To Nadejda von Meck.
“Kiev, November 9th (21st), 1881.
“Because I am deeply interested in Church music just now, I go to the churches here very frequently, especially to the ‘Lavra.’[87] On Sunday the bishop celebrated services in the monasteries of Michael and the Brotherhood. The singing in these churches is celebrated, but I thought it very poor, and pretentious, with a repertory of commonplace concert pieces. It is quite different in the ‘Lavra,’ where they sing in their own old style, following the traditions of a thousand years, without notes and without any attempts at concert-music. Nevertheless it is an original and grand style of sacred singing. The public think the music of the ‘Lavra’ is bad, and are delighted with the sickly-sweet singing of other churches. This vexes and enrages me. It is difficult to be indifferent to the matter. My efforts to help our church music have been misunderstood. My Liturgy is forbidden. Two months ago the ecclesiastical authorities in Moscow refused to let it be sung at the memorial service for Nicholas Rubinstein. The Archbishop Ambrose pronounced it to be a Catholic service.... The authorities are pig-headed enough to keep every ray of light out of this sphere of darkness and ignorance.
“To-morrow I hope to leave for Rome, where I expect to meet my brother Modeste.”
To N. F. von Meck.
“Rome, November 26th (December 8th), 1881.
“The day before yesterday I was at the concert in honour of Liszt’s seventieth birthday. The programme consisted exclusively of his works. The performance was worse than mediocre. Liszt himself was present. It was touching to witness the ovation which the enthusiastic Italians accorded to the venerable genius, but Liszt’s works leave me cold. They have more poetical intention than actual creative power, more colour than form—in short, in spite of being externally effective, they are lacking in the deeper qualities. Liszt is just the opposite of Schumann, whose vast creative force is not in harmony with his colourless style of expression. At this concert an Italian celebrity played; Sgambati is a very good pianist, but exceedingly cold.”
To N. F. von Meck.
“Rome, November 27th (December 9th), 1881.
“I cannot take your advice to publish my opera with a French title-page. Such advances to foreign nations are repugnant to me. Do not let us go to them, let them rather come to us. If they want our operas then—not the title-page only, but the full text can be translated, as in the case of the proposed performance at Prague. So long as an opera has not crossed the Russian frontier, it is not necessary—to my mind—that it should be translated into the language of those who take no interest in it.”