Rimsky-Korsakov and the Nationalists
Moussorgsky and the man who helped to make his inspired but ungrammatical works presentable to the world—Nicholas Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakov—belonged to a coterie of composers known as the nationalists. The other three were Balakiref, whose output as a composer was small, but whose two collections of Russian folk tunes are considered the best in existence; Borodin, who is best known in this country through an orchestral piece called “In the Steppes of Central Asia” and his “Prince Igor,” which has been produced at the Metropolitan Opera House, and César Cui, who is more interesting as a writer than as a composer. He has well set forth the tenets of the “nationalists,” chief of which is that a composer cannot be a truly patriotic Russian master unless he uses folk tunes as the bricks for building up his works.
MILI BALAKIREF
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
ALEXANDER P. BORODIN
Because Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky did not do this to any extent these nationalists looked down on them, and decried them as cosmopolitans—belonging to the world rather than to Russia. Rubinstein, who had a caustic pen, retorted by declaring that the nationalists borrowed folk tunes because they were unable to invent good melodies of their own. To a certain extent this was true, but it does not apply to Rimsky-Korsakov, who is, next to Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, the greatest of the Russian melodists and composers. Theodore Thomas considered him the greatest of them all. With this opinion few will agree, but no one can fail to admire the glowing colors of his orchestral works, the greatest of which is “Scheherazade,” which is based on “The Arabian Nights,” and is concerned with Sinbad’s vessel and Bagdad. Of his dozen or more operas none has become acclimated outside of Russia. As a teacher he might be called the Russian Liszt, because not a few of his pupils acquired national and international fame; among them Glazounov, Liadov, Arensky, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Gretchaninov, Taneiev (tah-nay-ev) and Stravinsky.