a profound attachment to a conservative aesthetic – thus, behind this Enchantress which tantalizes and ensnares me with its magic but which I have not come to believe in, there lies another Enchantress which I acknowledge in its entirety – the Enchantress of Act I. In the exposition, where the dramatic conflict has not yet become clear, where his characteristic major-key-Russian, cheerful and bold tone which forms the other side of his being could display itself with its full brilliance, where the task presented no contradictions with the artist’s character and gave magnificent scope for his imagination, we have found Tchaikovsky – if not Tchaikovsky the symphonist, the composer of instrumental works without programmes or poetic titles, then at any rate the one who endeared himself to us forever with his Onegin. But the public is created in such a way that in serious music it prefers what is touching and sad to what is joyful or triumphant, so that for instance Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is more popular than his Seventh or Eighth. Be that as it may, Act I of The Enchantress belongs among the composer’s masterpieces and gladdens one’s heart not only by the unflagging interest of its details but also by the consistency of its general atmosphere, its ‘long breaths’, and by the ability to compose keeping the whole in view without being deflected, not heightening the tone prematurely or slackening it before the end. May I confess to a slight Schadenfreude? I am enormously pleased that the finale of this miraculous first act opens with a dectet. I do not seem to remember such a thing as a dectet in the operatic repertory. The word is derived from decem, ten, just as duet, trio, quartet and so on stem from the corresponding numerals. Duets, trios, quartets and so on are most strictly prohibited by the Wagnerian (and therefore also by the Serovian) catechism. In the same way they are proscribed too by the Mighty Handful, seemingly so disdainful of Wagner while in reality so dependent on 31

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 him. And here in the opera of a composer whom some accuse of ‘Wagnerism’ while others give condescending encouragement to his incipient ‘Serovism’, is a finale that is the very number in an act which even last century was reckoned the most dramatic and the most free of conventional form, which had to be steeped in the pure spirit of ‘dramatic truth’, which opens not with the tedium of recitative, not with orchestral clamour but with an ensemble with three voices’ worth more of ‘falsehood’ than the septet in Les Huguenots of the impious Meyerbeer. In celebration, I am prepared to offer a small concession. In the comic details of the folk scene in this Act I, in the speeches of Lukash, Potap, Kichiga and the others, one notices a compromise between Russian song style and musical declamation, the avoidance of recitative is noticeable, and if you definitely wish it, then the Russian operas of Serov contain something similar. But, after all, even in your idol Richard Wagner there is much that comes from Weber and much that is Donizettian. Ought we not to embark on a prosecution of Tristan und Isolde for misappropriating motives from Lucia? What in a well-intentioned dilettante such as Serov was coarse and clumsy becomes refined and virtuosic in a genuine artist like Tchaikovsky – that’s the first point; the second is that what in Serov, Dargom¨ızhsky and the Mighty Handful is the sole or the predominant component, will enter our ‘future’ opera like a moment, like material that will drown in the general element. I wish from the bottom of my heart that Act I of The Enchantress vindicates itself as a promise of this opera of the future, as a specimen of its aims and resources.

(g) N. D. Kashkin: The Queen of Spades. Opera in three acts and seven scenes. Subject taken from the story by Pushkin. Libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Russian Review, December 1890, no. 12, pp. 780–93. Kashkin/Tchaikovsky, pp. 129–47 At first sight Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades does not by any means offer particularly suitable material for an opera libretto; it may perhaps be termed a psychological study, the main figure in which, Herman, is incapable of rousing any special feelings of sympathy. For Pushkin, the story was probably shot through by the passion for card-playing which reigned at that time among the upper and middle classes; he knew and saw celebrated gamblers who won colossal sums as well as the victims of a ruinous passion for cards. Pushkin himself gave way to this passion at times, though in a weak form. In those days cards often led to grave situations which ended tragically. In our time card-playing has lost that significance [though some people continue to waste time and energy on gambling of various disreputable 32

Tchaikovsky kinds]. There was something heroic about the gambler of former times, in his duel, sometimes really a matter of life or death, and this heroism, though in reality false, was able, from a certain point of view, to clothe such a figure in poetic garb. In Pushkin Herman has these features; his passion is a base one, but his enthusiasm for it, although abnormal, is sincere, and one can sense that it contains the unconquerable energy of nature. Herman’s very failure, destroying all his plans and ruining him irrevocably, reconciles one to him at the same time, for had he not made his fateful mistake and won his three cards, he would have fallen to the level of a card-sharp who spies on others’ cards or shuffles them unfairly and wins for certain; his downfall preserves for Herman’s character the mark of an energetic nature come to grief in an impassioned struggle. That is not much, however, for the principal figure in an opera, and Pushkin’s subject in untouched form cannot provide the substance for a large-scale opera. [. . .] Significant deviations from Pushkin have been made in Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto The Queen of Spades, but entirely in the opposite direction: here the tragic intensity of the characters’ situations is taken to an extreme degree and the music, as we shall see, heightens this tension further, lending it a certain palpability or reality. Mr Tchaikovsky’s deviations from Pushkin are important not so much quantitatively as qualitatively [. . .]. [The action of Act I of the opera is recounted.] I shall dwell on this act for the moment in order to try to describe Mr Tchaikovsky’s new work. In the first place, the libretto contains major divergences from Pushkin, as a result of which the main characters Herman and Liza are shown in a completely different light, and in addition the time of the action is transferred from the era of Alexander I to that of Catherine. I must confess that I do not fully understand why it was necessary to effect this transposition in the period of the action; if it was for the sake of the costumes, then the reason is much too feeble: we have already seen that costumes from the 1820s did no harm to the success of Eugene Onegin; if it was necessary for the sake of the intermedia in Act II, then that would have been much less of an anachronism in the time of Alexander than a great deal of what we find in the text of the libretto in Catherine’s time. The libretto of The Queen of Spades has the merit that on account, firstly, of its origin in a story by Pushkin and, secondly, of the undoubted skill and intelligence of the librettist, the characters in it are completely unlike the stereotyped, impersonal figures of opera – on the contrary, they are all living people with definite personalities and positions. This also applies to all the secondary characters; as far as the main characters are concerned, then Liza has without any doubt read Karamzin and even Zhukovsky, and Herman has perhaps heard something of Byron. An era never fails to put its mark on 33

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 living characters, and they will remain closely linked with it, in spite of any costumes. The spectator cannot be deceived for a moment in this respect, and no stage props or assurances from the author can make him believe that the time designated for the action is right. What is more, it is sufficient to change a mere few lines of text to put everything in order and into its proper place. While retaining all the paramount features of his prototype, Herman adds one new and important one to them: he is madly, passionately, in love with Liza, and making her his own is the chief aim and objective of his aspirations; his attraction to gambling seems to stem from this predominant passion but, thanks to the ardour and single-mindedness of Herman’s nature, the attraction turns into an obsession which drives him mad. He regards a win at cards not as an end in itself but as a means of becoming wealthy and running away with Liza from other people, as he says at one point in the opera. If this love brings Herman nearer to the usual type of operatic tenor, to a certain extent erasing the distinctive outlines of the character in Pushkin’s story, then at the same time it gives him a more sympathetic human character, and the happy inspiration of the composer who has delineated this love with uncommon power supplements the truthfulness of the figure of Herman and rewards him with a surplus for the loss of some of his originality. As far as Liza is concerned, she is put in an entirely different position from the one in Pushkin. In the opera she is not a poor lady’s companion but the granddaughter and heiress of the rich and exalted Countess***, and at the same time Liza is the fianc´ee of Prince Yeletsky, one of the most brilliant representatives of the St Petersburg aristocracy. Liza in the opera has thus extremely little in common with Liza in the story. Liza’s character suffers from a certain vagueness, but this very vagueness of itself gives greater scope to the composer who has clothed her image in flesh and blood, giving Liza through music that independent life of her own which she lacks to some extent in the libretto. The remaining characters in the opera, apart from the Countess who stays just the same as in Pushkin, do not play an especially prominent part and there is therefore no need to dwell on them particularly. We shall move on to a survey of the general course of the action in Act I and of how it is illustrated musically. The music of the first scene of The Queen of Spades forms a single entity which falls into separate episodes closely linked to one another. After a short introduction the curtain rises and the opera opens with a very lively scene with choruses of children playing catch, playing at soldiers, of nannies, etc. The miniature children’s march included here is very fine and is brought to a striking conclusion with a basso ostinato figure. This number moves immediately to Herman’s scene and arioso. The arioso, with its elegiac melody, is

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Tchaikovsky very beautiful. This scene again moves on to a chorus of promenaders whose bright cheerfulness is excellently set off by the previous mood; the following scene contains a brief duet between Herman and Prince Yeletsky who are animated by opposing moods. The Countess and Liza enter. A mood of agonized alarm overcomes all the principal characters at this encounter like a premonition of impending misfortunes. This gives rise to a short quintet, which is constructed perfectly. After the Countess, Liza and the Prince have left, Tomsky recounts in a ballad the adventure the Countess had in Paris where she learned the secret of the three cards. The ballad is composed in the form of free variations for orchestra, and within it there appear for the first time the motives which are later encountered frequently in the opera: one of them describes the Countess, and another is associated with the three cards. The first of these motives is a highly original harmonic sequence of enigmatic character. The whole ballad is composed superbly and constitutes one of the most effective numbers in the opera. The concluding scene is devoted musically to the depiction of the storm, the background against which Herman utters his impassioned phrases. All the music of this scene is written in a very concise and lively fashion. The second scene opens with a duet-romance sung by Liza and her friend Polina. This number and Polina’s song which follows are imitations of the romances current in the first quarter of the present century. These numbers have the same significance and character as the Larin sisters’ duet which opens Eugene Onegin. In spite of its imitative style, the music of these numbers is delightful, and they will probably both enjoy as much success with the public as they do with Liza’s young lady-friends in The Queen of Spades; [. . .]. To dispel the gloomy mood left by Polina’s song, the young ladies sing a cheerful Russian song and dance. After the comic-serious arioso of the governess reproving the young ladies for their levity, they leave. The concluding scene of Act I is one of the most precious jewels in The Queen of Spades. Liza’s state of unaccountable alarm expresses itself in an extremely beautiful arioso in C minor which portrays that state of mind uncommonly well and reaches a climax in her rapturous and fervent appeal to the night; this moment is outstandingly good [. . .]. Herman’s entry is thereby prepared in masterly fashion. This preparation wholly replaces the missing story of the development of Liza’s passion for him, and the mutual situation of these characters becomes perfectly clear without the slightest straining of interpretation. Also perfectly understandable is why Liza was more startled than frightened by Herman’s appearance – she more or less had a presentiment of it, his appearance had become almost a logical necessity. After a brief recitative a duet begins. The captivatingly passionate first theme constructed

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 on a short rhythmical phrase opens with a three-beat rhythm, which lends the theme a particularly restless and passionate quality of movement; after the first six bars a broad lyrical counter-theme appears, to which the first motive becomes a counterpoint. This entire first part of the duet is permeated by an unusual degree of passion which, so to speak, dies away agonizingly at the words ‘then let it be death and with it peace’ (‘potom pust’ smert’ i s ney pokoy!’). Liza is by now almost vanquished and can only utter in a weakening voice ‘leave me’ (‘Uydite!’). Key, time signature and rhythm change. Herman movingly implores Liza to take pity on him, takes her hand and kisses it. The Countess enters, and her appearance is characterized by a motive from Tomsky’s ballad. On the Countess’ departure Herman distractedly repeats the entire section of the ballad relating to the secret of the three cards but drives that recollection out of his mind and turns again to Liza; the first theme of the duet appears once more, only instead of F major it is at first in E major, and then again in F major. Then begins a modulating stretta based on the first motive of the duet which ends in E major. This duet can stand alongside the very strongest works of this kind; it is absolutely bound to captivate the listener by its passionate quality [. . .]. The first section of the drama comes to an end with the duet. The fates of the dramatis personae are irrevocably determined, and all the rest is the logical, inevitable outcome of what has so far occurred. Liza, having given herself wholeheartedly to Herman, becomes his obedient slave, and the pressing idea which will drive him mad and bring about the ruin of him, Liza and the Countess, has imprinted itself on his soul. This act, which represents the crux of the drama, forms a finished whole, and for that reason I have divided it from the remainder. Here we meet all Mr Tchaikovsky’s finest qualities as an artist, his wealth of melody, his immense mastery of technique and, finally, that healthy realism which constitutes one of the most typical features of his talent and bears far clearer and stronger witness to his kinship with Russian artists, poets and novelists than any use of folksongs could do. [The action of Acts II and III is recounted.] The main function of an opera libretto is to furnish the composer with an advantageous canvas of situations and scenes without those trivial details which place heavy fetters on a composer. Beautiful verse and the presence of strict metre are in general secondary matters. Poetic metre is not needed and can be sensed in an opera only when there is symmetrical repetition of musical phrases corresponding to the metre of the verse; in all other cases there is no need for it because for the most part the breaking-down of the phrases in rhythm and music demands a division of the text by logic rather than rhythm. Modest Tchaikovsky has exploited this very successfully – an

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Tchaikovsky example is the superlative scene in the Countess’ bedroom, where Pushkin’s text is preserved almost inviolate; not even the very best verses could have replaced this speech unconstrained by metre. In fact, in Modest Tchaikovsky we have almost the first Russian librettist who fully understands his job and possesses sufficient talent to do it. He deserves a large measure of the credit for the successful creation of such a work as Mr Tchaikovsky’s new opera. The scene of the Countess’ death marks the opera’s climax as far as music is concerned. The very beginning of the orchestral introduction gives a complete picture of the scene’s atmosphere. Something threatening and irresistible is heard; it is as if a heavy cloud has gathered over all the characters’ heads, a cloud bringing inevitable death, as if a terrible fate has already taken charge of their lives. The whole of the music for the fourth scene forms an entity which does not lend itself to description; it is a combination of beauty, truth and expressiveness such as one rarely finds even in the works of masters of the very front rank. Even the secondary sections, such as the chorus of hangers-on or the Countess’ little song borrowed from Gr´etry, are essential to the general colouring, and Herman’s impassioned entreaties, where beauty contends with profundity, sincerity and truthfulness, are of striking power. The next scene, the fifth one, is also uncommonly powerful. In the music of the entr’acte, that is the orchestral introduction, one can already hear the sounds of a funeral chant interrupted in an unusually poetic manner by a trumpet fanfare sounding the retreat. It is like a confrontation between sepulchral gloom and a peaceful, clear reflection of life; its impact grips the heart. It is heightened as the curtain rises when the chant from the funeral service (a distant off-stage choir) becomes audible to Herman; Herman grows faint under the heavy burden of reminiscences. The wind starts to howl, one detects in the music the approach of something terrible, from beyond the grave, the Countess’ motive is heard, and finally the ghost appears; over a deathly stationary note accompanied by alternating mysterious harmonies, the ghost utters its secret; Herman loses his senses from terror and involuntarily repeats the ghost’s words. The impression made by this scene was such that not every listener could endure it while retaining his composure, a thrill of horror seized many of them if not all. After two such scenes the remaining two are not so powerfully disturbing. The sixth scene, the one on the Winter Canal, is musically weaker than the others. The final scene, set in the gaming-house, is very concise. The carefree mood which reigns at the beginning changes at once on Herman’s arrival, and one senses a dreadful d´enouement approaching; Herman’s superb song is like a final cry of desperation, and the heavy atmosphere is dissolved by

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 his suicide, like a terrifying thunder-clap, after which comes the tranquillity of all-forgiving, all-reconciling death. It is still too early to deliver a general judgement on the music of The Queen of Spades. One should allow the initial impression to subside, and then one could analyze the work more accurately; one thing is certain – that we are dealing here with a work of art which will come to occupy one of the first places in the repertory of Russian music. Later, too, one will be able to speak about details which will emerge more distinctly; for the moment, everything is swallowed up in the general, uncommonly powerful impact. [Performance and production were of the highest quality.] For the time being Mr Tchaikovsky’s opera overshadows all other events in musical life [. . .].

(h) G. A. Laroche: The First Symphony Concert of the Musical Society on 16 October. Musical Chronicle in Theatre Gazette, 22 October 1893, no. 18. Laroche 2, pp. 159–61 The major item in the first concert of the Russian Musical Society, given [. . .] to a full hall with Mr Tchaikovsky conducting, was the conductor’s new symphony (no. 6, B minor, manuscript). [. . .] I approached the new symphony with a sympathy formed in advance purely from the fact that it is simply no. 6, and not The Giaour, not Cymbeline, and not Purgatory. Has this sympathy remained with me after hearing the piece three times (at two rehearsals and the concert)? It has in part increased, and in part decreased. In the new work one must first of all draw a distinction between the material and the form. The ‘material’, that is the melody and its contrapuntal development, is magnificent everywhere. As regards melody, in the last few years a special richness has opened up in Tchaikovsky, an inexhaustible abundance and a passionate charm in his themes, and the new symphony is in this respect a worthy adjunct to the entire period. From all points of view the contrapuntal working glows with compressed energy and constant beauty; just as with the fates of the characters in a skilfully constructed novel, so in the contrapuntal sections of the B minor Symphony the fate of the themes constantly ‘intrigues’ you, and interest never flags. The form is somewhat enigmatic. The ‘second subject’, i.e. the second theme of the first Allegro, takes the form of a short independent Andante enclosed within but detached from the continuation with uncommon firmness, with the aid of an often repeated cadence; after it, comes a sort of dramatic seething, resembling those rhythmic and orchestral devices used in operas to depict popular agitation, a crowd rushing in, etc. Then begins what is known as the ‘development’, that is the contrapuntally developed central section of the Allegro. The secondary section itself is more 38

Tchaikovsky in the operatic than the symphonic style. I consider it my duty to add that in my own observation in the Allegro third movement mutually alien elements converge and blend comparatively better perhaps [than in the opening movement] simply because we have had time to hear both the first and second themes. There remains nevertheless the idea of something alluring and of rare beauty, but going beyond the framework of a symphony. In precisely the same way, the concluding (fourth) movement of the symphony, an Adagio instead of the customary Allegro or Presto, opens with a smooth melody in the major and ends in the minor with a muffled morendo in the orchestra’s lowest register, and seems to be accompanying something taking place on the stage – the slow snuffing-out of the hero’s life, for example; likewise, here too, for all the melody’s uncommon beauty, one detects a character which is not symphonic but operatic. The same thing cannot be said of the two central movements of the symphony, which in my opinion (in spite of all the fine things in the first and last movements) constitute the pearls of the score. In them music lives on her own resources alone and makes an entirely aesthetic impression, not confusing and troubling the listener with the notion of a [different] sphere combined with music or bordering on it. The second movement is a species of Intermezzo in 54 , keeping to a middle way between a fast and a slow tempo, based on a graceful, charming theme (constructed on a rising major scale) and once again captivating us by the inexhaustible pliancy and variety of its contrapuntal accompaniment. The third movement belongs to that type of fast scherzo so popular in our day and age where the main theme rushes along and is glimpsed only fleetingly pianissimo and spiccato in the string section; the first example, if I am not mistaken, was furnished by Beethoven in his Eroica Symphony. But here we are dealing with a wholly new species or, to put it better, with a wholly new and distinctive species indivisible from this widespread genus. The fast, light theme of the Scherzo is combined with the theme of a carefree and dandified march, whose 44 time makes up four bars of the first theme; in the subsequent development, which is lively, animated and bold, the march becomes increasingly solid and powerful, attains increasing predominance and in the end, after decisively overwhelming the flimsy opening theme, rings forth in a magnificent fortissimo. The purely elemental process of gradual thickening (like all the processes of mobile elements in the highest degree akin to music) is presented here in a matching musical picture which is not only technically brilliant but also full of genuine poetry. I cannot call to mind a single one of Tchaikovsky’s compositions from among those I like best, which to a greater extent combines originality of concept with artistry of execution, the dexterity of the craftsman with the inspiration of the creator, and I suppose that the time is not far off when the audience too, which reacted with respect but 39

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 restraint to the new score in general, the Scherzo included, will understand the beauty of it and place it alongside the composer’s most precious pages . . . [The audience is praised – for being silent during the performance.]

(i) E. K. Rozenov: Concert in aid of the Fund for Artists’ Widows and Orphans. News of the Day, 14 February 1896, no. 4536. Rozenov, pp. 182–4 Emily Karlovich Rozenov (1861–1935), a musicologist, pianist and composer, studied with Safonov, Laroche and Arensky and taught piano at the Moscow Conservatoire between 1906 and 1916.

The concert in aid of the Fund for Artists’ Widows and Orphans which took place on 11 February with Vasily Safonov conducting was attended by uncommon success. The programme was of great interest, and the performance of all the pieces without exception was astonishingly good; seldom has one left the hall of the Assembly [of the Nobility] with such a complete and vivid impression as after that concert. [. . .] Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony made a gripping, deeply tragic impression, startling in its crystal-clear, graphic quality and the true-to-life development of the idea embedded in it. There could scarcely have been among those present an ignoramus or a musical sceptic from among the devotees of Hanslick’s theories who did not understand that music of that kind is written not for the sake of elegant forms and combinations alone but for a definite idea fully acknowledged by its composer. Music acts upon us by hints, by analogies drawn from her resources, of the phenomena of life. Such an inspired selection of hints and analogies as is found in the Sixth Symphony speaks to us with sufficient clarity. The mastery which Tchaikovsky possessed in the final period of his work is staggering. He had every resource at his service in perfect freedom, without the slightest tension, as if no difficulty existed for him in making his choice. Thanks to this ease, the technical side of composition, in itself astoundingly beautiful, rich and varied, remains in the background when the impression is being perceived. One even has no wish to divide up the whole in the normal aural fashion, analyzing the make-up of the orchestral sonorities and musical forms, so tightly are form and content united here in a single whole. Let us take just the inspired development section of the first movement; it contains fugato as well as orchestral imitation and progressions constructed on the main theme; everything there is the purest thematic work, there is not a single fortuitous note – everything follows from the data set forth in the exposition (the opening section in which a composition’s themes are expounded in lucid succession). With a less experienced composer all these devices inhibit creativity and restrict the imagination. Here, the contrary is true: the 40

Tchaikovsky development is one of the most irresistibly logical and stupendous moments in the musical drama which unfolds in this movement, and all the forms of technique mentioned above are obedient means of expressiveness in the hands of the inspired composer. This very combination of perfection of form with profundity and consistency of content is indeed the true task of musical creativity; it is only when that condition is met that music attains the level of true art rather than mere entertainment for the senses. Paltry is the work lacking content which strives only for grace and symmetry in its sounding forms. Based on physiological sensations of order, similarity, contrast and harmonic combinations agreeable to the ear, its effect is a purely external one which calls forth no vital ideas, even in arbitrary fantastic combinations, and is therefore alien to our spiritual process of perception and leaves no trace in our consciousness. On the other hand, a programmatic or conceptual work is inartistic and ephemeral whose form is arbitrary, its images unexpected and unmotivated, where everything is accidental, and therefore in the event that it is without verbal explanations, it allows wholly arbitrary interpretations. Such compositions arouse merely curiosity, and that a chance one, or an ephemeral one. If those of us who defend this point of view began to analyze attentively some musical work or other, then we would be able at any rate to determine their aesthetic significance more accurately than can be done under the influence of a simple impression. Unfortunately, the dimensions of a newspaper article do not allow us to go into those details which the assessment of compositions in terms of concepts and forms demands, which in essence is the only thing which could provide any real possibility of reliably understanding and writing a critique of compositions and performances of them. Meanwhile, a work such as Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony fully deserves the publication of individual critical studies of a scholarly or aesthetic character, since it represents a splendid specimen of conceptual musical work – a specimen worthy of examination and capable of exerting no little influence on the direction of a future Russian school of musical composition. We must hope that with the present-day blossoming of Russian music a genuine critical assessment of it, which we lack at present, will not be long in appearing. [The other items in the concert are mentioned briefly.]

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CHAPTER TWO

Rimsky-Korsakov

The years from 1881 until his death in 1908 saw the creation of thirteen out of Rimsky-Korsakov’s fifteen operas and the majority of his orchestral works. After Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893, Rimsky-Korsakov took on the mantle of Russia’s leading composer. Further works by this composer are considered in Chapter 3.

(a) G. A. Laroche: A new opera from the Young Russian School. Snegurochka (‘The Snowmaiden’) by A. Ostrovsky and N. Rimsky-Korsakov, staged by the Private Opera Theatre. Russian Herald, October 1885, vol. 179, pp. 872– 90. Laroche 3, pp. 279–94 This springtime folk-tale (vesennyaya skazka) was composed in 1880–81 and first staged in St Petersburg on 29 January 1882. Laroche uses the term ‘Young Russian School’ to refer to the composers in the Balakirev circle, though by this date the circle was more a matter of history than a present reality.

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov is widely and deservedly respected as composer, professor and public figure. As his compositions and the tenor of the programmes performed at the Free School of Music when he was conductor there seem to prove, Rimsky-Korsakov’s sympathies lie with the ‘Young Russian School’, in other words, with the extreme left. Yet when still a young man he received and accepted an invitation to the St Petersburg Conservatoire, an institution which was in fact multi-faceted and eclectic, but which was regarded as a hotbed of aesthetic conservatism. At the time, such a choice might have seemed unexpected and paradoxical, but if an action can be vindicated by subsequent events, then Korsakov’s invitation to the Chair of Instrumentation and Practical Composition was completely justified. In this environment, new and apparently foreign to him, the young professor displayed qualities that no one had any right to expect, qualities without which it was perfectly possible to be an interesting, talented and appealing composer. The academic

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Rimsky-Korsakov side of the theory of music, and teaching in the most varied fields and applications were attractive to an artist (at that time many still spoke of him as an amateur), all of whose previous work, though of short duration, led us to expect from him wilful rhapsodies, outpourings and casual caprices, rather than the prosaic, strictly measured work of a scholar or teacher. At the same time this work was not confined to the Conservatoire. Rimsky-Korsakov was entrusted with the task of forming and training a large military band (from the Department of the Navy), and this gave him the opportunity to make a serious study of military instruments and military music. A few years ago he was appointed to teach music theory at the Court Kapella’s school. As at the Conservatoire, he acquired authority and, what was still more valuable, won it without having to compromise any of his ideas. There was a period in his life when it seemed to many that he had betrayed his idols, cast aside his radical chains and sham-Russian exclusiveness, and made up his mind to set off along the broad European highway. That is what was said of him in 1875 and 1876 when he gave excerpts from Bach and Handel at the Free School of Music, when his own compositions displayed a temporary longing to play tricks with the intricacies of counterpoint, and, in short, when elements by no means typical of an ordinary representative of the ‘Young Russian School’ started to appear. As I write these lines, I recall, not without bitterness, the gullible way in which a certain section of the press welcomed Rimsky-Korsakov’s imaginary conversion to the conservative camp, considering it permanent. At that time it was necessary to be or, at least, to pass for a pessimist in order not to have any illusions about this matter. Bach and Handel, counterpoint and contrapuntal compositions proved to be no more than a transitional stage for Rimsky-Korsakov. The personal development of the gifted composer, scarcely confused by his temporary deviation into an alien environment, has continued unabated in that world of ideas and moods in which the founder of the school, Balakirev, lived and continues to live. I am speaking here about ideas and moods, not about erudition and technique, which in Korsakov are apparently far more broad, diversified, and solidly based than in his teacher. In general, technique (for many, an insignificant and secondary question) is, I am utterly convinced, not only important for the overall education of every musician, but constitutes a separate realm, which can have its own high points and low points, its various levels and summits, and in which a composer’s talent can live, have its being and be blissfully happy, without needing anything from other spheres, and without having to search for anything in them. It could never be said of Rimsky-Korsakov that he needs nothing other than technique; he scarcely resembles a recluse, immersed in canon and fugue, like Goethe’s silversmith

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 making a belt for Artemis.1 On the contrary, life in the widest and fullest sense of the word beckons to him constantly: the life of lyrical moods in a song or a symphonic poem, the life of dramatic peripeteias in opera, or, as it is now customary to call it, music drama. Rimsky-Korsakov did not specialize in technique, much less in technique exclusively. Yet, one way or another, he displayed a very considerable gift for technique, something not manifested by his peers in the ‘Young Russian School’. But while being a very good and even interesting technician, RimskyKorsakov is at the same time entirely devoted to the teachings of the ‘Young Russian School’. He is no recluse, enthusiastically and patiently working on some Mass for twelve voices, but it is even less acceptable to consider him a ‘journeyman’ in the negative sense of the word – a representative of dull, indifferent and worthless prose. No one doubts his intellect or talent, but here, in addition, I want to touch on his warm attitude to musical questions. He has a quite definite character; he is a lively person – so lively that he joined the most enterprising, animated and, in recent times, the most militant of our musical sects. We shall give credit here to that sense of proportion and of what is right which have allowed him to be a member of one party while still enjoying the respect of everyone. But at the same time we must allow ourselves to point out that the school chosen by him, or which absorbed him, offered almost no basis for the development of technique on broad, objective grounds. By rejecting strict counterpoint in the teaching of music, and rejecting, or reducing to their most insignificant and incidental meaning, the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in musical history, this school was not ignoring technique, but understanding it in terms of a tour de force or a humorous trick. Discord soon arose between Rimsky-Korsakov as scholar of counterpoint and Rimsky-Korsakov as Russian musical radical, with the radical eventually coming out on top. Counterpoint has not disappeared once and for all, yet nor has it become the composer’s main, allpervading element. Instead, it has taken up the same secondary role that it occupies with Franz Liszt and other progressive composers in contemporary Europe. Should the conservative party (if we assume that he did at some point belong to it) be distressed at the loss of such a precious ally, with his sensible and educated mind, his steady and irreproachable character, his engaging and, in the opinion of many, fascinating talent? The short-sighted, who in 1

The reference is to Goethe’s poem of 1812 ‘Gross ist die Diana der Epheser’, which in turn is related to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 19; the former mentions a goldsmith, whereas in the latter it is a silversmith.

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Rimsky-Korsakov the old days proclaimed Korsakov’s move into the conservative camp and have now elevated a mere name or badge far higher than anything else, will probably answer: yes, it should; we very nearly believed that our numbers had increased and the disillusionment which has overtaken us is bitter and shameful. In writing these lines I shall not deny myself the satisfaction of preserving perfect moral balance. When in 1876 the false news of the unexpected increase in our party’s numbers spread, I did not start sounding the trumpet or beating the drum; now, nine years on, I am just as loath to give myself up to despair when the production of a new opera in Moscow has given us the opportunity of defining anew and more seriously the direction which the creator of Pskovityanka (‘The Maid of Pskov’) is taking, and convincing ourselves again how dangerous it is to be carried away by rose-tinted hopes. The Snowmaiden, which has already been performed a few times in the Private Opera Theatre, represents a huge step forward from The Maid of Pskov which I saw in 1872.2 This new opera has melody which is bolder and better formed, and it is more measured in its harmonic caprices and piquancies, but this is a subtle distinction – a merely quantitative difference. The music of The Snowmaiden is less exclusive, less one-sided, less morbid than the music of The Maid of Pskov. For all that, as a matter of fact they resemble each other a great deal. I am not grieved by this, firstly because Rimsky-Korsakov’s conservative deviations were ephemeral, and secondly and mainly, because fanaticism is alien to me. In the aesthetic sphere doctrines and views, schools and sects can scarcely be piled one on top of another, can scarcely be arranged in a neat vertical formation. That state of affairs is good for the repenting sinners of Dante’s Purgatorio, who drag themselves up into a hill and at the same time free themselves from their heavy load of sin. For art, this state of affairs is not suitable, for the moral criterion here is either too great or else insufficient. The parties here are arranged horizontally, like countries and seas on a map. It is possible in criticism to be a very shallow Hanslickian and a very honourable follower of Bernhard Marx.3 In composition it is possible to be a very splendid Wagnerian and a very dull classicist. In performance it is possible to play the piano exquisitely in Field’s manner and vilely in Rubinstein’s. If I am going to be completely truthful, I must admit that I did not want, and still do not want Rimsky-Korsakov to turn to the true path. It seems to me that he is ill-suited to being among us conservatives. He has all the qualities essential for an excellent heretic, 2 3

For Laroche’s review from 1873, see RRM, vol. 1, pp. 217–24. For Hanslick, see Chapter 1, n. 8; Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795–1866), author of Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, first published between 1837 and 1847, was one of the nineteenth century’s most influential theorists and critics.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 and very few for a true believer.4 I am not acquainted with Mayskaya noch’ (‘May Night’)5 in which, so they say, he provided another example of a deviation towards our side. I wish from the bottom of my heart that our official opera, prompted by noble competition, would stage May Night now that the Private Opera has staged The Snowmaiden. Savouring in advance the enjoyment which this unknown opera will bring (any work by Rimsky-Korsakov is both agreeable and interesting), I maintain in advance that even this score will not sway the opinion which I have already formed of the composer. The years of one’s youth to a large extent decide irrevocably the path which a developing talent will take. The creator of The Snowmaiden spent those years under the direct influence of Balakirev, feeling the inspiration, like his teacher, of music by Schumann and Glinka. Subsequently, when Balakirev began to take a great interest in Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov also shared this enthusiasm entirely, as did the younger members of the group after him. Through Liszt, full of Wagnerian influences, our composer entered into contact with Wagner too, an element of whom can be heard as clearly now in The Snowmaiden as formerly in the fantasia Sadko.6 Schumann, Glinka, Balakirev, Liszt and Wagner – this is our composer’s real home ground, this is where he feels warmth, light and freedom. Those of his compositions which are most heartfelt and vital revolve in this sphere, and when he abandons it the musical impetus begins to diminish and waste away. It may be that I am mistaken. Rimsky-Korsakov is still a young man. There have been artists, such as Gluck for example, who have expressed themselves with their full force and profundity only when they reached their sixth or seventh decade. No one can predict for how many years to come the line of development will continue upwards, or when exactly it will reach its apex, and at what angle and rate it will subsequently decline. If Rimsky-Korsakov is fated to continue gaining strength and maturity for a long time into the future, then unforeseen and unexpected sides to him might easily come to light. For the time being, I can only say that the spectacle of a Wagnerian or a Balakirevite at ease with himself working with a steady hand is more agreeable than that of a follower of Bach and Haydn, groping his way along for the sake of some academic experiment. It is from this point of view that I enjoyed The Snowmaiden through and through. As I listened to it, I felt that I was floating on a tide of Russian musical radicalism. That tide is still little 4

5 6

Author’s note: Do we need to repeat that both the descriptions ‘heretic’ and ‘true believer’ are used in a purely relative sense? An English bishop once said: ‘Orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is every other man’s doxy’. It is precisely in this almost ironic sense that I can speak about rights and wrongs in the free and unstable sphere of art, which is forever playing with subtle inflections, mirages and will-o’-the-wisps. Opera composed in 1878–9 and first staged on 9 January 1880. Composed in 1867; the opera of the same title is considered in the next review.

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Rimsky-Korsakov known in Moscow; the majority of operas which form it are still waiting to be staged here, and a single work, like someone from a wonderful far-off land, rouses curiosity and inquisitiveness, and will have a refreshing and invigorating effect in the midst of our stagnation and provincial sleepiness. It will be another matter when here in Moscow, as formerly in St Petersburg, the Mighty Handful’s operas appear in quick succession, and the number of new works representing this trend reaches five or six. ‘In great quantity’ our musical radicalism will perhaps, like the rod, prove to be ‘an unbearable thing’. [All credit to the Private Opera for taking up this meritorious work which the Theatre Directorate did not.] I do not intend to analyze the new opera number by number; instead, I shall confine myself to pointing out a few traits which particularly struck me. In its choice of subject, the opera corresponds closely to Wagnerian requirements. The subject is mythological: the myth which is at its root has meaning as a symbol, and may be understood as the embodiment of a philosophical view. It is hardly worth mentioning that Rimsky-Korsakov took on a ready-made dramatic work, whereas Wagner wrote his libretti himself. The most confirmed Wagnerian will probably not insist on imitation to the letter. Turning then to the method of composition, I find that the resemblance between the German and the Russian composers is continued here too. Both are concerned with the idea that ‘music be the means and drama the end’. As a result, both avoid closed musical numbers as well as periods and sections with perfect cadences; for both, the interrupted cadence becomes not the exception but the rule; both have a very severe attitude towards musical declamation; for both, orchestral accompaniment is not an accompaniment in the usual sense of the word but a symphonic development of a consistent motive or figure. Moving from the general to the particular, I cannot fail to note that here too, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s melody, harmony and orchestration, you can often hear echoes of Wagner, and, in the orchestration even early Wagner – to be precise, in the misuse of orchestral tremolo in the ¨ style of Der fliegende Hollander, a method later abandoned by the German master. Despite this, of course, one can sense a huge difference. The diatonic character of the melody, for example, is much more Russian than Wagnerian. Incidentally, I would say that in The Snowmaiden very often the melodic turns of phrase are full of nobility, simplicity and a Russian quality. We see a musician who really loves Ruslan and Lyudmila, and who is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of our folksong. But what is imprinted with this character is only the turn of phrase, only a bar or two, not the whole period or even the whole phrase. The step-by-step form of the whole piece (in the shape of the sequence) prevents the melody expanding and settling into a 47

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 course; this form skips along in symmetrical cascades. I shall not dwell on the misuse of pedal, since this is the vice of a whole era, and Rimsky-Korsakov is susceptible to it to a large extent, although no more than anyone else. This vice offers great temptation: each bar with a pedal sounds matchless, but the continual use of this device is a mannerism, and mannerism kills art. I shall point to another sign of mannerism. Unless I am mistaken, this one originates with Liszt. The so-called ‘harmonic motives’, for the most part consisting of two bars transposed in sequences, are a favourite device in The Snowmaiden, just as they were in The Maid of Pskov. Of exceptional interest and disturbingly enticing to begin with, these sequences soon produce a nervous irritation, almost annoyance, and then deaden feeling, and, finally, have no effect at all. This does not happen merely because there are sequences at every turn, but also because the harmonic motive for the most part is very recherch´e. The augmented triad plays an important role here. There are also successions of several augmented triads occurring in parallel just as in The Maid of Pskov. Unnatural and unprecedented when we heard it for the first time from Liszt (in the introductory bars of the Faust Symphony), this harmony produced a staggering and deliberately loathsome effect, like the sudden glimpse of a dead head grinning. It was possible to censure Liszt because, as a result of a striving for a precise formula as regards expression and of a heartbreaking cry as regards mood, in the style of Victor Hugo (Liszt has much more in common with Hugo than with Goethe), he overstepped the limits of musical beauty. On the other hand, it was possible to applaud his audacity and reckon that with a brilliant stroke he had shattered the technical framework and discovered a new way of dealing with the augmented triad, one of the most unmanageable and thankless of chords. In any case, this was Faust, this was a universal idea, a fateful question for the thinking mind and the believing soul. Liszt prepared himself for his symphonic poems – as if to perform a religious rite – with several years of seclusion and reflection after an exhilarating and glorious youth. Along with his small invention he possessed an ardent faith in an ideal, and if his path (of programme music) was false in its very essence, then in his choice and application of musical and especially harmonic means to illustrate his thoughts, feelings or attitudes, he displayed a most subtle fastidiousness. The succession of augmented triads in the opening bars of the Faust Symphony was intended to express something fantastic, and thus a hyperbolical, unprecedented means was chosen. But as soon as this previously unheard harmony appeared in print, it became common property and began to occur together with the commonplaces of present-day progress in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, in the works of minor Weimar Germans and, after [the decisive defeat of the French army in September 1870 at] 48

Rimsky-Korsakov Sedan, of similar French composers. Moreover, our young people who were still laughing right up to this time (in the St Petersburg Bulletin of the 1860s) at the ‘hysterical’ morbidness of Liszt, and being amazed at his insufficient inventiveness, fell in love with the new harmony and, as if it were a gastronomic seasoning, began sprinkling it everywhere, ending up using it to depict practically everything short of lovers’ trysts. It is well known that the ‘Young Russian School’ is interested in declamation [i.e. word-setting]. Some of its members are very gifted in the realm of recitative; they all try to keep the grammatical, logical and rhetorical accent, and even, on a higher plane, the psychological accent. In conformity with this principle, the school’s critical organs take an extraordinarily severe view of declamation in the work of others, mercilessly noting blunders and incongruities. The declamation in The Snowmaiden produces a very agreeable impression. After the undifferentiated melody of [Serov’s] The Power of Evil, it was refreshing to hear real recitative clearly distinguished from cantilena. The reader knows that I am a stranger to any pedantry in this delicate and dangerous area. We conservatives acknowledge good declamation not only in Meyerbeer and Hal´evy but even in Bellini. We have no hand in complaints about a lack of dramatic truth in contemporary opera; for us, the ingenious comment of the author of Oper und Drama does not have any point – at times it seems that the complete opposite is true: that there could be rather less dramatic truth. If dramatic truth is represented by Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, then that truth will be completely wasted. If dramatic truth is represented by The Power of Evil, then, despite its relative skilfulness and clarity, we would willingly consign it too to where the power of evil belongs – the underworld kingdom. Impervious to the troubles and vexations of a subject which is only of secondary importance in music, and dissatisfied by the modern impoverishment of melody and the collapse of form, which are the consequences of these troubles, it is none the less with pleasure that we greet and welcome any manifestation of genuine poetry in art. And although there has been much less of such poetry among our innovators than with Scarlatti and Handel, Bach and Mozart, Gr´etry and Cherubini, Auber and Meyerbeer, we know its value, even in a particular one-sided and immature manifestation. Incidentally, declamation too belongs among the poetic beauties of music, if a conscious and sensitive attitude to verse, thoughts and ideas is visible in it. It is not at all necessary that this poetry be included within the framework of recitative. On the contrary, the whole error of the original Italian and French opera to which Wagnerians now want to return us, and to which, with a slightly different emphasis, the Stone Guest school also wants to take us back, consists in the fact that at that time they were not able to write anything other than recitative. Russian folksong or medieval 49

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Latin chant are not, of course, recitative: but what deep, powerful, heartfelt and original declamation they contain! In The Snowmaiden I like the fact that the composer, although a radical, has not been completely inflexible. Rimsky-Korsakov does not have a narrow doctrinaire attitude; his nature is, rather, gentle and aspires to be versatile. He makes a clear distinction in his opera between recitative and cantilena. In cantilena, although influenced by a method with which I do not sympathize in any way (the continual repetition of two-bar sections), he is obviously striving towards a broad singing style, wanting to allow the voice to ring out naturally. At the end of a number he even has no objection to making a fermata on a high note, combining vocal effect very nicely with maintaining correct prosody. From my point of view, of course, I should have wished the form of the melody to be different; but the very material of the melody, the individual figure, the individual bar, the individual two-bar section, as I have already said, is beautiful and noble material. Had it not been for the tendency [of the ‘Young Russian School’], it would have been possible to make out of this material an opera meeting the most stringent requirements of art, answering to the necessary degree the demands of our day and age, and, most precious of all, imbued with a pure Russian spirit. This Russian spirit is the aspect of the party formed under Balakirev’s influence which is the most gratifying and offers the richest hopes. Not endowed with brilliant, all-embracing natures like Glinka nor possessing his cosmopolitan responsiveness (that sign of a truly national artist), our radicals, extreme in all things, treat Russian song in a tendentious and onesided way; but their understanding of song is all the same much purer and stricter than that of Serov and his followers, or of the Russian Wagnerians. The cult of Ruslan and Lyudmila, so sincere and enthusiastic, saves and will in the future save the ‘Young Russian School’ from falling into much of what the Serovians and Wagnerians have sunk into and will continue sinking into. Like all the members of the group to which he belongs, the composer of The Snowmaiden willingly takes folk motives and uses them to build harmonic structures. This method is a particular favourite of Russian composers; the dazzling example provided by Glinka could not fail to captivate others – a whole generation, or maybe even two. But this method was not devised by us; Weber and Beethoven, to name but two, used folk motives when they wanted to give their music an exotic character. In our Russian composers’ work too, foreign folk motives are quite often to be found, but their own native Russian motives are used even more often, and it is in this respect that Russian music, perhaps, represents an original phenomenon. Russian folksong plays a much greater role in the work of our contemporary masters than it does for French, Italian or German composers. It is used with love and enthusiasm. They build on it and use it episodically to embellish 50

Rimsky-Korsakov symphonies, and operatic numbers, and quartets and songs. It seems to me that they love Russian folksong above all for its distinctiveness. They are enamoured primarily by the fact that it contains something special, something which stands out sharply, and there is a great deal of this character in it. Sometimes people see in it only what is quaint and curious. The fact is that our own folksong has, to a large extent, become exotic even to ourselves. It would be a supremely one-sided view to assert that there is only one cause at work here and that merely a subjective one – to say, for example, that the reforms of Peter [the Great, ruled 1689–1725] distanced us too much from the common people, and as a result we, the cultured class, are not at heart Russian. To a relative degree, this too is possible, but there is an objective reason which is much clearer and much more important. Our nation [narod] itself, on account of climatic and social conditions, has been preserved in the form of such a whole and scarcely touched mass, that sometimes traits of the epic times are still visible in it. The quantity and quality, the rich content and charming form, the manly strength and feminine grace of our melodies must not evoke any historical delusions in us about ourselves, whatever the intoxicating effect of all this beauty. It is perfectly true that there are no such songs in the West, but this is only relevant to contemporary Western Europe. What is now called Volkslied, air national or ballad represents nothing more, in fact, than an artificial substitute for folksong, of recent origin and crudely manufactured. But all that this means is that in the West, because of the comparatively short distances and the dense population, the printing of books, means of communication and other factors wiped out the features of folk life and art earlier than was the case in Russia. Folksong that was not inferior to ours in depth, strength, transparency or beauty existed in France as well as Germany, England and Italy. Now it is no more, borne away by the merciless flow of historical movement. The difference between what is sung by the common man in Russia and his counterpart in the West is more historical than geographical and represents a product of the difference in cultural phase, not a tribal peculiarity. The circumstances of our musical development over the last thirty years willed that an awakening of interest in Russian folk melodies should coincide with the founding of a school of composers who inscribed on their banner ‘mannerisms and freakishness’. Russian folksong acquired by an external route this character of mannerisms and freakishness, which is peculiar to the piquant harmonies and multi-coloured instrumentation of our musical radicals, but which, in essence, is not at all akin to the epic simplicity and objectivity of folk art. Having discarded this element, we find that the Young Russian School continually use folksongs, that the songs they choose make excellent themes both for their melodic qualities and suitability for development, and, finally, that these themes, being of folk 51

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 provenance, are familiar to a considerable part of the public, are recognized by the public in a new work, and pleasantly surprise people in their new and unaccustomed setting and colouring. The Young Russian School use readymade melodic material to a considerable extent, write using ‘other people’s motives’ or, to speak in terms of counterpoint, use ‘given parts’. Many people make a reproach out of this. Many say that the composer must be guided by ‘inspiration’, that this ‘inspiration’ will whisper into his ear both melody and accompaniment, both the original seed and the final organism, and that a composition must fly forth from his head fully formed, like Pallas Athene emerging from the head of Zeus. But is a composition an organism in the fullest sense of the word? Is the composer fully the creator? Is he not too proud and arrogant, from our perspective, in taking upon himself a spiritual function which is only partly proportionate to our human powers? Compositio means placing together, confronting, building. The work of the composer, as Hanslick said so beautifully, is the work of an artist who puts things together and adds them up; the work develops in his imagination not with a continuous current but in successive stages. Works of art, to some not fully defined extent, are artificial works precisely because they are the work of human hands; they strive to be organisms – that is their ideal, but because of their lowly birth they are merely mechanisms. They consist of elements which are detachable though joined together according to the demands of reason and feeling; they may have parts which originate in different places, and may be an amalgamation of features from different times which are even, apparently, alien to each other. One could have a symphony based thematically on a Gregorian chant combined (simultaneously or otherwise) with a theme from an opera by Donizetti or Richard Wagner. This same symphony could contain a third, fourth or tenth theme by the composer himself, and they could all be brought into a more or less close relationship. But let us look further. Let us assume that the basic idea of the composition, its concrete realization and its final touching-up must all without fail be the work of one and the same person. What then is the basic idea? What is the original motive? Is it always a snatch of melody? Is the material always formed from C–D–E–F–G–A–B? The composer’s concept, intention, plan or, lastly, caprice can also be called an idea or motive. ‘Ne tomi, rodim¨ıy’ (‘Do not weary, my dear’ [the trio from Act I of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar]) is an idea; but the intention of taking it, using it in fourfold augmentation, entrusting it in that form to the viola, and then building an adagio or a scherzo for string quintet on that viola melody is also an idea, and anyone can make use of this new motive according to his abilities: a brilliant musician – brilliantly, an ordinary, honest craftsman – ordinarily and honestly, and a fool foolishly. An arrangement of a folksong for orchestra, chorus and solo instrument or 52

Rimsky-Korsakov voice has ‘as an idea’ the folksong; but take four different arrangements of the same song for the same performing medium, all with the folksong as the idea: then, each one of the four at the same time presents its own idea, in the sense of a different attitude to his task on the part of the artist, a different method of working out the material, and finally a different internal mood and spirit. If we compare them among themselves, we will find that the first is too timid and indecisive in its idea, the second is fanciful and morbid, the third is majestic and the fourth is trite. One may assume that there are still a great number of such predicates, but I shall content myself with these as examples. I wanted to make clear that one can be very rich in ideas of one’s own yet at the same time compose exclusively with other people’s themes; that the working-out of ‘other people’s ideas’ alone by no means implies ‘poverty of thought’; that the composer who spends a lifetime taking first Italian, then French, and then Russian themes, may be very original, fresh and new; that, lastly, genuine talent and genuine greatness are displayed in the creation of a whole, in the ability to develop it from an original embryo, and not in the ability to find a few notes or bars of melody in succession. Regardless of his love for working out ready-made themes, RimskyKorsakov has very little originality. This shortcoming, although to different degrees, is a trademark of the whole school. The whole school is made up of imitators of Glinka and Liszt, or Glinka, Schumann and Liszt, with some external similarity to Berlioz and a strong hint of Wagner. Imitation within precisely these limits is a peculiarity of the ‘Young Russian School’; it forms Balakirevism, a purely Russian phenomenon which for many years was confined just to St Petersburg. It is only in the last few years that Balakirevism has started to move out to Moscow and the provinces. But with different models and different aspirations – those of national character, or a particular school or an individual talent,7 imitation exists everywhere, in Germany, Italy and France. The absence of originality is a disease of our age. In the West, too, one sees people paraphrasing in a more or less intelligent 7

Author’s note: It is necessary to make a distinction between imitation in general and individual cases of ‘reminiscence’, as it is called by musicians – in other words, a coincidence or similarity in some detail of melody, rhythm and so on with some well-known excerpt from the work of a famous composer. Such instances occur more often, perhaps, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s work than in the work of others; but they can occur in anyone’s work. Chasing ‘reminiscences’ with the aim of putting them on show, exposing and punishing the composer, is an easy pursuit which has its supporters; sometimes it gives rise to highly ingenious, unexpected convergences. It is of no importance for serious criticism. At a peak of artistic flowering one comes across a multitude of motives and melodies amounting, so to speak, to common property which are repeated in a uniform manner or with very insignificant changes by a whole series of contemporaries. A few such motives (‘travelling melodies’ as Tappert called them) even pass through several generations. The more fruitful a composer, the more often he has ‘reminiscences’. Incidentally, the music of Handel and Mozart has them in abundance. [Wilhelm Tappert was the author of Wandernde Melodien, first published in Leipzig in 1868.]

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 and refined way what was said before their time and, what is more, in a far stronger way. In the West too, this is an age of epigones. [Laroche sets out his idea of the present as a period of decline in music.]

(b) Ts. A. Cui: Sadko, opera/heroic ballad (opera-b¨ılina) by Mr Rimsky-Korsakov. News and Stock Exchange Gazette, 6 March 1898, first edition, no. 64, p. 2 This work, composed in 1895–6, was first performed in Moscow on 26 December 1897.

The plot of Sadko could be recounted as follows. Once upon a time there lived in Novgorod Sadko, a talented gusli-player8 and singer. He was of an expansive nature, and life in his own land was too cramped. He gathered a bodyguard, abandoned his young wife and set off on a journey. He wandered the whole world for twelve years; in the course of his voyage he called in to the bottom of the sea, attracted a sea princess with his songs, married her, and then returned to dry land again, where despite his bigamy – which evidently went unpunished if it was contracted not on dry land but in the depths of the sea – he resumed living happily with his previous wife, enjoying the esteem of his fellow-citizens. It is obvious that such a plot would be quite unsatisfactory for a normal opera, but Sadko is an opera/heroic ballad. It consists of seven scenes which reveal the most important stages of the subject just outlined, scenes, each of them amounting to a separate whole, for the most part either from the worlds of reality or magic and, in any case, very tempting for musical illustration. [Cui recounts the plot again, this time in greater detail.] All these scenes are interesting and beautiful, compiled with skill from elements of various heroic ballads and could not be better suited to Mr Korsakov’s kind of talent, he being a great master of the art of depicting the magical as well as the down-to-earth. One should note also that the libretto is written in antique language, which imparts a special colouring to it. Mr Korsakov’s originality as a composer comes out with special power in Sadko. If you open Sadko at random at any page, a few bars are enough to convince you that the music is by Mr Korsakov and Mr Korsakov alone. One can find in Sadko, to be sure, quite a few phrases, harmonies and modulations reminiscent of Glinka, Dargom¨ızhsky and Wagner, but all of them have passed through Mr Korsakov’s imagination and technique and have become inalienably his property. They are the same words, but used to express different thoughts and feelings. 8

The gusli is a psaltery.

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Rimsky-Korsakov Let me remind the reader briefly of the distinguishing features of Mr Korsakov’s work, especially as they reveal themselves in Sadko. His melodic inventiveness manifests itself in short phrases which are highly suitable for harmonic and contrapuntal treatment. Not all of them are original in themselves, but in the treatment indicated they acquire an entirely distinctive aspect. As a harmonist he is inventive, and moreover always observes a sense of proportion in his innovations, governed by irreproachable taste. He has an excellent command of polyphony, whether it be simply counterpoint or combinations of independent melodies and themes. It goes without saying that his orchestration is transparent, beautiful and varied: in this matter he is quite without rivals at the present time. He does not get carried away when required to portray powerfully dramatic, staggering scenes, or profound passion or moral torments. He is a lyricist, and a master in particular of depicting magical and everyday scenes, often animated on the surface but at the same time bearing the stamp of epic inner tranquillity. In depicting these scenes, his striving for architectural regularity and symmetry is always visible, which shows through inter alia in his almost constant paired musical phrases. The operatic forms in Sadko are unquestionably of the present day and rational. They are dependent on the structure of the libretto, whose epic character has allowed Mr Rimsky-Korsakov to satisfy his aspiration towards architectural regularity and accommodate a great many rounded songs within the general striving for an uninterrupted flow of music. And as these songs are in couplet mould, then variation form, of which the composer has such a virtuoso command, is prevalent in Sadko. Themes conferred on particular characters also play a significant role in Sadko. But these are not Wagnerian labels, they are not leitmotives. In the first place, with Mr Rimsky-Korsakov every character has several of them (except for the Sea King, who is content with his five notes ascending and descending, but his role is a quite secondary one); secondly, with Mr Rimsky-Korsakov these themes are not merely repeated but in addition are developed and change character along with a change in metre, tempo or rhythm. To this must also be added that the music of Sadko is indisputably national [narodnaya], matching as much as it possibly could those heroic ballads which sparked it off. For his opera/heroic ballad Sadko, Mr Korsakov made use of all the music of his symphonic picture Sadko. He dismembered it, scattered it everywhere, especially in the sea kingdom, and gave its individual sections extended and varied development. We hear it, too, right at the beginning of the opera, in the tiny introduction depicting the ‘ocean – the blue sea’ in its calm state, with the beautiful, calm rolling of the waves.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 The first scene presents all the stages of merry-making at the banquet, beginning in stately fashion and concluding with the skomorokhs’9 wild revelry with singing and dancing. From the very first notes, original fanfares and bold triplets rivet the listeners’ attention, which is maintained right through thanks to the way ideas are developed, the accumulation of sound and many attractive episodes. From among them, I shall mention the poetic songs of Nezhata (a young gusli-player from Kiev) with their particularly fine orchestral ritornelli: her basic phrase of five notes descending diatonically , sounds lyrical amongst the sparkling Rimskian variations; the chorus in 11 4 divided into 44 + 44 + 34 : this rhythm is both original and natural, thanks to the pattern of the text; Sadko’s song with its charming accompaniment which in places has its own independent significance; the very energetic phrase of the senior priest ‘uzh ne v perv¨ıy raz govorit Sadko’ (‘Sadko speaks by no means for the first time’) with its sequential development; the skomorokhs’ wild song, with its witty, humorous harmonizations reminiscent of Dargom¨ızhsky and [Glinka’s] Kamarinskaya, while preserving its folk character in full. This successful, broadly developed scene serves as an excellent opening to the opera. Sadko’s song, referred to above, is hampered by the recitatives, of which there are very many in the opera (particularly for Sadko himself), and about which a few words must be said. They represent something halfway between the meaningless recitatives of, for example, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and the melodic recitatives of, for example, Dargom¨ızhsky. They are measured, though they may be sung with freedom; they are accompanied modestly, which facilitates clear diction; they are not without musical content, but Mr Korsakov shows little care for their novelty and meaning, and in this case he is right, because these recitatives are epic ones, not dramatic ones, demanding special expressiveness and inspiration; moreover, Mr Korsakov resorts to them only where the text functions merely as a link between musical episodes, but does not itself evoke musical images. Introducing such moments of tranquillity in the middle of the listeners’ intense concentration is perhaps even practical, if it is resorted to only where appropriate, when the situation on the stage allows it. In the second scene, after some strange enigmatic chords based on the notes of the diminished seventh, and after Sadko’s song, which I would call the normal type of Russian folksong, the fantastic element comes into its own. For its representation Mr Korsakov gives much space to the whole-tone scale and especially to the augmented fifth. One may say that he extracts from 9

Skomorokhi were professional travelling minstrels whose characteristic instrument was the gusli.

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Rimsky-Korsakov this chord everything that can possibly be extracted, and this chord, in its indeterminate tonality with convenient, direct transitions to six other tonalities, is unquestionably appropriate for depicting the supernatural. From her very first appearance, the Sea Princess is outlined poetically in lovely, light, ethereal phrases, constructed on a chord of the ninth and the chord of the augmented fifth, and thereafter everything that she sings up to the end of the opera is utterly beautiful. Sadko’s song ‘Zaigrayte moi gusel’ki’ (‘Play, my little gusli’) is fresh and graceful. It is set forth, like all the other songs, in variation form, consisting of variants of the accompaniment: chords, arpeggios, tremolo above, and ever more complex counterpoints. Sadko’s song changes undetectably into a duet of astounding beauty, in which at the Princess’s phrase ‘molodets moy, staten’ (‘my brave young man, my handsome one’), Mr Korsakov rises to surpassing lyricism. One must also note the Princess’s heartfelt phrase ‘na veki vechn¨ıye serdtse moyo’ (‘for ever and ever my heart’). It plays an important role in the Princess’s vocal line, returning frequently and every time making a fascinating impression. Also very successful is the Princess’s narration of her origins, which is constructed out of new and original harmonic shifts. The episode of the golden fish in the middle of the narration is especially nice. The appearance of the King at the end, with unintentional comic effect, showing through his severity, diversifies this scene, whose charm is heightened further by the frequent entries of the women’s chorus. The third scene is significantly weaker. There is no reason to doubt either the sincerity of [Sadko’s wife] Lyubava Buslayevna’s feelings or her Russian origins, but she gives expression to them with very commonplace and whining melancholy. But even this scene contains features worthy of attention: Sadko’s powerful chords, his recollections which are nicely done, the bell marked unobtrusively and successfully in the orchestra, and Lyubava’s powerful phrase at the very end of the scene. The fourth scene represents the last word in technical mastery and the utmost complexity of texture. In it appear visiting merchants with cheerful melodies, wandering minstrels with sombre phrases importunately repeated, skomorokhi with humorous affectation and the sweet-voiced Nezhata. At first their themes follow on one after the other, then combine and blend, twice forming a foundation in the bass for varied harmonic combinations, resulting in a whole which is complicated in the highest degree yet at the same time clear and transparent, giving an imposing and truthful impression of a motley, animated crowd. The periodic return of the same episodes lends this scene an architectural form of solid construction. Sadko appears. He makes his announcement about the golden fish, to an accompaniment of magical chords floating upwards; to the same chords, but now descending, 57

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 his announcement is challenged. A harsh sixth ratifies the disputants’ wager. The episode of catching the fish with its radiant chorus in praise of Sadko is one of the most brilliant. There follows next Sadko’s appeal to his bodyguard with its ingenious counterpoints, with the appeal turning them into a chorus, an effect which heightens its sonority; Nezhata’s folk-tale, to which is added the skomorokh Duda with a very amusing phrase, and finally the three songs of the merchants from overseas. The Viking merchant’s song is powerful in a heroic way; the orchestral opening, with the strings rolling up and down on the chords of D minor and G major, is especially powerful and severe. The Hindu (Indian) song is extremely rich in colour thanks to its chromaticism and the ingenious alternation of major and minor; it is richly imbued with oriental languor. The Italian song of the Venetian merchant is utterly feeble. For some reason it comprises three sections. The first section is more like a Russian song, the rhythm of the second resembles a Spanish song, and only the third section bears a certain resemblance to an Italian barcarolle. Further, all three sections are devoid of any musical interest. These are the only unquestionably weak pages in the whole opera. Finally, after the short but tiresome episode with Sadko’s wife, the scene comes to an end magnificently with Sadko’s song of farewell, first as a solo without the orchestra, then with chorus a cappella, and lastly with the complete arsenal of Rimskian instrumentation. The fifth scene is, like the third, weaker than the others; these are, and not by accident, the briefest. It is not without an austere colouring, but its music, for all that it is perfectly respectable and euphonious, contains nothing outstanding. The music of the sixth scene, on the other hand, is truly magical from beginning to end. The material used in it is to a significant extent the themes of Mr Korsakov’s earlier orchestral fantasy. After an orchestral introduction and a short women’s chorus based on the Princess’s very first ethereal phrase, Sadko enters. The five-note theme of the King is heard menacingly. But Sadko begins to sing (the theme is from the orchestral fantasy), the Princess joins in his singing and then even the King himself who has calmed down; furthermore, the 64 rhythm is combined with that of 22 . All the subsequent episodes – the King’s call, the procession of sea wonders, the King’s daughters (the rivers), his grandchildren (streams), the wedding song, dances – all are full of character, typical, rich in inventive fantasy and beautiful. It is curious that the King’s daughters (the rivers) are characterized by the same harmonic shape, i.e. the augmented fifth, as Wotan’s daughters, the Valkyries, only softly. The wedding song has a Russian folk quality and is maybe too realistic for an underwater kingdom. The dance of the rivers and streams is written in 58 , and moreover the uninterrupted quintuplets 58

Rimsky-Korsakov are combined with triplets and duplets. The fisherman’s dance is a brilliant scherzo based on one of the themes of the fantasy, like the final general dance with chorus. Its fresh basic phrase, the broad development of this phrase, its combination with other thematic phrases and contours in the orchestra, the gradual increase in the sound, brought up to a full climax – all of this forms a single subtle whole of rare fervour and passion. The dances break off to give an exceptional effect immediately the wise old man appears, and he leads Sadko out of the depth of the sea to the gentle, calm and beautiful theme of Lyubava Buslayevna’s prayer from the end of the third scene. The introduction to the seventh scene represents the sea and love; amidst the rocking of the waves the captivating phrases of the love duet reach across, with the curtain lowered. And when the stage is revealed Sadko is already asleep, with the Princess lulling him, bidding farewell and turning into the river Volkhova. Her lullaby is written in a mild affectionate manner, with a very original concluding ‘bayu, bay’ (‘lullaby, lulla’). It goes without saying that the lines of the lullaby are accompanied by magical orchestral variations. The entire scene is most poetic. Lyubava enters with her importuning lamentations and endless repetitions of the same melancholy phrase. Her duet with Sadko, after twelve years of separation, is sufficiently cool: it is a depiction of epic, meditative, rational love. Thereafter everything else, up to the very end of the opera, is filled with interest and beautiful music. The appearance of the river Volkhova is constructed on the typical five notes which serve as theme for both the King and his daughters, naturally with changes in its character. Then the same phrase changes into the accompaniment of the song with which Sadko’s bodyguard head off to sea in the fourth scene, and are now returning. A crowd gathers, and the opera closes with a big chorus which leads to the prayerful theme of the ‘wise old man’, treated in a broad and grand manner, and to the concluding theme, which is wonderfully bright, fresh and beautiful. One must add to this that Sadko has everything: exploitation of themes, combinations of them, harmonization, contrapuntal adornments – all are notable for rare mastery and intellect, as one can satisfy oneself from some of the details cited above. (In that respect Sadko deserves the most serious study.) One should note that all of its finish is marked by elegance and a pure precision which is tempered and intricate; and that the characterization of the opera’s dramatis personae is of the most successful. The merry skomorokhi, and the daring Sadko, and his wailing wife Lyubava, and the sweet Nezhata, and the semi-comic King, and the Viking and the Hindu/Indian – all these are portrayed in a manner which is true to their type. But I consider the portrait of the Sea Princess to be particularly successfully delineated. The mixture of 59

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 poetry, grace and sincerity with a trace of sorrow render her image infinitely attractive. In conclusion, all one can do is congratulate both Mr Rimsky-Korsakov and the Russian school on a new, major, masterly work and the Moscow Private Opera for acquainting us with it. [. . .]

(c) Yu. D. Engel’: Kashchey the Immortal, N. A. RimskyKorsakov’s new opera. Russian Bulletin, 23 December 1902, no. 354. Engel’, pp. 105–11 Yuly Engel’, later known as Joel Engel (1868–1927), was active as a critic in Moscow. In addition, he was a lexicographer and composer and had a scholarly and practical interest in Jewish music. He left Russia in 1922, dying in Palestine. This autumn parable (osennyaya skazochka) was composed in 1901–2 and first performed in Moscow on 12 December 1902. Its immediate source was a text Ivan-korolevich (‘Ivan the King’s Son’) written by Ye. M. Petrovsky, whom we shall meet at (d) as the reviewer of the composer’s next-but-one opera.

Until recently, Tchaikovsky could be considered the most prolific Russian composer of operas; but over the last few years pre-eminence in this line has shifted to Rimsky-Korsakov, who presents the public with one new opera each year, and sometimes even two. Such facility was a matter of course in the days long past when writing an opera meant composing a number of arias and choruses and then attaching a modest orchestral accompaniment to them. But nowadays, when operatic forms and the entire apparatus of operas as a whole have become incomparably more elaborate, such fecundity is something amazing, especially if you take into account the carefulness with which Rimsky-Korsakov’s scores are worked out. Kashchey the Immortal is his twelfth opera. The subject of this ‘autumn parable’ (in three scenes) is taken from the Russian folk epos, though it has been supplemented in many significant features by the composer himself, who is also the librettist, making use of Ye. M. Petrovsky’s ideas. Ivan the King’s Son roams the world in search of the princess to whom he is betrothed, who has been taken prisoner by Kashchey. But it is hard to overcome the old sorcerer: Kashchey’s death has been bewitched into a tear of his daughter, the pitiless Kashcheyevna, who lives at the other end of the world, ensnaring and destroying knights. Ivan the King’s Son is the only one for whom Kashcheyevna has felt pity and love. But he yields to her charms only for a moment and hates her all the more afterwards. The rejected love of Kashchey’s daughter rouses the Princess’s compassion; she gives Kashcheyevna a kiss and she, touched, for the first time in her life weeps. These tears mean that Kashchey must die; he perishes, 60

Rimsky-Korsakov and Kashcheyevna is transformed into a beautiful weeping willow. A reign of sunlight and joy begins where Kashchey’s evil kingdom was before, and the ‘autumn tale’ ends with a picture of a lovely, radiant spring. As can be seen from this brief synopsis, there is no denying the originality of the plot of Kashchey. It is developed concisely and coherently; the final scene (the Princess’s kiss), which lends deeper meaning and significance to an artless tale, even rises to genuine dramatic power. The language of the libretto is also good. But of greatest interest in Kashchey is the music. It is absolutely special, Kashchey music: new contours, new colours, new constructions, a real ‘new style’ which could have been called both impressionist and decadent,10 did not the first word imply only part of what is so typical of Kashchey, and if the second term were not linked etymologically to the idea of degenerating into or leading to decline. There is nothing of ‘decline’, any more than there is anything recherch´e or affected, in Kashchey. The lightness and naturalness of the writing are staggering. Everything has the appearance of being improvised. But look more closely into this ‘improvisation’ and you will see how much intellect, knowledge and ‘pre-conceived purpose’ has been invested in it. The entire edifice of Kashchey is built out of a handful of basic musical elements (melodic and harmonic ideas), which contrast with one another and at the same time are capable of all sorts of combinations and confrontations. Describing these elements in words is difficult: it could be done only with the aid of music examples. Each element more or less typifies a basic feature of one or another of the characters, whose whole musical life evolves precisely on account of the development of these elements. ‘Excuse me’, I hear a reader objecting, ‘but these are Wagner’s leitmotives! What’s new about that?’ Yes, of course, this is fundamentally the same Wagnerian system, but with this opera it has entered a new and interesting phase of development. And the peculiarities of this phase are as follows. Wagner’s leitmotives follow one another continuously, like waves on the surf, forming, in a familiar phrase, ‘endless melody’. But this endlessly mobile, endlessly flowing music very rarely crystallizes into the plastic fixedness of rounded operatic forms – aria, duet and so on. By applying his own leitmotives with strict consistency, Wagner achieves a connection in musical logic between the diverse moments strewn here, there and everywhere in the opera, but that makes it more difficult for him to preserve this connection between any two adjacent moments, since each is constructed out of the leitmotive proper to itself. It is true that Wagner’s genius made itself felt with particular brilliance in his ability to weave the most varied rhythms, harmonies and melodies together in a single musical fabric, but not even the most masterly weaving 10

In Russian usage, ‘decadent’ meant something very close to ‘Symbolist’.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 can give an ideal integrity to musical form – whether rounded or otherwise makes no difference – if this form lacks thematic unity. And it is precisely the latter quality that distinguishes the majority of Wagner’s operatic scenes, if you take each one individually in its own right. This shortcoming is especially noticeable with respect to scenes where the centre of gravity is not the development of the action or characterization, but concentration on a certain mood. How can you preserve the innumerable advantages of the Wagnerian system of leitmotives and at the same time avoid the inadequacies I have just indicated – the absence of rounded operatic forms and weakness in thematic unity within the limits of each separate scene and the mosaic-like style which results from it? This is, of course, a difficult task, and composers have often sought to solve it by compromises of all kinds – by restricting the actual number of leitmotives, or by alternating the use of them with rounded forms based on completely independent musical material. In Kashchey the composer takes the latter approach in part, but at the same time sets out on a new path: he constructs rounded episodes and entire scenes out of one or two leitmotives, expanding them by means of thematic development into more substantial independent formations. In this way ‘not only are the sheep safe but the wolves are replete as well’: the opera is unified thanks to the system of leitmotives, but at the same time the integrity and completeness of individual lyrical episodes are not sacrificed to this latest operatic Moloch. The following may be pointed out in Kashchey as specimens of such structure: the brief ariosos of Burya-Bogat¨ır’ (Kashchey’s servant) ‘Sil¨ı ne zhal’’ (‘The valiant knight does not save his strength’), the same character’s trio with Kashchey and the Princess in the first scene, Kashchey’s arioso ‘Prirod¨ı postignuta tayna’ (‘I have penetrated the mystery of nature’) [all in scene 1], Kashcheyevna’s arioso ‘Tsvet¨ı, tsvet¨ı, daruyte char¨ı mne svoi’ (‘Flowers, flowers, give me your charms’) and Ivan the King’s Son’s arioso ‘O, slushay, noch’’ (‘Oh hear me, night’) [both in scene 2]. One long and many times repeated melody is simply put into the mouth of the Princess. Here we touch on another feature characteristic of Kashchey – the extensive use of leitmotives in the vocal parts (and not just in the orchestra, as is almost always the case with Wagner). Another distinguishing feature of Kashchey, and one of the most striking, is the novelty and originality of the harmony. It is this unusual harmony which sets the tone for the general impression, and it is the harmony in particular which is first and foremost likely (on first acquaintance with the opera) to provoke the exclamation ‘Decadence!’ In conjunction with this decadent harmony, decadent melodies built upon it, with their strange and out-of-the-ordinary contours, rise naturally to the surface from time to time. But on closer acquaintance with these fantastical combinations, full of the most unexpected chromatic and enharmonic turns 62

Rimsky-Korsakov of phrase – unexpected even after Wagner – you become convinced that, in this apparently chaotic arbitrariness, the same iron logic rules here as in all the rest of the architecture of Kashchey. The composer’s power of portrayal in this direction is applied mainly to the musical depiction of the world of magic (Kashchey, Burya-Bogat¨ır’ and especially Kashcheyevna); Ivan the King’s Son himself and the Princess are given more ordinary combinations closer to diatonicism. Despite that, Rimsky-Korsakov’s harmony merits the name ‘extra-tonal’ far more rarely than Wagner’s; for all its capriciousness, you sense in it an undoubted striving towards a single principal tonality. The latter, by the way, distinguishes even the ariosos indicated above. Thus, we can see in Kashchey, here from the harmonic angle, just as we did earlier from the thematic one, the ambition to introduce greater unity in the matter of modern operatic construction, without depriving it, however, of the broadest freedom and individualization. About the orchestration of Kashchey there is nothing to be said; in this respect each new opera by Rimsky-Korsakov bestows upon the world many fresh and vivid pages. I therefore consider the score of Kashchey to be one of the most remarkable written recently. To a musician it is a complete revelation, a mine of information, a book from which one can and must learn. But will Kashchey appeal also to the humble mortal who wants from an opera immediate aesthetic enjoyment above all? I think so, but to a much lesser degree. The point is that the original technique of developing a leitmotive to the extent of broader rounded forms is not carried out consistently, but only episodically in Kashchey, as if it were an experiment, and not with perfect resolve. Hence these forms are in the end too small, they are not in sufficient relief and not always perceptible to the ordinary listener. The Princess’s delightful melody which is repeated many times even completely escapes being developed to the extent of a wholly isolated lyrical moment, although the character of the entire role is as conducive as it could possibly be to singling out such a moment. Kashchey has a further shortcoming, which though relative is nevertheless noticeable: it contains less inspiration than craftsmanship. Its melodies seem insipid in places, at any rate when compared with the dazzlingly brilliant colours in the harmony and the orchestra. The part of Ivan the King’s Son and to some degree those of the Princess and Kashchey (‘I have penetrated the mystery of nature’) suffer especially in that respect. On the other hand, almost nothing which Kashcheyevna sings transgresses in that way. The latter’s song ‘Mech moy zavetn¨ıy’ (‘My cherished sword’) is splendid. The unusual chords in the orchestra, at first sight completely alien, but in fact akin to each other, the yelping of the strings and the clang of the percussion instruments (during her song Kashcheyevna is sharpening her sword) bestow unusual force and relief on this energetic melody. Both of Ivan the King’s Son’s duets 63

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 (with Kashcheyevna and the Princess respectively [in scenes 2 and 3]) are also beautiful. The second is nothing less than a masterly thematic development of the three-note melody of the familiar folk cradle-song (‘Idyot koza rogataya’, ‘The goat with its horns goes by’); it is, though, less original than the first one. We cannot fail to mention another wonderful episode in Kashchey – the entr’acte between the first and second scenes. As is also the case in the second entr’acte, the music does not break off and it depicts a snowstorm blown up by Kashchey to punish the recalcitrant Princess. In the piano reduction this episode is frankly astonishing; all of it (some 250 bars) is maintained on one and the same chord,11 monotonously terrifying and simultaneously changing its form every minute like a chameleon. The rhythmic figure, anxiously twisting and constantly crossing from one voice to another, gives movement to the whole scene, while the characterful, basic little theme in the Russian spirit colours in the picture of the snowstorm with a special native tint. Unfortunately, in the theatre this scene conveys much less than the vocal score promises; for some reason it is scored too feebly. [Engel’ writes about difficulties in performing the work.]

(d) Ye. M. Petrovsky: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya. Russian Musical Gazette, 18 February 1907, no. 7, cols. 193–200; no. 8, 4 March 1907, cols. 240–6; no. 11, 18 March 1907, cols. 297–308 Rimsky-Korsakov’s penultimate opera was composed in 1903–4 and first performed on 7 February 1907. The ‘legend’ (skazaniye) in the title is a genre in Old Russian and folk literature recounting actual or mythical events of the past.

I In St Petersburg the evening of 7 February contrasted sharply with the afternoon of the same date. Until 8 p.m., St Petersburg displayed its European face, with people carrying voting papers up to tall sombre boxes, out of which is bound to flow, as from a horn of plenty, every form of blessing and happiness for Russia’s future history; at 8p.m. Art drew the city aside from the black [ballot] boxes of hope for the future to ‘the year 6751 since the creation of the world’, to the forests of Kerzhenets, Lake Svetloyar, and still further and higher – to the celestial city, towards the outermost edge of earthly Epicureanism. If I say that the characters and figures who appear in an 11

The diminished seventh is indeed the basis of this scene, though the composer departs from it at times.

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Rimsky-Korsakov atmosphere of hoary antiquity in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s new work, with a single exception (I mean the drunken scoundrel magnificently personified by Mr Yershov), are wholly remote from the contemporary breed of his compatriots, then that is not an indication of the new opera’s irrelevance to the present day. On the contrary, the opera is all too contemporary, for it amply corresponds in conception (and this is where its novelty resides) to the tastes, objects of curiosity, and entertainments which – as usual, not without Western influence – are seeping through Russian society under the fine-sounding and bold name, even if it does not always match the reality, of ‘mystical tendencies’, a name which covers equally a serious worldview and a great spiritual labour as well as light, coquettish fashions and a snobbish churchiness. The novelty and contemporaneity of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera lie, however, in neither the poetic material of its subject nor the music in themselves, but precisely in the fact that all this is shown to people of the city, to the set known as the intelligentsia, and in the refined forms of a theatre production. If we detach the opera from the interior of a theatre in the capital, from the usual audience of city-dwellers having a good time or putting in their evening, and look for a moment at the opera as a national (narodnoye) possession, as an offering of Art to the nation, then the apparent novelty will disappear in a flash, the concept of contemporaneity will be replaced by a sense of timelessness and the offering will seem ‘Thine of thine own’. We have now left ‘tendencies’, fashion, and snobbery behind. All these images were created by the nation long since, are still alive within it and are being re-created constantly; within them, within these images of a great increase upon earth, lies the heart of the nation’s true life, the clear stream of its true culture, the tender delight of what gives it repose and what it admires. Once they are created, they do not die, and so long as they are being created, no motley brutalization can ultimately threaten the nation that creates them. That these images, emanating from the most noble recesses of the nation’s soul, are not a fiction, or the idle amusement of a roving imagination, is shown by the fact that, completely in accord with them, the same nation has in reality created, and is still creating, in its flesh and bones, characters and figures of such great lucidity, refined beauty and elevated style as the whole long line of Tikhon Zadonskys, Serafims of Sarov, Parfenys of Kiev, Amvrosys of Optina12 and many, many more. After all this, the impression taken away from the opera will not seem too much of an exaggeration: namely, that the Legend of the City of Kitezh seems the most national of all Korsakov’s operas (in this sense only Sadko comes anywhere near being 12

Tikhon Zadonsky (1724–83), Serafim of Sarov (1759–1833), Parfeny of Kiev (1790–1855) and Amvrosy of Optina (1812–91) were Russian monastics, famous for wise spiritual counsel.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 a companion piece to it) and, perhaps, the most national work in the entire repertory of Russian opera. Herein lies its principal character, its main distinction. It goes without saying that the words ‘most national’ are not equivalent to ‘the best’ in the composer’s catalogue of operas. In examining the opera, about which even a first impression prompts one to say a great deal, we shall not go into all the details: the composer’s style is sufficiently familiar, and his music’s artistic merits are sufficiently universally recognized for there to be any need to discuss all the beauties and all the weaknesses in the new opera in detail. Let me say at an early stage that among the texts of Russian operas, which in the majority are feeble, Mr Bel’sky’s libretto represents something quite outstanding in many respects. Its language is stylish, rich in imagery and full of character. The material is planned in a clear and balanced fashion, and has evidently been polished with great love and care. The Kitezh legend has been fused extremely smoothly with the figure of the heroine, in whose personality and history it is easy to recognize many features from the Life of St Yefrosinya, Princess of Murom. As with Yefrosinya, Fevroniya is a simple peasant-woman, the daughter of a beekeeper; like her she cures a prince, and like her she marries him, notwithstanding the indignation of the nobility. She is the principal character, and in the Russian operatic repertory she is a character who is completely new, with the others merely surrounding her like the bystanders on icons. And Fevroniya remains not a dramatic heroine but an image, an icon. Her dove-like gentleness, tenderness and calm lucidity are not subjected to any dramatic troubles, and no psychological reactions affect her. As she is at the beginning, so she remains at the end, and in the middle too – her features do not change. This psychological immobility, this single tone – wholly explicable here, does not represent an exception in Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas: let us remember Volkhova, whose whole substance is exhausted by the single phrase ‘Akh, polonili menya pesni tvoi’ (‘Oh, your songs have captivated me’). From the standpoint of a theatre piece this, naturally, would be too elementary, especially for an opera in four or five acts, but this standpoint is not appropriate in discussing either Mr Bel’sky’s libretto or Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera. They are writing a legend rather than a musical drama, and just how the tasks set by the former differ from the style and requirements of the latter will be seen clearly when we consider Act III. Act I, the simplest in content, shows Fevroniya against the setting of her peculiar girlhood. She is a quiet observer, alone in the forest among the birds and forest animals who show her affection (a feature drawn from the lives of hermits who are saints), her soul vibrating in consonance with nature’s collective harmony. In these surroundings a young man who has lost his way while out hunting finds her. Fevroniya heals his arm which had been 66

Rimsky-Korsakov scratched by a bear, and charms him by her looks, her speech and her piety. They exchange rings, and Fevroniya learns at the end from huntsmen who arrive just in time that the unknown man to whom she is betrothed is Prince Vsevolod, the son of Prince Yury of Kitezh. The details of this act’s subject-matter provided the composer with rich material for pictorial music, for painting in sound, and the descriptive moments make a stronger impression than the heartfelt poetry of the dialogue. While all of a piece as a whole, this act seems the most monotone and insipid in the entire opera. You immediately grasp that special song (pesenn¨ıy) style maintained throughout the vocal part of the opera, even down to insignificant recitatives, but it is not enough. Siegmund and Sieglinde or Tristan and Isolde can sing on stage for hours on end without the attention slackening, because it is seized by vigorous gradation in the psychological content of their scenes, a gradation accompanied by correspondingly intense musical development. For all its song style, the scene between the Young Prince and Fevroniya remains only an ‘agreeable conversation’ on various subjects, at the end of which listeners sense that the conversation was very prolix. Several episodes in this conversation are beautiful and compel attentive listening. The descriptive part is more vivid and lively than the lyrical one. One has, however, to enter the caveat that in the highly colourful reconstruction of the forest’s poetic atmosphere, the composer has too obviously given himself up to reminiscences of the sounds and the pre-dawn rustling of foliage which held the young Siegfried spellbound by the cave of the sleeping Fafner. But then, as regards direct and oblique recollections of Glinka, Wagner and himself, in Kitezh the composer provides extremely rich material for those who like analyzing a score in search of primary sources. We merely note the fact that often some theatrical or poetic image or other which interests the composer has been reflected musically by other composers, and is noticeably associated in his mind involuntarily with those reflections which already exist. As a result, if a winter storm blows up, you discern that it has blown in from the Kostroma forests; if a forest starts to murmur, you recall Siegfried; if a bear runs up to Fevroniya, the description with double basses growling chromatically bespeaks its close relationship to the bear with which Siegfried frightened Mime; later on, we shall encounter a literal quotation from Parsifal and in exactly the place where Kitezh loses its earthly reality and begins to look like the ideal Montsalvat; and in the symphonic ‘procession into the invisible city of Kitezh’ it is hard not to recognize the correspondence between certain rhythmic and melodic contours and those elements from which the ‘procession into the hall of the Holy Grail’ was created. It was essential to point this out, not only because in spite of all these reminiscences and in spite of his undeviating application of the thematic principle 67

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 (leitmotives), N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic style remains the complete opposite, one can say the diametrical opposite, of Wagner’s style of music and drama; but also because alongside such moments of non-independence, which disappear without trace in the self-sufficiency of the general conception, those successful places and episodes where the composer emerges as unadulteratedly himself stand out the more vividly. In Act II Fevroniya has forsaken her beautiful ‘mother-wilderness’, and all ‘the vexations of this world’ rain down upon her. The action opens with what are, in my view (mistaken, perhaps), the inessentials with which Russian composers are in the habit of filling up their operas as proprietary scenes of everyday life. The focus of attention is the crowd and the crowd alone. This is really of no interest, the more so in that it is repeated with the persistence of tradition and these repetitions lack any novelty. After the folk scenes in [Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera of 1889–90] Mlada and Sadko, what can the less vivid, less lively copies of similar scenes which open Act II of Kitezh add to the new opera’s merits? Musically, this is Serov ennobled; on the stage, all these bears, gusli-players and drunkards make the embarrassing impression of a played-out old anecdote: the spectators and listeners on the stage grow faint with laughter or exclaim with curiosity, while the listeners and spectators in the stalls who nevertheless, even while involved in the twentieth century, must patiently await the end of these diversions of the on-stage crowd. What explains a tradition like this taking root? Surely not Stasov’s delight at the folk scenes in [Meyerbeer’s] Les Huguenots and even Le Proph`ete? But do such ‘traditional’ scenes have that inner artistic necessity to justify them, that correlation with the principal idea of the piece, which we find in the folk scenes of Pushkin’s Boris or Coriolanus, Julius Caesar or Shakespeare’s dramatic chronicles, or, to return to opera, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger?! Having noted that the didactic chorus of beggars ‘S kem ne veleno vstrechat’sya’ (‘Who is it that we are forbidden to meet?’) stands out as the most distinctive feature in this divertissement and corresponds most closely to the main tone of the production, let us move on to the contents of Act II. In the course of it there enters a significant, new and vital figure opposed to the general staid character of the main persons in the opera: the drunkard Grishka Kuter’ma, a descendant of the smith Yeryomka [in Serov’s The Power of the Fiend], the smart adjutant to ‘the prince of this world’. As they await Fevroniya’s wedding procession, two of the ‘best’ people (that is worthy or invested with trust?) bribe Grishka to laugh at the bride. This episode is redundant in that, for a drunken scoundrel, it is entirely natural to insult a woman and on his own initiative; and it is redundant, furthermore, in that the pair of these ‘best’ people are too reminiscent of the pair of senior priests from Sadko, and they also to an extent recall by their manner of 68

Rimsky-Korsakov behaving and looking around them that classically inseparable pair of conspirators in black raincoats who so amuse the present-day spectator in the dramatic sensation that is [Verdi’s] Un ballo in maschera. The appearance of this pair can surely only be explained by the detail referred to above from the biography of Yefrosinya of Murom, whose marriage to the prince mortified the nobility. It is legitimate to detect the spirit of those same primordial traditions with which the ‘New Russian School’ embarked on the reform of Russian opera in the form in which this detail has been expressed: this pair is a survival (possibly an instinctive one) from those satirical and publicistic intentions approved by Stasov and realized by Musorgsky under the name ‘the living word’ in art. Thereafter Fevroniya appears, and, to the listeners’ great joy, brings with her Rimsky-Korsakov’s creativity and artistry in their full brilliance. The wedding procession is a very vivid, colourful and lively page in the score. Grishka’s gibes begin, which Fevroniya answers with angelic gentleness as she defends her abuser from the crowd’s victimization. Grishka will not calm down, his speech becomes more cynical and coarse and the crowd drives him out of the way all the same. In this episode the figure of Fyodor Poyarok, the Prince’s huntsman and master of ceremonies for the wedding, is illuminated by a bright ray of comedy. When Grishka appears Poyarok warns the bride in a carefree, cheerful tone: ‘Gospozha, ne slushay brazhnika, s nim besedovat’ ne veleno’ (‘Madam, do not listen to the drunkard, you must not speak to him’), giving the impression that this portly figure’s [. . .] invisible button has been pressed, and he has made the only movement available to him. At the same time this episode incorporates a significant share of that staid equability which forms the special character of the group acting lambs in the opera, as distinct from those acting goats. What is more, the repetition of Poyarok’s phrase instantly informs the listener’s consciousness that all this is ‘not meant seriously’, that it is all a ‘legend’, is measured out, according to a ceremony laid down by an expert narrator, and then just as instantly, with a feeling of cheerful pleasure, the listener feels himself led into the realm of complete artistic stylization. He realizes clearly and distinctly that it is not idealized people who are acting and expressing themselves before him (such as the resources of music drama make them) but stylized people, who are related to real live persons in the same way as a fantastical carved wooden horse or a little cockerel adorning some structure are related to a real live horse or cockerel. There are some reminders of previous impressions when reason was somewhat at a loss: ‘this is too ridiculous to be beautiful and too beautiful to be ridiculous’, is the formula it suggests. The musical stylization of Russian persons – that is the main distinctive feature of the tales, heroic ballads and legends clad in the forms of opera by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. 69

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 II Grishka has been sent away, order has been restored to the procession, a bright wedding song flows along and unfolds for a while without hindrance until a new hostile motive in the orchestra’s lower reaches disrupts its concord. The song breaks off. The terrifying motive grows, gets faster, crawls along like a dragon rolling itself up. Hoarse trumpets (off stage) rasp out their menacing octave. Complete confusion. In crowd after crowd, the panic-stricken inhabitants of Kitezh announce the appearance of unseen enemies. The triple-chorus episode makes an impact and successfully prepares the spectator for the appearance of the Tatars, upon whose arrival the slaughter begins. The melodic theme describing the Tatars (which develops its full power and completeness in the choral song in Act III) lacks the hackneyed oriental quality (although the interval of the augmented second duly has its place in it), but its characteristic rhythmic form suggests plundering, predatory boldness, a wildness of spirit and daredevil impetuosity. Threatened by the Tatars (Bedyay and Burunday), Grishka Kuter’ma agrees to lead the horde to Great Kitezh, the route to which through the dense forests the despoilers cannot find without someone’s help. The act concludes with Fevroniya’s prayer (she too has been captured by the foe) ‘Bozhe sotvori nevidim Kitezh grad, a i radi pravedn¨ıkh zhivushchikh v grade tom’ (‘God, make the city of Kitezh invisible, for the sake of the just who dwell in that city’), a prayer which closely associates the heroine’s personality with the fate of the legendary city. If I say that the first part of the new opera ends here, and the second and more important part begins with Act III, it is not because the basis of this division is provided by the contents of the play itself. I am marking thereby only the break in impression (perhaps a subjective one) which was perceived at the first performance: at the end of the first two acts the composer of The Snowmaiden and Sadko came forward to the noisy, universal applause of the public, whereas after Acts III and IV the applause and salutations were without doubt addressed solely to the composer of Kitezh. Act III. Instead of the bride, for whom the groom, the Prince and the people are waiting by the cathedral porch, a blinded, blood-stained Poyarok appears in Kitezh led in by a boy. After the Tatars’ way of behaving as shown before, Poyarok’s appearance in Kitezh may appear strange, but we learn subsequently that he has been sent deliberately by the polite enemy to warn the Prince of the impending attack – a mission which says little for the Tatars’ quick-wittedness, since they have struggled with great difficulties to find the route to the city. Poyarok passes on what has taken place while the boy, with his good eyesight, standing at the top of the look-out tower, reports on what lies ahead. The Young Prince Vsevolod and the soldiers leave the city 70

Rimsky-Korsakov to fight the enemy, ‘to assume the martyrs’ crown’. The inhabitants of Kitezh grieve, and pray to the Intercessor [the Virgin Mary]; and their prayers, like Fevroniya’s, are answered: Kitezh is made invisible. The music for this scene, which blends harmoniously with the spectacle and the characters’ beautiful, consistent language, makes a deep and stirring impression. The epic tone, that of a legend, is maintained even here, and maintained wonderfully: despite the painfulness of the moment being endured, you sense all the while that the artist is conveying it to you in the pluperfect tense. The narrative of the person who has just witnessed all the horrors with his own eyes, who has just endured the agony of trials and tortures – that is, Poyarok – the people’s replies as they listen to him while awaiting the onset of catastrophe, the terrible scenes of calamity opening before the boy’s oracular vision, the speeches of the Prince and his son – everything is here set forth with the wonderful smoothness, majestic calmness and stateliness of a heroic ballad, telling evenly, seriously and loftily of times and deeds past. The hurricane spirit of music drama with its musical speech developing freely and breaking off freely outside the framework of deliberate symmetry, would have run riot at this point as it conveyed the horror, the confusion, and the fast uneven alternation of ebbs and flows in the psychological waves of the crowd condemned to perish. For Kitezh is living through the hours of its ‘local’ doomsday, so to speak, and these hours are of course filled with terror. The style of the legend, the style of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, makes this point into something different, and the impression achieved by these means contains nothing realistic, but in spite of that, perhaps, it is in the present case more sublime. The rounded formal symmetry, the regularity in the succession of individual characters’ speeches, the speeches of the chorus and orchestra – all of which are perceived clearly by the listeners’ consciousness – are taken so far as to acquire the character of a strict ritual, in conformity with the subject. Operatic spectacle and operatic action, as a result of this clear perception of ‘deliberateness’ of artistic form, become a highly significant rite, a serious and skilful ‘game’. The idea of an ancient symbolic choral rounddance (khorovod) has been revived here. The spectres of chaos stirring in the plot have been vanquished by harmony and rhythm, and in their victory, in their imperiousness, a theatrical spectacle reveals itself in the guise of a kind of ‘secular’ liturgy for the listener’s contemplation. The steadfast measuredness and concord of the sounds – that is, the sounds which create the impression – here acquire the mysterious power of symbols. It is not simply beauty, it is wise beauty, the beauty of wisdom. And, of course, when such beauty sanctifies a present-day stage spectacle, it brings it that much nearer to the unattainable heights of Greek tragedy, and takes it that much further away from the overwrought hysteria and realistic amusements of the 71

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 contemporary stage, and above all from that shallow, smug ugliness going by the name of opera written by the Italian composers of verismo. Such beauty is characteristic of the portrayal of gods and heroes, personalities enjoying a preferential right to speak in a manner that is dulcet like music. And from the depiction of individual persons and the whole people in the third scene of Kitezh [Act III scene 1] there is a whiff of precisely the epic spirit of heroism – we mean not the trumpeted heroism of conventional fanfares, but that conveyed by the formal roundedness, clarity and orderly logic of the music, an impression of the firmness, uncomplaining courage and self-control with which all these people prepare to enter ‘the valley of the shadow of death’. Rhythm, harmony and clear coherence achieve this impression, even in spite of the doleful character of the melodic speech at the opening of the act. The attempt to dramatize one of the principal motives (which plays the role of a recurring pattern in the general fabric of voices and orchestra) of the scene at the moment when the Young Prince learns that Fevroniya is showing the Tatars the way (a slander put about by Grishka), yields no significant results. On the contrary, this motive concerning the situation on the stage becomes here so insignificant and inexpressive that it even acquires the same bustling character as the well-known theme which accompanied sire Raoul de Nanjy [the central Huguenot in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots] on his famous walk round the suburbs[?] of Amboise. The impression made by this scene is so much of a whole that one does not wish to dwell on details; nevertheless, one cannot fail to mention the original beauty and character of the Prince’s aria (and likewise its first-rate text), the boy’s rich and highly coloured narratives, the strict, serious expressiveness of the choral prayers, and lastly the magical charm of the concluding ‘miracle’. This entire scene, with its noble and stately hues, is not a depiction of Kitezh’s ruin, but the funeral service for Kitezh, a solemnly sad Requiem (panikhida) for the peaceable and fortunate ‘city’. And therefore from that scene, from Kitezh veiled in sorrow, one would like to go straight to Kitezh lit up with joy, to the Easter Kitezh of the final scene. But the spectator cannot be allowed to reach it before Fevroniya, and the fourth and fifth scenes of the Legend [Act III scene 2 and Act IV scene 1] recount her subsequent fate. The Tatars have taken Fevroniya to Lake Svetloyar on whose opposite shore is Kitezh, concealed by the darkness of night. They tie Grishka to a tree, divide up the booty and give themselves up to indispensable drunkenness (indispensable, that is, for the subsequent fate of the dramatis personae) and moreover, just like Fasolt and Fafner on account of the gold, Bedyay and Burunday fall out over Fevroniya, and Burunday kills Bedyay. When the heathens have fallen asleep, Fevroniya frees Grishka from his bonds at his request. The latter, tormented by remorse, tries to drown himself in the lake, 72

Rimsky-Korsakov but, catching sight in the dawn’s rays of the reflection in the water of the city which has disappeared from its own shore, he loses his reason and runs off, taking Fevroniya with him. The Tatars wake up, and seeing the miraculous reflection of an invisible city, flee headlong in terror. This scene is linked to the preceding beautiful symphonic interlude ‘The Battle at Kerzhenets’, whose battle ideas are achieved with no detriment to its musicality. This interlude possesses the bright, cheerful spirit of, let’s say, youthful joie de vivre typical of many works of Rimsky-Korsakov. It is animated and graphic in both sonority and musical ideas: no new themes are introduced. In the music for the stage picture the magnificent Tatar song (mentioned earlier) stands out, so intricately decorated with contrapuntal arabesques that it even makes one recollect those splendid contrapuntal brocades which Handel unfolds in his oratorios. Unfortunately, later in the scene the composer uses the song’s bold, easily memorable melody so insistently that it acquires something like the qualities of a motive which keeps going round obsessively in your head. The scene of Fevroniya and Grishka contains many fine details. His sprightly theme is so much varied in the vocal part that here and there it takes on an air of heart-rending suffering, and creates intonations of aching anguish. Grishka’s hallucinations are also powerfully represented. The sound of the bells ringing haunts him, and the accentuation – skilful in the highest degree – of their harsh dissonances lends this ringing a nightmarish quality. The appearance of Kitezh in the water is beautifully depicted, though the composer is always successful with such scenes: the tone of the folk-tale is his element, the tone which comes naturally to him. I doubt whether anyone [but Rimsky-Korsakov] could have written The Folk-Tale of Tsar Saltan in such a way that the impression of complete artistic truthfulness heightened the charm of its marvellous improbabilities. The fourth act takes place in a forest thicket, to which Grigory [Grishka], who is not in his right mind, has dragged Fevroniya fainting from exhaustion. This long scene, where the madman’s wild, convulsive succession of moods and ideas does not disturb Fevroniya’s invariably equable gentleness, is new and original in subject to opera. At the end of it Grishka runs away – no one knows where – and thus allows Fevroniya to ‘pass away’ calmly. This demise is attended by several joyous wonders (candles light up on trees, flowers never before seen spring up – in their stage manifestation they are truly prodigious, birds of paradise sing) and it creates the score’s most ravishing pages. The orchestra, in the captivating magic of all its colours, sings florid acathists13 to the righteous woman and encircles her figure with an unearthly radiance. The ghost of Young Prince Vsevolod appears; in the piano 13

An acathistus is a doxological prayer.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 reduction of the opera this is a moment of inspired illumination, because the sonorous keyboard chords solemnly pouring forth the opera’s principal church melody, the melody of Resurrection, achieve Beethovenian depth and conviction, they really do become that ray, that impetuous, expanding stream of light, which seems to carry something unutterable with it, and, as you wait for it, you catch your breath and your heart misses a beat. To my surprise, in the orchestra this moment – apparently the only one in the opera to which the word ‘mystical’ is truly applicable – passes by insipidly and feebly, with the stream of light weakening into a soft, spectral glimmering. The transfigured Young Prince, after a fairly lengthy conversation, escorts Fevroniya into the invisible city. This conversation contains several moments of tender and thrilling beauty, as also of stirring sublimity, but they are interleaved with those moments which in experimental mysticism are known by the term ‘the condition of aridity’. In these moments the vocal patterns bear witness to how cold the souls of the Young Prince and Fevroniya have become and how inadequately the celestial light protects them from the views of that earthly monster known as Tedium. To demand, however, that music be able to portray in an integral way a state of very prolonged ecstasy would be too much. I think that it is even almost impossible – the single unflaggingly prolonged ecstasy known as Isolda’s Liebestod is an exception in that respect. All these wonders and beauties indicated are concealed from the public’s eyes by a dusty curtain of the kind known as ‘cloudy’, and the orchestra starts to play the brilliant symphonic picture ‘entry to the invisible city of Kitezh’. The mere presence of this scene, this march with its celestial bells, to say nothing of its musical content and form, is sufficient to indicate how far the composer was from any intentional ‘mystical’ notions or perceptions in writing this opera. But I shall discuss this aspect of the opera, its general character as a ‘legend’ rather than some kind of ‘mystery-play’, in the conclusion which follows. The Young Prince and Fevroniya enter the ‘new’ Kitezh which is brilliantly illuminated. There too are the Prince, and Poyarok, and the boy, all in radiant clothes, and the birds of paradise Sirin and Alkonost with their pensive tunes, and angels with reed-pipes, and unicorns with silver wool and other folk-tale wonders. This whole scene forms a fine epilogue to the legend and leaves a far from ordinary impression which you retain carefully even as you go out on to the dark square, into the bustle and noise of people leaving the theatre. The invariably strict and serious tone of a ‘legend’ is combined with the touching and naive purity of children’s dreams. The wedding song, so sadly left incomplete on earth, is resumed; in answer to the dumbfounded Fevroniya’s questions, the inhabitants of Kitezh recount the miracles of their abode in measured antiphons, then the doors of the cathedral swing open as if summoning bride and groom 74

Rimsky-Korsakov to be married. In the midst of all this, the wonders and surroundings of the heavenly city have not impressed Fevroniya to such an extent that memory of earth’s wretched and stinking creatures (an essential condition, you would think, for happiness in paradise!) has disappeared completely. She recalls Grishka. I confess that had I not known in advance both the subject and the music of the new opera, I should have felt terrible about this recollection at this moment, since I know from N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s previous operas how the composer likes to bring all the characters together in front of the footlights in conclusion, so as to be able to weave all their characteristic themes together in counterpoint in the final ensemble. But this recollection of course leads to different consequences. Neither Grishka, nor the best people, nor the bear-trainer, adorn the heavenly finale with their presence, and the matter is limited to the letter which Fevroniya addresses to Grishka and which when it reached earth probably served as the primary source from which the people derived their legend of the disappearance of Kitezh. III In coming to terms with the confusion of varied impressions borne away from the new opera’s first performance, I am not going to dwell again on the beauty and artistic effect of the descriptive moments in the music. Who, knowing the exquisite sonorous beauty of those enchantments in which similar moments in The Snowmaiden, May Night, Christmas Eve, Sadko and Mlada envelop the listener, can be surprised that in Kitezh too all this is also beautiful, excites the imagination in a bewitching manner and is enlivened with the breath of poetry? One would be surprised if it were otherwise, and even those who do not know how to listen will hear and appreciate all this. From the many colours of natural phenomena, from the strange marvels of folk-tale existence, some individual human being-like characters stand out in the memory. Their features are uncomplicated, they lack the polymorphic elasticity which can change a face into a riddle, and their spiritual life is so simple and straightforward that it expresses itself in the recurring tune of a song as if that were its natural form of speech. I have used the word ‘recurring’. One of the peculiarities of Korsakov’s thematic working lies in the fact that he constructs even the vocal part in his operas using that element. The speech of each of the singing characters has its own melodic formula, its melodic catch-phrase. As in the real world, every person has a special melodic speech intonation (not to say motive) typical of him and more or less constant, from which attention is distracted only by words and their meaning. In a lyrical opera attention is very often not distracted 75

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 by words (however fine they may be), since at certain times the words are drowned in the melody, which nearly always they do not control (unlike the style of music drama). And then the immutability of the melodic phrase peculiar to each singing character as it pounds away in one’s consciousness, converts them through the simplicity of their psychological movements into something like half-birds, and creates an impression of the enigmatic happiness in which these special creatures who are beyond reality, this motley flock of wingless sirins and alkonosts, breathe and move. Why is the impression one of happiness when many of them seem to be grieving and weeping? It is hard to say. ‘We shall sing like birds’, says the happy Lear as he takes Cordelia with him into prison, in Act V. And after the preceding four acts, he may rightly be recognized as an authority on riddles about happiness. The most perfect demonstration of the lyrical style in which several of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian operas are written – so much the antithesis of Wagner’s style of music drama (the style of free, dramatic melody) and Dargom¨ızhsky’s declamatory style, as well as the arioso style of the operas of Tchaikovsky and some French composers – has so far been Sadko. Now The Legend of the City of Kitezh has been added to the latter in just as full measure. It would not be a substantial exaggeration to say that the whole of the score’s vocal line has been stretched out into one almost uninterrupted song and that, just as in folksong the expression of particular details is neutralized by the mood of the general melody (used for different lines of the text), so in this opera, too, a great many dramatic details are washed over in an even wave of lyrical melody. The whole opera thus becomes a song of itself in its own right, and whether the stream passes through the voice of the Young Prince, Fevroniya or Grishka, one too often senses that even the Young Prince, even Fevroniya, even Grishka, are merely splinters and twigs borne along on this even wave of song. That this is not a listener’s arbitrary imagination setting down his own impressions may be fully confirmed by what amounts almost to contempt for declamation, for so-called truthful word-setting, which the composer has reached in a few places in his opera. For anyone wishing to analyze the score from this point of view the presence of many such places (I mention the following examples as the first that came to mind – the episode of the first meeting of the Young Prince and Fevroniya: ‘Sgin’ t¨ı, navozhdeniye’ (‘Begone, sick fancy’) and ‘Zdravstvuy molodets’ (‘Greetings, young man’), Poyarok’s attempts at persuasion mentioned above, Fevroniya’s appeal ‘Ne greshite, slovo dobroye . . .’ (‘Do not sin, [God gives us] a good word [about everyone]’) – a real curiosity from the standpoint of truthful declamation, the Tatars’ conversations, even some places in the dialogues of Fevroniya and Grishka) – cannot be explained 76

Rimsky-Korsakov satisfactorily by any aesthetic consideration, but only by the autocratic role of song, on whose principles the whole opera is constructed. A composer who has explicitly and exactingly relegated the importance of the actor and acting on the stage to a place below music (as is stated in the prefaces to several of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas) must naturally arrive with perfect logic at another more extreme conclusion: that the importance of the word in a music theatre production should be played down. From Wagner’s point of view, from the point of view of music drama, an opera of this kind may seem like a figure turned upside down, but – I say again – to analyze Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera from that point of view would be wrong in the highest degree and an outright critical error. To judge in that way would be to judge a work in accordance with aims completely contrary to those which the composer set himself; in accordance with a completely opposite type of creative nature from that revealed in his work. An opera by Wagner is a drama which has become song; an opera by Korsakov is song freely taking on the appearance of stage spectacle. This opposition also matches the opposition in the style of musical speech, and the opposition in artistic devices used in composition, which express the difference in artistic natures in an almost elementary way. The main resource of musical drama is the device of developing musical ideas, a development which is always moving forward, organizing a series of moments intensively into a single whole; the main device of songopera is repeating musical ideas, a repetition subordinated to the laws of a formal symmetry which is extremely uncomplicated and independent of dramatic movement. Folksong is based on repetition of this kind (in an elementary form), and Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera too is based on repetition of this kind. The development of musical ideas is not a strong facet of his work, and if one were to approach symmetrical constructions made out of repetitions of themes and other places in his opera (even the dramatic dialogues of Grishka and Fevroniya) with the criterion of musical drama, one would have to admit that the latest Russian opera has transformed one of the shortcomings of ancient opera: ancient opera (let us think of Handel) lacked sufficient text for the music, and a single verbal phrase was sung over and over again to different tunes, whereas in the most modern opera there is not enough music for the text, and successive lines of speech are sung to one and the same tune. But when we look attentively into the essence of the opera’s musical style we shall fully understand the naturalness of what, from another wrongly applied point of view, might have seemed an aesthetic absurdity. After emphasizing this peculiarity of the opera as an opera predominantly in song style, a style which suits the character of a ‘legend’ astonishingly well, let us bring to mind the characters, the individual cells or short melodic 77

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 turns of phrase in the lengthy theatrical song which had most firmly imprinted themselves in the memory by the time the curtain fell for the last time. The Old Prince comes first to mind, a character who is wholly special in the gallery of Russian operatic types. There have been many princes, but this one is new and has not been displayed before. Both the harmonic and melodic colours chosen for the representation of his personality are distinctive and characteristic. Eyes looking beyond this world, and sorrow turned into profound seriousness, in his hand a cross and on his head a crown – the latter are not present, though, but may be found in similar figures standing motionless on the second tier of a gilded iconostasis.14 The complete antithesis of this seriousness, inner radiance and brave firmness of spirit is the hysterical alcoholic Grishka, an insolent carousing fellow, whose thoughts and feelings are as remote from equilibrium as his unsteady legs. His melody and manner of expression contain genuinely something impudent and impetuous, while his tearfulness and melancholy sincerity is mingled with unctuousness. The figure is a repulsive one but it is vivid. And then there is Fevroniya, a pure soul, whose virtues exposed the librettist and composer to the great danger of falling into complacent benevolence and, instead of portraying one pure in heart to whom it has been promised that they shall see God, portraying rather something resembling an affectionate calf who is ready not just to take suck from two females but from the whole world; for it is altogether difficult to portray a female saint, still more one all of whose reason and feeling are tenderness alone. And if one says that this difficult heroine hardly ever slips into the spurious tone of model figures from a children’s reader, or does not leave any impression of sickly sweetness at the very end but on the contrary – to say nothing of the captivating poetic quality of her ‘demise’ – disposes people in her favour by her simple-heartedness, and sometimes also by the warm sincerity of her tone, then this alone can show what invigorating creative powers the composer of fourteen operas still retains. One cannot fail to note that in this opera the invariable cock-and-bull story about the mutual love of operatic tenors and prima donnas is relegated to the background, made almost unnoticeable, in an extremely successful manner. A character who on the strength of her moral qualities and some of the circumstances of her life may be regarded as a saint is indeed something new on the Russian15 14 15

Feasts associated with the life of Christ and the Mother of God provide subjects for the icons on the second tier of an iconostasis. Author’s note: It is not new on the Western stage, where even better-known saints find occasion to sing an aria or some duets. John the Baptist sings in Strauss’ Salome, just as he sang before in Massenet’s H´erodiade. Saint Godeliva is the heroine of an opera [Godelieve] by [Edgar] Tinel and St Cecilia provided the title of [Joseph] Ryelandt’s music drama [Sainte C´ecile].

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Rimsky-Korsakov operatic stage (let us forget about the altogether episodic appearance of the Old Apparition16 in Sadko). Her presence at the heart of the opera, the fact that it is a big role to which musical motives of a church character are assigned in the score, the abundance of peals of bells, the luminescent appearance of the ‘celestial city’ in the finale, and the incense with which the auditorium is fumigated when it appears – all this taken together probably gave cause for Rimsky-Korsakov’s new opera to be considered a ‘mystical’ work. If by mysticism is meant an external concern with ecclesiasticism, then this name perhaps encompasses nothing erroneous. But if one treats this word seriously and with due caution, if one admits that even the term ‘mystery-play’ (misteriya) still does not predetermine the indispensable presence of anything truly mystical (as was the case with the medieval mystery-plays), then we shall see that RimskyKorsakov’s opera as a complete work of art is extremely remote in character from ‘mysticism’ – perhaps even more remote from it than the parody icons of Viktor Vasnetsov, which are themselves not very close to it. Let us enter a reservation. Given a broad interpretation of this word, it is possible, maybe, to discern in every genuine work of art, a work ignited from the unquenchable fire of Beauty, some fact of a mystical order. But broad views provide a very uncomfortable basis for analysis. Taking such a view, for anyone going beyond the usual mechanical classification of impressions, it would be difficult to define why The Legend of Kitezh should be considered more mystical than, say, The Snowmaiden, Onegin or Carmen; almost as difficult as explaining why clowns’ caps of white lilies are recognized as being more mystical than the tousled chignons of coloured chrysanthemums . . . It remains to measure the legend against the more fixed understanding of mysticism revealed by Devotees to the comprehension of ordinary mortals. Like two pathways leading to one destination, there are two kinds, or rather two types, of mysticism (the need for brevity forces me to submit to the fatal scourge of sharp distinctions and broad generalizations): Eastern mysticism – principally Vedic and Buddhist; and Western mysticism – principally Christian. Both equally invite the human spirit which has risen above the conventions of inert materiality and inert psychology to embark on the path of superhuman experience. The instrument of the first is Reason, and the mode of experiment is Contemplation; the instrument of the second is the Heart, and the mode of experiment Inflamement. There is but one object of experiment, for Truth is God, and Love is God. The point of the experiment is the God-transformation of the spirit, for the human spirit is in this case like God 16

This character (Starchishche) is what remained of St Nicholas after censorship: his intervention compels Sadko to return to dry land.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 in potential, like God in-becoming. The destination of both pathways is the destruction of the fetters of individuation, victory over the universal evil of the separated ‘I’, the fusion of this split thing with the whole, with Everything and with the One – regardless of whether we call this All-in-One the Father of Jesus, the Nirvana17 of the Buddhists, the multifaceted diamond of Teresa of Avila18 or the Dark Abyss of the Wondrous Ruysbroeck.19 ‘Taste and ye shall be like gods’ (like individual gods) was the corrupting error heard at the beginning of history. ‘I and the Father are one . . . the Father is in Me and I in Him’ was the correction made in the middle of it. This is all very well, the reader will be thinking, but how are these beautiful and abstruse things related to the opera The Legend of Kitezh? If you suppose, reader, that they have none at all, then why should we call this opera mystical? Why should we do this, nevertheless, if this epithet in no way enhances the excellent merits in which the new opera so abounds, but on the contrary conjures up an incorrect idea about its purport and character? And indeed what relationship to what is outlined above, the ‘reader’ must be thinking, can any musical works ever have which are not intended for the kliros [the place(s) where the choir sings in an Orthodox church] or the arches of churches, but for the so-called secular theatre or the concert platform? To avoid long discussions, let us take some concrete examples. We may apply the epithet ‘mystical’, in my opinion, to the greatest extent (and perhaps even in full) to two musical and music-theatre works known to us. These works are (1) Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, its finale in particular, and (2) Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The works of the latter in general, beginning ¨ with Tannhauser, contain many mystical moments, but the most unalloyed in the meaning and expression of these moments is his drama about Tristan. All the evil and grief of universal individuation find expression there in frenzied cries of the heart. The whole torment, the whole torture of the characters represented, lies in the fact that ‘I’ am not ‘You’, and ‘You are not Me’, and that apart from ‘You and Me’ there stands another great ‘It’ hostile to us; whether it is called the World, Day, Melot or Mark, its whole evil as far as we are concerned is that it is ‘not us’. These two souls are aflame with such a great indomitable fire, athirst for such full, perfect union in one, that any earthly combination in conditions of individuality remains for them a poor and weak parody of genuine conjoining. On uniting, they wish to prolong the instant into Eternity, and for nothing Else to enter their 17

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Author’s note: As the word is commonly used, the idea of Nirvana is often mixed up with the concept of non-existence. But this is mistaken. Nirvana is a positive concept, and at any rate no less positive than the enigmatic En-Sof of the Kabbalists. Teresa of Avila (1515–82), a mystic ascetic nun. Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293–1381), a Flemish mystic.

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Rimsky-Korsakov consciousness other than themselves, to prevent them being one – i.e. in the opposite sense, their striving is to become All. The dramatic portrayal of two souls inflamed by Eros resonates with such a sharp curse on this ‘most beautiful of worlds’ that even the familiar cruel condemnations of ‘this world’ written down by ascetics leading a monastic life pale, seem cold and meaningless. And the passion in which the music of Tristan is drenched to such an extent that it really becomes terrifying – like a reddish simoom blinding the eyes and constricting one’s breathing? Passion, which is terrifying in the secrets of its outcome and in the secrets of its conclusion? Are not these melodies – gasping, groaning, exploding with rapture, helplessly fainting and then taking wing again, are not these chords – muffled, mysterious, wearily extended, full of aspirations, insinuating and tender, audacious and rapacious, are they not somehow familiar to the person who consults history with its astounding excess of passion, who examines the staggering writings and confessions of Angela da Foligno, Catherine of Siena, Camilla Varano, Princess of Camerino,20 and other saints betrothed to the Heavenly Bridegroom, fearless zealots of mystical experience? . . . So is Tristan a mystical work? Even without bells and incense? . . . There is a qualification: if one can consider mystical works Rostand’s La Samaritaine, Massenet’s Marie-Madeleine, Parland’s Church of the Resurrection,21 the booklets and sermons of the Russian Lacordaires and Bossuets,22 then Tristan of course does not belong in this category. The contents of the Ninth Symphony are well known to everyone. Whether it is the history of a soul satiated with this world and rejecting it, just as the shepherd in the talkative Zarathustra’s vision spat out the snake’s head he had eaten and began to dance with joy, or whether something else is portrayed here – one thing is certain: this is the history of a soul outgrowing its torments, its despairs, its joys and its meditations, a soul becoming something more than it is, attaining the blessed state of Joy, uniting it completely with the Whole and with All. The musical motive of this finale, written by an old man who was deaf and tragically unhappy, is almost dance-like, is so free, light, winged, cheerful and uninhibited, as many of the melodies of our Easter morning service are cheerful and uninhibited – cheerful and uninhibited to such a degree, so transforming all the preceding impressions and sensations, that the name ‘mystic’ must seem illicitly attached to this finale, 20 21 22

Angela da Foligno (c. 1248–1309), Catherine of Siena (probably 1347–80) and Camilla Varano, Princess of Camerino (1458–1524) were mystics. Also known as the Church of the Saviour ‘On the Spilled Blood’, this neo-Russian building stands in the capital on the site of Alexander II’s assassination. Lacordaire (1802–61) and Bossuet (1627–1704) were priests who asserted the power of French Catholicism.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 if one acknowledges this epithet as the inalienable and exclusive property of the organ’s unhurried chords, or of the emaciated maidens with lilies in their hands, dilated pupils and faces stretched by hypochondria in Art nouveau icon-painting. If, after examining the essence of the two works named, we consider the character of the creative work realizing this essence, do we not notice first and foremost that the common division of artists in accordance with the type of their work (which is not unfounded) into subjective and objective is completely inapplicable here? For the concepts of subjective and objective fuse inseparably in the impression experienced here into a single whole. And the performance ideal of these works is that each listener should simultaneously sense these sounds in the sounds of his own soul. It is beyond question that Beethoven is here expressing not only his own torments and joys, but, as the fruit of his meditations and sympathies – at the same time also the torments and joys of all humanity, of the Great Man, of Adam languishing and liberated. At the same time he is himself undoubtedly dancing in the choral round-dance of Joy, and his breath can be heard in the ‘kiss of the whole earth’, and his heart is imbued with a palpitating sense of the presence of the ‘loving Father’. Likewise, in Tristan too the creator is inseparably fused with his creation. With Isolde he catches the fading glance of the expiring Tristan, with Kurwenal he seeks an outlet for his boredom in the ardour of a last battle, with Tristan he exposes his soul to the scorching torture of the deserted and mute horizon. All these heroes are themselves, and all these sounds are theirs, yet at the same time they are all the peculiar excruciating nightmares of their authors, their long history becomes like a personal confession, and the craving for the concluding, unclouded and tranquil B major chord catches fire so invincibly in the acute dissonances of this confession that the sacred chord attained as the curtain falls sounds like a personal occurrence in the human life of the composer. Separate the subjective from the objective. It is impossible. Such is the unfailing character of the realization of works of a mystical cast. Rimsky-Korsakov in his work shows himself to be predominantly an objective artist. All are in agreement about this – he himself, probably, too. His talent is stunningly well matched to the style of ‘tales’, ‘heroic ballads’ and ‘legends’, and he has created his own type of opera where the artistic portrayal, precisely because it is released from feeling, gives wonderful support to the style and character of ‘heroic ballads’, ‘tales’ and ‘legends’. What ‘once upon a time there was’ is laid out before the listener and spectator, using magnificent and ingenious language, and since that no longer exists today, here is how it used to be. Even in Kitezh, he has remained just as objective a storyteller. It would be futile to search his music for any mystical 82

Rimsky-Korsakov inflamements, and that would indeed distort the calm, majestic style of epic narrative. The actual contents of this capital opera did not prompt any need for such bursts of flame, for that mystical element, we can agree, which is contained within it is the element of secret sight which consists in the portrayal of the future ‘resurrection from the dead’ and the ‘heavenly city’ which are connected with the contents only in an outward manner. There is no psychological growth here, no progression from being one person into being a different person and beyond, no striving and no rapture; for the heroes of Kitezh, the heavenly city is not a fact of regeneration, but simply a change in their place of residence and a change of costume, with everything else remaining exactly as before, because right from the start they are shown as having achieved the ideal of peaceful lambs and meek little doves, perfectly worthy of the eternal pleasure of listening to the pealing of bells and smelling the aroma of incense. This is not said as a reproach to the author, whose libretto matches the style and content of spiritual verses23 excellently; it is said only because if the depiction of ‘heavenly Kitezh’ corresponding to their character rose only a little above the ennobled dreams of some land of milk and honey, then there would be no pretext for a mystical work to exist. How has the composer reproduced all these, possibly ‘spiritual’ and certainly unusual places in the opera? Just as one should have expected of an objective artist. Starting out from what is familiar, he achieves influence by means of reproducing impressions from the church service artistically; the impressions are those of an artist-spectator, sometimes of one who has not even himself been thrilled either by its contents or its mood. The duet between the resurrected Young Prince and Fevroniya who is departing (or also being resurrected) is vividly reminiscent of the singing of a choir in church with its patterns and traceries which at times, completely independent of the text, interpret, stretch out and split up the words. Unfortunately, like even church music too often, it at times lacks animation, although it maintains solemnity of tone. The ‘Entry to Kitezh’ is treated not as a lifting of the soul upwards, to flaming light, to waves of ever greater radiance, but as a measured procession with the cross around and near a church. Finally, in the charming scene of the ‘heavenly city’ some of the speeches of Fevroniya and the inhabitants of Kitezh, as well as the orchestra’s responses, are imbued with such quiet sadness, such calm, submissive melancholy, that instead of thoughts of dwellers in ‘eternal light and joy’, the evening Office in a monastery arises in the memory with its peaceful, quite special sorrow, when, if the expression does not seem strange, the heart itself stands on tiptoe 23

Such verses were based on scripture, church legends and saints’ lives, and were usually performed by itinerant blind singers.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 to catch a glimpse through walls freezing in the twilight to the darkening green of the trees, and into the depths of the evening sky. All of this is conveyed in masterly fashion, with great artistry, and what colours are found for all of this! Let me repeat that the opera is first-rate, and its last two acts will probably remain one of the best and most important of the artist’s works. It will remain that even without the epithet ‘mystical’, and even without any comparisons with Parsifal, that strange flower which elusively changes its coloration imperceptibly, a pure lily with the asphyxiatingly sweet aroma of a poisonous nature, a strange flower offered up on the altar of Catholicism. It is even difficult to say whether we need a Russian Parsifal and whether it will appear some day. But Kitezh was needed, and duly appeared. Russian legends about ‘the divine’ and severe prayer melodies called out long ago to be admired in artistic attire of this kind. And if we diverged for a minute from its beauties in order to detach from the opera an epithet superficially applied to it by many, it was only because even in criticism of a work of art, even in the understandable rapture induced by this work, in rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, one should not confuse it with what is God’s.

(e) Yu. D. Engel’: The Golden Cockerel (Zimin’s Opera House). Russian Bulletin, 27 September 1909, no. 221. Engel’, pp. 265–74 The composer’s final opera is ‘something that never happened personified’ (neb¨ılitsa v litsakh), which was composed in 1906–7 and first staged posthumously on 24 September 1909 in Moscow.

The Golden Cockerel is the final link in the golden chain of fifteen operas, unexpectedly broken, left by Rimsky-Korsakov. Fifteen operas! Such productivity is simply without parallel in our day and is particularly astounding if one takes into account all the profound complexity of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic writing. Such productivity is possible only for a great master who can set the great artist within himself free – a master for whom ‘to want to’ has finally become the equivalent of ‘to be able to’, something which, alas, cannot be said of Rimsky-Korsakov’s quondam colleagues in the ‘New Russian School’. Naturally enough, not all the links in this golden chain are of equal value, but not one of them is a copy of another; each one, even in periods when the composer was showing creative hesitation, testifies to tireless artistic quests, to a new stage in the evolution of a creative spirit, bold alike in striving ‘towards new shores’ as in reviving half-forgotten operatic ideals. Rimsky-Korsakov’s swansong confirms this. The Golden Cockerel occupies a place amongst his operas which is wholly special, independent and, besides, outstanding. 84

Rimsky-Korsakov As is the case with the majority of Rimsky-Korsakov’s best works, the plot of The Golden Cockerel comes from a folk-tale. ‘A fable in characters’ – such is the subtitle of this opera, whose libretto was based on Pushkin’s The Golden Cockerel and written by Mr Bel’sky. Mr Bel’sky is a long-standing collaborator of Rimsky-Korsakov, and a collaborator who is irreplaceable in combining affectionate knowledge of Russian antiquities and folk poetry with verse which is sonorous and to the point, a feeling for the stage with training in music. But for him, Mr Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic activities in recent years could scarcely have developed so extensively. Bel’sky will undoubtedly take his place in this regard in the history of Russian music. He has been successful with The Golden Cockerel too. ‘The artistic model of a Russian popular print illustration (lubok)24 tale’ is how the librettist in his preface perfectly correctly defines Pushkin’s original of the Cockerel. And later on: ‘Despite the eastern origin of many of the motives and the Italian names (Dodone, Guidone), in all the everyday details of these tales (the Cockerel and Saltan) the stern temper and awkward circumstances of the ancient Russian way of life appear’. Mr Bel’sky has been able to retain and increase all these typically Pushkinesque traits in his reworking of the Cockerel for the stage, as he was earlier able to do for Saltan. The opera is in three acts. The first takes place chez Tsar Dodon, who is not defined any more precisely in the Russian text, but who in the French one is called maˆıtre de steppes m´eridionales. He confers with the nobles, his two sons and the military commander Polkan, to find out how he can ‘rest from martial business and gain peace for himself’. One tsarevich suggests ‘removing the army from the frontier and placing it round the capital’, while the other advises as follows: ‘Disband our valiant host in full meantime, and a month before our neighbours attack us send them to fight them’. The tsar is saved by an Astrologer who appears out of the blue; he gives Dodon a wise golden cockerel who will call out from the tower lookout when war is to be expected (‘beregis’, bud’ nacheku!’; ‘look out, be on guard!’) and when it is not (‘tsarstvuy, lyozha na boku!’; ‘reign, lying on your side’). Dodon goes into raptures and promises the Astrologer: ‘I shall grant your first wish, as if it were my own’. Dismissing the nobles, he lies down to sleep. The cockerel suddenly raises the alarm. Dodon sends his sons to war. Amelfa the housekeeper again fluffs up his bedclothes. Sweet dreams once more, and once more the alarm. The tsar himself with Polkan and the old men have to set off to rescue the children. 24

Lubok denotes a popular print illustration, in earlier times a woodcut, sharing features with the chapbook and the broadside. Outlines were bold, with large areas of colour used.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Act II: in front of the tent of the Tsaritsa of Shemakha. Night. Dodon and his army stumble in horror upon the corpses of the tsareviches. Where can the enemy be? Surely they cannot be in the tent? In the breaking morning light Polkan gives the order for cannons to fire into the tent. But the Tsaritsa of Shemakha emerges from the tent. The beautiful lady sings a hymn to the rising sun; she captivates Dodon with every word, forcing him to sing and dance, and when he, finally, petitions her to accept his kingdom she accepts his proposal. Act III is set in front of Dodon’s palace. The people await the tsar and the new tsaritsa. Triumphal entry of Dodon, the Tsaritsa of Shemakha and their wedding train with warriors, negroes, slave-girls, giants, ‘young deer’ (pygmies), people with horns, others with one eye, with dogs’ heads, etc. The Astrologer appears and demands the promised payment from Dodon: ‘Give me the girl, the Tsaritsa of Shemakha’. The tsar goes into a fury and finishes off the Astrologer with a blow from his staff. The Tsaritsa approves: ‘That’s why we have serfs: if you don’t like them, bang!’ But when Dodon prepares to kiss her the Cockerel flies down from the tower, pecks the top of the Tsar’s head and he falls down dead. The Tsaritsa and the Astrologer disappear. The people mourn the Tsar. The curtain descends, but the Astrologer suddenly comes out from behind it. He reassures the spectators: ‘That’s how the tale finished; but the bloody d´enouement must not worry you. For only I and the Tsaritsa were real people here, all the others were delirium, a day-dream.’ This original Epilogue is an elegant counterweight to the similar Prologue to the Cockerel. In the Prologue, before the action begins, the Astrologer just as unexpectedly appears from behind the curtain to introduce the tale for listeners. Pushkin’s words summing up the tale are put into his mouth: ‘The tale is a falsehood, but it contains a hint, a lesson for brave souls’. ‘Hint’, of course, has to be understood here in the most general meaning, corresponding to the beautifully expressed formula of Potebnya,25 the specialist in folk poetry: ‘the role of a poetic image is to be the constant predicate to the transferred epithet’. But the theatre censorship, as is well known, saw the matter differently. From Rimsky-Korsakov’s first appearance in the world of opera (The Maid of Pskov), it turned its graciously deadening attention to him and did not deny it to his last opera. What ‘hint’ it saw in The Golden Cockerel, what ‘transferred subject’ it contrived to apply to the ‘constant predicate’ is not known; but it laid its heavy hand on the Cockerel. The librettist was compelled to omit entirely the two lines of Pushkin cited above (written seventy-five years ago) concerning the significance of the tale 25

A. A. Potebnya (1835–91) was a philologist, philosopher of language and poetic theorist.

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Rimsky-Korsakov and to replace them with the following: ‘To show the kind of power passion has over people’. The censorship reduced the heroes of the Cockerel in rank: they made Tsar Dodon into an army commander (voyevoda), and the army commander Polkan into a colonel. But in its anxiety about the lesson for brave souls it did not stop there. In answer to the Astrologer’s request: ‘Give me a written note, as the laws require, so that what the tsar promised me can stand firmer than a rock’, Tsar Dodon (according to the printed vocal score) replies: ‘As the laws require? What kind of talk is that? I’ve never heard such a thing. My whim, my command – that is the law for every occasion’. Instead of that, Dodon the army commander (on the stage) replies: ‘What’s this? This is new! Have you thought about that word?’ In imposing an increased tax on his subjects in the event of war, Tsar Dodon says: ‘But listen, peoples! If the army commanders themselves or someone subordinate to them wants to take something extra, don’t contradict them: it’s their business!’ That comes out somewhat differently on the lips of Dodon the army commander: ‘If one of you wants to give something extra, let him give it: it’s his business’. The people sing over Tsar Dodon’s body: ‘He was most sagacious: with his arms folded, he governed the people lying on his back’; but over Dodon the army commander they sing: ‘He was most sagacious and gloriously dealt out fair judgement over us’. But you can’t mention everything. However adroitly all these erasures and effacings have been carried out by the ill-starred librettist, they cannot fail to rouse fundamental indignation and, of course, will some day enter the pages of the history of Russian culture as a specimen of dark, obtuse, bad times. The most curious thing of all is that for even the least observant listener such tactics merely underline the abominations from which they were wanting to protect him. Indirectly these changes may perhaps have some influence even on the impact of the music, by making it not correspond fully here and there with the new stage perspective, but the censorship has not touched the music itself, thank God! It remains just as powerful and splendid as it flowed from Rimsky-Korsakov’s indefatigable pen. An original, magical circle of melodies, harmonies, sonorities and devices for musical description has been outlined here by the accustomed hand of the all-powerful wizard. And this new magical circle is extremely distinct from the circles outlined in Rimsky-Korsakov’s other operas. It sometimes intersects with them (Saltan, Sadko) and thereby forms what seem to be common segments, but never coincides with them concentrically. The most important thing is that all the unprecedented novelty of The Golden Cockerel is permeated by a kind of immediate spontaneity, by healthy, fresh inspiration. 87

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Frankly, you do not believe that all this was written by an old man. But that’s not the end of the story. ‘A song is beautiful by its mode, and a tale by its style’, says the old proverb. The Golden Cockerel’s mode corresponds astoundingly with its style. The magnificent and well-proportioned musical building which The Golden Cockerel is has been created by the infinitely varied development of a finite group of characteristic themes. But while this leitmotive principle stems from Wagner, it is here, however, remote from Wagnerian exclusiveness, it avoids Wagner’s overloading and, unlike Wagner, it is used in the voices with the same consistency as in the orchestra. Alongside strictly leitmotivic constructions, the Cockerel contains in addition, subject to the intensification of the lyricism, broad melodic formations entirely free or half-free of connections with the leitmotive group. An example of the first is the beautiful chorus of the people in Act III ‘Vern¨ıye tvoi kholop¨ı’ (‘Your loyal serfs’), which uses pure folk part-writing; what is more, even here the orchestra has a figure which links the chorus with the rest of the opera’s melodic material. An example of the second is the miraculous aria of the Tsaritsa of Shemakha ‘Otvet’ mne, zorkoye svetilo’ (‘Answer me, luminary of dawn’) written in couplet form with an ever-enriched orchestral accompaniment. New independent phrases are spliced organically together with the winding chromatic coils of the Tsaritsa of Shemakha’s principal theme, and as a result produce an unusually original melody; this marvellous melody is no doubt destined over the course of time to become a classic, like Glinka’s best arias, to which it is a worthy companion in its plastic beauty and brilliance of contour. Once they have revealed themselves, the leitmotives of The Golden Cockerel generally strive to take shape as the clear-cut contours of a rounded phrase or at least of a simple repetition and they thereby correspond to the greatest possible extent to the distinctly garish outline of Pushkin’s tale and even to its sharply minted paired verses, excellently assimilated by Mr Bel’sky. All are boldly distinctive, each is characteristic in its own way, and they imprint themselves easily in the listener’s memory, like symbols in sound. Often they are associated with harmonies of startling novelty and power, which sometimes even attain independent significance as ‘leit-harmonies’. There are also, finally, in the Cockerel, ‘leit-timbres’ (for example, the combination of harp, glockenspiel and celesta for the Astrologer). Diatonicism of the folksong kind predominates in the themes of Dodon, his sons and Amelfa; in the themes of the Astrologer and the Tsaritsa of Shemakha, chromaticism predominates. In a few places one can detect a certain kinship in the melodic turns of phrase of the Astrologer and the Tsaritsa, indicating, perhaps some internal connection between these two 88

Rimsky-Korsakov fantastic heroes of The Golden Cockerel, a connection which is undoubtedly already present in Pushkin’s tale, although enigmatic and concealed. Polkan’s barking chromaticism – he always ‘speaks as if he were cursing’ – is very characterful. The nobles are given nothing independent; they have to be humbly content with snatches of Dodon’s themes. Even more wittily treated is the leitmotive of the Golden Cockerel. It is double-headed – it exists in two forms. No. 1 is ‘Reign, lying on your side’ (the introduction to the opera opens with it); no. 2 is ‘Look out, be on guard’ (with which the opera ends). Both forms are made up of melodic steps that are absolutely identical in interval, but each descending melodic step in no. 1 corresponds with an ascending step in no. 2 and vice versa. For instance, both the dream scenes in Act I26 with their enchanting timbre are saturated with no. 1 (on your side). No. 2 (be on guard) pervades the broadly developed scenes of military alarm in Act I and popular anxiety in Act III. No less startling are the transformations of the war theme. What luboklike dance brilliance fills this major-key half-folk, half-soldier tune, when the people accompany Dodon as he sets off to war and greet him on his return! How it huddles up in the cowardly minor key when Dodon’s host comes upon the fallen tsareviches! How plaintive it sounds in the chorus sung over the Tsar’s corpse, while the wailing lamentations of the people form an original kind of counterpoint against it! But Rimsky-Korsakov gave most attention and his greatest inspiration to the Tsaritsa of Shemakha. Whereas her character is only weakly outlined in Pushkin, in the opera it has been extensively rounded out. And it is, in fact, everything connected with the Tsaritsa of Shemakha, as well as to an extent with the Astrologer that differentiates The Golden Cockerel most clearly from Saltan. In the straightforward, naive, spice-cake tinsel of Saltan, everything is clearly visible; it exemplifies the pure kind of stylized lubok folk-tale opera. The same thing is in The Golden Cockerel; but it contains something else as well, something far more powerful, profound and, in spite of its understatement – or perhaps because of it – full of a special inexpressible charm. The principal vehicle of this mysterious charm in The Golden Cockerel is the image of the Tsaritsa of Shemakha which Rimsky-Korsakov has created. This image is new and without precedent in our musical literature. It contains the venom of sarcasm, and the primeval seductive grace of the fabled Orient, and the tragedy, acute almost to the point of reality, of the solitary female 26

Author’s note: How accurately the difference between Dodon’s first dream and his second dream (where he can already see the Tsaritsa of Shemakha distinctly) is realized by means of chromatic harmonies and fragments of the Queen’s theme.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 in search of a worthy conqueror, and a kind of predatory demonism, now showing its claws, now concealing them. All this, which seems uncoordinated and apparently contradictory when one reads the libretto, is welded together into something whole, living, vivid and enigmatically beautiful by the charms of the music. The melodies, each more beautiful than the one before, and almost always fanned by Eastern chromaticism, follow one another endlessly on the Tsaritsa’s lips, and there is no end to this ocean of songs iridescent with thousands of shades of passion, dream, play and mockery. These songs acquire special vividness thanks to the contrast with everything sung by Dodon, starting with the scene of his night-time fears (also remarkable musically!) and ending with the long scene where he falls under the Tsaritsa’s thumb.27 The intelligent beauty could of course have seen through and captivated the simple Dodon far more quickly, but . . . then she would not have given us so many wonderful songs. It is these songs, together with the other superlative music and the lively originality of the stage concept, which make the second act (‘Shemakha’) the centre of the entire opera. In a distinctive way, it is the centre from the architectonic point of view as well: on either side are the two ‘Dodon’ acts, and further away still, at the outer edges, are the Astrologer’s Prologue and Epilogue. And this purely architectural symmetry is, of course, not fortuitous. It is merely the foremost embodiment of that principle of balance, proportion and co-ordination which pervades all the music of the Cockerel, from largescale structures to the very smallest. Of Mozartian elegance and euphony, this music is at the same time the last word in harmonic and orchestral refinement! What new possibilities are opened up for the artistic exploitation of the diminished seventh (particularly in the development of the Tsaritsa’s main theme), the minor third with major seventh and augmented chords (among other places, in the Cockerel’s ki-riku-ku in which fanfares of three different major triads are built one after another on one augmented triad). Korsakov is evidently ready to treat the dissonance of the augmented triad as a consonance; he even ends the opera on it – and, one must admit, he gives the impression of a real end by that means. The Golden Cockerel’s orchestra hits the target just as boldly and unerringly: it is fresh, magnificent, endlessly rich and at the same time transparent, witty and subtle in detail. 27

Author’s note: The musically comic effect, among other things, is magnificent when Dodon replies to the Tsaritsa’s grippingly ardent question: Chto t¨ı pel, kogda lyubil? (‘What did you sing when you were in love?’). Loudly and coarsely, with the dullest of harmonies and orchestral sonorities, he sings to the familiar motive Chizhik-p¨ızhik, gde t¨ı b¨ıl? (‘Linnet, where have you been?’) the chastushka Budu vek tebya lyubit’, postarayus’ ne zab¨ıt’ (‘I shall love you forever, I’ll try not to forget’).

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Rimsky-Korsakov Rimsky-Korsakov has indeed bequeathed to the world much that is good, but even among his gems The Golden Cockerel is one of the finest. Like all successfully balanced works of genius, it possesses in addition the same capacity to enrapture musicians and amateurs, specialists as well as the broad public alike. And I believe that the same general and deserved success awaits Rimsky-Korsakov’s final opera as fell to the lot of its predecessors The Snowmaiden and Sadko. [Engel’ assesses the production and performance.]

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CHAPTER THREE

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle

(a) Ts. A. Cui: The Second Concert of the Russian Musical Society. Excerpt from ‘Music Notes’ in The Voice, 22 October 1880, no. 292, p. 2 [The orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre was conducted by Eduard Napravnik.] The Second Concert of the Russian Musical Society was full of interest. From the symphonic repertory, the following works were performed: Schumann’s ‘First’ Symphony, Glinka’s Jota aragonesa, Borodin’s [In the Steppes of ] Central Asia, and a March by Mr Musorgsky. The last two works named belong in the category of so-called pi`eces d’occasion. Both form part of a whole series of pieces of music conceived last year, in the composition of which all our composers, of all hues, were meant to take part. The programme of Mr Borodin’s musical picture is as follows: In the desert of central Asia the melody of a peaceful Russian song is heard at first. The approaching tramp of horses and camels is heard, together with the doleful sounds of an oriental melody. A native caravan guarded by Russian soldiers crosses the boundless steppe. It completes its long journey trustingly and without fear under the protection of the victors’ awesome military strength. The caravan moves further and further away. The peaceful melodies of both vanquished and vanquisher merge into a single common harmony, whose echoes long resound in the steppe before eventually dying away in the distance.

This programme has been implemented by Mr Borodin with exceptional talent. The two brief themes, Russian and oriental, are very beautiful and fresh; and the way they are combined is the most successful and harmonious of any I know. The caravan’s approach and retreat are executed in masterly fashion. The measured pizzicato which continues throughout, and also the violins’ extremely high pianissimo at the beginning and end, lend the whole short piece a great deal of picturesqueness. In addition, the entire little 92

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle musical picture is written so lightly, clearly and with such taste that even apart from the programme it represents a charming short concert piece – a trifle, to be sure, but one worthy of Mr Borodin’s versatile, varied and powerful talent, which in his latest works has reached its full development. It is desirable that besides this trifle the Russian Musical Society should include Mr Borodin’s symphonies in its repertory – major, capital works, one of which was performed this year in Germany with great success.1 Mr Musorgsky’s task was much more difficult: he had to illustrate the capture of [the Turkish fortress of] Kars [by Russian troops in 1877]. To do this, he composed a march. For the first theme, he took a wonderful Russian folksong, which sounds excellent in the brass to begin with, and then especially in the divided strings. To depict our foes, he has made the trio of the march ‘alla turca’, with all the harsh strangeness of their melodies and all the wildness of their barbarous instrumentation (piccolo and percussion instruments). This trio, and also the fanfares which often cut through the music of the march, would be entirely appropriate on the stage during a corresponding tableau vivant, but in the concert hall sounded harsh and fierce, and to me personally unpleasant; but the majority of the public were evidently of a different opinion, and the composer was therefore called for and greeted with applause. [. . .]

(b) Ts. A. Cui: Borodin’s Quartet. Excerpt from ‘Music Notes’ in The Voice, 14 January 1881, no. 14. Cui, pp. 281–3 The premi`ere of the A major quartet was given in St Petersburg by the Russian Quartet on 30 December 1880.

(1) Borodin’s Quartet (manuscript). Borodin is one of our most talented composers. He writes easily and freely. If, in spite of that, he writes little, that is because he has serious work commitments which leave him only rare hours of leisure. He has a great wealth of themes which are often broad and singing, and are always fresh and beautiful. Many are imprinted with a Russian folk character. He also readily lends them an Eastern colouring. He is a most subtle and inventive harmonist. His harmonies contain much that is new, original and entirely his own. He particularly likes to base the movement of the harmony on brief chromatic phrases. He also has a great liking for contrapuntal elaboration, for combining themes, rearranging them and so on. But one must observe that this interest, these cunning tricks with textures, are almost never achieved at the expense of the work’s musical content. Among the shortcomings of his music can be counted the too frequent 1

Borodin’s First Symphony was performed on 8/20 May 1880 in Baden-Baden.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 changes of rhythm and the at times excessive refinement of the harmony and counterpoint. Borodin is the composer of seven charming songs, two symphonies (the first was performed in Germany this spring with great success [see n. 1 above] and the second a few days ago in Moscow, not without success2 ) and many numbers from the opera [Prince] Igor (from the ‘Lay of the Host of Igor’), which, however, is far from being complete. If to this total one adds the little musical picture Srednyaya Aziya (‘In the Steppes of Central Asia’) and Borodin’s participation in Paraphrases, then that seems to be everything that this most talented of composers has written so far. Given his compositions’ major virtues and small number, the interest aroused by every new composition of his is understandable, the string quartet in question included. The Quartet’s introduction is simple and peaceful, offering a beautiful accumulation of sound leading to the first Allegro. The Allegro is sweet and attractive. Its first theme is of an exclusively gentle character; the second is more impassioned and absorbing. A tiny chromatic phrase serves as a link between them, giving an opportunity for spicy and original harmonizations. The central section is vast but interesting. In it one should note the broadly developed fugato based on the second theme, the repeated introduction accompanied most beautifully by the chromatic phrase mentioned earlier, and the sumptuously accompanied first theme (cello pizzicato, arpeggios in the first violin). After the usual repetition of the ‘exposition’, the Allegro ends with a further new short theme, flowing out of the first, which has a refreshing effect. The defect in this Allegro is that there are several longueurs – most perceptibly in the central section and unavoidably connected with a certain uniformity of tone. In the second movement, Andante, the middle part is not entirely successful. It is once again a fugato (the second), based on a chromatic phrase and as a consequence insufficiently clear and transparent. But the beginning and end of the Andante are delightful. Their musical character is old – its spirit reminiscent of the introduction to Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, and this old style imbues it with special freshness and novelty. If to this one adds the simple but at the same time profound expressiveness, and in the midst of it all, one fiery passionate phrase which bursts through (descending triplets in the first violin), then the need for the beginning and end of this Andante to be attractive becomes understandable. The lively and boisterous Scherzo is musically weaker than the remaining movements of the Quartet, though it too contains many fine episodes. One of 2

His Second Symphony was performed in Moscow on 20 December 1880.

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle them deserves special attention for its unprecedented originality – the trio. In it one instrument plays an accompanying figure and all three others play in harmonics. The most subtle sound of these extremely high notes makes a strange but at the same time pleasant effect, diversifies the monotonous sound of string instruments, gives the music being performed a light character and makes you think you are listening to imaginary instruments of some sort. As far as I know, this kind of successful effect has not been used before in any other quartet. The finale is prefaced again by an Andante, based on a single phrase from the first Andante. Although this phrase serves as the bass foundation for the opening theme of the impending finale, I consider that it would have been better to do away with this Andante altogether, or curtail it, or else vary it, because its similarity to the previous one only delays the end of the Quartet. As far as the finale itself is concerned, it is the best movement. It is concise, compact, has great strength, its second theme is fetching, and the ending is striking and energetic. To this one must add that the style of this quartet is entirely ‘quartetlike’, something which is often not the case even with more experienced masters than Borodin; every instrument plays a conspicuous and independent role; the work is very difficult to play, but sounds well. Borodin displays an amazing command of composing technique in it (elaborating and developing phrases, transferring them from one part to another, etc.). [The quality of the performance was poor.]

(c) Ts. A. Cui: Excerpt from the Second Russian Symphony Concert, Excerpt from ‘Notes about Music’. The Citizen, 11 November 1887, no. 42. Cui, pp. 376–8 This series of orchestral concerts was initiated by M. P. Belyayev at his own expense; his other ventures included the Leipzig-based music publisher bearing his name; cf. Chapter 4.

[. . .] In this concert the following symphonic works were performed [. . .]. (2) ‘Intermezzo’ (in reality, a slow scherzo) in B minor by Musorgsky. This Intermezzo is very multi-coloured in its music. The first section is serious and austere. Ponderous but powerful unison phrases emerge with a classical sense of their importance, only rarely to be interrupted by harsh chords. In the second figure all classicism disappears and harshness and strength are replaced by caressing prettiness and mildness. But in spite of that, the second figure too retains the character of West European music. The trio, on the other hand, is wholly Russian, full of graceful animation, cheerfulness 95

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 and elegance. This mixture could be disagreeable if one based one’s appraisal of this Intermezzo only on rationality. But its music is so attractive and full of talent that during a performance there is no need even to think about this diversity of colours. It is beyond reproach both in content and form, and contains not a single feeble bar. (3) Rus’ – the symphonic poem by Balakirev – was written at the beginning of the 1860s and at that time bore the title ‘Musical Picture: 1,000 years’. It appears now in a revised version, but it has been revised only slightly and primarily in instrumentation. The form of this symphonic poem most closely resembles that of an overture. Three Russian folksongs serve as themes (one for the slow introduction and two for the Allegro of the overture). The first of them is gentle, appealing, based on just a few notes, constructed on an original rhythmical outline, and filled with reflective and intimate poetry. The second theme is tranquil but not without dash, expressed among other ways in the original flourishes often encountered in Russian folksongs. The third song is powerful, energetic and full of indomitable, somewhat wild bravado. At the outset these themes occur in fragments, in different orchestral instruments, and later on they grow and develop. Particularly from the beginning of the second theme of the Allegro, this development attains remarkable breadth and variety. The themes clash with one another, expand and engender new ones, and the interest in Rus’ intensifies right to the very end. If one were forced to point to the most outstanding episodes in this composition, one would have to cite the whole work: that shows how strongly inspiration goes hand in hand with deeply considered mastery of texture. One ought to add also that Rus’, like Balakirev’s First Russian Overture, is the prototype of the overtures on folk themes subsequently written in significant numbers in Russia. They have all copied the new form which Balakirev created, a somewhat mosaic, variation-like one, but one full of brilliance and interest. (4) Spanish Capriccio. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio comprises several separate movements. It opens with a brilliant introduction (Alborada); then come variations on a tiny Andante theme, after which the Alborada is repeated, thus playing something like the role of a ritornello. Then comes a gypsy scene with a song (Scena e canto gitano) and finally an Asturian Fandango. The entire Capriccio is based on Spanish folk themes. All the themes are tiny – more like phrases than themes. Some of them are insignificant, such as the theme for the variations, some are animated to the extent of frenzy though fairly banal (Alborada, which amounts to the rotation of two chords); some are fervent and spicy (the gypsy song). These little phrases are elaborated with rare mastery, although Korsakov does not develop them, being content to vary the harmony, modulations and counterpoint while 96

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle preserving the music’s bright Spanish colouring throughout. But the main strength, the distinctive character of the Capriccio, lies not there, but rather in its instrumentation which is carried to the highest degree of perfection. This is the most virtuoso of pieces for orchestra – what the Rhapsodies of Liszt are for the piano. At the present time Korsakov is the premier orchestrator in Europe; but he has never before brought his instrumentation to the stunning virtuosity of this Capriccio. To be sure, he set out primarily to create instrumental effects. It is impossible to enumerate all these effects. A considerable place is given to solo instruments – violin, clarinet, flute, harp, even side-drum; we find the most unusual and always beautiful combinations of different instruments; the percussion instruments play a prominent role, though always a noble one, and so on. This is one of the most dazzling, most brilliant orchestral compositions of all that are in existence; it rivals the most wonderful works of its kind, such as Tchaikovsky’s Italian Capriccio, Saint-Sa¨ens’ Danse macabre, Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz, Berlioz’s Queen Mab, and in its endless variety of effects perhaps surpasses them. It is impossible not to surrender to the fascination of these charming, magical sounds. It is therefore not surprising that this Capriccio [. . .] provoked a noisy ovation in favour of the composer and was repeated, its significant length notwithstanding. The Capriccio overshadowed all the other items in the programme with its sonorous splendour [. . .]. [The compilers of programmes for these concerts ought to cast their net more widely among Russian composers.]

(d) S. N. Kruglikov: The first two Symphonic Assemblies of the Russian Musical Society. Artist, November 1889, Book 3, second edition (Moscow 1890), pp. 131–7 Semyon Nikolayevich Kruglikov (1851–1910) studied with RimskyKorsakov and Lyadov and was active in Moscow as a critic from the 1880s. [. . .]

The first Symphonic Assembly, conducted by Mr Rimsky-Korsakov, was of enormous interest. The programme was exclusively Russian, and moreover consisted of works either completely new to Moscow or little known here. Mr Balakirev’s Tamara is a superlative work of great talent – one of the most clearly outstanding phenomena in the whole of present-day musical literature. Personal acquaintance with nature’s gaunt allure in the Caucasus and with Caucasian melodies, the typically Caucasian tradition poeticized with such captivating charm by Lermontov – that is where Balakirev found 97

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 inspiration, that is what prompted in him the idea of representing Lermontov’s Tamara in the music of his ‘symphonic poem’. It opens with a musical landscape. The wild, bleak Dar’yal ravine. On the cliff the old tower, abode of the enchantress Tamara, stands out blackly. She is ‘beautiful’ ‘like a heavenly angel, like a demon crafty and evil’. It is calm; only the lapping of the river Terek is heard: it ‘burrows in the mist’ and destroys the silence of the gruesome gorge. That is what is portrayed to the listener’s imagination by this scarcely audible rumble of timpani, the creeping triplets in the strings so colourfully shaded in, and, somewhere deep down, the severe, restrained evil of the buzzing brass; these sometimes contain fleeting excerpts of a beckoning feminine theme. But listen closely! An instrumental dance tune can be heard from the tower, a tune with originality, in typically oriental style, with oriental wilfulness in its angular rhythm. The tune grows, flares up, dies away, rises up again, changes colour, character and rhythm over and over again – it intoxicates and stupefies. A whole orgy of sounds, now untameably, furiously joyous, now amorous, now enigmatically ominous, frightening. And these sounds are also terrible, but at the same time they caress, they attract irresistibly, they hold out promises. And then once more something else comes along: again everything has begun to whirl round, to dance, to roar with a terrible, violent laughter. You remember Lermontov: I strann¨ıye dikiye zvuki Vsyu noch’ razdavalisya tam, Kak budto v tu bashnyu pustuyu Sto yunoshey p¨ılkikh i zhon Soshlisya na svad’bu nochnuyu, Na triznu bol’shikh pokhoron. [And strange wild sounds Rang out all night there, As if in that empty tower A hundred ardent youths and women Had gathered for a night-time wedding, A feast for a great funeral.]

Yes – all these things can be heard in Mr Balakirev’s work: the ‘wedding’ as well as the ‘feast for a great funeral’, the enchanting oriental languor as well as the burning, insane bursts of passion. But the mad orgy has abated, the life of the traveller who fell for Tamara’s charms has been cut short. As at the beginning, the river with its waves rolls along; these waves seethe and ‘hastened, lamenting, to bear the mute body away’. The best moment of the ‘poem’ gets under way:

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle V okne togda chto-to belelo, Zvuchalo ottuda: ‘prosti!’ I b¨ılo tak nezhno proshchan’ye, Tak sladko tot golos zvuchal, Kak budto vostorgi svidan’ya I laski lyubvi obeshchal. [In the window something showed white, And from there rang out: ‘Forgive me!’ And so tender was the farewell, So sweetly rang that voice, It was like a promise of the raptures of meeting And the caresses of love.]

Mr Balakirev has indeed been most successful of all with this ‘Forgive me!’; it is poetry itself, it is true inspiration. Tamara’s theme (her summons) overflows into something broad, thrilling and infinitely charming; the beauty of the harmonies and orchestral colours resists description of any kind. Had all of Tamara been bad, it would have had to be considered an excellent work on account of this ‘Forgive me!’ alone. But there is nothing bad about it, although there are nevertheless some shortcomings. There is something of the sort in the ‘orgy’, whose ardour slackens here and there; to my mind, the fault lies in repeating one powerful device more frequently than is desirable: the increase in sound and speed of movement suddenly dies out in order to return again later to a similar gradual heightening of the atmosphere. The listener follows this growth in the music, his heart stopping as he thinks that this time it will reach a climax, and all of a sudden he is deceived – the growth breaks off, and the sound begins to increase all over again. This stuns and excites the listener; he follows the new growth with redoubled attention and, still full of strength, takes its highest point as the longed-for climax. But Mr Balakirev ‘deceives’ us in this way more than once, and more than twice; and the listener, who to begin with was stirred and fired up by the ‘deceits’, has by the end cooled and grown somewhat tired. Tamara is, besides, excessively difficult in performance. The well-known oriental fantasia Islamey for piano by the same Mr Balakirev is more difficult than any rhapsody by Liszt; and Tamara is just about the most difficult orchestral piece ever written by anyone. That’s everything; no further reproaches can be levelled against Tamara. Woven together from the most original, most talented manifestations of creative power, it is Mr Balakirev’s finest work, a composition which is truly first class, truly ideal. The Assembly opened with Tamara. From this point on I abandon the order of performance and review first the orchestral pieces.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Mr Lyadov’s Scherzo3 is a delightful, graceful thing, where the good Schumann has offered a hand of friendship with the skilful devices which characterize the congenial features of the talented composer of Biryul’ki (‘Spillikins’), Intermezzi and many other piano compositions (Mr Lyadov has until now written almost exclusively for the piano). The character of the Scherzo is cheerful, lively and elegantly joking; it is a genuine ‘joke’ – sweet, witty and beautiful; particularly captivating is the figure in B-flat major (the Scherzo itself is in D major) and the modulations which immediately follow it. The middle section (Trio) is lyrical and gentle. Towards the end the 38 Scherzo theme is combined in masterly fashion with the 34 theme of the Trio: two bars of the former are set against one bar of the latter – a rhythmic effect of subtle grace. This was the first performance of Mr Lyadov’s Scherzo in Moscow. Mr Glazunov’s Po`eme lyrique4 (likewise a complete novelty in Moscow) maintains a warm melodic style throughout, and is thus free to subdue every listener by the feeling of sincerity which it pours into the soul. I had occasion to hear this opinion of the ‘Poem’ expressed by a member of the public: ‘What a heartfelt piece, and yet how much simplicity it has!’ This opinion is typical, and says a lot: Mr Glazunov’s ‘Poem’ is simple – in other words understandable, clear and accessible. And that’s absolutely right: the feeling which lives within it, the atmosphere of love and dreaminess cannot fail to be communicated to the crowd or to strike them as clear, understandable and simple. But on the other hand, Mr Glazunov does not pander to the crowd or merely purvey agreeable commonplaces to them, the music in his ‘Poem’ is far from the kind you meet everywhere; on the contrary, it is all entirely his own, full of far from simple details and wholly distinctive harmonic features; and some chord combinations are straightforwardly so new as never to have been encountered before in anyone else’s music. And how fascinatingly beautiful all this is – take for instance the twice repeated harmonic shifts with the expressive A at the top (the second time, right at the end, they are still more original, more unusual and at the same time even more beautiful than the first time), or take those orchestral outbursts which probably stare everyone in the face – the profound sighs with the note emerging upwards in the woodwind instruments. This is a superb composition, the fruit of truly happy inspiration. [The writer’s opinion of an excerpt from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor is given at (e).] [. . .] 3 4

Lyadov is considered further in Chapter 4. Glazunov is considered further in Chapter 4.

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle Hearing the Spanish Capriccio under [Rimsky-Korsakov’s] direction was naturally extremely captivating. And indeed only now was it possible to appreciate fully all the brilliant features of Mr Korsakov’s virtuoso instrumentation distributed in generous handfuls through the whole work. As music, to be honest, the Capriccio is inferior to much else from this composer’s pen; it is essentially still more of a rhapsody than Glinka’s Night in Madrid, and as regards thematic development cannot stand comparison with [Glinka’s] Jota aragonesa; it is a pot-pourri – a masterly one, of course, tasty, fascinating, spicy and fervent even when played by piano four hands; it is the escapade of a great artist who has had the idea of constructing a gigantic kaleidoscope of sound made up of the most ingenious, new orchestral combinations and colours capable of entering his head alone. And now these colours sparkle, merge into all possible subtle shades, gambol, tease, twinkle and laugh; and as you follow them, against your will you too laugh the cheerful, carefree laughter of heartfelt merriment. I wanted to call the Capriccio the last word in orchestration; but Mr Korsakov will accumulate many more such ‘last words’. [. . .] The main item performed by Mr Blumenfeld5 was Mr Rimsky-Korsakov’s Piano Concerto (played once before in Moscow by Mr Lavrov). There is a great deal of music and a great deal of skill in the Concerto. It is somewhat Lisztian as regards form; in only one movement, it is compressed and laconic in setting out its ideas, yet at the same time rich in content. It all derives from a single wonderful folksong, a recruiting one: Sobiraytes’-ka, bratts¨ı rebyatushki (‘Get yourselves ready, brothers, lads’). It also yielded a theme for the Adagio – a broad lyrical one, the playful theme of the Allegro, accompaniment figures and cadenza patterns – in a word, everything is obtained from the same material and has been worked up into a single well-proportioned, attractive whole, akin in style and devices to the best places in Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden. [. . .] In a word, the experiment – of putting on in Moscow a programme of exclusively Russian music compiled from works almost or wholly unknown in Moscow – has been carried out. It has proved that Russian music offers many compositions of diverse character and great talent, and that an evening devoted solely to them is not only possible but even in the highest degree interesting and desirable. Naturally, several estimable citizens of the musically Germanized heart of Russia [i.e. Moscow] are puzzled and confused, afraid to express their opinion, and turn to the experts for information; the latter explain things as best they can, but in general apparently are starting to 5

Blumenfeld is mentioned again in Chapter 4.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 succumb to the normal inclination in favour of all that is good, talented and original in Russian music, with those new tendencies with which the music sections of the best Moscow newspapers are beginning to be imbued. [. . .]

(e) S. N. Kruglikov: Prince Igor. Opera in four acts with a prologue. Words and Music by A. P. Borodin. Artist, 1890, no. 11, pp. 165–81 The source of this opera is the twelfth-century literary monument Slovo o polku Igoreve (‘The Lay of the Host of Igor’), from which the composer derived a libretto. Borodin worked on this opera in 1869–70 and from 1874, leaving it incomplete on his death. Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov prepared the version reviewed here, first staged in the Mariinsky Theatre on 23 October 1890.

Borodin dedicated his Igor to the memory of Glinka. That is significant, and this opera contains several homages to the greatness of the genius who gave Russian music life, and there is something else besides. Glinka’s greatest creation is Ruslan. There Glinka is the bard, the singer of ancient Rus’, of her bogat¨ıri6 and their great feats. Borodin was drawn to the very same themes and the very same songs; the old Russian epic plays a most important role in his finest creations – the ‘Second’ Symphony, and the opera with which we are concerned here. In undertaking Igor, Borodin entered the same field where the ‘golden strings’ which hymned Lyudmila once rang out. Both chose the grey-haired antiquity of the legend (skazaniye) and the heroic ballad (b¨ılina). And the younger brother could not but recollect the older one, and to him he dedicated his labour. The subject of Borodin’s opera is The Lay of the Host of Igor. It is hard to find a more Russian or more national subject. It pays honour truthfully, without embellishment, entirely in the sense of a chronicle without wise philosophizing, to the fearlessness, frankness and openness of the hero-prince, fighting for his country’s faith and rights against a cruel and terrible foe; tells of the touching fidelity of his beloved, of their great sorrow on being parted and their happy joy on being reunited, of the devotion of army and people to their prince and princess. And the narrative does not shout or underline anything. There are no pictures of the horrors of Igor’s captivity, because in fact there was none, since according also to history Igor led a very tolerable existence with Konchak: the bloodthirsty savage treasured his prisoner’s valour, and respected him highly. The Khan is a hero too in his own way; he is simply not so developed morally as Igor, and for him much in the Russian 6

Bogat¨ır’: a strong, well-built hero in Russian folklore.

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle prince is incomprehensible and almost funny; were he in Igor’s position, the Khan would not have declined the beautiful slave-girls or found it shameful to enter into alliance with his gracious conqueror in order to wage war against his own people. All Konchak needs is bravery, martial amusement, victory and booty; he is not choosy about anything else. He esteems Igor for his bravery, but does not go into details: to him they are hardly accessible. Likewise accurate, according to the chronicle, is the romance between the Khan’s daughter and the captive son of the captive Russian prince. Nor does the figure of Galitsky contradict history either. That prince was exactly like this: he loved carousing, and lived a jolly life in all respects, without reflecting on anything. The plot of Igor gives the composer great scope. How much variety and contrast, what simplicity and well-defined clarity are in the outlines of the characters’ portrayals. Russians and Polovtsians; a Russian hero and a Polovtsian one; the morally strict, valorous Prince Igor and his wife’s brother – who is brazen, debauched and a drunkard; the steadfast, faithful and loving Princess Yaroslavna and Konchakovna who is all afire with a passion for love. And all this is a property of long, long ago – of the year 1185; all this is covered in the haze of the long-gone past and therefore has no flavour in prose and realism of the phenomena of life which surround us, but cries out for the broad lyricism and simplicity of the heroic ballads, for music which is always accessible and characteristic. [Kruglikov recounts the action act by act.] But what is the libretto like as a whole? It contains some defects. A certain monotony can be sensed in the devices: there are many occasions on which someone’s praises are ceremonially sung (slavyat). Even supposing that all these ‘praisings’, both Russian and Polovtsian, are adequately motivated, monotony does not thereby cease to be any less monotonous (we are not dealing here with the music at all – that comes later). Much in the libretto is episodic – necessary for the picture to be complete or for contrasts, but not directly connected with the course of the action. Such is the Polovtsian couvre feu – the patrol – it is a mere detail of Act II, though outstanding and full of character; thus Galitsky is merely there as a contrast with Igor, and so on. And the whole character of Konchak is brought out to demonstrate the absence of physical suffering during Igor’s Polovtsian captivity, and to arrange a felicitous d´enouement for Konchakovna’s romance. And surely this romance itself is an episode? It is included in the libretto as nothing more than a convenient pretext for amorous lyricism and to provide a complicating factor in Igor’s flight.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 The central figures in the drama are Igor and Yaroslavna, and the author of the libretto has treated them with equal care; all the rest concerns them only to a certain extent, and some of it not at all. But even these most important characters are placed in an original position by the plot: it is in their very separation that the drama consists; in the Prologue they bid each other farewell almost silently; the next thing is that at the end of the final act they sing a duet; during the first, second and third acts they languish apart. The separate elements do not collide; drama, however, arises precisely from the collision of feelings and passions. Here is the conclusion: the libretto of Igor is not a drama; it is merely a device for adapting The Lay of the Host of Igor to the stage, a chronicled fact, in characters and pictures, narrated from the stage of a theatre. Such a conclusion would, however, be too short-sighted and superficial. Very well, maybe drama as it is usually understood is not so evident in the libretto of Igor, maybe one really can see the collision of characters necessary for drama hardly at all – it is nevertheless full of drama, not of the personal kind which we were seeking and finding hardly at all, but of the kind in which the Lay of the Host of Igor itself is undoubtedly steeped, a drama of ideas and a profoundly national one. Igor is a warrior for everything that is near and dear to his nation (narod), a warrior for this nation. Nothing frightens Igor when he takes to the field for the rights of his country; you cannot frighten this honest servant of an idea, of duty and honour with an eclipse. But he is vanquished, he is in captivity, an easy captivity, we presume, but that is immaterial – the important thing is that he is in captivity, deprived of his liberty, deprived of the means of pursuing his sacred aim. That is drama. Igor leaves captivity, reaches his own people again, and obtains once more the chance of serving the cause to which duty calls him; and here is the happy d´enouement of the drama. Wife, family and personal interests are to one side, while the idea is in the foreground. Borodin was right to call his opera Prince Igor, and he would have been wrong had he called it Igor and Yaroslavna. For he is alone as the representative of the nation. Prince Igor is a national drama. Let us move on to the music. The Borodin of symphony and quartet and the Borodin of the opera are not exactly the same. In the opera he is not so ingenious, does not make so much play with the unexpectedness of his devices or luxuriate so much in the originality of his ingenious tricks. In the opera he is entirely justifiably afraid of drowning the singer by complexity of [orchestral] writing, and pays greatest attention to the singer. Nor shall we get a precise understanding of the manner of Igor from Borodin’s songs either: a song is a miniature; an opera is a picture spread out over a canvas of impressive dimensions; this 104

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle requires a different calculation of effect and a different kind of writing. In short, in the opera Borodin is simpler. But everything we have just said concerns the external, or, more accurately, the quantitative aspect of the matter: in one place there are more of such-and-such devices and they are more subtle, in another there are fewer of them and they are more substantial in scale. Essentially, in its basic features the profile of Borodin’s talent is similar in all places. Whatever Borodin wrote, his colossal gift impresses us everywhere by its versatility, originality and profound content in ideas. And how varied are his musical ideas, how marvellous his thematic creativity! Borodin is equally attracted to laughter and jokes and to manly grief (he is never tearful); equally at his command are the light, the graceful, the weighty and the cruel. He is also capable of being tender, songful or loving as well as severe and powerful; he can be absorbed in calmly contemplating nature or a historic event, he can be a calm and poetic narrator about either the one or the other, sometimes passion flares up in him, but passion too in its multifaceted manifestations: here a warm kiss or an embrace can be heard in his music, here an impulse of a different sort, something spontaneous, everyday, the pulse of a popular movement, the cry of a crowd aroused, the raising of the spirit of a mass of humanity. And what is most precious of all – this powerful gift is entirely and completely a Russian one. Borodin is a national composer; for this alone he is the direct and unquestionable heir of Glinka. Borodin is not only a person with a natural talent, he is a fine, educated musician, a technician who is excellent, unconstrained and resourceful. His counterpoints can be very crafty and complex, but are always lucid and natural; he can combine with the skill of a real master themes which sometimes seem completely opposed in character. Borodin the harmonist yields nothing to Borodin the melodist: just as the latter is broad, beautiful and graceful, so the former, besides sharing those qualities, is often innovative and definitely brings to art something of his own, without precedent before him. Borodin’s music contains much that is individual and peculiar to him alone; Borodin can easily be recognized from just a few bars. Among his particularly favoured devices are: distinctive use of the interval of the second; short little chromatic figures; organ points (changing chords while the bass voice sustains the same note); sustained notes (the very same manoeuvre, except that the note held on is in a middle or upper voice); basses which move by leap. Borodin’s seconds and the device just mentioned of leaps in the bass are the most important of the new aspects which our excellent musician has introduced in the realm of harmony. In Igor leaping bass-lines are used conspicuously; we shall therefore try to explain their essence as far as possible. 105

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Imagine a series of chords so constructed that the bass moves smoothly, moving downwards all the time. Borodin disturbs this smoothness; he forces the bass to move down in wide, unexpected intervals on notes of a single chord, then on notes of the next one and so on. The result is not the usual kind of bass-line but a kind of new voice wholly made up of seemingly fortuitous intervals and strange in its huge compass. When we examine the music of Igor in detail, we shall point out examples of this device in appropriate places. Sometimes, on the other hand, a bass of this kind is achieved in a different way; it also moves in broad and strange spans, but from every chord takes only one note. Examples of this kind are also to be found in Igor. In instances of both kinds of bass, not only is an effect of unexpectedness and originality often achieved, but also an impression of something distinctively powerful and untameable. Borodin composed only the one opera. Consequently, one can only judge him as an opera composer on the basis of Igor. What sort of composer is he in the field of opera, a representative of new forms or of the old ones? That is what has to be decided. As we examine Igor, we see that Borodin was more attracted to rounded numbers and scenes, and to planning them on a large scale. Should we conclude from this that Borodin disowns the contemporary operatic ideal and is returning to the old one? We suppose not. Borodin is lyrical, in the nature of his talent Borodin feels most free in cantilena, among rounded musical outlines and in the midst of symphonic development of ideas; he has therefore prepared an operatic soil, a libretto, for himself with a subject such that all these broader forms could find a rational, truthful application. It is only as exceptions that Igor supplies examples where dramatic truth is infringed; in the majority of cases everything is rational, all is accurately thought out and in strict accordance with the course of the dramatic action. A character sings something of rounded musical character when, according to the action, he really ought to be ‘singing a [sustained] song’, or when he is given a situation which gives the chance of remaining longer in a lyrical mood (e.g. Konchakovna, etc.). The chorus sings something [musically] developed when according to the action it really ought to ‘sing a song’, during a ceremonial ‘praising’, or at moments of uniform general animation (e.g. the rejoicing at Igor’s return). Borodin has recourse even to sonata form (for the Overture) and variation form (in the final dances of Act II); but all this is appropriate and in no way contradicts the demands of modern opera, where all sorts of forms are good, if only they are rational and match the course of the drama. Besides, in Borodin we also find outstanding specimens of the latest melodic recitative, in places where one could not manage without it because of the precipitate movement of the action (in the comic 106

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle scenes of the gudok-players,7 or Yaroslavna’s speeches before she meets her husband). The musical characterizations in Igor are very powerful. In spite of that, they are expressed not by external devices but by means of the actual content of the music; one has to regard the use throughout the opera of several thematic excerpts and chord progressions as very desirable ‘appropriate recollections’ of characters and moments in the opera, and not as Wagnerian leitmotives, pinned once and for all to animate and even inanimate actors in the musical drama, and pursuing them everywhere, all the time throughout its duration. And in fact Borodin’s characterizations are successful: all the characters in his opera emerge precisely as one imagines them from the Lay of the Host of Igor and from the libretto of the opera. Igor is nobility itself, bravery, strength, honesty and courage. Galitsky exudes effrontery, dissipation and nasty rakishness; he is a pretty low-grade carouser, but nevertheless a prince in conduct and manners. Yeroshka and Skula are soul-mates in their tastes, but they are of course people of a different kind: it is not they who make drunkards of other people, they are entertained to drink for their jesting and buffoonery; nonetheless the difference between them is immediately obvious: Skula is the instigator; Yeroshka is more stupid and can act only according to his comrade’s stratagems. Ovlur, whose entire role amounts to persuading Igor to flee from captivity, persuades him in such a way that only perhaps the adamantine Prince Igor would not be convinced by his arguments right from the start. The character of Yaroslavna is maintained in full: the image of the faithful, loving sweetheart is presented and is completely clear and understandable to us. The young Prince Vladimir, as befits someone in love, does not think of much other than Konchakovna, and is therefore characterless. Konchakovna, on the other hand, is far from characterless in her impetuous, fiery passion for Vladimir which causes her to forget everything in the world, for which she is prepared to make any decision, to give up everything. Konchak is superlative; that is exactly how you imagine him: imperious, powerful, fervent, bloodthirsty, clever, noble in his own way, an interesting amalgam of positive and negative qualities. But if Borodin was successful with individual characters, the masses turned out even better, emerged even more sharply; the Russians and the Polovtsians are like sky and earth, so great is the difference in colour! After the staid severity of the Slavonic sounds, the composer almost sets us on fire when he introduces us to the Polovtsian camp. And what subtlety of differences, moreover: the Russians praise in one way, the Polovtsians in another; a carousing with Galitsky, an orgy at Konchak’s; there is nothing in common, 7

Gudok: a three- or four-stringed bowed instrument.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 each time it is different, there is none of the monotony which one detected in this respect when reading the libretto. Let us now go through the opera step by step. We shall omit the Overture for the time being; it will be discussed at the end. The Prologue The introductory orchestral bars are fine in the full sense of that word; Russian in their strictly diatonic style, they are permeated by a ceremonial importance and recognition of the seriousness of the moment. The digression towards the flat side is one of the happiest details at this point. The chorus of praise (slava) is worthy of the introduction. Although it is not based on any well-known folksong but on a theme belonging to the composer, the folk spirit is maintained irreproachably. To begin with, the chorus is set out in an extremely simple manner: unisons, octaves and, in the inner voices, thirds; there is something of antiquity in this naive coarseness and deliberate poverty of harmony. Later on, on the other hand, the harmony is more complicated, but the character of the opening is not disturbed; the word slava itself is repeated here, harmonized in the most beautiful and original fashion (the supertonic seventh in last inversion alternates with the 64 chord of the tonic, with the bass of the latter entering slightly earlier); the Phrygian cadence, in which the last chord with its ingeniously omitted third sounds so full of character, leads to the four-sharp key which is the basis for the girls’ enchanting singing. This is something different, like a kind of variation on the theme of the beginning of the chorus. The alternation later on of the women’s voices’ Slava! Slava! (‘Glory! Glory!’) with the men’s ‘Slavn¨ım knyaz’yam nashim’ (‘To our splendid princes’) and so on is charming. The chorus comes to an end after two dominant organ points; the first of them is filled with gentle prettiness and the second with simplicity and power. Now we have reached pure Borodinesque combinations, snatched, to be exact, from his ‘Second’ Symphony; in these outbursts of the people shouting, one detects the power of the crowd and its thirst for the enemy’s blood. From a theoretical point of view, this is a paraphrase of the theme from the orchestral introduction, occurring with the most original use of the harmonic interval of the second. To the very same theme, but more gradually and not so ferociously, the boyars8 sing, and this leads into a very gentle harmony for eight-part chorus, where the theme from the beginning of the number is developed imitatively. Then again comes the harsh unison of the people on seconds in the orchestra and again the gentle imitations just described. 8

Boyar: a nobleman.

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle This scene ends with smooth choral chords, while the lower registers of the orchestra reproduce, as they die away, the theme of the people’s shouts, in the guise of a decorated pedal. However good the number just described may be, though, the ‘eclipse’ is still better as regards music. It becomes terrible from these dominantseventh chords in E-flat, A, G and C, taken one immediately after the other; the panic-stricken trembling, the bewilderment, the crest-fallen state of the people who just before this were bold and filled with vengeance, can be heard in the orchestra’s semitones creeping down and in the original alternations of minor modes built upon them. These pages are truly inspired. Igor’s speech cannot stand comparison with them at all: it is decent and that is all; and his phrase, placed between two fine excerpts from the music of the first chorus – ‘druz’ya, syadem na borz¨ıkh koney’ (‘Friends, let us be seated on fast horses’) is even worse than that: it is perfectly ordinary. The little scene of Skula and Yeroshka, on the other hand, is excellent; it is full of humour, gifted jokes and incomparable declamation, worthy of Musorgsky and his Inn Scene in Boris. The sweethearts’ farewell is rather ordinary. The mood here is correct and the ensemble is motivated in a justifiable way, but the crotchets in Igor’s part are tedious and suggest something cold; Yaroslavna’s sobbing part is monotonous, of little interest and surely only slightly better than what Igor sings; the short four-part ensemble (Yaroslavna, Igor, Vladimir and Galitsky) is euphonious, but nothing more; Igor’s words of farewell are insignificant; Yaroslavna’s ‘Proshchay!’ (‘Farewell!’), where she has to diminuendo slowly on a high C is both impractical and unbeautiful. What Igor says to Galitsky is somewhat better; the essentially ordinary part for the singer also rests on ordinary harmony, but it is ennobled by different melodic turns; also pleasant here is the use in the final cadence of a first-inversion chord of the mediant, instead of the dominant triad. Galitsky is more successful, and his music for the words ‘T¨ı vo mne uchast’ye prinyal’ (‘You showed some concern for me’) goes to the heart of the matter. Throughout this scene one must pay attention to the fine chords as the sweethearts enter and leave; the former are in a descending pattern, the latter ascending. The Prologue is rounded off, ending superbly with a chorus using the music from the beginning, altered only slightly. The episode with the theme in the basses is powerful, leading to the marvellous concluding bars in 32 time: cries of ‘Zdravi knyazi’ (‘Greetings, princes’) and so on; and then a decorated pedal, as before, only more majestic. In the Prologue the soloists are markedly inferior to the choruses. But since the choruses in this Prologue are far more to the point than the soloists, since the choruses sing superlative music imprinted with powerful inspiration 109

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 excellently sustained in the old-Russian style, since the brief comic scene of the gudok-players is very successful, and the ‘eclipse’ is a thing of genius, then as a result the Prologue to Igor is a marvellous threshold to the opera. Act I scene 1 The music here also has a good deal in common with the composer’s ‘Second’ Symphony, and particularly with the playful sounds of its finale. Echoes of it may be heard as early as the orchestra’s opening festive bars with their lively, fervent little theme whistled somewhere at scarcely attainable heights. To these sounds the drunkards, interrupting one another, shout out their Slava to Galitsky. But the tempo accelerates; on top only the second half of the lively little theme is given and Skula sings his song; the amicable choir answers him; Skula is replaced by Yeroshka; later both gudok-players sing together and again the chorus takes it up. In subject all this is full of reckless merry-making and unrestrained revelry, and in the music too there is revelry, merry-making also – purely Russian in nature, with its rampaging and going out on the spree on a grand scale. That at least is the impression. But what ingenuity there is in this music and its construction! Skula in fact sings the theme which was whistled in the orchestra at the start. Yeroshka has it too; except that it is now in a different hue, one of comic compassion. It is in the chorus too, in whose hands, with the words ‘Goy, goy! Zagulyali!’ (‘Hey, hey! They’re starting to have fun!’), it undergoes some changes. Let us note in passing the curious modulation at the ‘Mnogoletiye’ (‘Long life’) (an unexpected F), and in Yeroshka and Skula, the compassion pervaded by malicious humour – ‘Oy, khochu k batyushke’ (‘Ah, I want to go back to my father’), etc. Galitsky’s recitative is good, while his song (less well motivated, by the way, than the singing of the gudok-players) is full of the right character – of sweep and daring; in the song’s middle section the modulations from G-flat to A and back again are interesting. Galitsky’s subsequent recitative is possibly even better and more expressive than his first one. His phrase ‘Poydyom-ka luchshe v terem’ (‘Let’s go to the palace’) is given character by its breadth and brazenly commanding character; it was used in the preceding recitative to the words ‘Ya zazhil b¨ı na slavu’ (‘What a glorious life I’d lead’); we shall encounter it again in Galitsky’s part in the scene with the Princess. The recitative is framed at the beginning and the end by the strong exclamation ‘Knyazyu Galitskomu slava!’ (‘Glory to Prince Galitsky!’); the theme of this exclamation will have a role to play later on. 110

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle The scene with the girls is graceful, folklike and attractive when it concerns them; it is somewhat weaker musically where the Prince’s replies are concerned. The gudok-players’ mocking refrain at the end of the scene ‘Vot-te i k batyushke’ (‘Back to their fathers’) is superlative – a most gifted prank. The scene of the gudok-players with the chorus, ‘Stoy, rebyata, slukhay!’ (‘Stop, lads, listen’) is based in a lively and witty way on the interesting orchestra, making skilful use of a motive taken from a theme at the beginning of the scene. The song in honour of the prince is a fine, fervent number in couplet form. The ritornello with its trill and its beautiful spread chords on the top sparkles and laughs. Skula starts his important-sounding song to a comic text to the accompaniment of a kind of killingly funny sighs in the orchestra. The chorus sings on to the end of the couplet with him. The same ritornello comes back again, and Yeroshka sings the theme while Skula feels his way along a chromatic scale; it all turns out most amusing. The chorus arranges its short refrain in canon. The middle section of the number is entrusted to Yeroshka; in his every phrase Skula enters rigorously with his three assenting notes. This passage is repeated after Skula’s weighty couplet to the first theme, anticipated by the previous ritornello in which a curious C in the bass is now mixed in. At the end a canonic exchange from the chorus is added to the gudok-players, and the ‘Song in honour of the prince’, which is profoundly Russian, brilliantly talented and rib-ticklingly humorous, rounds things off with its loudly laughing ritornello. A shortcoming of the song is perhaps its too low choral parts. The chorus ‘Da, vot komu b¨ı knyazhit’ na Putivle!’ (‘Yes, that’s who should rule in Putivl!’) found its theme in the development of the choral exclamation mentioned above, ‘Glory to Prince Galitsky!’ It contains the strength and blunt obstinacy of a coarse gang dispersing. A little later the music of the opening is reproduced successfully, and moreover at one point the opening choral theme is superbly united with the theme ‘Yes, that’s who should rule in Putivl!’ The scene dies away with ‘Ah, I want to go back to my father!’ On this occasion Yeroshka brings out his drunken, piteous semitones. This realistic, highly talented, lively, integral and at the same time musical and masterly scene has given a vivid characterization of both Galitsky’s surroundings and the prince himself. Scene 2 Yaroslavna’s arioso is sincere, gentle and makes an impact; its calm, profound sorrow has found expression in music of lofty qualities. The recitative section 111

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 is delightful – a genuine model of inspired melodic recitative. The faster section is not quite so good musically, but full of the right mood and feeling; the ‘dream’ is poetic. The girls’ chorus is entrancing. Preceded by the warm short scene with the nanny, it rings out in such touching, simple and charming sounds, and several times comes to a close not on a chord but on a unison, so much in the folk style that you are full of admiration both for the chorus itself, and for the talent of a composer who is able to compose such truthful, artistically realistic pictures of Russian life. The girls’ embarrassment is a little episode of indescribable freshness; the Glinka-like little descending figure is heard twice and occurs extremely aptly there. But the 54 ending of this number is the best thing of all here; it is a masterpiece musically; it is one of the most successful and natural applications of that metre in the entire literature of music; a model of ‘Borodin’s’ seconds; and, lastly, it is truth itself as music for the stage. And how good it is after this captivating patter song to return to the calmer opening: all the offended girls have had their say and a weight has fallen from their shoulders. Superb! The scene with Yaroslavna and Galitsky is thinner. Notice, however, that it is a scene and not a duet; a dialogue, not simultaneous singing; and that is because there is no place here for lyricism and similarity of feeling between the two of them. We see the new aspirations of opera being served here. During this scene Yaroslavna bases what she says on arioso elements, whereas Galitsky in his replies in part recalls what he sang in the Prologue and in part gives us something new, and the new material ends the musical characterization of Galitsky; it is immensely to the point, although goodness only knows what it is purely as regards music. Let us note one episode which is harmonically very beautiful and sensuously passionate; it is the moment when Galitsky, debauched to the marrow of his bones, admires his sister with an angry expression in a not entirely brotherly fashion (‘brovi sdvinulis” (‘his eyebrows moved’)). As Galitsky comes on, reminiscences of the music of Yaroslavna’s arioso are very cleverly quoted; to the accompaniment of those reminiscences, tired by the scene with her brother, she again dreams sadly of her husband. Yaroslavna’s recitative as she meets the boyars is insignificant. But the boyars’ narrative is of amazing depth and power; its gloomy, joyless harmonies are full of overwhelming tragedy, and the listener’s involuntary agitation is only intensified by the Princess’ despairing hopeless wails which in places interrupt the narrative. The melodic phrase of these replies of Yaroslavna is repeated when she recovers consciousness after fainting; in the concluding scene with the alarm bell it plays an important role in Yaroslavna’s music, the chorus and the orchestra. The boyars calm the Princess down with music 112

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle of a staid character which inspires confidence. Her reply to them gives nothing away. The alarm-bell itself and the whole commotion in general which ends Act I is a passage written both by an inspired musician and a man who has a subtle understanding of what true stage effect is in the best sense of that word. What a peak of musical ideas there is here, what deep feeling for the dramatic situation, what brilliance in the scene, how cleverly the orchestra at the very end reproduces the chords of the ‘eclipse’, indicating thereby what the heavenly eclipse meant, but it was not obeyed. We point out here only one impracticality which, as it seems to us, prevents the finale we have described making an even stronger impression: the women weeping and lamenting off stage have to do all that to start with on notes of an insufficiently high register; for that reason they cannot be heard well. Thus, the two scenes in Act I are full of outstanding qualities, both as pure music and as music for the stage. Act II As has been said already, the beginning is lyrical, and for that reason all that corresponds to it in music is a series of rounded numbers, which in this instance by no means contradicts the rationale of modern operatic demands. The song of the Polovtsian woman with chorus is a graceful, beautiful number, with very well-sustained, warm oriental colouring. Of interest here is a theme which occurs each time with a different harmonization; its augmented-second ornaments are distinctive. The maidens’ dance is piquant, elegant and delicate; but this lively, sympathetic little piece with its unmistakable tarantella rhythm lacks a sufficiently clear oriental character. On the other hand, Konchakovna’s cavatina contains as much of the ‘East’ as anyone could wish. It is not the fierce, cruel ‘East’ or even Ratmir’s gentle laziness; it is desire itself, intense heat, the languor of love. The composer did not spare the paint here to create these colours; in gentle, smoothly rising waves, bewitching harmonies flutter and captivating combinations resound in the orchestra; and in the midst of them, in the midst of this magical and well-proportioned mass of sounds, Eastern curls of melody intoxicated with passion float and luxuriate – they are alive, they are loving, they entice you to themselves . . . The episode with the ‘captives’ is a page of music containing a graceful, gentle chorus, its mood the perfect counterweight to the cavatina just sung. The next episode – the ‘Polovtsian patrol’ – is superb; once more the music is unquestionably oriental, but this time it is of a completely different cast by comparison with the first songs of this Act and the cavatina of the Khan’s 113

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 daughter – without a single augmented second; on the contrary, the diatonic quality is observed nearly all the time, disturbed only very slightly by four very brief little chromatic figures. The whole secret of the ‘oriental quality’ here lies in particular features of the rhythm (syncopes, triplet flourishes), and indeed in these same four little chromatic figures. A peculiarity of this number is that throughout its duration, except for brief diversions to the minor keys of E and A, it is in the ancient Phrygian mode (the scale from E to E without any sharps) with the unchanging bass note (E). In a word the colourful, poetic little chorus of the ‘patrol’ is nothing else than an example of an excellent, original pedal-point. And another detail – when the patrol passes by, its singing is heard from the distance and dies away earlier than the orchestral bars come to an end – and not on the tonic but on the seventh (D). This last aspect is very bold and clever. Vladimir Igorevich’s cavatina is sweet, tender, lyrical and expressive; the moment ‘Chto-zh t¨ı medlish’, drug moy?’ (‘Why do you delay, my friend?’) and its later analogue ‘Pridi pod krovom tyomnoy nochi’ (‘Come under the cloak of dark night’) are full of taste and poetry; the bars where the word ‘spit’ (‘sleeps’) occurs are strongly reminiscent of the harmony of Borodin’s wonderful song Spyashchaya knyazhna (‘The Sleeping Princess’). But the absence of national colouring from the cavatina is a hindrance in our estimation; a Russian prince is singing, but there is nothing Russian about his singing – rather, European prettiness on its own. Vladimir’s recitative which precedes the cavatina is incomparably better: it has breadth, the rapture of a warm night and fine construction. The love duet is impassioned, melodious, lies beautifully in the voices and is impetuous. The negotiations ‘Lyubish’-li?’ (‘Do you love me?’) are very fine with their very appropriate chromatic quality, which makes them particularly ardent. Here once more the music is general in character – not Russian and not Eastern; but in this instance this is to the point: lyricism from one person on their own is of course expressed by everyone in the character of their own land; a fervent lovers’ meeting is not subject to the conditions of nationality [narodnost’]; it is international. Then comes Igor’s aria, or, more accurately, arioso, or, still more accurately, monologue. A gloomy mood throughout, with a certain ray of light only in the middle section as he thinks of his wife. And this middle section is uniform over its whole length but is flooded with a caressing diatonic lyricism something in the manner of ‘O, Lyudmila, Lel’ sulit mne radost’’ (‘O, Lyudmila, Lel’ promises me joy’) from Ruslan’s aria [in Act II of Glinka’s opera, Allegro con spirito section] (we underline not the similarity of the two melodies’ external features but only the general similarity in their character). Let us note an important circumstance in passing: in Act IV Yaroslavna grieves and 114

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle weeps for her husband to the same theme. A very subtle idea. Thus does the composer express the spouses’ secure, deep, powerful love for one another: they both even think about one another in the same terms. We shall return again to this melody later; one would be most justified in referring to it as the ‘theme of marital fidelity’. But if the middle section of Igor’s monologue is unquestionably uniform, that cannot be said of the music at the beginning which, to a significant extent, is repeated at the end. There the fragments are excellently adapted to each other and painted in one common colour of sorrowful despair, illustrating the most important moments in the prince’s recollections. And here Igor recalls ‘Bozhiya znameniya ugrozu’ (‘the threat of God’s omen’) and there appears a fragment from the ‘eclipse’ music; ‘brannoy slav¨ı pir vesyol¨ıy’ (‘a merry feast of martial glory’) flies into Igor’s thoughts, and we get a new, energetic thematic contour, which is heard again a little later at the text ‘O, dayte, dayte mne svobodu’ (‘Oh, give me freedom’) which plays an important role both in the opera and in the overture. It is these fragments which give us the right to insist that this is not an aria but a monologue, the product not of the old operatic forms but of the new ones. The music is expressive everywhere and very deeply felt, and the chords with which it begins are profound and steadfastly sorrowful. The scene of Igor with Ovlur is brilliant proof that Borodin had a perfect command of melodic recitative and such control over characterization as only rare figures among the best masters enjoyed. This scene alone is sufficient to show us that the figure of Igor has grown to his full height, to the full stature of his moral strength and nobility. What does the composer give him here? Just a few scrappy notes, mainly on the modest triad of the subdominant, and only twice does he give him something more complex: a powerful progression of seconds for the series of rising questions – ‘Mne knyazyu? Bezhat’ iz plena? Potayno?’ (‘Me, a prince? Run away from captivity? In secret?’) – and a certain hint at a melodic quality when Igor hesitates and thinks about saving his motherland, and in the orchestra at that moment the first bars of the Prologue are recalled. Such is the power of talent. Ovlur himself is incomparable, and his ingratiating speeches – for Ovlur they are perhaps even too beautiful – have a charming effect. In all respects – both in the abstract and as applied music – this is music of first-rate qualities. In the context of the stage, Konchak’s aria is a definite blunder. It is emphatically an aria and moreover a very long one; the actor playing Igor has a harder time here than Ruslan does during Finn’s Ballad [in Act II of Ruslan and Lyudmila]; there it is merely a matter of listening to the story and silently showing surprise from time to time; here, on the other hand, the Khan is uttering compliments, offering all sorts of pleasures, and the Russian prince utters his thanks after a mass of bars from the Khan, of which, without 115

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 counting those devoted to recitative, thirty-eight are Allegro, eighty-two are Andante, and sixty are Allegro moderato. But if we ignore this awkwardness and regard Konchak’s aria simply as a musical number, then we find a good deal that is remarkably good. The Allegro is superb in its powerful, luxuriant character and harmonic innovation (the leaping basses, of which we spoke earlier); the lyrical Andante is saturated through and through with Eastern colouring, and again in a different style compared with the specimens which we have analyzed already; this is neither Konchakovna nor the ‘patrol’; proof that even oriental music need not be all the same; but the best thing of all in the aria is the final Allegro moderato where Konchak speaks of the ‘slave-girl’ (chaga9 ) ‘from beyond the Caspian’ while Borodin for the purpose captivates us with chromatic harmonies of rare beauty, elegance, taste, unquenchable passion and intoxication. The conversation between Konchak and Igor which follows is made up of excerpts from music belonging to them. In Konchak’s part we encounter both the chromaticism of the ‘slave-girls’ and Borodin’s leaping basses; and in Igor’s part, chords and phrases from his monologue. The Polovtsian Dance with chorus which ends Act II is a most capital number in the opera, where Borodin has put himself entirely in the power of his fantastic imagination and inflamed by the images suggested by that imagination, lends the picture of the East such dazzling brilliance, such faithful and bright colouring that we are entitled to call it one of the most national scenes ever to have occurred in music. First a few bars from the orchestra. Tender sounds, not too rapid movement; but the rhythm already contains distinctive life and fervour arising from the constant syncopations; over the typical chromaticism of the harmony lie no less typical flourishes of Eastern melody. A pause. The female dancers have begun their smooth dance, and to illustrate them, a marvellous melody flows above that same syncopated harmonic background: the girls, the ‘slave-girls from beyond the Caspian’, have started singing of their distant homeland ‘where beneath a burning sky the air is filled with languor’. Higher voices give way to altos; both soon combine to sing that bewitching melody. The song falls silent; but the orchestra is playing, and the rhythm is still the previous one, only the syncopes are beaten out in a livelier and louder way – the men’s dance. The sounds flare up and grow; the insistence on the characteristic parallel fifths in the accompaniment is ferocious; the accents on it of the little theme which winds itself around it and runs about are incendiary; and all of a sudden, in counterpoint to it, a new theme breaks in which is hard, angular, sweeping; the tempo speeds up, the energy of the 9

Author’s note: Chaga means slave-girl. It is an ancient word used in the libretto of Prince Igor.

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle male dancers is doubled, and everything has stopped. But just for a second: once again sounds pour forth and the general dance starts to spin and whirl round. During this time the chorus is singing the praises of the Khan, and in the cast and rhythm of this music we recognize the original from which it flowed. Then come the ‘slave-girls’ from Konchak’s aria; but there is not even a hint now about their being tender; languor has been replaced by furious boldness; an astounding variation. In the middle of it, as if it were for comparison with the original, the ‘slave-girls’ are heard almost in the same way as we heard them during the aria. Several calm orchestral bars based on the same elements are suddenly replaced by the thunder and din of the Polovtsian ‘hymn of praise’. Bustling, agile rhythm, short figures leaping upwards and a mere second later running back down again, unquestionably diatonic but nonetheless surprisingly Eastern harmony – provide us with the orchestra for the boys’ dance; the same theme, the same rhythm – but everything painted more thickly and in a more weighty character – accompany the singing and dancing of the men: they all praise the Khan, and from time to time the orchestra seems to flare up on chromatically descending harmonies. Once again the girls, and once again their first poetic melody; gradually the men’s voices join the women’s; the sound of the chorus has become fuller; and now comes the first broad melody in the chorus, and simultaneously, forming an amazing comparison with it, the familiar little theme of the young Polovtsians leaps about in the orchestra. And once more they are dancing by themselves, to the same music as before; only a few small additions have been made: a curious entry, full of character, in the bass. Adults, children, the adults again and finally a general Infernalia towards the end, the most unexpected syncopated variation of Konchak’s ‘slave-girls’ borne along in a mad galop like a hurricane; thematic excerpts from the first men’s dance emerge; a chromatic movement obtained again from the ‘slave-girls’ taking off in a whirlwind; a furious trill – and the curtain falls. Nothing can be compared with the impact of the ending of this scene; how many superb things have we encountered in this act. Act III The Polovtsian march serves as entr’acte to it; with the addition of the chorus, it continues even after the curtain rises, throughout the procession of Gzak’s troops. After Konchakovna, after the ‘patrol’, after Konchak, and after the concluding dances of the previous act, you would think that everything possible had been done to characterize the Polovtsians. But Borodin is inexhaustible and indefatigable. The Polovtsian woman’s ardour in love, 117

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 the Khan’s splendidly dignified speeches, the peaceful Polovtsian curfew, the Polovtsian orgy – all of these themes have found magnificent applications in the music of Igor. Only one thing has been missing – the Polovtsian thirsting for blood, the Polovtsian in all his primordial savagery. And Borodin gives us a savage of this kind. The ‘March’ represents a whole gallery of uncouth, terrifying monsters who are at the same time absurd and rather amusing, half-human and half-animal. This is a powerful sound picture entirely out of the ordinary. It required sharp, harsh chords, harmonic turns bold to the point of daring, screaming colours thrown on to the canvas by the creative artist’s assured unreflective, highly talented brush. But everything is derived from something [else], even such original creations as the ‘Polovtsian march’. As we listen to it, something from Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens along with something from Chernomor’s march flashes into the memory. We are by no means pointing out borrowings: there is no direct similarity between the ‘Polovtsians’ and either composition. This is merely proof that sometimes a hardly noticeable particle of a great element can give birth to a major phenomenon full to overflowing with original beauties and qualities. Because of the ‘March’, Act III particularly underlines the Polovtsians’ cruelty and bloodthirstiness. Konchak too appears in this new light. His song opens excellently – solemnly, broadly, imposingly, and one detects an enjoyment of power and conquest. But after the words ‘Posle bitv¨ı pri Kayale’ (‘After the battle at Kayala’) the song becomes weaker: its constant quavers become wearisome, its haste does not match the exalted status of an Eastern potentate. The chromatic progression in minims ‘Na svete nam podvlastno vsyo’ (‘Everything in the world is subject to our power’) which was the basis of the harmony of Konchak’s aria, is very good. The chorus’s exclamations ‘Slava Gzaku i Konchaku!’ (‘Praise be to Gzak and Konchak!’) are original (the resolution of the 65 chord not to a major but to a minor triad, and not by a semitone up but by a major seventh down is piquant). The middle section of the Khan’s song is insufficiently vivid, with the piling-up of harmonic intricacies overdone. The same is true to a certain extent of Konchak’s subsequent recitative: the chromaticism in both the harmony and the singer’s part go on forever. The chorus of khans (it is later repeated in its entirety with a different text and a different ending) is based on the theme from the middle section of the Khan’s song. Here too there is a great deal of chromaticism, but this time it represents not mere intricacy; the chorus contains fine music, power and energy. The Polovtsian fanfares are very successful and full of character. Beautiful music is entrusted to the Russian captives, and it has an interesting contrapuntal development, though there is nothing Russian about it.

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle At the appearance of the string of vehicles with the booty won in the war, there are again fanfares, and then the Polovtsians combine the theme of their chorus with the theme of the Russians from their previous number. The same device is used at the entry of the part for the new captives. The guards’ chorus and dance are interesting, entertaining and fully in the spirit of the ‘Polovtsian march’. The compositional working here is masterly; everything has grown out of the ‘patrol’ and the dances from Act II, and there is even a mention of Ovlur. And all this thematic material undergoes talented confrontations and development which is extremely witty and inventive. In sum, the impression is just what is required, and the music is excellent. Gzak’s menacing hordes have already been presented to us to the sounds of the march in a collection of curious musical figures; now these newly cheered-up bears bring out an involuntary smile. Ovlur’s scene is a copy of his scene in the preceding act. But his role has become somewhat different: before, he persuaded and convinced; now he whispers a prosaic plan of escape; before, therefore, he sang, whereas now he gives nearly all the melodic interest of his part to the accompaniment; and it has become luxuriant in its enchanting content and poetic colouring. Terzet. Stormy orchestral chords at the outset; Konchakovna’s love theme, beseeching and impetuous, is charming even when sung by a tenor, and in graceful performance by two voices there is continuous harmonic interest allowing the mood sometimes to reach the outer limits of passion (‘Raboy tvoyey gotova b¨ıt’!’ (‘I’m ready to be your slave!’)); the bars of conclusion which rush quickly by, where the basses at first have Konchakovna’s phrase and then a figure derived from the same phrase, – the conclusion, where over these gradually rising basses turbulent harmonies grow up, and along with them the characters’ alarm grows as they hear Ovlur’s whistled signal. In short, the terzet contains much good music, animation and dramatic power. Further on, there is little that needs to be dwelt upon. The moment when the Polovtsians want to shoot Vladimir is very successful in all respects. Konchakovna begs them in despair to the theme of the terzet, and the Polovtsians break into her impassioned melody with brief, ominous exclamations, ‘strelami . . . ostr¨ımi’ (‘with arrows . . . with sharp arrows’). In Konchak’s music melodic hints of his Andante from Act II are not without interest. The Khan’s final resolution is set to the Allegro from his aria with the leaping basses; the orchestral accompaniment is here adorned with festive figurative additions. Assembling for the new campaign is accompanied by Polovtsian fanfares powerfully harmonized with descending whole tones and later chromatically.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 In summing up Act III, we find a new very remarkable perspective on the Polovtsians, interesting and talented development of old material and the attractive music of the terzet. But we also encounter in places a piling-up of harmonic oddities, which is rather dry and therefore tedious. Act IV Yaroslavna’s ‘lament’ shows good taste, simplicity, beautiful lyricism and gentle feminine feeling, and is undoubtedly Slavonic in character. The powerful, profound, graphic lyricism of this magical page from the Lay of the Host of Igor, the charm of its unfeigned sincerity, lend the music a moving poetic quality. This number is rich in themes. Over its whole course we note several fragments varied in theme, tempo and sometimes even by time signature. The first section (Moderato assai, 34 ) is constructed entirely out of phrases of the most beautiful melodic contour; each of them appears first in the singer’s part and then in the orchestra, and everything sobs, without the participation of chords, over a single constant note (the dominant of the key); it proves extremely musical, warm, folk-like and expressive. The second section (at twice the speed, 44 ) is the broad, heartfelt ‘theme of marital fidelity’ which we know from Igor’s monologue. The third section (Allegro moderato, 44 ) also rests on an unchanging bass note, like the first section, but in theme it resembles neither the first section nor the second; during it an energy which had become inactive as a result of grief is restored to life. The fourth section (Allegro animato, 44 ) is somewhat similar to the previous one, but still more lively and not in tempo only. The fifth section (Allegro moderato, 44 ) does not want for breadth, or lyrical, cantabile sweep. The sixth section (the same tempo, 22 ) consists of thematic movement in the exquisite accompaniment with long-held notes in the voice of no melodic significance. Six sections! All are skilfully attached to one another, some are repeated without modification and others with changes of key, accompaniment in whole or in part, in the vocal line or the orchestra. And this thematic ‘multicolouredness’ detracts from the ‘lament’; its beautiful and warm music is more of a mechanical mixture than an organic whole; it contains little growth. It provides many opportunities for admiration, but the impression is made in pieces without giving complete satisfaction. The chorus ‘Okh, ne buyn¨ıy veter’ (‘Ah, it was not the violent wind’) is almost unaccompanied; it amounts to only a few notes to support accurate intonation for the chorus and on one occasion a figure is heard independently in the low orchestral registers which imitates one melodic turn in the theme. One has to be profoundly Russian in order to write music like this. Here Borodin is not only Russian as a successor to Glinka but Russian in his own 120

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle right. We are not going to assert whether a genuine folksong has been taken by the composer or whether the chorus’ theme is a wonderful imitation; this is not a question of any substantial importance. It is important to investigate how the chorus is written. As regards its general conception, as regards partwriting, it is a real phenomenon in the best sense of the word: the voices sound, enter, drop out, join in the harmony of the whole again – all perfectly in the folk style, exactly as they sing in the countryside. Of course, the most characteristic feature of artless Russian folk singing is to bring all the voices to a unison or an octave at the end of periods – and that is observed here, as in the girls’ chorus from Act I, which is also profoundly Russian. But that was an inspired insight into the folksong style; this is an artistic reproduction of it. The chorus makes an irresistible impression. What happens next is incomparable. Yaroslavna has fallen to reflecting under the impact of the song sung by people impoverished in the attack; this impact is also to be heard in the orchestral part as well as in every phrase the princess sings. Riders have appeared in the distance; the orchestra provides the rhythm of a galloping horse. Yaroslavna’s attention is increasingly riveted to the horsemen; and now, while the orchestra gallops nearer and nearer, she forms some suppositions. ‘Was this not how the Polovtsians came to us!’ escapes from her lips, and in the melodic outline we recognize the groans as Gzak attacked Putivl’. The horsemen draw closer and closer, and the suppositions become ever more probable. There is a fleeting thought of a Russian prince paying a visit – a superb episode. She begins to guess, but is still afraid to admit it to herself; and in the meantime the orchestra lets the cat out of the bag, so to speak: it reports that it is Igor by using the same progression in rising seconds to which the prince at first categorically rejected Ovlur’s proposal to flee; the progression is made somewhat more complicated harmonically and is given the character of alarm. She is convinced: a happy cry bursts forth from her heart. Brief final doubts – and then endless joy, endless happiness. ‘Those are Igor’s familiar features, Igor’s features are precious to me! My prince has returned!’ He rides in, dismounts and rushes to his beloved; the orchestra makes a crescendo, harmonizing a series of impatient descending chromatic figures. A loud outburst of rapture; their voices unite ‘On, moy sokol yasn¨ıy!’ (‘He, my bright falcon!’) ‘Zdravstvuy, radost’ lada!’ (‘Hail, my joy, my sweetheart!’). The first caresses: marvellous harmonies ascend in semitones impetuously, impassionedly; as they die away intoxicatedly, the impatient little figures we know already run down, and the ‘duet’ starts. We have to convey the spirit, to analyze what we have heard. A passionate scene, of uncommon truth and subtlety. It is a whole psychological study in sounds, one of the most perfectly dramatic scenes in the whole repertory. Borodin is here almost even more inspired than he was in the scene of the eclipse in 121

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 the Prologue. Only someone convinced of its potency could write melodic recitative so strikingly. The duet itself is somewhat in Glinka’s style; it is full of lyrical elevation, cantabile, sincere, very musical, beautiful in the voices and effective. Its main theme is Yaroslavna’s ‘dream’ from Act I. This is clever: now the dream has been realized. In the middle [section] the duet is interrupted by Yaroslavna’s excellent questions as to how Igor saved himself; Igor recounts his captivity to a theme sung in Act III by himself, Vladimir and the other Russians when they saw new Polovtsian booty; at the same time the princess declaims her several phrases wonderfully. Immediately before this point and at the very end of the duet, there are bars from the orchestra where, beneath a series of caressing chords, the opening excerpt of the theme from their first joint greeting – ‘He, my bright falcon’ flits through. The substantial comic scene of the gudok-players is lively and vivid. It opens with a comic song for two voices which is very smart, very fervent, and done in a very Russian way. In it, and particularly later on in the recitatives of Skula and Yeroshka, one can sometimes hear Musorgsky. The terror which paralyzes them both at the sight of Igor is very amusing. Certain details of what they think up to extricate themselves from their predicament are killingly funny: they sit facing one another and think; ‘I – nu?’ (‘Yes, well?’) asks one; ‘Yes, well?’, replies the other with a question – a second higher. The sounding of the alarm which the gudok-players think up is very successful in all respects; their conversations with the people and their answers to the nobles sparkle with inexhaustible humour. The concluding chorus is rather unfinished, sketch-like. One would have liked more development and more grandeur. The middle section is especially unfinished – the singing in turn of the old men, women and the general chorus (the theme of these negotiations is reminiscent of one of the themes in the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – ‘T¨ı odna soyedinyayesh’’ (‘You alone unite’)).10 But whatever the case, even as it stands there is much that is good in this chorus. The basic theme has breadth, national character and sweep; the old men’s advice has devoutness and ritual propriety; there is strength and beauty in the pedal which leads to the final 32 section, where, as at the end of the Slava (‘Hail’) in the Prologue, chords in chorus and orchestra triumphantly and smoothly move over a constant bass made up of figures (the gudok-players’ theme ‘Gulyay vo zdrav’ye knyazya!’ (‘Have a good time for the prince’s health!’) which they sang with curious zeal before the start of the chorus and which transfers in the central section into the unison I have mentioned). At any rate, the desired rejoicing at the end of 10

Perhaps bars 249ff. in Beethoven and bars 55ff. in Borodin?

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle Borodin’s opera is fully achieved by this chorus, and therefore its main aim – to sing the praises of Igor as his country’s courageous defender – is carried out wonderfully well. It remains for us to analyze the Overture. It is written using motives from the opera exclusively. The slow introduction consists of the initial superb harmonies of Igor’s monologue; they are interrupted by chords in the Prologue foreshadowing the arrival of the sweethearts. The Allegro does not at first give out the first theme; before that there is a further sequence of other excerpts: Polovtsian fanfares, fragments from the scene of Igor and his wife in the final act, i.e. ‘He, my bright falcon’ and both chromatic moves, the magical rising one as well as the descending one; the latter leads to the statement of the first theme. Its role includes the opening of the terzet, i.e. almost everything as it is there, up to and including the phrase ‘I’m ready to be your slave’. The statement of the second theme of the Allegro does not start straightaway either. In shifting from the principal key (D major) into that of the second theme (B-flat major), we at first find ourselves with Igor’s phrase (from his monologue) – ‘A merry feast of martial glory’ – and after that we have, as second theme, the ‘theme of marital fidelity’. Before the beginning of the middle section this theme is developed canonically for several bars; then again the chords for the ‘arrival of the sweethearts’ are heard and the middle section begins. This is something different to begin with, as a passage from the terzet, where Ovlur gives the signal, while in the bass the main theme of the terzet sounds first, and then a figure obtained from the same theme, which rises together with the harmony. Later on, the Polovtsian fanfares are heard, mingled several times with a fragment of the theme ‘He, my bright falcon’, and thus we progress to Konchak, to the leaping basses from the Allegro of his aria and the later bars of this Allegro. Then comes the principal key of the fanfare and so on – in a word, the statement of both themes; at this point the second is stated not in D, but in A (a relationship of keys the same as that in the Overture to Ruslan). On the return to D, a masterly combination of the two themes occurs – the theme from the terzet with the theme of ‘marital fidelity’. Subsequently again those bars of the terzet where Ovlur whistles, and the whole-tone passage which ends Act III (again, as in the Overture to Ruslan) and the chromatic passages. This is where it ends. The Overture is brilliant, skilful, full of interest, animation and content. The material I have listed demonstrates how complex and fine is this content. The composer’s mastery lies in the fact that, despite the abundance of motives from the opera, the Overture is by no means a motley or something stitched together from bits and pieces. On the contrary, it is unusually integral and well proportioned, and the inspired growth of its ideas, their 123

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 unbroken, headlong forward movement, do not allow the listener to recollect himself and notice how long it is. In dimensions, it is closer to a symphonic overture than to an operatic one; in quality, it is one of those which are repeated. Igor is orchestrated incomparably. And there is nothing astonishing about that: Borodin himself was an excellent orchestrator; after his death the orchestration of Igor was completed by Messrs Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. And so to conclusions. Igor is an opera with shortcomings: now and again there is something weak about the music (the soloists in the Prologue), now and again something is exaggerated (in Konchak’s part in Act III); Konchak’s aria is too long, and Igor is in an unenviable position listening to it in silence; the young Russian Prince sings in an unRussian manner; the Russian captives have also forgotten their native language; several choruses are written lower than they ought to be, and therefore are not sufficiently sonorous. All these are shortcomings, and shortcomings of some significance. But they become almost unnoticeable when compared with the opera’s positive aspects, with its powerful characterizations, national character (narodnost’), its broad captivating lyricism, an opera which has given us such amazing pictures of ancient Russia and the East, such vital specimens of dramatic and comic scenes, which has given us, finally and most of all, such highly talented, original music, music sometimes straightforwardly of genius. Borodin is the younger brother of Glinka; Igor is the younger brother of Ruslan!

(f) E. K. Rozenov: Khovanshchina. News of the Day, 17 November 1897, no. 5194. Rozenov, pp. 198–202 This opera, worked on from 1872 to 1880 but left incomplete by Musorgsky, was adapted for performance by Rimsky-Korsakov and first performed by an amateur company in St Petersburg on 9 February 1886. Rozenov reviews a production by the Moscow Private Russian Opera.

A surprising impression, or at any rate an unusual one, is made by the opera Khovanshchina, or as its composer called it, ‘a national (narodnaya) musical drama’ – surprising to such an extent that to begin with, before it has gripped you by its deeply truthful, lifelike moods, you do not know how to relate to it. Judged by the criterion we are used to applying to opera, here we have completely lost any ground under our feet. There are almost no independent musical forms or rounded musical moods at all, and not because the composer was unable to create them but because you can sense that that was not his aim. Even at those points where you can obtain a more or less powerful impression from the music, you feel that it is the accidental result 124

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle of circumstances, exactly as when you pick up a mood from a picture of nature or even in life, you recognize that neither nature, in taking on some particular tinge or other, nor the persons taking part in the event, experienced your mood in the slightest and were not counting on it in the least. It is the same here: in certain places you find marvellous music and at the same time you feel that not one single note was written for the sake of mere ‘musical enjoyment’, that is in order to smooth over, reinforce, vary the musical form, to produce a sound effect enchanting the ear, to arouse interest through originality, novelty, or at least to form a so-called ‘musical number’. Whether this is good or bad, these were not the aims which the composer set himself; his music stands higher than the conventions of form and the traditions of opera, it becomes inartificial, an organic part of the characters in the mass of the people, their soul, their inner image, their speech. Where these spiritual sides and features of their character manifest themselves fleetingly, as if they had been dropped accidentally, as happens in life, there the music also acts by hinting, giving compressed, unfinished snatches of moods; where passions or spiritual states are concentrated and develop freely thanks to a coincidence of circumstances, there the music too grows stronger and expands to really large forms. In a word, the music here is life itself and it makes no concessions to prejudices of any sort, to ‘ideas’ about opera found in the Wagnerian theatre, to any preconceived views about the role of voices and orchestra or anything similar. The music here is sincerity and simplicity itself, and takes not a single step for the sake of convention or appearance. One might then ask what is music for? Are not words alone sufficient? Is not this lowering music, to offer it such a subsidiary role? Perhaps this is simply drama, and music is wholly superfluous? But at this point something completely unexpected arises. As a drama, Khovanshchina amounts to nothing in itself, it comes to life solely thanks to that deep characterization of Russian types and the historical era which the composer has succeeded in reproducing by means of this music. The plot in itself is so episodic and ramshackle that not only does it not amount to drama, but in general does not present anything organically whole and unified by some sort of idea. For a drama, the most important thing is missing here – conflict. Here we see a collision of two elements, but not a conflict. And even collision in the strict sense is missing, since in the single scene of the quarrel between Prince Khovansky, the head of the strel’ts¨ı11 and representative of boyar despotism, the old order, convictions and beliefs, with the semi-European Prince Golits¨ın, the actual motives for the quarrel are of an accidental personal character and are not explained in the 11

Strel’ts¨ı: military corps in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 preceding acts. And finally, the power of dramatic interest is lacking in this quarrel, since both these quarrelling persons, like the third participant in the quarrel as well, Dosifey, the head of the schismatics, perish in the same way without struggle or oppositions under the blows of a mysterious unseen power, despotic and all-destroying and remaining wholly incomprehensible and dark to the spectator. There lies the weakest part of the drama. In this matter the principal dramatis personae remain off stage. These characters are the young Peter and the regent Sofiya, between whom genuine conflict takes place, a conflict which interests one vaguely the whole time. The young Peter, with bright ideas for renewal and progress being born in his inspired head, with his unconquerable will, which halts before no obstacles – that is the main hero of Khovanshchina, there is the man who is ‘cutting down the forest’, from which only the splinters fly across the stage. But without seeing this hero before your very own eyes, not recognizing clearly the motives for this general dreadful destruction and the powerful, far-seeing ideas, which might even to some extent reconcile you with the death of characters who have done nothing wrong in your eyes but live and act only according to their convictions (Dosifey and Marfa), or according to the obligations and habit of their times (the Khovanskys, father and son), against your will you experience dissatisfaction and a heavy feeling of frightful, overwhelming injustice, which is entirely on the side of the offended. This impression is increased by the fact that both representatives of the new order, Golits¨ın and Shaklovit¨ıy, are the least sympathetic of all. The first of them, despite the education which he has received abroad and his advanced ideas, displays a series of contradictions testifying to a lack of character, turns out to be a believer in prejudices (fortune-telling), despotic in dealing with people, cruel (in ordering that Marfa be drowned) and devoid of convictions (in his dispute with Dosifey), while the second, for all his lofty grief over the fate of Russia, makes a repulsive impression through his low deeds (denunciation, perfidious murder of Khovansky and mockery over his corpse). Thus, we see that there is no drama, and there is not even a connecting idea to justify the events which take place. And indeed, Musorgsky was unable to deal with the plot’s dramatic side, and probably was not even particularly interested in that side. What did interest him, what touched him deeply, was something else – namely, life itself. He was most likely not striving for the triumph of one idea or another; he took the crowd, the folk types and the historical personalities, brought them alive in his imagination, with all their merits and shortcomings, just as they were, and created several living pictures of the past, deeply faithful in spirit, colour, place, time and

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Other composers of the former Balakirev circle action. These pictures are sketched in some cases carelessly, in others with powerful, broad strokes, in yet others with loving, painstaking polish, but all are indisputably sincere, inspired, and profoundly talented to such an extent that, for vividness and vitality, the images and scenes he has created have almost no equals in the art of music and drama. Thus the entire interest of this work resides in bringing to life one of the interesting and characterful pages in our nation’s history and re-creating several deeply truthful folk types. Musorgsky has achieved all this mainly through his music, because the libretto, in spite of its typical old-Russian language and small features captured with talent in the depiction of characters and situations, is too incoherent, scrappy and insubstantial to be at all satisfactory by itself. The whole vitality, the whole psychology, the whole drama are reproduced through the music alone; to it too all the crowds and the individual characters are indebted for their profoundly typical character. The artists have to obtain information about the creation of their roles from the music alone. And in truth, the turns of Musorgsky’s declamatory vocal lines conceal such profoundly intimate intonations, noted and captured in the speech of Russian people that the whole appearance, all the movements of his heroes in their most characteristic features, are clarified by themselves for the actors, and it remains only for them to create integral characters from these clarified features, a task made still easier by the fact that Musorgsky, as if he saw his heroes and folk crowds in the flesh in front of him, created them integral and without the slightest contradictions, though surely with the one exception of Shaklovit¨ıy. In its depth and nobility of feeling, his aria is difficult to reconcile with Shaklovit¨ıy (in the scene of denunciation and murder). Khovanshchina demands nothing special from performers in the way of vocal resources, but it demands a great deal of artistic understanding. Probably that is why it has not so far been staged by the official theatres. The routine manners of the semi-Italian school, a concern with pauses on high notes and showy arias sung beside the footlights, lose all meaning here and can only distort the very essence of the opera to the extent of unrecognizability. Musorgsky’s opera presupposes in the performers entirely new and unprecedented demands of mental and spiritual development, and therefore it can only be produced by a theatre which has renounced the age-old routine of our operatic stages and musical institutions. In this respect a huge amount has been done by the company of the Private Opera. One detects a rational, lively and in many respects truly artistic attitude to their task. One detects, moreover, that the mounting of this opera was prepared with special care and without the customary haste. Careful consideration is evident everywhere:

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 in the very successful distribution of the most responsible roles, in the zeal of the orchestra [. . .]; in the strict selection and ordering of the designs, sets and costumes from the well-known artist and expert in the Russian style A. Vasnetsov, which, with the artistic execution of the sets by Messrs Korovin and Malyutin, the historically accurate costuming and excellent make-up, created for this opera an external aspect of a rare integrity and, lastly, in the skill of the stage action, free of any kind of routine. On the other hand, the action and the production did not pass without a few blunders. Thus, for instance, the opera opens with a dawn, and moreover the music charmingly portrays a picture of old Moscow as it awakens; meantime the curtain which rises in the middle of this musical picture reveals the stage as dawn is far advanced, and the illusion is thus lost: it is already fully light, and the strelets Kuz’ka is asleep on guard duty and, what is more, he is raving too loudly not to waken himself up; two other strel’ts¨ı approach him, and, wakening up, Kuz’ka attacks them, not having recognized them; however deeply Kuz’ka might have slept, in the full daylight he could not have failed to recognize the strel’ts¨ı in their bright blue costumes immediately. Obviously, it should still have been dark at the raising of the curtain. Later on, at the appearance of Andrey Khovansky with Emma, Khovansky ought not to drag her straight to the front of the stage, but all the time, right up until Marfa’s appearance, ought to draw the young German girl trying to defend herself forward. What point would there have been in stopping with her in the centre of the square? And by the way, Emma’s costume is far too artisan, reminiscent of a baker. Prince Andrey is unlikely to have been attracted so tenaciously to such a prosaic figure. In the second act in Golits¨ın’s office, the electric light, depicting moonlight falling through the window, is unnaturally bright and lends the scene a f´eerie quality inappropriate to the context. All these shortcomings can easily be put right. Much harder to change is the unsuccessful production of the immolation scene, which is limited for some reason to only three people – Dosifey, Marfa and Andrey – when the whole tragic character of this scene lies in the death of the entire sect. It would have been possible to arrange the fire so that the entire crowd placed themselves behind a flaming foreground. The result would have been more triumphant, and more terrible than in its present form, where the appearance of several of Peter’s men by the dying fire merely gives an effect of utter perplexity. However, despite these slight defects, the opera makes a deep, genuine and tremendous impression, especially the scenes of fortune-telling, the murder of Khovansky, the exiling of Golits¨ın and the preparation for the fire. [. . .]

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(g) Yu. D. Engel’: [Balakirev’s Second Symphony]. Russian Bulletin, 21 March 1909, no. 66. Engel’, pp. 257–9 Balakirev composed this work between 1900 and 1908, incorporating a Scherzo sketched in about 1864.

The final concert of the Circle of Lovers of Russian Music took place on 17 March. [. . .] The evening’s programme comprised exclusively symphonic compositions, headed by the Second Symphony of Balakirev, which was being performed for the first time. This symphony is dedicated ‘to the precious memory of A. D. Ul¨ıb¨ıshev’, the author of a well-known book about Mozart in French, which came out sixty-six years ago.12 And it is somehow touchingly strange to recall that this very artist, now sending his new symphony into the world, was on close personal terms with figures active in an era separated from us by a good two generations. The same kind of relationship also existed between Balakirev and Glinka, who valued highly the talent of the then young composer and even called him his successor. And it is true that Balakirev’s compositions have much in common with those of Glinka. The same striving for purity of style, where everything is painstakingly polished down to the tiniest of details; the same absence of anything exaggerated or chaotic; the same link between composition and folk melodies – whether Russian, Czech, Spanish or oriental; the same detailed style of orchestration. The only thing missing is Glinka’s spontaneity, his power and wholeness. On the other hand, the influences of Berlioz, and of Schumann and the symphonic Liszt, whom Glinka did not know at all, have had their effect on the more complicated and especially the ‘programmatic’ elements of Balakirev’s music. But Balakirev did not write operas, like Glinka, and instead put all his strength into writing for the orchestra and the piano as well as into song. The new symphony is very typical of the seventy-three-year-old composer, who carries his works for a long time before giving them birth. As always with Balakirev, the symphony’s themes are for the most part brief, but bold and significant. These themes are developed with variety and freshness, and moreover as regards form, the composer’s strong powers make themselves felt not so much in the grand integrity of large-scale constructions as in the details of variation style. His harmonic, rhythmic and orchestral devices are well aimed and effective. Each of them on its own rarely represents anything 12

A. D. Ul¨ıb¨ıshev (1794–1858) was a wealthy music-loving landowner and patron of the young Balakirev. He is the author of a Nouvelle biographie de Mozart, 3 vols. (Moscow 1843) and of Beethoven, ses critiques et ses glossateurs (Leipzig 1857).

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 out of the ordinary, yet in living organic conjunction they achieve an entirely new combined strength, very characteristic of the distinctive individuality of the composer, who is a stranger to fiery impulses and inclined to good grooming perfected at the desk. The first movement of the symphony, with its original scheme of modulations, has a slightly oriental character, bringing to mind, willy-nilly, Balakirev’s own Tamara, with which there are many points of similarity both in the themes and their working-out. The second movement is an interesting, lively ‘Scherzo alla cosacca’, which however contains very little of anything specifically ‘Cossack’, or even scherzo-like in general. The Trio of the Scherzo – the kingdom of the wind instruments – is built on a Russian theme. The third movement is a Romance [song] where the strings reign; the melody is lyrical, graceful, beautiful, but with Balakirev’s typical coolness. In the brilliant finale, with its clearly expressed polonaise character, the best things are the episodes based on the development of a folk melody, a device often used before in Russian music. More insipid are those episodes in the finale which are linked with the theme borrowed from the Romance. As a whole, the symphony is a very fine work, not always powerful maybe, but interesting throughout. Well performed under the direction of Mr Kuper, it apparently appealed to the public. [Other items on the programme and the performances are reviewed.]

(h) V. P. Kolomiytsev: Mr Romanovsky’s Piano Evening (1909). Small Hall of the Conservatoire [in St Petersburg], 3 April. New Rus’, 5/18 April 1909. V. Kolomiytsev, pp. 66–8 Kolomiytsev (1868–1936) was prolific and well regarded as a translator into Russian of song-texts and opera libretti for performance use. He was also a busy music critic and organizer of musical life. This notice records a rare public performance of Pictures at an Exhibition.

The most important and most interesting item in Mr Romanovsky’s programme this time was the cycle of piano pieces by Musorgsky entitled Kartinki s v¨ıstavki (‘Little Pictures from an Exhibition’). A posthumous exhibition of drawings by the artist and architect Viktor Gartman, a friend of Musorgsky’s, was arranged in St Petersburg in 1874. The composer found inspiration in these quaint drawings of extremely diverse content and reproduced ten of them in sound. The result was a kaleidoscope, partly real and partly fantastic, of musical sketches, to some extent reminiscent in concept of Schumann’s Carnaval. Musorgsky’s work opens with an introduction – ‘Promenade’; this beautiful but deliberately tranquil, impassively idling ‘walk’ is repeated from time to time over the course of the piece, acting 130

Other composers of the former Balakirev circle as a connecting link between certain of the ‘little pictures’ and emphasizing as well as could possibly be achieved their vivid, vital expressiveness. And the expressiveness and distinctive truthfulness of these sketches, these brush-strokes in sound, outlines, and chiaroscuros – often extremely strange, capricious and almost accidental from a purely musical point of view – are simply astounding! Indeed, in them music is in close contact with painting, and almost crosses over into it: you not only hear, you can positively see the freakish gnome with his amusing leaps and grimaces, and the noisy gang of children with their nannies in the Tuileries Gardens, and the conceited Samuil, and the fawning Shmul’, and the luminous skull in the catacombs of Paris, and Baba-Yaga, and the design for the ‘Bogat¨ır’ gate in Kiev’, and so on. For all its rather wild primitiveness, this sound-picture is uncommonly fresh, clear and original. But the capriciousness of its architectonics and the absence from it of a strict musical logicality make Musorgsky’s Pictures most difficult for the performer and are even able to drive the pianist to despair: this piece is, above all, very difficult to remember by heart. That is probably why it has so far almost never featured in programmes of piano evenings. The more honour to Mr Romanovsky, then, that he did not take fright at these difficulties but overcame them, and played Musorgsky’s Pictures for us yesterday superbly and artistically. Our talented and sensitive pianist managed to find for each of them the appropriate mood and colours. Only in a few places – for example, in the picture portraying French women quarrelling furiously at the market – could one have wished for rather more rhythmic sharpness and rather less delicacy; it is essential to take account of the fact that Musorgsky was, or at least tried to be, an enemy of beauty ‘sufficient unto itself’. [Other works in the programme are discussed.]

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CHAPTER FOUR

The Belyayev generation

Inspired by his love of Glazunov’s music, the wealthy timber merchant Mitrofan Petrovich Belyayev (1836–1903/4) initiated a series of ventures to support Russian composers – among them a publishing house, concert series including the Russian Symphony Concerts, and prizes. RimskyKorsakov was a principal adviser for these schemes, later joined by Lyadov and Glazunov.

(a) Ts. A. Cui: The results of the Russian Symphony Concerts. Fathers and Sons. Musical Review, 21 January 1888, no. 3. Cui, pp. 381–6 Cui was among the first to draw attention to the epigonal character of the generation which succeeded Balakirev, Borodin, Musorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov (but see Chapter 2 (b)). The sub-title of his article echoes the title of Turgenev’s novel. Cui’s apostasy, of which this article was one manifestation, prompted Stasov to publish an article citing mutually contradictory viewpoints, all expressed by Cui, and charging him with giving solace to the conservative foes of the New Russian School to which both Cui and Stasov had given their allegiance.1

Works by eighteen composers have been performed at the five Russian Symphony Concerts. From a numerical point of view, this is extremely comforting. Thirty more or less large-scale orchestral works and fourteen small-scale works were performed. But of this enormous number only a few are of artistic significance and can reckon on a long life. This is extremely discomforting. Out of the eighteen composers, some had already made a name for themselves – they are the fathers; the others were beginners in the composing game – they are the sons. Among the composers three were represented extensively and the others very meagrely. Seven large-scale orchestral pieces by Borodin were performed, five by Rimsky-Korsakov (one of which was played at two concerts), and five by 1

See V. V. Stasov: ‘A Sad Catastrophe’, Day, 6 January 1888, no. 3, p. 2. Stasov 4, pp. 49–52.

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The Belyayev generation Glazunov. The remaining composers, including even the genuine ones, were represented by only one piece each, and that generally of the most modest proportions, such as, for instance, overtures by Glinka, Balakirev and Tchaikovsky (and even then by the over-played Romeo and Juliet), scherzos by Arensky and Lyadov, and an Intermezzo by Musorgsky. With certain composers it was impossible to proceed otherwise because of the small number of their orchestral works (e.g. Lyadov) but others presented an embarras de choix (e.g. Tchaikovsky). In this uneven distribution of works by Russian composers and even more in the omission of others such as Dav¨ıdov,2 Napravnik3 and Rubinstein,4 one detects a biased exclusivity, an unappealing aspect of these concerts which are in many respects excellent. One might think that the concerts were given for the benefit of the three composers, with the others included purely for the sake of propriety. Some composers were not represented as they should have been: instead of performances of complete works, only excerpts were played – and as first performances (the Allegro from Antipov’s Symphony,5 the Andante from Blaramberg’s Symphony,6 or the Scherzo from Arensky’s Suite). Excerpts should be performed only if they are from well-known works or by composers with established and time-honoured reputations. But new works, especially by composers at the start of their careers, should be performed complete or not at all, for an excerpt can give a false and misleading idea of a composer’s creative abilities. Possibly Arensky’s Suite or Blaramberg’s Symphony, performed complete, would have made a dispiriting impression, but at least such an impression would be the result of the complete work, of the composer’s thoughts and intentions expressed in all their fullness, and not in a fragmentary or episodic fashion. The same thing was noticeable to an even greater extent in the compilation of the programme of piano pieces. Two short pieces by Shcherbachov7 were played along with one each by Antipov, Balakirev, Lyadov and Felix Blumenfeld.8 What can be learned from one short piece? What opinion 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Karl Yul’yevich Dav¨ıdov (1838–89): outstanding cellist; composer, conductor and teacher. Professor, director of the St Petersburg Conservatoire. Eduard Frantsevich Napravnik (1839–1916): the chief conductor of Mariinsky Theatre from 1869 to 1916. Anton Grigor’yevich Rubinstein (1829–94): outstanding pianist; composer. Founder of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, its director 1862–7, 1887–91. Konstantin Afanas’yevich Antipov (1858–?): composition student of Rimsky-Korsakov, who graduated in 1886. Pavel Ivanovich Blaramberg (1841–1907): composer, journalist, piano pupil of Balakirev. Nikolay Vladimirovich Shcherbachov (1853–?): composer and pianist, briefly a pupil of Liszt. Feliks Mikhaylovich Blumenfeld (1863–1931): pianist, conductor and composer; pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 can be formed of its composer? It would have been better to be content with one composer and present his piano works with a degree of completeness, as was done in these concerts with Borodin’s songs, of which five were performed. But that was Borodin, who was one of the three favoured composers. A substantial lack of discrimination and almost striving for quantity over quality were discernible in the programmes of the Russian Symphony Concerts. There must be limits to the desire to serve Russian music by opening the field to beginning composers and performing their works. It is not enough for a composition to be the work of a Russian composer; it is essential that it should have something to offer here and now, or at least show promise for the future; that could not be said of everything performed at these concerts. If the aim was merely to perform music by Russian composers, then there were too few of them; if the aim was to perform music by gifted Russian composers, then there were too many of them. Concerts where Dav¨ıdov, Napravnik and Rubinstein were rejected and many empty and hopeless works by a variety of novices were performed, can be justified how you will but not by musical aims. In music there is room for only two groups, two camps: the camp for good music whoever might have written it, and the camp for bad music – again, whoever might have written it. The spirit of party, understood in a different sense, brings art no benefit but does it considerable harm; one must seek to be above this spirit of party and to place the interests of art higher than personal sympathies and interests. Some programmes were compiled clumsily: at one of the concerts, two Spanish pieces were performed, while at another, three oriental pieces were played.9 The concerts were rather monotonous because vocal music was excluded, except for the concert dedicated to Borodin. I am not speaking about choral pieces; choruses would have increased the already huge cost of organizing these concerts, but it would have been possible to perform some songs at each concert and the more desirable, as Russian composers have substantial strengths as composers of songs. The standard of orchestral performance at these concerts left much to be desired, not because the orchestra was bad (our opera orchestra is one of the best in Europe), or because Rimsky-Korsakov was an unsatisfactory conductor, but because the conductor set both himself and the orchestra tasks 9

At the concert on 5 December 1887, Glinka’s Jota aragonesa and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Spanish Capriccio were performed. On 21 November Glazunov’s Rˆeverie orientale and First Overture on Greek Themes, and The Dance of the Polovtsian Maidens from Borodin’s Prince Igor were performed.

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The Belyayev generation beyond their strength by compiling programmes made up almost entirely of works receiving their first performances. Performance is the intermediary between listener and composer, an intermediary which must on no account be neglected. It would have been better to reduce the number of newly performed works but perform them as perfectly as possible. If I have dwelt on all the smallest shortcomings of the Russian Symphony Concerts at such length, it is only because the concerts’ noble goal of serving the cause of Russian music is attractive in the highest degree; we do not wish to see the slightest imperfection in what we hold dear. These shortcomings can easily be got rid of, and then the concerts would deservedly be even more appealing, would occupy a still more honoured place and acquire still more capital importance. It is entirely natural that the significant number of works performed at these concerts should provoke a comparison between the works of our mature composers who are already dying out – the fathers’ group, and our younger composers, the beginners – the sons’ group. The first thing that stares one in the face is that the sons are the direct successors and heirs of the fathers and lack the slightest admixture of outside blood; it is equally obvious that they have inherited from the fathers mainly their shortcomings, not their strengths. Glazunov stands head and shoulders above the other sons in strength of talent and technical perfection, and therefore I shall have Glazunov’s works primarily in mind in what follows. In the sons’ compositions one most often encounters these three fundamental shortcomings: an absence of musically significant themes, a passion for curiosities of harmony, and an enthusiasm for programmes which are quite unsuitable for music. In any work, the main thing is the idea. Hence, in music the most important thing is the theme. Many of the fathers were distinguished by rich thematic inventiveness – Borodin, Tchaikovsky and Musorgsky. Korsakov is considerably poorer in themes, but you often find in his music beautiful short phrases which he seeks out and frequently finds. But among the sons there apparently exists a degree of disdain for themes; they apparently suppose that any theme at all, even the poorest, the dullest, will do for music. It is true that in Coriolan and the first Allegro of his C minor Symphony Beethoven worked wonders with themes comprising only a few notes, but that was Beethoven and these were merely exceptions for a composer of genius whose principal strength lay precisely in his inexhaustible thematic wealth. A theme cannot be thought up or thought out; a theme is the product of inspiration; inspiration does not always obediently appear at a composer’s summons – he must be able to wait for it. But our sons, apparently, will

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 have none of this – they take the first phrase that comes into their heads and build their harmonic curiosities upon it. I mention Glazunov’s Second String Quartet as a prime example of disdain for themes, if not of thematic poverty. One of the New Russian School’s most attractive features is fear of the banal. This fear finds expression, among other things, in sumptuous and original harmonization. The fathers strove for harmonization of this kind, but they almost always subordinated it to the basic ideas. And if there are some exceptions, if sometimes genuine originality changes into a straining after originality, then that happens only rarely. (These harmonic exaggerations carried to the extent of ugliness occur most often in Musorgsky, the least musical, though one of the most talented of the fathers.) With the sons, this seeking after new, unprecedented, original harmonization has engulfed everything else – musical ideas, feeling, expressiveness; they have carried their harmonic investigations to the length of oddity, ugliness and forcedness; they apparently confuse simplicity with banality and have decided not to say a single thing in the same way as their predecessors. They take the technique of harmonization to a level of virtuosity where it becomes an end in itself and is just as damaging to art as exclusive dedication to virtuosity in performance, as the acrobatics of performers. Let me express myself yet more clearly: just as a piece which consists exclusively of technical difficulties for the performer cannot be of serious musical significance, no more can a piece consisting entirely of harmonic curiosities be a work of art. Such pieces may astound the listener, but that is not the aim of music. This is a slippery slope, and since, surprisingly, feelings are quickly blunted, it can easily take us much too far out of our way. Only the effect of what speaks to the feelings is irresistible, while striving exclusively after harmonic curiosities is in its very essence heartless and cold. The wider the bounds of art the better; this is also an attractive principle of the New Russian School. Music is above all capable of expressing and communicating moods of the soul; but in addition it is capable of conjuring up in the listener’s imagination certain images prompted by a programme. Hence the legitimacy of programme music. But one must not forget that if music is capable of expressing only a general mood, still more is it in a position to reproduce only general images. The fathers understood this perfectly; their programmes were general in character (vengeance, power, love in Korsakov’s Antar; the caravan’s approach and moving-away in Borodin’s Central Asia) and their programme music never ceased being music. Only once, in his Skazka (‘Folk-Tale’) did Korsakov move outside this general framework, and the result was a work significantly inferior to the remainder of his programme music. 136

The Belyayev generation One can find some exaggerations in Musorgsky – as well in Boris Godunov (the chimes) as in [Pictures from] Gartman’s Exhibition; in Boris they had to be cut; and Gartman’s Exhibition is one of Musorgsky’s less successful works. The sons take details of the programme to absurd lengths by portraying giants stepping through a forest breaking up trees, or wood-demons growing to fabulous dimensions. All these are tasks beyond and in part unworthy of music, and since the listener is not in a position to guess where and when the composer moves from depicting one detail to depicting another, the musical work becomes formless, incomprehensible and loses all meaning. I shall point out one other feature which sets the sons apart from the fathers. Despite the frequent contact the fathers had with one another, each preserved his own individuality in all its inviolability. It is enough to glance at one page of the fathers’ music to be able to say unmistakably whose it is – Borodin’s, Balakirev’s, Musorgsky’s, Tchaikovsky’s or Korsakov’s.10 The sons’ music is the music of twins. That is not a reproach inasmuch as it depends on the sons’ less brilliant gifts; but it is a reproach inasmuch as it derives from the wrong direction taken by them all in common. Let no one think that in saying all these things I wish to belittle the importance of the Russian Symphony Concerts or the talent of our young composers. On the contrary, I wish to raise yet higher the moral role of these concerts, to indicate the false path which our sons are taking, to demonstrate the danger of it, and to bring them to a halt along this path. But unfortunately, judging by Glazunov, this path attracts them more and more, just like a quicksand or an abyss in the ocean. I would cite in evidence the fact that his Second String Quartet is poorer in ideas than his First, his Second Greek Overture is more over-refined than his First, Sten’ka Razin is less fancifully programmatic than The Forest, his Characteristic Suite is weaker than his First Symphony, and so on. Only by abandoning this false path, only by absorbing the idea that the purpose of music is not to astound but to attract and captivate, that everything great is usually simple, that one cannot make oneself original by one’s own wish – only then will our young composers be in a position to count on not passing through this life without trace and on their works being preserved for a long time alongside the compositions of the fathers. But should this not happen, should the striving after impossible fantasies finally stifle their gifts, there would still be no reason for despair. Nature endowed the fathers so generously that she is perhaps saving up her next gifts for the grandsons. 10

Editor’s note: The compositions of Ts. A. Cui are also distinguished by a similar individuality.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 I should mention in conclusion that these concerts have given us a series of superb posthumous works by Borodin and one brilliant work by Korsakov, and among the sons (saying nothing about Glazunov) have demonstrated the undoubted gifts of Vitol’,11 Antipov and Felix Blumenfeld.

(b) G. A. Laroche: A. S. Arensky’s String Quartet. Moscow Bulletin, 1888, no. 359. Laroche 4, pp. 240–3 Following study with Rimsky-Korsakov, Anton Arensky (1861–1906) made his career in Moscow, as a professor at the Conservatoire, and latterly again in St Petersburg at the Court Kapella. Though not a ‘Belyayevite’, Arensky may justifiably be included here by education and generation. This quartet op. 11 was composed in 1888 and is dedicated to Laroche; for a further discussion of this composer, see (c) below.

The composer whose name appears in my heading represents a vein of something new and interesting in our musical world. A pupil of N. A. RimskyKorsakov and by no means alien to the currents from the ‘young Russian school’, at the same time he belongs fully to the group of composers of the solid orientation who combine national (natsional’noye) content with European technique, a group which is only starting to be formed in Russia, even though the immortal model of such a combination, Glinka, entered eternity long ago. An entirely harmonious fusion of these two elements with a temporary predominance of now one, now the other, is to be found in P. I. Tchaikovsky, but in that respect Tchaikovsky has been completely on his own. The new feature of the hue represented by Arensky consists in his greater closeness to the ‘young Russian school’: the Russian element in his work has been filtered through the crucible of that school’s methods to a significant extent; at times a page of pure Balakirev style (such as the elegant Andante of his Symphony) turns up in his music, but at the same time he shows real virtuosity in counterpoint, while his form is distinguished by a fluency and coherence unusual in Russia; for all his youth, he is a complete master, and he acquired his mastery some time ago. I regard Arensky as the prototype of a new kind of Russian musician and think that the future, or at least a significant share of it, belongs to just this kind of musician. The national direction and distinctive imprint, for which Russian music is indebted to its constant intercourse with folksong, will be preserved, but the place of present-day dilettantism and slovenliness will be taken by a perfect command 11

Jazeps Vitols/Iosif Ivanovich Vitol’ (1863–1948): composer, student at the St Petersburg Conservatoire; he worked in his native Latvia, 1918–44.

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The Belyayev generation of all the resources developed over the age-long process of European music. The harshness of present-day radicalism will be softened and its corners smoothed down; it is a radicalism which so little represents a rational link with the national direction and is tacked on to it in such a superficial manner; the childish contempt for the age-old luminaries of the art – for Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart – will vanish; the present-day provincial exclusiveness and weakness of a small circle who consider themselves our national school will disappear; Russian music will finally and deservedly achieve a general recognition in Europe, such as Russian poetry already enjoys. If such thoughts are prompted by the whole of Arensky’s work as a composer, they strike me as particularly relevant to his G major Quartet for two violins, viola and cello (his only one so far), which was played with great success on 18 December at the Musical Society and was lately published by Mr Jurgenson [. . .]. First and foremost, the Quartet is agreeably striking for the fact that it is written in an entirely chamber-music style. Double-stopping – that first sign of corruption in quartet style – is used extremely moderately; the four instruments almost always represent four independent voices, with the first violin not unduly predominant over the other parts. But while the new Quartet reveals a learned musician and experienced contrapuntist, it is by no means a product of abstract erudition; like everything else from Arensky’s pen (except for [the orchestral fantasy] Marguerite Gauthier which I detest), the Quartet bears the stamp of grace, ease and naturalness. The first Allegro, with its sweet and playful agility, suits the character of string instruments in the best possible way and, it seems, was directly inspired by their sonority and technique; the poetic Andante sostenuto (which particularly appealed to the public at the performance, as should have been expected) is distinguished by the extraordinary fascination of its melody and its beautiful harmonization, without apparently ever going beyond the limits long known and used by all, but at the same time gives a captivating impression of something new, fresh and charming. Both these first two movements as well as the Minuet which follows them – especially the Minuet – come significantly close to German music in style; in the first two movements it is the German style of the nineteenth century, approximately of Schumann’s time but without any direct influence from Schumann, whereas in the Minuet a rare and precious guest pays a call on us – the eighteenth century, more in the subtle, worldly elegance of Mozart than the unceremonious cheerfulness of Haydn. Moreover, the character of irony or parody is easily recognizable here, and beneath the mask of a marquis you can nonetheless divine the familiar and endearing features of the young Russian master. The Trio displays a major

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 shortcoming: it forms little contrast with the Minuet in general spirit and in rhythm especially – like the main section it is written in legato quavers. Unlike the other three movements, the Finale (variations on a theme of the Russian common people) once more reminds us of Arensky’s close kinship to the young Russian school, who, it seems, neither acknowledge him as one of their own nor even like him very much, whereas they should be exceptionally proud of him. Like many fast Russian dance songs, the theme of the Finale, although appearing to be eight bars long, actually consists of only two: bars 3 and 4, 5 and 6, and 7 and 8 are nothing more than a slight modification of the first two. This circumstance must have made the task of varying it exceptionally difficult, for variation is in itself repetition, but Arensky has emerged triumphantly from a difficult situation: his variations can be listened to with unbroken interest; the harmonies are full of life and variety, but it is the instrumentation which is especially striking, achieving astounding clarity and abounding in nuances and contrasts. It is true that in this movement (and only here) the composer deviates in places from strict quartet texture and moves into an orchestral one, but one cannot reproach him for that: his little orchestra of four instruments sounds so full, so clear, so varied and beautiful that one wants to forget about the strictness of a principle for which at another time one would have stood up energetically. If there is a shortcoming for which one might reproach these variations, it lies in the too frequent pauses. I think that the pause is a rhythmic effect that must be used with the greatest moderation, since it disturbs the symmetry of construction and thereby gives the listener a strong jolt. The composer probably resorted to it in consequence of the harsh monotony of the theme’s metre and rhythm, but there is no need to be too afraid of such monotony: it is in the spirit of the dance themes of our simple people, and its invariable consistency in our people’s singing, along with the endless couplet repetitions, have a grace and passion of their own; it is sometimes amusing, sometimes intoxicating, but rarely boring. At any rate, the variations are delightful and introduce the contemporary spirit’s salt and savour into the Quartet when they are absent from the other three movements, although they are maybe aimed at the more sophisticated connoisseur. I cannot fail, in conclusion, to point out another merit of the new work: it is exceptionally concise and short. I am inclined to think this quality more important in the eyes of the specialist than the ordinary music-lover. The public is not averse to longueurs: if they were afraid of them, the breed of Bayreuthomanes – people who sit patiently for four hours in the dark listening to recitatives – would not exist. But those of us who are critics by profession are surfeited with music and for the most part as soon as we hear the first two bars we know what will come in bars

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The Belyayev generation 3 and 4, and are most aggrieved when a composer lapses into talkativeness. We, like Gogol’s bride, like a ‘good person’ mainly for not ‘talking idly’.

(c) A. V. Ossovsky: A. S. Arensky. The Word, 1906, no. 384. Ossovsky, pp. 145–8 This critic (1871–1957) was an eminent St Petersburg /Leningrad musicologist.

Russian art has once again sustained a heavy loss. On the night of 13 February the composer A. S. Arensky died. [His health had been deteriorating for the last three years.] [Arensky’s biography is outlined: after studying at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, he taught at the one in Moscow from 1882 to 1894 before returning to the capital as director of the Court Kapella (1895–1901).] Arensky’s activities as a composer brought him the highest earthly reward an artist can obtain – general recognition and popularity. His muse’s outward appearance of affability filled with gracefulness and external charm, disposed everyone in his favour. The unfeigned sincerity of his work, the accessibility of its contents and his lively feeling for beauty made his compositions intelligible to the broad public. Arensky’s art was not notable for its profundity, overwhelming power or grand scale. It lacks even striking originality, which might have set up his activity as a landmark in the historical course of music’s development. But, nevertheless, he was a thoroughbred artist in the whole cast of his nature, and for that alone he has to be beloved and precious to us. Not by reason and schooling, but by spontaneous feeling for his artistic nature, he took possession of the mystery of life and beauty in art. Of the two types of creative artist embodied in the form of supreme genius by Mozart and Beethoven (these two names have become powerful symbols for musicians), Arensky, of course, belonged to the former one – to the Mozartian type. Passionate and carried away in life, never falling prey to the mysteries of the universe, he wrote music at the very first summons of his inspiration. Without lengthy reflection, he committed to paper nothing but that which was prompted by his heart. Labour-pains in producing compositions and painstaking self-criticism were incomprehensible to him. Serving art did not strike him as a feat of sacred heroism, and he did not feel himself preordained to open up any great universal enigma to mankind. He sang because he wanted to, and composing was for him a natural form of existence, which it was therefore not worth prizing particularly or taking

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 pride in. In Pushkin’s pithy saying, in this case too the ‘sacred gift’ illumined the ‘head of a madman, an empty idler’. But that madman was Mozart, a genius, whereas here we are confronting merely talent. In this combination of a Mozartian nature with the powers of mere talent, not genius, a certain artistic peril lay concealed for Arensky too. It was precisely from this source that his characteristic preference for small forms of art arose. For the same reason, the inner beauty with which his finest works glow declined on occasion to mere conventional external prettiness while the contents became superficial and of little value. There now came into the world compositions bearing all the disagreeable marks of the salon. It is no use, however, dwelling on them. For when one is speaking about a real artist, and assessing his importance, one must weigh up, of course, that which is truly fine which is to be found in the midst of what he created and what the world needs from him. For supreme justice rigorously gives everyone in history his due, ruthlessly erasing from human memory works of art undeserving of that sacred name. Arensky’s first compositions (up to roughly op. 15, including his first opera A Dream on the Volga) bear traces, along with the composer’s individual traits, of the influence of the St Petersburg national school of music. Over the course of time, Arensky’s talent evened out, the nationalist and realist aspirations fell away, and his artistic personality, reflecting in some respects Tchaikovsky, took shape along the lines described in general terms above. The typically Russian is not to be found in Arensky, but he is nevertheless an artist of a perfectly clear Slavonic mould in psychology of feeling and manner of expression. Arensky’s prolific activity as a composer touched the spheres of opera and ballet, sacred, symphonic, chamber and salon music, the cantata, vocal ensemble, song and melodeclamation. In each of these spheres he left talented specimens of his art. There is neither time nor space here to embark on a more detailed examination and characterization of Arensky’s work now. From among them, his piano pieces, songs and chamber works have achieved the widest diffusion, and of these the First Piano Trio has become really popular not only in Russia but in Germany as well. The radiant image of a pure-hearted, benign, captivating and open man, marked by talent and intelligence, will never leave the memory of his friends after Arensky’s death. As far as Russia is concerned, Arensky will not die altogether either. His soul ‘in its intimate lyre will escape decay’, and in his best works the image of a sincere and ingenious artist in love with the supreme delight of our life – undying beauty – will remain alive.

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(d) Yu. D. Engel’: Glazunov as a symphonist. Published for the twenty-fifth anniversary of A. K. Glazunov’s career in music (1882–1907). Russian Musical Gazette, 1907, no. 1, cols. 1–8; no. 2, cols. 60–5; no. 3, cols. 89–95; no. 4, cols. 130–8; nos. 5–6, cols. 171–5 Engel’ writes a substantial but not uncritical account of the work of the most productive Russian symphonist to date. By 1907 Glazunov was also well established as a major figure in the musical and educational landscape, with a considerable foreign reputation as well.

I ‘To me you are an enigma’ (from a letter of Tchaikovsky to Glazunov).12

Speaking about Glazunov as a symphonist means speaking about the whole of Glazunov. By this I do not mean that his quartets, piano pieces and other works do not deserve attention, but the element which Glazunov loves best and where he is most at home is, of course, the orchestra. It is in exactly this field that he has created the work which is his most significant and powerful; his vigorous talent, with all its merits and shortcomings, has made itself felt here most impressively of all; it is here that one must seek the key to interpreting the basic features of his work. One must seek, but how is one to find?! How is one to get one’s bearings in the boundless ocean of scores and fourhand arrangements summoned into existence by Glazunov?13 How is one to revive in one’s memory the vivid colours of works of his heard in days gone by? How is one to imagine even a simulacrum of those colours in the many compositions one has never heard at all? What are all the complex works like, not only in the manner of writing but also in breadth of form and conception? The matter is made more difficult by the fact that there are extremely few substantial articles about Glazunov in our music criticism. One has to undertake for oneself a mass of laborious preparatory work and one nearly always ends up with a question mark all the same. And how, in fact, is one to come to terms as a whole with a composer whom the very idea of a jubilee does not fit, though he has been writing, to be sure, for twenty-five years – so young is he in truth, so natural is it to expect from him in the future even more than he has done in the past? Yes – comprehending the whole 12 13

Tchaikovsky’s letter was written from Florence on 30 January/11 February 1890, and may be found in his Collected Correspondence, vol. 15b (Moscow 1977), pp. 30–2. Engel’ refers to the Belyayev practice of publishing works in several formats – for instance, orchestral works in arrangements for one piano and piano duet.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 of Glazunov is indeed a difficult task – and perhaps, for the time being, an impossible one. But in the last resort one ought to make an attempt to do something of that kind in general terms at least now, on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary! The repertory of Russian symphonic music, as everyone knows, is one of Europe’s youngest. Its inception can be dated from Glinka’s overtures and Kamarinskaya; the first actual Russian symphonies were composed only in 1854 (by Rubinstein) and 1864 (by Rimsky-Korsakov).14 Nonetheless, in quantity of orchestral works Russia occupies third position in the universal repertory; in intensity of creativity, that is in quantity of works associated with each symphonist, she stands ahead of all other countries.15 But even among these so very productive Russian symphonists, the first place for quantity created is held by Glazunov. Of the eighty-two opus numbers which he has written, more than half are allotted to orchestral works. There are eight complete symphonies (the eighth has not yet been published)16 and four suites (the ‘Characteristic’, Chopiniana, the Ballet Suite, ‘From the Middle Ages’), not counting suites assembled from ballets; four overtures (two on Greek themes, Carnaval, the Solemn); and a long line of symphonic poems, pictures, fantasias and other compositions of every kind: Sten’ka Razin, The Forest, The Sea, The Kremlin, the Fantasia op. 53, Spring, the Po`eme lyrique, Rapsodie orientale, Triumphal Procession, Sc`ene de Ballet, Rˆeverie orientale, Ballade, serenades, marches, waltzes, etc. To the same category must be assigned the ballets Raymonda, Bar¨ıshnya-krest’yanka (Les ruses d’amour) and The Seasons, since the centre of gravity of these ballets lies in the orchestra – the dances are only an addition, an illustration of the music, in contrast to the old ballets, where the complete opposite could be observed. To Glazunov alone, therefore, 14 15

16

Works by Count Viyel’gorsky (1825) and Alyab’yev (1850) challenge this claim. Author’s note: Catalogue of Orchestral Music of All Countries, compiled by Rosenkranz and published by Novello (London 1902), gives the following figures. Over the 250 years from 1650 to 1900, 2,324 orchestral works by 649 composers were published in Germany; 1,242 pieces by 256 composers in France; 322 pieces by 53 composers in Russia; 251 pieces by 89 composers in England, etc. Thus, every Russian composer who wrote for orchestra composed an average of 6 pieces; every Frenchman 4.8; every German 3.5; every Englishman 2.8. This rapid and energetic growth (mainly over the last twenty-five to thirty years) in the Russian symphonic repertory was helped in part by the committed publishing activities of Belyayev, which had an indirect influence in this direction on other publishers as well. It is relevant to recall here that Belyayev’s publishing activities in fact began with the compositions of Glazunov, whose talent first disposed Belyayev to the good cause of supporting Russian symphonists by publishing their compositions and establishing an appropriate composer’s fee for those works. Author’s note: In number of symphonies Glazunov has thus even now overtaken Tchaikovsky, who earlier held first place in this respect among Russian composers; the same must be said about programmatic orchestral music.

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The Belyayev generation belongs about one-seventh of all Russian symphonic music. But of course the question of a composer’s significance is decided not by the quantity of his works but by their quality, their power, beauty, expressiveness, by what they have introduced to contemporary art and what may be left to posterity. What does Glazunov represent from this point of view and – dependent on that factor – what is his significance in Russian music and in present-day music in general? As early as the First Symphony (E major), composed at the age of fifteen, several features of his talent were outlined which were subsequently to be defined and confirmed more strongly. The symphony is somewhat cold even where it is beautiful, it is melodically pale (the weakest movement is the watery Andante), but it is hale and hearty, it sounds well, and most important of all – it is all distinguished by a flair for form and in general by a firmness of compositional tread surprising in a beginning composer. Take for comparison, for instance, Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony or Kalinnikov’s First Symphony. Both of them as music stand incomparably higher than Glazunov’s First Symphony, but how many times does one detect in both hesitations in developing a musical idea, how many times do the white threads used to stitch one episode to another stare one in the face! With Glazunov there is almost none of that. However narrow his musical horizon in the First Symphony, even there, whether by instinct or consciously, he knows where he wants to go and how to get there. In comparison with the First, the Second Symphony [. . .] represents a huge step forward as regards the composer’s musical development – something akin to the leap which Beethoven made between his First and Third Symphonies.17 The F-sharp minor Symphony is dedicated to the memory of Liszt, whose favourite device is here used by Glazunov when he runs a single theme through all the movements. In this symphony the twenty-year-old composer comes before us as a real master already, with broad and free musical horizons. Flair has turned into confidence, while firmness of step has become boldness and the ability to take the bull by the horns. Here Glazunov is a true young Samson sensing 17

Author’s note: One notices, by the way, a complete correspondence (I don’t know whether coincidental or deliberate) between the keys of the symphonies of Glazunov, beginning with the Third, and Beethoven, beginning with the Second:

Beethoven Glazunov

D major

E-flat major

B-flat major

C minor

F major

no. 2 no. 3

no. 3 no. 4

no. 4 no. 5

no. 5 no. 6

no. 6 no. 7

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 his strength for the first time. It even seems as if this Samson, like his biblical prototype, possesses a heart capable of beating with passion, something which would not enter one’s head about the First Symphony. The Po`eme lyrique, written in the gap between the First and Second Symphonies, inclines one even more to that idea. How much warmth (not fire!) and good, sincere, gentle lyricism this charming music contains! Along with this Po`eme lyrique, the Second Symphony gives us an outline of the young composer’s instincts: they show a whole, balanced artistic nature, sensitive to pure beauty, but also capable of responding to everything human, combining gentleness with strength and breadth. The harmonious evolution of a nature like this promised to lead to the creation of a complete musical microcosm of its own – just as broad, just as deep, and just as pervaded by the quickening of the senses as the cult of beauty. Did the reality live up to these promises? Not altogether. ‘The sleepy giant (bogat¨ır’)’, as someone called Glazunov, accomplished many glorious deeds, deployed his mighty strength and put on a powerful display, but somehow not to the full. Part of his powers remained half asleep, only rarely blazing up with the spirit of life, only to be plunged once more into the usual drowsiness. This drowsiness contains something fatal. Tchaikovsky divined it sixteen years ago, although, of course, it is far easier to determine its extent and significance now than it was then. ‘To me you are in many respects an enigma’, he wrote to Glazunov in 1890. ‘You have the quality of genius, but something prevents you developing broadly and deeply. One always expects something out of the ordinary from you, but such expectations are always justified only to a limited degree.’ One fisherman can tell another from afar off. Tchaikovsky recognized the quality of genius in Glazunov; but from our present-day viewpoint the latter part of his diagnosis needs to be amended and supplemented. It is true that not all the ‘expectations of something out of the ordinary’ placed on Glazunov have proved justified; but it is untrue that they have all been ‘justified only to a limited degree’. Some of them have been justified entirely, and several even more than entirely: reality has outstripped these expectations and each new score by the composer of Raymonda threatens to surpass the previous one in this respect. Don’t we have in the person of Glazunov the all-powerful sovereign of sound – first and foremost the sovereign of orchestral colours and nuances, the great wizard of instrumentation, worthy to stand alongside Rimsky-Korsakov himself? Isn’t Glazunov up to handling the heavy armour of the most complicated forms of contemporary symphonic music? Are we not astounded by his vigorous, truly gigantic sweep, and at the same time the lightness and elegance of the butterfly as it flits from flower to flower? To someone who knows the present-day Glazunov, 146

The Belyayev generation there can be only one answer to all these rhetorical questions, and it is in the affirmative. Once more, therefore, we must amend Tchaikovsky’s diagnosis in the part where he speaks of the want of breadth in Glazunov. Tchaikovsky is far closer to the truth, as we can see now, when he makes an oblique reference to the want of depth in Glazunov. But even here he is only half-right, and for this reason. Music represents impressions of life conveyed in sound by an artist. In this definition one must understand by ‘life’ not only the indispensable life of every day with its round of social and other events, though there are no grounds for excluding the topics of the day from the range of influences upon an artist, as some try to do. ‘Life’ must be understood here in its real, unembraceably wide and infinitely varied meaning, as every artist perceives and experiences it. It contains both art in all its branches and ramifications as well as nature; both things which raise the spirit and the humdrum; both personal and social experiences; both dream and reality – in short, all that the artist’s ‘five senses’, imagination, sensibility, mind and heart can comprehend. But it is possible to ‘convey the impressions of life’ in art in two ways. The centre of gravity here may be either the artist as he reacts to life, or that which he narrates. Creative work of the first kind is more subjective, bears more strongly the imprint of passion, has more of an edge; creative work of the second kind is more objective, colder, broader. An inclination towards specifically national elements in art is obviously more typical of artists of the second type than the first. It goes without saying that both subjective and objective creativity absolutely presuppose individuality of creative powers in the artist; but in the first case this individuality displays itself more deeply, in the second more broadly.18 Combining both in a well-balanced synthesis is within the power only of a talent which is versatile, complete and harmonious, although in individual instances it can be achieved even by talents which are clearly ‘of the same type’ in the sense indicated above. The two composers with the greatest influence on contemporary Russian music, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, can serve as representatives of precisely this same-type creativity, the first subjective, the second objective.19 18

19

Author’s note: Of course, apart from the what (in subjective or objective incarnations), a large part in a work of art – especially in music – is played by the how. This is indicated, among other things, even by the definition which we accepted above: ‘music represents impressions of life conveyed in sound by an artist’. The italics presuppose in the artist authority over both the material of his art (in this case, over sound), and also over its means of expression and artistic devices. But we shall not deal here with this more specialized aspect of creativity. Author’s note: I have already had occasion to make a more detailed juxtaposition of these two composers in the press, and there the contrast between them was emphasized by pointing to the fact that Tchaikovsky is first and foremost both the ruler and the slave of the minor, the

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 One must not understand the feature differentiating them only in a strict and exclusive sense. It indicates only the prevailing character of the creative work of each of these two composers. And one has only to take a closer look at contemporary Russian music to see that the meaning of this feature is greater than it might seem at first glance; it not only distinguishes Tchaikovsky from Rimsky-Korsakov; it differentiates two currents in modern Russian music, and divides present-day Russian composers into two groups, independently of their degree of talent. On the one side, along with Rimsky-Korsakov, we see Glazunov, Lyadov, Lyapunov20 and to an extent Cherepnin;21 on the other, with Tchaikovsky, we see Rachmaninoff, Skryabin and to an extent Arensky. Grechaninov22 and Kalinnikov23 occupy a position in the middle; the former is closer to the first group, the latter to the second. Taneyev stands on his own. The first group could be called the ‘Korsakovites’, after its most eminent and influential member, while the second could be called the ‘Tchaikovskyites’ – which by no means indicates, of course, that, for instance, Glazunov is merely a continuer of Rimsky-Korsakov, or Skryabin of Tchaikovsky. One could also, guided by the surprising geographical coincidence, call the first group the St Petersburg one and the second the Moscow one.24 II It is natural that the features of each group should be felt and noted with special acuteness by artists of the opposing type. That is why Tchaikovsky was bound to find Glazunov insufficiently profound, just as Tchaikovsky probably impresses Glazunov and people of his kind by a certain narrowness or one-sidedness. One must also say that Glazunov is one of the most typical representatives of ‘objective’ creativity not only in Russian musical literature but also in that of the whole world. And that in spite of the fact that he has devoted himself almost exclusively to instrumental music, i.e. to precisely that field of the art of sound which, at least when facing the challenges of programme music, offers the greatest scope for displaying the composer’s personality as such.

20 21 22 23 24

singer of sorrow and dissatisfaction, whereas Rimsky-Korsakov is the herald of the major, the singer of joy and an optimist. And this, I believe, is not entirely accidental: by their very nature grief and the minor are more personal and subjective than joy and the major. Sergey Mikhaylovich Lyapunov (1859–1924): composer, pianist and conductor. Close associate of Balakirev. Nikolay Nikolayevich Cherepnin (1873–1945): composer and conductor. Aleksandr Tikhonovich Grechaninov (1864–1956): composer, pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov (1866–1900/01): composer. Author’s note: Or is Moscow in actual fact more ‘subjective’ than St Petersburg?

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The Belyayev generation In this respect Glazunov shows a partial similarity to Brahms, of whom he reminds one also by the ‘artistic seriousness of his intentions’25 and his cult of form. I do not in the least mean to suggest that Glazunov’s actual music is similar to Brahms’. Its sources are different, and almost all of them are closer to us; and the influences from these sources have been so greatly transformed in the composer, so much transfigured and absorbed by the power of his own talent, that we are fully entitled to speak of him as a great figure who is entirely independent. Even today, there are many who number Glazunov among the ‘New Russian School’. But the element of truth which this traditional formula contains is far less than the element of delusion. For a start, as a real school, i.e. as a group of composers united by shared artistic ideals and devices, the ‘New Russian School’ disintegrated even before Glazunov appeared in the musical arena. Moreover, Glazunov’s creative work is in many respects alien to the ‘New Russian School’ in its very essence. The ‘New Russian School’ perceived the elements of realism and populism (narodnichestvo)26 advanced during the era of the 1860s and 1870s and developed them within the realm of music; Glazunov is far removed from these elements, at least in the form in which they were understood at that time. The ‘New Russian School’ disparaged the importance of the formal and architectonic aspects of musical creativity in favour of the idea inserted into the composition; we see rather the opposite in Glazunov. But one cannot, of course, deny the link between Glazunov and the ‘New Russian School’. Superficially, this link finds some corroboration in the fact that Balakirev discovered Glazunov’s talent and Rimsky-Korsakov fostered it. But one must not forget that the Rimsky-Korsakov of the time when he was teaching Glazunov was not the same one who had written The Maid of Pskov; in the interval he had subjected himself to a strict and prolonged novitiate of self-taught technical work and had even turned in the direction of an enthusiasm for pure form in music, which among other things led him to the conviction that he needed to correct nearly all his previous compositions. This new Rimsky-Korsakov moved away from the former militant slogans of the ‘New Russian School’, but how much more decisive must his influence have been on Glazunov’s talent, who by his own nature was inclined to the abstractness of musical logic. The gravitation of both towards bright colours, contrary to the prevailing gloomy tones of contemporary serious art, strengthened their connection even more. The influence of other members of the ‘Mighty Handful’ made itself felt on Glazunov no more strongly than 25 26

Author’s note: Tchaikovsky’s expression. [In the letter cited above, Tchaikovsky in fact uses the phrase ‘the seriousness of your aspirations’.] Narodnichestvo: radical agrarian political ideas first formulated in the 1860s.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 on many other composers of the same or similar type. Only to Borodin is Glazunov indebted comparatively more. His kinship with the composer of Prince Igor can be noticed in Glazunov in the heavy sweep of Russian themes, and in certain harmonic turns of phrase, and in the treatment of oriental subjects, favourites of them both. Glazunov’s relationship to Wagner is similar. Our composer, like nearly all his European colleagues, is substantially indebted to Wagner – perhaps even more than many others – but he has not been swallowed up by him, has not lost his own physiognomy. The wide range of Glazunov’s sympathies, which extend far beyond the factional limits of the ‘New Russian School’ circle, is indicated indirectly by the names of the people to whom his major symphonic compositions are dedicated. Alongside members of the circle, their fervent propagandist Vladimir Stasov and the composer’s young colleagues, we find here in addition dedications ‘To the memory of Richard Wagner’ (The Sea), to Anton Rubinstein (the Fourth Symphony), to Tchaikovsky (the Third Symphony), to Laroche (Carnaval), to Sergey Taneyev (the Fifth Symphony), etc. But what are dedications! In judging a person, seeing his face means little, of course – you must look into his soul; so turn over the title-pages of Glazunov’s scores and look into their souls, and you will become still more convinced of the breadth of the composer’s musical horizons, the free independence of his creative work, uninhibited in its flight by any kind of preconceived artistic views. Wagner asserted that music as an independent art had become obsolete with Beethoven and that if it wished to grow and develop thereafter, it inevitably had to be combined with drama. In his book The Symphony after Beethoven [Leipzig 1898], Weingartner became the spokesman of a more widespread opinion, having rather softened and modified Wagner’s verdict of doom. Beethoven, he declared, had exhausted the symphony’s form and there was no point in moving further in that direction; the future belonged therefore to programme music, to the broad perspectives opened up by its free, new forms. That Wagner was wrong is now clear to everyone. It is obvious that even for genius it is difficult in certain cases to renounce a narrow Philistine point of view: ‘the only real light is the one that shines from my window’. No more was Weingartner correct, it would seem, in condemning the symphony to death. Remember what Pushkin says: ‘There’s no movement, said the bearded sage’. By the same means as the sage’s interlocutor demonstrated that there was movement (he got up and left), it is easy to refute Weingartner. At any rate, so many fresh, vivid and powerful symphonies have been written since Beethoven that it can hardly be said that the form is obsolete. And we 150

The Belyayev generation may say with pride that among these symphonies, Russian ones – especially those by Glazunov – occupy a place of prominence and honour. There are sufficient of them alone to demonstrate that the surprisingly flexible form of the symphony is even now perfectly viable and can accommodate all the wealth of contemporary resources of musical expression, embodying to perfection at the same time the old (but perpetually young!) aesthetic law of ‘unity in diversity’. In this regard, the symphonies of Glazunov are instructive – no less, perhaps than those of Tchaikovsky. A cursory survey is sufficient to see how much variety they offer in both form and character, despite their common family features! In the Second Symphony, in F-sharp minor op. 16 [composed in 1886 and dedicated to the memory of Liszt], Glazunov, as has been said already, takes a single theme through all the movements. But how he differs here from Tchaikovsky, who applies the same device, for example, in his Fourth Symphony. In Tchaikovsky the basic theme forces its way like a wedge into each of the symphony’s movements – like something opposed or alien to it; and why this should be so is understandable: it is fate, laying its heavy hand on a person in all his actions and aspirations. Glazunov solved his problem starting out from a different, specifically musical point of view. For him, a theme is above all a compound of primary musical elements (motives), from a new combination and distribution of which one can obtain a series of new and in part entirely independent musical bodies, just as out of water, by means of a new combination of its constituent elements, one can obtain air, salt, lime, etc., to say nothing of ice and steam, to obtain which less complex processes suffice. And one must say that Glazunov succeeds in masterly fashion with these demonstrations of musical chemistry. The principal theme of the Second Symphony harmonized in the Mixolydian mode gives an impression of something religious and pompous when it occurs in the introduction to the first Allegro. But its Gregorian nuance disappears completely in the Allegro, where, thanks to new rhythm, metre, harmony and instrumentation, it takes on a character of somewhat uncontrolled savagery. A significant place in the Allegro is assigned to an interesting and rich development, with sudden enharmonic leaps into remote keys, reminiscent of Liszt. The new movement of the symphony (Andante) brings a new transformation of the theme – a magical broad melody with Borodinesque oriental colouring over lush, languorous harmonies. In the Scherzo, which is interesting for its alternation of seven- and eight-bar statements, the Trio expounds the basic theme in sweet, smooth thirds in the woodwind instruments. The Finale of the symphony is rather in the Russian spirit; here again we encounter the same theme in a new independent form; even the contrapuntal formations of 151

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 the Finale (which also acquire independent status in it) turn out on closer inspection to be related to the same basic theme. In a final analysis, the Second Symphony could be called something like grandiose, original variations in sonata form. The Fourth Symphony, in E-flat major [op. 48, written in 1894 and dedicated to Anton Rubinstein] represents something similar, in that a single theme is threaded throughout all its movements too, but now in a new manner. If in the Allegro of the Second Symphony a large place is given to the development, in the Allegro of the Fourth Symphony its dimensions are quite tiny. In this respect Glazunov almost approaches here the type of Rossini overture where after the exposition of the principal themes, almost without any development section, they are immediately repeated with the corresponding change of keys. This is to be explained, one must suppose, by the broadly extended statement of both the themes of the Symphony’s first movement, and also by the comparatively substantial dimensions of the Andante which serves as an introduction to it. The Scherzo, complete with its waltz-like Trio, sounds stirringly spry. There is no formal, complete Andante in the Symphony; it is replaced by a quite short, slow introduction to the Finale, because of which the Symphony is in either three or five movements, if one includes in the number of movements the slow introductions to the Finale and the first Allegro. In the Finale the Symphony’s basic theme (the first theme of the Allegro) appears both in its first form and in a new transformation with the rhythm [music example 1] (one of Glazunov’s favourite rhythms). It

Example 1.

is moreover combined here with the second theme of the Allegro. This Finale is characteristic of the composer. As in the majority of Glazunov’s finales, a special kind of Russian stamp is perceptible in it which is not doleful but cheerful, lively, somewhat akin in spirit to Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov; in spite of a certain piling-up of material, it is developed freely and naturally. III Glazunov’s Third Symphony, in D major [op. 33, composed in 1890] is dedicated to Tchaikovsky. The first movement is of the utmost originality in the modulatory layout of its sonata form. The two themes of the exposition are in the keys of D major and B-flat minor; the development, leading to their repetition, seems also to be heading towards D major, instead of which E-flat major appears suddenly and with superb effect. It is in this E-flat 152

The Belyayev generation major that the repetition of the exposition opens, with the same relationship between the two themes, but now a semitone higher: the first theme is in E-flat major, and the second is in B minor. After this traditional B minor, but obtained in a wholly untraditional way, the D major ending of the first movement of the Symphony appears, of course, entirely natural. But apart from the odd scheme of modulation, this movement is also of interest for the music itself. The impetuous onslaught of the Symphony’s very first bars (a 34 Allegro, nearly Presto), the restless tenderness of the first, stepwise theme and the gently aching sadness of the second – all these lend the music a distinctive hue not at all usual for Glazunov. An even more ‘unusual’ impression is made by the Andante of the same Symphony – one of Glazunov’s not very frequent specimens of genuine appassionato. A profound and powerful chromatic melody works up by expanding and developing a vigorous passion, which in its heartfelt quality is not inferior to the finest inspirations of Tchaikovsky; in this passionate quality one can even detect something unhealthily corrosive, reminiscent of Skryabin. It is not without reason that this Symphony is dedicated to Tchaikovsky. The lengthy Scherzo abounding in chromaticism is a magnificent piece with lots of witty details. The Fifth Symphony (in B-flat major) [op. 55, written in 1896] is dedicated to S. I. Taneyev, with whose name the calm, mature simplicity of its general plan and the mastery of its execution could not be more in harmony. The main theme of the first movement is of a fanfare character – clear and bright; it is as if a single chord was spread out over many bars. When Cui was trying to wound Wagner, who had a penchant for themes of this kind, he somewhere went so far as to assert that fanfare-like themes bear witness to a composer’s lack of genuine melodic inventiveness. A very strange opinion, to put it no more strongly! As if a chord is not just as much a basic, normal type of melodic construction as a scale! At any rate, in making such extensive use of fanfare-like themes and even placing them in the symphony’s place of honour, Glazunov can find consolation in the fact that he is in good company – not only that of Wagner, but of all the greatest symphonists.27 If this theme of Glazunov’s may be reproached for anything, it is not of course for its fanfare quality but surely for the fact that this fanfare is strongly reminiscent of a leitmotive from Wagner’s [Der Ring des] Nibelungen. The second theme of the Allegro is somewhat akin to the first, as if it had been derived from it. This weakness in thematic contrast (even at the moment when the two themes are combined simultaneously) reinforces the distinctive calm character of the first movement. In the delightful, rather Mendelssohnian Scherzo, the 27

Author’s note: A propos – the main theme of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony [. . .] is also of a pure fanfare type.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 changes of harmony which flare up in an instant on weak beats of the bar and then immediately die out are especially effective. The beautiful but not particularly broad Andante also sounds well, with its harmonic and rhythmic contrasts and its canons of masterly simplicity. The energetic Finale of the symphony can serve, among other things, as an example of one of Glazunov’s favourite rhythmic devices for forming themes. The opening two bars of the Finale’s first theme (in 22 ) produce the rhythm [music example 2]. Thereafter

Example 2.

the same melody is repeated identically, except that instead of the two fast minims it goes in crotchets: [music example 3]; as a result the strong and

Example 3.

weak beats change places, the rhythm loses its schematicism and a kind of unbroken forward momentum is achieved – real ‘progress’. The Sixth Symphony, in C minor [op. 58 composed in 1897, dedicated to Felix Blumenfeld] begins with a mysterious Adagio, in which both the themes of the following Allegro passionato take shape. The first theme of this Allegro comprises, in essence, only two bars; there is something akin to Tchaikovsky in its passionate unease. The second theme – lyrical and broad, a complete contrast to the first – is dealt with in an original fashion in its repetitions after the development. After the C minor of the first theme (trombones, etc.), it appears in A-flat major (woodwind), then in C major (trumpets, horns) and finally, reaching E-flat major (brass and woodwind), leads to the conclusion in C minor, constructed using the first theme. This whole movement is astonishingly clear and concise in form. It is based mainly on the development of the first theme and in that connection is imprinted with the character of a kind of conflict, of some sort of stubborn impassioned strivings. Nonetheless, there is no impression that the basic theme has been exhausted and developed to the utmost in a single integral passionato, enveloping and unifying the whole movement. Here the composer has made less out of the theme than it promised. The second movement of the symphony is a theme with fine, luxuriant variations. Two or three melodic turns of phrase give the theme a Russian colouring, very full of character, but without containing anything too specific. Melodies of this kind are very frequent in Glazunov, who can achieve a superb combination of refined Europeanism with a no less subtle though restrained use of devices of Russian character in his music. In this regard he occupies something like a middle 154

The Belyayev generation position between Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. The third movement of the Symphony is also partly of the same type, a graceful Intermezzo – one of those lovely Allegrettos with which our composer is so successful. The Finale (Andante maestoso) – an unusual thing in its way – is the diametrical opposite of this Intermezzo. Glazunov generally fulfils the promise of a maestoso more completely than he does with a passionato, but the Finale of the Sixth Symphony testifies to this even more than some of his other finales, cort`eges, processions and so on. The energetic initial unison theme of this Finale (in 42 ) contains something suggestive of the church servicebook. Its subsequent harmonization (in triads) strengthens this impression still more, but then its dazzling, endlessly varied development draws the listener out of this tight framework of churchiness. This theme (partly with the help of the device indicated already – the displacement of strong and weak beats) changes its metre and rhythm like a chameleon; the same thing happens also with the second theme of the Finale (scherzando) which is related melodically to the variation theme in the second movement of the symphony. The result is a kind of cabinet of curiosities of metre ( 42 , 32 , 21 , 64 , 22 , 98 ) and a kaleidoscope of rhythms. The structures of the bars and their rhythmic content change constantly, now being gently and smoothly transformed, now suddenly dislocating all relationships of times and accents. On first acquaintance, in places one may even get an impression of chaos from this orgy of rhythms and metres, but listen attentively, think it over, and the inner connection and consistency between the separate episodes will start to emerge clearly before you. You will be convinced, in the end, that this apparent chaos is no less than a picture mapped out with masterly refinement, where the composer relies on rhythm with the same virtuoso calculation as a pianist does on his octaves or a violinist on harmonics. And the sonorities, each more vivid than the last, each more brilliant than the last, lend still greater interest to this astounding picture, and its majestic character remains predominant right up to the end. The Seventh Symphony [op. 77, 1902, dedicated to Belyayev] corresponds to Beethoven’s Sixth (F major) not only in key but in the prevailing ‘pastoral’ character of the music. The two ‘shepherd’s pipe’ themes in the first Allegro are not only related to each other (the second could even be straightforwardly ‘derived’ from the first), but even the instrument which first sets them forth is the same – the oboe. From the second theme in turn emerges the subsidiary theme, which the composer then uses in notes of double and quadruple length, both turn-about and simultaneously. All these contrapuntal manipulations, together with a mass of other imitations, canons, etc., do not detract, however, from the Allegro’s lightness of form and clear, simple construction, in which one senses something bright and close to nature. 155

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Incomparably more complex is the contrapuntal working in the second movement of the Symphony, an Andante (in 34 ). If we called the Finale of the Sixth Symphony a rhythmic cabinet of curiosities, then this Andante can be called a cabinet of curiosities of counterpoint. To the first festive, important theme (it appears first in the trombones and is chordal and diatonic in character) is opposed the second theme – a chromatic one which first enters in the strings. Besides, after the first theme, a further one developed from it – a subsidiary theme – appears. Right from the start the latter forms a little fugato and moreover each of the newly entering voices begins the theme now with the first crotchet, now the second, now the third, while at the same time the other voices continue with the same theme, bringing it to an end and taking the music further. As becomes clear later, the second (chromatic) theme also holds the secret of constructing such a fugato (‘horizontally mobile counterpoint’), and forms startling harmonies in addition. For after this second fugato a broad, endlessly flowing beautiful canon and a repetition of the first theme lead us to yet greater contrapuntal rarities. It turns out that the second theme (the chromatic one) and the subsidiary theme not only combine excellently with each other simultaneously, regardless of which forms the upper or the lower voice (‘vertically invertible counterpoint’), but in addition possess the same capacity for horizontal transfer in relation to each other, which each of them conceals from itself. In other words, here is what happens:28 the chromatic theme begins first, the subsidiary theme enters in the following bar, and both are again taken to the end; then the subsidiary theme begins, the chromatic theme enters in the following bar, and both are again taken to the end. The two following pages of the score (pp. 51–2) convince us that the chromatic theme possesses an even more cunning mechanism: it can (in a slightly modified form) make a counterpoint with itself, each time entering not only on a new crotchet – as we saw before – but even on a new quaver. The masters of such tricks of virtuosity in horizontally mobile counterpoint were the medieval contrapuntists, whereas the most modern composers seldom break out of the framework of vertically mobile counterpoint; that is the opinion expressed by S. I. Taneyev about this Andante, and he should know. To be sure, this startling Augenmusik (‘Music for the eye’) gives less to the ear and the heart than to the eye and the mind – but it must, all the same, be acknowledged as remarkable and unique of its kind. In its pastoral, spring-like character (and partly in the elements of its main theme) the Symphony’s Scherzo may be linked to the first movement. The Scherzo’s two other brief themes, which are related to each other (especially 28

Author’s note: See p. 50 of the score.

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The Belyayev generation the second, piu` lento), introduce to this celebration of spring, with its chirpings, new moments which complement it by their light contrast. In the Finale we find reminiscences from the whole symphony. But Glazunov does not confine himself here to individual themes from separate movements, as usually happens in such cases. Carrying out a ‘review of all the movements’ means just that – and past the listener file – some one after the other, others in contrapuntal combinations – all the themes of every movement in the symphony: Allegro, Andante and Scherzo. There are nine of them – or even more than nine, because here we find also some secondary thematic borrowings from the first movements of the symphony, to say nothing of the independent thematic material of the Finale. Something extremely variegated results (a rondo with ten themes, a form never envisaged in theory), but interesting; to someone who has listened attentively to the preceding movements of the symphony, even rather integral to it. With Glazunov, we thus encounter symphonies both close in general plan to the classical scheme and diverging strongly from it; symphonies with wholly independent thematic material in each movement, as well as symphonies composed with a single theme, and also such where the independent thematic material of the first movements is brought together in the finale; symphonies with more or less the usual modulatory layout of sonata form as well as with completely unexpected surprises in that area; in short, the symphonies are most diverse as regards the general plan or construction of individual movements29 and the relationships between these movements, their individual episodes and themes. It goes without saying that all this represents not new types of form, but merely all possible variants (sometimes new and very substantial ones) of the old basic sonata type. But if the sonata type outlines a wide, trustworthy channel for the flow of a composer’s creative imagination, then such variants flowing out of it, variants closely linked to the composer’s individuality, give the opportunity to direct the bends in their channel according to the artistic demands of the moment, and therein lie exactly the age-old strength and magnetic power of sonata form. IV [Other orchestral works, including programme music and ballet scores, are surveyed.]

29

Author’s note: In our survey we have dealt mainly in this respect with the opening sonata allegros of all the symphonies, though the symphonies’ other movements would confirm this conclusion.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 V ‘Music represents impressions of life conveyed in sound by an artist.’ In the first article an attempt was made to classify Glazunov’s talent from that point of view. But before answering the question of what is expressed in sound and how, it is essential to presuppose that we are really dealing with an artist who has power over the means of expression of his art, over its material – sound. Just how brilliantly this presumption has been confirmed in the case of Glazunov is obvious after all that has been said. Whichever of his works we have scrutinized, the constant refrain has been: how skilfully this has been done! As regards power over the secrets of the technique of his art, Glazunov is even more than a master – he is a virtuoso! A virtuoso – with all the virtues of this artistic type necessary to move art forward, but also with all the ‘shortcomings of his virtues’, as the French say. And this mastery (of course, in a less perfect form than today) was characteristic of Glazunov, as we have seen, almost from his first compositions. In his mature years Rimsky-Korsakov revised almost everything he had written as a young man. Tchaikovsky had a craving to do the same, but managed to correct only a certain amount. Glazunov had no reason to fear such a ‘craving’; the standard of ‘work’ even in his earliest compositions was higher than that of which a mature artist might repent, saying: why are they like that? And this applies equally to the whole complex of knowledge and abilities which comprise the field of technique in composition. [Engel’ praises Glazunov’s inventiveness in exploiting the orchestra and resourcefulness in finding harmonic and contrapuntal ideas; his melodies are less original.] We can see how original and immense is the sound world opened up by [Glazunov’s musical panorama], how much beauty and strength it contains. It is true that this beauty is not always illuminated by spirituality of the highest order, resembling rather the ancient ‘harmony of the spheres’ which enticed the ear through a magical correlation of numbers using a celestial laboratory for some kind of logic drawing on the laws of physics and the Kabbala. It is also true that limits are set to this power – those limits which Tchaikovsky at one stage foresaw when he said that something prevented Glazunov’s genius from expanding fully. It is not enough to define these limits, to say that Glazunov’s immense talent and powerful flight are more broad than deep, captivate more by the charm of their colours and perfection of form than by the heartfelt conviction of their contents; one must also add that the further this talent moves away from those summits of grief, despair, passionate yearning for an ideal and, in general terms, from passionate enthusiasm for anything at all which is hardly accessible to it, the 158

The Belyayev generation more it becomes more powerful and more individual. On the other hand, the summit of joyous self-denial is also inaccessible to it, it would seem. But even with these limitations, there remains a still more infinitely varied field for ‘life’s impressions’ which have found vivid expression in Glazunov’s music. Its prevailing mood is a gentle, lulling one, remote from the sharp pain of earthly passions, but also remote from mystical contempt for life and fanatical unconsciousness of it; a strange mixture of high spirits and melancholy – the high spirits carried to their maximum in energetic, bold finales and magnificent, vigorous maestosos, and the melancholy confined for the most part to a minimum and never turning into moaning. It is often, moreover, difficult even to speak of the ‘mood’ of Glazunov’s music – to such a degree do the emotional contents recede into the background in the face of the sheer play of arabesques in sound, or the treatment of sound as an end in itself and not as a means. But even when he sets himself the specific plastic task of expressing ‘life’s impressions’, the artist himself with his inner world and his attitude to the external world remains for the most part somewhere in the distance, outside the field of vision of the perceiver. Think of the man in [Glazunov’s] The Sea, who communicated to people only ‘all that he saw’, although he was supposed to communicate also ‘all that he felt’. Such is Glazunov, if only one can divine the meaning of this complex, enigmatic nature. With the prophetic spiritual gaze of an anointed sovereign, he sees the fabulous worlds of pure, virginal beauty and opens them up to a dumbfounded world; but it is less given to him to speak from heart to heart than to create images; less to move than to charm. The greatest of artists in sound declared: ‘Music must carve fire out of man’s breast’. Glazunov often fails to live up to this cherished Beethovenian touchstone. But do many of the most celebrated present-day composers live up to it?

(e) V. G. Karat¨ıgin: In memory of A. K. Lyadov. Apollo, 1914, nos. 6–7. Karat¨ıgin, pp. 130–41 From 1906, the critic and composer Vyacheslav Gavrilovich Karat¨ıgin (1875–1925) wrote about all that was new in music as well as championing the compositions of Musorgsky. His scientific education shows through in his style.

A. K. Lyadov died on 15 August. His death passed little remarked. August is the deadest month in our capital’s musical life. Summer concerts have come to an end, and there is still a long time to go before the winter season. Moreover, the threat of war breaking out all over Europe pushed all artistic interests, all personal misfortunes and the deaths of individuals, at least to 159

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 start with, to one side. So it came about that the departure from this world of a wonderful Russian master of the art of music was recorded in a mere few dozen lines tossed off for the newspapers. One must be honest: you probably can’t write a book – a monograph – about Lyadov.30 He himself, after all, wrote very little and very seldom reminded the public of his existence by producing a new composition; all his creations are very slight in scale, and all his work is very intimate, domestic and absolutely alien to great ambitions of any kind or to any sort of revolutionism. But if it is neither possible nor necessary to write extensive research projects concerned with the indoor comforts of Lyadov’s art, it is the more necessary and important to outline the general features of his creative profile in a small memoir. Apart from out-and-out experts and specialists, Russian music-lovers took little interest in the musical jewellery of Lyadov’s art while he was alive – the more so, as he himself did nothing in the least, either by the quantity or character of his works, to promote the spread of his fame among the broad mass of the public. At least, after the death of this highly gifted Russian musician, let our pianists scrutinize Lyadov’s delicate Preludes, Etudes and Mazurkas more attentively. With the irreproachable good taste with which every piece from Lyadov’s pen is finished, the refined poetry which aerates his musical speech and the perfect plasticity of his musical ideas, the late composer’s artistic legacy may be placed alongside the highest achievements of Russian creativity in music. Inspiration is not subject to precise critical stocktaking. But the formal and technical aspect of Lyadov’s work on its own is on such a high level that the study of his compositions can bring every musician great artistic benefit. Artistic instinct and flair for musical artistry are sharpened and refined on the whetstone of Lyadov’s art hardly less than by the work of Glinka or Rimsky-Korsakov. Anatoly Konstantinovich Lyadov’s biography is on the surface very simple. [His father and several other relatives were musicians in St Petersburg theatres.] [. . .] In 1878 he graduated from the Conservatoire [there] with the silver medal. His exam composition was music for the concluding scene of Schiller’s The Bride of Messina. In Rimsky-Korsakov’s words, this scene performed at the graduation ceremony in May 1878 ‘sent everyone into raptures’. This was not the first of Lyadov’s compositions where his talent made itself felt very early on [. . .]. The cantata The Bride of Messina appears as op. 28 in his catalogue of compositions. Before this cantata Lyadov had composed 30

Lyadov monograph. Several authors have since disproved this assertion.

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The Belyayev generation four songs, four Arabesques, ten Mazurkas, several Preludes and Waltzes as well as some orchestral pieces, including a Scherzo, Village Scene at the Tavern (a mazurka), the Ballade in the Olden Time, the charming piano suite Biryul’ki (‘Spillikins’) made up of fourteen short pieces of varied character and the highest degree of elegance in a Schumannesque style, 18 Children’s Songs (three sets of six apiece), offering a collection of true, flawless gems of Russian vocal music, etc. But the initial establishment of Lyadov’s fame as a composer in musical circles was aided more than anything by the cantata mentioned above, which earned the strong approval of V. V. Stasov, the Balakirev circle’s literary apologist. Soon thereafter Lyadov’s Muz¨ıkal’naya tabakerka (‘A Musical Snuffbox’) appeared as well, which seems to be his only composition to have earned wide popularity rapidly, whereas artistic admiration for the delightful children’s songs, as for the majority of Lyadov’s marvellous piano trifles, Spillikins included, is even today confined to educated musicians who follow what is being composed. A Musical Snuffbox, that idealized imitation of the playing of small clockwork organs and musical boxes, exists in two forms. It sounds amazingly original in the upper register of the piano, but it gains even more in the composer’s own instrumental arrangement of it for two flutes, piccolo, three clarinets and metallophone (campanelli). Two pieces of work which ought to be mentioned particularly belong to the first years of his career. The first project is his work in the mid-1870s on the full scores of Glinka’s operas, whose publication was planned by L. I. Shestakova under the editorship of Balakirev, who invited Rimsky-Korsakov to help him and then Lyadov, as one of the most talented of his pupils. As Rimsky-Korsakov admitted, the editor and his collaborators adopted too ‘light-hearted and self-reliant’ an attitude towards their job. The edition was published with many misprints and misunderstandings about the orchestration. But working on Glinka’s compositions proved to be doubtless just as useful for Lyadov as it was for Rimsky-Korsakov. From studying Glinka’s scores, with their ideal part-writing, irreproachable formal logic and freedom and naturalness of harmonic style, Lyadov, like Rimsky-Korsakov himself, extracted much information useful to him and at the same time substantially refined his artistic taste on compositions by the father of Russian music. The other project of the 1870s was Lyadov’s participation in the humorous collective composition Paraphrases, on the theme of the children’s polka-like melody usually known for some reason as ‘The Dog’s Waltz’ [and elsewhere as ‘Chopsticks’]. In this curious composition several variations and four movements of extreme ingenuity from a technical point of view (Waltz, Galop, Gigue and Procession) are by Lyadov. In all his early compositional labours, Lyadov showed himself to be such a strong technician and master 161

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 of the art of music that scarcely had he completed the Conservatoire course than the same Conservatoire invited him to join the ranks of its teachers [in 1878]. In addition, in 1885 he began teaching at the Court Kapella and then added to that his extremely fruitful work for the Song Commission of the Imperial Geographical Society. [. . .] A degree of mystery attended the remainder of Lyadov’s life. He evidently drew a strict demarcation between his private life [including his marriage] and his public musical activities. [. . .] While being on the whole conservative in his musical tastes, Lyadov nonetheless accepted Debussy and Skryabin. In Debussy’s art he prized the exquisite grace of his ideas, and he really adored Skryabin, though not everything. The first and second periods of Skryabin’s work gave him unalloyed delight, but, starting with Prometheus, Skryabin’s inspirations aroused bewilderment in Lyadov, and even doubt as to the health of the innovator’s musical mind. The German innovators [i.e. Richard Strauss and Reger] and our own Stravinsky inspired no sympathy in Lyadov. In their work he could in all sincerity discern only the flouting of all laws human and divine, and was even inclined to deny them the most elementary musical ear. A great admirer of form, Lyadov spoke out against the formal stereotypes in general use – the newer they were, the more definitely he objected. Sonata form struck him as almost completely obsolete, needing to be replaced by the more free and flexible forms found in lively and immediate association with the conditions of the way we perceive sound, which are quite unlike those of former times. In spite of providing many superlative models of the Russian style in music, Lyadov, however strange it might seem, held extremely ‘liberal’ views on the question of musical nationalism. National tendencies in music, too, evidently seemed to him close to the point when they could be regarded as obsolete. Enraptured by Skryabin who unquestionably brought to our [Russian] art a certain movement in the direction of ‘denationalization’, Lyadov at the same time considered the nationalism of many epigones of the New Russian School to be artificially inflamed, stilted and false. To Musorgsky, Lyadov took the same attitude as RimskyKorsakov, simultaneously adoring and detesting him – adoring him for his wealth of inspiration, his incomparable strength and the clarity of his distinctive musical language, and detesting him for his scorn for technique, a stalwart admirer of which Lyadov remained until the end of his days. [. . .] [The composer’s last ten years were accompanied by declining health], and he died on 15 August [. . .]. The first period of Lyadov’s career as a composer coincided with the heyday of the Balakirev circle. All the most powerful and fresh talents united around Balakirev at that time. It is not surprising that Lyadov too, a pupil 162

The Belyayev generation of Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the circle’s most gifted representatives, was attached to the New Russian School at first. But like his teacher he did not remain long in the bosom of the Balakirev circle which, moreover, by the 1880s was beginning to disintegrate. At the same time another circle taking shape around M. P. Belyayev started to gain importance and influence. Rejecting the extremes of the ‘Balakirevites’’ artistic ideology, with their advocacy of musical realism and their sceptical opinions about the role and purpose of technique in music, the ‘Belyayevites’ showed themselves a ‘musical party’ which was more tolerant and, truth to tell, more civilized. The Balakirev ‘handful’ comprised Cui, Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Balakirev himself. Lyadov, to a degree Lod¨ızhensky31 and a few other composers joined them, as well as the literary defender of the circle’s ideas, Stasov. The Belyayev circle was made up of Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov, the new luminary Glazunov, Dyutsh,32 the Blumenfeld brothers,33 Sokolov,34 Vitol’ and others. If one adds to them Borodin, who in the last years of his life also moved over to the ‘Belyayevite’ camp, then the basic core of both circles was broadly similar. This similarity will seem even greater if we recall that, on the one hand, almost none of the ‘Balakirevites’ – apart from Musorgsky of course – applied the circle’s ideology in practice in all its particulars and fullness, that the head of the circle, Balakirev, took enormous care to achieve technical perfection, despite the contempt for questions of technique preached by the circle, and that on the other hand the pillars of the Belyayev group, Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov, retained in their work until the end of their days features which in many respects revealed their descent from the Balakirev school. And yet, however obvious the continuity, the difference between the Balakirevites and the Belyayevites is very significant. The latter have a different attitude to music and a different opinion about its challenges; they understand the great value of technical, formal and plastic elements in music and do not join in naively elevating to the headstone of the corner the idea of expressiveness and pictorialism as the true contents of music. At the time the kuchkist¨ı [the Balakirev circle] were active, during the 1860s and 1870s, the realistic and narodnik ideology of art was a historical imperative: it matched the social and political ideas of that time to the nth degree. A certain element of dilettantism was also necessary in carrying out 31 32 33 34

Nikolay Nikolayevich Lod¨ızhensky (1842–1916): amateur composer, professional diplomat. On the fringes of the kuchka in the 1860s. G. O. Dyutsh (1857–91): conductor, composer and collector of Russian folksongs; pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. To Feliks, mentioned in n. 8 above, must be added Sigismund (1852–1920), a pianist and composer. N. A. Sokolov (1859–1922): composer, theorist, teacher and pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 the tasks founded on that ideology. The boundless self-confidence inherent in dilettantism (and so rarely combined with a high level of culture) was necessary to overwhelm all the strongly defended positions of old-fashioned artistic tastes and convictions, and give a further turn to the wheel of Russian musical history, first budged from standstill by Glinka. But when this had been done, when the New Russian School’s historical mission had been accomplished, it was necessary to take a backward glance, to bring order to the areas devastated by the musical battles which had just raged over them. This task of bringing order to the kuchkist legacy fell to the Belyayevites, and particularly to those who formed the connecting links between the Balakirevites and the Belyayevites – Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov and to some extent Glazunov. Thus, in the historical scheme Lyadov is an ‘intermediate’ composer. The Schumannism and Chopinism of Lyadov’s early and middle compositions have their origins, of course, in the Balakirev circle; from it too come the marvellous feeling for Russian style, the beauty and logic of modal harmonies and the characterful melodic shapes in the spirit of the refrains typical of Russian folksong. But the cult of technique, the perfection of a composition’s technical finish, ‘neatness’ of part-writing – these come from a later period and stem from the cultural and musical ideals of the Belyayev circle. As we examine Lyadov’s sixty-six opus numbers, we can say time and again: the syncopated rhythms here are from Schumann, the extremely graceful ornamental figuration here is from Chopin, and these fantastical harmonies in Baba-Yaga, The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora are from Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov. So what remains that is Lyadov’s own? Can we catch a glimpse of his own face behind the amalgam of very definite influences from Schumann and Chopin, Musorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, and Lisztian–Wagnerian and even Skryabinesque harmonic devices? Those who ask this question expose merely by raising it their complete inability to be caught up in the distinctively intimate moods of Lyadov’s music. And, on the other hand, the musician who has perceived – even only once – what comes from Lyadov himself in his music, will never again place the many influences to which this art is subject in the foreground. In Lyadov’s art one senses so sharply and clearly that it is a living thing, that every note was written down with love, that every harmony, every ‘Chopinesque’ pattern, every ‘Schumannesque’ rhythmic combination that causes a stumble, was worked out by Lyadov with a special kind of heartfelt tenderness and an infatuation with the game of matching sounds to one another. The influences of Chopin and Schumann in Lyadov’s tiny Preludes, Etudes and Mazurkas are so obvious, so incapable of being concealed by the composer, that they disarm the critic who wishes to reprove Lyadov for a lack of independence. One can only 164

The Belyayev generation write so openly in imitation of Chopin, Schumann or Rimsky-Korsakov if one is profoundly convinced that power does not lie there, in a Schumannesque or any other exterior in itself, but when one believes instead that a composer’s individuality – even while relying on someone else’s exterior – makes itself known by itself in spite of everything, and cannot pass unobserved. And Lyadov is correct in this conviction. His music is convincing. You cannot confuse the other person’s musical clothes that he wears with his own musical soul. The soul is an unsteady and elusive thing not available for precise analysis – particularly Lyadov’s soul. His creative soul is just as detached from the world, as concentrated upon himself as his empirical human personality. This spiritual seclusion has not entailed any special deepening of his work and has certainly not been complicated by any mark of pessimism or misanthropy derived from it. The shell of self-absorption and seclusion in both his life and work are rather the result of the composer’s over-acute spiritual sensitivity, his inability and lack of desire to accommodate himself to anyone or anything else, of the presence in his nature of several lordly traits, and lastly of his tendency to far niente. The gloomy is just as alien to Lyadov as the profound. Here lies one of the most substantial differences between Lyadov, on the one hand, and Chopin and Skryabin on the other; his love of Chopin was in all probability conditioned by the Chopinism of Skryabin himself in his first period of composition. A large part of Lyadov’s compositions are in the major and permeated by a bright, idealistic worldview. There is no concentratedness of creative thought, in the sense of the word in which we apply it to the works of Beethoven, Bach, Wagner and Musorgsky, in Lyadov – with small exceptions (From the Book of Revelation), which even then hardly seem to be such. Pathos is decidedly not typical of him. What remains? The play of sounds? A kaleidoscope of sounds? A game for the sake of a game, pleasing the ear (in Serov’s expression) – these are not in fact alien to Lyadov. In certain of his pieces, even A Musical Snuffbox, it is difficult to track down any other sort of sense than the play of sound, the highest grade of artistic amusement, aural delight in the play of sounds. In the majority of his compositions Lyadov stands on different ground, inscrutably able to endow what seem to be the most ‘superficial’ ideas with inner significance. How he achieves this is his secret, but almost every piano, orchestral and vocal miniature (including the children’s songs) by Lyadov breathes unfeigned poetry. Moreover, the simplest analogies suggest themselves in explaining Lyadov’s ‘superficial depth’. Is the surface of the sea, furrowed with foaming waves by the will of the most skilful artist of nature, sparkling under the hot rays of the sun in millions of varied colours, really less full of content and ‘depths’, in a spectator’s perception, than its true many-fathomed deeps giving refuge to multifarious 165

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 representatives of ocean fauna? Are the splash of sea breakers, the play of patches of light, the starfish and shells thrown up on the seashore really less of an enigma, less beautiful, less poetic than what takes place in the depths of the ocean? Wilde found, not without reason, that sometimes the greatest depth is discovered in what appeared wholly external and superficial. All we need is to be able to find this special profundity. And still more do we need an artist who has set this special profundity into his superficial creations. Nature almost always resolves this problem with astounding ‘mastery’. A few original artists are also capable of resolving it. In Russia Lyadov is one of them, as, to some degree, are the Impressionists in France. I say ‘to some degree’ because the homophonic art of Debussy and Ravel long needed to be extended, which was done by Roger-Ducasse when he combined Impressionist harmonies with a polyphonic texture. Lyadov does not need this ‘textural’ extension: he gives polyphony its due willingly and frequently. He nearly always develops even ornaments of the Chopin type in such a way that they can be condensed to a certain polyphonic scheme, his figuration can be called ‘single-part counterpoint’, so that it can easily be reduced to real contrapuntal voices, which, by the way, is rarely to be observed in Chopin. Lyadov’s exceptional predilection for the miniature helps to resolve the paradoxical question of finding depth in the surface. His pieces are miniature not only in form, scale, and number of printed pages. They are miniature also in respect of psychology. If it is true that on some occasion Skryabin himself called his music ‘exaggerated’ (an expression not without psychological accuracy, whoever uttered it), then, staying on the same terminological plane, we are justified in calling Chopin’s art, so to speak, an art of human artistic emotions ‘of natural size’. Then we must accept Lyadov’s music as music ‘greatly reduced in size’. Everything about it is small. All the reflections of aesthetic emotions, all the movements of the soul, the entire realm of pathos, are presented in Lyadov’s art on an exceedingly reduced scale by comparison with their ‘natural size’. And because everything is small and toy-like, everything becomes special, unusual, different from the ordinary – for instance, just as a tumbler of water is different from the tiniest drop of water which, because it is impossible to examine it with the normal eye, we examine through a microscope, and the microscope opens up for us unexpectedly a whole world of life in an insignificant splash of water. Skryabin’s art is often so much ‘magnified’, so much reflects the cosmos on a large scale, that in order to grasp the contours of this art one has to apprehend it as if it were at a certain (psychological) distance. One may admire Chopin at the distance of normal ‘clear sight’. In order to bring one’s soul into contact with Lyadov’s inspirations, one has to adjust it to ‘microscopic’, one has to approach Lyadov in real earnest and, armed with 166

The Belyayev generation special psychological prisms and lenses, scrutinize attentively the worlds of the inner life of sound opening up before one’s eyes. This is not difficult and is instructive to the utmost degree. And immediately, on adopting this intimate approach to this intimate art, the depth and slender, detailed beauty of construction in Lyadov’s musical images and their originality are revealed. Lyadov was not productive, but, to repeat what I said at the beginning, every work of his shows the highest school of taste and excellent mastery. Lyadov is simple and clear even when he is solving the most complicated technical problems, to which he resorts, moreover, far more rarely than, for instance, the other composer who holds a boundary position between the Balakirevites and the Belyayevites – Glazunov. A large majority of Lyadov’s compositions are written in the form of small pieces for piano. Apart from the works mentioned above, Lyadov has composed for orchestra two Polonaises (in memory of Pushkin and Rubinstein respectively), arrangements of Russian songs, as well as several numbers in collective compositions (Variations on a Russian Theme in F, Cantata in memory of Antokol’sky, etc.). For chamber ensemble Lyadov has not written at all, except, again, individual movements in collective compositions (Scherzo in the Quartet on B–la–f, a movement for the quartet Imenin¨ı (‘Name-day’), Polka, Mazurka, Sarabande, and Fugue in the quartet Suite Les Vendredis, and so on). In the field of vocal music Lyadov left a whole series of masterpieces, but in the genre of Russian song, not art song. Apart from the four Romances which came out as op. 1 and are not particularly successful, Lyadov did not write art songs. On the other hand, he gladly made arrangements of Russian songs in all styles, always with superb results. His versions of Russian songs for voice with orchestra (and for orchestra alone), for voice and piano, for male, female and mixed quartets and choirs and his eighteen children’s songs are close in style to folksongs – all these works were carried out wonderfully by Lyadov. The Russian songs in Lyadov’s harmonizations with his three orchestral pictures – Baba-Yaga, The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora, which are permeated with splendid freshness of imagination and warmth of artistic feeling – would on their own be sufficient to earn Lyadov a place of honour in Russian musical history. And he has in addition presented our art with a rich collection of piano Spillikins, Bagatelles, Mazurkas, Preludes, Variations – an entire world of captivating arabesques in sound which have presumably not pleased our pianists because they are too ephemeral, fleshless, elegant and because you won’t find the slightest trace of banality in them.35 35

These works originated in Belyayev’s domestic music-making on Friday evenings; hence the musical motive B–la–f (=B –A–F), derived from the patron’s surname.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Moscow and her composers

(a) N. D. Kashkin: The Moscow School in Music. An Essay by Prof. N. D. Kashkin. New Word, June 1910, no. 6, pp. 53–8 This greatly curtailed essay outlines a general picture, some aspects of which are examined in later articles.

In the luxuriant flowering which Russian music has achieved at present, seniority and initiative belong to St Petersburg. It was in St Petersburg that Glinka and his immediate successors lived and worked, and it was there too that the first Russian Conservatoire was opened just when some of the St Petersburg intelligentsia were begetting the group of musicians who called themselves the ‘young Russian school’ but who had the comic nickname the ‘Mighty Handful’ as well. In regard to music, Moscow emerged independently much later, and the origins of the Moscow school may be dated to the opening of the Moscow Conservatoire, whose first teachers of music theory were P. I. Tchaikovsky and G. A. Laroche – who had both previously completed the course at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. The group of Moscow composers is very large and active at present, but we do not count all its members among the Moscow school; thus, for instance, A. T. Grechaninov1 and M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov2 live and continue their activities in Moscow, but both are alumni of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, although the former is indebted for a significant part of his musical education to Moscow and its Conservatoire. We intend, first of all, to define what, in our view, should be called the Moscow school. Tchaikovsky began his career both as composer and teacher in Moscow in 1866. To his teaching he brought the same clear-headedness of view which guided his compositional work too. Without being a theorist in either 1 2

Grechaninov: see Chapter 4, article (d), n. 22. M. M. Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859–1935): composer and conductor; pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. In Georgia, 1882–93, director of Moscow Conservatoire, 1905–22.

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Moscow and her composers sympathies or vocation, over the twelve years of his professorship at the Conservatoire he nonetheless achieved a great deal, guided mainly by his immense artistic talent and broad intellectual development. At any rate, Tchaikovsky laid firm foundations for the teaching of the theory of music in Moscow. Laroche, who became a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire one year later than Tchaikovsky, was by then a genuine theorist, although he worked in the field of practical teaching only with long gaps, sometimes moving his activities from Moscow to St Petersburg or in the opposite direction, at other times breaking them off altogether for a more or less prolonged period. His principal service in this respect lies in the articles through which he laid down the basic principles of the theoretical teaching of music. Since Laroche wrote only in various periodical publications in Moscow and St Petersburg, hardly anyone knows his articles nowadays, but they were anyway of great historical significance, as we consider it essential to recall.3 ‘The last word’ was always the war-cry of the champions of superficial Russian education, whether in science or art. This war-cry resounded in St Petersburg’s leading musical circles as well. Laroche took up arms chiefly against the poor grounding of the leading tendencies, and tried to demonstrate that in order to understand the last word in art it was necessary to be more or less basically familiar with earlier words as well; among other things, he pointed to the polyphonic school as the sole reliable foundation for a truly serious musical education. In his enthusiasm for this idea and particularly in his polemic with its opponents, he went to extremes, which caused him to be regarded not just as a conservative but even as a retrograde; this opinion likewise marks an extreme, which does not fully correspond with the truth. Lacking time to dwell on this subject here, let me remind you only that the retrograde Laroche acknowledged Wagner’s genius as a composer at a time when St Petersburg’s heralds of the ‘last word’ were calling him a complete musical nonentity, although they acknowledged the truth of his reformist ideas. Laroche’s outlook exerted a significant influence on Tchaikovsky, even though he did not fully share it; it influenced chiefly their joint pupil S. I. Taneyev, who was able to appreciate Laroche’s ideas about musical education and adopted them himself to a significant degree. Becoming a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1878, Taneyev came to specialize in teaching counterpoint after a few years. He was himself a gifted composer whose chamber works are counted among the best models in the most recent literature of that kind; at the same time, with the persistence of the most serious scholar, he was engaged in the study 3

Chapter 1 (a) contains a summary of some of these ideas.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 of his main subject and the result of this study was the monumental work which came out a year ago entitled Invertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style (‘Podvizhnoy kontrapunkt strogago pis’ma’), where he put the subject on a proper scientific footing and definitively set the seal on all the relevant theories and rules in scholarly generalizations. Taneyev was professor of counterpoint at the Moscow Conservatoire for no less than twenty-eight years and during that period developed such a wellconstructed, consummate system of teaching as barely existed anywhere else before then. Although the study of complicated contrapuntal forms has no direct bearing on present-day composition, as a training discipline it represents a means (such as nothing can replace) of developing a technique for the writing of music, as regards freedom and beauty of part-writing. We cannot dwell on this, because there is no opportunity of expounding in full the features and advantages of such a training, without resorting to a multitude of technical terms utterly incomprehensible to non-specialists. For the whole period of its existence, Taneyev’s class in counterpoint was the finest adornment of the Moscow Conservatoire and its most precious feature; although Taneyev left the Conservatoire four years ago, the seeds which he planted will not die, and among his direct pupils can be found many who will be in a position to continue their teacher’s cause in the field of pedagogy. In our opinion, Mr Taneyev’s teaching left a profound reflection on all his pupils, although probably not all of them are aware of it; their activities as composers vary greatly according to the individual peculiarities of the direction taken by each of them, but all are united by the freedom of their writing and the absence of any particular cultivated manner, something which resulted from the structured system in which they were schooled. They are all, to a greater or lesser extent, masters of part-writing, that is, of the main essential of the technique of writing music – and they have become accustomed to so concentrating their attention on this essential that their music’s external decoration, even when of the most sumptuous, is a secondary matter. In our opinion this is the principal sign which distinguishes the group of composers whom we unite under the name of ‘the Moscow musical school’. [Kashkin summarizes the careers to date of Rachmaninoff and Skryabin.]

(b) Yu. D. Engel’: A Cantata by S. I. Taneyev. Russian Bulletin, 3 April 1915, no. 75. Engel’, pp. 408–13 The current season has turned out to be most productive in precisely the field that is normally least cultivated by our composers – the cantata.

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Moscow and her composers Rachmaninoff has given us his All-Night Vigil, Grechaninov his Khvalite Boga (‘Praise the Lord’), and Taneyev his On Reading a Psalm. These are all works of a religious character, though they differ profoundly one from another in the essence of their basic artistic tasks and the devices of each composer, to say nothing of his creative originality. Rachmaninoff has created a canticle (pesnopeniye) where all the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church are observed (singing without instrumental accompaniment, text in the Slavonic language used for worship, ancient church melodies, etc.) and which is thus entirely suitable for performance in church. Grechaninov has carried out a kind of experiment (the first of its sort!) in extending the limits of Orthodox Church music and, while observing other traditional requirements of the church, has, however, introduced into his cantata orchestra and organ, hitherto employed only in Western church music; this has closed off the cantata’s access to the [Orthodox] Church. Lastly, in his cantata Taneyev has given us a work which is not linked in any way with the traditions of the Orthodox Church: the text is in Russian (by Khomyakov4 ), and the melodies are free, not traditional church ones; the orchestra does not merely support the singing but is often of major independent significance in its own right; the forms are the contrapuntal ones created long since and raised to a peak of perfection by the great masters of the West. Since the time of these great masters, the evolution of music has passed through several august phases: the supremacy of counterpoint has been superseded by that of melody, then of harmony, and now in the mists of the future a new phase can be discerned somehow taking shape: the reign of timbre, of sound colours. None of these elements of the art of sounds excludes the indispensable importance of any other, but it goes without saying that in every age what has come to light for the first time during that age is at the forefront of attention and is in greatest demand. It is therefore not surprising that the venerable old contrapuntal forms are today considered by many to be rather exhausted (‘Why build the pyramids of Cheops again?’), lifeless, in the best case – only ‘a useful school for learning the technique of composition’. But, after all, the reproach of lifelessness and lack of originality can be levelled at any modernist composer if his ‘researches’ in harmony and colour are only a willing or unwilling copying of what belongs to someone else, and not the ‘categorical imperative’ of his own creative individuality. The whole point here lies, as it generally does in art, in the strength of the inner ‘categorical imperative’ which nudges the creative artist irresistibly to

4

A. S. Khomyakov (1804–60): poet, playwright, philosopher of history and theologian.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 one side or the other, and also, naturally, in a correspondingly profound command of the means of expression of his art. With regard to the contrapuntal forms, Taneyev possesses both the one and the other in the highest degree. From the time of his very first emergence as a composer (with Ioann Damaskin),5 counterpoint has been his constant and unchanging love. Taneyev has propagated the contrapuntal style in word and deed with an energy, love and talent, such as no one else among his contemporaries has done – and not only in Russia but anywhere in the world. His treatise Invertible Counterpoint is the most significant work written on counterpoint in recent times;6 his new cantata is the most significant contrapuntal composition of recent times. Khomyakov’s poem which Taneyev set to music is lucidly religious and beautiful in its ideas and language, and more redolent of the prophet Isaiah than the psalms of David. In storm and thunder God’s voice pronounces: ‘Israel! You build temples to me, and the temples glitter with gold, and incense is burned in them, and lights burn day and night.’ What are all these things to the Lord? For he has created gold, and incense, and the lights, and the whole world! ‘I require a heart purer than gold, and a will sturdy in toil; I require brother to love brother, I require justice on earth!’ Khomyakov’s forty verses have been turned by Taneyev into an imposing work occupying a whole evening. This could have happened only by means of the most extensive use of word-repetition. Such repetition, inappropriate in dramatic music, is acceptable where there is a moment of heightened lyricism or a completed complex of images from the external world which have sunk into the soul, or an imperious affirmation of some clearly defined poetic idea, especially if all this is entrusted to a contrapuntally polyphonic chorus in which the repetition of words may be endlessly diversified by transferring them to various independent voices or groups of voices within the choir. And that is exactly the character of Khomyakov’s poem. The ritual stability and plasticity of the old contrapuntal forms match Khomyakov’s whole style, its precise language and its unshakably firm idea as much as they possibly could. In a word, the composer’s good seed has here fallen on extremely good soil. One must not think, however, that the old contrapuntal forms also determine the old contents of the music itself. Here is what Taneyev himself has to say on the subject in the preface to his Invertible Counterpoint: In polyphonic music melodic and harmonic elements are subordinated to the influence of the composer’s time, nationality and individuality. But imitative and canonic forms, and the forms of complex counterpoint – 5 6

Taneyev’s Ioann Damaskin was first performed in 1884, and published as his op. 1. Invertible Counterpoint: see (a) above.

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Moscow and her composers both those which have been applied before and those which are still possible – are eternal, do not depend on any particular conditions, and may enter the framework of any harmonic system, or take hold of any melodic content.

We see this confirmed in Taneyev’s cantata. His Bachian fugues, canons, imitations and invertible counterpoints operate with harmonic and melodic material which includes not only the classics but also modern music, from Wagner to Tchaikovsky inclusive. The same has to be said about the orchestration of the cantata. The result is thus a quite special ‘neocontrapuntal’ music, contemporary in spirit (even with strictly applied leitmotivic working), but with such a grandiose classically contrapuntal formal scheme as Russian art has not known at all hitherto, and which indeed Western art has not known for a long time. A brief example will give the reader who is not a specialist a clearer understanding of what I am speaking about. In the third movement of the cantata there is a solo aria (the only one in the work) where the words cited above (‘Mne nuzhno serdtse chishche zlata’ (‘I require a heart purer than gold’, etc.)) are heard for the first time. Each of these four lines (heart, toil, brother, earth) gives a new turn to a simple but beautiful melody without repeating a previous one. After the aria comes a double chorus to the very same words. And what happens? The four voices of the choir sing simultaneously the same four lines to the same four melodies which, it turns out, fit contrapuntally one against another. And this counterpoint is complex – that is, it is of the kind where any one of the four voices may sound lower or higher than any of the others. And now begins ‘a series of magical transformations of a beloved face’, or, to be more accurate, of four faces. The four themes now combine in new combinations, now develop in parallel in all kinds of ways, now emerge in the foreground in turn – and, by the way, by means of doubling the theme in the corresponding voices of the other choir (a device which, it appears, is purely colouristic and was not used by the old contrapuntists). Towards the end, all the voices in both choirs repeat the same words to the same melodies in a mighty unison (doubling and quadrupling the note-values), as if for the greater affirmation of the will of God, and then again one after the other (as in the aria), while the same themes sound in shorter note-values in the orchestra, in the form of all possible counterpoints, imitations, canons and even double canons! One could quote any number of examples like this. The entire score of the cantata is astounding in the maturity and unity of its creative conception, which was able even before the start of composition to comprehend the 173

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 entire work as a whole and in the actual process of composition to subordinate every new detail to this concept of the whole. This is the origin, by the way, of the cantata’s elegant architectonics, so simple and natural, with its division into movements, movements into ‘numbers’ (choruses, quartets, solos), ‘numbers’ into sections. But, the reader will say, are all these architectonics, complex counterpoints, canons, and so on, so very important? All of this, after all, is the kitchen of art, which is of greater interest to chefs. The only thing that matters to us simple hungry and thirsty souls is to know whether we can fulfil the psalmist’s testament here: ‘And ye shall be satisfied and praise the Almighty’?! All that is true. But Taneyev’s cantata is a unicum of contrapuntal skill in modern musical literature; with this cantata Russia has at last repaid the West with interest for her training in counterpoint. And when you are handed a rare, special dish, surely the natural first question is ‘what is it made of, how is it made?’ And if the rank and file listener is not always capable of perceiving consciously all the subtlety of the real complex contrapuntal meaning, then sooner or later he cannot avoid sensing, albeit perhaps only dimly, the vivid artistic power of this distinctive unity in variety and variety in unity. And how the soul is nourished by this ambrosia, for which ‘you praise the Almighty’! Up to now Taneyev has been considered a strong composer, but one whose strength lay in his head rather than his heart. In his new cantata mind and heart have been woven together into something unified, gripping and strong in that supreme Secret, without which in the final analysis there is no real art! Not everything here, obviously, is uniformly strong. The triple fugue, for choir (‘Ya sozdal zemlyu’ (‘I created the earth’)), for instance, is magnificent in its contrapuntal mastery, but somehow too formal; the same could be said of the orchestral introduction to the third movement (where all the previous themes are reviewed). But how ‘thunderous and grand’ is the introductory Allegro of the orchestra and choir (‘Zemlya trepeshchet’ (‘The earth trembles’))! How captivatingly euphonious is the double choir which ensues (‘Izrail’, t¨ı mne stroish’ khram¨ı’ (‘Israel! You build temples to me’); particularly in the episode of burning the incense!) What a combination of gloom and movement is achieved in the chromatic fugue in the second movement (metal melted in the bowels of the earth)! What expressiveness there is in the melodies of the quartet [of soloists] and the solos! What power and elevating beauty is to be found in the concluding double-choir finale described above ‘I require a heart purer than gold’ which worthily crowns this marvellous building so grandiose in conception and realization! [The quality of the performance and the fate of the work are assessed.] 174

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(c) A. V. Ossovsky: S. V. Rachmaninoff. 1. Songs, op. 21 (nos. 25–36); 2. Variations pour le piano sur un th`eme de F. Chopin, op. 22; 3. 10 Pr´eludes pour le piano, op. 23 (publications of A. Gutheil in Moscow, 1903–4). The Word, 1904, no. 10. Ossovsky, pp. 62–5 Against the lacklustre background of the young Russian musical school which embarked on artistic activity in the first half of the 1890s, S. V. Rachmaninoff stands out as a major and attractive figure endowed with many original traits. Today, now that this composer’s talent has been formed and defined fully, he must be acknowledged as a powerful and mature artist, with a broad and independent perspective on his art. Together with a genuine artistic temperament, he is notable for great self-possession. The steadfast and serious structure of his lyre is successfully combined with a subtle quality of poetry and profound, heartfelt conviction of moods, but the power of his musical expression is not impeded by brilliance of utterance, done always with noble taste, alien to everything banal and at times reaching in this respect even undue refinement. Setting himself often bold and large-scale projects, Rachmaninoff never forgets in carrying them out to remain a musician and never introduces into his music elements foreign to the art of music. When surveying a series of compositions by Rachmaninoff, you feel that the artist creates them only when he hears a compelling inner summons to compose, when a rich stock of ideas, images and moods has accumulated in his soul, straining irrepressibly to flow forth in sounding form. That is why his art is notable for its persuasiveness and inner compulsion and is always afire with living and warm blood. Uneven, self-willed and somehow disarranged at the beginning of his career, he was even then attractive for his impulsiveness, animation and youthfully untiring gifts, which forced their way through the frequent angularity and lack of balance in the form and concealed by them. Over the years maturity made itself felt, and after the Cello Sonata, the Second Suite for two pianos and the Second Piano Concerto, Rachmaninoff had already become a master, an artist in whom form is in equilibrium with content, while the former is marked by completeness and the latter by inward value. Starting out on his artistic career at a time when art was growing small of form, Rachmaninoff had no fear of large-scale forms: expansiveness and power of ideas are not betrayed in his works by the rich musical means used here to realize them. In his youthful period, Rachmaninoff at times came to grief over technical problems, sometimes even ones which were not really difficult, and even more frequently he would be careless about 175

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 technique, adopting in places where there were technical defects a defiant air of ‘je m’en fiche’. Later, he caught up in this regard and now, prizing and understanding the importance of form in the broad sense, Rachmaninoff does not retreat before extremely complex problems, having worked out already his technical methods and the characteristics of his style. Of these, the greatest power in his creative hands and his favourite is harmony – which is full of colour, lush, often bold and sometimes even rather tough. An artist of powerful temperament, Rachmaninoff is typical also in his energetic and highly developed rhythmic system, the representative of the volitional aspect in music. It imparts to the other elements of his art a vital energy and serves as a reliable framework, endowing it with definition and distinctness. As a melodist, Rachmaninoff is not notable for the plasticity of his themes or the beauty of their outline; but, on the other hand, his short phrases frequently stand out for their sharp strength of character. They are all related in their style to the instrumental type of melody. There are, after all, composers who in the features of their melodic gift remain vocal even in instrumental compositions, for example, Schubert, and, among the Russians, Glinka. With other composers, on the other hand, the style of melody is always essentially instrumental, even in compositions written for the voice, for example Beethoven, or in Russia Glazunov. It is to this second type that Rachmaninoff too belongs. These features of melodic style cannot be put down as either virtues or failings of a composer, but represent simply characteristics of his nature, which exert no influence on the qualitative merits of his compositions. But that is enough about technique. You forget about such a thing as you listen to Rachmaninoff – it is covered over and illuminated in his music by one supreme element – poetry. One would have to be devoid of hearing, heart and imagination not to yield to the enchantment of the fragrant waves of profound poetry in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, not to be borne away headlong into the free, radiant and exultant distant prospect in ‘Vesenniye vod¨ı’ (‘Spring Waters’), seething with the fermentation of life regenerating itself, not to fathom the aromatic freshness and chaste purity of feeling in ‘Siren’’ (‘Lilacs’). And how many such poetic and rich pages there are in the works of this composer! This brief description of Rachmaninoff’s musical gifts, to which I should have liked to add a good deal, frees me from the need to give a detailed analysis of each one of the new compositions listed individually in the heading of this notice. They all belong to the mature period of his work and are therefore imprinted with the general, typical features of his artistic gift. One further general observation in passing. Without pursuing the matter of the number of new opuses which Rachmaninoff publishes – in comparison 176

Moscow and her composers with our greatest composers not very often – over the course of time, with the growth of his artistic maturity, Rachmaninoff takes ever-increasing trouble over their qualitative significance and artistic logic. Among the new songs, three stand out as wonderful jewels: ‘Lilacs’, ‘Zdes’ khorosho’ (‘How Fair This Spot’), and ‘Melodiya’ (‘Melody’), which give off the fragrance of pure poetry. ‘Sumerki’ (‘Twilight’), ‘Oni otvechali’ (‘They Answered’), and ‘Kak mne bol’no’ (‘How Painful for Me’) must be classed among the songs with agreeable music which do not, however, stand out either for any special originality or depth of content. The songs ‘Nad svezhey mogiloy’ (‘By the Fresh Grave’) and ‘Otr¨ıvok iz A. Myusse’ (‘Fragment from de Musset’) are full of a severely sombre mood, portrayed successfully and powerfully. The first of them, moreover, is of a declamatory character, not without a certain rationality and intensity. The song ‘Na smert’ chizhika’ (‘On the Death of a Linnet’) stands on its own in being marked by originality of conception. Its sentimental naivety of feeling and a certain curious touch of olden times in the general mood are sweet and amusing, although the music does not counterfeit the olden style in even one iota. It is hard to say under precisely what influence Rachmaninoff’s piano style took shape. Himself an excellent pianist, Rachmaninoff has undoubtedly assimilated, perhaps entirely involuntarily, all the peculiarities of presentday piano writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, shaped by intersecting influences, principally those of Chopin, Liszt and Schumann. Having a virtuoso command of this style, Rachmaninoff extracts from the piano not only in a general sense a lush, rounded and beautiful sonority, but is able to impart to it diverse, expressive and poetic colours, as he understands and has a feeling for piano instrumentation. In his last two piano opus numbers a gravitation towards a Chopinesque manner is very clearly noticeable, a manner which is reflected not only in the treatment of the piano but also in the artistic style itself, in the spirit of the composition. The Variations are written on the theme of Chopin’s well-known tiny Prelude in C minor. A work on a colossal scale (twenty-two variations covering thirty-five pages), it presents the performer with difficult demands. It is not possible to dwell on the details of the variations, some of which have expanded to the dimensions of independent pieces. They are all rich in content, highly varied technically, many of them poetic, and the only reproach which can be levelled at them is the coincidence or close similarity of mood of certain variations, which somehow needlessly encumber the work, and a shortage in some of freshness of inspiration, something which is absorbed on this occasion by the interest of the technical problem. 177

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 The ten Preludes, written in a masterly way as regards pianism, in general and as a whole, must be counted among Rachmaninoff’s most successful compositions. Among them, the first and fourth Preludes leave an ineradicable impression by their heartfelt conviction and poetic quality; the second and fifth have been composed with great sweep, of which the latter, except for its central section, suffers from a certain coarseness of concept, and is therefore particularly suited to the taste of the ‘mass of the public’. The third Prelude is charmingly sweet with its curious sense of stylization, making this piece the twin of ‘On the Death of a Linnet’. The composer’s artistic activities show no sign of flagging. At the present time he has completed two short operas: The Miserly Knight to Pushkin’s text, and Francesca da Rimini to Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto. We look forward impatiently to the appearance of these compositions in print.

(d) Yu. D. Engel’: Two novelties at the Bol’shoy Theatre. Russian Bulletin, 14 January 1906, no. 13. Engel’, pp. 158–61 Rachmaninoff is one of the most prominent of our young composers. He has hitherto written mainly instrumental music. His single short opera Aleko is nothing less than a piece of student work written to graduate from the Conservatoire (1892). All the greater, then, was the interest aroused in musicians by Rachmaninoff’s two new operas produced for the first time on 11 January: The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini. The first of them was written as usual to the inevitable text by Pushkin. Almost all Pushkin’s other dramatic works have already been used by composers who preceded Rachmaninoff, and the fact that it was The Miserly Knight in particular which has remained until now without musical illustration is, of course, no accident. It has been avoided, I think, because it is comparatively unsuitable for conversion into an opera. The abundance of discourse and, in general, the unavoidably rational character of the basic passion portrayed in the play – meanness, the weak development of the action – all these factors complicated Rachmaninoff’s task in advance and at the same time indicated in advance the type of operatic writing most suitable in this case. This type is the recitative-declamatory one, which strives to stylize every logical accent of speech musically, heightening it to maximum expressiveness and clarity. When using such stylization, the operatic composer has the chance of manoeuvring between two basic paths. He can either concentrate the centre of gravity on the singing, assigning only a secondary role to the orchestra (Dargom¨ızhsky provided an extreme specimen of this approach in The Stone Guest), or, on the other hand, he can concentrate the 178

Moscow and her composers power of musical expression in the orchestra, leaving for the most part to the singers the roles of motive force of the action and commentator on it (Wagner). Between these two paths, Rachmaninoff seemingly tries to keep to the centre, though with a slight inclination towards Wagner’s side, except that Rachmaninoff applies the system of leitmotives, which predominates in Wagner and to which Wagner attaches colossal importance, only in its most general features. Thus, the basic element in characterizing the son of the miserly Baron, Albert, is an energetic, lively, scherzo-like rhythmic motive; the theme which introduces the listener to the Baron’s cellar receives repeated though less systematic development, and so on; the most interesting scene in the opera, as in the drama, is the second (the Baron’s monologue); there are individual moments of great power there. Moreover, the composer’s pensive talent makes itself felt throughout The Miserly Knight, both in its harmonic richness and the colourfulness of the orchestra as well as the flexible precision of the musical declamation which fuses with the text. Yet this is not an opera ¨ for the broad public: it is rather a piece written in the study (Kabinettstuck) for music lovers capable of appreciating the composer’s delicate filigree work. As I recall, the same impression was made by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri on its first appearance, an opera rather similar in style (with an inclination in the direction of The Stone Guest), which has since, however, obtained wide fame. But the important point is that Chaliapin appeared in the principal role there [. . . and such an exceptional performer is needed to bring off this role too]. Rachmaninoff’s other opera, Francesca, can count far more on the attention of the broad mass of the public. About twenty operas have been written on the same celebrated subject before him, including one Russian one, that by Napravnik, performed for the first time three years ago in St Petersburg. Rachmaninoff’s Francesca (libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky) is different, however, from all the others in that it is conceived, not as an independent drama, but as an episode in Dante’s hell: the story of the love of Francesca and Paolo, compressed into two scenes, is framed by scenes of hell (prologue and epilogue). Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasy Francesca da Rimini is constructed in just this way, as everyone knows. And, of course, it is not everyone who would decide to undertake to depict hell after Tchaikovsky’s Francesca. But Rachmaninoff has managed to carry out successfully this difficult task afresh, in part thanks to resources which Tchaikovsky did not have to hand. These resources are the stage and the massed chorus. The orchestral introduction, where the composer does not use them, is relatively insipid. As a consequence of the long absence of rhythmic movement, the aching chromaticism becomes rather monotonous here. In any case, in Rachmaninoff there is no impression of lasciate ogni speranza. 179

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 (In Tchaikovsky there is.) But now the curtain rises. Gloomy, hellish ravines. The voices of the invisible chorus, intensifying and growing all the time, gradually begin to weave themselves into the sombre, chromatically creeping harmonies. The composer uses these voices in a masterly and entirely original manner. The choir sings the whole time with lips closed; it is a muffled groan, not singing. In the following scene of the prologue, which is vividly staged as regards d´ecor as well, the ghosts of sinners scud by in front of Dante and Virgil; the choir sings here now with lips open (on the letter a); the groans turn into wails, the peals in the orchestra reach a climax; everything altogether makes a powerful and distinctive impression. Also very beautiful, though of course in a different way, are the two scenes devoted to Francesca herself. Both are powerful, inspired and rich in melody, and at the same time they form a contrast with one another. The hero of the first is the ill-starred Lanciotto, who imprints on the music of this scene the steadfastness of its rhythm, the severity of its harmony and the accents of a tragic quality profoundly endured. The second scene, on the contrary, is entirely in bright colours; the love duet of Francesca and Paolo is full of expressiveness, tenderness and passion. In our opinion, the first scene is nevertheless superior; it is more of an entity – all hewn from the same rock; the superb love duet seems to lack a point of climax worthy of it. In respect of its music, the epilogue repeats the principal moments of the prologue and thereby imparts to the whole opera a rare balance from the formal point of view. To sum up, Francesca is just as ‘serious’ in style as The Miserly Knight, but more vivid and heartfelt; the composer’s talent does not merely prompt respect but attracts and captivates. And for the performers too Francesca is not only easier but also more rewarding than The Miserly Knight. [Engel’ comments on the performers, giving particular credit to Rachmaninoff as conductor.]

(e) V. Yakovlev: S. V. Rachmaninoff. Russian Olden Times, 1911, book 12 (December), pp. 515–20 This author (1880–1957) was an eminent musicologist who worked particularly in source studies and bibliography. The heart has long since been engaged in struggle with life . . . Count Al. K. Tolstoy

Our Russian music has a short history. We have no old style, because our entire secular music can count a history of only slightly over seventy years. Russian folk art and sacred chants were, of course, born in the depths of the centuries, but the fruitful moment when secular music emerged from religious music, as happened in the West, was missing in Russia, just as we failed to acknowledge that folksong was an art expressing the temper of 180

Moscow and her composers the whole of society. The causes are sufficiently familiar, the most important of them being the estrangement of the so-called intelligentsia from the people, the original sin of our existence. The art of Glinka, who joined forms elaborated over centuries by Western composers to devices from Russian folksong and deeply national content, is one of the few bridges which cross the gulf between highest and lowest. But Glinka came along only recently, and all the experiences of our Classicists, Romantics and Byronists of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century failed to find an exponent in music, unlike the cases of literature, painting and even architecture. The necessary technique was not there, and nor were there any serious aesthetic aspirations. In the meantime, certain currents in European thinking about art have taken root so deeply in the Russian’s soul that he has not found the strength to free himself from them even today. Thus, a revival of Romanticism and of classical strivings is occurring before our very eyes – with the greater animation, because our grandfathers’ tastes did not have time to be fully dislodged and, in many respects, that generation was not able to say all it wanted in its own time, since an urgent need to engage with social questions arose and the latter were in the forefront of creative people’s minds. Among the currents undergoing revival we include Byronism too. We think that in our time it is to be found in the works of the artist Vrubel’7 and the composer Rachmaninoff. We regard this Byronism, naturally, not as a social phenomenon, although its revival is undoubtedly not accidental, but as a mood – that is precisely the kind of thing one ought mainly to be speaking about when dealing with art. One may object that the Weltschmerz of the nineteenth century made itself felt earlier in the power of genius in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies – and conclusively. But this essence of the late composer’s finest pages does not represent what we call Byronism. For the latter there is too little resistance or conflict in Tchaikovsky, and too much mundane lyricism. Gloomy protest, indistinct prolonged struggle between the heart and life provide the subject-matter for many inspired works by a present-day composer – Sergey Vasil’yevich Rachmaninoff. [Information about the composer’s background and education as a pianist is given; on transferring from the St Petersburg to the Moscow Conservatoire, he studied with N. S. Zverev and A. I. Ziloti], and took the theory course taught by Arensky and Taneyev. The teaching of S. I. Taneyev (who derived his ideas from the theorist G. A. Laroche) is of historic significance for the cause of music in Russia; the painstaking study of counterpoint, on which his teaching was based, resulted in his pupils being able to compose beautiful part-writing freely without putting the young composers’ abilities to write 7

M. A. Vrubel’ (1856–1910): Russian painter, creator of frescoes and stage designer.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 melodies under any strain – indeed, his system allowed their individuality to manifest itself the more successfully. We are indebted to this peculiarity of Moscow teaching for the emergence of Rachmaninoff, Skryabin, Medtner, etc. in the form that we now know them. Finally, the last and strongest influence on Rachmaninoff was exerted by P. I. Tchaikovsky – although it was not felt in person, it is always perceptible; Tchaikovsky’s works filled the air of the whole of musical Moscow in those years. Veneration of his memory has not left Rachmaninoff even now. We shall see later how at various times Chopin, Schumann and Wagner, and in his songs Musorgsky furthered the development of Rachmaninoff’s rich talent. In 1892 Rachmaninoff completed the course at the Conservatoire, presenting as his graduation work the one-act opera Aleko, for which he received the gold medal. In the same year he made his d´ebut as a pianist in Moscow, at the Electrical Exhibition, with outstanding success. In the spring of the following year his opera was produced at the Bol’shoy Theatre in Moscow, and then it did the rounds of almost all the Russian opera houses, encountering a sympathetic response everywhere thanks to the freshness and ardour of its inspiration. [. . .] One detects some impetuosity in the composer’s work; at certain times, perhaps when he has been encouraged by success, he shows an intensification of activity, whereas in other years his energy appears to have slackened. Thus, in a single year after his graduation from the Conservatoire, the Piano Concerto (op. 1, written moreover while he was a student), five piano pieces, the Fantasy for two pianos, two cello pieces and two for violin, six songs, the orchestral fantasy The Rock and an Elegiac Trio dedicated to Tchaikovsky’s memory all appeared. All these works immediately placed the beginning composer in the front rank of Russian composers, and certain piano pieces, for instance the Prelude in C-sharp minor op. 3 or the Barcarolle op. 5, won exceptional popularity. In the subsequent two years, seven piano pieces for two hands, six songs, six piano pieces for four hands and the Capriccio boh´emien for orchestra appeared, and the First Symphony, which has so far remained in manuscript, was written. It is said that the failure of this symphony (performed in 1896 in St Petersburg at a Russian Symphonic Assembly conducted by Glazunov) and certain personal circumstances caused an interruption in Rachmaninoff’s activities as a composer; he was conductor of S. I. Mamontov’s Moscow Private Opera for two seasons. In 1899 a new and most important time in his career as a composer began. The twelve songs, six choruses, six Moments musicaux, the Suite for two pianos, for all their attractive qualities, do not yet give any idea of the true dimensions of the composer’s talent, and are preparatory steps towards the better things which were composed immediately after them. The 182

Moscow and her composers Second Piano Concerto, the Sonata for cello and piano and the Cantata Spring demonstrated what the enchanting poetry-filled musical essence of Rachmaninoff was capable of. The first of these works has won worldwide fame; the Concerto is one of the most capital phenomena in the contemporary piano repertory in the power and beauty of its sincere, dreamy content and completeness of form. The same lofty virtues distinguish the Cello Sonata with its varied, rich material, noble ideas and elegant exposition of them, while the Cantata is marked by its light, spacious character, its genuinely spring-like freshness and high spirits (as is one of his early songs, ‘Spring Waters’). As if finding himself, taking command of something he did not have the means to express before, Rachmaninoff gives us three major works of complete maturity and mastery. After them appeared a set of songs (twelve in number, op. 21) some of which, we think, are of outstanding importance in the history of Russian music; we shall say more about them later; then there appeared the technical but essentially in many respects interesting Variations on a Theme of Chopin (on the C minor Prelude), ten Preludes which rapidly won fame and are sonorous, beautiful and meaty, two one-act operas The Miserly Knight on an [almost] unaltered text by Pushkin, and Francesca da Rimini – a dramatic episode from the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno, and more songs, even more delicate and intimate than those in the previous set. The Second Symphony was completed in 1907 (the score was published very recently) which was performed in the next season in Moscow and St Petersburg. The critics adopted a very severe attitude towards this composition at the same time as it has always enjoyed great success with the public, particularly as conducted with the irreproachable artistry of the composer himself. Over these last three years it has already been performed repeatedly at symphonic assemblies in Moscow and St Petersburg. A sometimes sombre lyricism suggesting a spiritual kinship with Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, without being imitative, since Rachmaninoff had already become sufficiently strong, the noble Glinka-like manner of writing though using the full modern orchestra – that describes the general impression made by this symphony. It seems to us that the dissatisfaction with this composition typical of Rachmaninoff, of which one hears in musicians’ conversations and opinions, stems from the haste and impatience with which new and ever newer statements are expected from contemporary composers. Rachmaninoff is still young for the fame which follows him, he is still developing his ‘I’ and it is natural that, in saying what he has to say almost for the first time in such broad forms, he can at times remind one somewhat of his earlier inspirations created in different frameworks, in the setting of chamber music. He is not stopping, although he does not astound one with his radicalism in the most recent works. The Sonata, a work of Beethovenian tragedy, 183

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 which follows the Symphony, the delicate music, gained through suffering, of The Island of the Dead, which is marvellously orchestrated, and finally the Third Piano Concerto, form the chronological conclusion of the composer’s work so far. In the summer of 1910 he wrote a Liturgy, which must be of exceptional interest, the more so since, if we are not mistaken, Rachmaninoff is under the influence of the theories of S. V. Smolensky.8 Rachmaninoff’s appearances as conductor and pianist are of considerable significance among his activities; apart from his two-year period at the Moscow Private Opera which has been mentioned, he was invited a few years later to the Imperial Bol’shoy Theatre in Moscow, where he also conducted for two years. He has, besides, appeared repeatedly at symphonic assemblies, always attracting attention by his thoughtful attitude, temperament and artistic refinement in performing compositions, whether his own or others’. His piano-playing shows traces of the felicitous influence of the era of the Rubinsteins and Tchaikovsky, with vitality, spontaneity and aristocratic subtlety of communication its distinguishing features. Technique is for him only a means; the power of feelings is the point of his performance. In recent years Rachmaninoff has not performed works by other composers, playing only his own. Let us add, to complete the biographical information, that at present he lives in Dresden for a large part of the year, extending his foreign activities; long acknowledged in England and Germany, he has now started giving concerts with great success in America. Moving on now to an overall evaluation of Rachmaninoff’s career, one must in the first place single out his songs; we consider it a great misunderstanding to deny his ability to write recitative – on the contrary we see in his vocal music the ultimate completion of the path traversed from Glinka, the creator of melodic recitative, by way of Balakirev, Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff’s declamation is amazing in its naturalness; his lyricism is always intimate and original; the simplest perceptions of life as he freshly communicates them are enclosed in profound poetry; his songs are rather difficult to perform, which perhaps explains why many of them are unpopular, while five or six have become exceedingly well known and well loved – even extremely so. From a technical point of view, Rachmaninoff’s compositions are noteworthy for their great melodic and rhythmic inventiveness, while the colours of his orchestra are rich and varied; all the same, as with Tchaikovsky, instrumentation is only one of the means he uses to embody his intentions, and not the principal aim. Harmony and counterpoint merge in one beautiful whole, neither developing to the disadvantage of the other. 8

S. V. Smolensky (1848–1909) was a scholar of ancient Russian church music who sought its reintroduction in liturgical practice. See also Chapter 5 (g).

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Moscow and her composers Rachmaninoff’s brilliant talent of itself has not been carried away by any one thing among the many (outside music as well) he has experienced, and therefore turned into the limited, Byronic tendency mentioned earlier; but it is so characteristic of him, just as bold Romanticism is for Schumann, heroic pathos for Wagner, folklike spontaneity for Musorgsky or the epic past for Borodin; with these words we are not giving a definition but merely marking the most stirring motives in the work of this composer or that. And if you can call to mind his songs, piano pieces, symphony (no. 2) and operas, you will often find in their delicate and even rather elegant writing echoes of the acute poetic malady which enveloped the talented Russian youth of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and of those ‘songs full of sadness which our grandmothers used to sing’, which could not find contemporary expression in the art of music. Given an inclination of this kind, a lesser talent would have composed no more than a series of pieces designed for inclusion in albums; Rachmaninoff goes deeper, and, being moreover alien to aesthetic sectarianism, is more many-sided. From his own sorrow, which is serious and concealed, albeit it stylish, from gloomy cellars with the miserly knight’s gold he moves over to an enchanting sound landscape, from extreme subjectivism to composure, and from the dynamic to the static. And this side of his work is not only attractive but contains tokens of a bright future. We think that if the composer paid greater attention to this aspect of his talent, then besides The Rock, Spring, The Island of the Dead, the Moment musical in D-flat major, the preludes in D major, E-flat major and G-flat major and the songs ‘Twilight’, ‘How fair This Spot’ and ‘Fontan’ (‘The Fountains’), he could give us completely original models of Impressionist music, independent of those contemporaries who enrapture us – the Frenchman Debussy and the Russian Lyadov. But some kind of austere, ancient vision incomprehensible to the mind burdens his individuality, and, not being a Nietzschean (like Skryabin) but a Byronist, i.e. profoundly human, he, like his spiritual ancestors, is nevertheless going off to some place ‘where there are no people, where there is silence’.

(f) N. Ya. Myaskovsky: N. Medtner. Impressions of his creative personality. Music, 2 March 1913, no. 119, pp. 148–57. Myaskovsky 2, pp. 507–9 Nikolay Myaskovsky (1881–1950) studied with Lyadov, RimskyKorsakov and Vitol’, graduating from the St Petersburg Conservatoire in 1911. His twenty-seven symphonies were composed between 1908 and 1949. At this time he was a voluminous writer of reviews; see also Chapter 6 (c) and (d).

Only very few people really like Medtner’s music; I am one of them, and in this essay I should like merely to give an indication of what it is about his 185

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 art that attracts me, without engaging in polemics with anyone. If I succeed in doing that with sufficient clarity, then perhaps there will be a few extra people who, once they have understood it, will also come to like it. In general terms, my attraction to Medtner stems from the following qualities of his music: its richness of texture, which is unusual even in our time; its surface restraint, and the self-engrossedness of its expression, as a result of which his compositions cannot bore one; and finally, its lack of colour. The latter is, of course, in the opinion of the majority a huge fault, possibly even a sin, overshadowing almost all Medtner’s merits. This quality has not hitherto been called by its true name, or, if so, then only in passing. The unacceptability of Medtner’s art was explained either by its ‘absence of soul’, or ‘insufficiency of lyrical feeling and sonorous charm’, or else ‘retrospectivism’, or ‘mechanical creativity’, etc. In my opinion all these insistent and various quests for a precise expression to describe people’s dissatisfaction with Medtner’s music could be combined in one definition – its lack of colour, its lack of pictorialism. And I believe this circumstance hides the reason why Medtner is rejected so passionately by the majority of both critics and musicians of the present day, who are mostly of the progressive camp – we live in a time when purely pictorial tendencies are flourishing; almost all our powers of enquiry and perception are directed towards colour, external beauty and brilliance of sound; we rush from the heady aromas of Skryabin’s harmonies to Ravel’s glittering orchestra, from the stunning shouting of Richard Strauss to Debussy’s infinitely subtle nuances. Generally speaking, one observes among us a manifest tendency towards a minimal burdening of the receiving reason and spiritual resources, providing sustenance only to the feelings and the ear; when we are offered something for the soul which is not set in something sweet enough for the ear, we refuse what is offered, having lost the ability to perceive and finding an insufficiency of soul in it. On the other hand, by sheer force of habit and upbringing, we still allow ourselves the enjoyment of Beethoven and Bach, but are we not doing that, too, just in the meantime? As far as Medtner is concerned, while reluctantly giving him every sort of due, in the last resort we turn away from him, and I discern the main reason for that in his lack of pictorialism. It is that characteristic, which I consider neither a shortcoming nor a virtue, but simply a characteristic, that in all sincerity attracts me to Medtner’s music, as I said above. It also attracts me as a contrast to the extravagance of the rest of presentday music, which I love probably no less than others, but which is also very tiring, heard in large quantity; but the main factor directing my attention to the uncolourful Medtner lies in the fact that the absence of colourfulness 186

Moscow and her composers from his music finds compensation in its great compression, in the profundity and kinetic tension of his thinking, and the corresponding complication and refinement of the general fabric of his works, thereby intensifying the process of intellectual perception, which is not dispersed by a surfeit of extravagant colour and does not dull spiritual impressionability. It is understandable that everything I have mentioned makes Medtner’s work almost inaccessible to the mass public, but I can explain the fact that it proves largely unattractive – even to those who truly value culture – only by reference to the spirit of the age, because for all attempts to believe that Medtner is dry, cold, shallow – that is, without content – I invariably come up against the fact that I personally am agitated, often even shaken, when listening to his works. If it were a question of something base or banal, then, of course, such agitation would testify solely to defects in my musical organization, but, since Medtner’s music unquestionably lies in completely the opposite area, then its having such an effect on me can only be ascribed to the strength of its inner intensity and warmth. And I shall try to explain that this is indeed the case, and not otherwise. The first thing that I demand of music in general is spontaneity, power and nobility of expression; apart from this trinity, music does not exist for me, or, if it does exist, then in a purely utilitarian application. When these qualities are united with refinement or novelty, the strength of the effect is naturally increased, and in the opposite case decreased; but the impression changes only, so to speak, in the quantitative sense, and not in the slightest in the qualitative one. For that reason, while I love Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and at the same time am inspired by Skryabin, while I am tenderly enraptured by Rimsky-Korsakov and intoxicated by Medtner, I remain completely cold towards, for instance, Glazunov and Balakirev. Here I have come up against a problem which may seem too much of a digression from the subject, but which as a result will give me a further strong argument in favour of Medtner. In adding to the previous formula – spontaneity, power and nobility – also perfection of expression, I shall obtain in extreme degrees what is meant by balance of form and content. This problem hangs permanently in the air and I, of course, not having the necessary data, cannot undertake to solve it. I should like only to express a few thoughts about it, which will perhaps prove not entirely beside the point. There is no doubt that, as the words are normally used, content is quantitatively linked indissolubly with its form; any other notion is as good as 187

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 unthinkable. But the qualitative balance of these two values is something forever being sought – a universal ideal (although to define the level of content, quantitative adjectives are always used) – greater, lesser, but the sense of this is nonetheless qualitative, since the level of content, essentially, is always reduced to the value or significance of the elements in a work and the depth of the feeling harnessed in them. Only three kinds of relationship of quality and type between form and content are thinkable: balance between them, a predominance of content over form, and the other way round. The ideal relationship is the first; the second can work perfectly well, though not in an extreme form; the third is always bad and can be valuable almost solely from a utilitarian point of view. But it is nonetheless clear that both content and form are indissolubly linked one to the other; they seem to me, in fact, to be two sides of the same phenomenon which only, as it were, changes its colouring, and this phenomenon is in essence only form, but corresponding to the previous division – outer and inner form. By outer form I mean a certain constructive scheme in a work, and by inner form – also a scheme, but one of a different order – a scheme for the development of feelings or moods which, according to my convictions, ought to contain the same kind of logic as the outer structure of a composition. The concept of content I deliberately narrow down to the basic elements of a composition – its thematic, rhythmic and harmonic material. Thus, by means of exaggerated schematization and subdivision, I always approach a composition from three angles: its content, its inner form and its outer form. I would not begin to argue if it were said that this is very strained and even naive, but, on the other hand, it allows me to evaluate very fully and carefully the phenomenon in the art of music which is the most confused and unclear at first sight (strictly speaking, inner form is the obverse of outer form to the same extent as it is also of the broadening of the concept of content, since the commonality of the primary source – inspiration or intuition – links it with the latter, and with the former the constructiveness characteristic of both varieties). Of the three data listed, I recognize the absolute value and necessity only of the first two; good outer form sends me into raptures, but I recognize its incompleteness. For that reason I accept Musorgsky equally with Tchaikovsky and Skryabin and reject Glazunov and his entire school, although I myself unfortunately am still in its snare. In actual fact, it is the school of Rimsky-Korsakov, though, as always happens, he himself did not have this fundamental shortcoming and, although his compositions are sometimes somewhat cold, the succession of moods in them is invariably natural. 188

Moscow and her composers Glazunov is extraordinarily typical of this school, and I shall dwell on him a little. He always has superb content – themes of rare beauty and vividness with original harmonies; he has magnificent, virtuoso outer form, but the inner structure of his compositions can rarely withstand criticism, particularly in large-scale works; small and uncomplicated pieces, and pieces with a single mood or the usual sorts of contrast turn out well for him – take his scherzos, variations, and so on; but something more extended – where the scheme of feelings or moods cannot be limited to contrasts alone but binds him to some sort of higher systematic planning, unification, synthesis – there he is unable to create anything other than externally connected sequences of beautiful moments. Let us take as an example the outer movements of the Fourth Symphony (E-flat major, op. 48): in themes and technique these seem to be perhaps Glazunov’s most characterful and remarkable creations, but, as one listens to them, in places they do not just leave one cold but even induce sadness, as a result of the manifest randomness, with the succession of thematic elements not compelled by inner logic; when I had occasion to analyze these movements of the symphony in detail from the point of view of their construction, I was at times overwhelmed by despair on seeing how everything in them is well linked, but also how little one thing is knitted to another. But let me return to Medtner. If we bring together all that has been said, I think that it will not enter anyone’s head to conclude that my attraction to Medtner is merely a transformation of the intellectual satisfaction obtained from the perfection of outer form in Medtner’s works; if that were the case, I should certainly be in the front rank of admirers of Glazunov. But it is not, whereas Medtner excites me, and there can be only one explanation – his music is spontaneous, warm and vital; these qualities are inevitably reflected in the inner form; in other words, I affirm, this inner form in Medtner is good. And indeed he has what may be called the logic of feeling, however strange that expression might sound. All his compositions – songs, folk-tales (skazki), novellas, dithyrambs and especially his many sonatas – are distinguished not only by the wholeness of their general conception – even such a ‘green’ work (in my opinion) as the First Sonata (F minor, op. 5), but also by an amazing naturalness and necessity in the way all their constituent movements are combined. I have had occasion to notice a fault in this respect in only one sonata, unfortunately a very fine one – the G minor (op. 22); always when playing it through or listening to it – once in a very fine performance and once in an incomparable one given by the composer himself – always I have been troubled by the unexpected bustle in the bridge passage between the first and second subjects; this struck me as a kind of disruption or something 189

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 far-fetched. On the other hand, no composition has given me greater satisfaction than the remarkable, I would even say inspired, E minor Sonata (op. 25 no. 2). Inner form, or the logic of feeling, is so powerful in Medtner that he probably had no need to wrestle with the iron principles of outer form; at least, the disruption which I noticed occurred only once, as I indicated, and once again perhaps one detects in the First Sonata (in the first movement) a degree of uncertainty. The outer form of Medtner’s works is generally superb – it is always highly developed, not too canonic, preferably tonally strict, and, most importantly, rich and logical. The technical finish of a composition has also, of course, to be regarded as among the qualities of outer form. In this respect, we encounter a vivid feature in Medtner’s work which may also be the key to the attitude we have observed towards him and which lies in the link with the characteristic indicated previously – the lack of colour. This feature is his outstanding but distinctive contrapuntalism. It is not the beautiful, euphonious and to a significant extent harmonic counterpoint which we observe in Glazunov, but a completely different kind. Medtner’s works often give the appearance that everything in them has been sacrificed to line. Thus, melody, or rather theme, emerges in the foreground, moreover melody or theme of the clearest, simplest contours and almost always full of character, and also in the majority of cases diatonic. People say that Medtner’s themes lack character or brilliance, but I suppose that this stems from a merely superficial attitude towards him; whereas those who examine the question more closely are struck by the features in his themes I have mentioned: each of them proves to contain a turn of phrase by which these themes clutch at the soul and the memory; as one musician I know accurately expressed it, the majority of Medtner’s themes possess a ‘tentacle’ of just this kind. This quality is characteristic, by the way, of the themes only of outstanding composers and is encountered but seldom; the themes of Wagner, Beethoven, Skryabin and just a few others are like this; epigones cannot manage themes of this kind. It is easy to be convinced that Medtner’s themes possess this hooking device: you need only look at his Folk-Tales/Skazki, Sonatas (the E-flat major Andante from the Sonata-Folk-Tale op. 25 no. 1, all of the leit-theme from the E minor Sonata, the themes from the Skazka in E minor op. 14, in B-flat minor op. 20 and many others – I chose at random the first examples which came to mind); besides, Medtner’s themes, I would say, are distinctive in their rectilinear quality; hence the general prevalence of linearity in his compositions, or to put it another way, of draughtsmanship, or, combining it

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Moscow and her composers with the lack of colour and putting it even more generally – the graphic quality. I have now at last said the most important thing I wanted to say about Medtner. In my idea of him, Medtner is a graphic artist, and if one accepts this proposition (and I think many will agree with it), then even the conciliatory point of view about his work becomes clear. In actual fact, at the present time it has become a perfect truism to say that graphic art in all its many manifestations is an art enjoying entirely equal rights with painting; and it is almost as much of a truism that, to appreciate it and find pleasure in it, one has to possess something more than just a pair of eyes; it requires education, culture and refinement of taste in addition; in principle it is an aristocratic art, not one for the crowd. But for all these reasons, it is obvious that neither is Medtner a composer for the crowd, and it is plain to see, even if one has only a superficial acquaintance with his compositions, that his art is analogous to graphic art. The outlines of his melodies are always clear and definite; the contours of figurations and subsidiary parts have been painstakingly honed and subordinated to a scheme persistently carried through; the duration of the harmonic beat is abbreviated to the minimum, almost to the limit of what is permissible artistically (hence the lack of colour, the insufficiency of colouring); the harmonic dispositions are marked by a high degree of closeness and by distinctive doublings, and in consequence the harmony too acquires a character of thickness – of darkness (which is explained by a certain dullness and toughness in it); the rhythms are universally acknowledged to be rich, but are also very reduced in scale; lastly, the contrapuntal fabric is very saturated; in this way, Medtner avoids broad strokes and patches, fresh air and boundlessness – in a word, painting – as it were, with all his might. I intentionally said ‘avoids’, because undoubtedly he is able (not only ‘was able’) to be pictorial as well: take, for instance, the Stimmungsbilder op. 1, the Novella in E-flat major, op. 17, the Folk-Tale in B minor op. 20, or many of the songs, if only ‘Meeresstille’, ‘Winter Path’ or such a remarkable but unfortunately little known one such as ‘On the Lake’, op. 3 no. 3, and how many more there are; we find purely pictorial ideas scattered everywhere in abundance, moreover realized in an interesting and unusual manner. But this is not where Medtner’s strength lies: he is a master of drawing, and in this field he need fear no rival. He reaches rare heights here and particularly because he is guided not just by cold reason alone but by a genuine creative fire, which unites all the diminutive elements of Medtner’s style in compositions which are integral, firmly welded together and full of

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 powerful though concealed (potential) energy, which I long to link genetically ¨ with the names of Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt. At this point, just when I am finding a point of view which gives me the right not only to express but also to substantiate my passion for Medtner, I think I may allow myself to assert that his compositions are full of a profound, but, to be sure, also a very reserved feeling. The absence of this feeling could be proved to me only if there was not a single one among a whole crowd of listeners who was moved; but that is completely wrong, because I myself can cite many people, even among those who are not professional musicians, on whom Medtner’s music makes a strong and deep impression, and, since this is so, then any assertion about the soullessness of his music is completely unfounded and lacks even a shadow of conviction. The fact that this music does not make an impact on many people may be explained by its reserved character, its severe restraint of expression and the distinctiveness of its technical cast described above; as a result of this, naturally, those who approach it with the usual criterion of pictorialism and a requirement for easy absorption will inevitably find that they have stumbled into a prickly hedge and are therefore of course unsusceptible. But in the last resort, just as graphic art has won its position with slow gradualness, so Medtner’s art, also so near to a graphic quality, faces the prospect of a long wait before it achieves the appreciation and recognition it deserves, though I have no doubt that it will come: Medtner’s music contains too many vital juices; too much spiritual strength has been invested in it, perceived as yet by only the few who have fallen in love with it (though do they not love it because it offers so much spiritual strength as to provide an impulse to overcome the external difficulties of perception?); and it contains too much sacred fire for it not, at the end of the day, to melt the ice of hostility. Since I have been avoiding as far as possible any polemic over the course of this whole essay, I do not wish to raise objections to the attempt which I came across recently to endow the art of Medtner, alongside that of Rachmaninoff, with a kind of providential significance, as elements capable of holding back the now extremely intensive evolution of attitudes to sound (see Marietta Shaginyan’s ‘S. V. Rachmaninoff’ in the bimonthly Works and Days (Trud¨ı i dni) published by Musaget, nos. 4/5). It seems to me that Medtner is too remote from the tendency which for the time being concentrates exclusively on the sphere of colourfulness and developing new means of expression, and, for that reason, can scarcely exert an influence of any kind on him; but as a composer of front-rank talent and a powerful distinctive individuality, moreover speaking in a strong and ardent language, even if he is not understood by everyone, he really is called 192

Moscow and her composers to enrich and deepen our spiritual life, and I believe that his importance in that respect is higher and more valuable than as some sort of barrier in the path of culture. At this point I can, strictly speaking, boldly write a full stop, since I have expressed the main thing in my essay – I have explained why I like Medtner, for which qualities, and by what route one may come to like him; as far as the review of his compositions for which I was asked is concerned, in my opinion, it too much deserves careful and many-sided investigation for it to be possible to find space for it at the end of an already extensive note in a journal. Hoping, therefore, that circumstances will enable me to return sometime to that useful and, still more, pleasant work, I finally place here the long-awaited full stop.

(g) A. V. Preobrazhensky: A description of the most recent attempts to restore the ancient chants, from A. V. Preobrazhensky: Music for Worship in Russia (Kul’tovaya muz¨ıka v Rossii) (Leningrad 1924), pp. 111–17 While more historical than the other items, this passage succinctly outlines a very important development in Russian music in the years up to 1917.

Over the closing years of the nineteenth century and the most recent years of the twentieth century, there is only one [. . .] profound movement in church music to mention, one which showed itself in the work of a whole series of modern composers, sometimes associated in the literature on religious music with the concept of the ‘New Direction’ and linked in their ideas, or even primarily in reality itself, with the direction taken by the Synodal Choir, its School of Church Music and their activities. Following its reform in 1886, this School took upon itself, to quote the terms of the official document, ‘to aim to succeed in the spirit of ancient Orthodox church song (peniye)’; it mustered a number of people to join in this work who had firmly established the idea of reviving Russian church music by means of a convergence with the style of the Russian musical school. Without dwelling on the details of the far from completed process of forming this new direction, which has continued to develop the most valuable type of ‘restoration of the ancient melodies’, one can provide only a brief description of the main foundations upon which this direction rests, having undertaken to realize the behests of the past history of Russian church music. The negative results of earlier attempts at harmonization, beginning with Bortnyansky, became gradually clear in the consciousness of the principal figures [in the ‘New Direction’], influenced by the growing interest in the ancient melodies. The perception of a need to create, on the basis of those 193

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 melodies, ‘a proper musical world’ proved so strong that satisfaction could be achieved only by attempts which departed as far as possible from the generally accepted foreign style towards a Russian national musical character. Since the time when the powerful development of Russian music entrenched the national principle itself, our church music has been avidly fixed upon attaining the same ideal. The originality of style in Russian church music in its ancient chants is deemed sufficient for Russian (now in a special meaning of that word) church music to exist alongside Russian secular music. Having recognized the preceding attempts as one-sided and inadequate, church music during the nineteenth century transferred the movement’s centre of gravity towards the national question, striving to draw the ancient church melodies into the same kind of participation in creating a national church music as Russian folksong occupied in the field of the secular music running parallel to it. In developing Russian church music, the same historical method was applied as led Russian secular music to entirely propitious results, since on the basis of European music it had evolved into a fully defined national type. By applying the experience of secular music, Russian church music too had to secure for itself the possibility of a similar development. Therefore one of the most important elements in the new Russian church music became the widespread use of the melodies of ancient chants not just as cantus firmi for harmonization, but as the supreme criterion of style, a criterion determining authoritatively both the melodic material and the forms in which it was set out polyphonically. If one acknowledges that Rimsky-Korsakov had already come close in his experiments with arranging to an attempt at such a distinctive understanding of the ancient chants’ melodies, and given an elementary way of treating them in accordance with the sense of an idealization of the devices of Russian choral performance, then the New Direction subsequently carried that treatment significantly further and achieved positive results. What was essentially new to church music here was precisely this turning to the melodic material of the ancient melodies; the material ceased to be attractive purely as a pretext for harmonic tricks, as it had been hitherto, for which reason it had remained dry and lifeless in such compositions, revealing its melodic richness only extremely sparingly (even in RimskyKorsakov). In the new experiments it became more lively and flexible, and displayed an unusual power of expressiveness and beauty, because it had been set free from the obligatory ‘application’ to it of harmony, and had begun to be drawn into more active participation in the formation of the whole composition in aggregate. It was allowed to develop freely in forms better matched to its melodic style, and ancient chant was raised to the significance of a musical theme, subject precisely to thematic development, which created 194

Moscow and her composers a wholly different style for arrangements, and, taking them as a model, also for independent compositions on the themes of ancient melodies, such as are the best and greatest works of the most prominent composers of this direction (chiefly – the works of A. D. Kastal’sky, the All-Night Vigil of S. V. Rachmaninoff and others). An opportunity arose for stylish treatment of genuine melodies, and at the same time an opportunity of creating new melodies in the same style. Russian church music had gained the opportunity, while remaining within the limits of a historically formed type, of emerging on to the broad highway of free creativity, and, without breaking sharply away on this occasion from its own past, it is already drawing its historic inheritance into the conditions within which present-day musical life and composition exist. Church composers’ enthusiasm for making church music national is entirely understandable. Russian music offers a multitude of outstanding models of arrangements of folk melodies, which have become popular and are familiar to everyone; and thus when the devices employed there are applied to arrangements of church melodies, they, more than anything, incline the thoughts of church listeners to acknowledge such arrangements as typically Russian – that is, they bring about what is to all intents and purposes a Russian church style. Ancient church melodies are subjected to arrangement, just like folksongs or folk choruses, in accordance with the type established in art music (Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and others), and by this means alone preserve, in the opinion of many, the mark of Russian ‘nationality’ (narodnost’). There can be no other outcome for them at the moment than this. That is because we can only consider as ‘Russian’ those signs which have crystallized as such in Russian folk music. Only by them and by comparison with them can we assess any music as to whether it is Russian (narodna) or not; our history has not drawn up any other criterion, and our church music in itself contains no Russian national or folk signs. The point of any reconciliation of church melodies with folksong must be as follows: church melodies have only become Russian and national, have been Russified, exclusively in the same sense in which, for instance, an Orthodox church building, an icon, a chasuble, a stole and the whole church service have become ‘Russian’ and ‘national’ in Russia. In other words, they have become Russian by dint of prolonged use and traditional assimilation, though their essence has remained as before borrowed and unchanged. In this brief description of the principal bases of the new direction in church music, one cannot pass over in silence another of the elements of Russian church style which has been borrowed, on the one hand, from direct indications about music in church statutes, and on the other, from the traditional forms of music for church worship as found on the kliros [choir 195

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 area] of the church. These are: singing with the kanonarkh,9 recitatives with melodically developed endings, solo introductions (zapev¨ı), refrains (pripev¨ı) and suchlike, or the singing on the kliros of songs of glorification, troparia10 and other chants of Russian folk character, sometimes even exaggeratedly. The Moscow Synodal Choir, successor of the Choir of the Patriarchs’ Singing Clerks, was created with the intention that it should sing in the Great Cathedral of the Dormition [in the Kremlin]. Since ancient times this cathedral had retained in daily use its own special ancient chant (rospev) which was very closely related to znamenn¨ıy11 chant and, as a result, the choir which sang in the cathedral was to a certain extent linked with a historic tradition of church singing. The force of this tradition, of course, was not always sufficiently robust to withstand various currents in church music, but it was quite strong enough for the most sensitive people who came in contact with the singing in that cathedral to be guided by that tradition and strive to make it more prominent by some means or other. This solicitude stemmed both from respect for a church of the greatest antiquity – a holy place of Muscovite Rus’, a witness of her church history – and on aesthetic grounds to give rise to a demand for some harmony between the character of song within the cathedral and the character of its ecclesiological appearance. The cathedral followed a special liturgical statute, from which there could be no deviations, for which reason the singing of the choir proceeded in perfect obedience to the instructions, for example, as regards singing using tones, the number of stichera,12 singing using particular melodic patterns (na podoben), etc. A significant majority of Russian churches long ago lost any link with the discipline of the statutes and have legitimized complete arbitrariness in this respect; meanwhile, singing deprived of this foundation, severed from the fundamental type of Russian worship, condemns itself naturally to a complete lack of principle as regards statutory discipline, which cannot help but reflect negatively on its purely musical side as well. Inadequate co-ordination of the mood of a piece of music with the character and meaning of a particular liturgical action is quite especially conspicuous in arrangements of ancient melodies, which, even if with only a few exceptions, are always full of typical moods of worship and link with the character of the contents and meaning of the text. Therefore, a careful attitude to this side of church music can uncommonly reinforce the significance of the melodies themselves: 9 10 11 12

Kanonarkh refers to a singer or reader who announces in chant the tone and opening text of a hymn before it is taken up by the choir. Troparia are single-stanza hymns belonging to a genre of Byzantine and Russian hymnwriting. Znamenn¨ıy rospev is a basic stylistic form of Russian medieval monody. Stichera are hymns of several lines belonging to one of the basic genres of Byzantine and Russian hymn-writing.

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Moscow and her composers they acquire a special meaning which heightens the worshipful significance of their musical setting. It is not without interest to record that the necessity for a close connection with worship was clearly recognized by the best figures active in church music in recent times and that, for instance, P. I. Tchaikovsky, with good reason, declared that he sensed acutely the need for a serious turning-away from that ‘false’ direction, which had led to Russian music losing ‘its initial character and its organic link with the whole environment and general structure of worship’. Thus, the style of Russian church music in its most recent form is realized by the ‘new direction’ by means of a whole series of elements gleaned from, firstly, the characteristic melodic and rhythmic profile of our ancient melodies as well as the turns of phrase and forms which typify them; secondly, from the general style of Russian folksong, as it exists in itself, and as it has been treated by Russian composers; thirdly, from the reconciliation of the devices of sacred music composition with the same devices of music in general as established in the Russian musical school; and fourthly, from the indications and traditions of normal liturgical musical practice.

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CHAPTER SIX

New stylistic directions

As the twentieth century advanced, new conceptions of music evolved from older ones, emerged from the rejection of them or appeared from a combination of both. Important figures include Skryabin, already mentioned as a Moscow composer, Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

(a) Yu. D. Engel’: The music of Skryabin. Russian Bulletin, nos. 44 and 45, 24 and 25 February 1909. Engel’, pp. 244–52, with cut restored I Everywhere that Skryabin’s latest works are performed, whether in Russia or abroad, they provoke profound unease in the world of music. Some people go into raptures over them, others are indignant, while yet others are perplexed – but no one remains unmoved. This fact in itself is enough to show that these compositions are out of the ordinary. And, indeed, in Skryabin we are confronted by one of the most remarkable talents in the art of the present time. A talent which may be morbid, as befits our age, but which is also powerful, a single unity within itself, and original. And, what is more, original completely regardless of his works’ link with philosophy. This link cannot actually have the same fundamental significance in music that it has in other arts. It is true that both philosophy and music are essentially generalizations, but they operate on different planes: one provides a generalized thought, while the other gives a generalized feeling. Music can thus embody only basic types of mood, and not logical deductions, even though those may lead to a certain mood, as if reaching a conclusion. It is important to be aware of this subterranean working of the composer’s thought as well, as it bursts through the world of sounds in a rush of emotional experiences and feelings, for it may shed light on a great deal in his work; but it is not capable either of enhancing or weakening the purely artistic significance of the musical embodiment of these experiences and feelings. Fine philosophy may beget the foulest music, and vice versa. For that reason, 198

New stylistic directions in speaking about the music of Skryabin, I shall proceed first and foremost on the basis of his compositions, and not of his philosophy, set forth, by the way, in Mr Schloezer’s interesting article (in no. 42 of the Russian Bulletin), even though I regard that article as an authentic self-declaration from the composer.1 Skryabin has so far composed either for orchestra (Rˆeverie, three symphonies, the Poem of Ecstasy), or for piano (more than fifty opus numbers: e´ tudes, preludes, waltzes, mazurkas, poems, sonatas, etc.). These works do not show his work progressing along a straight line, such as can be observed, for instance, in Chopin or Schumann, who defined themselves musically almost from their very first compositions. They betoken, on the contrary, an evolution which is continually unfolding and, of course, has not yet reached its final stage even now. The Skryabin of the present day (the Poem of Ecstasy, Fifth Piano Sonata, the latest preludes, etc.) is different from the previous one. But one cannot understand this new Skryabin without knowing the old one, since the first is profoundly connected to the second – in fact, sprang from it. I shall therefore allow myself to repeat a little of what I wrote about Skryabin about seven or eight years ago. Skryabin’s music is a product of the most recent times, when we have been living a life of heightened intensity, anxiety and nerviness; art has lost touch with the healthy and fixed moods of the multitude, with the broad fragrant expanse of fields, woods and meadows. The city, four walls, the refined and complicated moods of the ‘uppermost ten thousand’ – that is the sphere of this art. In this respect Skryabin is closely attached to Chopin, who is for him not only his spiritual forefather but also his prototype in the matter of form and style (especially in the piano compositions). Still closer is Skryabin (to be precise, in his orchestral works) to Wagner, whom he recalls in the interweaving polyphony of his scores; the chromatically sliding extra-tonal harmonizations; the unbroken leisureliness of movement depending on the fact that a great number of varied rhythms are combined simultaneously and thus grind down each other’s sharp edges – and, moreover, with the musical punctuation marks (cadences) avoided or disguised; the lushness and density of the orchestral colours – in a word, using all those methods which the creator of Parsifal employed in an inspired way to carry the listener into a special world unknown before him ‘outside of time and space’. This proximity is the result, however, not of direct imitation but of an inner artistic kinship between two creative natures. And in that last respect Skryabin may be called the first Russian Wagnerite truly in the bloodline. His music contains not 1

Author’s note: The analysis of the works performed in the concert of Skryabin’s compositions is written in exactly the same spirit. [See B. F. Shletser (Boris de Schloezer): A. N. Skryabin i yego muz¨ıka (‘Skryabin and his Music’), Russian Bulletin, 21 February 1909, no. 42.]

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 even a vestige of so-called ‘Russian style’. By its whole being, a symphony by Kalinnikov gives away the country where it saw the light of day all by itself. A symphony by Skryabin, on the other hand, tells you absolutely nothing on that subject. When listening to it, one is just as entitled to suspect that it carries the stamp ‘Made in Germany’ as ‘Made in Russia’, or for that matter any other stamp. It goes without saying that this is in no wise a reproach to Skryabin; it is not a failing and not a virtue but simply an organic property of his gift.2 That was the earlier Skryabin. Would you like to understand how the new one is derived from the old? Thicken the network of interlacing voices so that every liana winds around another until the impenetrability of a virgin forest is achieved; banish consonance and allow dissonance to reign supreme in myriads of old and new combinations; take the chromatic orgy of spicy harmonies to nightmarish limits of elusiveness unknown even to Wagner; compel the orchestral sea to overflow into sonorities of ever new hues, from passionate, tender sighs to a stupendous, simply deafening collective roar; eliminate cadences; mingle a thousand rhythms and allow a choking syazmatic syncope to soar above them. But that is not enough. Subordinate all this chaos to some iron law which is difficult to formulate but can be sensed and undoubtedly exists; wrap this creation full of semi-delirious dreams in real artistic forms; refine and complicate the primordial laceration of Skryabin’s ecstatic moods; draw the four walls closer together; raise yourself from the ‘upper ten thousand’ to the very topmost ten dozen or ten hundreds – and at that point the creative physiognomy of the present-day Skryabin, someone new and unlike anyone else before, will begin to appear in outline before you a little at a time. As you listen to the Fifth Piano Sonata by this new Skryabin, which as a pendant to the Poem of Ecstasy might have been called ‘Sonata of Ecstasy’, you cannot say, as Cui said of his first, early work: ‘Fine! But surely this is a trunkful of stolen Chopin (or Wagner) manuscripts!’ Firstly, because no such trunk exists anywhere in the world, and there is no place to steal it but from Skryabin, and secondly, because it is not fine at all. Unprecedentedly bold, original, powerful perhaps – yes indeed, but not fine. And art cannot be fine when the balance between content and form is so recklessly destroyed in the ecstasy of an outburst of raw emotion. The content (the emotions) has here overwhelmed the form, and the Sonata, in spite of all its complexity, is grasped more as a convulsive succession of elementary rhythmic and dynamic surges and subsidences than as an artistic combination 2

Engel’ incorporated the paragraph above from his article in the Russian Bulletin of 7 March 1902, no. 7.

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New stylistic directions of the highest musical elements – melody and harmony. This is a strange outcome, calling involuntarily to mind something kindred in contemporary drama, poetry and painting (the effects of stylization simplified to the level of something elementary). Perhaps in the last analysis this impression depended partly on the incongruity between the huge hall of the Conservatoire and the profoundly chamber-like, extremely intimate spirit of the Sonata. I have to confess, however, that both in the Small Hall of the Conservatoire, where I had occasion to hear this unusual Sonata performed by Meychik,3 and in the private house where Skryabin himself played it, the essence of the impression was just the same. An entirely different impression is made by the orchestral Poem of Ecstasy, which is related to the Fifth Sonata as a bough is related to the tree or a harmonic to the basic pitch. The Sonata was even written to an excerpt from the ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ in verse by Skryabin himself, which was composed at the same time as the Poem of Ecstasy in music. [. . .] II This poem in verse [where, by his own admission, Skryabin the poet was striving to give adequate expression in words to what Skryabin the composer was creating in sounds at the same time] is a little on the long side for ecstasy (fifteen pages), something of which its score-twin is also guilty. Skryabin’s blank verse, at times powerful and rich in imagery, at other times highflown and wishy-washy, gives a poetic exposition of the philosophy of the Spirit ‘at play’ which the reader knows from Schloezer’s article. In contrast to Wagner, who in the end ‘began to crawl towards Christ’, this Fichtean, Nietzschean Spirit of Skryabin is self-sufficient. ‘In the amazing grandeur of pure aimlessness and in the combination of opposed aspirations, the Spirit comes to know the nature of its divine essence.’ And later: ‘Having raised you up, legions of feelings, I make you into a complex and unified feeling of bliss which seizes you all. I am the instant which radiates eternity, I am affirmation, I am ecstasy!’ The score of the Poem of Ecstasy is built out of a dozen themes corresponding to the basic moments in the poem. There is, for example, the theme of ‘flight’ (‘to the heights of denial’!), the themes of ‘languor’, ‘will’, ‘delight’, ‘the rhythms of alarm’, ‘self-affirmation’ (‘I am’) and so on. The composer handles these themes in the same way that Wagner handles leitmotives in his operas. But with the difference, however, that in Wagner the words and the stage come to the composer’s aid, and in only a few 3

M. N. Meychik (1880–1950): pianist who was a pupil of V. I. Safonov.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 cases can one speak about a tacit agreement between composer and listener about the meaning of this or that theme. In Skryabin everything is based on such an agreement. You hear, let’s say, a combination of three themes, and you interpret this combination as something ecstatic, extremely complicated and beautiful. But the composer, evidently, wants to give the psychology of creation here: he has united the themes of ‘the created’, ‘delight’, and, predominating over everything, the ‘will’. And to whatever lengths you go in order to be able to imagine these themes as the individual bearers of abstract ideas, which, I am prepared to believe, live in the composer’s consciousness, you will never be able to say that you have grasped the philosophical secret of Skryabin’s music. Is it in fact possible to do that at all?! The themes of the Poem of Ecstasy are all short. Taken together, they are all marked with their own distinctive Skryabinesque features, but they have a good deal in common with one another, and are insufficiently individual. All contain, for instance, a greater or lesser degree of chromaticism. But the power of Skryabin’s themes lies not so much in each one taken separately but rather in its development, in combination with others, which often attains extraordinary complexity. This perpetual ‘combination of opposed aspirations’, sometimes at different times, sometimes simultaneously, is one of the most characteristic features of Skryabin’s music. In the first movement of the Third Symphony, even the exceptional number of markings (over forty) testifies to the inclination towards this: myst´erieux, tragique, triomphant, joyeux essor, opress´e, e´ croulement formidable, s´erieux, orageux, grandiose, etc. In the Poem of Ecstasy the assortment of markings is smaller (though it contains such an extraordinary one as tr`es parfum´e), but the point is the same. One mood rapidly succeeds another which has not yet been outlined definitively in full, so as to give place to a similar third one, or to blend in with it and a fourth one; everything is ‘im Werden’; everything is achieving, not achievement, creating, not creation – the naked chaos of the process of creating, expressing itself, however, in some kind of special forms inviolably fixed for it. No – I sense that I am adrift in definitions, I cannot find the right words or expressions. And that is not surprising. It is always thus when you do not fully understand the very essence of a subject. And grasping the essence of the Poem of Ecstasy is not so very easy. For it is the quintessence of a new Skryabin either in the process of being born or else actually born; along with the Fifth Sonata, it is the most original, the most ‘Skryabinesque’ of everything so far written by him. You will ask, then, why the Poem of Ecstasy makes an impression of a quite different sort from the Fifth Sonata, one which is incomparably more forceful, powerful, tremendous. Mainly because one is for piano and the 202

New stylistic directions other is for orchestra. Imagine the Poem of Ecstasy for flute. That would be completely ridiculous, first and foremost because the flute is incapable of either harmony or combining diverse rhythms, melodies and timbres. If you want all these things, write for piano, because they are available to it – within certain limits, to be sure. And so now you write the Poem of Ecstasy for piano; write, and as you go further along the new road you quickly reach those limits. For your complicated combinations of harmonies, melodies, rhythms, timbres and counterpoints lose their definition and strength on the piano; they all mingle together, get tangled up, become grey and undifferentiated. The result is the effect I spoke about in connection with the Fifth Sonata. You have therefore hit your head against a brick wall; there is nowhere further to go. But you want to go further. Then turn to the orchestra. It will unravel, bind, pick out and express everything. That is how Skryabin acted. But the usual orchestra, even a large one, is not enough for him. In the Poem of Ecstasy he needed – not so much to give a massive sound as for the sake of richness in combining timbres – a colossal orchestra, with four instruments in each wind group, organ, two harps, an enlarged army of percussion and brass (eight horns) and so on. Can one go any further? And if one does, where does one get to in the end? Is the result not the same as that to which the Fifth Sonata led: to the transformation of the most complex orchestral polyphony, polyrhythms and polytimbres into a single muddy, grey, undifferentiated mass? Shadows of this prospect occasionally hover over the Poem of Ecstasy as well. It grips you, this Poem of Ecstasy, and bears you away – especially if you can forget its philosophy – but the enjoyment it gives is a special, toxic one, at times simply an oppressive one. And when at the end of the ‘poem’ this unprecedented Bacchanalia of sounds meant to embody the climax of ecstasy is heard no more, this roar of brass with bells upturned, amidst the thunder of the rest of the orchestra, sounding like the trumpet of the archangel Michael at the Last Judgement, this rumble of the organ, cementing the whole orchestral mass and creating the illusion of human voices – when all this falls silent you feel dispirited, jaded. This is immense, new, stupendous music, but it is also accursed. Yes, accursed, because upon its sufferings and joys as well as upon its super-Dionysian ecstasy there lies the horrifying diseased seal of an end of some kind. We advance towards this end and we shall inevitably reach it because every fissure in art, in order to cease being a fissure, must turn itself into an abyss. But, as we come up to the end, we shall be broken against it. And, after we have been broken, seeing no escape, exhausted by the burden of this superhuman stilted art, we shall cry out: ‘Away from here! Give us something different, new, more straightforward and healthy!’ (from the ‘Poem of Ecstasy’). 203

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 If the Poem of Ecstasy is the most original of everything that Skryabin has written to date, then the Third Symphony (the Divine Poem) is the most beautiful, the most attractive. As regards form, it represents a free variant of the classical type of symphony, just as the Poem of Ecstasy provides a variant of the most recent type of symphonic poem. Except that in Skryabin’s Symphony each of the individual movements of the symphony flows into the next, that is, they are performed without a break. These movements are: Introduction (‘I am’), Struggle (Allegro), Pleasures (Lento) and Divine Play (Allegro). From this mere enumeration it is not hard to trace the same philosophy of the evolution of the Spirit which, after doing battle with survivals of the past and passing through the ordeal of the present, sees the meaning of existence in ‘divine play’, in the ‘amazing grandeur of pure aimlessness’. But once again the power of the Third Symphony lies not in this philosophy. Its power resides above all in the significance and boldness of its melodies, the clear roundedness of its development and combination, the freshness of its harmonies, in the colours of the orchestra – in a word, in all that artistic allure of purely musical beauty, which is far more illusory in the Poem of Ecstasy and without which any additional aspirations in philosophy or ideas, whatever they might be, are doomed to perish in the art of sounds. Precisely thanks to this beauty in the Third Symphony, its content in ideas acquires special depth and power; each and every listener can draw from this source what is closest to him, which may often be wholly dissimilar from what is embedded there according to the ‘official guidebook’ written by the composer himself.4 The Third Symphony too is of Skryabinesque complexity, but this complexity cannot even be compared with the Poem of Ecstasy. It is less, possibly, even than in the Second Symphony, from which the Third differs advantageously also by the absence – or, to be more precise, the least presence for Skryabin – of elation and bombast. At any rate, nowhere in the Third Symphony does this complexity obscure the basic moments of development in the musical thinking. Only in the first movement are the threads of this development lost for a spell, not so much as a result of the simultaneous ‘combination of opposed aspirations’ so much as in consequence of their rapid, impetuous replacement to which I referred earlier. And yet how much fresh charm, how irreproachably well balanced and rounded, there is in the second movement, Lento. This Lento, now issuing in profound impassioned melodies, now twittering with all the voices of spring, is Skryabin’s finest 4

Author’s note: Surely, for instance, no one will interpret the superlative principal theme of the first Allegro as the theme of ‘mysticism’, yet the ‘official’ guide calls it exactly that.

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New stylistic directions inspiration. This is real music, as powerful as it is beautiful, not crushing and not oppressing, but providing pure, unclouded delight. [. . .]

(b) G. E. Konyus: Skryabin’s Prometheus (Serge Koussevitzky’s Eighth Symphony Concert, 2 March 1911). Russia’s Morning, 4 March 1911. Konyus, pp. 160–3 Georgy Eduardovich Konyus (1862–1933) is now best known as the inventor of an approach to musical rhythm and syntax called metrotectonicism. He was active as a composer and influential as a teacher, chiefly in Moscow, at the Conservatoire where he had himself studied with Arensky and Taneyev.

This concert [in Moscow], the last of the current season, offered listeners Skryabin’s Second Symphony and Prometheus, the latter performed for the first time. Our judgements – whatever they might concern – are in many respects preordained. Freedom of judgement is a fiction. Without us noticing it, our judgement is bound to the past and the present by invisible routes and chains. And we are the unconscious slaves of this past and present in not less than nine-tenths of our thinking. As I prepare to express an opinion about the new composition (Prometheus), I wish above all to establish firmly the absolute necessity of renouncing that little-recognized enslavement in which the very act of judgement usually takes place, before making judgement in this instance. Had I approached Prometheus without freeing myself in advance from the principles I had absorbed, which were bequeathed by the past and today hold almost complete sway in the sphere of music – the rules formed by history and inherited habits of listening – then my judgement of the new work would inevitably have been harshly negative. In Prometheus Skryabin has turned his back on those giants – the major and minor modes – on which music has rested since the time of Bach. He has gradually replaced the basic supports of music, which formed themselves over centuries of cultural work by a number of musical generations, with a scale of his own comparatively recent artificial creation, at first intuitive and later conscious. Determinedly disavowing the stereotyped melodic turns of phrase to which European ears have grown accustomed, Skryabin has fabricated instead themes of his own, choosing sounds for them from his newly created scale, without being in the least embarrassed that the melodic shapes produced by this recipe turn out messy at times. And to match these dramatis personae

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 from his poem, Skryabin has clothed them in harmonies drawn from his new-born scale obedient to him alone. Of the legacy of his fathers, then, the composer has preserved very little: contrapuntal combining of themes, regular progressions, the return of themes in a manner more magnificent compared to the way they were before, using them in abridged and extended forms and similar constructional devices. It is clear that by acting in this fashion the composer has not only cut the ground from under the feet of judgement, but has unavoidably separated the listener from what he is listening to. In this separation Prometheus, it seems, has broken all records. And the more orthodox the musician, the more erudite, the more experienced in the subtleties of his own art, the less prepared, I think, will he be to give Prometheus a favourable reception. Having entered this caveat and thereby explained the genuine and entirely understandable indignation and exasperation of many, many listeners, I now go on to set out the impressions which I myself took away from Prometheus. On the first hearing I understood absolutely nothing. At the second, only slightly more. Then, after looking through the score twice and listening to the poem again in a performance on the piano, I set off for the concert and did not so much listen as surrender to the impressions of listening. And, I confess openly, in its main features I liked Prometheus as performed on 2 March. In this luxuriantly exotic composition, with its particularly heady harmonies and its strange, mystical sonorities alien to musical culture, one hears at some times a captivating power, at others a sinister power from the other world. One divines, rather than consciously senses, the peculiar enigmatic beauty of these new worlds. Especially bewitching are the gentle caressing tones of the poem, rousing a dim notion of some sort of sorcery in sound. But the gloomy colours are also good. They induce shuddering. Feelings of evil mystery are aroused. ‘Unheimliches’, Germans would say. And taken in this way, preconceivedly renouncing the ordinances bequeathed by the whole past of musical culture, I repeat, you can like Prometheus. In spite of some other shortcomings. Such as invention which is excessively the product of brainwork. Such as the screeching sonority of some overloaded chords (the final one, for example), as if the composer did not want to take the limits of human endurance into account. In spite of the defective instrumentation of the whole climactic episode (pages 67–72 of the score [issued by Koussevitzky’s firm in 1911]), where the theme in the three trumpets is drowned in the unquestionably indecipherable chaos of gurgling sounds. 206

New stylistic directions Whether Prometheus proves to be une r´evolution manqu´ee or une remeute r´eussie as regards the reigning order in music, is a matter which naturally only the future can determine. I personally doubt whether Skryabin’s new scale conceals in its depths a great variety of resources. At any rate this Poem of Fire based on it is something in the highest degree ¨ remarkable. It is a mighty Kunststuck. A specimen of the immense mastery of one of the most talented and conscientious among present-day masters of sound [– and a worthy end to Koussevitzky’s concert season].

(c) N. Ya. Myaskovsky: Ig. Stravinsky. Zhar-ptitsa, skazkabalet (‘The Firebird, folk-tale ballet’) for piano four hands. Published by P. Jurgenson. Price 4 roubles 50 kopecks. Music, 8 October 1911, no. 45, pp. 970–2. Myaskovsky 2 (1964), pp. 24–7 For Myaskovsky, see Chapter 5 (f).

You have only to start speaking about Igor Stravinsky to someone, above all a professional musician, to be sure to hear: ‘Uncommon talent for orchestration, astounding technique, the richest inventiveness, but there’s no music’. What sort of nonsense is that? Talent, yes, talent, an uncommon one, an astounding one, and yet that which constitutes the element in which that talent exists is missing; what is this – a misunderstanding, or carelessness? Let’s discard the second, however, because one has had occasion to hear this opinion from both impartial and uninterested people and even from people who are close to Stravinsky. The matter is simply explained: we don’t know how to speak; we are not alert to the words we utter. To say of a musician with irreproachable technique, refined taste and a wonderful gift for orchestration, and who is master of the latest secrets of harmony, that his compositions contain no music is, of course, nonsense. If we say: ‘He is not an extravagant melodist, and his themes are not always arresting’ – then we are coming nearer the truth. But that is all. Of course what is striking in the young composer, who ought to be having to reckon with an excess of material, is economy of this kind: five numbers out of nineteen (although this division is artificial, since the greater part of them follow immediately one after another without any opportunity for a break) in the ballet before us are constructed out of a tiny motive made up of a succession of major and minor thirds separated from each other by a distance of one and a half tones. But what pictures are conjured out of this insignificant material! The introduction – the mysterious twilight of its first sounds, the disturbed calls to one another of monsters roused from sleep in the central section, the plaintively sweet sighs at the end; out of nothing 207

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 at all, how much has been made. Other numbers based on the same material (no. 2 ‘Kashchey’s Enchanted Garden’ with its small but distinctive new motive and its depiction of the whistling of birds with an accuracy completely out of the ordinary; no. 13 ‘Kashchey’s Dialogue with Ivan-Tsarevich’; no. 15 ‘Dance of Kashchey’s Servants’; no. 18 the achingly gloomy ‘Death of Kashchey’) are not so striking, but even among them one comes across the wittiest transformations of the same motive. But there remain another fourteen numbers using entirely new material, where the motive I indicated appears, if at all, only episodically, called forth by the situation on stage. And just look at how much of the most excellent music they contain: ‘The Entrance of the Firebird’ (no. 3) – no stage is required, so graphic is it in the orchestra’s glittering whirlwind, and surely the mournfully melodic little phrase at the end is a pearl. The languidly fluttering ‘Firebird’s Dance’ (no. 4) is an elegant scherzo, in harmony almost approaching Skryabin’s most recent achievements. The interesting bustle of the scene where the Firebird is captured by IvanTsarevich (no. 5) leads to her voluptuous supplications. In this number, the following one ‘The Entrance of the Thirteen Princesses’, in their Khorovod (‘Round Dance’) and lastly in the apotheosis, one can sense most distinctly the handing-on of Stravinsky’s gift from Rimsky-Korsakov. Without mentioning purely external signs (such as the first chord of the ‘supplication’, or the use of the same folk melodies in the Round Dance), one senses the influence of the way of thinking of the inspired creator of The Snowmaiden, Kashchey and Kitezh in the actual character of the pieces, the clarity of their contours, their coils of melody (the Allegretto in no. 6, the little two-bar theme adroitly imitated in the ‘Entrance of the Thirteen Princesses’), and finally the invigorating freshness of the harmonies in other places. No. 8, ‘The Game of the Princesses with the Golden Apples’, is the most miraculous scherzo, now jingling cheerfully, now gently caressing (that delightful little theme again); the chatter unexpectedly breaking off signifies the appearance of Ivan-Tsarevich; this episode is rather dry among the others, but with a splendid warm melody. After the ‘Princesses’ Round Dance’ with the subtle harmonies of its ending, there follows a series of scenes, some of which have been enumerated above, including: ‘Kashchey’s Dialogue with Ivan-Tsarevich’, ‘Dance of Kashchey’s Servants’, some of them insignificant (‘The Approach of Morning’ – no. 11; ‘The Firebird’s Second Entrance’ – no. 14); no. 12 stands out from among them – ‘Magical Peals, the Entrance of Kashchey’s Servants and the Capture of Ivan-Tsarevich’; this episode reveals in all its brilliance Stravinsky’s inexhaustible inventiveness in bringing his orchestral and technical ideas into being from the most insignificant material; here for the first time appears the superb theme which is the basis for the 208

New stylistic directions mighty ‘Infernal Dance of Kashchey’s Kingdom’ which rounds off this whole series of scenes. This scene is a gripping one. Vivid, distinct themes, welded together by the impetuosity of a fiery temperament; a dull tread alternating now with wild screams, now with unchecked languid sighs; it is a whirlwind of unlimited revelry. Another moment and, it seems, the final borders will be destroyed, but unexpectedly everything collapses and the marvellous Firebird’s Lullaby, full of profound sorrow, is heard. The death of Kashchey, profound darkness, the disappearance of Kashchey’s kingdom, the coming to life of warriors who have been turned to stone and, finally, oh horror, general rejoicing, that is to say the apotheosis. But even here Stravinsky remains true to himself, in spite of the banal situation; there is not a hint of triviality in the music (just recall even the best ballets of Tchaikovsky or Glazunov); the theme is beautiful and bright, and it develops into a broad picture of infectious merry-making. What is there to say after one has looked through the entire ballet scene by scene? – What a wealth of inventiveness, how much intelligence, temperament, talent, what a remarkable, what a rare composition! But one still cannot agree with Alexander Benois’5 assertion that this is music of genius, despite a fervent desire to do so: there is something missing; and the answer suggests itself: there is insufficient originality. The prickliness, the good spirits, the cheerfulness rare in a present-day composer, which single Stravinsky out from his extremely talented contemporaries, entitle him to be considered the direct heir of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov and, together with his other qualities, provide a guarantee of the still greater flowering of his major talent; but the actual essence of his musical material does not yet bear the stamp of a clearly expressed individuality. But is being the direct heir of Rimsky-Korsakov and the successor of the greatest luminary of Russian music a mere trifle?! Let’s return to the publication. It is outwardly splendid, like all Jurgenson’s publications of recent years, but, my goodness, how many misprints it contains! Given the refinement of certain harmonies, that is very annoying.

(d) N. Ya. Myaskovsky: Petrushka, ballet by Igor Stravinsky. Music, 14 January 1912, no. 59, pp. 72–5. Myaskovsky 2 (1964), pp. 41–4 Is Stravinsky’s Petrushka a work of art? Even as I pose this question, I can see irate, reproachful glances directed at me, I can sense cries of indignation 5

The artist and critic Benois (1870–1960) was a key member of Diaghilev’s circle as well as Stravinsky’s collaborator on the scenario of Petrushka.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 barely restrained on the tongue, and prepared, in spite of it all, to give an affirmative answer, I nonetheless stop myself and say: ‘I don’t know’. That’s right – I don’t know. Can life be called a work of art? I mean this very life itself which stirs around us, which at different times is embittered or happy, weeps, rages, or flows in a smooth, broad stream. And Petrushka is that life itself: all the music in it is full of such ardour, freshness and wit, such healthy, incorruptible merriment, such unrestrained audacity, that all those intentional banalities and trivialities, that constant accordion background, not only do not antagonize you but, on the contrary, are yet more attractive – as if on a sparkling day of snow and sunshine at Shrovetide you yourself were brazening your way with all the fire of fresh young blood into a jolly crowd of revellers roaring with laughter and blending into an indissolubly jubilant whole. Yes – it’s life itself, and in so far as it is, all our pitiful, everyday yardsticks of artistic quality, good taste, etc., seem so unnecessary, so pale and bloodless, that, just as if you had felt the breath of the plague, you run as far away as possible from this quagmire for everything that is alive, and, without thinking, rush into a joyous whirlwind of real life, of this – to speak in a Wildean paradox – genuine art. The music of this unusual ballet is so much of a piece, is permeated from the first note to the last by such an allconsuming ardour and inexhaustible humour, that you positively lose any desire to undertake a more detailed examination – it seems that you are getting ready to dissect a living organism. Scene 1 is Shrovetide. The merrily seething background is established in the orchestra at once, and the flute’s ringing cries are engraved upon it; the shouts of the women street-traders and the male salesmen ring out, at times sustained, at others animated and you are already immersed in waves of holiday atmosphere. The entire scene moves along in an unbroken current of unbridled merry-making and revelry; at some points one hears a fast dance (the accordion effect is obtained by amusing parallel triads in the trombones on a repeated G minor chord in other instruments), at others it is interrupted by a disorderly bustle when the most vulgar boulevard tunes rush by, of the Svetit mesyats . . . (‘The moon is shining . . .’)6 kind, some of the time on their own, at others woven into a freely flowing counterpoint – and all this against a background of almost uninterrupted accordion but orchestrated with such variety and wit that you don’t feel the slightest vexation. The scene of reckless revelry breaks off for an instant for the entrance of the Magician – a tiny orchestral joke prepared for by an extremely trivial flute cadenza. At the conclusion comes the lively ‘Russian Dance’, which is full 6

Svetit mesyats: a banal nineteenth-century urban song.

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New stylistic directions of fire, freshness, ingratiating affection (in the trio) and free of all of the conventions which have so solidly entwined themselves around exactly this area of our composers’ work. Suddenly a hoarse cry rings out and Petrushka appears (Scene 2); his bowing, the nodding of his long nose and his fussy falsetto chatter find in the music a precision of expression which becomes palpable. This attractive, animated scene has for its predominant background the chirring tremolo between chords of F-sharp major and C major, against which fanfares from muted trumpets and trombones crackle harshly. The tinkling Adagietto episode – at times joking, at times sad – is followed again by the stunning bustle of seconds and the despairing crackling of trumpets and trombones – muted as before and against the previous background. Scene 3. Several harsh, angular brush-strokes (with fourths and fifths of various kinds the predominant intervals in the harmony) outline the entrance of the Moor; a rather melancholy melody (without any orientalism to set the teeth on edge), played by clarinets at the octave and a tortuous little phrase moving from the cor anglais to the whole brass section, aptly embellish this clumsily monstrous musical figure. The Ballerina appears (cornet against a background of side-drum), and dances the most commonplace waltz. The Moor (with his melancholy theme as the bass) tries to join in, but with his awkward 24 bar he simply cannot adapt to the Ballerina’s lightly fluttering 34 bar. There is a short break filled with the excitement of love; then the waltz returns, and the Moor tries a different tack (his tortuous little phrase in the cor anglais), but still with equal lack of success. With stupefying fanfares, Petrushka bursts in and engages the Moor in a desperate quarrel: the orchestra rushes about in stunningly scored seconds and rasps out savage howls in diminished fifths. Scene 4. The climax of the Shrovetide celebrations overshadows for a time the love drama which has just flared up. Against an almost constant accordion background (scored with inexhaustible inventiveness), figures of different types flash past one after another as in a kaleidoscope: here Vdol’ po Piterskoy (Along the St Petersburg street) the cheery, eager wet-nurses come forward singing Akh v¨ı seni, moi seni in a bawling and discordant manner (harmony of diminished fifths); here Mishka the bear, falling over heavily, trails along with a peasant tootling stridently on a pipe (two clarinets ff ) and loudly goading his charge on (tuba); a rakish merchant enters with gypsy girls; there’s such a lot of genuine, inimitable bravado in these sounds, in these haughty glissandi of the violins, in the strumming of the balalaikas (a very skilful imitation of their sound); the coachmen enter dashingly in their stead – their boots squeaking, each with a ring in his ear. The music seethes with good health and humour. In the 211

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 midst of this fast dance the motive of ‘Along the St Petersburg street’ enters again, as if the coachmen had been joined by the wet-nurses, although of the former there remains only the trombones’ little scales comically rushing around in triads (as if they were running on the spot); then the previous dance returns in a bold canon with redoubled force and swagger. The approaching sounds of little bells starting to tinkle are heard (it must sound amazing) – and mummers burst in in a motley crowd. The orchestra jingles, sparkles and whirls past them in a violent whirlwind. Petrushka’s nasal cry rings out again and the quarrel with the Moor, which had been on the verge of calming down, is renewed. Seconds have strayed in, diminished fifths have started growling madly, the strings have leapt up in a despairing glissando, a mournful, hoarse wail has been heard (two clarinets in seconds in their highest register) – the Moor has finished off the ill-starred Petrushka with his cudgel. Against a background of subsiding violin tremolos, Petrushka’s motives take on a mournful character to depict his last breath. The Magician who is Master of Ceremonies enters and removes the lacerated corpse. The importunate sounds of the accordion are heard again, but in a few moments the calm which reigned is violated by a triumphant cry – a living Petrushka appears in a window on the curtain; there’s one more hoarsely piercing scream (fanfares of two trumpets in seconds) before perfect peace sets in. That’s the scene – isn’t it really life itself, this crowd buzzing and spilling over with merry-making and daring, and this ephemeral tragedy unfolding against that background, from which all that remains is a handful of sawdust from a disembowelled unlucky failure? There is so much nerve and blood in all this, moreover, that I cannot define this work any other way than by the word ‘life’ – and, indeed, does one have to? I think that had Rimsky-Korsakov – that exceptional aristocrat of the kingdom of sound – been alive, he would have stood up for this work without a moment’s hesitation; he could not have failed to recognize or at least to feel that Stravinsky’s exceptional, buoyant talent is flesh of his own flesh, blood of his own blood. Should one say something about the orchestration? That seems to me unnecessary, for it is altogether obvious now that in Russia at the present time Stravinsky is the only person in that line – he feels the orchestra’s soul. It would be interesting to know whether we can expect sometime a production of this delightful fragment of life in an exemplary theatre. Without saying anything about what an occasion for celebration it would be for our native art, for all genuine, lively people, how much more fruitful it would be than the production of f´eeries on the stage of the wealthiest Russian theatre. 212

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(e) V. G. Karat¨ıgin: The Rite of Spring. Speech, 16 February 1914. Karat¨ıgin, pp. 122–9 For Karat¨ıgin, see Chapter 4 (e). Stravinsky’s score was heard in St Petersburg for the first time on 12 February 1914.

Motors, cinematographs, telephones, aeroplanes and radium represent a succession of discoveries and improvements which are increasingly out of the ordinary and follow one another increasingly quickly in all spheres of life, science and culture in general. I am far from being in sympathy with the ‘futurists’ who think that the latest achievements of technology are the sole subject worthy of the most modern art. But can there be any doubt that motors and aeroplanes are bound to introduce – have actually already introduced – certain modifications in the whole psyche of modern man, or that the general restlessness and tension of the entire cultural atmosphere which surrounds us must correlate with the headlong speed of technical progress in our day? Can there be any surprise that even those strings of our soul most distant from any technology and least directly affected by motors and aeroplanes – namely, those which have charge of the secrets of artistic creativity and perception – are all in the last resort bound to resonate in some way in sympathy with this cultural atmosphere’s characteristics? This influence, of course, is indirect, and its effects can be extremely varied. But, by virtue of the mutual interconnection of all the spheres of our psychological organism, such an influence must exist, and does exist. It lies in a certain speeding-up and sharpening of all our experiences, in a certain ‘impressionization’ of the whole structure of our soul. When transformed into creative images this psychological impressionism puts on different faces and appears in varied metamorphoses and convolutions; it is sometimes even accompanied by tendencies, however strange this might seem, which are directly opposed to impressionism – by a gravitation towards classical clarity and elegance or a striving for cultivated simplicity. In these cases, obviously, the law of psychological contrasts comes into effect. The artist reflects in his art his soul crushed and disconnected by nervy impressionism, yet at the same time feels a tiredness from irritating tensions; he seeks an antidote to them in a deliberate return to simplicity. How do these considerations bear on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, with which Mr Koussevitzky has just acquainted us? The most immediate one, a direct one. Of all the arts, music is the one most free of influences from the external world. Of all the arts, music became associated with impressionism latest of all. But, once it became associated with it, music had to complete the full cycle of impressionist development. And this cycle, it would seem, is now close to being completed. The first to hint at the impressionist possibilities 213

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 of the art were Musorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Their hints were vague and hardly appreciable. But they had inevitably to be developed into a distinct and definite system of regarding sound at the time when, as the artistic atmosphere of our time developed, suitable resonators became available to enhance the embryonic impressionist sounds first revealed in the work of the New Russian School. Debussy’s talent proved to be in harmony with the impressionist elements in the musical work of our kuchkist¨ı. A pure impressionism arose, ‘a musical stenography’, striving to capture artistic experiences on the wing, at the very moment of their conception, without waiting for them to become fully crystallized. As a consequence of the pursuit of an instantaneous photographing of artistic experiences in all their vital immediacy, there arose a special style of impressionist composition using separate, seemingly uncoordinated, aural brush-strokes, the connection between which had to be guessed by the listener, and was not provided by the composer. The traditional ‘resolutions’ of dissonances disappeared. The strangest and oddest combinations of sounds, previously conceivable only as ‘passing’ notes or harmonies or as ‘suspensions’ unfailingly demanding to move on to a consonance, began to be used freely as self-sufficient chords. What appeared to be ‘abridgements’ in artistic psychology arose in the logic which underlay the chord progressions, and filling in those cuts with missing links of musical logic was left to the listener. How was it to be done? Musical ‘logic’ is a relative thing. This filling-in is therefore also relative, realizable within the rather wide limits within which our imaginative capacity for musical logic fluctuates. Hence, the element of vagueness, or, more accurately, the psychological dual or even multiple meaning of many combinations and successions of sounds characteristic of impressionism. In this multiple meaning lies one of the special fascinations inherent in impressionism. Ravel has developed further the principles of impressionist texture. Roger-Ducasse7 has rendered impressionism more complicated by a partial reaction in the direction of classicism (I spoke earlier about the meaning of such a reaction). An entire galaxy of second-rank French composers have attached themselves to the impressionist trend, which is the predominant one at present among all the modernist currents in French music. Could it possibly come about that Russia, where an embryonic impressionism first revealed itself, remained indifferent to the enormous harmonic achievements of Debussy, Ravel and Roger-Ducasse? That would indeed be incredible. Our Russian composers could not fail to be tempted by the luxuriant flowers breaking into bloom in 7

This French near-contemporary of Ravel, who lived from 1873 to 1954, made more of a mark in his own day than he has left on musical history.

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New stylistic directions France from buds which first set on a tree of art grown in our Russian soil. Russian music could not fail to be carried away by an artistic trend which answered the spirit of the time and had been engendered initially within the bowels of Russian music itself. Our practitioners of the art of music could not fail to sense new beauty in impressionist quests and exploits. Russian art was bound to have its say loudly in the sphere of impressionist music, and it did. Stravinsky emerged, and (along with the German innovator Schoenberg) he stole up little by little to the extreme outer limits of refinement of sound and to a nerviness which was almost convulsive. Will it not be through their names, the names of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, that the circle of impressionist development will be completed for the whole of European music? Are not the paths for its further refining reserved for impressionism? I do not know. But I think that if the final frontiers of what is possible in musical impressionism have not yet been reached, then their attainment is in any case not far off. And I know already – not so much know as feel – that The Rite of Spring, whatever one’s attitude towards it, is an event of exceptional historical significance in the life of Russian art and that the score Stravinsky has created is one of the most distinctive and brilliant results of contemporary impressionist attitudes to sound and impressionist psychology of creation. The subject of The Rite of Spring may be outlined in a few words. Something along the lines of a ‘ritual murder’ among the ancient Slavs – that is the central motive of the plot. A young girl chosen by fate through the drawing of lots must be offered as a sacrifice to Spring. The Spring of doomed virginal youth must fructify and sanctify with itself the earth as it awakens to spring life. Around this mythological idea of a ‘Great Sacrifice’ are grouped various kinds of vernal divinations, round dances, ‘The Kiss of the Earth’ [the four bars preceding figure 72], appeals to forebears, secret girls’ games – a sequence of scenes which transport our imagination into the grey distance of the ages with their ritual actions of enigmatic erotic/pantheist meaning, their religious and cosmic symbols, and the archaic ‘syncretism’ of the legendary Slav Ur-culture. What interesting material for musical illustration! What scope for the imagination of an impressionist! – for that is how Stravinsky quite definitely announced himself as early as Petrushka, that superb specimen of an artistic and musical popular print illustration (lubok).8 I spoke above about the possibility of combining within impressionism extreme piquancy and refinement with an inclination to the primitive. This antinomy in art was also outlined earlier in Petrushka. In The Rite of Spring there is utterly free scope for the composer’s imagination in this respect. For 8

For lubok, see Chapter 2, n. 24.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 here, if a composer wishes to create in sound something adequate to the conception in idea and myth of these musical and choreographic scenes, he has first and foremost to reflect in his score all the coarseness, inertia, primitiveness and spontaneity of the way of life and spiritual order without which our fantasy cannot conceive the life of prehistoric Slavdom. How can one express primitiveness and spontaneity in music otherwise than by combining harsh, self-sufficient dissonances with primitive constructions formed of bare unisons, fourths and fifths? On the other hand, is it possible to display a new musical beauty, aided by these devices, without dealing with dissonant progressions in a way which uses that refined elaboration whose principles were shown with the utmost conviction by pure impressionism? Extreme refinement combined with deliberate musical simplification, the influences of Musorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov combined with a noticeable subordination to the French impressionists – those are the fundamentals which Stravinsky has transformed, by means of the creative working of his outstanding and bold individual talent, into one of the most unusual scores in the universal repertory. The brutal, biting, block-like music of The Rite is not music only. It strives to enter the spirit of a ‘syncretic’ epoch corresponding to the subject. It wants to merge with nature as it surrounded primitive man, with the soul of the Slav in the early dawn of his conscious existence. It wants to cry out through the voices of animals and birds, to quiver in the faint rustling of age-old forests, and to screech in the awkward reedpipe melodies of ancient shepherds. Such are Stravinsky’s tasks, and, for the sake of executing them successfully, he has been unstinting in inventing the most fantastic harmonies and the strangest rhythms as well as in detonating the harshest explosions of artistic temperament. And the melodic side of Stravinsky’s talent is by no means as insignificant as is usually thought. Surely the first reed-pipe theme with which The Rite opens is charming. Surely the theme of the ‘Dance of the Dandies’, or the massive, weighty theme of the ‘Oldest-and-Wisest’ who kisses mother-earth, or the motive of the girls’ secret games – surely these are distinctive. True – the majority of Stravinsky’s themes call to mind Musorgsky or Rimsky-Korsakov, but this resemblance could scarcely have been avoided. The themes of Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky are not so much similar to one another as much as they resemble melodic phrases in the spirit of Russian song, as much as they are related to one another through their common kinship with Russian song. As a result of the happy combination of bold melodic writing, quaint and always distinctive harmony and the composer’s volcanic temperament, we have in The Rite of Spring a series of episodes of unusual originality, vividness 216

New stylistic directions and beauty. It is impossible to listen to the procession of the ‘Oldest-andWisest’ with indifference. In the bass are dull blows which seem to be in triple metre, although the procession’s real metre is that of a march – quadruple metre. In the middle of the texture chromatically rising diminished sevenths growl. Still higher, in the very centre of the orchestral sonority, the ponderous theme of the supreme priest is set forth by the brass. And at the very top is something akin to the pealing of bells. The ‘Kiss of the Earth’ is marked by a Skryabinesque chord. There then follows the frenzied ‘Dancing-Out of the Earth’. This entire Act I finale blends into a polychrome, headlong picture in sound where your heart is in your mouth as you listen to it. Another marvellous episode is the introduction to Scene 2, when over a D minor triad pedal Stravinsky carries on a slow figuration made from chords of A-flat minor, E-flat minor and other tonalities at the furthest remove from the principal one (in the pedal). It is perhaps relevant to say a few words here about those harmonic combinations selected from the whole arsenal of impressionist devices of which Stravinsky makes greatest use. The complexity of Stravinsky’s harmonies is to a certain extent illusory. Most often he combines a number of simple chords simultaneously which, however, belong to different keys. Such ‘polytonal’ combinations (they are common in Strauss too) sometimes give an impression of exceptional skill, but even a not very developed ear can soon detect their true composition, after which the given harmony is perceived not so much as an organic one but as a mixed one. So be it. Let a rather fraudulent character be typical of such harmonies. Do they inspire in consequence any doubt as to their high artistic quality? Not in the slightest. Does not illusion play an important role in art? Never mind Debussy – does one not encounter hints of illusionist possibilities in Rimsky-Korsakov – in the bitonal harmonies of The Golden Cockerel? Do not these psychological multiple meanings (I spoke more generally about it above) with which the musician will accept polytonal chords, experiencing them at one and the same time as complicatedly recherch´e and as the sum of simple harmonic components – do not these contain the new, original aesthetic values advanced by our time? One must give Stravinsky his due: in the realm of polytonal chords he displays astounding resourcefulness and logic. It is not just any keys he mixes, but always such as, for one reason or another, turn out to be to the listener’s consciousness, as far as possible, most sturdily mutually coupled. Thus, for example, the pedal background in ‘Spring Divinations’ is formed of a combination of triads each a semitone lower than the next. The result is something strange, but close to an ordinary suspension of a diminished octave, an old device well known to everyone. In the ‘Game of the Two Cities’ Stravinsky carries out the following exercise: he takes a 217

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 splendid Russian theme and presents it in diatonic thirds (with the correct alternations of major and minor thirds) in a definite key, then the upper voice of these thirds is found doubled systematically at the major sixth above, and the lower one at the minor sixth below (the later rearrangement of parts is not a matter of principle). The result is a most curious alternating outof-tuneness. Now the first and third parts slide about at the seventh, at the same time as the even-numbered parts give a pure octave, then these latter are out of tune while the odd-numbered ones sound at the octave. There are in essence three keys here, linked, however, by the abundance of pure octaves. Or else that is how Stravinsky still connects various keys. Putting it in terms of the piano, he gives two figurative patterns, one on the white keys and the other on the black ones in the same register and as far as possible in a metre incommensurate with the first pattern. It is obvious that as far as the ear is concerned, given the rapid movement of both patterns, a multitude of brief chromatic appoggiaturas arise in this instance, and the sum of the two diatonic figurations seems to acquire a chromatic appearance. One senses the two patterns separately, and also the ‘pseudochromatic’ whole. I should like to say a little more about the development of contemporary chords made up of seconds formed from appoggiaturas, in a way similar to the emergence of appoggiaturas themselves from suspensions, about the gradual historical evolution of the unresolved suspensions used by Stravinsky from their old, very simple forms – but I am afraid of wearying readers’ attention with details which are too specialist. I shall confine myself to adducing two principles which lie at the root of present-day impressionism when examined from the point of view of the purely musical evolution of attitudes to sound. The first principle is to recognize chords defined by increasingly complicated acoustic treatment as being consonant in character. This principle of harmonies formed ‘of the higher overtones’ has been implemented partly by the French and partly by Skryabin. The second principle is giving ever-increasing independence to passing harmonic moments. This principle is not alien to the French impressionists either. Stravinsky bases himself predominantly on it. Polytonal and pseudochromatic combinations may be cited as frequent instances of the second principle without particularly stretching the interpretation of it. Whatever general conclusions can be drawn from all that has been said? What is the general artistic value of The Rite of Spring? It seems to me that its historical, symptomatic significance nonetheless exceeds its artistic significance. I have already mentioned the best episodes, those which act irresistibly on the listener’s imagination. But even there, certain unpleasant features are striking – the uniformity of the devices, the absence of appropriate development of the ideas, the excessive tendentiousness in devising 218

New stylistic directions harmonies each more terrifying and toxic than the one before. The main thing is the uniformity. A pedal is a good thing, but how vexatious it can be when pedals stretch out one after another in an endless line. How many uniform repeating rhythms there are in The Rite! It seems that however many tricks of metre Stravinsky can throw up, he does not achieve genuine variety. The final dance of the doomed victim is frankly some sort of rhythmic paradox, and for all that, it lacks rhythmic life, and it seems as if it could successfully have been put into duple or triple metre, with syncopation, of course. Worse than that, for all Stravinsky’s harmonic and colouristic inventiveness, for all his truly significant achievements in the field of polytonality and pseudo-chromaticism, for all this music’s energy at full tilt, it is nonetheless superficial. Depth, breadth, inner power, epic pathos, mystic colour – everything one would have wished to see in The Rite in addition to the great deal which it has to offer – all that is not provided. How did this happen? How did it come about that the most important and necessary elements of creativity are not to be found in The Rite? Are a certain exterior quality and superficiality organically inherent in Stravinsky’s talent? One would like to think that in subsequent works Stravinsky will disprove such thoughts, prompted, by the way, not by The Rite alone but to a degree by both Petrushka and The Firebird. But even if Stravinsky offers no refutation of this idea, his Rite of Spring will remain in our history of the arts as an exceptionally impressive monument, albeit in many respects imperfect, to the impressionist phase in Russian music.

(f) N. Myaskovsky: Sergey Prokofiev: Op. 4. Vospominaniya (‘Reminiscences’); Por¨ıv (‘Elan’); Otchayaniye (‘Despair’); Navazhdeniye (‘Suggestion diabolique’). Price: Nos. 1, 2 and 3 – 50 kopecks each; No. 4 – 65 kopecks. Op. 11 Toccata. Price 1 rouble; for piano. Published by P. Jurgenson. Music, 12 October 1913, no. 151, pp. 667–8. Myaskovsky 2 (1964), pp. 139–43 These early pieces are based on compositions dating from 1908. The reworking was carried out between 1910 and 1912.

Despite his youth, Sergey Prokofiev is already a composer with a fully formed and, moreover, highly striking and original identity. This identity is severe and even somewhat hard, but it is not the cold and unchanging hardness of stone but rather the constantly vital, scorching, elastically strong power of a whirlwind. This feature of spontaneous tension is perhaps the most characteristic one, the one which stares you in the face in Prokofiev’s art, and 219

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 immediately entails certain exceptionally valuable qualities of his composing: the complete absence of any kind of vagueness in utterance, clear freely moulded form, a rare, almost aphoristic brevity, clarity and character in themes, and clear-cut, lively rhythm. But those are only the basic features of Prokofiev’s music – his talent is so versatile, so varied, that it is capable of curbing his fits almost to the point of contemplation, and the only thing that betrays at the same time his fiery nature is the same clarity of contours, the same definiteness of expression – except that it has become more concentrated, more deeply immersed in itself. This mood of contemplative, profound quiet can be detected in the first piece of the cycle before us, Reminiscences; but, of the present pieces, this is the only one in this vein, with all the others being impetuous. Of these, the last one, Suggestion diabolique, is permeated by the most striking and frighteningly nightmarish character, which in its fantastic quality, its insuperable headlong motion and fiery imagery leaves even Musorgsky’s Noch’ na l¨ısoy gore (‘Night on Bare Mountain’) far behind, so that in comparison with Suggestion diabolique (a mere piano piece!) it seems almost a stage prop. Despair is in a different mood – it is a kind of paroxysm of deepened anxious melancholy, swallowing itself up; the constantly repeated agonizing little phrase here, which often does not accord with the harmonies surrounding it, is like a glance immovably pointing in one direction, a glance filled with inexpressible torment. Elan is more ordinary, though not without power. The whole series altogether offers the richest material for the performer in originality and strikingness of content, and in part by its technical qualities; as regards the last piece indicated in the title, Toccata, it sets a task which is mainly a technical one, capable of being accomplished only by a pianist with huge technique and endurance. The Toccata is of colossal difficulty and is, moreover, continuous, but its thematic material is so engaging, in spite of its exceptional brevity, the layout is so significant and rich and, what is more, so well finished and, within the limits of the task set, so varied, that for this alone the Toccata ought to attract attention; but, most important of all, it is also of profound content, and belongs in character among Prokofiev’s impetuous pieces; restricted by the technical assignment, the thought within it races along with concentrated, irrepressible force like a deep-water torrent compressed between granite banks. Let us hope that these outstanding compositions will in the end find performers and, having made their way into the concert hall, will, by their freshness and strength and with their frequent fantastic quality and rare good health, enliven somewhat the enfeebled and often musty atmosphere in our concert life.

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(g) Yu. D. Engel’: [S. Prokofiev] (Second Evening of Contemporary Music), Russian Bulletin, 10 February 1917, no. 33. Engel’, pp. 453–6 This notice was prompted by a concert in which the composer as pianist was joined by the singers Butomo-Nazvanova and Artem’yeva and the cellist Vol’f-Izrael’.

After Mikhail Gnesin9 comes Sergei Prokofiev. This young composer came to the fore rapidly in Petrograd (he is only twenty-five years of age) and is not unknown even in Moscow, but a special Musical Contemporary10 concert gave us the opportunity to get to know him more closely and across a wider spectrum. It is only a few years since Prokofiev graduated from the Petrograd Conservatoire in the piano class (of Yesipova); he worked on composition with Lyadov but did not complete the course. In all, he has so far written and published twenty-seven opus numbers; they are mainly compositions for piano (including two sonatas), also songs, orchestral compositions (a sinfonietta), the ballet Ala and Lolly, another ballet, an opera The Gambler (all unpublished), etc. As I proceed from the composer’s curriculum vitae to his inner features, I hasten to enter a reservation. Before you can say anything more definite about such distinctive music as Prokofiev’s, you need not just to listen to it but to study it for yourself. For the majority of the works performed, I have not managed to do this (not through any fault of mine!), which of course cannot help but be reflected in the lines which follow. But my fundamental judgement of Prokofiev is definite: I welcome his music. You have to start with that, because there are people who reject Prokofiev completely. ‘If that is music, then I’m no musician!’, exclaimed one of our front-rank musicians about Prokofiev, and this thought was by no means unique among the musical e´ lite in the audience for the concert. It’s understandable: the more brilliant a creative individual’s personality, the harder he finds it to comprehend a different, opposite individuality. But ‘when you can’t find your own brains in your neighbour’s skull, rejoice when you find his brains there’. And it’s beyond dispute that Prokofiev has ‘his own brains there’. They may be turbulent, wild, on occasion even mischievous, but they are his own, and, most important of all, lurking within them are the embryos of a kind of special set of rules of his own. At least, as you listen to Prokofiev himself, you want to believe in that set of rules (even when your ears suffer insult from it!). 9 10

M. F. Gnesin (1883–1957) became a very significant figure in Soviet music education. A periodical published in Petrograd between 1915 and 1917.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 The greatest number of these ‘aural assaults’ are administered by Prokofiev’s harmonies. If the mighty world of Skryabin’s unprecedented harmonies, for all their novelty, is nevertheless unified by a single basic harmonic idea, perhaps even one evolved from the entire past of European music; if Gnesin’s new harmonies are created by the furthest refinements of old harmonic types (as is the case with many other modernists), then you can’t sum up Prokofiev’s harmonies either as the unity of the new or the refinement of the old, or anything else other than ‘that’s the way I want it to be!’ A simple triad or, for that matter, a chord of the seventh is almost never found in Skryabin (late period, and middle as well); they are despised also by nearly all kinds of modernist. Prokofiev, on the contrary, is not by any means afraid of them; but cheek by jowl with them he can place both a most complex chord of the utmost refinement and a straightforward smudge of sound. Nor is Prokofiev afraid of even simple C major with its immediate plebeian brethren, which since the time of Skryabin it has been usual to disparage like the mob – but what unprecedented things he attaches to this ‘white mob’ [Engel’ refers to the piano’s white keys]! Nor is Prokofiev afraid even of the most simple time signatures, in fact he actually prefers them, whatever rhythm he ignites using them! This aspect – rhythm – is the strongest and possibly the least debatable one in Prokofiev’s work; generally speaking, the ‘horizontal line’ with him is stronger than the ‘vertical’ one. But his rhythm too is special. The rhythm is clearly strong in Medtner as well, but there it is a complex, carefully cherished soil for ‘grains’ of melody, harmony and part-writing, whereas in Prokofiev the force of the rhythm is more exposed, it is self-sufficient and ‘stabs, chops and slices’ spontaneously. Not only that: I am prepared to say that ‘music’ itself sometimes serves Prokofiev as merely the soil for ‘grains’ of rhythm, for only through them can the music be artistically justified and accepted (somewhat as in the Toccata op. 11, and to some degree in the Sarcasms and the finale of the Sonata op. 14). After all that has been said, it is hard to expect tenderness, warmth or heartfelt emotion – in a word, lyrical charm – in Prokofiev’s music. There are those who say that the composer has none of that at all, but after listening to the songs to words by Akhmatova (especially ‘Pamyat’ o solntse’ (‘Memory of the Sun’)) it is difficult to agree. The strength of Prokofiev’s cheerful, sparkling art lies at any rate not in lyricism or moods of contemplation, but in impulse and making an impact; not in Adagio but in Allegro; not in Appassionato but in Scherzando or Strepitoso. And here’s another important thing: the words so often applied to contemporary art – ‘morbid’, ‘fragile’ and so on – are not applicable to 222

New stylistic directions Prokofiev. He is a sort of wild, strapping lad, a mustang left to forage for himself. And if with Gnesin we could speak about intellect recovering a debt from spontaneity, then one has to say the exact opposite about Prokofiev: it is spontaneity that recovers a debt from intellect; a head which if it lacks anything, it is certainly not talent, freshness or temperament but just one thing – a controlling agent. In this last respect Prokofiev recalls Igor’ Severyanin,11 with whom he has a different thing in common: both are violent, trenchant and seethe noisily; to each of them, everything other than himself is of no consequence; both are ‘excessivists’ when it comes to making mischief or having comical pretensions to ‘spit in the face of the sun’. Both lump together uninhibitedly all sorts of archaisms, neologisms and simply ‘nihilisms’ to form sheer nonsense; even when they both produce something which shows talent, they by no means always produce something good. But the difference is that, with Severyanin, there is a clear tendency in favour of all sorts of quasi-cultured lisping delicacies, on the lines of ‘champagne in lilies’, whereas Prokofiev is healthier, more thick-set, straightforwardly ‘barbarian’. And another difference – the most important one. Not only is there no controlling agent in Igor’ Severyanin’s head, but it is impossible to see when there will be one. With Prokofiev one can guarantee that there will be one; as a matter of fact, there is one already, though not yet enthroned, and not yet properly involved in matters of government. Sarcasms and much else, to be sure, say little about him – and sometimes nothing at all. The Ugly Duckling says a little more, although, in general terms, it is not a particularly successful piece: everything in it is too concise – from the text, which has trimmed back Andersen’s delightful story with pitiless dryness, to the music which often forgets the wood for the trees; but there are individual episodes in the Duckling which are lovely. And most of all – the Ballade for cello and piano, which, on several planes, is well balanced, fresh and natural in all its ‘effects’. There is weighty significance too in the ‘Little Grey Dress’ (‘Seroye platishche’) [from the Balmont settings op. 23]. The Scherzo of the D minor Sonata is fine. The tempestuous Suggestion diabolique simply carried me away, though it was also played by the composer with a kind of magic charge. Prokofiev is altogether a superb pianist, who is especially strong in rhythmic brilliance and energy; he plays his own compositions magnificently. [. . .]

11

Igor’ Severyanin (1887–1941): poet and translator born in St Petersburg.

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(h) V. G. Karat¨ıgin: The most recent trends in Russian music. Northern Notes, 1914, nos. 6–7. Karat¨ıgin, pp. 141–53 A full century has not yet elapsed since it became possible to speak of Russian music as a full member of the family of musical arts to which the other European nations belong. For infants who first came into the world during the present bloody days, the era of their age of maturity (1936) will coincide with the joyful date of the hundredth anniversary of A Life for the Tsar, the first-born of Russian art music. Those of us writing about music now and studying the conditions of its growth and development, will by then be grey-haired old men, maybe already pushed aside and tired of musical life, incapable of feeling sympathy for such new forms of creativity as will by then have taken shape. But meantime those of us writing about music now, who are informed about contemporary musical aspirations and achievements, truly cannot fail to experience a feeling of the greatest astonishment as soon as we try to take in at a glance the whole epoch from Glinka to our day. The chronological timespan is less than a hundred years, yet the evolution in artistic methods of composing music and thinking about music, the development of our attitude towards sound and the refinement of tastes in colour and harmony, are such that their precipitateness can sometimes even rouse apprehensions about the durability of the new conquests, as well as doubts about their organic quality. How, in fact, can one avoid giving way to a certain apprehension when Russian music, to which Glinka gave birth only four score years ago, has achieved great-power strength and importance in the very shortest period of time and proved to be an element in the highest degree powerful in all respects, in its most advanced trends yielding nothing to the boldest acts of daring in the art of Western Europe, which, unlike our music, reached this daring by a process of extremely gradual development over many centuries? On the other hand, this very powerfulness, this conviction and persuasiveness of the new Russian musical creativity, the undoubted mastery which accompanies the composing activities of many of the most ‘extreme’ of our composers – do they not weaken the doubts expressed above, do they not provide grounds for considering Russia’s evolution in creating music, however headlong its pace has been, to be an organic phenomenon? Inclined personally more to that conclusion than to doubts about the seriousness of Russian music’s most recent artistic accomplishments, I shall try in what follows to substantiate my judgement using the only argument possible in such cases: by demonstrating as well as I can that, however rapid the course of our musical history, however stupefying the changes over the last eighty years in the way we regard sound – we nonetheless have before 224

New stylistic directions us a picture of gradual and logical development without any revolutionary leaps, and thousands of every possible kind of thread of mutual influence and continuity link up a good deal of what might at first glance seem excesses of absurdity and extravagance in the life of Russian musical creativity. By a strange coincidence, the names of three main composers of the greatest significance have come forward in the most recent music of each of the three principal continental nations (contemporary English music is still very weak in talent): in France – Debussy, Ravel and Roger-Ducasse; in Germany – Reger, Strauss and Schoenberg; and in Russia – Skryabin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. The list of interesting and gifted musicians is not, of course, exhausted by the trios of names I have given – not in France, nor in Germany, or in Russia. But these names are particularly typical and indicative. Certain currents of musical thought can be aligned with them, particularly bitter quarrels are conducted around them, and they are representative of the present-day Russian attitude towards sound in its chief shapes and forms. Which of the Russian composer-innovators mentioned should be assigned first place? Which of them is the dominant musical influence over the young generation of Russian composers? Skryabin, of course; his exceptional natural creative gift borders on genius and he usually comes before us as composer as an artist of the utmost sincerity, profundity and uncommon originality of harmonic thought. The originality of his harmonic style took shape in a very gradual way but also with great precision. The first phase and to some extent the second phase of Skryabin’s work were passed under the banner of Chopin. His early piano mazurkas and the series of preludes, e´ tudes, etc. which followed them, reveal the strongest influence on Skryabin of the music of the renowned Polish poet of the piano. It is impossible, however, to confuse Skryabin’s preludes with the authentic Chopinesque inspiration. For Skryabin’s own soul – fragile, tender, less strong but more refined than Chopin’s – shows all too clearly through the wrapping of the Chopinized sound-world. Now and then a raised or lowered dominant in a chord breaks through in the work of the young composer newly conscious of his powers, here a convulsively compressed rhythmic figure, there a nervously, morbidly soft suspension, now an explosion of pathos from heaven knows where, which in a flash attains extraordinary intensity before immediately petering out. The First Symphony in E major with soloists and chorus in the finale was published as op. 26. This symphony in six movements (Skryabin made the formal four-movement construction more complicated with fairly extended introductory and concluding movements) is very colourfully scored and abounds in strongly dissonant combinations which never, however, violate the conditions of absolutely pure and clear part-writing; it made an 225

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 extremely strong impression in its time12 and roused great indignation among musicians who value integrity and fidelity to old traditions in art far beyond anything else. This indignation was still more justified in that Skryabin showed himself in his First Symphony to be an unusually deft smuggler. The whole symphony, I repeat, contains not a single bar, not a single harmony or counterpoint which could not be explained by this or that paragraph in school textbooks. Despite all that, it was perfectly obvious that an entirely new work had been created, one based on original, tortuous melodic lines (the Andante, the best movement in the symphony), decorated with such original, sensually spicy harmonies and steeped in altogether special, artistic experiences unknown to us heretofore. After the First Symphony came the Second, and after it the Third, the so-called Divine Poem, a mighty creation of ardent pathos, whose central slow movement belongs amongst Skryabin’s most perfect, most inspired works. After the Divine Poem, Skryabin presented Russian art with his Poem of Ecstasy, which is dazzling in the luxuriance of its colours and, along with Skryabin’s latest orchestral work to date, his Prometheus, must be considered the topmost peak of Skryabin’s creative fantasy. In the middle phase of his work, approximately from the Third Piano Sonata up to the op. 50s inclusive, Skryabin gradually betrayed Chopin and surrendered to the influences of Liszt and Wagner. Chords of the seventh and ninth with raised or lowered dominants and, generally speaking, every sort of augmented and diminished harmony are encountered increasingly often in Skryabin’s works, whether for piano or orchestra. Melody becomes increasingly intricate and sinuous. The rhythmic language becomes increasingly jerky and capricious. The general character of the music acquires features of states of extreme exaltation; waves of lyrico-dramatic pathos, in abrupt and frequent ebbs and flows, bear witness to the extreme restlessness, violence, passion, and lack of balance in the composer’s original musical and psychological ideas. In embodying his moods in sound – moods which are contradictory and demonic, with sudden transitions from eroticism to sarcasm or from tenderness to ferocious spitefulness – Skryabin the composer in his middle period sometimes bears a close resemblance to Liszt in both musical conception and harmony (a remarkable analogy may be observed between Skryabin’s Satanic Poem and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz) in particular. The realm of Liszt’s musical images and moods makes itself felt in Skryabin’s work even today; at the same time, beginning with the same op. 50s, the Fifth Sonata for piano, the Poem of Ecstasy and other things chronologically close to them, the listener senses that the composer is increasingly freeing himself 12

The symphony was first performed (without its final sixth movement) soon after composition on 11 November 1900, Lyadov conducting.

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New stylistic directions from extraneous influences and displaying his own individuality ever more clearly and fully. Artistic ecstasy, aspirations to affirm his own ‘I’ as the supreme aesthetic basis for free creativity, the acknowledgement that the art of music possesses self-sufficient power and value – these are the ideas which, with the admixture of a certain portion of theosophy and the metaphysics of art, are becoming the ‘content’ of Skryabin’s most recent compositions. It is a little strange that the ‘programme’ of all Skryabin’s latest symphonic pieces amounts to ruminations (set forth, incidentally, in a pretty inconsistent and tasteless way), which in the last resort can be reduced to advocating aesthetic subjectivism as the basis for creative work and denying to art any meaning and content other than its self-sufficient significance; in other words, they amount to a lack of programmaticism in principle in objects of artistic creation. But this programme of lack of programmaticism is nevertheless very typical of Skryabin. Musico-psychological antinomies are a fundamental characteristic of his talent. Skryabin is capable of being affected and high-flown but without a trace of insincerity. His highly strung nature verges at times on hysteria, but his heartfelt emotional outbursts always encompass a kind of higher naturalness and rightness. He is an extreme, unbridled subjectivist, but he is also attracted to reflecting in his music, especially in its most recent period, the element of the universal and the cosmic (the Seventh and Ninth Piano Sonatas). When I was examining the most recent trends in West European musical thought in these pages last year,13 I tried, parallel to establishing the two basic groups of composers – the impressionist and the neoclassical – to outline the two main psycho-musical types. There are some artists who like to reopen their wounds – even with a certain sensuality, so to speak, the wounds in general of the contemporary soul, over-refined, over-delicate, fragmented and slack in the manifestations of its emotional and volitional life. There are other creative figures, on the other hand, who go in search of an antidote to this fragmentedness and looseness and try to find it in the partial retention of some of the classical traditions of musical thinking and writing; in many cases, moreover, a very close cohabitation proves possible between ‘modernist’ content and polyphonic and formal methods of composition in the spirit of Beethoven and Bach, giving the partnership greater stability and depth. In this respect too, Skryabin is antinomian in the extreme. There is no doubt that his psychological make-up, especially as the composer of 13

Karat¨ıgin wrote an article, whose title resonates with that of the present one, which was published in Northern Notes of December 1913. This earlier article is entitled ‘The Most Recent Trends in West European Music’, and it was republished in Karat¨ıgin, pp. 107–22.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Prometheus and the most recent works, displays many features which bring him close to the pure ‘impressionists’. And along with this, in the midst of the complete disintegration of his mental experiences, in the midst of his fantasies of every possible kind, in the midst of the utmost chaos of ideas rushing about convulsively, it would seem, on all sides – in the midst of all that, there reigns an iron logic, an ideal supreme order. What is more, this order holds sway not only for the contrapuntal and formal requirements of a work, as is the case with the neoclassicists, but also for the very essence of Skryabin’s music, its purely musical content, its delightfully fascinating themes and their harmonic garb. Between the development of Skryabinesque compositional forms and Skryabinesque harmonies, however, fairly significant differences can be noticed. Strictly speaking, in the realm of form Skryabin has created nothing new. One of his muse’s boldest creations, Prometheus, is close in form to the sonata (symphonic) Allegro. In the Poem of Ecstasy, the music of which is based on the development of several dozen small themes, this development is entirely obvious and intelligible in its formal contours. In harmony Skryabin is infinitely bolder. Step by step he wins back ‘autonomy’ for those altered chords of the seventh and ninth which he originally used as subsidiary and passing combinations of sounds. In Prometheus the composer sets his face wholly free from the mask of a ‘smuggler’ and proclaims the right of the chords named above to independent existence. At the same time, it proves that the aural instinct which had attracted Skryabin to combinations of that kind and led him to attach ever increasing importance to them, culminating in them being recognized as distinctive consonances, did not deceive the artist. The ear’s commands corresponded in full with the laws of acoustics. [Karat¨ıgin relates Skryabin’s harmonic innovations to the harmonic series and observes that the ear has over the centuries accepted an increasing number of intervals and chords as consonant.] The route which lies by way of harmonics is not the only one for composers seeking new harmonic perspectives. The combinations of sounds encountered, for instance, in Debussy or Schoenberg must be explicable far more often on the level of purely musical technique as deriving from various circumstances of decorativeness than as arising on the basis of upper harmonics. It is in the same direction that the work of the most talented of the Russian ‘impressionists’ – Stravinsky – is developing. His very first steps as a composer furnished the most obvious evidence of Stravinsky’s outstanding gifts. His early symphony, even though it is full of echoes of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Musorgsky, is striking and colourful in the highest degree. Stravinsky’s early songs to texts by Gorodetsky (‘Spring (The 228

New stylistic directions Cloister)’, and ‘A Song of the Dew’ (a song of the Khl¨ıst sect)) already reveal significantly greater self-reliance. Like the Pastorale of the same period (a wordless vocal piece), these items are exceptionally attractive both in the lively poetry pervading them and in the originality and variety of technical devices in the writing, without, however, violating the old traditions at any point. In the beautiful songs to words by Verlaine the composer falls temporarily under the influence of Debussy; the parallel fifths, the successions of seventh chords, the harmonies and the part-writing acquire the character of soundpainting in individual strokes and patches. In his orchestral compositions (the Fantastic Scherzo and Firework) and in his first ballet The Firebird, Stravinsky continues to proclaim a refined harmonic taste and the richest inventiveness in instrumental timbres, as well as his simultaneous attachment to Rimsky-Korsakov and Musorgsky, on the one hand, and to Debussy and Ravel, on the other. This combination will not seem so strange if we recall that many elements in the sonorous decorativeness of the French impressionists grew out of some of the devices of Musorgsky’s (and Borodin’s) harmony and Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestra. To give some idea of the principles of this musical decorativeness, I shall dwell in more detail on some highly typical instances of it. What in harmony is called a ‘suspension’ has to be regarded aesthetically and historically as a derivative of the use of ‘passing notes’ where these notes fall on relatively strong beats of the bar. Out of the old suspension, ‘prepared’ in accordance with all the rules, there arose newer, unprepared suspensions, which were first introduced into music by the ‘smugglers’ route, by means of so-called ‘long appoggiaturas’ (to the eyes there was a consonance on the strong beat, but to the ears it proved to be a dissonance which resolved into a consonance only on the weak beat of the bar). Let us now imagine that the time interval between the suspended note and the note where it resolves becomes ever shorter. The result is a chord in which both notes sound simultaneously. The ear continues to interpret such combinations as something like an appoggiatura, though with a new subtlety inserted into the old combination.14 To put it more accurately, in our psychological hearing apparatus a certain conflict arises between the immediate perception of two adjacent notes sounding simultaneously and the insurmountable aural illusion of an appoggiatura, arising from the unconscious striving to make sense of what is being heard. In more complicated cases, where a large number of major or minor seconds are pressed together, a different illusion occurs. Complex 14

Author’s note: It is curious that similar combinations in the context of melismas were occasionally used even in olden times; they were called ‘acciaccatura’.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 harmony distributed compactly gives an impression not of harmony at all but of some new timbre. Harmony turns into an element of timbre. Even more complicated illusions that are difficult to analyze occur when several keys are combined. If the first experiments with decorative, illusory appoggiatura-like seconds were the work of our Borodin, then it is even more pleasant to note that some of the most interesting instances of ‘polyharmonies’, that is, the simultaneous combination of several keys, are also encountered in the work of a Russian composer, in Rimsky-Korsakov – to be precise in his The Golden Cockerel (A major and B-flat major in the Astrologer’s phrase ‘I poprobovat’ zhenit’sya’ (‘And to try to get married’) in Act III). To be sure, Richard Strauss sometimes worked with ‘polyharmonic’ combinations before RimskyKorsakov, but with Strauss the results were far less convincing than with Rimsky-Korsakov; that is because the latter gives the union of different keys in a form where its origin in a complex suspension becomes obvious, in other words, what is new is perceived in a clear association with the old, familiar technical device, representing merely a more refined derivative of it. Another moment of aural illusion arises with combinations which can be called ‘pseudochromatic’. The essence of this is that two figures of some sort, of more or less animated character, are set forth in mutually incompatible metres (for example, duplets against triplets, quintuplets against sextuplets, etc.); they share the same register and use keys separated from each other by an odd number of semitones. In this case the ear will hesitate between, on the one hand, perceiving them as two simultaneous figures in different keys and different metres and, on the other, interpreting them as a single chromatic figure; what is more, the origin of the impression of chromaticism is the same appoggiatura-like attaching of one melody to the other, which must unavoidably arise in the tonal, rhythmic and registral circumstances of these melodies as indicated above. These and similar ornamental devices may be found in embryo in the music of Russian composers of the Balakirev school. The French impressionists have taken them to an extraordinary level of refinement. Stravinsky has gone further along the same path and, in pursuing his goal of decorative refinement, has found a multiplicity of the most varied combinations of sounds, passages and instrumental colours. In his ballets Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, the connoisseur of harmonic rarities can admire an entire collection of the most fantastic combinations of a decorative kind to his heart’s content. They reach the greatest intricacy in the opera The Nightingale (in Acts II and III; Act I was written much earlier than the others, and is far simpler musically) and in the charming songs to Japanese ‘tankas’.

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New stylistic directions Unfortunately, a quality apparently fatally linked to the impressionist tendency in art, a significant lightness of weight and superficiality of musical imagination, makes itself felt very strongly in Stravinsky’s music. By some miracle he has managed to avoid the other indispensable concomitant of impressionism – effeteness, which with the French can sometimes reach the point of complete musico-psychological flaccidity, brittleness and want of strength. Flaccidity is just as foreign to Stravinsky as Skryabin’s states of ecstasy. A rare strength of temperament breathes from every page of Stravinsky’s scores, but you cannot find any profound ideas in them anywhere at all. Everything glitters, fizzes and foams and is iridescent in every colour of the rainbow, but never, anywhere, is there anything capable of touching the inner strings of the listener’s soul. His art is enchanting, magnificently attired, incomparably ingenious, dazzlingly brilliant, but very superficial. Until recently, ‘neoclassicism’ held a more or less subordinate position in Russia. One must regard the Muscovite Medtner as one of the first Russian composers to have emerged as a definite exponent of this trend. This composer, who writes almost exclusively for the piano and for voice (though he has a few chamber works), has a profile of his own. His music has a colouring which is strict, severe and manly. Rhythmic and contrapuntal aspects are developed much more interestingly and characterfully in his compositions than melodic ones. The harmonic innovations are not always agreeable and natural, but they too are full of character. Medtner thinks and writes in his own way. The influences of Schumann and Brahms do not hinder the reflection of Medtner’s own very individual ideas in his music. A significant element of dryness and rhetoric stands in the way, however, of this music finding a significant response – even among musicians who give Medtner’s unquestionable gift its due and value the distinctiveness of his compositional personality and the curiousness of its technical style.15 Far fresher and livelier is the work of another Russian ‘neoclassicist’ – Prokofiev. He too is susceptible to influences from the German classics, though not only from Schumann and Brahms, but also from the ‘neoclassicist’ Reger. A volcanic temperament, an ability to pour something completely new – wine of a magnificent harmonic bouquet – into old wine-skins, the art of combining organically classical strictness and severity of form and texture with content which matches the present-day attitude towards sound in the highest degree – these are the traits which distinguish Prokofiev from the more one-sided, the more pallid Medtner. Prokofiev is still very young, and it is hard to predict what forms his work will take as his talent develops 15

For a different perspective, see Myaskovsky’s essay in Chapter 5.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 further. But a good deal of what he has already composed, such as the two superb piano concertos and the Second Piano Sonata, is a guarantee that we are dealing here with a talent full of seething creative energy and an inexhaustible fantasy of a distinctly individual hue. Without having anything in common with Stravinsky in the general direction of his creative work, Prokofiev sometimes reveals some external features of similarity, however, with the composer of The Nightingale. Both these composers succeed best with moments of a grotesque character. Their greatest achievements are on the level of the scherzo and humorous moods. But the marvellous Andante from Prokofiev’s Second Sonata obliges us to suppose that later on he will be able to give the musical art of Russia a series of works of very profound and heartfelt musical content. Of all the composers mentioned, not one has so far established a school. Skryabin represents a relative exception. Over the last few years a fairly significant number of beginning composers have emerged in Petrograd and Moscow who try to compose in imitation of Skryabin. Khvoshchinsky16 (Second Symphony), Dobroveyn17 (piano pieces), L. Sabaneyev18 and the Kreyn brothers19 have to be put in that category. Of these, probably only the Kreyns can be acknowledged as composers holding out the hope of developing into more or less definite eminences. The compositions of all the other Skryabinists make a pretty sad impression, and they do not get beyond purely superficial imitation of Skryabin’s methods. It remains to say a few words about ‘unaligned’ Russian composers. If any proof were necessary for the truth that not belonging to a definite artistic sect is no impediment at all to manifestations of personal talent, then I would cite first and foremost the names of Gnesin, whose lyrical songs are imbued at times with great depth of feeling, sometimes rather intense and morbid; Shteynberg20 (his early symphonic and chamber works bear witness to the influences of Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, but his new pieces, such as the ballet Metamorfoz¨ı (‘Metamorphoses’) and the music to the Princesse Maleine, are significantly more independent, very vivid and fresh besides being superbly orchestrated); Myaskovsky, composer of an interesting symphonic poem Alastor, three symphonies, and a series of songs, 16 17 18 19 20

Khvoshchinsky. I have been unable to find any information. Better known outside Russia as Isay Dobroven (1891–1953). He emigrated in 1923 and made a name as a conductor. Leonid Sabaneyev (1881–1968) is known abroad, where he lived from 1926, for his monographs on Skryabin and Taneyev and his essays. The Kreyn brothers were Grigory (1879–1955) and Alexander (1883–1951). In their earlier years they were identified as composers who drew on their Jewish heritage. Maksimilian Shteynberg (1883–1946) preserved the heritage of his teacher, RimskyKorsakov, at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. He taught Shostakovich.

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New stylistic directions the latest of which are extremely curious in respect of harmony; Senilov,21 the composer of two operas (Yegory Khrabr¨ıy (‘Yegory the Bold’) and Vas’ka Buslayev), of many symphonic poems (The Wild Geese, Mts¨ıri, The Scyths, etc.), in which one can detect the influence of Strauss, and of a very significant number of vocal items, amongst which one can find many of character (Kalechina-M’lechina and The Red Horseman); Yuliya Veysberg22 (married name Rimskaya-Korsakova, the author of a symphony, a scherzo, a fantasia, the symphonic poem At Night for orchestra, and a series of vocal works many of which, for instance, the Chinese Songs, are pervaded by great sincerity of poetic feeling, testifying simultaneously also to the composer’s excellent harmonic inventiveness); Stanchinsky,23 whose early death, alas, prevented his exceptional creative gift from developing fully (his piano Eskiz¨ı (‘Sketches’) are remarkably talented and creatively individual). Not all of these composers are in the vanguard of innovation. There have been and will be no quarrels about the sonorous languors of the always Romantically inclined Gnesin, about Myaskovsky’s moderately spicy harmonies, which owe something to Tchaikovsky, or about the works of Senilov which are often somewhat cold and not free of artificiality. You simply get used to the comparative novelty of these composers. And that is to the good. By getting used to comparative novelty, the broad public’s approach to the chief representatives of Russian musical innovation (of which I wrote above) becomes easier. In conclusion it remains only to mention the name of the Muscovite Roslavets,24 who has only just embarked on the career of a composer. His published works (a string quartet, a quintet for oboe, two violas, cello and harp, a violin sonata, and songs) testify that this composer lays claim to the position of the most radical of our innovators. The influences of Schoenberg and the new Frenchmen are as yet the predominant ones in Roslavets’ compositions. To all appearances, he is a gifted person, but what the true dimensions of his talent are and how the process of its shaping and individualizing will go – these are questions for the future, to which it is difficult to give any very definite answer now. 21 22 23 24

V. A. Senilov (1875–1918) studied with Riemann and Rimsky-Korsakov. Programme music and songs take a large share of his compositions. Yu. L. Veysberg (1879/80–1942): pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Reger. A. V. Stanchinsky (1888–1914). Most of his output, of piano pieces and songs, was composed between 1911 and 1914. N. A. Roslavets (1880/81–1944) was a pioneer of atonal composition in Russia. His works of the 1910s and 1920s have been revived as examples of the Russian ‘avant-garde’ of that time.

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EPILOGUE

Igor Glebov: Pathways into the future. Melos, book 2 (Petrograd, 1918), pp. 50–96 The author of this article, whose real name was Boris Vladimirovich Asaf’yev (1884–1949), studied at the University and the Conservatoire in St Petersburg. He later became the most influential figure in Soviet musicology as historian and theorist.

Since Russian music officially joined the musical currents of Western Europe, it has developed at a slant derived from the constant pressure of (mainly) German music. It has been fed and watered by it and, what is more, to such a strong degree that the views, tastes and impulses towards creativity and, ultimately, the actual methods and structures taking root in Russian musical consciousness – ones essentially alien to it – have been accepted by us as something fit and proper beyond dispute or challenge, the one and only correct and immutable ones. Something introduced through education turned, by the force of its historical influence, into dogma, into a would-be logical scheme of compositional technique, that is, inevitably resulting from a priori laws and from the nature of musical thought. The customary began to be regarded as organic, and, through preconceived formulas, began to winnow out everything that was alive, irrepressible, and unwilling to be subordinated to rational theories. Wagner himself was accepted with caution, after a delay, with restrictions, and it took propaganda from figures on the periphery of the musical world for present-day German and French composers to break through. Everything that helped Glinka to stand on his own feet and create compositions of astounding skill entered the catechism of belief of the Russian composers who were his heirs, with the addition of the achievements (harmonic, colouristic and formal) of Liszt, Schumann, Chopin and Berlioz. Italian and French influences found reflection most in the work of Tchaikovsky, but in a strongly reshaped form, and made themselves felt hardly at all on other Russian composers. Even Berlioz exerted an influence exclusively through his instrumentation, while the work of the 234

Epilogue Polish Frenchman Chopin was received nonetheless more on the surface (in harmonic colour and through the emergence of myriad Chopinized piano pieces) than in its inner essence, which is not so easily grasped and which it is unthinkable to systematize. The many-sided legacy of Liszt was also grasped just as superficially. To be sure, elements of harmonic texture and the linking-together of the whole by means of harmonic synthesis – such as can be observed on occasion in Rimsky-Korsakov – were in part inspired by Liszt’s influence. On occasion only – because most of the time there remains a simple succession of third-relationships, so tedious even in Liszt, but whose limpness is aggravated by the absence of Liszt’s poetic quality and the inability to find a contemporary synthesizing outcome. It is pertinent to note that with Balakirev, the leader of the old-Russian musical school, the cult of Chopin, Liszt and to a degree Schumann degenerated quickly into an imitative, lifeless, rational style, and within the miserable existence of this epigonal branch using Balakirev’s precepts there has even arisen a distinctive academicism which steadfastly rejects all contemporary music, its methods and forms. Lyapunov alone represents this fading current, it is true, for the young people (even the puny ones who clung to Balakirev in the last years of his life) extricated themselves from it and dispersed at the right moment. It was the will of fate that only the Muscovite Skryabin developed on foundations laid by the work of Chopin, Liszt and partly Wagner, interpreting them in a way completely at odds with the precepts of the kuchkist¨ı and the ‘Belyayevites’, and on a new level of musical consciousness alien to the latter which might be called cosmic. But more of this later. I wish for the moment only to indicate that, whether as a result of these youthful inspirations (thanks to the fascination with Glinka), or as a result of a striving to submit to the element that was most organized, Russian composers are essentially disciples of German classical music, guided by principles of part-writing which correspond most closely to Mozart’s, and, as regards structure, exploiting chiefly Beethoven’s architectonics along with its basic shortcoming – the incessant reduction of any melodic or harmonic fabric to tonic–dominant foundations. The exceptions are few, and are evident in only two orientations: the influence of the ‘squareness’ of Liszt’s compositions, particularly the programmatic ones, and the entirely opposite influence of the true, lively essence of Mozart and Bach. The latter made itself felt only in Taneyev, whose chamber compositions (the quartets especially) represent a genuine organically interpreted inheritance, if not a development, of that almost extinct current in European music which was suppressed by the genius of Beethoven, whose powerful personality was able to hypnotize a number of generations in almost all countries of Europe. 235

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 [The evolution of music in the work of composers including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner is discussed.] I move on now to analyze those fundamental living currents in Russian music which may in the future take the form of a broad, deep river – that is, if Russian music is fated to have a future. I insist on this ‘if’ with sadness, because however much you love it, prize it or believe in the flowering of Russian music, historical conditions tell us the opposite. First and foremost, even now, we cannot say anything about the national essence of our music. I am not speaking about any nationalistic superiority, or patriotic preference, but only about its essence or character: art is an organism, among the arts music is the most lively and real, and every organism has a face, a countenance, an image and character. Where is the face of our music? What does it consist of? Where are the synthesizing forms we have created? In order to speak about Russian music’s pathways into the future, it was essential to say something about the essence of German music. The metropolis is there. We can examine the history of our music only in conjunction with West European and primarily with German music. We are provincials. Our greatest pride – Tchaikovsky – is a full member of the family of great musicians of mankind, or more accurately of Europe, the only one not to have yielded to Western symphonism but to have overcome it. Skryabin relied more on Chopin and Liszt than on Russian composers. Every impulse, every current in the West is immediately transferred to us, is intertwined mechanically and finds acceptance. In Russia traditions quickly turn into inert schemes. But the most important thing, and this is not to conceal anything, is that Russian music is the music of the intelligentsia, that is, of an insignificant group of Russian Europeans who dream about a settled spiritual culture in a land of wandering thoughts and profoundly utilitarian feelings and emotions. Our art music is not national (narodna). Until the most recent times, we approached the remnants of folksong now with one yardstick, now with another, but we have no right to say which of them more faithfully conveys the spirit and features of folksong because until lately we could not sense or touch its true face. And I do not think that any democratization can aid this cause, until the nation begins to live and starts creating cultural values itself. Then, perhaps, it will find something for itself even in Glinka or Musorgsky, particularly the latter: the tears he sheds are Russian! Thus, when one has to define the true nature of Russian music, it can be done only with reservations and, moreover, significant ones: firstly, it can be grasped only by flair, by instinct, in the midst of all those strata, thickets which flourished because methods and resources were used which reveal the psychological conditions of a creative spirit alien to us; secondly, it cannot be described as belonging to the whole nation because so far we know and love only the 236

Epilogue art of the Russian intelligentsia. Until very recently the Russian intelligentsia personified Russia spiritually. We all grew accustomed to this and built all our expectations, even our philosophical, messianic ones, relying on the intelligentsia’s future creativity to which we thought the nation would come. But the nation can come and say something which we do not understand at all, and everything that seemed Russian can prove no more than a dream, a reverie, induced by looking at Russia from a distant, rose-tinted perspective. This means that one can even imagine my reverie coming into being when two conditions are met: in the staunch sober consciousness that Russian music is a province in relation to Western metropoles and, perhaps, in the deceptive notion that the intelligentsia’s Russian musical art is indeed a true mirror of national creativity where the genuine spirit of the nation, rather than a stylized folk current, is reflected. Being a Russian intelligent, I want to delude myself with such a bright hope. Moreover, the nation is as yet still keeping silent.1 During the brief existence of our music, nevertheless, one can detect the presence of those same elements which animated West European music too, that is, strictly speaking, the fundamental element: a sense of a vital fluctuating impulse, intense and protracted, fixed in time, possibly by way of the creation of abstractly spatial constructions or poetic ideas defined by landmarks. It flows in the direction of song, melodic and harmonic cell (intonatsiya) and instrumental metre, which are woven together. But here is the basic distinction. Whereas in the West archaic folksong in its pure form disappeared long ago, and we, apparently, have preserved specimens of ancient song style almost until the present day, and since there was no instrumental music at all in Russia and we took it from the West, and consequently along with it took the forms (periodic, dance and metrical) in which it developed, then a curious planting side by side of different crops resulted: the yardstick of Western harmony and standard tripartite schemes began to be applied to Russian song and, on the other hand, our flat, horizontal melodies have been inserted into typically European ‘vertical’ schemes. The result was the dilettante Russian style, most beloved of all our composers, from which we have not escaped entirely even today, which was cultivated magnificently by both Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov and is nowadays being introduced even into church music by Grechaninov. In this style, the symphonism of Russian folksong has worn out and been almost lost, and it is valuable precisely because it has something won permanently as a result of its formation through the age-long compression of various creative layers – that is, uninterrupted melodic fluidity, the element of song (melos in Greek) which created effective tension and thus observed the continuity of musical 1

Quotation from Pushkin’s Boris Godunov.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 consciousness; Western song, on the other hand, had long before fallen under the influence of dance metre, tonic–dominant relationships and the pale succession of major and minor. Russian symphonies appeared in which ‘stumps’ of Russian songs took shape mechanically (Balakirev’s First Symphony is especially typical); Russian operas were created where, in the guise of the popular print illustration (lubok)2 and stylization, songs of the most varied styles and eras were mixed together and subjected to Haydnesque and Beethovenian methods of development and harmonization: but for the ingenuous lyricism of RimskyKorsakov in places and his gift for colour, his ‘folk-tale operas’, completely lacking folk-tale magic and the element of romantic obsession, would quickly have faded. But it worked the other way round too: the element of melos infected the pale schemes with its vital impulse and created seductive mirages of genuine folk art (Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kitezh, Borodin’s Prince Igor3 and Lyadov’s Kikimora). There are only two composers who cannot be reproved for adopting a false approach to folksong: Tchaikovsky and Musorgsky. The first is steeped in the element of Ukrainian song and is, therefore, for most of the time right in his arrangements, for Ukrainian song coupled with Polish elements is entirely Europeanized and tolerated common European metricization and harmonization. For the rest, Tchaikovsky is so subjectively specific, and so subordinates every style to his own emotional intensity, that he becomes, like Turgenev, a truly national Russian artist simply because of the personal, profoundly individual temper of the Russian intelligent, irrespective of his relationship to folk art. Musorgsky too hardly ever used songs as themes, but by his keen feeling for psychology grasped as no one else could, the profundity of soul in Russians of all social strata, and in those places where he did not lapse into folk tendencies and romantic pathos created astounding models of the folksong melos. By means of psychological recitative, Musorgsky arrived, in the end, at the most tense song lyricism, at the lyrical and symphonic ecstasy of Marfa in Khovanshchina. She is possibly the only genuine non-literary, operatic type: Marfa is inconceivable apart from music, apart from song she has no life! One of the reasons for Tchaikovsky’s charm is concealed in his lyrical (melodic) intensity, but, of course, this is a song quality of deeply subjective cast, and not an imitation of the folk element. Did Rimsky-Korsakov possess this gift? No, because he lacked any instinct for continuous development: he 2 3

For lubok, see Chapter 2, n. 24. Author’s note: The marvellous peasant chorus in the final act of Igor is the finest creative embodiment of the folksong element in opera.

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Epilogue framed and juxtaposed his sweetly crystalline instrumental tunes in a sweet way, but he did not sing them. Therefore, when you wish to dream about the future direction of singing quality generally, no paths lead on from RimskyKorsakov. Nor is it obvious that they lead on from Glazunov. It is characteristic that M. Shteynberg,4 the typical alumnus and most prominent heir of the ‘symphonic’ opinions of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, is simply not able to get out of the rut of rational developments and rearrangements of material, adroitly welded and jointed together, but not harbouring even a shadow of symphonic effectiveness and therefore perceived as psychologically indifferent. As regards this singing quality, the horizontal aspect of the musical element, two paths have opened up: from Tchaikovsky and Musorgsky, with a predominance of lyricism of varied intensity; there is a lyricism of heightened feminine sentimentality, that is in essence a lyricism of disturbed will (that which sounds like a dramatic quality in Tchaikovsky’s work), and there is a lyricism of austere masculine endurance, imperious, haughty, forcing its way in but in essence a lyricism of despairing will (that which sounds like a tragic quality in Musorgsky). But the pathway from Tchaikovsky is a dual one: a lyrical melos in the vocal sphere (Eugene Onegin is of course a specimen of this so far unsurpassed by anyone in unity of conception, musical completeness, accuracy and consistency in the characterizations as well as in the power to transform literary types into operatic ones), and a dramatic melos (i.e. the highest degree of lyrical intensity) in the instrumental sphere. Even in the vocal sphere, however, with Tchaikovsky there is an example of an operatic role which is equally unsurpassed by anyone in all its genuine tragedy, awful in its common human simplicity. This is, of course, Herman in The Queen of Spades. In the instrumental sphere, Tchaikovsky moved up the degrees of excruciating intensity in an uninterrupted ascent (I refer, of course, to the symphony) from thoughtful, benumbed contemplation in a kind of rhythmic lulling (in the first movement of the First Symphony), by way of a tendency to compression, to a kind of d´enouement (in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony), to the ecstatic prefiguring of death (in the first movement of the Sixth Symphony). I think there is some truth in the hypothesis that the process of dying is agonizing in its feeling of prolonged evaporation, draining and exudation of all the energy from the body, and that it thus has a prototype, but an infinitely paler one, in the process of artistic creation or the birth of a child. How terrible if it was given to Tchaikovsky to touch on this moment 4

Shteynberg: see Chapter 6, n. 20.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 in his work (strong enough in The Queen of Spades, but almost palpable in the Sixth Symphony, and especially in the most passionately intense pedal point in the first movement: at Largamente [bar 285ff.], before the return of the second subject)! All paths end at this point, for Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is the sole genuine symphony after Beethoven and the sole symphony of the Russian intelligentsia. There can be no further psychological evolution in that direction. Here the historic path may be moved to a different plane, and with it the path of creative consciousness, but nothing can be achieved by proceeding along that path: Tchaikovsky had no choice but to die – if not physically, then creatively – after his contact with the ultimate boundary (accessible to our intuition) of perception of the superhuman. But here is what is amazing: Skryabin, to whom the same experiences were apparently known as were known to Tchaikovsky (I use the term ‘experiences’ not in the internal, emotional sense but to denote mental processes deeply sensed by a keenly feeling personality), that is, the same perturbations of the soul and its screams of pain (it is not without reason that there is a parallel to the music of Tchaikovsky as regards rhythmic, dynamic and thematic linearity in the most symphonic moments of Skryabin’s music) – this nervous, fragile Skryabin found within himself the strength to move forward to illumination. It is interesting that his symphonic intensity weakens along the path towards the spectral, and that the extremity of his creative audacities – Prometheus – is a static composition without development or fluency. The new sonority, the heightened harmonic sphere, initially led to error and created an illusion of movement. But there is almost no movement. Only the piano part hints at impulses of the will, but everything else round about resounds in the immobility of a swirling fog. This is harmonic counterpoint where the shifting voices exchange places peaceably without joining battle but by interpenetrating each other. There is very much more intensity in the Poem of Ecstasy, but is that symphonism in evolution, i.e. as continuity of musical consciousness, or a succession of sounding moments sometimes more, sometimes less bewitched by a kind of stupefying hypnotic element contained in the themes themselves? It is more likely the latter, because, from comparing the succession of themes in the symphonies of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky with the themes in the Poem of Ecstasy, it emerges that while in the former they complement one another or form a contrast, nevertheless drawing the whole thing in a single surge towards the concluding concentration, the themes of the Poem of Ecstasy seem to be added to the given fabric from outside, produced and assembled somewhere or other and forming a chaotic matter which obstinately refuses to submit to synthesis, so that constant new surges of powers of inspiration are necessary to unite the 240

Epilogue series of impulses towards Ecstasy in a brief static moment of contemplation in the dazzling sonority of an instant of transformation. I would intensify the comparison thus: symphonism is conceivable as the carrying-out of a commandment: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it’, etc. [Genesis 1:28], but what moves the music of Ecstasy conceals within itself a reflection of some will from outside man (not immanent in the composer’s consciousness) unquestionably lying outside all corporeality. But it would be pointless to introduce the character of this will into the framework of ethical norms: music offers no answers to such questions! Whereas Tchaikovsky could not release himself his whole life long from the sphere of consciousness inherent in the ordinary human being, Skryabin apparently surmounted the barriers of human consciousness and often touched and grasped, now with horror (Ninth Sonata), now with enthusiasm (Ecstasy), or again in calm veneration (the Adagio of the [Piano] Concerto, many pieces for piano) the sphere of the superhuman, without sensing the corporeality and the terror of death associated with it. With Skryabin an element entirely unknown and appearing nowhere else entered Russian music. That is possession, but an improbably seductive one, as if it were a line running from heaven to hell. It is not a line parallel to earth, not the organic inspiration of genius and talent, but a period of religious zeal, or giddiness. Without doubt, Musorgsky belongs among the possessed, but he remained always within life, within the limits of our native psychological states. The same is true of Tchaikovsky. Skryabin does not draw us anywhere, does not call us, does not force us either to suffer or rejoice. He resides and, drawing on incredible power, forces the listener to transfer into the same kind of trance. And he has achieved these conditions very easily: he has somehow not noticed concrete life and not sensed that he is outside it or outside its immanent norms. And, abiding in religious zeal, he could go down to hell, touch the abominations of depravity and nevertheless remain in ‘ecstasy’, in a static sojourn, in blindness. Skryabin’s sphere of sound can most accurately be described as a poem-like quality, woven from desires to be lost in ecstasy (by means of narcotics – even if only of a spiritual order, of course) and from a sojourn in it. Skryabin has no will of his own, and therefore there is no symphonism, no continuity of musical consciousness, though there is all the same an impersonal, insane dissolution in the sphere which to him is concrete and ideal. The phenomenon of Skryabin is a historic wonder: can it really be possible to understand his whole biography in the midst of grey, tedious Russian ordinariness? Or is it only in conditions of such reality that aspirations to such themes as Skryabin raised up can be born? But what path leads on from them? A psychologically equivalent one is unthinkable: that is precisely 241

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 wherein the power of such natures as Tchaikovsky and Skryabin lies, that they are enclosed, unrepeatable and undevelopable, that their individuality does not even allow a school. No imitation can maintain the brilliance of the original. Rimsky-Korsakov can be imitated in his objective worldview, for personality is hardly entangled there, and its turbulence and wilfulness are not perceptible – but with Tchaikovsky this is unthinkable. It is the same with Skryabin, because his few followers who attempt to compose, taking his ideas as a basis, display only erudition and receptiveness. There is, however, one possibility: by experiencing, that is, perceiving psychologically, absorbing Skryabin’s sound world, in order to foster within oneself creative strength in symphonic effectiveness – in other words, to learn, taking Skryabin as a model, to surpass him as one develops within oneself, as a counterpoise to the instability of Skryabin’s forms a firm resilience, striving to move Skryabin’s harmonic timbres from indifference to the laws of formal construction – in a word, to put the whole system into a condition of immovable volitional striving, fixed in clear-cut plastic images. As regards the attempts at composition in the style of Skryabin just mentioned, that is, at imitating Skryabin – useful in taking further the technical development of the material he left – another way of mastering this material that is conceivable in principle would lead to a significant enrichment of both the psychological and acoustic sides of music. This tendency could be called the ‘making concrete’ of Skryabin’s ideas. [Miklashevsky’s symphonic poem Sisyphus is mentioned.5 ] I must dwell somewhat on the features of the concept ‘subjectivity of musical consciousness’, for rather unclear ideas are always linked with it and its opposite, ‘objectivity’. The music of Tchaikovsky, for instance, appears more subjective than that of Musorgsky, and the music of the latter more subjective than that of Rimsky-Korsakov, and Rimsky-Korsakov moreover is described as a cold observer to whom any kind of emotion is alien and who merely records sonorities or paints the phenomena of nature in music. Glazunov too is considered an objective composer on account of his supposedly amazing architectural musical constructions. Objectivity, it would seem, is where pure beauty reigns. One cannot fail to observe that underlying this definition of objectivity, with the corresponding classification of composers, is concealed essentially a conception of a kind of detachment, of pure power of observation, without the participation of any impulses emanating from the life of the soul (as if artistic creativity is conceivable as something purely mechanical). Is Glazunov, in actual fact, entirely lacking 5

Miklashevsky: there are two less than wholly convincing candidates: the St Petersburg pianist Aleksandr Mikhaylovich (1870–c. 1935), and the critic and musicologist with strong Ukrainian connections Iosif Mikhaylovich (1882–1959).

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Epilogue in creative gift, is he a musician who merely piles up kaleidoscopes in sound, or does his objectivity signify a non-abstract attitude towards composition? I think that so-called subjectivity and objectivity are only different degrees of psychologism and, with regard to the content of musical consciousness, take shape as the course of a single creative process, but one where at times the personal state of soul (when the creative impulses are rooted in the egoism of the composer, in his mental states) is predominant, and at other times they are the reflection of perceptions introduced from outside, from the sphere of the super-human world. For the extreme degree of subjectivity, the striving to accept any creative impulse as a given of one’s own, that is, a personal mental state, is typical, and therefore the music of a person of such an intensity of personal life of the soul as Tchaikovsky, for example, carries a sharp imprint of his specific egoism absolutely everywhere his creative consciousness reached. And it is worthy of note that where the composer has realized his personifications within the framework of a programme introduced from outside, everything is powerful that is akin to his personality, and in the symphonies this is especially prominent: his symphony of greatest genius is the one where the element inserting a tragic discord was not adopted from outside (Fatum, fate, destiny, as in the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies) but was provided in the depths of the composer’s own soul, unbalanced, unquenched in its quests and aspirations. And where Tchaikovsky dealt with states of soul alien to him without changing them fully into ones of his own, possibly even trying to contrast them with himself (for example, in the finale of the Fourth Symphony, the role of Onegin, a great deal in the songs), he, if his skill did not rescue him (the finale of the Second Symphony), did appreciable violence to himself and was not in a state to achieve a powerful exertion of his creative will in such cases. The success of the finale of the Second Symphony can also be explained by the fact that the distinctive, intimate, gentle, feminine and romantically sensual character of Polish–Ukrainian lyricism was profoundly akin to Tchaikovsky’s soul and therefore, when he cloaked his music in its colouring, he sensed a firm external buttress (not of course in an ethnographical sense) and was able to create wonderful episodes and descriptions essentially foreign to his nature. The Slippers is full of this tendency and all its freshness is due precisely to this distinctive kinship of spirit, even though nothing could have been more alien to Tchaikovsky than this subject or indeed Gogol’ in general. But meantime how typically national (naroden) are the chorus ‘K nam milosti prosim’ (‘We bid you welcome’), the duet of Oksana and Solokha, the beginning of the opera, Oksana’s monologue, etc. To complete my thoughts about Tchaikovsky, I wish to point out that the pathway leading from him into the future must be seen not in his epigones, 243

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 of whom Arensky is the most prominent, but in places where there is not a single particle of external imitation or even similarity of creative natures. Generally speaking, one can only wish whole-heartedly that Russian music would inscribe in its chronicle several more names similar to Tchaikovsky in the degree of their exertion of the creative impulse both in profundity and continuity of immersion in the genuine element of music. But one does not wish to await the rebirth of that emotional quality which is valuable in him, but pitiful among his followers. For that reason the pathway from Tchaikovsky lies in surmounting the infectious element – a personal peculiarity of his own – and deepening and strengthening the element of subjectivity as a whole. In this respect I must point out the sole contemporary composer who does not run the risk of becoming popular precisely because of his sinewy, prickly, acute subjectivity. The essence of his work (I refer to Myaskovsky) lies in revealing himself alone, his personal mental processes alone, his own states alone. The old injunction to ‘know thyself’, interpreted not with regard to rational analysis but as a synthesis of creative thought, has never yet been able to be experienced in music with such intensity, such excruciating ruthlessness as in the symphonic tension of Myaskovsky. One cannot even detect any will in it. On the contrary, it seems to me that will is almost absent from the conceptions of this composer who perceives his inner world by divining his own riddle contained within himself. The will is possibly even opposed to the desire to create. At any rate, the power of thought in the symphonies and sonatas of Myaskovsky is astounding, as it concentrates all these tough, unpolished, sharp, explosive but not complaisant elements in continuous movement towards completing the cycle. This movement is not fleeting: it resembles neither a stream rushing down from high mountain peaks, fed by the sun and nursed by ice and snow, a stream which turns into a stormy river carried nervily into the valleys which it refreshes (an image of this kind brings to mind the powerful work of Sergey Prokofiev), nor an unrestricted ocean, nor yet a broad-streamed Russian river of the plains calmly contemplating itself in its slow current and reflecting the world around (Rachmaninoff and Kastal’sky). The music of Myaskovsky evokes an image of a traveller. His creative thought draws his musical consciousness tensely through profound tortuous ravines, staring keenly and trying to get a grip, now lapsing into tired, gloomy contemplation, now into nervous impetuosity. In his extreme detached subjectivity, Myaskovsky does not wish to know the world but at times yearns painfully for it. If at some time he enters it, he is happy only briefly and tries as quickly as possible to don the mask of an indifferent sceptic, so that no one will notice his twisted smile. On analysis, the musical world of this major composer discloses a great deal that is out of the 244

Epilogue ordinary. As an undisputed symphonist who nourishes a belief in the stability and versatility of those forms in which symphonies are usually written, he puts this belief to the test stubbornly and insistently, for he is constantly striving not to distribute his constructions within defined schemes but to comprehend form as a synthesis, as something intended to hold in check within its limits the pressure of an irrepressible element which sometimes bends and twists these limits, and sometimes submissively gives in to them. These attempts are sometimes futile, for sonata form is not flexible and will not withstand individual violations: it spreads itself, dissipates itself, or tempts by the possibilities of rational constructions, and then longueurs, hollow expanses and so on occur. Dogged in its naive symmetricality, it allows no place for synthetic deductions, replacing them with repetition and return to the basic key, whereas true symphonism demands continuity, each given moment of which, being derived from the preceding one, can never be only a copy of the foregoing one, just as it cannot be uncoupled from it. Sonata form stifles free musical speech. Therefore the psychological, extremely subjective foundation of Myaskovsky’s art, embodied in concrete forms, implements symphonism, that is, continuity of musical consciousness, not in the completeness of the whole but in the constant coupling of elements on the basis of the always purely musical nature of the thinking, though not as in the great, shrewd psychologist Musorgsky where the link is brought about externally by given impulses and is therefore often interrupted musically. Is it not this which provided the grounds for vandalistic attempts to ‘purge’ his inspired intuitive achievements for the sake of academically irreproachable part-writing? As regards integrity, Myaskovsky at times becomes rational and, instead of demonstrating the versatility of sonata form, himself submits to its schemes and reduces development to mere workingout (devices of the official classical exposition, the sustained repetition of the basic key not balanced by corresponding centrifugal flows into other tonal spheres, and intentional schematicism in the actual permutation of the succession of themes). Myaskovsky’s rhythm is tortuous and cunning, but complicated by uncommon richness and viscosity of harmonic content, which strongly slows down and dulls the character of movement. But movement is always present, and Myaskovsky’s harmonic interwoven ornament and melodic linearity become known (are perceived) only in conditions of music of long duration, and are almost impossible to break down into static individual elements. That is how I see the work of the most prominent representative of the element of extreme subjectivity in contemporary Russian music, and only in this way can one develop Tchaikovsky’s precepts without running the risk of becoming a slave of one’s emotions. 245

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 Rimsky-Korsakov is the opposite pole to Tchaikovsky. He is the inculcator and educator of the cult of static sonority where formulas take the place of living fabric and where music is thought of exclusively as if confined to two dimensions. As a result, a false horizontal quality comes into being: depersonalized, stiff part-writing considered not in living motion but from blueprints fixed once for all; harmonic counterpoint where the parts are not so much in motion as swap places with one another; the periodization of form; the mechanical permutation of tonal constructions; independent existence of metre, when it turns from being a factor determining rhythmic tension into an aim of construction and so on and so forth. In short – everything which representatives of the ‘Belyayevite’ persuasion elevated so helplessly into dogmas, and from which they make so much effort to escape, but into which its most talented champions at times only sink deeper. The outermost limit of this school of ‘objectivists’ is reached in the compositions of Glazunov which are so perfectly orthodox that one may even question whether the source of this outlook on the world of sound is indeed creativity. Objectivism of this kind almost borders on psychological indifference: how can one fail to understand how equable, flaccid and lacking in impulse are the personal soul-states of the composer that, becoming immanent in his musical consciousness, they are not made concrete in the living tension of mastering the sound material; or the attitude of the composer to the superhuman world is so impassive and phlegmatically calm (harmoniously) that, in being realized in a creative synthesis, the reflection of this world is not disturbed by any agitation of the soul apprehending it? Extremes come together: the steep slope of subjectivity gives rise to the same insensitivity to interpreting other people’s life of the soul and the extra-personal life in general, as to exaggerations of objectivity. But in the first case this arises from the tendency to subordinate everything to one’s personal life of the soul, to regard everything as proceeding from egoism, from one’s own feelings and to liken everything to one’s own mental states (this psychological ‘colour-blindness’ is inherent in Tchaikovsky and manifested itself particularly unpleasantly in his operas). In the second case the insensitivity is provoked by the habit of not noticing the tension in another person’s life of the soul, and not perceiving the quality of being alive which is in the world as a whole. From there arises a perception of the cosmos as static, which schematizes everything on one plane and accepts even the spiritual quality itself (the upsurge of life) at the stage of motionless concentration. Composers with this cast of creative thought are usually inclined to make music geometrical. With them, form appears not in the shape of a tightly stretched bow where simultaneously, in a single essence, in a perceptible living synthesis, our mind observes the primary strivings of the material being overcome by the personalized organizing force of energy, apparently 246

Epilogue only potentially expended, though in actual fact uninterruptedly expended – though in the shape of a stiff, architecture-like edifice. From this, too, stems the substitution of working-out for living development, and the single organism is understood as a composed plurality of elements. If there were nothing of Glazunov but his symphonies, his sound-world would be absolutely alien to Russian (or, to be more accurate, to the common Slavonic) musical nature, so little fluidity is poured into their musical element. But there is one important composition of his – the Second Sonata for piano – where Glazunov’s music unexpectedly, while continuing to exist beyond all the temptations of emotionality, compels one to be convinced of the presence of creative, psychological underlying causes in his composition, though smothered by limpness of will, apathy and indifference of thought, preferring rather to construct and combine on the basis of habitual academic schemes, that is, to betray their own rational nature, rather than live in an intense organic coming into being, in a perpetual effort to give birth. The redeeming beauty of Glazunov’s music lies in the noble ‘portly’ balance of his lyricism, which is sincere and of crystalline transparency.6 What is more, this integrity, this chastity, is natural, and has not been won by spiritual struggle, and therefore contains no tension. It is not a deep lake, and it does not offer those astounding insights into an ideal world, that depth and innocence, that is, such spheres as Musorgsky touched on occasion, at the expense of incredible spiritual torment and struggles of the will but, alas, only for brief moments. But who knows? Perhaps in his coldness Glazunov holds the potential for a future genuine Russian symphonism? To that strong will, which will some day be capable of setting in motion, igniting and stirring up the legacy which as Borodin’s heir Glazunov bequeaths, and interpret the material developed by them as an environment of sound, as a buttress for development – to that will, maybe, will be revealed the path to inexhaustible possibilities. But it is hard to believe in this just now: the cold water of Glazunov’s lake is probably cold not with the coldness of spring water, for there is no one who could profitably drink from it round about. Mal¨ıshevsky,7 Shteynberg, Khvoshchinsky8 and the other symphonists of Glazunov’s type, hardly a single one of whose symphonies has been accepted in the real world with several even rejected forever, give no grounds for rosy hopes for the subsequent cultivation of Glazunov’s dogmas. And that will continue to be the case until 6

7 8

Author’s note: I remind you that I conceive the element of music as lyrical in nature, and think that such concepts as lyrical music, dramatic music and tragic music are only degrees of intensity within a single element. For Glazunov, therefore, the lyrical quality as the fundamental, natural condition is extremely indicative. Mal¨ıshevsky/Witold Maliszewski (1873–1939): Polish composer who studied at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. Khvoshchinsky. See Chapter 6, n. 16.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 a second reaction occurs, since Glazunov relates to the revolutionary quests of the ‘Belyayevites and the Balakirevites’ as the crowning, delaying stage. Then ‘Glazunovism’ may be revived, but only in another guise. It is typical that Stravinsky, sprinkled with living dew, touched upon ‘Glazunovism’ only very slightly in the finale of his only symphony and recoiled from that current forever, instinctively sensing there inertness, stagnation and impermeability to warmth and light. My opinions about the degrees of musical psychologism gave me the chance to elucidate the character of the work of our distinguished contemporary Myaskovsky, but diverted me from my primary task of projecting the pathway leading on from Skryabin without considering his religious and philosophical ideology (the Skryabin Societies take sufficient trouble over it), but rather in the sphere of his musical nature. [Miklashevsky’s Sisyphus is discussed again.] Naivety (‘squareness’) of construction is what everyone succeeding Skryabin has to overcome: one can expect that the inner tension will demand for its vivid concrete realization a more flexible and at the same time resilient sound environment than that of Skryabin, and one not so easily subjected to the effect of creative energy. Then the need for more complex and sinuous forms will be created. I shall explain my idea by an example. In Skryabin one may observe a falling-off in the degree of tension in the symphonism from the First and Second Symphonies to Prometheus and, on the contrary, in Tchaikovsky that tension rises and is concentrated in the Sixth Symphony with tremendous power. What is more, with Skryabin form does not become more complicated and intensified, whereas with Tchaikovsky it develops from looseness to compression and impetuosity; all of Skryabin’s dynamism can be reduced in the last resort to a period spent in a particular element, whereas with Tchaikovsky it is supremacy over it. This takes place because of the growth in psychological influence in both the former and the latter composer, that is, as a result of what might be called the constriction of the life flow, but the results obtained are opposite because of the dissimilarity in volitional elements. Tchaikovsky, as I have already said, is inclined to assimilate any phenomenon as if he had experienced it himself, while Skryabin wanted to be and indeed became only a priest or a medium, adapting music as a means through which a magic element acting invisibly is embodied. Skryabin’s priesthood led him to passivity of will and instability of symphonism: continuity of musical consciousness is unthinkable where there is no tireless aspiration towards self-will (awareness of oneself as a centre) and where creativity is reduced to a ritual. Limiting himself by means of a closed circle of specific harmony, Skryabin concentrated on meditating on the incantatory element which had taken root in it and worried only 248

Epilogue about maintaining the strict sequence of the liturgical enactment, so that no inaccuracy creeping into the incantatory formulas should impede the manifestation of the mysterious power. The evident simplicity of Skryabin’s forms which synthesize his work proves a wise principle of artistic economy: not to break by rational constructions the power of direct, unrestricted influence of the magic of sound (usually in a series of jolts or by means of hypnotizing moments of stiffness, as something like numbness). What I called the poetic quality of Skryabin’s work is indeed contained within this distinctive objectivity of acceptance of a supra-personal inspiration: to become an individualist in order to become permeable to suggestion: so to refine the means of expression (that is, the sound matter itself, since the ultimate form is not yet the means) that there should be no obstacles (streams of inertia) to displaying the energy of extra-personal spirituality. And Skryabin has solved the problem brilliantly. At some particular point in his creative coming into being (for me it is the Third Symphony, the Divine Poem), he stops his personal subjective quests and passively gives himself up to the power of the magic influence, creating a material environment sufficiently versatile, as he is convinced, to be constantly firming-up into magic formulas. Skryabin’s creative path seems to me to resemble Lermontov’s long poem The Demon. I do not sense a sacred element in the power which courses through his work. But that is already a question of personal subjective interpretation. In any case, Skryabin’s flight towards the unknown and his distinctive objectivism undoubtedly seems more valuable for Russian music and more lifecreating than the cold, passionless objectivism sundered from life of RimskyKorsakov and Glazunov, reflecting the visible world and impermeable to the influence of either good or evil. That is why these composers so lovingly cherish formulas and think up forms that are congealed, and that equally alien to them is the flow of life interpreted as a personal element both as continuity of personal musical consciousness (Tchaikovsky) and as an element which is extra-personal, cosmic and hypnotizes personal consciousness (Skryabin). The concretization of Skryabin’s musical inheritance can even lead in the direction of turning poetic quality into symphonism, that is to the return to the dominance of the personal element asserting one’s own will far above anything else. The meaning of the flourishing creativity of the great composer Sergey Prokofiev is also contained in this assertion. Of course, he has no connection with Skryabin and is not derived from Skryabin. His youthful creative rapture is simply in full swing, and it is so distinctive that we cannot discern any direct predecessor. But that precious effective element undoubtedly reigns within him which palpitates in Russian music as early as A Life for the Tsar (and before then is predominant in Russian songs), was transmitted 249

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 through Tchaikovsky to Skryabin, Rachmaninoff, turned Stravinsky’s head, touched Borodin, intrigued Glazunov with reservations, was cautiously accepted by Rimsky-Korsakov (The Tsar’s Bride and The Golden Cockerel), and is perceptible even in Taneyev, who is universally acknowledged as an incorrigible academic. After all the explanations and definitions I have given (psychologism, creative intensity, symphonism, poetic quality), I shall allow myself to generalize all this in one concept: sound animated by an upsurge of life. And now, I consider that in the works of Prokofiev, as never before in Russian music, that living source common to many composers has found a channel where it can flow in a crystal-clear stream. One can say that in the creative work of this composer we find the ideal expression – a manifestation of present-day life. Remaining subjective, that is passing through personal consciousness but without turning every fact of life into a mood of his own, Prokofiev embraces in his synthesis both his thirst for healthy primordial savagery and the grimaces of horrible spectres – creations of an imagination inflamed to monstrousness, and the naivety of his grasp of nature and life, and the cruelty of mockery. Over everything hovers the heartless egoistic will, now slowing its impulse down in implacable contemplation, in remorseless peering into the depths, now striving rapidly towards the sun, freedom, warmth and joy. Without becoming like either the psychologistrealist Tchaikovsky (I understand musical realism as the projection outwards of subjectiveness, of egoism), or the psychologist-Romantic Musorgsky (I interpret musical Romanticism as a heightened subjective feeling, and not as reflecting consciousness of the phenomena of life) – Prokofiev builds his ideal world on the foundations given by the musical element, taking into consideration only the intuitive preconditions derived from personal inner motives and not from traditional schemes. For that reason form is always constructed by live experiment, somewhat in an improvisatory manner. In its motion it is strongly welded together, and false reproaches and accusations of illogicality in Prokofiev’s part-writing are provoked only by the taste of people uttering them for rational formulas bringing about common static norms for all vital individual conceptions. Amusing unruliness is not at all typical of Prokofiev’s music but rather creative tension of irrepressible power. In him alone we have the single true representative of the present day in whom we can sense life as creativity, and creativity as life: he knows that his mission is to reveal himself in a vital, creative impulse. He is spontaneous and brutal where he comes in contact with the animal element of human nature forcing its way through directly, with its blatant sensuality and unconscious surges towards the reviving and all-organizing element of the sun. He is concentrated in a heartfelt way where he strives to realize his impressions from current phenomena of the world, be they personal or extra-personal, 250

Epilogue which have affected his imagination; meek and mild when bowing before something dear to him, but naive when he experiments with imprinting the conflict of passions; he is touchingly romantic if telling of the severe element of nature or the charm of ancient legends; and irresistibly attractive in his appealing diary-like moods. He knows laughter – young and mischievous as well as spiteful and cold. He also knows the temptation of spells: then before us move in horrible half-darkness werewolves and masks – reflections of life in the mirror of a devil from Andersen’s The Snow Queen! But Prokofiev is a thoughtful musician at all times, and his musical conceptions are nowhere conditioned by the bidding of a programmatic or formal scheme. He remains true to himself both in opera and programmatic suite and songs: he gives freedom to a purely musical conception not adapted from outside in accordance with a rational plan but achieved from within, that is psychologically conditioned. Of the two directions which the element of music can take, diatonicism and chromaticism, the latter is alien to Prokofiev. That is indeed understandable. By way of diatonicism he is linked with the deep roots of Russian musical art – with folksong and its essence: firstly, with the effectiveness (the dramatic quality) of its lyricism based on the thorough-going impregnation of sound by psychologism and, secondly, by the ideal quality of its living contents, brought about by changes in the consciousness of the mass of the people over the course of centuries. Of course, this link is not intentionally of an ethnographical order. Besides, diatonicism profoundly matches Prokofiev’s very nature which is not inclined, on the one hand, to mystical contact with spheres inaccessible to the perception of a healthy balanced human personality, and on the other hand is always attracted to the bold, definite, clear expression of its own thoughts. This can be obtained only in the conditions of the diatonic realm, offering far greater scope for the embodiment of life’s concreteness than the specific framework of chromaticism, locking the composer, for all its illusions of freedom, in the vice-like grip of a harmonic prospect chosen once for all, or else confronting his imagination with faceless, colourless and characterless tonal indifference, with an amorphous, ‘invertebrate’, amodal haze. The boundlessness of chromaticism in conditions of tempered tuning is deceptive, illusory and futile! Prokofiev uses diatonicism in an original and broad way. Unlike the two masters of Russian diatonicism, Kastal’sky and Rachmaninoff, he, in accordance with the furious pace of his whole creative nature, moves the framework of scale, structure and mode apart, introducing a multiplicity of momentary chordal and tonal confrontations, astounding in their freshness, resourcefulness and logic. About Prokofiev’s creative power, one may say that it has no fear of used commonplaces: the most ordinary chords appear 251

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 miraculously in his music in an unexpected new light, in an unaccustomed connection. Dividing sounds into banal, trivial and tame, or original, tasty and uncommon – without considering their interrelations, in impotent immobility, in weak-willed ‘vertical’ petrification – must strike him as ridiculous. Taken in motion, given some scope, in flux, they are all alive, outstripping, catching up, clashing and ultimately confronting one another, being filled up with freely passing parts or by central non-harmony notes. This occurs when every voice or any single voice is regarded in its horizontal plane (independently of its coupling with other main voices) as a local tonal centre, alongside which are grouped some added notes or others related only to it. In the presence of such a complex modal scheme it is impossible to speak as yet about the poverty of means or the inexpressiveness of diatonicism. The deceptive impression obtained from purely rational scrutiny (the optical, visual perception of musical structure) – as if it were from outside the sound or discord – is not vindicated on hearing or by carrying out an attentive but unprejudiced analysis of the construction as a whole. In the last resort, the basic hints at rich possibilities included in this principle – that is that every voice conceals within itself a separate mode and therefore one must introduce added notes reckoning not with the chord in its immobile, separate, egoistic solitariness but with some movement of the part or other – are provided in Bach’s part-writing. That is precisely what happens in his very common and frequently encountered device of non-coincidence (non-simultaneity) of modulations in different voices when an impression of unity is nonetheless not disturbed, in spite of the acuteness of the instability. The pathway opening up before Prokofiev and leading on from him strikes me as uncommonly fruitful both as regards psychology, since it obviously introduces fresh nuances for expressing the life of the soul into the sphere of creative musical syntheses, and as regards purely sound constructions, since it immeasurably enriches the sphere of sound perceptions. I should particularly like to see the composer’s creative path develop in the direction of theatre (dramatic) music, since Russian opera is undoubtedly suffering harm as a result of the predominance in it of music which is static, descriptive and coldly objective. Even examining the character of Russian operatic style independently of libretti and plots, whose untheatrical, undramatic nature greatly facilitated the unsuccessful application of good music, one must confess that, apart from Musorgsky’s two operas, two operas by Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades (a crippled libretto), A Life for the Tsar and perhaps Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, the Russian stage does not know truly musical drama. Wagnerism in Russia is cultivated superficially, after the manner of a placard. Italian and French melodramatic tendencies with 252

Epilogue their running description of the dramatis personae stemming from outside the adventures in the plot (I know only one exception – Bizet’s Carmen, which palpitates with life rather than the author’s inflamed imagination) are foreign to us. And of course Tchaikovsky, having given models of astoundingly integral descriptions based on the unity of free-flowing musical speech typical of a given character, and understanding the mystery of developing a musical fabric without Rimsky-Korsakov’s leitmotivic labels, deserves close study and listening. Overcoming the acute subjectivity inherent in him, but applying the basic element of his operatic music (the continuous inner effectiveness) in the contemporary consciousness, would be a major and fruitful achievement. In order to be able to characterize, there is absolutely no need to reduce objectivity to indifference: dramatic integrity cannot be created from a variety of moments fitted into one another. It was Musorgsky who was able to comprehend so sensitively in his own way the world of someone else’s soul, in spite of the proverb, and moreover not to liken other people’s experiences of the soul to one’s own whilst retaining the subjectivity of one’s own perceptions. Evidently in this sensitivity lies the whole essence, and therefore Musorgsky’s operas, for all the lack of development of their strictly musical awareness, are wonderful, are models of the quality of drama in opera, even though they are vulgarized by an admixture of the stagey Romanticism of so-called grands op´eras, i.e. the inheritance of bombastic French Romanticism, in turn a faithful disciple of Romantic Classicism. Having once touched upon theatricality, I dare not pass Russian ballet by, which is unquestionably destined to develop from two examples which are intense and full of life in an effective way: Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (its first half) and Stravinsky’s Petrushka. The first is unsurpassed in its aweinspiringly transparent realism and the second in its concrete, lifelike idealism. The stylizers’ colouring which they wanted to fasten on to that sparkling composition and the attempts made on behalf of the adherents of the stylizers’ schemes of Rimsky-Korsakov and Bel’sky prove to be an unconvincing invention, if you listen to this cheerful music without being ensnared in tendentiousness. When Russian folk-tale opera takes the route of these two wonderful ballets and sweeps aside what has been foisted on it by the popular print illustration (lubok), which conceals the absence of the imagination, magic and naive Romanticism that are in the folk-tale; when Russian musicians understand and mature, having made a more thorough acquaintance with Russian folk-tales (skazki) and heroic ballads (b¨ılin¨ı), that the Tale of Tsar Saltan, Kashchey, Sadko, The Snowmaiden, etc. – irrespective of the good music heard in them – are not essentially folk-tales but soberminded narratives, since a folk-tale is alive, is psychological from top to bottom, whereas the popular print illustration is a wicked invention of the 253

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 intelligentsia, a calumny on the ‘dramatic quality’ of the folk-tale – at that point one may be able to speak about the imaginative quality of the Russian folk-tale in opera as a trustworthy fact. Even in The Golden Cockerel, everything folk-tale-like is put in brackets and not uttered in full, and everyday life titters impertinently. As regards the non-folk-tale operas of Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin’s pseudo-epic opera, their lyric static quality and the elevation of the element of everyday life into a target to be hit must also be completely overcome and rejected as indisputably anti-theatrical, non-operatic forms devoid of a true scheme of musical drama. I have in mind the works as wholes, of course, not individual first-rate moments (for example, the finale of Act II of Prince Igor, the invasion of the Tatars in Kitezh, Marfa’s delirium in The Tsar’s Bride, or the popular assembly scene in The Maid of Pskov). When speaking about the forms in which the musical element is embodied, it is unthinkable not to dwell on Russian art-song. In this area much loved by Russian composers, one important tendency which gives its basic content to the whole of the Russian song style can be identified clearly. That is lyricism (napevnost’), a song-like character (pesennost’), a distinctive emanation of lyrical intensity of an idealistic character present in folksong converted during the era of Russian dilettantism and subsequently separated into several significant currents and innumerable streams. This lyricism and intensity, combined with the sharply subjective lyricism of Tchaikovsky, showed a distinctive song realism in which was revealed an inexhaustible wealth of intonations from the life of the soul. The heir of Tchaikovsky in this unlimited sphere of possibilities is Rachmaninoff, a subjectivist and contemplative by nature and an idealist in the essence of his music. The symphonism of Rachmaninoff’s music indeed consists in its lyricism, its song-like character, its smoothness and rather in its quietness than in emotional ‘sensual’ or volitional outbursts reflected in the emotion of rhythm. Developed on the basis of an outlook on sound akin to Tchaikovsky’s and drawing in the sound material cultivated by him, Rachmaninoff nonetheless took a path which was profoundly different from Tchaikovsky’s psychological realism. The emotional quality of Rachmaninoff is pompous in a Romantic way and therefore not always natural, because it does not match the anxiety and tension of the life of the soul as it was present in Tchaikovsky. It is evoked by the forcibly bridled striving to end existence in a constant accustomed contemplative balance. But how people regard music is not something static, for it is not indifference but a quiet flame, a persistent peering at and listening into the world of the soul, which gives in a creative synthesis a continuous ideal coming into being, a reflection of images of the world in a lake which on the surface 254

Epilogue is calm. At times, though rarely, the composer expands his conceptions in a powerful surge and throws them into a seething maelstrom of opposing currents of sound, though in order to immerse himself anew in a state of very intensive listening. It is understood that Rachmaninoff will not create embodiments of any new, major forms, but on the other hand the majority of his songs are models of absolutely individual conceptions. The fascination of Rachmaninoff’s work lies in how he puts the diatonic perception of the musical element into practice in a special, distinctive way. Only Prokofiev, Kastal’sky and Musorgsky can be placed beside him in this respect. Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil is something like a spectrum combining in strict, austere grandeur and naive simplicity of religious feeling, rays of light radiating from all directions of his musical thought. But even outside that remarkable composition, one finds at every step – in harmonic structure, in melodic writing, in the contrapuntal podgoloski,9 in the typical winding of parts, in their melodic mutual influence – one discovers everywhere that the source of Rachmaninoff’s creative work lies in the world of Russian folksong. It is not for nothing that his creative work manifests itself in profound prayer: in contemplative idealistic sound, in continuous lyricism. If diatonicism rings incisively in Prokofiev, then in Rachmaninoff it sings and resonates at bell-like length at moments when spiritual forces unite with powerful joy in a religious upsurge. This may also be observed in Musorgsky, but with a different slant: in illuminating self-will, in the egoism of the personal or supra-personal element – that is, in revolt. Musorgsky is a sensitive psychologist, but not a ‘realist’. He is not satisfied with the reflection given in the continuity of musical consciousness of his own feelings. He experiences everything intensely – whether it be his own or someone else’s state of soul, he endures it within his own feeling (without making every phenomenon into a mental state of his own, like Tchaikovsky), he amplifies, joins and then expels it from himself in an agonizing exertion, deferring, though, not to the conception of the musical idea but to the bidding of musical speech. But then, like no one else, he fills words with his inner, effective musical content. In the Romantic tableaux of his songs, which reflect the variety of life in their vividly dramatic vocal concepts, the link between word and music is given for the first time, in an unprecedented synthesis as yet unsurpassed by anyone. These three substantial currents in the Russian art-song impregnated with a song-like character and psychologism (the conceptions are realistic, Romantic and idealistic) branch out into diverse streams containing a sustained series of degrees from extremes of emotionalism or naturalism 9

podgoloski: melodic variants used in the accompaniment of Russian folksong in folk practice.

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Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 (the gypsy element) to the boundary of idealism: art-song abstractions, that is vocal pieces formal in concept and execution, where imaginative creation ends.10 That is how I classify many art-songs by Medtner, Taneyev and Rimsky-Korsakov and such characterless objectivizations as the songs of Glazunov, Lyapunov, Vasilenko,11 etc., etc. The ways of converting and implementing the musical element in the creative consciousness of Russian composers cover a broad and deep expanse of free creativity, that is, they are based on belief in the organic distinctiveness of art outside the pressures of tendencies from otherwordly art. At least that is what the very recent past testifies. Whether this direction will hold its ground, or Russian musical consciousness will become deeper, or turn towards subservience to religious feebleness (theosophy) and social and materialist prejudices, adapting to life and desiring to adjust to their own aims something that was created by an impulse of life, the future will tell us, for the present ‘here and now’ does not allow us to make any assumptions. It is unthinkable to try to guess which element will triumph in a chaos where all roads are mixed up. Material life, in its striving to heal its wounds, will demand unprecedented sacrifices, especially in the sphere of art. In expectation of a better future, I shall conclude my essay with the names of two composers who are profoundly different in the nature of their work but united in a single aspiration to attain the summits of concrete idealism, based on living perception of the musical element. The essential dependence of Russian music on classical German music, whose disciple and foster-child she is, consists in cultivating obsolete formal schemes. Form has been imagined in a living continual synthesis only by a few Russian composers. Taneyev was one of them. He bequeathed to Russian music a wonderful realization of Western symmetrical schemes, reviving there the current of symphonism whose supreme representatives were Bach and Mozart. Taneyev’s symphonism was revealed in his single published symphony,12 but with particular clarity in his chamber music, and there with greatest tension and intensity in the quartets. It seems to me that, after Mozart, there is no composer who has so vitally, that is in continuous sounding, in the intensity of the thought being created, who has achieved all the depths of expressiveness, power and psychological flexibility in the quartet style, as if missing out Beethoven, i.e. the whole orchestral and piano character of his quartet compositions where 10 11 12

Author’s note: I.e. the creation of musical ideas and the combining of musical concepts begins, i.e. of pure sounds entirely without the life-giving effect of the flow of life. Sergey Nikiforovich Vasilenko (1872–1956): composer with a lifelong link to the Moscow Conservatoire. Taneyev’s Symphony in C minor, op. 12; originally published in Leipzig in 1901 as no. 1, it is the fourth symphony actually written by the composer.

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Epilogue Beethoven’s emotionalism overcomes entirely unsuitable material so awkwardly. After Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, it is only in the quartets of Taneyev that sonata-symphonic form is created in that way, in such a living synthesis. The whole ensemble is alive, nervous, aquiver; the wave of irresistible tension now rises, now subsides, and moreover all the achievements are given with an uncommon purity of style without any harmonic figurations, keyboard passages or the like. At every instant either a sound is given or else the one succeeding the previous aspiration, or one drawing it forward in an unstable surge towards completion or exhaustion. Only very rarely does the rationalist-theorist make himself felt in sounds objectively strung together. Everything coheres, everything grows, everything moves, and only the conventions of sonata form where they cannot be avoided compel one to be annoyed that in Taneyev the symphonist his mind was ashamed to submit itself to bold will and noble emotions. This can be felt particularly in Taneyev’s religious cantatas which captivate by their fiery idealism and intelligent grasp of the mysteries of the cosmos, but are smothered in their religious feeling by the deist temptation, which disappointingly neutralized all the powerful striving which arose from symphonism. I conclude my thoughts with an indication of the presence of a religious pathway in Russian music. We are at present experiencing a revival in composition for the church. The impetus for this was provided by Kastal’sky. He is our contemporary, though he is as yet unappreciated and, apart from the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow in performance by the Synodal Choir, no cult of his music has so far been created anywhere. But it unquestionably deserves that, for it is unique, original and unrepeatably out of the ordinary. In the essence of his music Kastal’sky is an idealist, realizing the living material of the sound of the folksong element in fluid forms. He thereby comes into contact with the best representatives of secular music, since, based on diatonicism, he shows in his compositions a perfectly unusual original approximation to Russian song. To be more exact, it is not an approximation, not an approach to it, but rather a community, a permeation by it, like a symphonic sound element continuously flowing through it. This is the first outcome, the primary intuitive insight into the recesses of folk creativity, rather than a stylizer’s artificial adaptations of it or (which is even worse) measuring it by an alien standard. In Kastal’sky we have, besides, the first undoubtedly national religious composer because he is the first to combine in an original individual interpretation the precepts of ancient Russian church chant with the element of folksong. He makes use of the melodies of the znamenn¨ıy chant, our national treasure, which acquired through being sung down the ages, one must suppose, a different, a Russian colouring (even if one supposes that the melodies themselves are unquestionably an 257

Russians on Russian music, 1880–1917 integral Greek original, which has not been subjected to the influences of Russian podgoloski practices), but develops them in an untried, unexplored direction, harmonizing them on the basis of innate features of the Russian choral song style. And Kastal’sky has a perfect command, entirely unknown among Russian composers before him, of choral ‘instrumentation’ (I use that concept which is very imprecise, but describes in part the diversity of possibilities opening up within the limits of the four basic divisions of the human voice). With this brief description, which by no means exhausts the nature of Kastal’sky’s music or its importance, I should like to give a mere indication of the great path of eternal value which opens up thanks to this composer’s work before Russian musical creativity – the path of religious art. And is not Russian music destined, on the foundations of a religious revival, to reveal a new blossoming of the element of melodic and harmonic cells derived from song? . . .

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INDEX

Absolute music 13 Acts of the Apostles 44 Alexander I, Russian emperor 33 Alexander II, Russian emperor 81 Alexander III, Russian emperor xii Alyab’yev, A. A. 144 Amvrosy of Optina 65 Andersen, H. C. 223, 251 The Snow Queen 251 Angela da Foligno 81 Antipov, K. A. 133, 138–41 Symphony 133 Arensky, A. S. 40, 138–42, 148, 181, 205 A Dream on the Volga 142 Marguerite Gauthier 139 String Quartet op. 11 138–41 Suite 133 Symphony no. 1 138 Artem’yeva-Leont’yevskaya, Z. N. 221 Asaf’yev, B. V. xii, xiv, 234 Auber, D.-F.-E. 27, 49 Bacchanalia 203 Bach, J. S. 43, 46, 49, 139, 165, 173, 186, 205, 227, 235–6, 252, 256 Balakirev, M. A. 14, 42, 43, 46, 50, 53, 129, 132, 133, 137, 138, 148, 161, 163, 184, 187, 235 Islamey 99 Musical picture: 1,000 years 96 First Russian Overture 96 Symphonic poem: Rus’ 96 Symphony no. 1 238 Symphony no. 2 129–30 Tamara 97, 130 Balakirev circle 162–3, 248 Balakirev school 230, 248 Bayreuth xiv Bayreuthomanes 140 Beethoven, L. van 16, 18, 22, 31, 39, 50, 74, 135, 141, 150, 159, 165, 176, 183, 186, 190, 227, 235–6, 238, 240, 256

Coriolan 135 Quartets 256 Ruins of Athens 118 Symphony no. 1 145 Symphony no. 2 145 Symphony no. 3 (Eroica) 22, 39, 145 Symphony no. 4 153 Symphony no. 5 31, 135 Symphony no. 6 155, 239 Symphony no. 7 31 Symphony no. 8 31 Symphony no. 9 80, 81, 82, 122 ‘Wellington’s Victory’ 22 Belaieff, M. P., music publisher 95, 132, 143, 144 (see also Belyayev) Bellini, V. 29, 49 I Puritani 29 La sonnambula 29 Bel’sky, V. I. 66, 85, 88, 253 Belyayev (Belaieff), M. P. xi, xii, 95, 132, 155, 162–3 Belyayev circle/Belyayevites 163–4, 235, 246, 248 Benois, A. N. 209 Berlioz, H. 10, 18, 53, 129, 234 L’Enfance du Christ 94 Harold en Italie 10 L´elio 10 Rom´eo et Juliette 10, 97 B¨ılin¨ı 253 Bizet, G. 253 Carmen 79, 253 Blaramberg, P. I. 133 Symphony 133 Blumenfeld brothers 163 Blumenfeld, Felix 101, 133, 138, 154, 163 Blumenfeld, Sigismund 163 Bol’shoy Theatre 18, 24, 178, 182, 184 Borodin, A. P. xiii, 25, 93, 95, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 150, 151, 152, 163, 185, 195, 214, 229, 230, 247, 250

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Index Borodin, A. P. (cont.) Contribution to the collective Paraphrases 94 In the Steppes of Central Asia 92–3, 94, 136 Mlada 25 Prince Igor xi, 25, 94, 100, 116, 122, 150, 238, 254 Peasant chorus 238 Polovtsian Dances 134 The Sleeping Princess 114 Songs 94, 104, 134 String quartet in A major 93–5 String quartets 104 Symphonies 93, 94, 104 First Symphony 93 Second Symphony 94, 102, 108, 110 Bortnyansky, D. S. 9, 193 Bossuet, J.-B. 81 Brahms, J. 149, 231 Butomo-Nazvanova, O. N. 221 Byron, Lord 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 33 Manfred 10, 11, 15 Byronism/Byronists 181, 185 Camilla Varano, Princess of Camerino 81 Catherine, Russian empress 33 Catherine of Siena 81 Catholic Church/Catholicism 4, 81, 84 Chaliapin, F. I. xiii, 179 Cherepnin, N. N. 148 Cherubini, L. 49 Chopin, F. 164–6, 177, 182, 199, 200, 225, 226, 234–5, 236 Prelude in C minor 177 Church of the Saviour ‘On the Spilled Blood’: see Parland, A. A. Circle of Lovers of Russian Music xii, 129 Classicist(s)/classicism 45, 181, 214, 253 Compositio 52 Cui, Ts. A. xii, xiv, 23, 132–8, 153, 163–4, 200 Dante Alighieri 14, 179, 180, 183 Purgatorio 45 Dargom¨ızhsky, A. S. 29, 30, 32, 54, 56, 76 The Stone Guest 49, 178, 179 Dav¨ıdov, K. Yu. 133, 134 Debussy, C. xiv, 162, 166, 185, 186, 214, 217, 225, 228, 229 Diaghilev, S. P. xii, xiii, xiv, 209 Directorate of the Imperial Theatres xii, 47 Dobroveyn, I. A. 232 Donizetti, G. 8, 32, 52 Lucia di Lammermoor 32 Dumas-p`ere, A. 28

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¨ Durer, Albrecht 192 Dyutsh, G. O. 163 Edition Russe de Musique xii, 206 Eighteenth century, music of the 44 Engel’, Yu. D. xii, 129, 170, 178, 200, 221, 222 Evenings of Contemporary Music xi, 221 F´eeries 212 Fet, A. A. 16 Fichte, J. G. 201 Field, J. 45 Findeyzen, N. F. xiv Free School of Music xi, 6, 42, 43 Galler, K. P. 30 Gartman, Viktor 130 Genesis, book of 241 Glazunov, A. K. xi, xii, 7, 100, 102, 124, 132, 133, 135–8, 142, 144, 163, 164, 167, 176, 182, 187, 188, 189, 190, 209, 232, 233, 239, 242–3, 246–8, 249, 250 Ballade 144 Ballets Bar¨ıshnya-krest’yanka (Les ruses d’amour) 144 Raymonda 144, 146 The Seasons 144 Ballet Suite 144 Suites from the ballets 144 Carnaval Overture 144, 150 Characteristic Suite 137, 144 Chopiniana 144 Fantasia op. 53 144 The Forest 137, 144 First Greek Overture 134, 137, 144 Second Greek Overture 137, 144 The Kremlin 144 Marches 144 ‘From the Middle Ages’ 144 Piano pieces 143 Piano Sonata no. 2 247 Po`eme lyrique 100, 144, 146 Quartets 143 Rapsodie orientale 144 Rˆeverie orientale 134, 144 Sc`ene de Ballet 144 The Sea 144, 150, 159 Serenades 144 Solemn Overture 144 Songs 256 Spring 144 Sten’ka Razin 137, 144 First String Quartet 137

Index Second String Quartet 136, 137 Symphonies 144, 247 Symphony no. 1 145–6 Symphony no. 2 137, 145, 151–2 Symphony no. 3 145, 150, 152–3 Symphony no. 4 150, 152, 189 Symphony no. 5 150, 153–4 Symphony no. 6 154–5, 156 Symphony no. 7 155–7 Triumphal Procession 144 Waltzes 144 ‘Glazunovism’ 248 Glebov: see Asaf’yev, B. V. Glinka, M. I. 2, 4, 21, 22, 24, 29, 30, 46, 50, 53, 54, 67, 102, 105, 112, 120, 124, 129, 133, 138, 160, 164, 168, 176, 181, 183, 184, 224, 234, 235, 236, 237 Jota aragonesa 92, 101, 134 Kamarinskaya 56, 144 Night in Madrid 101 Operas 24, 88, 161 A Life for the Tsar 4, 28, 52, 224, 249, 252 Ruslan and Lyudmila 47, 50, 102, 114, 115, 118–20, 123, 124 Overtures 144 Sacred music 4 Songs 28 Gluck, C. W. 23, 46 Gnesin, M. F. 221, 222, 223, 232, 233 Songs 232 Goethe, J. W. von 43, 48 ‘Gross ist die Diana der Epheser’ 44 Gogol, N. V. 16, 19, 141, 243 Gombert, N. 5 Gounod, C.-F. 30, 31 Grands op´eras 253 Grechaninov, A. T. 148, 168, 237 Praise the Lord 171 Greek tragedy 71 Gregorian chant 52 Gr´etry, A.-E.-M. 37, 49 Gurilyov, L. S. 27 Gutheil, A. 175 Hal´evy, F. 49 Handel, G. F. 43, 49, 53, 77, 139 Hanslick, E. 13, 40, 45, 52 ¨ Vom musikalisch-schonen 13, 54 Haydn, F. J. 46, 139, 238 Hegel, G. W. F. 18 Hugo, Victor 28, 48 Icon-painting 78, 82 Impressionist(s) 166, 185, 213, 214–15, 216, 218, 219, 228, 229, 230

Ippolitov-Ivanov, M. M. 168 Isaiah, the prophet 172 Ivan the Terrible, tsar 19 Ivanov, M. M. 23 Jesus Christ 78, 80, 201 Josquin des Prez 5 Jurgenson, P. 3, 139, 207, 209, 219 Kalinnikov, V. S. xiv, 148, 200 Symphony no. 1 145 Kanonarkh 196 Kapella xii, 1, 6, 9, 43, 138, 141, 162 Karamzin, N. M. 33 Karat¨ıgin, V. G. xii, xiv, 159, 213, 224, 227 Kashkin, N. D. xii, 168 Kastal’sky, A. D. xii, 195, 244, 251, 255, 257–8 Kerzins, A. M. and M. S. xii Khomyakov, A. S. 171–4 Khvoshchinsky 232, 247 Kliros 80, 195 Kolomiytsev, V. P. 130 Konyus, G. E. 205 (see also metrotectonicism) Korovin, K. A. 128 Koussevitzky, S. A. xi, xii, xiii, 205, 207, 213 (see also Edition Russe de Musique) Kremlin xii Cathedral of the Dormition xii, 196, 257 Kreyn brothers, A. A. and G. A. 232 Kruglikov, S. N. xii, 102–24 kuchkist¨ı 163, 164, 214, 235 (see also Mighty Handful, Balakirev circle) Kukol’nik, N. V. 24 Kuper, E. A. 130 Lacordaire, H. 81 Laroche, G. A. xii, xiv, 13, 40, 45, 138, 150, 168, 169, 181 Lasso, Orlando 5 Last Judgement 203 Lavrov, N. S. 101 Leitmotives 61, 62, 107, 201, 253 Lermontov, M. Yu. 97, 249 The Demon 249 Tamara 98 Liszt, F. 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 44, 46, 48, 49, 53, 101, 133, 145, 151, 164, 177, 226, 234–6 (see also Weimar School) Dante Symphony 10 Faust Symphony 48 Gran Mass 8 Mephisto Waltz 97, 226

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Index Liszt, F. (cont.) Rhapsodies 97, 99 The symphonic Liszt 129 Symphonic poems 48 Lod¨ızhensky, N. N. 163 Lomakin, G. A. 6, 8 Lubok: see popular print illustration Lyadov, A. K. xi, 97–9, 100, 132, 133, 148, 159–67, 185, 221, 226 Arabesques 161 Baba-Yaga 164, 167 Bagatelles 132–67 Ballade in the Olden Time 161 Biryul’ki (‘Spillikins’) 100, 161, 167 From the Book of Revelation 165 Cantata in memory of Antokol’sky (collective work) 167 Cantata/music for the concluding scene of Schiller’s The Bride of Messina 160, 161 18 Children’s Songs 161, 167 The Enchanted Lake 164, 167 Etudes 164 Kikimora 164, 167, 238 Mazurkas 133–67 Muz¨ıkal’naya tabakerka (‘A Musical Snuffbox’) 161, 165 Contributions to the collective Paraphrases 161 Piano compositions 100, 160, 238 Polonaise in memory of Pushkin 167 Polonaise in memory of Rubinstein 167 Preludes 133–67 Quartet Imenin¨ı (‘Name-day’) (collective work, one movement by Lyadov) 167 Quartet Suite Les Vendredis (collective work, four movements by Lyadov) 167 Four Romances 167 Russian folksongs 167 Scherzo 99–100, 133, 161 Scherzo in the Quartet on B–la–f (collective work) 167 Songs 161 Variations 133–67 Variations on a Russian Theme in F (collective work) 167 Village Scene at the Tavern 161 Waltzes 161 Lyapunov, S. M. 148, 235 Songs 256 Maliszewski, W. 247 Malyutin, S. V. 128 Mamontov, S. I. xii, 182

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Marenzio, Luca 5 Mariinsky Theatre 24, 102, 133, 212 Orchestra of the 92, 134 Marx, Adolf Bernhard 45 Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition 45 Mary, Mother of God 78 Massenet, J. H´erodiade 78 Marie-Madeleine 81 Medtner, N. K. 182, 185–93, 222, 231 Dithyrambs 189 Folk-Tales 189, 190, 191 Novellas 189, 191 Sonatas 189, 190 Sonata no. 1 (F minor) 189, 190 Sonata in E minor 190 Sonata in G minor 189 Sonata-Folk-Tale 190 Songs 189, 191, 256 ‘Meeresstille’ 191 ‘On the Lake’ 191 ‘Winter Path’ 191 Stimmungsbilder 191 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, F. 5, 153 Metrotectonicism 205 (see also G. E. Konyus) Mey, L. A. 24 The Maid of Pskov 25 The Tsar’s Bride 25 Meychik, M. N. 201 Meyerbeer, G. 5, 23, 29, 30, 32, 49 Les Huguenots 32, 68, 72 Le Proph`ete 68 Michael, archangel 203 ‘Mighty Handful’ xiv, 25, 31, 32, 47 Miklashevsky xiv, 242 Symphonic poem Sisyphus 242, 248 Ministry of the Imperial Court xii Modernist(s) 222, 227 Moloch 62 Morozov, S. T. xii Moscow Conservatoire 40, 138, 141, 168–70, 178, 181, 182, 205, 256 Small Hall 201 Moscow Philharmonic Society xii Moscow Private Opera Company xii, 42, 45, 46, 47, 60, 124, 127, 182, 184 Moscow school 148, 168–70 Mozart, W. A. xiv, 49, 53, 90, 129, 139, 141, 142, 235–6, 256 Don Giovanni xiv, 56 Music drama 13, 76 Musical Contemporary concert 221 Musical drama 13, 24

Index Musorgsky, M. P. xiii, 27, 69, 132, 135, 136, 137, 159, 162, 163, 164–5, 184, 185, 188, 195, 214, 216, 220, 228, 229, 236, 238, 239, 241, 245, 247, 250, 252–3, 255 Boris Godunov 27, 49, 109, 137, 182, 252–3 Intermezzo 95–6, 133 Khovanshchina xi, 124–8, 238, 252–3 March: The Capture of Kars 92, 93 Night on Bare Mountain 220 Pictures at an Exhibition 130–1, 137 Songs 255 Myaskovsky, N. Ya. 185, 207, 219, 231, 232, 233, 244–5, 248 Alastor 232 Songs 232 Symphonies nos. 1–3 232 Mystery-plays 79 Mysticism, Eastern 79 Mysticism, Western 79 Napravnik, Eduard 92, 133–67, 179 narodnichestvo 149 narodnik 163 narodnost’ 195 Navy, Department of the 43 Neoclassicism/neoclassicists 228, 231 ‘New Direction’ xiii, 193–7 New Russian School: see Young Russian School Nietzsche, F. W. 185, 201 Also sprach Zarathustra 81 Nirvana 80 Odoyevsky, Prince V. F. 6 Oprichnina (special bodyguard) 19 Ossovsky, A. V. 175 Ostrovsky, A. N. 19, 24, 25, 42 Dramatic chronicles 24, 25 Palestrina, G. P. da 5, 7 Pallas Athene 52 Parfeny of Kiev 65 Parland, A. A. Church of the Resurrection/Church of the Saviour ‘On the Spilled Blood’ 81 Patriarchs’ Singing Clerks, Choir of the 196 Peter I, Russian emperor 51, 126, 128 Petrograd Conservatoire 221 Petrovsky, Ye. M. 60 Ivan Korolevich 60 Podgoloski 255 Poetics, rules of classical 26 Popular print illustration (lubok) 215, 238, 253

Potebnya, A. A. 86 Potulov, N. M. 6, 8 Pre-Bach music 6 Preobrazhensky, A. V. 193 Pre-Raphaelite painting 6 pripev¨ı 196 Programme music 13, 16 Prokofiev, S. S. xi, 198–205, 219–20, 221–3, 225, 231–2, 244, 249–52, 255 Ala and Lolly 221 Ballade for cello and piano 223 Chout (‘another ballet’) 221 The Gambler 221 Piano concertos 232 Piano pieces 221 Piano Pieces op. 4 Despair 219, 220 Elan 219, 220 Reminiscences 219, 220 Suggestion diabolique 219, 220, 223 Piano sonatas 221 Sonata no. 2 op. 14 222, 223, 232 Sarcasms 222, 223 Sinfonietta 221 Songs 221 Songs to poems by Akhmatova 222 Songs to poems by Balmont 223 Toccata 219, 220, 222 The Ugly Duckling 223 Psalms of David 172 Pushkin, A. S. 24, 32, 33, 34, 37, 85, 142, 150, 178, 183 Boris Godunov 24, 68, 237 Eugene Onegin 30 The Golden Cockerel 85, 86, 88, 89 The Queen of Spades 32 Pyramids of Cheops 171 Rachmaninoff, S. V. xi, xiii, xiv, 148, 170, 171, 175–85, 187, 192, 244 All-Night Vigil xiii, xiv, 171, 195, 250, 251, 255 Capriccio boh´emien 182 Two cello pieces, op. 2 182 Cello Sonata 175, 183 Six choruses 182 Elegiac Trio 182 Fantasy for two pianos, op. 5 182 Barcarolle 182 The Island of the Dead 184, 185 Liturgy 184 Six Moments musicaux 182, 185 Operas Aleko 178, 182 Francesca da Rimini 178–80, 183 The Miserly Knight 178–80, 183

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Index Rachmaninoff, S. V. (cont.) Piano Concerto no. 1 182 Piano Concerto no. 2 175, 176, 183 Piano Concerto no. 3 184 Five piano pieces (Morceaux de fantaisie), op. 3 182 Prelude in C-sharp minor 182 Seven piano pieces (Morceaux de Salon) for two hands, op. 10 182 Six piano pieces (Six Morceaux) for four hands, op. 11 182 Piano Sonata no. 1 183 10 Pr´eludes pour le piano, op. 23 175, 183, 185 The Rock 182, 185 Songs 254–5 Six Songs, op. 4 182 Six Songs, op. 8 182 Twelve Songs, op. 14 182 ‘Spring Waters’ (no. 11) 176, 183 Twelve Songs, op. 21 nos. 25–36 175, 183 ‘By the Fresh Grave’ (no. 2) 177 ‘Fragment from de Musset’ (no. 6) 177 ‘How Fair This Spot’ (no. 7) 177, 185 ‘How Painful for Me’ (no. 12) 177 ‘Lilacs’ (no. 5) 176, 177 ‘Melody’ (no. 9) 177 ‘On the Death of a Linnet’ (no. 8) 177, 178 ‘They Answered’ (no. 4) 177 ‘Twilight’ (no. 3) 177, 185 Songs, op. 26 183 ‘The Fountains’ (no. 11) 185 Cantata Spring 183, 185 Suite no. 2 for two pianos, op. 17 175, 182 Symphony no. 1 182 Symphony no. 2 183, 184, 185 Variations pour le piano sur un th`eme de F. Chopin, op. 22 175, 183 Two violin pieces, op. 6 182 Raff, J. 14 The Fatherland 14 The Forest 14 Leonore 14 Spring 14 Ravel, M. 166, 186, 214, 225, 229 Reger, M. xiv, 162, 225, 231, 233 Rembrandt 192 Riemann, H. 233 Rimsky-Korsakov, N. A. xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 10, 42–90, 97, 101, 102, 124, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 146, 147–8, 149, 152, 155, 158, 160, 161, 162–3, 164–5, 168, 185, 187, 194–5, 208,

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209, 212, 214, 216, 217, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 235, 237, 238–9, 242, 245, 249, 250, 252, 253 Antar 136 ‘Folk-tale operas’ 238 ‘Non-folk-tale operas’ 254 Operas 84 Christmas Eve 75 The Golden Cockerel 84–91, 217, 230, 250 Kashchey the Immortal 60–4, 208, 253 The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya 64–84, 208, 238, 254 The Maid of Pskov 25, 45, 48, 86, 149, 254 May Night 46, 75 Mlada 68, 75 Mozart and Salieri 179 Sadko, opera 54–60, 65, 66, 68, 70, 75, 76, 79, 87, 91, 253 The Snowmaiden 70, 75, 79, 91, 101, 208, 253 The Tsar’s Bride 250, 252, 254 Tsar Saltan, The Folk-Tale of 73, 85, 87, 89, 253 Piano Concerto 101 Sadko, fantasia/symphonic picture 46, 55 Skazka (‘fairy-tale’) 136 Songs 256 Spanish Capriccio 96–7, 101, 134 Symphony no. 1 144 Rimsky-Korsakov, school of 188 Roger-Ducasse, J. xiv, 166, 214, 225 Romanovsky, G. I. 130, 131 Romanticism/Romantics 181, 185, 253, 254, 255 Roslavets, N. A. 233 Quintet 233 Songs 233 String Quartet 233 Violin Sonata 233 rospev 196 Rossini, G. 152 Rostand, E. La Samaritaine 81 Rozenov, E. K. 124 Rubinstein, Anton xii, 24, 30, 45, 133, 134, 150, 152 Operas 24 Symphony no. 1 144 Rubinsteins, Anton and Nikolay 184 Russian art-song 254 Russian church music 193–7, 257 Russian intelligent/intelligentsia 237, 238, 240, 254

Index Russian Musical Society (Imperial Russian Musical Society) xi, 1, 7, 10, 92, 93, 97, 139 Russian Orthodox Church 1, 7, 171, 193–7 Russian Quartet 93 Russian Symphony Concert(s) 95, 132, 134, 135, 137, 182 Ruysbroeck, the Wondrous 80 Ryelandt, Joseph Sainte C´ecile 78 Sabaneyev, L. L. xiv, 232 Monograph on Skryabin 232 Monograph on Taneyev 232 Safonov, V. I. xiii, 40, 201 Saint-Sa¨ens, C. Danse macabre 97 St Cecilia 78 St Godeliva 78 St John the Baptist 78 St Nicholas 79 St Petersburg Conservatoire 30, 42, 43, 130, 133–67, 168, 181, 185, 232, 234, 247 (see also Petrograd Conservatoire) St Petersburg national school of music 142 St Petersburg school 148, 168, 169 St Petersburg theatres 160 St Petersburg University 234 St Yefrosinya, Princess of Murom, Life of 66 Scarlatti, A. 49 Schiller, J. F. 19 Joan of Arc 19 Schloezer, B. de 199, 201 Schoenberg, A. xiv, 215, 225, 228, 233 Schubert, F. 176 Schumann, R. 5, 10, 12, 18, 22, 24, 29, 46, 53, 100, 129, 139, 161, 164–5, 177, 182, 185, 199, 231, 234–5 Carnaval 130 Genoveva 24 Manfred 10, 15 Paradies und die Peri 22 First Symphony 92 Sedan 49 Senilov, V. A. 233 Operas Vas’ka Buslayev 233 Yegory the Bold 233 Symphonic poems Mts¨ıri 233 The Scyths 233 The Wild Geese 233 Vocal items 233 Serafim of Sarov 65 Serov, A. N. 4, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30, 31, 32, 50, 68, 165 The Power of the Fiend 27, 49, 68

Rogneda 24 Stabat Mater 4 Seventeenth century, music of the 44 Severyanin, I. 223 Shaginyan, Marietta 192 Shakespeare, W. 10, 14, 26 Coriolanus 68 Dramatic chronicles 68 Hamlet 14, 15 Julius Caesar 68 Richard III 26 Romeo and Juliet 10 Shcherbachov, N. V. 133 Shestakova, L. I. 161 Shostakovich, D. D. 232 Shpazhinsky, I. V. 24, 26, 28 Shteynberg, M. O. 232, 239, 247 Early symphonic and chamber works 232 Metamorphoses 232 Princesse Maleine 232 Sixteenth century, music of the, 5, 7, 44 skazki 253 skomorokhi 56, 57, 59, 68 Skryabin, A. N. xi, xiv, 148, 153, 162, 164, 165, 166, 170, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 198, 199, 208, 217, 218, 222, 225–8, 231, 232, 235, 236, 240, 248–50 Orchestral works 199 Piano Concerto 241 Piano Sonata no. 3 226 Piano Sonata no. 5 199, 200, 202–3, 226 Piano Sonata no. 7 227 Piano Sonata no. 9 227, 241 Piano works 199, 225, 241 Poem of Ecstasy 199–205, 226, 228, 240 ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ in verse 201, 203 Prometheus (Poem of Fire) 162, 205–7, 226, 228, 240, 248 Rˆeverie 199 Satanic Poem 226 Symphonies 199 Symphony no. 1 225–6, 248 Symphony no. 2 204, 205, 226, 248 Symphony no. 3 (the Divine Poem) 202, 204–5, 226, 249 Skryabin Societies 248 Skryabinists 232 Slav Ur-culture 215 Slovo o polku Igoreve (‘The Lay of the Host of Igor’) 102, 104, 107, 118–20 Smolensky, S. V. 184 Sokolov, N. A. 163 Song Commission of the Imperial Geographical Society 162 Spontini, G. 27

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Index Stanchinsky, A. V. xiv, 233 Sketches 233 Stasov, V. V. xii, 69, 132, 150, 161, 163–4 stichera na podoben 196 Strauss, Richard xiv, 162, 186, 217, 225, 230, 233 Salome 78 Stravinsky, I. F. xi, xiii, 162, 198, 207, 213–19, 225, 228–31, 232, 248, 250, 253 Early ballets xiii The Firebird 207–9, 219, 229 Petrushka 209–12, 215, 219, 230, 253 The Rite of Spring 213–19, 230 Fantastic Scherzo 229 Firework 229 The Nightingale 230, 232 Pastorale 229 Songs to poems by Gorodetsky 228 Songs to poems by Verlaine 229 Symphony 228, 248 Strict style 5, 6, 7 Symphonic poem 13 Synodal Choir (Moscow) xii, 193–7, 257 Synodal School of Church Music (Moscow) xii, 193–7 Taneyev, S. I. xi, 148, 150, 153, 156, 169, 181, 205, 235, 250, 256 Cantata On Reading a Psalm 170–4 Chamber music 256 Quartets 256, 257 Invertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style 170, 172 Ioann Damaskin 172 Religious cantatas 257 Songs 256 Symphony 256, 257 Tappert, Wilhelm 53 Wandernde Melodien 53 Tchaikovsky, Modest 32, 33, 36, 37, 178, 179 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr xi, xiii, xiv, 1–41, 42, 60, 76, 133, 135, 137, 138, 142, 143, 144, 146–8, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 168–9, 173, 182, 184, 187, 188, 197, 209, 228, 233, 234, 236, 238, 239–45, 246, 248, 249, 250, 252–3 Concert Overture in F 1 Francesca da Rimini 10, 11, 179 Hamlet 13, 15 Italian Capriccio 97 Liturgy of St John Chrysostom 1, 3–9 The Nutcracker 253 Operas 18

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Charodeyka (‘The Enchantress’) 19, 24–32 Cherevichki (‘The Slippers’) 18, 19, 27, 243 Eugene Onegin 18, 19, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 79, 239, 243, 252 Mazeppa 18–24, 27 The Oprichnik 27 The Queen of Spades 32–8, 183, 239, 240, 252 Undina 18 Voyevoda 25 Romeo and Juliet overture 10, 15, 133 Serenade for Strings 17 Songs 254, 255 Suite no. 1 in D, 7 Suite no. 2 in C (containing a waltz) 17 Suite no. 3 in G 15 Suites 10 Swan Lake 21 Symphonic poems 14, 27 Symphonies 10, 181 Symphony no. 1 145, 239 Symphony no. 2 21, 243 Symphony no. 3 21 Symphony no. 4 15, 151, 239, 243 Manfred Symphony 1, 10–13, 14, 15 Symphony no. 5 1, 16–18, 243 Symphony no. 6 1, 38–41, 239, 240, 248, 257 The Tempest 10 Teresa of Avila 80 Tikhon Zadonsky 65 Tinel, Edgar Godelieve 78 Tolstoy, Aleksey 24, 25, 180 Ivan the Terrible 24, 25 Tret’yakov, P. M. xii troparia 196 Turgenev, I. S. 16, 19, 238 Fathers and Sons 132 Ul¨ıb¨ıshev, A. D. 129 Beethoven, ses critiques et ses glossateurs 129 Nouvelle biographie de Mozart 129 Vasilenko, S. N. 256 Songs 256 Vasnetsov, A. 128 Vasnetsov, Viktor 79 Verdi, G. 5, 8, 30 Un ballo in maschera 69 Verstovsky, A. N. 27 Veysberg (Rimskaya-Korsakova), Yu. L. 233 Fantasia 233

Index Scherzo 233 Symphonic poem At Night 233 Symphony 233 Vocal works 233 Virgil 180 Vitol’, I. I. 138, 163, 185 Vittoria, T. L. da 5 Viyel’gorsky, M. Yu. Count 144 Vol’f-Izrael’, Ye. V. 221 Volkslied 51 Vrubel’, M. A. 181 Wagner, R. xiv, 5, 8, 23, 31, 32, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 77, 88, 125, 150, 153, 164, 165, 169, 173, 179, 182, 185, 190, 199–200, 201, 226, 234, 235–6 ¨ Der fliegende Hollander 47 ¨ Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg 68 Oper und Drama 49 Parsifal 67, 84, 199 Der Ring des Nibelungen xiv, 48, 58, 67, 72, 153

¨ Tannhauser 80 Tristan und Isolde 32, 67, 74, 80, 81, 82 Wagnerism 252 Weber, C. M. von 32, 50 Weimar school 8, 13, 14, 48 Weingartner, F.: The Symphony after Beethoven 150–1 Weltschmerz 181 Wilde, O. 210 Willaert, A. 5 Yakovlev, V. V. 180 Yershov, I. V. 65 Yesipova, A. N. 221 Young Russian School 42, 43, 44, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 69, 84, 132, 136, 138, 140, 149–50, 162, 164, 168, 214 Zapev¨ı 196 Zeus 52 Zhukovsky, V. A. 33 Ziloti, A. I. xi, xiii, 181 znamenn¨ıy rospev 196, 233, 257 Zverev, N. S. 181

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