To N. F. Von Meck.
“Frolovskoe, July 17th (29th), 1888.
“.... My name-day was a great interruption to my work, for my visitors arrived the day before and only left yesterday evening. My guests were Laroche and his wife, Jurgenson, Albrecht, Siloti, and Zet,[132] who arrived quite unexpectedly from Petersburg. The last named (who has been highly recommended to me) has been my concert agent since May.... He is a great admirer of my work, and cares less to make money out of his position than to forward my interests in Europe and America....”
At this time Tchaikovsky received an offer from an American impresario offering him a three months’ concert tour at a fee of 25,000 dollars. The sum appeared to the Russian composer fabulous in its amount. “Should this really come off,” he says, “I could realise my long-cherished wish to become a landowner.”
Diary.
“July 13th (25th), 1888.
“Dargomijsky? Certainly he was a gifted man. But never was the type of amateur musician more strikingly realised than in him. Glinka, too, was a dilettante, but his immense inspiration served him as a defence from amateurishness. Except for his fatal Memoirs, we should not have realised his dilettantism. It is another matter with Dargomijsky: his amateurishness lies in his creative work, in his very forms themselves. To possess an average talent, to be weak in technique and yet to pose as an innovator—is pure amateurishness. When, at the close of his life, Dargomijsky composed The Stone Guest, he seriously believed he had overturned the old foundations and erected something new and colossal in their place. A piteous error; I saw him in this last period of his life, and in view of his suffering condition (he had a heart disease) there could be no question of a discussion. But I have never come in contact with anything more antipathetic and false than this unsuccessful attempt to drag truth into this sphere of art, in which everything is based upon falsehood, and “truth,” in the everyday sense of the word, is not required at all. Dargomijsky was no master (he had not a tenth part of Glinka’s mastership). He possessed a certain originality and piquancy. He was most successful in curiosities. But artistic beauty does not lie in this direction, as so many of us think.
“I might speak personally of Dargomijsky (I frequently saw him in Moscow at the time of his success there), but I prefer not to recall my acquaintance. He was very cutting and unjust in his judgments (when he raged against the brothers Rubinstein, for instance), but was pleased to talk of himself in a tone of self-laudation. During his fatal illness he became far more kindly disposed, and showed much cordial feeling to his younger colleagues. I will only keep this memory of him. Unexpectedly he showed me great sympathy (in respect of my opera The Voyevode).[133] Apparently he did not believe the report that I had hissed at the first performance of his Esmeralda in Moscow.”
To N. F. von Meck.
“Frolovskoe, July 25th (August 6th), 1888.