Musorgsky and His Circle: A Russian Musical Adventure

by Stephen Walsh

  7. The poem, “Verratene Liebe,” is not by Chamisso, but was translated by him into German from a French translation of an anonymous modern Greek poem. Schumann himself set the poem as op. 40, no. 5. See Sams, The Songs of Robert Schumann, 148–9.

  8. LMMZ, 70; MML, 76.

  9. Dianin, Borodin (1963), 55. Dianin calls it an “affair,” but there seems no reason to doubt Borodin’s own assertion that his feelings for Anna were essentially platonic, protective, and devoid of sensuality or passion. “She is absolutely not,” he insists, “a mistress to me” (letter of 25 October 1868, in PB1, 134–5).

  10. Dianin, Borodin (1963), 55.

  11. Letter of 7 August 1868, in RKP, 308; MR, 116.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Letter of 15 August 1868, in MLN, 106–7; MR, 120–1.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. The dominant, being unstable (it assumes a resolution on the tonic), makes a better pivot note than the tonic itself.

  17. LMMZ, 85–6; MML, 92–4.

  18. MML, 103.

  19. “Vtoroy kontsert besplatnoy shkolï” (11 January 1872), Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 191–3.

  20. LMMZ, 92; MML, 101.

  21. Letter of 3 November 1868 to Stasov, in BSP1, 258–9. Balakirev’s goose, presumably, was Wagner’s swan.

  22. “Loengrin, muzïkal’naya drama R. Vagnera,” Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 11 October 1868.

  23. Quoted in Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, 38.

  24. “Kompozitorskoye pis’mo,” Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 4 December 1868, reprinted in SSM2, 142–3.

  25. “Opernïy sezon v Peterburge,” Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 37.

  26. The formulation is Taruskin’s, in ODR, 346.

  27. MDW, 177, specifies the 26th, but without saying why. Musorgsky’s own note on this copy merely mentions the month.

  CHAPTER 17 History for the Stage

  1. Letter of 21 March 1861 to Balakirev, in BSP1, 128.

  2. Ibid., 130. This whole question is discussed in great detail by Taruskin in his long essay “The Present in the Past,” in Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 123–200. See also Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, 38.

  3. Letter of August 1866 to O. Novikova, quoted in Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 128.

  4. This is, of course, why Mikhail Romanov makes no appearance in Glinka’s opera about the saving of his life, and also, incidentally, why Catherine the Great remains offstage at the moment of her arrival at the ball in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades.

  5. LMMZ, 82; MML, 90.

  6. See Abraham, “Pskovityanka, 58; also Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 151 and note 69. Nobody seems to know how or why Tchaikovsky came by the libretto.

  7. LMMZ, 82; MML, 89.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Act 2, tableau 1 of the revised (1895) score, which is the version invariably performed now. See LMMZ, 89; MML, 97.

  10. Letter of 25 September 1868, in PB1, 293.

  11. In revising the opera in the late seventies and again in the mid-nineties, Rimsky-Korsakov changed many details in these early scenes. The present discussion is naturally based on the original version, rarely if ever performed now, even in Russia, but published as the very first two volumes of the Collected Edition.

  12. Letter of 8 December 1888, Balakirev to Stasov, in BSPII, 142–3.

  13. LMMZ, 92; MML, 100.

  14. Letter of 30 July 1868, in MLN, 100; MR, 112.

  15. Letter to Rimsky-Korsakov, 15 August 1868, in MR, 119; to Nikolsky, 15 August, in MR, 122.

  16. Emerson and Oldani, Modest Musorgsky and Boris Godunov, 30.

  17. This is no longer the case, but of course that has no relevance to Pushkin’s drama. See Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 186, for details.

  18. The offstage choruses were added in the revised score.

  19. See chapter 2, note 4.

  20. On the complicated question of the sources of Pushkin’s and Musorgsky’s texts for these songs, see Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 291–6; also Dunning et al., The Uncensored “Boris Godunov,” especially p. 472, note 90.

  21. Letter of 15 August 1868 to Nikolsky, in MLN, 102; MR, 122.

  22. Letter of 11 November 1868, quoted in TDM, 167; MDW, 177.

  23. Undated letter [27 September 1869], explaining his refusal to act as accompanist at a rehearsal for an FMS performance of Schumann’s Scenes from “Faust”; MR, 131–2.

  24. MBO, 98.

  25. Letter of 18 July 1869, SPR, 46; quoted in MR, 131.

  26. Igor Glebov (Boris Asafyev), “Muzïkal’no-esteticheskiye vozzreniya Musorgskogo,” in Keldïsh and Yakovlev, M. P. Musorgskiy, 34.

  27. See his letter of 15 August 1868 to Rimsky-Korsakov, in MR, 120–1; also Glebov, in Keldïsh and Yakovlev, M. P. Musorgskiy, 43.

  CHAPTER 18 An Opera Performed, an Opera Abandoned

  1. ODR, 104.

  2. LMMZ, 96; MML, 105. Rimsky-Korsakov admits that the original panegyric sprang “from a pure heart, but a small critical mind.”

  3. “Ratklif,” Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 7 May 1869, reprinted in SSMII, 169–84.

  4. Quoted in ODR, 395.

  5. For these and other opinions, see “Ratklif,” SSMII, 178–81.

  6. Letter of 18 April 1869, in Dianin, Borodin (1960), 193.

  7. Letter of 20 April, in PB1, 142.

  8. Dianin, Borodin (1963), 53.

  9. Ibid., 64; MML, 85 (although Rimsky-Korsakov gives the wrong year).

  10. There remains disagreement about how much of Prince Igor Borodin composed in this first phase. For instance, A. N. Dmitriyev’s suggestion that a first version of Igor’s aria in act 2 was sketched in the winter of 1869–70 is questioned by Marek Bobéth in his major study of the work, in the absence of clear evidence. See Bobéth, Borodin und seine Oper “Fürst Igor,” 28. See also Dmitriyev, “K istorii sozdaniya operï A. P. Borodina Knyaz’ Igor,” in Dmitriyev, Issledovaniya stat’i nablyudeniya, 138–9 (the article first appeared in the journal Sovetskaya Muzïka in 1950); and Gaub, Die kollektive Balett-Oper “Mlada,” 378–9.

  11. Letter of 4 March 1870, in PB1, 200.

  12. Quoted in Williams, Franz Liszt: Selected Letters, 969.

  13. Cairns, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, 492–3.

  14. Letter of 24 September 1870, in PB1, 234–5.

  15. Letter of 3 November 1869, Borodin to his wife, in PB1, 161–2.

  16. Letter of 12 November, in BSP1, 273.

  17. The first letter, not sent, but kept by Balakirev, is dated 18 March 1869. The letter that he sent is dated 31 March. See Kremlev and Lyapunova, Miliy Aleksegevich Balakirev, 127–32.

  18. Letter of 2 October 1869, in ibid., 135.

  19. Letter of 4 October, in ibid., 136–9.

  20. Quoted in Maes, A History of Russian Music, 66.

  21. Letter of 11 October 1869, in BSP1, 270–2.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Letter of 29 July 1870, in SPR, 60.

  24. Muzïkal’nïy sezon, no. 13, quoted in TDM, 182–3; MDW, 194–5.

  25. Stasov’s article is reprinted in SSMII, 186–96. A rayok is a small ray (“paradise”), hence the occasional translation of Musorgsky’s title as “Penny Paradise.” The fairground peepshow was like a magic lantern, a box with moving pictures, which you watched through an eyeglass to the accompaniment of pribaoutki, bawdy comic poems. According to wikipedia (http://​en.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Rayok), one of the favorite subjects for the rayok was the biblical fall—hence the name.

  CHAPTER 19 A Shared Apartment …

  1. Letter of 11 July 1872, in MLN, 133; MR, 188. The internal quotations are from Alexander Griboyedov’s comedy Woe from Wit (Gore ot Uma): Colonel Skazolub is explaining to the civil servant Famusov how he has risen so quickly in the ranks.

  2. Letter of 6 May 1870, PB1, 221–2.

  3. Letter of 24 April 1871, in BSP1, 279.

  4. Undated note of 12 April 1871, in Kremlev and Lyapunova, Miliy Aleksege
vich Balakirev, 105.

  5. Letter of 17 April 1871, in RKP, 34.

  6. Letters of 17 and 24–25 October 1871 to his wife, in PB1, 305–13.

  7. See, for example, “Musorgsky versus Musorgsky,” in Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 201–90.

  8. Pushkin’s equivalent scene is a brief conversation between Marina and her maid, Ruzia, who in fact does most of the talking but takes no part in the opera. In the previous scene, the Jesuit Father Czernikowski has one speech to the Pretender, invoking St. Ignatius in his aid.

  9. Letter of 18 April 1871, in MLN, 121–2; MR, 162–3. Taruskin argues that this refers to the second Polish scene, but his reasoning is questionable and includes a complicated point about the Russian word for “scene” (stsena), whereas the actual word used is kartina, which almost certainly relates to the whole tableau—i.e., act 3, scene 1. The second scene, as we shall see, was not finished until December. See Musorgsky: Eight Essays, 253–4, note 114.

  10. See ODR, 141–239, for a comprehensive study of The Power of the Fiend. Cui’s reviews are quoted at 228–38, passim.

  11. ODR, 199.

  12. No. 27, “Kak pod lesom, pod lesochkom.”

  13. Letters of 20 and 21 September 1871, in PB1, 291–5. That these are the Cui works in question is my deduction. The editor of Borodin’s letters, by contrast, assumes that he is referring to choruses for Angelo. But the fourth act of that opera contains no choral music except for a twenty-bar monks’ chorus at the very end, and there is no evidence that Cui was working on the earlier acts, where there are plentiful choruses, at this stage.

  14. Quoted in G. Abraham, preface to the Eulenburg miniature score, p. II.

  15. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 20 … and a Shared Commission

  1. LMMZ,, 103; MML, 116. Rimsky-Korsakov’s emphases; see also Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 78.

  2. LMMZ, 105; MML, 117.

  3. Letter of 21 September 1871, in PB1, 293.

  4. Letter of 3 January 1872, in MLN, 126; MR, 176–7. Nadya Purgold’s letter to Rimsky-Korsakov is quoted in TDM, 233; MDW, 251.

  5. Letter of 31 March 1871, in MLN, 129–30; MR, 181–2.

  6. Stasov, Borodin, quoted in Dianin, Borodin (1960), 93; Borodin (1963), 77.

  7. This question is discussed in exhaustive detail in Gaub, Die kollektive Balett-Oper “Mlada,” 376–84. Gaub questions, on what seem good grounds, the standard assumption that the 1869 arioso (“Yaroslavna’s Dream”) was the same as, or even close to, the final version. Unfortunately, the original manuscript was obliterated by Borodin’s subsequent adaptations.

  8. Borodin’s Mlada music, unlike Cui’s and Musorgsky’s, has never been published in any authentic form. The final scenes, including the inundation and the apotheosis, were arranged for orchestra by Rimsky-Korsakov after Borodin’s death and published in 1892 by Belyayev. The other scenes were all plundered, in various ways, for Prince Igor.

  9. Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 28 March 1868, quoted in ODR, 298–300.

  10. Quoted in ibid., 337–76.

  11. Quoted in ibid., 303.

  12. Letter to Stasov, 31 March 1872, in MLN, 129–30; MR, 181–2.

  13. MBO, 122.

  14. Letter of 16 & 22 June 1872, in MLN, 131–2; MR, 185–6.

  15. See his letter of 21 March 1861 to Balakirev, in BSP1, 129. See also chapter 3 of the present volume. Vadim Kel’siyev’s Sbornik pravitel’stvennikh svedenniy o raskolnikakh (part 1) had been published in London in 1860.

  16. Letter of 13 July 1872, in MLN, 134–5; MR, 189.

  17. MLN, 137; MR, 93. Musorgsky’s emphases.

  18. The new songs were intended for a new set, to be called At the Dacha (Na dache), but no songs were added, and the pair were eventually appended to The Nursery by Rimsky-Korsakov when he made his edition of the cycle. Musorgsky quotes Hamlet in his letter of 13 July, Hamlet’s mad-play with Polonius about clouds shaped like camels, weasels, or whales (act 3, scene 2, line 400 et seq.). Hamlet’s “When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw” is to Guildenstern in act 2, scene 2, line 403.

  19. Not, as often given, “The Cat Sailor,” which suggests a puss in a sailor suit aboard a toy ship. “Sailor” is simply the cat’s name.

  20. The rather banal piano coda sometimes heard in this song (resolving back to the home key) is by Rimsky-Korsakov, who placed this song last in his edition of the cycle.

  21. Letter of 18 October 1872, in MLN, 141; MR, 198–200. See also Kelly, Toward Another Shore, 10.

  CHAPTER 21 Three Tsars and a Tyrant

  1. Quoted in MR, 253–4.

  2. See Oldani, “Boris Godunov and the Censor,” 245–53, for an authoritative account of this whole issue.

  3. Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 9 January 1873, in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 215–24; see also Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 207–17.

  4. Golos, no. 10 (1873), in Gozenpud, G. A. Larosh: Izbrannïye stat’i, 105–12; see also Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 217–24.

  5. “City Notes,” Peterburgskaya gazeta, quoted in MDW, 297.

  6. Golos, 14 February 1873, in Gozenpud, G. A. Larosh: Izbrannïye stat’i, 119–24; see also Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 224–30.

  7. Letter of 25 October 1873, in PBII, 63–4.

  8. Letter of 17 March 1873 to Sofia Medvedeva, in SPR, 102; MDW, 309.

  9. Letter of 9/21 August 1873, in SPR, 146.

  10. Letter of 19 May 1873 [NS], in MR, 209.

  11. Letter of 6 August 1873, in MLN, 164; MR, 239.

  12. Letter of 6 September 1873, MLN, 166; MR, 247. Musorgsky’s emphases.

  13. LMMZ, 127; MML, 144.

  14. Letter of 2 August 1873 to Nadezhda Stasova, in MLN, 163; MR, 237.

  15. Letter of 6 September, in MLN, 166; MR, 239. The instrument in question was a piano.

  16. Letter of 2 August 1873.

  17. MML, 136. The passage is not in LMMZ.

  18. LMMZ, 85; MML, 92. See also chapter 16, note 17 and related text.

  19. Letter of 28 March 1874 to Dmitry Stasov, in SPR, 215–6.

  20. Letter of 2 August 1873, in MLN, 160; MR, 233.

  21. Letter of 25 September 1874, in PB2, 80–1.

  22. Letter of 21 May 1873 to Dmitry Stasov’s daughter Zinaida, in SPR, 110.

  23. Quoted in TDM, 233; MDW, 251.

  CHAPTER 22 Toward New Shores

  1. Letter of 2 February 1874, in SPR, 206–9.

  2. See Oldani, “Boris Godunov and the Censor,” 249.

  3. For monochrome reproductions, from lithograph originals, of all the sets transferred from the play, see Oldani, “Mussorgsky’s Boris on the Stage,” 75–92.

  4. Nikolay Solovyev, Birzheviye vedomosti, 29 January and 2 February 1874, respectively, in MDW, 362, 376. The “wrong notes” were diagnosed by Hermann Laroche, Golos, 29 January 1874, in MDW, 364.

  5. Letter of 29 October 1874, in Galina von Meck (ed.), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Letters to His Family (London: Dennis Dobson, 1981), 89.

  6. Golos, no. 44 (1874), quoted in TDM, 365–9; MDW, 388–91.

  7. Sankt-Peterburgskiye vedomosti, n. 37, quoted in TDM, 355–60; MDW, 378–83.

  8. Letter of 6 February 1874, in MLN, 175–6; MR, 266–7.

  9. Letter of 19 June 1873, in MLN, 149; MR, 217–8.

  10. A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, “Vospominaniya o M. P. Musorgskom,” in Gordeyeva, M. P. Musorgsky, 136–7.

  11. The duration of their cohabiting has been questioned by the Soviet scholar Alexandra Orlova, but there are gaps in her datings. On the whole there seems no reason to doubt Kutuzov’s claim that he and Musorgsky shared accommodation from the autumn of 1874. See Musorgsky Remembered, 95, and 174, note 20. As for the reason for Musorgsky’s being shut out of the apartment when Kutuzov departed for the country, he himself alleged (letter of 7 August 1875 to Stasov, in MR, 301) that Kutuzov had inadvertently gone off with the key; but how would he have got into the apartment in the small hours even if Kutu
zov had left the key behind? The explanation has all the hallmarks of a face-saving formula.

  12. A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, “Vospominaniya o M. P. Musorgskom,” in Gordeyeva, M.P. Musorgsky, 137.

  13. Ibid., 142–3.

  14. See, for instance, Alexandra Orlova’s preface to Musorgsky Remembered, xi–xii, quoting the editor of Golenishchev-Kutuzov’s memoirs, P. Aravin.

  15. Letter to the Editor of Novoye Vremya, 27 October 1876, in SSMII, 309.

  16. A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, “Vospominaniya o M. P. Musorgskom,” in Gordeyeva, M.P. Musorgsky, 17.

  17. Letter of 25 September 1874 to his wife, PB2, 81.

  18. Russkiy klassicheskiy romans XIX veka, cited in Walker, “Mussorgsky’s Sunless Cycle,” 382–91.

  19. Calvocoressi, Mussorgsky, 85. The book was unfinished by its nominal author, and the relevant chapter on the songs was written by Gerald Abraham.

  20. Letter of [?12] June 1874, in MR, 271; see also Rimsky-Korsakov, M. P. Musorgskiy: pis’ma i dokumentï, 302.

  21. The subtitle is only in Russian in the manuscript and the Latin version was presumably added by Stasov or Rimsky-Korsakov before the work’s first publication in 1886, perhaps in response to Musorgsky’s marginal note: “A Latin text would be good. The creative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads me to the skulls, and apostrophizes them; the skulls slowly start to glow.” The Latin for “with” is not con but cum.

  22. Michael Russ, in his Cambridge Handbook on Pictures, finds octatonic harmony in “Tuileries.” But there is nothing very unusual about the harmonic progressions as such, and the phrase structure is regular. See Russ, Musorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, 68–9.

  23. Ibid., 55–6.

  24. Letter of 1 July 1874 to Rimsky-Korsakov, quoted in TDM, 395–6; MDW, 419.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Letter of 18 June 1858, quoted in MDW, 66–7.

  CHAPTER 23 Distractability