WE have seen that Glinka and Dargomijsky represented two distinct tendencies in Russian operatic music. The one was lyrical and idealistic; the other declamatory and realistic. It would seem that Glinka’s qualities were those more commonly typical of the Russian musical temperament, since, in the second generation of composers, his disciples outnumbered those of Dargomijsky, who had actually but one close adherent: Modeste Moussorgsky. Cui, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov were all—as we shall see when we come to a more detailed analysis of their works—attracted in varying degrees to melodic and lyric opera. Although in the first flush of enthusiasm for Dargomijsky’s music-drama The Stone Guest—which Lenz once described as “a recitative in three acts”—the younger nationalists were disposed to adopt it as “the Gospel of the New School,” Moussorgsky alone made a decisive attempt to bring into practice the theories embodied in this work. Taking Dargomijsky’s now famous dictum: I want the note to be the direct representation of the word—I want truth and realism, as his starting-point, Moussorgsky proceeded to carry it to a logical conclusion. Rimsky-Korsakov speaks of his having passed through an early phase of idealism when he composed his Fantasia for piano “St. John’s Eve” (afterwards remodelled for orchestra and now known as “Night on the Bare Mountain”), “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” and the song “Night,” to a poem by Poushkin. But although at first he may not have been so consciously occupied in the creation of what Rimsky-Korsakov calls “grey music,” it is evident that no sooner had he found his feet, technically speaking, than he gripped fast hold of one dominant idea—the closer relationship of music with actual life. Henceforward musical psychology became the absorbing problem of his art, to which he devoted himself with all the ardour of a self-confident and headstrong nature. In a letter to Vladimir Stassov, dated October 1872, he reveals his artistic intentions in the following words: “Assiduously to seek the more delicate and subtle features of human nature—of the human crowd—to follow them into unknown regions, and make them our own: this seems to me the true vocation of the artist. Through the storm, past shoal and sunken rock, make for new shores without fear, against all hindrance!... In the mass of humanity, as in the individual, there are always some subtle impalpable features which have been passed by, unobserved, untouched by anyone. To mark these and study them, by reading, by actual observation, by intuition—in other words, to feed upon humanity as a healthy diet which has been neglected—there lies the whole problem of art.” However greatly we may disagree with Moussorgsky’s æsthetic point of view, we must confess that he carried out his theories with logical sequence, and with the unflinching courage of a clear conviction. His operas and his songs are human documents which bear witness to the spirit of their time as clearly as any of the great works of fiction which were then agitating the public conscience. In this connection I may repeat what I have said elsewhere: that “had the realistic schools of painting and fiction never come into being through the efforts of Perov, Repin, Dostoievsky and Chernichevsky, we might still reconstruct from Moussorgsky’s works the whole psychology of Russian life.”[39]
In order to understand his work and his attitude towards art, it is necessary to realise something of the period in which Moussorgsky lived. He was a true son of his time, that stirring time of the ’sixties which followed the emancipation of the serfs, and saw all Russian society agitated by the new, powerful stimulants of individual freedom and fraternal sympathy. Of the little group of musicians then striving to give utterance to their freshly awakened patriotism, none was so passionately stirred by the literary and political movements of the time as this born folk-composer. Every man, save the hide-bound official, or the frivolous imitator of Byron and Lermontov, was asking himself in the title of the most popular novel of the day: “What shall we do?” And the answer given to them was as follows: “Throw aside artistic and social conventions. Bring down Art from the Olympian heights and make her the handmaid of humanity. Seek not beauty but truth. Go to the people. Hold out the hand of fellowship to the liberated masses and learn from them the true purpose of life.” The ultra romanticism of Joukovsky and Karamzin, the affectation of Byronism, and the all too aristocratic demeanour of the admirers of Poushkin, invited this reaction. Men turned with disgust to sincere and simple things. The poets led the way; Koltsov and Nikitin with their songs of peasant life; Nekrassov with his revolt against creeds and social conventions. The prose writers and painters followed, and the new spirit invaded music when it found a congenial soil in Moussorgsky’s sincere and unsophisticated nature. Of the young nationalist school, he was the one eminently fitted by temperament and early education to give expression in music to this democratic and utilitarian tendency; this contempt for the dandyism and dilettantism of the past generation; and, above all, to this deep compassion for “the humiliated and offended.”
Modeste Moussorgsky was born March 16/28, 1839, at Karevo, in the government of Pskov. He was of good family, but comparatively poor. His childhood was spent amid rural surroundings, and not only the music of the people, but their characteristics, good and bad, were impressed upon his mind from his earliest years. He was equally conversant with the folk literature, and often lay awake at night, his youthful imagination over-excited by his nurse’s tales of witches, water-sprites and wood-demons. This was the seedtime of that wonderful harvest of national music which he gave to his race as soon as he had shaken off the superficial influences of the fashionable society into which he drifted for a time. His father, who died in 1853, was not opposed to Modeste’s musical education, which was carried on at first by his mother, an excellent pianist. The young man entered the Preobrajensky Guards, one of the smartest regiments in the service, before he was eighteen. Borodin met him for the first time at this period of his existence and described him in a letter to Stassov as a typical military dandy, playing selections from Verdi’s operas to an audience of appreciative ladies. He met him again two or three years later, when all traces of foppishness had disappeared, and Moussorgsky astonished him by announcing his intention of devoting his whole life to music; an announcement which Borodin did not take seriously at the time. During the interval Moussorgsky had been frequenting Dargomijsky’s musical evenings, where he met Balakirev, under whose inspiring influence he had undergone something like a process of conversion, casting the slough of dandyism, and becoming the most assiduous of workers.
While intercourse with Dargomijsky contributed to the forced maturing of Moussorgsky’s ideas about music, the circumstances of his life still hindered his technical development. But he was progressing. His early letters to Cui and Stassov show how deeply and independently he had already thought out certain problems of his art. Meanwhile Balakirev carried on his musical education in a far more effective fashion than has ever been admitted by those who claim that Moussorgsky was wholly self-taught, or, in other words, completely ignorant of his craft. The “Symphonic Intermezzo,” composed in 1861, shows how insistent and thorough was Balakirev’s determination that his pupils should grasp the principles of tradition before setting up as innovators. Here we have a sound piece of workmanship, showing clear traces of Bach’s influence; the middle movement, founded on a national air, being very original in its development, but kept strictly within classical form. His earliest operatic attempt, dating from his schooldays, and based upon Victor Hugo’s “Han d’Island,” was quite abortive as regards the music. Of the incidental music to “Œdipus,” suggested by Balakirev, we have Stassov’s testimony that a few numbers were actually written down, and performed at some of the friendly gatherings of the nationalist circle; only one, however, has been preserved, a chorus sung by the people outside the Temple of the Eumenides, which does not in any way presage Moussorgsky’s future style.
Faced with the prospect of service in a provincial garrison, Moussorgsky resolved to leave the army in 1859. His friends, and more particularly Stassov, begged him to reconsider his determination; but in vain. He had now reached that phase of his development when he was impatient of any duties which interfered with his artistic progress. Unfortunately poverty compelled him to accept a small post under the government which soon proved as irksome as regimental life. In 1856 he fell ill, and rusticated for a couple of years on an out-of-the-way country property belonging to his brother. During this period of rest he seems to have found himself as a creative artist. After working for a time upon an opera founded upon Flaubert’s novel “Salammbô,” he turned his attention to song, and during these years produced a number of his wonderful vocal pictures of Russian life, in its pathetic and humorous aspects. The music which he composed for Salammbô was far in advance of the Œdipus. Already in this work we find Moussorgsky treating the people, “the human crowd,” as one of the most important elements of opera. “In conformity with the libretto,” says Stassov, “certain scenes were full of dramatic movement in the style of Meyerbeer, evoking great masses of the populace at moments of intense pathos or exaltation.” Much of the music of this opera was utilised in later works. Stassov informs us that Salammbô’s invocation to Tanit is now the recitative of the dying Boris; the opening of the scene in the Temple of Moloch has become the Arioso in the third act of Boris Godounov; while the Triumphal Hymn to Moloch is utilised as the people’s chorus of acclamation to the False Demetrius in the same opera.
Moussorgsky’s next operatic essay took the form which he described as “opera dialogué.” The subject—Gogol’s prose comedy “The Match-Maker”—was admirably suited to him, and he started upon the work full of enthusiasm for the task. His methods are shown in a letter written to César Cui in the summer of 1868, in which he says: “I am endeavouring as far as possible to observe very clearly the changes of intonation made by the different characters in the course of conversation; and made, so it appears, for trifling reasons, and on the most insignificant words. Here, in my opinion, lies the secret of Gogol’s powerful humour.... How true is the saying: ‘the farther we penetrate into the forest the more trees we find!’ How subtle Gogol is! He has observed old women and peasants and discovered the most fascinating types.... All this is very useful to me; the types of old women are really precious.” Moussorgsky abandoned The Match-Maker after completing the first act. This was published by Bessel, in 1911, under the editorship of Rimsky-Korsakov, and contains the following note: “I leave the rights in this work of my pupilage unconditionally and eternally to my dear Vladimir Vassilievich Stassov on this his birthday, January 2nd, 1873. (Signed) Modeste Moussoryanin, alias Moussorgsky. Written with a quill pen in Stassov’s flat, Mokhovaya, House Melnikov, amid a considerable concourse of people.