I
The most significant phase in the history of Russian music is that which represents the activity of the Balakireff group and the founders of the St. Petersburg Free School of Music. This belongs to the middle of the past century, when the seed sown by Glinka, Dargomijsky and partly by Bortniansky began to bear its first fruits. Up to that time the question of Russian national music had not been aroused. The country was dominated either by German or the Italian musical ideals. Art, particularly music, was in every direction aristocratic, academic, and pedantically ecclesiastic. The ruling class was foreign to the core and followed literally the timely æsthetic fads of other countries. The idea that there could be any art in the life of a moujik was ridiculed and flatly denied. O, Bóje sohraní! a patron of music would exclaim at any attempts at a national music.
To the middle class and the common people the admission to high-class musical performances and the opera was legally denied. The concerts of the Imperial Musical Society and the performances of the Imperial Opera were meant only for the élite, and the direction of those institutions was in the hands of bureaucratic foreigners. It was at a critical moment that Balakireff, who had come as a young lawyer from Nijny Novgorod to St. Petersburg, laid the foundation of the Free School of Music. This institution was meant to train young Russians, to arouse in them an enthusiasm for the possibilities latent in their native music, and at the same time to arrange free concerts for the people and perform the works of those native composers who were turned away by the existing organizations. Founded by Balakireff, the composer, Lomakin, the talented choirmaster, and Stassoff, the celebrated critic, the free school became the institution of Borodine, Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. Balakireff, Borodine and Moussorgsky can be considered as the real founders of the Russian 'realistic' school of music, if not the pioneers of a new musical art movement altogether. Upon their principles and examples rest the original vigor and the subjective glamour of all subsequent Russian music. The vague initiative given by Glinka and Dargomijsky underwent a thorough process of reconstruction at the hands of these three reformers; the stamp set by them upon the Russian music is as unique and as lasting as the semi-oriental spirit that permeates Russian life and character with its exotic magic.
The ideal of building up an art out of national material seemed to hang in the air, for this was the time of a great national awakening in Russia. Gogol, Lermontov, Pushkin, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in poetry and fiction, Griboiedoff and Ostrovsky in the drama, Stassoff, Hertzen, and Mihailovsky in critical literature, and the revolutionary movement of the so-called narodno-volts in politics were all symptoms of a vigorous reform period. It should be noted that in this great and far-reaching movement the Russian church, with all its seeming supremacy, exercised but little influence over matters of art and literature. While the church in Western Europe was aristocratic in its institutions, in Russia it remained throughout the centuries democratic. A Russian clergyman has remained nothing but a more or less refined moujik, a man who lives the life of the common people and associates with the people. As such he has never been antagonistic to the spirit of the common people, as far as their æsthetic tendencies and traditions are concerned. He has never tried to make art an issue of the church. Music, less than any other of the arts, has never been influenced in any way by ecclesiastical interests. No instrumental music of any kind has ever been performed in Russian churches. Hence, unlike those of Western Europe, Russian composers never came under the sway of the church. The western church was, as we have seen, originally opposed to the influence of folk music. In Russia, on the other hand, it favored any assertion of the people's individuality. It was, therefore, unlike the aristocratic classes, sympathetic to such a work as that which the Free School of Music made the object of its existence.
Before treating the works of the three great Russian reformers individually we may remark that none of them made music his sole profession. Balakireff was sufficiently well off to devote himself to his art without thought of material gain. Borodine earned his living as a scholar and pedagogue, and so maintained his independence as a composer. Moussorgsky alone felt the pinch of poverty; his official duties were strenuous and left him little leisure for composition. Yet, like his colleagues, he never compromised with public taste.
The real initiator of this new movement, Mily Alekseyevitch Balakireff, was born at Nijny Novgorod in 1837. He studied law at the University of Kazan, though music was his hobby from early childhood on. His musical ideals were Mozart, Beethoven, and Berlioz. During one of his summer vacations Balakireff met in the country near Nijny Novogorod a certain Mr. Oulibitcheff, a retired diplomat and friend of Glinka, an accomplished musician himself and thoroughly familiar with the classic composers of every country. It was he who converted Balakireff to the idea that Russia should have its own music, and that the lines to be followed should be those indicated by Glinka. With an introduction to that apostle of nationalism Balakireff journeyed to St. Petersburg in 1855. He found the city under the spell of German and Italian music, and the masses limited to the musical enjoyment to be derived from military bands and boulevard artists. With all the youthful energy at his command Balakireff set himself to combat the foreign influence and advance nationalistic ideas of music.
Balakireff was an artist such as perhaps only Russia can produce. Without really systematic study he was an accomplished musician theoretically and practically. No existing method could measure up to his ideas of musical study. He had mastered the classics and made their technique his own; his contemporaries he approached in a critical spirit, appropriating what was good and rejecting what he considered wrong. His watchword was individual liberty. 'I believe in the subjective, not in the objective power of music,' he said to his pupils. 'Objective music may strike us with its brilliancy, but its achievement remains the handiwork of a mediocre talent. Mediocre or merely talented musicians are eager to produce effects, but the ideal of a genius is to reproduce his very self, in unison with the object of his art. There is no doubt that art requires technique, but it must be absolutely unconscious and individual.... Often the greatest pieces of art are rather rude technically, but they grip the soul and command attention for intrinsic values. This is apparent in the works of Michelangelo, of Shakespeare, of Turgenieff, and of Mozart. The beauty that fascinates us most is that which is most individual. I regard technique as a necessary but subservient element. It may, however, become dangerous and kill individuality as it has done with those favorites of our public, whose virtuosity I despise more than mere crudities.'
The man who launched such a theory at a time when the rest of the world was merged in admiration of Wagner and his technique was an interesting combination of a scholar, poet, revolutionist, and agitator. Wagner, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky were technicians in his eyes, whose creative power moved merely in the old-fashioned channels of classicism. Of the rest of his contemporaries Liszt was the only genius worthy of attention. Between Balakireff, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky there was continual strife.[12] Rubinstein headed the newly founded Imperial Conservatory, Balakireff his Free School of Music. On Rubinstein's side were the members of high society, the music critics and the bureaucratic power. Balakireff and his group of young composers were outcasts. Music critics and public opinion stamped him a conceited dilettante, only a handful of intellectuals subscribed to his creed.
Balakireff's first composition was a fantasia on Russian themes for piano and orchestra, which he afterward rearranged for an orchestral overture. In 1861 he composed the music to 'King Lear,' which is his only work of a dramatic character. An opera, 'The Golden Bird,' which he commenced some years later, was never completed. One of the most significant of Balakireff's early works is the symphonic poem 'Russia,' commemorating the thousandth anniversary of the inauguration of the Russian empire by Rurik. That his own works are rather limited in number is explained by the fact that he spent most of his best years in organizing his campaign and in criticising the compositions of his followers. The symphonic poem 'Tamara,' some twenty songs and ballades, 'Islamey,' an oriental fantasy for piano, which was one of the most cherished numbers in Liszt's repertoire, and his symphonic poem 'Bohemia' represent the best fruits of his genius. His First and Second Symphonies are very beautiful, original and Russian in feeling, but they have somehow remained behind his above-mentioned works. Very fiery and popular are his two concertos, the Spanish Overture and a number of dances. 'Tamara' is a real gem of oriental wickedness and fascination.
In 1869 Balakireff was appointed conductor of the Imperial Musical Society and later of the court choir. In 1874 he retired from the directorship of the Free School of Music and the post was taken over by Rimsky-Korsakoff. From this time until his death Balakireff lived in seclusion in his comfortable home in St. Petersburg and avoided society. He died in 1910, having outlived all his contemporaries and many of his pupils. The last period of his life was overshadowed by a strange mystic obsession which caused him to destroy many of his compositions.
An artist of wholly different cast was Alexander Porphyrievitch Borodine. While Balakireff was the positive type of an active man, a born organizer and agitator, Borodine was a dreamer and tender-souled poet, the true Bohemian of his time. He was a most remarkable combination of very unusual abilities: Borodine the surgeon and doctor enjoyed a nation-wide reputation; Borodine the chemist made many valuable discoveries and wrote treatises which were recognized universally as remarkable contributions to science; Borodine the philanthropist and educator was tireless from early morning till night; Borodine the flutist, violinist, and pianist rivalled the best virtuosi of his time; and Borodine the composer was, according to Liszt, one of the most gifted orchestral masters of the nineteenth century.
Here is what Borodine writes of his visit to the hero of Weimar in 1877: 'Scarcely had I sent my card in when there arose before me, as though out of the ground, a long black frock-coat, and long white hair. "You have written a fine symphony," he began in a resonant voice. "I am delighted to see you. Only two days ago I played your symphony to the grand duke, who was wholly charmed with it. The first movement is perfect. Your andante is a masterpiece. The scherzo is enchanting, and then, this passage is wonderful—great!"' This was his Second Symphony, which Felix Weingartner has called one of the most beautiful orchestral works ever written.
Under what circumstances he produced his enchanting beauties is best evidenced from one of his letters to his wife in 1873: 'Thursday I gave two lectures for women [on surgery], received clothes sent from the institution, had a letter from Butleroff to take dinner with him and then to attend the meeting of the chemists. I brought there all my material and gave an account of my experiments. Then, Mendeleyev [the famous chemist] took me to his house. I worked this morning as usual, took dinner with Miety at Sorokina. Then Raida and Kleopatra called on me to request space for a sick man in the hospital.'
Who would believe that a man of such a versatile nature was at the same time one of the finest composers and musicians of his generation? In another letter to his wife he writes how he rushes madly from his laboratory to his musical study, sits furiously at the piano and starts to pour out the musical ideas that have haunted him day and night. His friends thought he would never be able to continue such a triple life for any length of time and urged him to devote himself merely to music. But to him this change of thought and work seemed a recreation and he lived in this very turmoil until he died.
Borodine was born in St. Petersburg in 1834. His father was Prince Gedeanoff, a descendant of the hereditary rulers of the kingdom of Imeretia in the Caucasus, and his mother, Mme. Kleineke, the widow of an army doctor in Narva. Borodine's oriental tendency can be traced back through his family. His nationalism was truly spontaneous and genuine, in spite of the fact that, unlike his colleagues, Balakireff and Moussorgsky, he never had an opportunity to come in contact with the peasantry. Borodine's nationalism is a product of heredity and owes nothing to environment.
Having studied medicine in the famous Military Surgery School in St. Petersburg, Borodine became a professor in the same institution after a short practice as a surgeon in various hospitals of the capital. He was, even as a student in college, an accomplished virtuoso in music. At the age of eighteen he had composed a concerto for violin and piano. But his real musical creative activity started when he met Balakireff and the members of his circle, to whom he was introduced by Moussorgsky, then a young officer of the guard in the military hospital. Though filled with Balakireff's ideals, Borodine was not close to his teacher. Balakireff's ideas were grand in outline, but rather rough in detail; Borodine's preferences were toward refinement in detail and melodic form. Though the opera 'Prince Igor' may be considered Borodine's masterpiece, he has enriched Russian musical literature by exquisite examples of orchestral composition—of which his Second Symphony and the symphonic poem 'In Steppes of Central Asia' are the best—chamber music, songs and dances. Borodine's orchestral compositions excel in richness of coloring and in the dramatic vigor of his melodies. Withal he has an almost mathematical mastery of form and style.
From all his works emanates a distinctly lyric Slavic-Oriental glow of sound—brilliant, passionate, gay, and painful in turns. In the words of a modern Russian composer, 'it is individually descriptive and extremely modern—so modern that the audiences of to-day will not be able to grasp all its intrinsic beauties.'
In 'Prince Igor' Borodine has produced a work that has nothing in common with either Italian or German operas. He employs a libretto of legendary character, such as Wagner used for his operas, but in construction and style he follows the very opposite direction of the German master. The dramatic plot is almost lacking in the conventional sense, but the interest of the audience is kept in suspense by means of a unique musical beauty, by stage effects and the dramatic truth that shows itself in every detail of the action.
As compared with Balakireff and Moussorgsky, Borodine was an aristocratic figure in thought and inclination. He was more chivalrous and lyric in his style and more imaginative in his form, therefore less dramatic and less elemental. Borodine's great significance for Russian music lies in his individual form of melodic thought and the relation of that thought to human life. His realism verged on the point of impressionistic symbolism, in which he surpassed both Balakireff and Moussorgsky. He gave to Russian music new forms of romantic realism, forms that have been used and perfected by the composers who have followed him. Unlike Balakireff and Moussorgsky, Borodine was married and lived a happy family life. He died suddenly at a costume-ball in St. Petersburg in 1887.