For instance, the Peasants’ chorus, “We go to our work in the woods,†is written in the hypo-dorian mode; the Song of the Rowers is in the Æolian mode, which is identical with “the natural minor,†which was the favourite tonality of Glinka’s predecessors. The strange beauty of theSlavsialies in the use of the mixolydian mode, and its simple harmonisation.The introduction to the opera is treated contrapuntally, in the style of the folk-singing with its cantus firmus (zapievkoya) and its imitations (podgolossky).
Glinka wrote the rôle of Sousanin for a bass. He has, indeed, been reproached with giving preference for the bass at the expense of the tenor parts, and other Russian composers have followed his example. But when we bear in mind that Russia produces some of the most wonderful bass voices in the world the preference seems natural enough, and even assumes a certain national significance. Upon Sousanin’s part centres the chief interest of the opera and it is convincingly realised and consistently Russian throughout. His opening phrases, in the Phrygian mode, seem to delineate his individuality in a few clear broad touches. Serov is disposed to claim for Glinka the definite and conscious use of aleitmotifwhich closely knits the patriotism of his hero with the personality of the Tsar. Towards the close of the first act, Sousanin sings a phrase to the words taken from the old RussianSlavsiaor Song of Glory. Making a careful analysis of the score, Serov asserts that traces of this motive may be found in many of Sousanin’s recitatives and arias, tending to the fusion of the musical and poetical ideas. Serov, an enthusiastic Wagnerian student, seems to seeleitmotifsin most unsuspectedplaces and is inclined, we think, to exaggerate their presence inA Life for the Tsar. But there are certainly moments in the opera in which Glinka seems to have recourse consciously to this phrase of theSlavsiaas befitting the dramatic situation. Thus in the quartet in the third act, “God love the Tsar,†the melody of theSlavsiamay be recognised in the harmonic progression of the instrumental basses given in 3-4 instead of 4-4; the treatment here is interesting, because, as Cheshikin points out, it is in the antiphonal style of the Orthodox Church, the vocal quartets singing “God love the Tsar,†while the string quartet replies with “Glory, glory, our Russian Tsar.†Again in another solemn moment in the opera the phrase from theSlavsiastands out still more clearly. When the Poles command Sousanin to lead them instantly to the Tsar’s abode, the hero answers in words which rise far above the ordinary level of the libretto:
“O high and bright our Tsar’s abode,Protected by the power of God,All Russia guards it day and night,While on its walls, in raiment white,The angels, heaven’s winged sentries, waitTo keep all traitors from the gate.â€
“O high and bright our Tsar’s abode,Protected by the power of God,All Russia guards it day and night,While on its walls, in raiment white,The angels, heaven’s winged sentries, waitTo keep all traitors from the gate.â€
“O high and bright our Tsar’s abode,Protected by the power of God,All Russia guards it day and night,While on its walls, in raiment white,The angels, heaven’s winged sentries, waitTo keep all traitors from the gate.â€
These words are sung by Sousanin to a majestic cantilena in a flowing 6-4 measure,while the orchestra accompany in march rhythm with theSlavsia, which, in spite of being somewhat veiled by the change of rhythm and the vocal melody, may be quite easily identified.
Two great scenes are allotted to Sousanin. The first occurs when the Poles insist on his acting as their guide and he resolves to lay down his life for the Tsar. Here the orchestra plays an important part, suggesting the agitations which rend the soul of the hero; now it reflects his super-human courage, and again those inevitable, but passing, fears and regrets without which his deed would lose half its heroism. The alternating rhythms—Sousanin sings in 2-4 and the Poles 3-4—are effectively managed. Sousanin’s second great moment occurs when the Poles, worn out with hunger and fatigue, fall asleep round their camp fire and the peasant-hero, watching for the tardy winter sunrise which will bring death to him and safety to the young Tsar, sings in a mood of intense exaltation the aria “Thou comest Dawn, for the last time mine eyes shall look on thee!†a touching and natural outburst of emotion that never fails to stir a Russian audience to its emotional depths, although some of the national composers have since reached higher levels, judged from a purely musical standpoint.
InA Life for the TsarGlinka conceived the idea, interesting in itself, of contrasting the characters of the two nations by means of their national music. To this end he devotes the whole of the second act entirely to the Poles. Here it seems to me that he is far less successful than with any other portion of the work. Some critics have supposed that the composer really wished to give an impression of the Poles as a superficial people literally dancing and revelling through life, and possessed of no deeper feelings to be expressed in music. But Glinka was too intelligent a man to take such naïve views of national character. It seems more probable that not being supersaturated with Polish as he was with Russian folk-music, he found it difficult to indicate the personality of the Pole in anything but conventional dance rhythms. This passes well enough in the second act, where the scene is laid at a brilliant festival in the Polish capital, and the ballroom dances which follow constitute the ballet of the opera. But in other parts of the work, as, for instance, when the Polish soldiers burst into Sousanin’s cottage and order him to act as their guide, the strains of a stately polonaise seem distinctly out of place; and again, when they have lost their way in the forest and their situation is extremely precarious, they express their alarm and suspicion in mazurka rhythm. The polonaise,cracoviak, the valse in 6-8 time and the mazurka and finale which form the ballet are somewhat ordinary in character, but presented with a charm and piquancy of orchestration which has made them extremely popular. The representative theme of the Poles, a phrase from the polonaise, hardly suggests the part they play in the opera—their evil designs upon Moscow and the young Michael Feodorovich, about which they sing in the succeeding chorus. But others seem to find this music more impressive, for, says M. Camille Bellaigue, “even when restricted to strictly national forms and formulas, the Russian genius has a tendency to enlarge them. In the polonaise and especially in the sombre and sinister mazurka inA Life for the TsarGlinka obtains from local rhythms an intimate dramatic emotion.... He raises and generalises, and from the music of a race makes the music of humanity.â€
In the last act ofA Life for the TsarGlinka has concentrated the ardent patriotism and the profound human sympathy which is not only a feature of his music but common to the whole school of which he is the prototype. The curtain rises upon a street in Moscow, the people are hurrying to the Kremlin to acclaim the young Tsar, and as they go they sing that beautiful hymn-march “Glory, glory, Holy Russia,†a superb representation of the patriotic ideal.In contrast to the gladness of the crowd, Glinka shows us the unfortunate children of Ivan Sousanin, the lad Vanya, Antonida, and her betrothed, Sobinin. Some of the people stop to ask the cause of their sadness, and in reply they sing the touching trio which describes the fate of Sousanin. Then the scene changes to the Red Square under the walls of the Kremlin, and all individual sentiment is merged in a flood of loftier emotion. The close of the act is the apotheosis of the Tsar and of the spirit of loyalty. Here on the threshold of the Kremlin Michael Feodorovich pauses to salute the dead body of the peasant-hero. Once again the great crowd takes up the Slavsia or Glory motive, and amid the pealing of the bells the opera ends with a triumphant chorus which seems to sum up the whole character of the Russian people. “Every element of national beauty,†says M. Camille Bellaigue, “is pressed into the service here. The people, their ruler and God himself are present. Not one degree in all the sacred hierarchy is lacking; not one feature of the ideal, not one ray from the apotheosis of the fatherland.â€
With all its weaknesses and its occasional lapses into Italian phraseology,A Life for the Tsarstill remains a patriotic and popular opera, comparable only in these respects with some of the later works which it engendered, or, amongcontemporary operas, with Weber’sDer Freischütz.
With the unparalleled success ofA Life for the Tsar, Glinka reached the meridian of his fame and power. He followed up the opera by some of his finest songs, contained in the collection entitled “Farewell to St. Petersburg,†and by the beautiful incidental music to Koukolnik’s tragedyPrince Kholmsky, of which Tchaikovsky, by no means an indulgent critic of his great predecessor, says: “Glinka here shows himself to be one of the greatest symphonic composers of his day. Many touches inPrince Kholmskyrecall the brush of Beethoven. There is the same moderation in the means employed, and in the total absence of all striving after mere external effects; the same sober beauty and clear exposition of ideas that are not laboured but inspired; the same plasticity of form and mould. Finally there is the same inimitable instrumentation, so remote from all that is affected or far-fetched.... Every entr’acte which follows the overture is a little picture drawn by a master-hand. These are symphonic marvels which would suffice a second-rate composer for a whole series of long symphonies.â€
The idea of a second national opera began to occupy Glinka’s mind very soon after the production ofA Life for the Tsar. It was hisintention to ask Poushkin to furnish him with a libretto based upon his epic poem “Russlan and Liudmilla.†The co-operation of Russia’s greatest poet with her leading musical genius should have been productive of great results. Unhappily the plan was frustrated by the tragic death of Poushkin, who was shot in a duel in 1837. Glinka, however, did not renounce the subject to which he had been attracted, and sketched out the plot and even some musical numbers, falling as before into the fatal mistake of expecting his librettist to supply words to music already written. The text forRusslan and Liudmillawas supplied by Bakhtourin, but several of Glinka’s friends added a brick here and there to the structure, with very patchy results. The introduction and finale were sketched out in 1839, but the composer, partly on account of failing health, did not work steadily at the opera until the winter of 1841. The score was actually completed by April 1842, when he submitted it on approval to Gedeonov. This time Glinka met with no difficulties from the Director of the Imperial Opera; the work was accepted at once and the date of the first production fixed in the following November.
The subject ofRusslan and Liudmilla, though equally national, has not the poignant human interest that thrills us inA Life for the Tsar.The story belongs to a remote and legendary period in Russian history, and the characters are to a great extent fantastic and mythical. It had none of those qualities which in the first opera made for an immediate popular success in every stratum of Russian society. The days are now long past when the musical world of Russia was split into two hostile camps, the one led by Serov, who pronouncedRusslanto be the last aberration of a lamentably warped genius; the other by Stassov, who saw in it the mature expression of Glinka’s inspiration. At the same time Stassov was quite alive to the weaknesses and impossible scenic moments of the libretto, faults which are doubtless the reason why seventy years have not sufficed to win popularity for the work, although the lapse of time has strengthened the conviction of all students of Russian opera as to the actual musical superiority ofRusslan and LiudmillaoverA Life for the Tsar.
The story of the opera runs as follows:
In days of old—when the Slavs were still Pagans—Prince Svietozar of Kiev had one beautiful daughter, Liudmilla. The maiden had three suitors, the knights-errant Russlan and Farlaf, and the young Tatar prince, Ratmir. Liudmilla’s love was bestowed upon Russlan, and Prince Svietozar prepares to celebrate their marriage. Meanwhile the wicked wizardChernomor has fallen desperately in love with Liudmilla. At the wedding feast he carries off the bride by means of his magic arts. Prince Svietozar sends the three knights to rescue his daughter and promises to give her to the one who succeeds in the quest. The knights meet with many adventures by the way. Farlaf seeks the help of the sorceress Naina, who agrees to save him from the rivalry of Ratmir, by luring the ardent young Oriental aside from his quest. Russlan takes council with the benevolent wizard Finn, who tells him how to acquire a magic sword with which to deliver his bride from the hands of Chernomor. Russlan saves Liudmilla, but on their homeward journey to Kiev they are intercepted by Farlaf, who casts them both into a magic slumber. Leaving Russlan by the wayside, Farlaf carries the heroine back to her father’s house, where he passes himself off as her deliverer and claims her for his bride. Russlan awakes and arrives in time to denounce his treachery, and the opera ends with the marriage of the true lovers, which was interrupted in the first act.
The overture toRusslan and Liudmillais a solid piece of work, sketched on broad lines and having a fantastic colouring quite in keeping with the subject of the opera. The opening subject is national in character, being dividedinto two strains which lend themselves to contrapuntal treatment.
An introduction follows, consisting of a chorus and two solos for Bayan (tenor), the famous bard of old, who is supposed to relate the legend. This introduction is largely built upon a phrase of eight notes, the characteristic utterance of Bayan when he speaks of the “deeds of long ago.†Afterwards this phrase is repeated in the Dorian mode, and the music acquires an archaic character in conformity with the remote period of the action.
The opera itself may be said to begin with a wedding chorus, followed by a cavatina for Liudmilla in which she takes leave of her father. In writing for his primadonne Glinka seems to have found it difficult to avoid the conventional Italian influence, and this solo, in common with most of the music for Liudmilla, lacks vigour and originality. Far more interesting from the musical point of view is the chorus in 5-4 measure, an invocation to Lel, the Slavonic God of Love. At the close of this number a loud clap of thunder is heard and the scene is plunged in darkness, during which the wizard Chernomor carries away the bride. The consternation of the guests is cleverly depicted over a pedal point for horn on E flat which extends for a hundred and fifty bars. Prince Svietozar then bids the knights-errant to go in search of his daughter,and with a short chorus imploring the aid of Perun upon their quest the act comes to an end.
The orchestral prelude to the second act is based upon a broad impetuous theme which afterwards appears as the motive of the Giant’s head in Act III. The first scene represents a hilly region and the cave of the good wizard Finn. The character of Finn, half humorous and half pathetic, with its peculiar combination of benevolence, vacillation, and pessimistic regret, is essentially Russian. Such characters have been made typical in the novels of Tourgeniev and Tolstoy. Finn relates how, in a vain endeavour to win Naina the sorceress, he has changed himself into a shepherd, a fisherman, and a warrior, and finally into a wizard. In this last character he has succeeded in touching her heart. But now alas, they have awakened to the realisation that there is nothing left to them but regret for lost possibilities fled beyond recall. Glinka expresses all these psychological changes in Finn’s famous Ballade which forms the opening number of this act; but admirable as it is, critics have some ground for their reproach that its great length delays the action of the plot. Russlan, having listened to Finn’s love-story, receives from him the sword with which he is to attack the Giant’s Head. In the next scene Farlaf meets the elderly but once beautiful Naina, and the two sing ahumorous duet. Farlaf’s chief air, a rondo in opera-bouffe style, is rather ordinary, but Naina’s music is a successful piece of character-painting. The last scene of the second act is one of the most fantastic in this fantastic opera. The stage is enveloped in mist. Russlan enters and sings his aria, of which the opening recitative is the strongest part, theAllegrosection, which Glinka has written in sonata-form, being somewhat diffuse. While he is singing, the mist slowly disperses, and the rising moon reveals the lonely steppe and shines upon the bleached bones which strew an ancient battle-field. Russlan now sees with horror the apparition of the Giant’s Head. This in its turn sees Russlan, and threatens the audacious knight who has ventured upon the haunted field. But Russlan overcomes the monster head with the magic sword, as directed by Finn. In order to give weight to the Giant’s voice Glinka has supplemented the part by a small male chorus which sings from within the head.
The prelude to the third act is generally omitted, and is not in fact printed in the pianoforte score of the opera. The opening number, a Persian chorus for female voices, “The Night lies heavy on the fields,†is full of grace and oriental languor. The subject of the chorus is a genuine Persian melody and the variations which form the accompaniment add greatlyto the beauty of these pages. The chorus is followed by an aria for Gorislava (soprano), Ratmir’s former love, whom he has deserted for Liudmilla. This air with its clarinet obbligato is one of the most popular solos in the opera. In answer to Gorislava’s appeal, Ratmir appears upon the scene and sings a charming nocturne accompanied bycor anglais. The part of the young oriental lover is usually taken by a woman (contralto). For this number Glinka makes use of a little Tatar air which Ferdinand David afterwards introduced, transposed into the major, in his symphonic poem “Le Désert.†It is a beautiful piece of landscape painting which makes us feel the peculiar sadness of the twilight in Russia as it falls on the vast spaces of the Steppes. A French critic has said that it might have been written by an oriental Handel. The scene described as the seduction of Ratmir consists of a ballet in rococo style entitled “Naina’s magic dance.†Then follows a duet for Gorislava and Ratmir, after which the maidens of the harem surround Ratmir and screen Gorislava from him. Afterwards the enchanted palace created by Naina to ensnare Ratmir suddenly vanishes and we see the open plain once more. The act concludes with a quartet in which Russlan and Finn take part with the two oriental lovers.
The entr’acte preceding the fourth act consistsof a march movement (Marcia allegro risoluto). The curtain then rises upon Chernomor’s enchanted garden, where Liudmilla languishes in captivity. An oriental ballet then follows, but this is preceded by the March of the Wizard Chernomor. This quaint march which personifies the invisible monster is full of imagination, although it tells its tale so simply that it takes us back to the fairyland of childhood. The first of the Eastern dances (allegretto quasi andante) is based upon a Turkish song in 6-8 measure. Afterwards follows the Danse Arabesque and finally a Lezginka, an immensely spirited dance built upon another of the Tatar melodies which were given to Glinka by the famous painter Aivazovsky. A chorus of naiads and a chorus of flowers also form part of the ballet, which is considered one of Glinka’schefs d’œuvre. While the chorus is being sung we see in the distance an aerial combat between Russlan and Chernomor, and throughout the whole of the movement the wizard’sleitmotifis prominent in the music. Russlan, having overcome Chernomor, wakes Liudmilla from the magic sleep into which she has been cast by his spells.
The first scene of the last act takes place in the Steppes, where Ratmir and Gorislava, now reconciled, have pitched their tent. Russlan’s followers break in upon the lovers with thenews that Farlaf has treacherously snatched Liudmilla from their master. Then Finn arrives and begs Ratmir to carry to Russlan a magic ring which will restore the princess from her trance. In the second scene the action returns to Prince Svietozar’s palace. Liudmilla is still under a spell, and her father, who believes her to be dead, reproaches Farlaf in a fine piece of recitative (Svietozar’s music throughout the work is consistently archaic in character). Farlaf declares that Liudmilla is not dead and claims her as his reward. Svietozar is reluctantly about to fulfil his promise, when Russlan arrives with the magic ring and denounces the false knight. The funeral march which had accompanied the Prince’s recitative now gives place to the chorus “Love and joy.†Liudmilla in her sleep repeats the melody of the chorus in a kind of dreamy ecstasy. Then Russlan awakens her and the opera concludes with a great chorus of thanksgiving and congratulation. Throughout the finale the characteristics of Russian and Eastern music are combined with brilliant effect.
Russlan and Liudmillawas received with indifference by the public and with pronounced hostility by most of the critics. Undoubtedly the weakness of the libretto had much to do with its early failure; but it is equally true that in this, his second opera, Glinka travelled sofar from Italian tradition and carried his use of national colour so much further and with such far greater conviction, that the music became something of an enigma to a public whose enthusiasm was still wholly reserved for the operas of Donizetti, Bellini and Rossini. Looking back from the present condition of Russian opera we can trace the immense influence ofRusslan and Liudmillaupon the later generation of composers both as regards opera and ballet. It is impossible not to realise that the fantastic Russian ballets of the present day owe much to Glinka’s first introduction of Eastern dances intoRusslan and Liudmilla.
The coldness of the public towards this work, the fruit of his mature conviction, was a keen disappointment to Glinka. He had not the alternative hope of being appreciated abroad, for he had deliberately chosen to appeal to his fellow-countrymen, and when they rejected him he had no heart for further endeavour. His later symphonic works, “Kamarinskaya†and “The Jota Aragonese,†show that his gift had by no means deteriorated. Of the former Tchaikovsky has truly said that Glinka has succeeded in concentrating in one short work what a dozen second-rate talents could only have invented with the whole expenditure of their powers. Possibly Glinka would have had more courageand energy to meet his temporary dethronement from the hearts of his own people had not his health been already seriously impaired. After the production ofRusslanhe lived chiefly abroad. In his later years he was much attracted to the music of Bach and to the older polyphonic schools of Italy and Germany. Always preoccupied with the idea of nationality in music, he made an elaborate study of Russian church music, but his failing health did not permit him to carry out the plans which he had formed in this connection. In April 1856 he left St. Petersburg for the last time and went to Berlin, where he intended to pursue these studies with the assistance of Dehn. Here he lived very quietly for some months, working twice a week with his old master and going occasionally to the opera to hear the works of Gluck and Mozart. In January 1857 he was taken seriously ill, and passed peacefully away during the night of February 2nd. In the following May his remains were brought from Germany to St. Petersburg and laid in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky monastery near to those of other national poets, Krylov, Baratinsky and Joukovsky.
Glinka was the first inspired interpreter of the Russian nationality in music. During the period which has elapsed since his death the impress of his genius upon that of hisfellow countrymen has in no way weakened. For this reason a knowledge of his music is an indispensable introduction to the appreciation of the later school of Russian music; for in his works and in those of Dargomijsky, we shall find the key to all that has since been accomplished.
GLINKA, in his memoirs, relates how in the autumn of 1834 he met at a musical party in St. Petersburg, “a little man with a shrill treble voice, who, nevertheless, proved a redoubtable virtuoso when he sat down to the piano.†The little man was Alexander Sergeivich Dargomijsky, then about twenty-one years of age, and already much sought after in society as a brilliant pianist and as the composer of agreeable drawing-room songs. Dargomijsky’s diary contains a corresponding entry recording this important meeting of two men who were destined to become central points whence started two distinct currents of tendency influencing the whole future development of Russian music. “Similarity of education and a mutual love of music immediately drew us together,†wrote Dargomijsky, “and this in spite of the fact that Glinka was ten years my senior.†For the remainder of Glinka’s life Dargomijsky was his devoted friend and fellow-worker, but never his unquestioning disciple.
Dargomijsky was born, February 2/14, 1813, at a country estate in the government of Toula, whither his parents had fled from their own home near Smolensk before the French invaders in 1812. It is said that Dargomijsky, the future master of declamation, only began to articulate at five years of age. In 1817 his parents migrated to St. Petersburg. They appear to have taken great interest in the musical education of their son; at six he received his first instruction on the piano, and two years later took up the violin; while at eleven he had already tried his hand at composition. His education being completed, he entered the Government service, from which, however, he retired altogether in 1843. Thanks to his parents’ sympathy with his musical talent, Dargomijsky’s training had been above the average and a long course of singing lessons with an excellent master, Tseibikha, no doubt formed the basis of his subsequent success as a composer of vocal music. But at the time of his first meeting with Glinka, both on account of his ignorance of theory and of the narrowness of his general outlook upon music, he can only be regarded as an amateur. One distinguishing feature of his talent seems to have been in evidence even then, for Glinka, after hearing his first song, written to humorous words, declared that if Dargomijsky would turn his attention to comic opera he wouldcertainly surpass all his predecessors in that line. Contact with Glinka’s personality effected the same beneficial change in Dargomijsky that Rubinstein’s influence brought about in Tchaikovsky some thirty years later; it changed him from a mere dilettante into a serious musician. “Glinka’s example,†he wrote in his autobiography, “who was at that time (1834) taking Prince Usipov’s band through the first rehearsals of his operaA Life for the Tsar, assisted by myself and Capellmeister Johannes, led to my decision to study the theory of music. Glinka handed over to me the five exercise books in which he had worked out Dehn’s theoretical system and I copied them in my own hand, and soon assimilated the so-called mysterious wisdom of harmony and counterpoint, because I had been from childhood practically prepared for this initiation and had occupied myself with the study of orchestration.†These were the only books of theory ever studied by Dargomijsky, but they served to make him realise the possession of gifts hitherto unsuspected. After this course of self-instruction he felt strong enough to try his hand as an operatic composer, and selected a libretto founded on Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris.†Completed and translated into Russian in 1839, the work, entitledEsmeralda, was not accepted by the Direction of the Imperial Operauntil 1847, when it was mounted for the first time at Moscow. By this time Dargomijsky had completely outgrown this immature essay. The light and graceful music pleased the Russian public, but the success of this half-forgotten child of his youth gave little satisfaction to the composer himself. He judged the work in the following words: “The music is slight and often trivial—in the style of Halévy and Meyerbeer; but in the more dramatic scenes there are already some traces of that language of force and realism which I have since striven to develop in my Russian music.â€
In 1843 Dargomijsky went abroad, and while in Paris made the acquaintance of Auber, Meyerbeer, Halévy, and Fétis. The success ofEsmeraldaencouraged him to offer to the Directors of the Imperial Theatre an opera-ballet entitledThe Triumph of Bacchus, which he had originally planned as a cantata; but the work was rejected, and only saw the light some twenty years later, when it was mounted in Moscow. Dargomijsky’s correspondence during his sojourn abroad is extremely interesting, and shows that his views on music were greatly in advance of his time and quite free from the influences of fashion and convention.
In 1853 we gather from a letter addressed to a friend that he was attracted to national music. As a matter of fact the new opera, upon whichhe had already started in 1848, was based upon a genuine Russian folk-subject—Poushkin’s dramatic poem “The Roussalka†(The Water Sprite). Greatly discouraged by the refusal of the authorities to acceptThe Triumph of Bacchus, Dargomijsky laid asideThe Roussalkauntil 1853. During this interval most of his finest songs and declamatory ballads were written, as well as those inimitably humorous songs which, perhaps, only a Russian can fully appreciate. But though he matured slowly, his intellectual and artistic development was serious and profound. Writing to Prince Odoevsky about this time, he says: “The more I study the elements of our national music, the more I discover its many-sidedness. Glinka, who so far has been the first to extend the sphere of our Russian music, has, I consider, only touched one phase of it—the lyrical. InThe RoussalkaI shall endeavour as much as possible to bring out the dramatic and humorous elements of our national music. I shall be glad if I achieve this, even though it may seem a half protest against Glinka.†Here we see Dargomijsky not as the disciple, but as the independent worker, although he undoubtedly keptRusslan and Liudmillain view as the model forThe Roussalka. The work was given for the first time at the Maryinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, in 1856, but proved too novel inform and treatment to please a public that was still infatuated with Italian opera.
In 1864-1865 Dargomijsky made a second tour in Western Europe, taking with him the scores ofThe Roussalkaand of his three Orchestral Fantasias, “Kazachok†(The Cossack), a “Russian Legend,†and “The Dance of the Mummers†(Skomorokhi). In Leipzig he made the acquaintance of many prominent musicians, who contented themselves with pronouncing his music “sehr neu†and “ganz interessant,†but made no effort to bring it before the public. In Paris he was equally unable to obtain a hearing; but in Belgium—always hospitable to Russian musicians—he gave a concert of his own compositions with considerable success. On his way back to Russia he spent a few days in London and ever after spoke of our capital with enthusiastic admiration.
In 1860 Dargomijsky had been appointed director of the St. Petersburg section of the Imperial Russian Musical Society. This brought him in contact with some of the younger contemporary musicians, and after his return from abroad, in 1865, he became closely associated with Balakirev and his circle and took a leading part in the formation of the new national and progressive school of music. By this time he handled that musical language of “force and realism,†of which we find the first distincttraces inThe Roussalka, with ease and convincing eloquence. For his fourth opera he now selected the subject ofThe Stone Guest(Don Juan); not the version by Da Ponte which had been immortalised by Mozart’s music, but the poem in which the great Russian poet Poushkin had treated this ubiquitous tale. This work occupied the last years of Dargomijsky’s life, and we shall speak of it in detail a little further on. Soon after the composer’s return from abroad his health began to fail and the new opera had constantly to be laid aside. From contemporary accounts it seems evident that he did not shut himself away from the world in order to keep alive the flickering flame of life that was left to him, but that on the contrary he liked to be surrounded by the younger generation, to whom he gave out freely of his own richly gifted nature. The composition ofThe Stone Guestwas a task fulfilled in the presence of his disciples, reminding us of some of the great painters who worked upon their masterpieces before their pupils’ eyes. Dargomijsky died of heart disease in January 1869. On his deathbed he entrusted the unfinished manuscript ofThe Stone Guestto Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov, instructing the latter to carry out the orchestration of it. The composer fixed three thousand roubles (about £330) as the price of his work, but an obsolete law made it illegalfor a native composer to receive more than £160 for an opera. At the suggestion of Vladimir Stassov, the sum was raised by private subscription, andThe Stone Guestwas performed in 1872. Of its reception by the public something will be said when we come to the analysis of the work.
We may dismissEsmeraldaas being practically of no account in the development of Russian opera; but the history ofThe Roussalkais important, for this work not only possesses intrinsic qualities that have kept it alive for over half a century, but its whole conception shows that Dargomijsky was already in advance of his time as regards clear-cut musical characterisation and freedom from conventional restraint. In this connection it is interesting to remember thatThe Roussalkapreceded Bizet’s “Carmen†by some ten or twelve years.
As early as 1843 Dargomijsky had thought ofThe Roussalkaas an excellent subject for opera. He avoided Glinka’s methods of entrusting his libretto to several hands. In preparing the book he kept as closely as possible to Poushkin’s poem, and himself carried out the modifications necessary for musical treatment. It is certain that he had begun the work by September 1848. It was completed in 1855.
As we have already seen, he was aware thatGlinka was not fully in touch with the national character; there were sides of it which he had entirely ignored in both his operas, because he was temperamentally incapable of reflecting them. Glinka’s humour, as Dargomijsky has truthfully said, was not true to Russian life. His strongest tendency was towards a slightly melancholy lyricism, and when he wished to supply some comic relief he borrowed it from cosmopolitan models. The composer ofThe Roussalka, on the other hand, deliberately aimed at bringing out the dramatic, realistic, and humorous elements which he observed in his own race. The result was an opera containing a wonderful variety of interest.
Russian folk-lore teems with references to theRoussalki, or water nymphs, who haunt the streams and the still, dark, forest pools, lying in wait for the belated traveller, and of all their innumerable legends none is more racy of the soil than this dramatic poem by Poushkin in which the actual and supernatural worlds are sketched by a master hand. The story of the opera runs as follows:
A young Prince falls in love with Natasha, the Miller’s daughter. He pays her such devoted attention that the father hopes in time to see his child become a princess. Natasha returns the Prince’s passion, and gives him not only her love but her honour. Circumstancesafterwards compel the Prince to marry in his own rank. Deserted in the hour of her need, Natasha in despair drowns herself in the mill-stream. Now, in accordance with Slavonic legends, she becomes aRoussalka, seeking always to lure mortals to her watery abode. Misfortune drives the old Miller crazy and the mill falls into ruins. Between the second act, in which the Prince’s nuptials are celebrated, and the third, a few years are supposed to elapse. Meanwhile the Prince is not happy in his married life, and is moreover perpetually haunted by the remembrance of his first love and by remorse for her tragic fate. He spends hours near the ruined mill dreaming of the past. One day a littleRoussalkachild appears to him and tells him that she is his daughter, and that she dwells with her mother among the water-sprites. All his old passion is reawakened. He stands on the brink of the water in doubt as to whether to respond to the calls of Natasha and the child, or whether to flee from their malign influence. Even while he hesitates, the crazy Miller appears upon the scene and fulfils dramatic justice by flinging the betrayer of his daughter into the stream. Here we have the elements of an exceedingly dramatic libretto which offers fine opportunities to a psychological musician of Dargomijsky’s type. The scene in which the Prince, with caressing grace and tenderness,tries to prepare Natasha for the news of his coming marriage; her desolation when she hears that they must part; her bitter disenchantment on learning the truth, and her cry of anguish as she tries to make him realise the full tragedy of her situation—all these emotions, coming in swift succession, are followed by the music with astonishing force and flexibility. Very effective, too, is the scene of the wedding festivities in which the wailing note of theRoussalkais heard every time the false lover attempts to kiss his bride—the suggestion of an invisible presence which throws all the guests into consternation. As an example of Dargomijsky’s humour, nothing is better than the recitative of the professional marriage-maker, “Why so silent pretty lassies,†and the answering chorus of the young girls (in Act II.). As might be expected with a realistic temperament like Dargomijsky’s, the music of theRoussalkiis the least successful part of the work. The sub-aquatic ballet in the last act is rather commonplace; while Natasha’s music, though expressive, has been criticised as being too human and warm-blooded for a soulless water-sprite. Undoubtedly the masterpiece of the opera is the musical presentment of the Miller. At first a certain sardonic humour plays about this crafty, calculating old peasant, but afterwards, when disappointed greed and his daughter’sdisgrace have turned his brain, how subtly the music is made to suggest the cunning of mania in that strange scene in which he babbles of his hidden treasures, “stored safe enough where the fish guard them with one eye!†With extraordinary power Dargomijsky reproduces his hideous meaningless laugh as he pushes the Prince into the swirling mill-stream. The character of the Miller alone would suffice to prove that the composer possesses dramatic gifts of the highest order.
The Roussalka, first performed at the Maryinsky Theatre in May 1856, met with very little success. The Director of the opera, Glinka’s old enemy Gedeonov, having made up his mind that so “unpleasing†a work could have no future, mounted it in the shabbiest style. Moreover, as was usually the case with national opera then—and even at a later date—the interpretation was entrusted to second-rate artists. Dargomijsky, in a letter to his pupil Madame Karmalina, comments bitterly upon this; unhappily he could not foresee the time, not so far distant, when the great singer Ossip Petrov would electrify the audience with his wonderful impersonation of the Miller; nor dream that fifty years later Shaliapin would make one of his most legitimate triumphs in this part. The critics met Dargomijsky’s innovations without in the least comprehending their drift. Serovitwas before the days of his opposition to the national cause—alone appreciated the novelty and originality shown in the opera; he placed it aboveA Life for the Tsar; but even his forcible pen could not rouse the public from their indifference to every new manifestation of art. Dargomijsky himself perfectly understood the reason of its unpopularity. In one of his letters written at this time, he says: “Neither our amateurs nor our critics recognise my talents. Their old-fashioned notions cause them to seek for melody which is merely flattering to the ear. That is notmyfirst thought. I have no intention of indulging them with music as a plaything.I want the note to be the direct equivalent of the word.I want truth and realism. This they cannot understand.â€
Ten years after the first performance ofThe Roussalka, the public began to reconsider its verdict. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 changed the views of society towards the humble classes, and directed attention towards all that concerned the past history of the peasantry. A new spirit animated the national ideal. From Poushkin’s poetry, with its somewhat “Olympian†attitude to life, the reading public turned to the people’s poets, Nekrassov and Nikitin; while the realism of Gogol was now beginning to be understood. To these circumstances we may attribute the reaction in favourofThe Roussalka, which came as a tardy compensation towards the close of the composer’s life.
During the ten years which followed the completion ofThe Roussalka, Dargomijsky was steadily working towards the formulation of new principles in vocal, and especially in dramatic music. We may watch his progress in the series of songs and ballads which he produced at this time. It is, however, inThe Stone Guestthat Dargomijsky carries his theories of operatic reform to a logical conclusion. One of his chief aims, in which he succeeded in interesting the little band of disciples whose work we shall presently review, was the elimination of the artificial and conventional in the accepted forms of Italian opera. Wagner had already experienced the same dissatisfaction, and was solving the question of reform in the light of his own great genius. But the Russian composers could not entirely adopt the Wagnerian theories. Dargomijsky, while rejecting the old arbitrary divisions of opera, split upon the question of the importance which Wagner gave to the orchestra. Later on we shall see how each member of the newly-formed school tried to work out the principles of reformation in his own way, keeping in view the dominant idea that the dramatic interest should be chiefly sustained by the singer, while the orchestra should be regardedas a means of enhancing the interest of the vocal music. Dargomijsky himself was the first to embody these principles in what must be regarded as one of the masterpieces of Russian music—his operaThe Stone Guest. Early in the ’sixties he had been attracted to Poushkin’s fine poem, which has for subject the story of Don Juan, treated, not as we find it in Mozart’s opera, by a mere librettist, but with the dramatic force and intensity of a great poet. Dargomijsky was repelled by the idea of mutilating a fine poem; yet found himself overwhelmed by the difficulties of setting the words precisely as they stood. Later on, however, the illness from which he was suffering seems to have produced in him a condition of rare musical clairvoyance. “I am singing my swan song,†he wrote to Madame Karmelina in 1868; “I am writingThe Stone Guest. It is a strange thing: my nervous condition seems to generate one idea after another. I have scarcely any physical strength.... It is not I who write, but some unknown power of which I am the instrument. The thought ofThe Stone Guestoccupied my attention five years ago when I was in robust health, but then I shrank from the magnitude of the task. Now, ill as I am, I have written three-fourths of the opera in two and a half months.... Needless to say the work will not appeal to the many.â€
“Thank God,†comments Stassov, in his energetic language, “that in 1863 Dargomijsky recoiled before so colossal an undertaking, since he was not yet prepared for it. His musical nature was still growing and widening, and he was gradually freeing himself from all stiffness and asperity, from false notions of form, and from the Italian and French influences which sometimes predominate in the works of his early and middle periods. In each new composition Dargomijsky takes a step forward, but in 1866 his preparations were complete. A great musician was ready to undertake a great work. Here was a man who had cast off all musical wrong thinking, whose mind was as developed as his talent, and who found such inward force and greatness of character as inspired him to write this work while he lay in bed, subject to the terrible assaults of a mortal malady.â€
The Stone Guest, then, is the ultimate expression of that realistic language which Dargomijsky employs in his early cantataThe Triumph of Bacchus, inThe Roussalka, and in his best songs. It is applied not to an ordinary ready-made libretto, but to a poem of such excellence that the composer felt it a sacrilege to treat it otherwise than as on an equal footing with the music. This effort to follow with absolute fidelity every word of the book, and to makethe note the representative of the word, led to the adoption of a new operatic form, and to the complete abandonment of the traditional soli, duets, choruses, and concerted pieces. InThe Stone Guestthe singers employ thatmelos, ormezzo-recitativo, which is neither melody nor speech, but the connecting link between the two. Some will argue, with Serov, that there is nothing original in these ideas; they had already been carried out by Wagner; and thatThe Stone Guestdoes not prove that Dargomijsky was an innovator but merely that he had the intelligence to become the earliest of Wagner’s disciples. Nothing could be further from the truth. By 1866 Dargomijsky had some theoretical knowledge of Wagner’s views, but he can have heard little, if any, of his music. Whether he was at all influenced by the former, it is difficult to determine; but undoubtedly his efforts to attain to a more natural and realistic method of expression date from a time when Wagner and Wagnerism were practically a sealed book to him. One thing is certain: from cover to cover ofThe Stone Guestit would be difficult to find any phrase which is strongly reminiscent of Wagner’s musical style. What he himself thought of Wagner’s music we may gather from a letter written to Serov in 1856, in which he says: “I have not returned your score of “Tannhäuser,†because I have notyet had time to go through the whole work. You are right; in the scenic disposition there is much poetry; in the music, too, he shows us a new and practical path; but in his unnatural melodies and spiciness, although at times his harmonies are very interesting, there is a sense of effort—will und kann nicht!Truth—above all truth—but we may demand good taste as well.â€
Dargomijsky was no conscious or deliberate imitator of Wagner. The passion for realistic expression which possessed him from the first led him by a parallel but independent path to a goal somewhat similar to that which was reached by Wagner. But Dargomijsky adhered more closely to the way indicated a century earlier by that great musical reformer Gluck. In doing this justice to the Russian composer, a sense of proportion forbids me to draw further analogies between the two men. Dargomijsky was a strong and original genius, who would have found his way to a reformed music drama, even if Wagner had not existed. Had he been sustained by a Ludwig of Bavaria, instead of being opposed by a Gedeonov, he might have left his country a larger legacy from his abundant inspiration; but fate and his surroundings willed that his achievements should be comparatively small. Whereas Wagner, moving on from strength to strength, from triumph totriumph, raised up incontestable witnesses to the greatness of his genius.
InThe Stone GuestDargomijsky has been successful in welding words and music into an organic whole; while the music allotted to each individual in the opera seems to fit like a skin. “Poetry, love, passion, arresting tragedy, humour, subtle psychological sense and imaginative treatment of the supernatural,[15]all these qualities,†says Stassov, “are combined in this opera.†The chief drawback of the work is probably its lack of scenic interest, a fault which inevitably results from the unity of its construction. The music, thoughtful, penetrative, and emotional, is of the kind which loses little by the absence of scenic setting.The Stone Guestis essentially an opera which may be studied at the piano. It unites as within a focus many of the dominant ideas and tendencies of the school that proceeded from Glinka and Dargomijsky, and proves that neither nationality of subject nor of melody constitutes nationality of style, and that a tale which bears the stamp and colour of the South may become completely Russian, poetically and musically, when moulded by Russian hands.The Stone Guesthas neverattained to any considerable measure of popularity in Russia. In spite of Dargomijsky’s personal intimacy with his little circle of disciples, in which respect his attitude to his fellow workers was quite different to that of Glinka, the example which he set inThe Stone Guesteventually found fewer imitators than Glinka’s ideal modelA Life for the Tsar. At the same time in certain particulars, and especially as regards melodic recitative, this work had a decided influence upon a later school of Russian opera. But this is a matter to be discussed in a later chapter.
Serov, V.A. SEROVSEROV
GLINKAand Dargomijsky were to Russian music two vitalising sources, to the power of which had contributed numerous affluent aspirations and activities. They, in their turn, flowed forth in two distinct channels of musical tendency, fertilising two different spheres of musical work. Broadly speaking, they stand respectively for lyrical idealism as opposed to dramatic realism in Russian opera. To draw some parallel between them seems inevitable, since together they make up the sum total of the national character. Their influences, too, are incalculable, for with few exceptions scarcely an opera has been produced by succeeding generations which does not give some sign of its filiation with one or the other of these composers. Glinka had the versatility and spontaneity we are accustomed to associate with the Slav temperament; Dargomijsky had not less imagination but was more reflective. Glinka was not devoid of wit; but Dargomijsky’s humour was full flavouredand racy of the soil. He altogether out-distanced Glinka as regards expression and emotional intensity. Glinka’s life was not rich in inward experiences calculated to deepen his nature, and he had not, like Dargomijsky, that gift of keen observation which supplies the place of actual experience. The composer ofThe Stone Guestwas a psychologist, profound and subtle, who not only observed, but knew how to express himself with the laconic force of a man who has no use for the gossip of life.
When Glinka died in 1857, Russian musical life was already showing symptoms of that division of aims and ideals which ultimately led to the formation of two opposing camps: the one ultra-national, the other more or less cosmopolitan. In order to understand the situation of Russian opera at this time, it is necessary to touch upon the long hostility which existed between the rising school of young home-bred musicians, and those who owed their musical education to foreign sources, and in whose hands were vested for a considerable time all academic authority, and most of the paid posts which enabled a musician to devote himself wholly to his profession.
While Dargomijsky was working at his last opera, and gathering round his sick bed that group of young nationalists soon to be known by various sobriquets, such as “The InvincibleBand,†and “The Mighty Five,â€[16]Anton Rubinstein was also working for the advancement of music in Russia; but it was the general aspect of musical education which occupied his attention, rather than the vindication of the art as an expression of national temperament. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century there had been but two musical elements in Russia, the creative and the auditory. In the latter we may include the critics, almost a negligible quantity in those days. At the close of the ’fifties a third element was added to the situation—the music schools. “The time had come,†says Stassov, “when the necessity for schools, conservatoires, incorporated societies, certificates, and all kinds of musical castes and privileges, was being propagated among us. With these aims in view, the services were engaged of those who had been brought up to consider everything excellent which came from abroad, blind believers in all kinds of traditional prejudices. Since schools and conservatoires existed in Western Europe, we, in Russia, must have them too. Plenty of amateurs were found ready to take over the direction of our new conservatoires. Such enterprise was part of a genuine, but hasty, patriotism, and the business was rushed through. It was assertedthat music in Russia was then at a very low ebb and that everything must be done to raise the standard of it. With the object of extending the tone and improving the knowledge of music, the Musical Society was founded in 1859, and its principal instrument, the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, in 1862.... Not long before the opening of this institution, Rubinstein wrote an article,[17]in which he deplored the musical condition of the country, and said that in Russia ‘the art was practised only by amateurs’ ... and this at a time when Balakirev, Moussorgsky and Cui had already composed several of their early works and had them performed in public. Were these men really only amateurs? The idea of raising and developing the standard of music was laudable, but was Russia truly in such sore need of that kind of development and elevation when an independent and profoundly national school was already germinating in our midst? In discussing Russian music, the first questions should have been: what have we new in our music; what is its character; what are its idiosyncrasies, and what is necessary for its growth and the preservation of its special qualities? But the people who thought to encourage the art in Russia did not, or would not, take this indigenous element into consideration, and from the lofty pinnacleof the Western Conservatoire they looked down on our land as atabula rasa, a wild uncultivated soil which must be sown with good seed imported from abroad.... In reply to Rubinstein’s article I wrote:[18]‘How many academies in Europe are grinding out and distributing certificated students, who occupy themselves more or less with art? But they cannot turn out artists; only people all agog to acquire titles, recognised positions, and privileges. Why must this be? We do not give our literary men certificates and titles, and yet a profoundly national literature has been created and developed in Russia. It should be the same with music.... Academic training and artistic progress are not synonymous terms.... Germany’s noblest musical periodsprecededthe opening of her conservatoires, and her greatest geniuses have all been educated outside the schools. Hitherto all our teachers have been foreigners brought up in the conservatoires abroad. Why then have we cause to complain of the wretched state of musical education in Russia? Is it likely that the teachers sent out into the world from our future academies will be any better than those hitherto sent to us from abroad? It is time to cease from this importation of foreign educative influences, and to consider that which will be most truly profitable andadvantageous for our own race and country. Must we copy that which exists abroad, merely that we may have the satisfaction of boasting a vast array of teachers and classes, of fruitless distributions of prizes and scholarships, of reams of manufactured compositions, and hosts of useless musicians.â€[19]
I have quoted these extracts from Stassov’s writings partly for the sake of the sound common-sense with which he surrounds the burning question of that and later days, and partly because his protest is interesting as echoing the reiterated cry of the ultra-patriotic musical party in this country.
Such protests, however, were few, while the body of public enthusiasm was great; and Russian enthusiasm, it may be observed, too often takes the externals into higher account than the essentials. Rubinstein found a powerful patroness in the person of the Grand Duchess Helena Pavlovna; the Imperial Russian Musical Society was founded under the highest social auspices; and two years later all officialdom presided at the birth of its offshoot, the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Most of the evils prophesied by Stassov actually happened, and prevailed, at least for a time. But foreigninfluences, snobbery, official tyranny and parsimony, the over-crowding of a privileged profession, and mistakes due to the well-intentioned interference of amateurs in high places—these things are but the inevitable stains on the history of most human organisations. What Cheshikin describes as “alienomania,†the craze for everything foreign, always one of the weaknesses of Russian society, was undoubtedly fostered to some extent under the early cosmopolitanrégimeof the conservatoire; but even if it temporarily held back the rising tide of national feeling in music, it was powerless in the end to limit its splendid energy. The thing most feared by the courageous old patriot, Stassov, did not come to pass. The intense fervour of the group known as “The Mighty Band†carried all things before it. Russian music, above all Russian opera, triumphs to-day, both at home and abroad, in proportion to itsamor patriæ. It is not the diluted cosmopolitan music of the schools, with its familiar echoes of Italy, France and Germany, but the folk-song operas in their simple, forceful and sincere expression of national character that have carried Paris, Milan and London by storm.
The two most prominent representatives of the cosmopolitan and academic tendencies in Russia were Anton Rubinstein and Alexander Serov. Both were senior to any member ofthe nationalist circle, and their work being in many respects very dissimilar in character to that of the younger composers, I propose to give some account of it in this and the following chapter, before passing on to that later group of workers who made the expression of Russian sentiment the chief feature of their operas.
Alexander Nicholaevich Serov, born in St. Petersburg January 11th, 1820 (O.S.), was one of the first enlightened musical critics in Russia. As a child he received an excellent education. Later on he entered the School of Jurisprudence, where he passed among his comrades as “peculiar,†and only made one intimate friend. This youth—a few years his junior—was Vladimir Stassov, destined to become a greater critic than Serov himself. Stassov, in his “Reminiscences of the School of Jurisprudence,†has given a most interesting account of this early friendship, which ended in something like open hostility when in later years the two men developed into the leaders of opposing camps. When he left the School of Jurisprudence in 1840, Serov had no definite views as to his future, only a vague dreamy yearning for an artistic career. At his father’s desire he accepted a clerkship in a Government office, which left him leisure for his musical pursuits. At that time he was studying the violoncello. Gradually he formed, if not a definite theory of musical criticism, atleast strong individual proclivities. He had made some early attempts at composition, which did not amount to much more than improvisation. Reading his letters to Stassov, written at this early period of his career, it is evident that joined to a vast, but vague, ambition was the irritating consciousness of a lack of genuine creative inspiration.
In 1842 Serov became personally acquainted with Glinka, and although he was not at that period a fervent admirer of this master, yet personal contact with him gave the younger man his first impulse towards more serious work. He began to studyA Life for the Tsarwith newly opened eyes, and became enthusiastic over this opera, and over some of Glinka’s songs. But when in the autumn of the same yearRusslan and Liudmillawas performed for the first time, his enthusiasm seems to have received a check. He announced to Stassov his intention of studying this opera more seriously, but his views of it, judging from what he has written on the subject, remain after all very superficial. All that was new and lofty in its intention seems to have passed clean over his head. His criticism is interesting as showing how indifferent he was at that time to the great musical movement which Wagner was leading in Western Europe, and to the equally remarkable activity which Balakirev was directingin Russia. He was, indeed, still in a phase of Meyerbeer worship.
In 1843 Serov began to think of composing an opera. He chose the subject of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,†but hardly had he made his first essays, when his musical schemes were cut short by his transference from St. Petersburg to the dull provincial town of Simferopol. Here he made the acquaintance of the revolutionary Bakounin, who had not yet been exiled to Siberia. The personality of Bakounin made a deep impression upon Serov, as it did later upon Wagner. Under his influence Serov began to take an interest in modern German philosophy and particularly in the doctrines of Hegel. As his intellect expanded, the quality of his musical ideas improved. They showed greater independence, but it was an acquired originality rather than innate creative impulse. He acquired the theory of music with great difficulty, and being exceedingly anxious to master counterpoint, Stassov introduced him by letter to the celebrated theorist Hunke, then residing in St. Petersburg. Serov corresponded with Hunke, who gave him some advice, but the drawbacks of a system of a college by post were only too obvious to the eager but not very brilliant pupil, separated by two thousand versts from his teacher. At this time he was anxious to throw up his appointment and devote himselfentirely to music, but his father sternly discountenanced what he called “these frivolous dreams.â€
It was through journalism that Serov first acquired a much desired footing in the musical world. At the close of the ’forties musical criticism in Russia had touched its lowest depths. The two leading men of the day, Oulibishev and Lenz, possessed undoubted ability, but had drifted into specialism, the one as the panegyrist of Mozart, the other of Beethoven. Moreover both of them published their works in German. All the other critics of the leading journals were hardly worthy of consideration. These were the men whom Moussorgsky caricatured in his satirical songs “The Peepshow†and “The Classicist.†It is not surprising, therefore, that Serov’s first articles, which appeared in the “Contemporary†in 1851, should have created a sensation in the musical world. We have seen that his literary equipment was by no means complete, that his convictions were still fluctuant and unreliable; but he was now awake to the movements of the time, and joined to a cultivated intelligence a “wit that fells you like a mace.†His early articles dealt with Mozart, Beethoven, Donizetti, Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Spontini, and in discussing the last-named, he explained and defended the historical ideal of the music-drama.Considering that at that time Serov was practically ignorant of Wagner’s work, the conclusions which he draws do credit to his foresight and reflection.
As I am considering Serov rather as a composer than as a critic, I need not dwell at length upon this side of his work. Yet it is almost impossible to avoid reference to that long and bitter conflict which he waged with one whom, in matters of Russian art and literature, I must regard as my master. The writings of Serov, valuable as they were half a century ago, because they set men thinking, have now all the weakness of purely subjective criticism. He was inconstant in his moods, violent in his prejudices, and too often hasty in his judgments, and throughout the three weighty volumes which represent his collected works, there is no vestige of orderly method, nor of a reasoned philosophy of criticism. The novelty of his style, the prestige of his personality, and perhaps we must add the deep ignorance of the public he addressed, lent a kind of sacerdotal authority to his utterances. But, like other sacerdotal divulgations, they did not always tend to enlightenment and liberty of conscience. With one hand Serov pointed to the great musical awakening in Western Europe; with the other he sought persistently to blind Russians to the important movement that wastaking place around them. In 1858 Serov returned from a visit to Germany literally hypnotised by Wagner. To quote his own words: “I am now Wagner mad. I play him, study him, read of him, talk of him, write about him, and preach his doctrines. I would suffer at the stake to be his apostle.†In this exalted frame of mind he returned to a musical world of which Rubinstein and Balakirev were the poles, which revolved on the axis of nationality. In this working, practical world, busy with the realisation of its own ideals and the solution of its own problems, there was, as yet, no place for Wagnerism. And well it has proved for the development of music in Europe that the Russians chose, at that time, to keep to the high road of musical progress with Liszt and Balakirev, rather than make a rush for thecul-de-sacof Wagnerism. Serov had exasperated the old order of critics by his justifiable attacks on their sloth and ignorance; had shown an ungenerous depreciation of Balakirev and his school, and adopted a very luke-warm attitude towards Rubinstein and the newly-established Musical Society. Consequently, he found himself now in an isolated position. Irritated by a sense of being “sent to Coventry,†he attacked with extravagant temper the friend of years in whom, as the champion of nationality, he imagined a new enemy. The longpolemic waged between Serov and Stassov is sometimes amusing, and always instructive; but on the whole I should not recommend it as light literature. Serov lays on with bludgeon and iron-headed mace; Stassov retaliates with a two-edged sword. The combatants are not unfairly matched, but Stassov’s broader culture keeps him better armed at all points, and he represents, to my mind, the nobler cause.
When Serov the critic felt his hold on the musical world growing slacker, Serov the composer determined to make one desperate effort to recover his waning influence. He was now over forty years of age, and the great dream of his life—the creation of an opera—was still unrealised. Having acquired the libretto ofJudith, he threw himself into the work of composition with an energy born of desperation. There is something fine in the spectacle of this man, who had no longer the confidence and elasticity of youth, carrying his smarting wounds out of the literary arena, and replying to the taunts of his enemies, “show us something better than we have done,†with the significant words “wait and see.†Serov, with his extravagances and cocksureness of opinion, has never been a sympathetic character to me; but I admire him at this juncture. At first, the mere technical difficulties of compositionthreatened to overwhelm him. The things which should have been learnt at twenty were hard to acquire in middle-life. But with almost superhuman energy and perseverance he conquered his difficulties one by one, and in the spring of 1862 the opera was completed.
Serov had many influential friends in aristocratic circles, notably the Grand Duchess Helena Pavlovna, who remained his generous patroness to the last. On this occasion, thanks to the good offices of Count Adelberg, he had not, like so many of his compatriots, to wait an indefinite period before seeing his opera mounted. In March 1863 Wagner visited St. Petersburg, and Serov submitted to him the score ofJudith. Wagner was particularly pleased with the orchestration, in which he cannot have failed to see the reflection of his own influence.
The idea of utilisingJudithas the subject for an opera was suggested to Serov by K. I. Zvantsiev, the translator of some of the Wagnerian operas, after the two friends had witnessed a performance of the tragedy “Giuditta,†with Ristori in the leading part. At first Serov intended to compose to an Italian libretto, but afterwards Zvantsiev translated into the vernacular, and partially remodelled, Giustiniani’s original text. After a time Zvantsiev, being doubtful of Serov’s capacity to carry throughthe work, left the libretto unfinished, and it was eventually completed by a young amateur, D. Lobanov.
The opera was first performed in St. Petersburg on May 16th, 1862 (O.S.). The part of Judith was sung by Valentina Bianchi, that of Holofernes by Sariotti. The general style ofJudithrecalls that of “Tannhäuser,†and of “Lohengrin,†with here and there some reminiscences of Meyerbeer. The opera is picturesque and effective, although the musical colouring is somewhat coarse and flashy. Serov excels in showy scenic effects, but we miss the careful attention to detail, and the delicate musical treatment characteristic of Glinka’s work, qualities which are carried almost to a defect in some of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas. But the faults which are visible to the critic seemed virtues to the Russian public, andJudithenjoyed a popular success rivalling even that ofA Life for the Tsar. The staging, too, was on a scale of magnificence hitherto unknown in the production of national opera. The subject of Judith and Holofernes is well suited to Serov’s opulent and sensational manner. It is said that the scene in the Assyrian camp, where Holofernes is depicted surrounded by all the pomp and luxury of an oriental court, was the composer’s great attraction to the subject; the music to this scene was written by him before all the rest of the opera, and it isconsidered one of the most successful numbers in the work. The chorus and dances of the Odalisques are full of the languor of Eastern sentiment. The March of Holofernes, the idea of which is probably borrowed from Glinka’s March of Chernomor inRusslan and Liudmilla, is also exceedingly effective; for whatever we may think of the quality of that inspiration, which for over twenty years refused to yield material for the making of any important musical work, there is no doubt that Serov had now acquired from the study of Wagner a remarkable power of effective orchestration. Altogether, when we consider the circumstances under which it was created, we can only be surprised to find how littleJudithsmells of the lamp. We can hardly doubt that the work possesses intrinsic charms and qualities, apart from mere external glitter, when we see how it fascinated not only the general public, but many of the young musical generation, of whom Tchaikovsky was one. Although in later years no one saw more clearly the defects and makeshifts of Serov’s style, he always spoke ofJudithas “one of his first loves in music.†“A novice of forty-three,†he wrote, “presented the public of St. Petersburg with an opera which in every respect must be described asbeautiful, and shows no indications whatever of being the composer’sfirst work. The opera has manygood points. It is written with unusual warmth and sometimes rises to great emotional heights. Serov, who had hitherto been unknown, and led a very humble life, became suddenly the hero of the hour, the idol of a certain set, in fact a celebrity. This unexpected success turned his head and he began to regard himself as a genius. The childishness with which he sings his own praises in his letters is quite remarkable. And Serov had actually proved himself a gifted composer but not a genius of the first order.†It would be easy to find harsher critics of Serov’s operas than Tchaikovsky, but his opinion reflects on the whole that of the majority of those who had felt the fascination ofJudithand been disillusioned by the later works.