Musorgsky and His Circle: A Russian Musical Adventure
Page 57
“The history of Russian music,” Cui went on,
will assign to Balakirev one of the highest, most honored, places. I realize he could have done much more than he did. At one time all music was in his hands. He could have been director of the conservatory or the Imperial Opera. He conducted symphony concerts, fussed over the Free Music School. The powerful of the world were prepared to sponsor him. But Mily Alexeyevich’s character was far from public. He was a person of an independent disposition, not very sociable, and at all events obstinate.… What he wrote is very fine, elegant and superbly worked. I should even say too superbly worked. Without doubt he could have composed much more and left huge musical riches. But his character prevented it.
And finally Cui reflected on his own situation.
So I’m the last one left. It’s a little frightening, but I haven’t lost my mind. I sit and rummage through the pile of thematic material I’ve accumulated. I’m getting something ready to bring into the world. As you see, I remain custodian of the New Musical School.
The custodianship lasted eight more years; it embraced children’s operas, songs, piano pieces, music of a charm almost ridiculously discordant with the events of those most violent years in Russia’s history. Cui’s final performance was a production of his completion of Musorgsky’s Sorochintsï Fair at the Petrograd Music Drama Theatre on 13 October 1917. Twelve days later the Bolsheviks seized power. When Cui died the following March, the new Soviet Union had been out of the war for three weeks. The civil war inside the country had scarcely begun.
Notes
CHAPTER 1 Arrivals
1. See for instance Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 29.
2. Glinka, Memoirs, 36, 68.
3. Sargeant, Harmony and Discord, 15.
4. D. Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 279–80. See also S. M. Lyapunov and A. S. Lyapunova, “Molodïye godï Balakireva,” in Kremlev and Lyapunova, Miliy Alekseyevich Balakirev, 7–71, especially from 47 onward.
5. Letter to Vladimir Stasov, 3 June 1863, in BSP1, 211.
CHAPTER 2 The Father Figure
1. Glinka, Memoirs, 82–3.
2. Askold’s Tomb is the first of a number of Russian operas whose reputation seems to thrive on ignorance of its music. Verstovsky himself resented Glinka’s preeminence, but acquaintance with his music quickly rules out serious comparison.
3. Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 29.
4. See Swan, Russian Music and Its Sources, 25–6, for a clear, nontechnical definition of this folk heterophony, known to Russianists as podgoloski.
5. Glinka, Memoirs, 101.
6. This is an example of peremennost’, the “variable mode” characteristic of Russian folk tunes and Orthodox chant. See, for instance, Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 132–3.
7. Ibid., 36.
8. V. F. Odoyevsky, “Letter to a music lover on the subject of Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar,” in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 2–3.
9. Quoted in D. Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 88–9; also 44–5.
10. Glinka, Memoirs, 136. Glinka may have been consciously or unconsciously exaggerating the dilettante way in which the scenario was created. A scenario survives in Glinka’s hand that cannot be much, if at all, later than the Bakhturin plan, which has not survived. See D. Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 185–6.
11. Swan, Russian Music, 68.
12. Exactly what Glinka meant by the glass harmonica is obscure. It may have been a keyboard instrument in which, presumably, the hammers struck glass strips or plates. See del Mar, Anatomy of the Orchestra, 493. Today a celesta is normally used, as it is also for the campanelli (bells) in the Magic Dances in act 4. The stage music was orchestrated by Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov for the publication of the full score in 1878.
13. It was published only in 1845 and not played outside France before 1842. Glinka first visited France in 1844. He may have known Liszt’s transcription for solo piano, published in 1834.
14. Anonymous critic in the Russkiy invalid, quoted in Orlova, Glinka v Peterburge, 169.
15. Glinka, Memoirs, 172.
16. Ibid., 234.
17. Lakond, The Diaries of Tchaikovsky, 250–1 (entry for 27 June 1888). Emphases in the original.
CHAPTER 3 The Lawyer-Critic
1. See Sharp, Heine in Art and Letters, 44.
2. Ibid., 1.
3. Quoted in Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, 140.
4. Ibid., 134.
5. “The Idea of Art,” in Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, 168. “Images” translates the word obraztsakh, strictly “types,” “patterns.” See, for instance, Taruskin, Musorgsky, 11.
6. Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, 149.
7. Letter of 1 January 1844, quoted by Gerald Abraham in his introduction to Jonas, Vladimir Stasov: Selected Essays, 9–10.
8. “Liszt, Schumann and Berlioz in Russia,” in ibid., 121.
9. “Muzïkal’noye obozreniye 1847,” in SSM1, 23–38; translated as “Review of the Musical Events of the Year 1847” in Jones, Vladimir Stasov: Selected Essays, 15–37. Stasov had contributed a few brief reviews of foreign books, as well as short anonymous pieces on art, architecture, and music, to the same paper earlier in the year.
10. Letter of 18/30 April 1852, quoted in Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, 184. Emphases in the original.
11. See Lebedev and Solodovnikov, Vladimir Vasil’yevich Stasov, 50.
12. Letter of 21 March 1861, in BSP1, 128–30. For further information on Kel’siyev, see Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 101–16 (the passage is not in the abridged version).
13. “Nasha muzïka za posledniye 25 let,” in SSMIII, 168.
14. “Pis’ma iz chuzhikh krayev,” in SSMII, 209. The article is an account of the circumstances surrounding the first performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold in Munich in 1869.
15. Letter of 18/30 November 1853 to Glinka, in Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, 211. See also Stasov, L’Abbé Santini.
16. Letter of 24/25 July 1861, in BSP1, 153–4.
17. Journal des débats, 16 April 1845, quoted in D. Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 315.
18. Introduction to Jones, Vladimir Stasov: Selected Essays, 6–7.
CHAPTER 4 The Officer and the Doctor
1. Quoted in Dianin, Borodin (1960), 39–40; cf. Dianin, Borodin (1963), 18.
2. Ibid., 2. Stasov indicates that “Herke prepared [the work] for publication with pleasure,” information he probably had from Musorgsky himself. MBO, in Ogolevets, V. V. Stasov, 32.
3. Dianin, Borodin (1960), 41; Borodin (1963), 20.
4. Ibid.
5. See his “Prosheniye ob otstavke” (“Request for discharge”), in MLN, 270–1.
6. See “Little Star: An Etude in the Folk Style,” in Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 38–70.
7. The term “pedal” derives from the pedal board of the church organ, on which the organist can hold a note indefinitely with his foot while improvising freely with his hands. The pedal note has the effect of bonding the upper harmonies, regardless of their character. The piano cannot, of course, sustain in this way, but can suggest the effect by repetition.
8. Letter of 19 October 1859 to Balakirev, in MLN, 46; MR, 21–2.
9. Letter of 10 February 1860 to Balakirev, in MLN, 48; MR, 23–4. This later Soviet edition omits the reference to “onanism,” but it is in the earlier Russian text edited by Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov. See Rimsky-Korsakov, M. P. Musorgskiy: 55.
10. Ivan Turgenev, The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (London: William Heinemann, 1894).
11. Stasov wrongly dates the meeting with Dargomïzhsky to the winter of 1856–7, so has Glinka still alive, but abroad. See MBO, 35–6.
12. Letter of autumn 1856, quoted in ODR, 258. I am indebted to Taruskin for much of the information in this paragraph.
13. MBO, 34.
14. Letter of 9 December 1857 to L. I. Belenitsïna (Karmalina’s maiden name), in Pekelis, A. S. Dargomïzhsky, vol.1, 53.
16. LMMZ, 24–5; MML, 28–9. (Unless otherwise stated, the translations from the work are my own.) But according to Cui, in his obituary of Balakirev, Chopin was highly regarded by the circle: “Ts. A. Kyui o M. A. Balakireve,” Birzheviye vedomosti, 18 May 1910, reprinted in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 548–50.
17. Letter of 18 June 1858, in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 46; also MDW, 66–7.
18. See his letters of 12 July and 13 August 1858 to Balakirev, in MR, 9–13. MR translates rasseyannost’ as “absentmindedness”; but Musorgsky is not talking about forgetfulness.
19. Letter of 10 February 1860 to Balakirev, in MLN, 48; MR, 23.
CHAPTER 5 On Aesthetics and Being Russian
1. I am indebted to Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, 191–4, for much of the present discussion.
2. Letter to V. P. Botkin and N. A. Nekrasov, 25 July 1855, in Turgenev, Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy i pisem, vol. 2, 300–301.
3. Quoted in Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, 192.
4. Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, 162.
5. Lebedev and Solodovnikov, Stasov, 62–3.
6. Olkhovsky, Vladimir Stasov, 139.
7. Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, 86.
8. “Nasha muzïka za posledniye 25 let,” in SSMIII, 151.
9. Letter of 18 November 1858, in BSP1, 84–5, referring to Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen (Berlin, 1859). A note to the published text explains that Marx’s book, though dated 1859, actually came out in 1858, and was already listed in the St. Petersburg Public Library’s register of acquisitions for that year. As far as I am aware, there is no authority in Beethoven for Marx’s interpretation.
10. Letter of 19 July 1858, BSP1, 63–9. Stasov’s emphases.
11. SSMIII, 147; cf. Glinka, Memoirs, 60.
12. Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, 86.
13. Ibid., 111.
14. Ibid., 112, 114.
15. Letter to Balakirev, 12 June 1860, in BSP1, 106.
16. Letter to Balakirev, 20 August 1860, in BSP1, 114–5. But Stasov’s arithmetic is adrift. There are either six modes (or seven, including the purely theoretical Locrian mode), or twelve, if the so-called hypo-modes are counted. The major scale is the same as the Ionian mode, but the minor scale has three versions, of which two (the harmonic minor and the rising melodic minor) have no modal equivalent. The descending minor scale is the Aeolian mode. So Stasov might have allowed Balakirev as many as fourteen scales, or even—with the Locrian and Hypolocrian—sixteen.
17. SSMI, 231. See Richard Taruskin’s detailed analysis of the article in ODR, 6–13. Stasov’s emphases.
18. Letter to Balakirev, 13 February 1861, in BSP1, 121–4.
19. Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, 112–3 (translation adjusted).
20. Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, 306–7.
CHAPTER 6 New Institutions
1. Anton Rubinstein, “Die Componisten Russland’s,” Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst (Vienna: 11 May, 25 May, 8 June 1855).
2. Quoted in Ridenour, Nationalism, Modernism and Personal Rivalry, 83.
3. See ibid., 28, for an English version of the complete conversation.
4. Letter of 15 October 1852, quoted in Taylor, Anton Rubinstein, 38.
5. Quoted in ibid., 30.
6. Rubinstein, “O muzïke v Rossii,” Vek (1861, no.1); English translation in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 64–73.
7. Letter of 1 March 1861, in BSP1, 125–6.
8. “Konservatorii v Rossii: Zamechaniya na stat’yu g. Rubinshteyna,” Severnaya pchela, 24 February 1861, reprinted in SSMII, 5–10; English translation in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 73–80.
9. Letter of 13 January 1861, MR, 31.
10. Quoted in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 82.
11. Letter of 23 January 1867, MLN, 80; MR, 76. “Tupinstein” was one of various corruptions of Rubinstein’s name with which the kuchka amused themselves. Tupoy is Russian for “dull.”
CHAPTER 7 First Steps
1. Letters of 18 and 19 October 1859, MLN, 46–7; MR, 20–22.
2. Gordeyeva, M. P. Musorgskiy, 179; cf. Orlova, Musorgsky Remembered, 39.
3. Letter of 25 July 1858, in BSP1, 72.
4. As reported by Musorgsky in a letter of 12 July 1858 to Balakirev; MR, 10.
5. Musorgsky subsequently worked on two further Oedipus choruses, according to a letter to Balakirev of 26 September 1860 (MR, 25–6), but nothing is known of them for certain. Gerald Abraham has plausibly identified them with other music in Salammbô. See Calvocoressi, Mussorgsky, 97.
6. See Stasov to Balakirev, letter of 19 July 1858, in BSP1, 63–9. According to Edward Garden, Stasov’s source was William Chappell’s Collection of National English Airs (1838–40, expanded as Popular Music of the Olden Time [1855–59]). Garden speculates that Balakirev may have taken his act 4 tune either from Chappell or from a previous, lost Stasov letter. See Garden, Balakirev: A Critical Study, 42 and 46, note 16.
7. Letter of 7 July 1858, in MDW, 66 (but wrongly dated to June).
8. Rimsky-Korsakov lists the Oedipus chorus as “the only work of Musorgsky’s acknowledged by the [Balakirev] circle,” when he, Rimsky, first came on the scene (LMMZ, 27; MML, 31). But that was in 1861.
9. MBO, 42.
10. ODR, 341, 343. The work’s brevity in its original two-act form may also have been a problem. See Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 533, note 4.
11. Taruskin’s assertion that she drowns herself in the opera, as in the poem, is a curious and uncharacteristic mistake. See ODR, 354.
12. See N. Basmajian, “The Romances,” in M. H. Brown, Musorgsky in Memoriam, 38.
13. Letter of 31 December 1860, in MR, 28.
14. Undated letter postmarked 25 December 1860, in MLN, 51; MR, 27. “Voice” in this context is a technical term for “part”; voice leading is the technique of writing music in several parts, and does not refer specifically to the human voice.
15. The Mengden play is not known. Georgiy Mengden was a school friend of Musorgsky’s, but the Mengdens were a well-known family of aristocratic Balts, and the playwright may have been Georgiy’s father or one of his Mengden-Altenwoga cousins. See MLN, 50; MR, 25.
16. See MDW, 71, entry for 25 December 1858, for a somewhat confused account of this discussion. A clearer source is Calvocoressi, Musorgsky, 20.
17. See, for example, Turner, “Musorgsky,” 153–75, for a theory about the composer’s supposed homosexuality and sadomasochism. As an example of theorizing on flimsy evidence, the diagnosis of homosexuality from a pair of extravagantly affectionate letters to Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov is something of a prize exhibit.
18. MR, 15, note 32.
19. Letter of 12 May 1859, in MLN, 42–3 (where it is—probably wrongly—dated 12 June), MR, 15–16.
20. Letter of 13 February 1861, in BSP1, 121. Stasov’s emphases. Lyadov (father of the composer Anatoly) had cut this entr’acte from the performances of Glinka’s opera.
21. Letter of 19 January 1861, in MLN, 56–7; MR, 34–5.
22. Letter to Vladimir Stasov, 18 October 1872, in MLN, 140–1; MR, 198–200; emphases Musorgsky’s.
23. The letter has not survived, but its contents can be deduced with some precision from Musorgsky’s reply of 19 January 1861, in MR, 34–5.
CHAPTER 8 The Third Rome
1. Letter of 5 July 1858, in BSP1, 62–3.
2. Letter of 23 June 1859 to Balakirev, in MLN, 43–4; MR, 17–18.
3. Quoted in Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 162.
4. “Nasha muzïka za posledniye 25 let,” in SSMIII, 159.
5. SSMI,, 231.
6. “Nasha muzïka za posledniye 25 let,” in SSMIII, 149.
7. Letter of 3 June 1862 to Alexander Arseniev, quoted in the introduction to BSP1, 26.
8. Letter of 25 Ju
ne 1862, in BSP1, 188–9.
9. Letter of 10 July 1864 to Stasov, in BSP1, 229–30.
10. See, for instance, Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 17–24. Something comparable happened in eighteenth-century Hungary, leading to confusion in the following centuries over what was and what was not “authentically” Hungarian.
11. Of the most prominent Slavophiles, Ivan Kireyevsky had died in 1856, and Konstantin Aksakov and Alexis Khomyakov both died in 1860.
12. See Raeff, Russian Intellectual History, 197, on Kireyevsky.
13. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 301–2.
14. Lebedev and Solodovnikov, Stasov, 50–57; see also Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, passim.
15. Letter of 9 August 1888, in Karenin, Vladimir Stasov, 598, note 1; emphases Stasov’s.
16. Private communication, 29 May 2009. Dr. Kelly answered my inquiries about the relationship in generous detail, and the observation about the absence of significant references is hers.
17. Letter of 22 June 1863, in MLN, 70–1; MR, 55–7. Musorgsky’s emphases.
18. Letter of 10 June 1863, in MLN, 70; MR, 54. Musorgsky’s emphases.
19. See Novikov, U istokov velikoy muzïki, 158. For more details on the conditions of the Toropetz peasantry at the time of emancipation, see Obraztsova, “Faktï k biografii Musorgskogo,” 83–88. She depicts them as living in extreme poverty, poorly housed, fed and clad, and with no local medical center. When, after the emancipation decree, the peasants refused to pay their obrok (quit rent) or do the corvée (labor in lieu), “the disturbance was harshly put down.” She finds it “hard to believe that the Musorgskys did not know about this, and … were not disturbed by these events.” As always with Soviet historians, it is necessary to bear in mind a possible parti pris.