II
Of all artists one of the most fought and ridiculed, the least recognized and a figure almost ignored, yet doubtless the greatest personality in Russian musical history, was Modest Petrovitch Moussorgsky. It has remained for the present generation, especially for men like Rimsky-Korsakoff, Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf, to appreciate this most original musical genius of the last century. Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky spoke of Moussorgsky as of a talented musical heretic, regarding his compositions as the result of accidental inspiration, crude in their workmanship and primitive in their form. Though his name was known through Russia to some extent, especially after Rimsky-Korsakoff had secured for him some professional success, he remained always a minor character. This lasted until the beginning of this century, when a celebrated foreign composer came out publicly and said: 'What Shakespeare did in dramatic poetry Moussorgsky accomplished in vocal music. The Shakespearian breadth and power of his compositions are so original that he is still too great to be appreciated, even in this generation. A century may pass before he will be fully understood by composers and music lovers generally. His misfortune was that he composed music two hundred years ahead of his time.' After this the whole atmosphere changed. A cult of Moussorgsky was started at home and abroad. The public began to dig out the tragic chapters of his life little by little and the neglected genius of Moussorgsky loomed up to an extraordinary height, as is usually the case when the sentiments of the public are stirred. However, this cult of Moussorgsky is merely a timely fad and adds nothing to his real greatness.
After the composer had met bitter opposition where he had expected enthusiastic appreciation he wrote to Balakireff: 'I do not consider music an abstract element of our æsthetic emotions, but a living art, which, going hand in hand with poetry and drama, shall express the very soul of human life and feeling. The academic composers and the people who have grown to love the musical classics take my works for eccentric and amateurish. This is all because I lack the high academic air and do not follow the conventional way. But why should I imitate others when there is so much within myself that is my own? My idea is that every tone should express a word. Music to me is speech without words.'
Moussorgsky's music reminds us so much of the poetry of Walt Whitman that we cannot but regard these two geniuses of two different worlds as intimately related to each other.
'Composers! mighty maestros!
And you sweet singers of old lands, Soprani, tenori, bassi!
To you a new bard caroling in the west
Obeissant sends his love.'
Like Whitman, Moussorgsky broke loose from the conventional rhythm and verse. Most of his compositions are set to his own words and librettos, in a kind of poetic prose. He said plainly that he never cared for verse for his compositions, but merely for a dramatic story to carry a certain thought. 'Thoughts and words fascinate me more than rhythm and poetic technique,' he used to say. Every piece of his work bears the stamp of his individuality; every chord of his music breathes power and inspiration. It was not a notion to be original that actuated him, but the irresistible necessity to pour out what came to life in his creative soul and temperament. In his autobiography Moussorgsky writes characteristically:
'By virtue of his views and music and of the nature of his compositions Moussorgsky stands apart from all existing types of musicians. The creed of his artistic faith is as follows: Art is a means of human intercourse and not in itself an end. The whole of his creative activity was dictated by this guiding principle. Convinced that human speech is strictly governed by musical laws, Moussorgsky considered that the musical reproductions, not of isolated manifestations of sensibility, but of articulate humanity as a whole, is the function of his art. He holds that in the domain of the musical art reformers such as Palestrina, Bach, Berlioz, Gluck, Beethoven, and Liszt have created certain artistic laws; but he does not consider these laws as immutable, holding them to be strictly subject to conditions of evolution and progress no less than the whole world of thought.'
Moussorgsky's life was no less unique than his thoughts and works. He was born in 1831 in the village of Kareva in the province of Pskoff, the son of a retired judicial functionary. He inherited the gift of music from his mother and from his father the gift of poetry. At the age of ten he was sent to a military school in St. Petersburg, where he remained until 1856, when he became an officer of the Preobrajensky Guard Regiment in St. Petersburg. A handsome young man of chivalrous manners, he became the romantic hero of the beau monde of St. Petersburg. His musical studies, begun in the college, were taken up more systematically and energetically after he became an officer. As a sentinel in the military hospital he met Borodine, the surgeon, and the two passionate lovers of music soon grew to be intimate friends. It was through Borodine that he heard of Balakireff, in whose Free School of Music he at once became a student. Already in 1858 he composed his first orchestral work, 'Scherzo,' which was performed two years later by Balakireff's orchestra.
In 1859 Moussorgsky resigned from the army with the idea of living for his music alone, but, lacking a systematic musical education, he found himself an outcast. He was treated as a dilettante by the professional musicians and the patrons of music, and this closed the way to earning a living by his art and getting his compositions published or produced. The situation made him desperate and he was glad to accept a clerkship, first in the Department of Finance, later in the office of the Imperial Comptroller. The salary was small and the work hard; he could only compose during the evenings and on festival days. This made him bitter about his future. It is rather strange that even Balakireff did not wholly understand Moussorgsky's genius when he joined the circle, for Rimsky-Korsakoff writes in his memoirs that Moussorgsky was always treated as the least talented of all. This was on account of the peculiarly passive frame of mind into which the composer had fallen after leaving the army. He even changed in his appearance and manners. The once handsome, chivalrous young social hero was suddenly transformed into a dreamy vagabond, who cared nothing for manners and appearances.
Moussorgsky's masterpieces are his three song cycles of about twenty numbers each, his few orchestral compositions and his two operas, Boris Godounoff and Khovanshchina. There is hardly a work by another composer which has upon the listener such a ghastly, hypnotic effect as some of these works of Moussorgsky. Every chord of them is like a gripping, invisible finger. His cycle of 'Death Dances,' of which Trepak is the most popular, are knocks at the very gates of death, written in the weird rhythms of old Russian peasant dances. In this work he makes the listener realize the indifference of nature to human fate. 'Snow fields in silence—so cold is the night! And the icy north wind is wailing, brokenly sobbing, as though a ghastly dirge. Over the graves it is chanting. Lo! O behold. Through the night a strange pair approaches; death holds an old peasant in his clutches.' Thus sings the composer in the epilogue. The starved peasant is frozen under the snow. But then the sun shines warmer; spring comes into the land. The icy fields change into flourishing meadows, the lark soars to the sky and nature continues its everlasting alternate play as if individual joys and sorrows never existed.
The descriptive power of Moussorgsky's vocal compositions is marvellously realistic, and of this his songs of the second and third active period of his life, such as 'Peasant Cradle Song,' 'Children Songs,' 'Serenade,' and Polkovodets, give the best illustration. In the first named composition not only does he visualize the rocking of the cradle, accompanied by a sweet melody, but he also draws, with a remarkable power, the interior of a peasant's hut, the mother bending with tenderness over her child; her sigh and dreaming of his future; the child's breathing and the ticking of a primitive old watch on the wall. One can almost see the details of an idyllic lonely Russian village. But Moussorgsky is not only powerful in his gloomy and melancholy tone pictures, in which he depicts the hopeless situation of the Russian people in their struggle for freedom; he is also great in his humorous, gay songs. Hopak, Pirushki, Po Griby, and the 'Children Songs' are full of exultant humor, naughtiness or joy. How well he could make music a satire is proved by 'Classic,' 'Raek,' and others, in which pedantic academicism is caricatured in ironic chords. Moussorgsky's musical activity may be divided into three periods: First, from 1858 until 1865, when, more or less under the influence of Dargomijsky, he composed 'Edip,' 'Saul,' Salâmmbo, 'Intermezzo,' 'Prelude,' and 'Menuette'; second, from 1865 until 1875, when he was independent and wrote the 'Death Dances,' 'Children Songs,' Boris Godounoff, Khovanshchina, etc.; and the third, during which he composed the 'Song of Mephisto.' The works of his second period are overwhelming in their elemental power and boldness of treatment. In them he surpasses all Russian composers up to his time.
Boris Godounoff, finished in 1870, was performed four years later in the Imperial Opera House. The libretto of this opera he took from the poetic drama of Pushkin, but he changed it, eliminating much and adding new scenes here and there, so that as a whole it is his own creation. In this work Moussorgsky went against the foreign classic opera in conception as well as in construction. It is a typically Russian musical drama, with all the richness of Slavic colors, true Byzantine atmosphere and characters of the medieval ages. Based on Russian history of about the middle of the seventeenth century, when an adventurous regent ascends the throne and when the court is full of intrigues, its theme stands apart from all other operas. The music is more or less, like many of Moussorgsky's songs, written in imitation of the old folk-songs, folk dances, ceremonial chants, and festival tunes. Foreign critics have considered the opera as a piece constructed of folk melodies. But this is not the case. There is not a single folk melody in Boris Godounoff, every phrase is the original creation of Moussorgsky.
Although there is nothing in the symphonic development of Boris Godounoff which approaches the complexities of Wagnerian music drama, the leading motives are quite definitely associated with the characters and emotions of the drama. Noteworthy features in the realm of musical suggestion are those of the music accompanying the hallucinations of Boris, where Moussorgsky forsakes the conventional custom of employing the heavy brass and reproduces the frenzy in musical terms by means of downward chromatic passage played tremolo by strings—an effect which succeeds because it has a far more direct appeal to the nerves of the listener than the more abstract commentary of the German operatic masters.
Moussorgsky's second opera, Khovanshchina, which was finished by Rimsky-Korsakoff after the death of the composer, is in its subject and broad style far superior to 'Boris,' especially because of its more powerful symbolism and exalted pathos. But the music, particularly in the last unfinished acts, lacks the originality and grip of his early opera. If he had been able to work out this opera under more favorable circumstances it would have caught more faithfully the psychology of a nation's life and history in a nutshell of music than anything written before or later for the stage. Moussorgsky also wrote a comic opera, 'The Fair at Sorotchinsk,' which was partly orchestrated and finished by Sahnovsky and Liadoff and performed for the first time in the Spring of 1914.
Moussorgsky's perpetual misery, overwork, and the thought that his compositions would be hardly understood and recognized during his lifetime made him so gloomy and desperate that he drifted away from Balakireff's circle. For some time he lived at the country place of his brother, and when he returned to St. Petersburg he tried to overcome the haunting thoughts, but in vain. He began to avoid all society and everything conventional. In the meanwhile his Boris Godounoff had been given with great success on the stage. Yet the academic circles would not recognize him in spite of this public success. The man's pride was touched and he felt unhappy about everything he had done. His only contentment he found in playing his works for himself and in associating with the common people in dram shops, which he visited with dire results. Shunning every intelligent circle and society, he grew melancholy, and his mental and physical health was seriously affected.
Russian Nationalists:
Modest Moussorgsky Mily Balakireff
Alexander Borodine Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakoff
In 1868 Moussorgsky began to write an opera to the libretto of Gogol's drama 'Marriage.' This, however, he never finished. He wrote quite a number of powerful orchestral works of which his 'Intermezzo,' 'Prelude,' and Menuette Monstre are the most typical of all. Having composed several piano pieces and orchestral works with little satisfaction to himself, he decided to devote himself only to vocal music. The period from 1865 to 1875 was the most productive part of his life. During these ten years he composed his 'Hamlet' songs, ballads, romances, and operas, every one of which is more or less original and hypnotizing in its own way.
Moussorgsky's letters to his brother throw a remarkable light on his unique nature and the change that took place in his mind in regard to his social environment. They are partly ironic, bitter expressions upon modern civilization and its wrong standards. Moussorgsky died in 1881 in the Nicholaevsky Military Hospital at the age of forty-two and asked the nurse that instead of a mass in church his 'Death Dance' be played for him by a few of his admirers.