The art of music, Vol. 05 (of 14)

by Unknown

I

We have referred in another chapter to the neo-Russian school of composers, who worked under the influence of Mily Balakireff and based their composition largely upon the native folk-songs. It is this group that has created Russia’s musical art. Tschaikowsky and Rubinstein are, in the Russian view, out of the direct line of succession. In the direct line, which commences with Glinka, we find a distinguished company of geniuses. After Glinka comes Alexander Dargomijsky (1813-1869), one of the earliest converts to Wagnerian principles outside of Germany and a radical innovator in dramatic and harmonic method. His opera, ‘The Stone Guest,’ looks forward a quarter of a century to modern harmonic effects, whole-toned scale and all. But, in consideration of the time he was working, it is not to be expected that his songs are of a radical cast. They, however, show the innovating genius of the man and his full-blooded artistic life. Some ninety in all, they are extraordinarily varied in style and contents, some graceful and elegaic, some exotic, and some humorous. Dargomijsky took the traditional mantle of Russian genius upon his shoulders in satirizing the bureaucracy and wrote some of his finest humorous songs on the subject. Among the best of his songs we may mention ‘An Eastern Song,’ ‘I Think that Thou Wert Born for This,’ and ‘O Maid, My Rose.’ His dramatic ballads, of which ‘The Knight Errant’ and ‘The Old Corporal’ are the finest, are marked by directness and simplicity which give them a rare laconic force.

Famous Song Interpreters.
Top: Julia Culp and Elena Gerhardt
Bottom: Ludwig Wüllner and David Bispham

Dargomijsky was one of the older generation, a sort of father confessor to the neo-Russian group. This group worked under the inspiration of Mily Balakireff (1837-1910), a young enthusiast with fine visions and a considerable knowledge of music, mostly self-learned. It was he who first of all gave the great emphasis to the use of folk-songs in Russian composition and this he made the cornerstone of the new school. As members of his little group he was lucky enough to have two geniuses of very nearly the first order, one Modest Moussorgsky (1835-1881) and the other Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakoff (1844-1908). Balakireff’s own songs show artistic qualities of a high order; they are marked by unfailing taste and proportion and range over a broad field of expression, nearly everywhere successfully. But, though his artistic and critical sense was superb, he had not the creativeness of most of the group. One man who has done much finer work in song than he is Alexander Borodine (1834-1887). Borodine entered the neo-Russian group as a mere amateur, but he became filled with the new enthusiasms and set himself to work in earnest. The high and consistent creative level of his work, considering his short and interrupted study and the smallness of his output, is amazing. He wrote some twelve songs in his lifetime and fully half of them are masterpieces. Borodine was courageous in his attitude toward new musical principles and extremely happy in his use of the new materials. Expressive dissonance, in particular, he uses with rare effectiveness. The ballad or romance entitled ‘The Sleeping Princess’ is surely one of the finest things of its kind in existence. The spell of the enchanted forest, the calm beauty of the sleeping princess, are suggested in a succession of major second dissonances which weave a web over the mysterious melodies of the accompaniment. The same power of creating ‘atmosphere’ with simple means is shown in ‘The Sea-Queen,’ which is an exquisite inspiration. The romance, ‘A Dissonance,’ is a gem of concentrated lyricism. But the most original of Borodine’s songs, one of the most memorable of the whole Russian product, is ‘The Song of the Dark Forest.’[33] This is written purely in the Russian idiom, with a great and savage melody which is irresistible in its vigor. The accompaniment only duplicates the voice part, with the addition of dissonances that sound forth like trumpet blasts. With his handful of songs and his definite quantity of genius Borodine has made a place for himself in the history of lyric music.

César Cui (born 1835), who was in early years the press agent of the neo-Russian group, need be mentioned here only to be passed over. His song output is generous and nearly always marked with much grace and good taste. But Cui took less stock in the adoration of the folk-song than the other members of the group and his art product is in every way weaker. Rimsky-Korsakoff combined an intense feeling for the native Russian idiom with an exhaustive knowledge of the technique of music and produced a large number of works which, while being truly Russian, seem not unnatural to western ears. He is shown in romantic vein in two early songs, ‘On the Georgian Hills’ and ‘A Southern Night.’ His oriental songs are perhaps the best known of his lyric works. In these the greatest modern master of musical exoticism has brought vividly to our ears not only the phrases, but the very spirit of the east. The ‘Hebrew Love Song’ may be taken as one of the best of the group. But the greatest of the neo-Russian group, the greatest Russian composer hitherto, and one of the great composers of all musical history, was Moussorgsky. This man was utterly absorbed in the Russian folk-song and based his style on nothing else. He had the faculty of genius which goes straight to the heart of something new and produces his result without seeming effort. Few musicians of the nineteenth century have spoken with so individual a voice. The world is only beginning to appreciate the greatness of his operas. As for his songs, they have made their way even more slowly, but where they are once known they are never forgotten. Moussorgsky’s many remarkable qualities are not to be set down in a single paragraph like the present. Suffice it to point out his harmonic originality, which made use of atmospheric chords, unusual scale combinations, and powerful modulation long before Debussy’s time (Debussy, in fact, confesses to have learned much from Moussorgsky); his freshness of inspiration, which has produced some of the most glorious of melodies; and his unsurpassed ability in the delineation of character and mood. His songs are not a great many, but there are few of them that are not masterpieces. His pictures of peasant life are marvellous in their persuasive picturesqueness. As an example we may quote the ‘Peasant Cradle Song,’ one of the greatest of songs anywhere. The ineffable pathos of the beginning, the strange ethereal light of the end, are hardly to be paralleled in the whole range of song. But it is more than a mere lullaby; it is a peasant’s lullaby and the music almost makes us see the poor hut in which the mother croons her song. Another lullaby, the ‘Cradle Song of the Poor,’ is hardly less appealing, but is totally different in design. Another song showing Moussorgsky’s highest genius is the Hopak, a long piece with admirable picturing of various phases of Russian character. The song is tremendously effective in concert.

Moussorgsky’s three song groups are all of the highest rank. In the Nursery Songs he has done what no other composer has ever done better, and not more than two or three have done so well. He has depicted the events and emotions of a child with the simplicity of spirit of a child. The songs, however, are not simple technically—so much the contrary that, composed in 1868 to 1870, they are prophetic of future musical procedure. This freedom and delicacy of delineation had never been seen in songs before. The four ‘Death Dances’ are tremendous songs of grim tragedy; in ‘Death and the Peasant’ the accompaniment depicts the indifference of nature at the fate of the peasant who is dying in the snow after a debauch. The most amazing product of Moussorgsky’s lyrical genius, however, is his last group of six songs—‘Where No Sun Shines.’ These, written in the later years of his life, under the influence of the deepest pessimism, are perhaps the most intense expression of spiritual despair in all song literature. The extraordinary technical method of these pieces, hardly less than that of the remarkable children’s songs, was Debussy’s chief guiding light in the early years of the development of his style. In absolute musical value these six last songs stand very high and ‘By the Water’ has few parallels in song literature.

The remaining Russian song writers can be summed up briefly. Antony Arensky (born 1861) is the composer of many songs, graceful and pleasing but not highly original in style. Sergius Taneiev (born 1856) inclines to the conservative and classical, but is an able musician and capable song-writer. Alexander Glazounoff (born 1865) has worked with most success in the smaller forms and in his graceful songs has put much that is charming, though little that is genuinely inspiring. His work is marked by its extraordinary suavity and taste. Michael Ippolitoff-Ivanoff (born 1859) has composed some ninety songs, distinguished by a straightforward honesty of method and healthfulness of feeling. Sergei Rachmaninoff (born 1873) is a much greater man than those we have just named and a masterful song-writer. He is not always, however, writing in the strenuous eastern idiom. ‘Before My Garden’ and ‘Lilacs’ are excellent in the conventional way. But he has written at least one truly great song of genuine Russian inspiration. This is ‘Oh, Thou Billowy Harvest Fields,’ which deserves to rank with Borodine’s ‘Song of the Black Forest’ in daring and stark power.