In 1868 Moussorgsky began to write an opera to the libretto of Gogol's drama 'Marriage.' This, however, he never finished. He wrote quite a number of powerful orchestral works of which his 'Intermezzo,' 'Prelude,' andMenuette Monstreare the most typical of all. Having composed several piano pieces and orchestral works with little satisfaction to himself, he decided to devote himself only to vocal music. The period from 1865 to 1875 was the most productive part of his life. During these ten years he composed his 'Hamlet' songs, ballads, romances, and operas, every one of which is more or less original and hypnotizing in its own way.
Moussorgsky's letters to his brother throw a remarkable light on his unique nature and the change that took place in his mind in regard to his social environment. They are partly ironic, bitter expressions upon modern civilization and its wrong standards. Moussorgsky died in 1881 in the Nicholaevsky Military Hospital at the age of forty-two and asked the nurse that instead of a mass in church his 'Death Dance' be played for him by a few of his admirers.
The most widely known of the 'neo-Russian' group, outside of Russia, was Nicholas Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakoff. This man, the most prolific and the most expert of the group, proved himself in some ways one of the supreme masters of modern music. His command over harmonic color-painting and his astonishing mastery over all details of modern orchestration have made him a teacher to the composers of all nations.
Rimsky-Korsakoff was born March 18, 1844, at Tikvin in the department of Novgorod. On his father's estate he received all the advantages of a childhood in the open air, and of the best education available. From the four musicians who furnished music for the family dances he received his first initiation into the art of his later years. When he was six he received his first piano lessons, and when he was nine he was already composing pieces of his own. But it was in the family tradition that the sons should enter the navy, so when he was but twelve years of age the boy went to the St. Petersburg Naval School and entered the long required course. He did not, however, give up his music during this period; he worked hard at the piano and the 'cello, also receiving lessons in composition from Kanillé. But music was comparatively meaningless in his life until, in 1861, he met Balakireff, who had recently come to the capital to undertake the musical spiritualization of his country. Under Balakireff he worked for about a year, and during this time came into close contact with the other members of the famous circle. The contact was profoundly stimulating. 'They aired their opinions and criticized the giants of the past,' says Mrs. Newmarch,[13]'with a frankness and freedom that was probably very naïve, and certainly scandalized their academic elders. They adored Glinka; regarded Haydn and Mozart as old-fashioned; admired Beethoven's latest quartets; thought Bach—of whom they could have known little beyond the "Well Tempered Clavier"—a mathematician rather than a musician; they were enthusiastic over Berlioz, while, as yet, Liszt had not begun to influence them very greatly.' Of these days the composer has written, 'I drank in all these ideas, although I really had no grounds for accepting them, for I had only heard fragments of many of the foreign works underdiscussion, and afterwards I retailed them to my comrades at the naval school who were interested in music as being my own convictions.'[14]
Then, while Rimsky-Korsakoff's technique was still being molded, while his ideals were unprecise and his appreciations fluid, he was called away on a long cruise on the shipAlmaz—a cruise which was to last for three years and take him around the world. But with the huge energy for which Russians are so notable, he decided to add music to his regular official duties. He arranged that he was to send to Balakireff from time to time the things he would write on shipboard, and was to receive extended criticisms in return, to be picked up at the harbors at which his ship should stop. Thus he would maintain his active pupilship. The work which he managed to accomplish on shipboard is astonishing. But Rimsky-Korsakoff was endowed with a capacity for orderly and methodical work which enabled him in later life to discharge all sorts of onerous artistic burdens and keep his creative output undiminished in quantity. When he returned from the cruise in 1865 he brought with him his Symphony No. 1, in E minor, the first symphony to be written by a Russian. It was performed under Balakireff's direction at one of the concerts of the Free School of Music and made a favorable impression. For the next few years the composer's life was chiefly centred in St. Petersburg, and his association with the Balakireff group was once more resumed. In this period, too, began his close friendship with Moussorgsky, which continued until the latter's death. After composing the first Russian symphony he produced the first Russian symphonic poem inSadko, opus 5, which revealed his marked power of musical narration and scene-painting. Directly he followed with the 'Fantasy on Serbian Tunes,' opus 6, which gave the first signs of his laterbrilliancy in orchestration. This work attracted the attention of Tschaikowsky, who became his ardent supporter and continued as a personal friend in spite of the fact that the ideals of the two composers were so disparate that close association was impossible. In 1870 Rimsky-Korsakoff began his first opera,Pskovitianka('The Maid of Pskoff'), which was performed early in 1873 and was well received. Soon afterwards he completed his 'Second Symphony,' which is in reality rather a symphonic poem—theAntar, op. 9.
This may be taken as closing one period of his creative activity. He had entered music with all the lively nationalistic ideals of the Balakireff group, and with its naïveté as to musical technique. Like his associates, he had written chiefly in an intuitional fashion. But in 1871 he accepted an invitation to teach at the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music. And he has recorded that in attempting to teach the theory of music he became convinced that it was first necessary for him to learn it. He became profoundly dissatisfied with his musical achievement and set out deliberately to acquire an exhaustive knowledge of musical technique by means of hard work. During one summer he wrote innumerable exercises in counterpoint and sixty-four fugues, ten of which he sent to Tschaikowsky for inspection. From this severe period of self-tuition he emerged with a command of conventional musical means unsurpassed in Russia, but without any essential loss either to his individuality or to his nationalism. By some, Rimsky-Korsakoff's recognition of his need for further technical learning has been accepted as a recantation of his nationalistic principles. But it was not this in reality, for his later operas are all drawn from national sources and the folk-song continues to occupy a prominent place among them. The enthusiasm for classical learning may have changed his standards somewhat; many critics feel that the revisionto which he later submitted the Moussorgsky opera scores reveals a pedantic cast of mind, a failure to appreciate the original genius of his friend. But, on the other hand, his severe training gave him that fluent technique which enabled him to accomplish such a great amount of work on such a high plane of workmanship.
In point of fact, Rimsky-Korsakoff 'recanted' nothing. His ideals and his fundamental musical method had been formed in his early youth. Balakireff's enthusiasm for folk-song never left him. The influence of the early ocean cruise was in his work to the end. Among all musicians Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the greatest describer of the sea. The effect of lonely days and nights out in the midst of the swelling ocean, at a time when his adolescent senses were still deeply impressionable—this we can trace again and again in his later music. 'What a thing to be thankful for is the naval profession!' he wrote in a letter to Cui during the first voyage.[15]'How glorious, how agreeable, how elevating! Picture yourself sailing across the North Sea. The sky is gray, murky, and colorless; the wind screeches through the rigging; the ship pitches so that you can hardly keep your legs; you are constantly besprinkled with spray and sometimes washed from head to foot by a wave; you feel chilly and rather sick. Oh, a sailor's life is really jolly!' We see here the effect of the out-of-door activity on the young artist—that awakening of sensibilities to the external life of nature, rather than the introspection of the thinker who spends his time solely in the study of his art. It was this voyage, surely, that chiefly helped to make Rimsky-Korsakoff so objective in his music. He loves to describe the form and color of nature rather than the experiences of the soul. He paints for us the life of the senses. We recall the young naval officer in themighty swell of the ocean inScheherezade. We cannot doubt the effect of this early influence toward making Rimsky-Korsakoff the great story-teller of modern music.
His later life was an extremely active one. He retained his position at the conservatory for many years, and numbered among his pupils some of the most talented composers in modern Russian music—among them Liadoff, Arensky, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff, Gretchaninoff, Tcherepnine, and Stravinsky. He was an enthusiastic collector of national folk-tunes. He revised, completed, arranged, or orchestrated many large works, including operas by Moussorgsky, Borodine, and Glinka. He served for many years as conductor of the concerts of the Free School, succeeding Balakireff, and for a time was assistant director of the music at the Imperial Chapel. A perquisite post as inspector of naval bands, given him in 1873, enabled him to devote his time to music; for many years he remained officially a servant of the government. After 1889 and up to the time of his death in 1908 he wrote twelve operas, and at one period was looked to to provide one dramatic work each year for one or another of the great lyric theatres of Russia. Once or twice he was publicly at odds with officialdom, at one time going so far as to resign his professorship in the conservatory. But on the whole he was a figure of whom Russia, both popular and official, was proud. His books on theory and orchestration have long been standard.
Rimsky-Korsakoff's works, in addition to the fifteen operas already mentioned, include three symphonies (one of them theAntar), a 'Sinfonietta on Russian Themes,' several symphonic poems, including the 'symphony'Scheherezade, theSadko, and the 'Symphonic Tale' founded on the prologue to Pushkin's 'Russlan and Ludmilla'; several large orchestral works, including the famous 'Spanish Caprice,' the 'Fantasia on SerbianThemes,' and the 'Easter Overture'; a fine piano concerto and a violin fantasia; some church music, a limited amount of piano music and many songs.
Rimsky-Korsakoff's operas are the staple of the Russian opera houses. They are not works of such genius as those of Moussorgsky and Borodine, but, taken together, they reveal a creative genius of a high order. In general their style is lyric rather than declamatory, but in this respect Rimsky-Korsakoff applied a wide variety of means to his special problems. Some, like his first, 'The Maid of Pskoff,' follow loosely the principles laid down by Dargomijsky in 'The Stone Guest,' in which the libretto is regarded as a spoken text to be followed with great literalness by the music. Others, likeSnegourotchka, are almost purely lyric in character. Yet another, 'Mozart and Salieri,' is written in the style of the eighteenth century. But in one way or another the national feeling is in all of them, and folk-tunes are introduced freely with more or less literalness. Though Rimsky-Korsakoff could occasionally reach heights of emotional intensity (as in the last scene of 'The Maid of Pskoff'), his genius is more properly lyrical and picturesque. The songs and pictures ofSnegourotchkaandSadko, in which a huge variety of resource is brought to achieve vividness and brilliancy of effect, are the work of a rich imagination. The melody is supple and varied, the harmony extremely expressive and colorful, but neither is so original as with Moussorgsky. The orchestration, however, never fails to be masterful in the highest degree. This suits admirably the legendary and picturesque subjects which Rimsky-Korsakoff invariably chose. With only one or two exceptions, his operas have held the stage steadily in Russia, and two or three of them have become familiar, by frequent performances, to foreign audiences.
Among Rimsky-Korsakoff's other works the 'SpanishCaprice' and theScheherezadesymphony have become classics of the concert room. The former is a virtuoso piece in brilliantly colored orchestration. The other is one of the most successful musical stories ever told. In these pieces he is working in his own field, that of national or oriental color, made vivid by every device of the modern musician. When he is composing in the more 'absolute' or classical forms, as in the 'Belaieff Quartet,' or the piano concerto, his inspiration seems to wane. Mention should be made of the songs, which include some of the most perfect in Russian literature, though in many the slender melody is weighted down by the richness of the accompaniment. Finally, we should not forget Rimsky-Korsakoff's great service to Russian church music, which will be referred to later.
From this brief outline we can see how great was the variety of his activities. Very little that he did was undistinguished. When he was at his best, in the exploitation of the resources of the modern orchestra, in painting natural scenery, the sea or the woods, in narrating a story of fairies or heroes, he was in the very front rank of composers of the nineteenth century.
In comparison with Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff was a conservative. He inclined toward the sensuous and regular melody of Borodine, which was always somewhat Italian. His harmony was far from revolutionary. He can show us no pages like that wonderful page of Moussorgsky's, introducing the Kremlin scene inBoris Godounoff, where the light of the rising sun is painted striking the towers of the ancient churches—a page which has become historic in connection with modern French impressionism. On the whole, indeed, he seems rather timid about venturing off the beaten path. His harmonic heterodoxies, where they occur, are introduced discreetly, obtaining their effect rather by their appropriateness than by their originality. Norwas Rimsky-Korsakoff so instinctive a nationalist as either Balakireff or Moussorgsky. In a great quantity of his music we find nothing to mark it as Russian. But when welistento the music of Rimsky-Korsakoff we feel that it is daring, novel, and exotic. The striking difference between this musicseenandheardis due chiefly to the orchestration, which so glitters with strange colors that we forget how orthodox the musical writing generally is. By tone coloring the composer gives it qualities of pictorial suggestiveness and Oriental strangeness which is quite lacking in the piano score. Sometimes he even covers up musical poverty by his magnificent scoring; the 'Spanish Rhapsody,' for instance, is a work of little inherent originality, but is maintained on our concert programs because of its inexpressible brilliancy of orchestration. If, on the whole, we find Rimsky-Korsakoff's music thin, we must give due credit to the style which enabled the composer to write a great quantity of music with easy facility, while his taste kept him almost always above the level of banality.
The fifth and last member of the nationalist group was César Cui, the least distinctive and least important of the five. He occupied a somewhat anomalous position in the movement. The son of a Frenchman, he became an enthusiastic nationalist, being the first of Balakireff's important converts. As a teacher in the Government Engineering School in St. Petersburg he had little time for active composition, but exerted great energy in defending the nationalist group in the press and in pamphlets. In all Russia, with the single exception of Vladimir Stassoff, there was no more vigorous and overbearing apologist of the Russian school of composition. Yet his own music is hardly tinged with Russian elements, being a compound of Schumann andof some of the most superficial of the French composers, notably Auber. Though he was undoubtedly a musician of considerable learning and much talent, he has left nothing of much creative vigor.
His father came to Russia with Napoleon's army, was wounded at Smolensk, and later became a teacher of French in a private school at Vilna, near Poland. Here, on January 18, 1835, César Antonovich Cui was born. He received fairly good instruction in piano and violin in his early years, and at the age of fifteen was sent to the School of Military Engineering at St. Petersburg. Here, in a seven years' course, he distinguished himself so that he was made sub-professor in the school, and later became a specialist in military fortifications. (The present czar was at one time his pupil.) All his life he gave distinguished service in this capacity, and during the war that is going on at this writing, though he is past eighty years of age, he is taking a prominent part in the military defense of Russia.
It was in 1856, when he was twenty-one years old, that he was introduced to Balakireff. He immediately became fired with the latter's enthusiasm for a Russian school of music. But his first works show no signs of it. Some early piano pieces are written entirely in the style of Schumann, and his first dramatic work, an operetta called 'The Mandarin's Son,' is a weak piece in the manner of Auber. His first important opera, 'The Prisoner of the Caucasus,' finished about this time though not performed until twenty years later, shows some originality and an attempt at local color. Early in the 'sixties Cui was at work on his opera 'William Ratcliff,' which established his reputation. It was performed in the year 1869 at the Imperial Theatre, St. Petersburg, and though coldly received at the time was revived with considerable success many years later in Moscow. But Cui's chief influence on the music of his time was exerted through his newspaper articles, whichstoutly championed the 'Big Five.' In these he showed himself an able, but a somewhat dogmatic, commentator. He held his ground successfully until the music of the new school had ceased to depend on the written word for its prestige. His pamphlet, 'Music in Russia,' was the chief source of knowledge of Russian composers to the outside world for many years. Cui further helped the cause among foreign lands through the performances of his operas in Belgium and Paris. In fact, two of his later operas, 'The Filibusterer' andM'selle Fifi, were composed to French texts. The opera 'Angelo,' performed in 1876 and in some ways his strongest work, was also drawn from a French source—a play by Victor Hugo. When we have mentioned 'The Saracen,' founded upon a work of Dumas, and 'The Feast in Plague Time,' based on Pushkin, we have named all his works for the stage. In these the dramatic element is always subordinate to the lyrical. The harmony, though often meticulous, is rarely strong or original, and in general the style is thin and conventional. But Cui had a rich fund of melody, and in a few scenes, as in the love episodes in 'The Saracen,' he succeeded to a notable degree in the expression of emotion. But it is in Cui's songs and small pieces for violin and piano that he shows his talent most markedly. Here his French feeling for nicety of form and delicacy of effect revealed itself at its best. We feel that the pieces were written by some lesser Schumann, but we admire the taste and judgment displayed in their execution. Further, we must admire Cui's confining himself to his own style of music. His enthusiasm for and appreciation of the neo-Russian composers is unquestionable, and he might have produced much flamboyant nonsense in trying to make their style his own. As it is he has played an important part in the development of Russian music, and displayed abilities which are by no means to be overlooked.
Before leaving the Russian nationalists we should mention several composers of their generation who were not definitely allied with them or with their school, but still demand mention in any history of Russian music. Edward Franzovitch Napravnik was born August 12, 1839, in Bohemia, and moved to St. Petersburg in 1861. He had received his musical education in his native country and in Paris, where he studied organ and piano, and later taught. In St. Petersburg he took charge of Prince Youssipoff's private orchestra, and thereafter became intimately associated with the musical life of his adoptive country and worked indefatigably for its improvement and independence. In 1863 he was appointed organist to the Imperial theatres, and assistant to the conductor. At the time of the latter's illness in 1869 he was appointed conductor, and this post he held for nearly half a century. He found Russian operatic life under the complete dominance of the Italian influence and made every effort to shift the centre of gravity toward native work. His productions of Glinka's, Tschaikowsky's, and Rimsky-Korsakoff's operas were notable. He was always distinctly hospitable to native work, and the subsequent triumph of Russian musical expression was due in no small degree to his faith and energy. He further built up the opera orchestra in St. Petersburg until it became one of the best in all Europe, and restored to the opera house its old brilliancy of performance. He was also an able and frequent conductor of orchestral concerts in the capital. His compositions, though many and varied, show chiefly French and Wagnerian influence, and are not highly important. He has written four symphonies, among them one with a program taken from Lermontov; several symphonic poems, of which 'The Orient' is most important; three string quartets and a quintet, two piano trios, a piano quartet, a sonata for violin and piano, two suites for 'cello andpiano, a piano concerto; fantasias on Russian themes for piano and violin, all with orchestral accompaniment; a suite for violin and numerous vocal and instrumental pieces in the smaller forms.
His operas, though they were never very popular, are perhaps the most important part of his work. The first, 'The Citizens of Nijny-Novgorod,' was produced at the Imperial Opera House in 1868. It is somewhat in the style of Glinka, but is generally thin and uninspired except in the choral parts, which make effective use of the old church modes. 'Harold,' produced in 1886, is more Wagnerian in form and dispenses with the effects which helped the former work to its popularity.Doubrovsky, produced in 1895, is Napravnik's most popular work; in it the lyric quality is again most prominent, and the parts are written with expert skill for the singers. His last opera,Francesca da Rimini, founded on Stephen Phillips' play, was first presented in 1902. It is musically the most able of his works, though highly reminiscent of the later Wagner. The music of the love scenes is touching and expressive. On the whole, we find Napravnik's influence on Russian music to be notable and salutary, and his original composition, though not inspired, sincere and workmanlike.
Paul Ivanovich Blaramberg (b. 1841), the son of a distinguished general of French extraction, came early under the influence of the Balakireff circle. But a number of years spent in foreign countries impressed other influences on his style, so that his music vacillated from one manner to another without striking any distinctive note. Blaramberg was long active as a teacher of theory in the school of the Philharmonic Society in Moscow. His works include a fantasia, 'The Dragon Flies,' for solo, chorus, and orchestra; a musical sketch, 'On the Volga,' for male chorus and orchestra; 'The Dying Gladiator,' a symphonic poem; a symphonyin B minor; a sinfonietta; a number of songs; and five operas. His first opera, 'The Mummers,' founded on a comedy by Ostrovsky, is a mingling of many styles, from the dramatic declamation of Dargomijsky to the musical patter of opera buffa. 'The Roussalka Maiden' contains many pages of marked lyric beauty, and 'Mary of Burgundy' attains some musical force in the 'grand manner.' The last opera, 'The Wave,' contains a number of pleasing melodies and not a little effective 'oriental color.'
J. N. Melgounoff (1846-1893) was a theorist rather than a composer and had some part in the nationalistic movement through his close and scientific study of folk-songs at a time when the cult of folk-song was chiefly sentimental. A. Alpheraky (born 1846) was also a specialist in folk-song, particularly those of the Ukrane, where he was born. He composed a number of songs, as well as piano pieces, in which the national feeling is evident. N. V. Lissenko (born 1842) was the author of a number of operas popular in the Malo-Russian provinces. He was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakoff and set music to several texts drawn from Gogol.
I. N.