Musorgsky and His Circle: A Russian Musical Adventure

by Stephen Walsh

  The first part of the article confines itself to a general account of Russian musical life and its underpinnings, as Rubinstein understood them. Wherever you go in Russia, he assures his readers, you hear music—sung or played, and accompanying all kinds of activity, work or leisure. As for music as an art, he credits Catherine the Great with the setting-up of the first music schools (the empress Anne had in fact preceded her in this). He fails to mention that these early schools were essentially training grounds for court singers, and were certainly not designed to provide any sort of theoretical grounding. Catherine sent Russian musicians abroad to study, most significantly the young Dmitry Bortnyansky, who studied in Italy, then returned; was appointed Kapellmeister to the Imperial Court Chapel; and composed a large number of mass and psalm settings and motets which became the staple of the Orthodox repertoire and eventually, together with the work of his successor as Kapellmeister, Fyodor Lvov, acquired a monopoly under which, by Rubinstein’s day, it was illegal to replace their church music with music by other composers.

  In Orthodox services, he explains, musical instruments were not permitted, and the composers had at their disposal only a four-part choir. Within these limitations, and with his Western training, Bortnyansky was able to produce much beautiful music in an essentially simple, pure idiom, even if his works could hardly measure up to the great masterpieces of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Rubinstein here raises the question of Russian folk song. Distinctive though it is, he finds in it a certain monotony, a persistent lugubriousness and melancholy that infect every aspect of its melody and rhythm. As material for an entire opera, this is scarcely endurable, especially for foreign audiences, who have no interest in the issues that might impel a Russian composer to base his music on folk materials.

  No composers are named at this point. But Rubinstein begins the second part of the article, published two weeks later, with the claim that “Glinka was the first to have and carry out the bold but unfortunate idea of composing a national opera.” Both Glinka’s operas, he maintains, suffer from the monotony this entails on his view of folk song, and he claims that Glinka was aware of the problem and tried to mitigate it by introducing national elements from elsewhere: Polish dances in A Life for the Tsar, Orientalisms of one kind or another in Ruslan and Lyudmila. Unfortunately this merely added a new monotony to the old, since it still involved whole scenes limited to the chosen style of the moment. Rubinstein is at pains to soften these remarks by praising Glinka as “not only one of the most important Russian composers, but as deserving of an honorable place among the finest foreign masters.” Turning to Glinka’s songs, he calls him “the Russian Schubert, [who] turned Russian song into an art form, and was not content to send out into the world a more or less suitable word setting with simple arpeggio accompaniments”—as had been the standard convention for drawing-room songs. And Glinka’s Kamarinskaya, he suggests (without naming it), is “among the most beautiful and the richest products of either Russian or non-Russian music.” Thus a minor, if delightful, orchestral piece is elevated above the two great operas that had made their composer a beacon for all subsequent Russian composers.

  “There is folk music and folk dance,” Rubinstein asserts by way of summary of this aspect of his article, “but folk opera there strictly speaking is not.” The typical emotional elements of opera are common to everyone in the world, and the musical setting of these universal feelings must have a world tone, not a folk tone. A sharp distinction emerges only between Western and Eastern music, thanks to differences of climate, religion, social customs, and other general influences. “Just as one wouldn’t try to write a Malayan or Japanese opera but an Oriental one, so one shouldn’t write an English, French, or Russian one, but a European one (speaking only about the musical aspect).”1

  It seems unlikely that Glinka ever read Rubinstein’s article, but he certainly read a report of it in the German-language St. Petersburger Zeitung by the composer-critic Karl Friedrich Berthold. Berthold had seized on what he saw as an attack on A Life for the Tsar in particular, and used it as a basis for refuting Rubinstein’s argument about the limitations of folk material in general. Precisely because of the authenticity they derive from their national character, he argued, “they acquire … a universal character, and thanks to their style and originality they belong to world history and become immortal.” Berthold meanwhile ignored the fact that the rest of the Blätter article had been broadly positive about Russian music. Thus Rubinstein’s apparently sincere attempt to introduce his German readers to what he saw as the best of his fellow countrymen’s work was received in the Russian capital as a straightforward attack. Glinka told his friend Vasily Engelhardt that “the yid Rubinstein has taken it on himself to tell Germany about our music and has written an article in which he does us all dirty and handles my old woman A Life for the Tsar rather insolently.”2 Glinka, as we saw, was touchy about his first opera on account of the poor quality of its recent revivals, and no doubt he communicated his reaction not only to Engelhardt, but to the other members of his musical circle, who already included Vladimir Stasov and would also within a matter of weeks include Mily Balakirev.

  Rubinstein does little more than hint at musical conditions in Russia. He notes that opera in St. Petersburg is dominated by Italian Opera; and who can complain, he asks, when this brings the greatest singers and the best music to the capital? Still, it was undeniably hard on Russian composers, neglected by an Italophile public and having in consequence to make do with a third-rate opera company. Of course there were bright young talents emerging; but they were not writing operas, and few of them were composing instrumental music, “partly because the public has little understanding of this kind of music, partly because the necessary educational apparatus is not available anywhere in the country.” He could well have added that in any case there were few concerts at which such music might be played. Concerts happened mainly in Lent, when the theatres were closed by law and the orchestral players from the opera houses were therefore temporarily available. And there was one final grievance which Rubinstein spared his probably uncomprehending Viennese readership. Musicians in Russia were denied the status of Free Artist, in a country where all social and political relationships were defined by rank (or chin, to use the technical Russian word); they did not, like distinguished practitioners of other arts, receive the privileges that went with status, such as tax benefits and exemption from military service. In fact, musicians were not recognized at all within the bureaucratic system. Elsewhere Rubinstein recounts a painful experience of his own in St. Petersburg, in which an official at Kazan Cathedral insisted on registering him as “son of a merchant of the second guild” (the middle of the three merchant ranks) at a time when he was world-famous as a pianist and among the most professionally successful Russian artists in any sphere.3

  Although the Vienna article skirts these issues, we know that they rankled with its author. In St. Petersburg in the early fifties he had already been contemplating ways of remedying them. In October 1852, he had written to his mother that he was at work on a plan for a music academy: “The plan is ready and today I shall give it to the Grand Duchess who will hand it to the tsar. This may have great consequences for the future of music in Russia and also for me.”4 Rubinstein had worked his plan out in considerable detail, basing it on his knowledge of the conservatories in Paris and Vienna and the Academy of Music in Berlin. But his timing was bad; Nicholas I was less open than ever to new ideas of a liberal character, and in any case he was increasingly distracted by the political tensions that would lead, in a matter of months, to the outbreak of the Crimean War. Toward the end of his three-year European concert tour, Rubinstein spent the winter of 1856–7 in Nice with Yelena Pavlovna discussing the problem. “The idea of a Russian musical society and a conservatory was born there,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Yelena Pavlovna became interested in it as well.”5 In 1858 he returned to Russia and began, with her political and financial support, to put his
ideas into practice.

  Since his departure three years before, the country had undergone a sea change. Nicholas I had died in February 1855 and had been succeeded by his son, Alexander II, who was widely expected (on admittedly somewhat flimsy evidence) to be a more liberal tsar. In fact Alexander’s first task was to try to win the Crimean War, which had been dragging on, for the most part disastrously for Russia, since 1853; and then, when it became clear that winning it was impossible, to bring it to an end. The Treaty of Paris was signed in March 1856. Thereafter, Alexander was able to turn his attention to the by now pressing need for land reform, with particular emphasis on the abolition of serfdom and the modernization of the rural economy and the politics that went with it. Obviously there was liberal thinking behind these moves, even if the main motive was to improve efficiency and discourage rebellion; and to some extent they brought with them a more open, receptive atmosphere in society at large. Even so, it was necessary to tread warily in seeking to establish new institutions in such a habitually conservative environment. Rubinstein’s tactic, which seems to have been suggested by his friend Vasily Kologrivov, was to represent his new musical society as a revived version of the former Symphonic Society, which had put on the occasional orchestral concert in the time of Nicholas I. With a renewed charter to organize concerts, it would be a mere formality to transform them into regular events. And by including “the development of music education” among the “revived” society’s principal aims, the ground would be laid for the new conservatory that it had for so long been Rubinstein’s real dream to found in St. Petersburg.

  After a good deal of lobbying and much energetic fund-raising by a board of directors which included Vladimir Stasov’s lawyer brother Dmitry, the Russian Musical Society (RMS) finally opened its first season in November 1859 with a series of ten symphonic concerts in the Hall of the Assembly of the Nobles. The importance of this venture can hardly be overstated. Orchestral concerts in the capital had been a rarity. The Imperial Theatres held a monopoly on musical performances during the opera season, and it seems that Rubinstein was only able to evade the theatre directorate’s embargo through the influence of Yelena Pavlovna, which also enabled him to draw on the best players from the opera orchestras and to assemble a concert orchestra superior to anything previously heard in St. Petersburg. For the first time, Petersburgers could hear the classics of the Western repertoire in performances worthy of the name. But Rubinstein also had the tact to include music by Russian composers in every program, even though the historic lack of concerts meant that the native repertoire of such things was decidedly thin. He played Glinka and Dargomïzhsky, Musorgsky (Scherzo in B-flat), and Cui (Scherzo in F, op. 1). And naturally he included his own music, in the form of the G-major Piano Concerto (no. 3). But many of the Russian offerings were not much more than tokens, sops to Cerberus. It was a situation that precisely illustrated the problem that his other great project was eventually designed to solve.

  The new conservatory remained Rubinstein’s prime goal; but here he began to face more serious opposition. His initial proposal for what he grandly but sycophantically labelled the Imperial Music School was rejected out of hand by the Ministry of Education on the grounds, more or less, that it was not needed. Stung by this characteristically obtuse bureaucratic response, he launched once more into print. This time his article appeared in the Russian-language newspaper Vek, and took the form of a direct attack on the basic conditions of Russian music. At its core lay an extended grumble at the state of affairs whereby the refusal of official status to musicians meant that only the gentry could afford to cultivate music at all. Anyone else with musical aspirations had first to find himself some gainful employment outside music, and this necessity would rob him of the time and energy to devote to music the concentrated effort without which it was idle to expect worthwhile artistic results. Rubinstein makes no attempt to conceal his profound contempt for the amateurism that dominates the Russian musical scene as a result. The amateur is a mere dabbler who never masters the rudiments of the art he pretends to cultivate. He imagines that if he writes a single romance, however primitive and inept, he can call himself a composer. He will set himself up as musical celebrity, write the same song over and over again, and “start to contend that only melody has value in music, and that everything else is German pedantry; and he will end up composing an opera.”

  There are, it is true, amateurs who study musical theory, but here too they do not behave like true artists. They value not the rules but the exceptions; and having assimilated these exceptions they never give them up. Thus, in some work by a great composer we can, for example, come across a chord progression of an unusual kind. The amateur will take this and turn it into a rule for himself and will write only unusual harmonies, without taking into consideration the fact that where the great composer was concerned this harmony was the result of the overflowing of his inspiration, a cry of despair or ecstasy, and the logical consequence of the whole composition.

  Many amateurs want to study, he continues, but cannot afford to do so. In any case, since Russians are musically untaught and music is not a viable profession, Russian teachers hardly exist, which means that the would-be student must be able to speak French or German.

  But what can be done to remedy this sad situation? I shall tell you: the only answer is to establish a conservatory.

  People will argue that great geniuses have rarely come out of conservatories; I agree, but who can deny that good musicians come out of conservatories, and that is precisely what is essential in our enormous country. The conservatory will never prevent a genius from developing outside it, and, meanwhile, each year the conservatory will provide Russian teachers of music, Russian orchestral musicians and Russian singers of both sexes who will work in the manner of someone who sees his art as his livelihood, the key to social respect, a means of becoming famous, a way of giving himself up completely to his divine calling, and as a person who respects himself and his art ought to work.6

  Rubinstein mentioned no names: it was more a case of “if the cap fits …” And it certainly did fit quite a few heads. Anyone could recognize the Alyabyevs and the Gurilyovs in the gibe about single-romance composers. And as for the songwriter who contends that rules of harmony are German pedantry and ends up writing an opera, could that be Dargomïzhsky, or even (perish the thought) Glinka? Then there were the amateur geniuses who made a career out of weird harmonies: there were plenty of candidates for this accolade, some of whom, like Cui and Musorgsky, had already had works played by the RMS. In a way this was the most damaging barb, since it tore at the very idea of a specifically Russian kind of originality, one that would break away from textbook rules and classical formulae and create a completely new language. For Vladimir Stasov it was altogether too much. “The fact is,” he told Balakirev, “that Anton has written the piece out of jealousy of Russia and out of sheer bloody-mindedness, and to my mind it will do terrible harm. I’d like—if only it were still somehow possible—to put a stop to this or at least force those who scurry around like busy ants and try to push logs pointed out to them by the genius maestro to think what they’re about.”7 His public reply had just appeared in Severnaya pchela (Northern Bee), and it would lay the ground for a quarrel that would infect Russian musical life for the next thirty years.8

  Stasov’s article starts with a sneer that was to become standard with the kuchka where Rubinstein was concerned. Rubinstein, he asserts, “is a foreigner with no understanding either of the demands of our national character or of the historical course of our art.” Rubinstein was, of course, a Russian citizen by birth, but ethnically a Jew whose mother tongue was probably either Ukrainian or Yiddish. Stasov seems to be echoing the routine anti-Semitic argument (put most recently and notoriously by Wagner in his Judaism in Music) that Jews are acquainted with European languages and cultures only as something learned rather than innate, and are therefore incapable of anything but a superficial understanding of their inner wo
rkings. Stasov wants to argue, on the other hand, that what Rubinstein condemns as amateurism is in reality the natural Russian distaste for the stultifying effects of Western academicism. The weaker form of amateurism he complains of is no different from dilettantism anywhere; it can produce bad results or good, but in neither case does it do significant harm. The question is, would sending musicians off to conservatories and offering them civic status achieve anything better? The offer of status would surely act as a bait to all kinds of riffraff to get themselves a qualification and a better life, without achieving anything useful in terms of art. After all, Stasov suggests, “our men of letters were never given any ranks or titles, and yet a deeply national literature has grown up and thriven in our country.” As for conservatories, is Rubinstein unaware of the opinion widely held in Europe that such institutions “serve only as breeding grounds for talentless people and aid the establishment in art of harmful ideas and tastes”? As a matter of fact, Russia was long ago flooded with foreign music teachers, and if academic tuition were the solution to the problems Rubinstein perceives, they would have been solved a long time ago.

  It was true that Rubinstein tended to view the Russian scene from the point of view of a musician thoroughly well trained in Western orthodoxies and instinctively suspicious of the deviant behavior of Russian composers whose sole ambition seemed to be to assert their difference from everyone else at no matter what cost to their artistry. We know that he had little time for a maverick Westerner like Berlioz or even Wagner, and admired Liszt as a pianist and great human being more than as a composer. Still, with all allowance made, it is hard to take seriously Stasov’s general arguments about the evils of study and the virtues of creative instinct. It might well be that in the particular cases of Stasov’s close composer friends, study of the kind recommended by Rubinstein was something of an irrelevance. Rubinstein himself acknowledges that genius is an exception to which the academy has no answer. But what about all the other musicians, the performers, the writers, the teachers, even the useful minor composers? Stasov’s example from literature is somewhat disingenuous, since writers can learn their trade in ordinary university courses, or simply by practicing it, while writing as a profession involves a much less complicated support apparatus, except perhaps in the theatre—and even acting, however skilled, hardly calls for the same depth of training as musical performance (or the same number of trainees). The infrastructure simply is not comparable. As for Stasov’s theory that Western Europe was turning against the musical academy, this looks like an invention ad hoc. The Paris Conservatory remained the mecca for aspiring French musicians, even those like Berlioz himself or, half a century later, Debussy who affected to despise its precepts. The Vienna Conservatory would soon number Mahler and Wolf among its students, Bruckner among its teachers. And Stasov ignores the whole question of expense and language, insignificant to people of his class, but crucial to the vast, less privileged majority to which Jews like Rubinstein himself belonged.