In the first scene we are introduced to a hall in the Palace of King Dodon, where he is holding a council with his Boyards. He tells them that he is weary of kingly responsibilities and especially of the perpetual warfare with his hostile neighbours, and that he longs to rest for a while. First he asks the advice of his heir, Prince Gvidon, who says that instead of fighting on the frontier he should withdraw his troops and let them surround the capital, which should first be well provisioned. Then, while the enemy was destroying the rest of the country, the King might repose and think of some new way of circumventing him. But the old Voyevode Polkan does not approve of the project, for he thinks it will be worse to have the hostile army surrounding the city, and perhaps attacking the King himself. Nor does he agree with the equally foolish advice of the King’s younger son Aphron. Very soon the whole assembly is quarrelling as to the best way out of the difficulty, when the Astrologer arrives upon the scene. He offers King Dodon a present of a Golden Cock which would always give warning in case of danger. At first the King does not believe him, but the cock is brought in and cries at once: “Kikeriki, kikerikou! Be on your guard, mind what you do!” The King is enchanted and feels that he can now take his ease. He offers to give the Astrologer whatever reward he asks. The latter replies that he does not want treasures or honours, but a diploma drawn up in legal form. “Legal,” says the King, “I don’t know what you mean. My desires and caprices are the only laws here; but you may rest assured of my gratitude.” Dodon’s bed is brought in, and the chatelaine of the Palace tucks him up and keeps watch by him until he falls into a sound sleep. Suddenly the shrill crowing of the Golden Cock awakens the King and all his attendants. The first time this happens he has to send his unwilling sons to the war; the second time he is obliged to go himself. There is a good deal of comic business about the departure of the King, who is obviously afraid of his warhorse.
In the second act Dodon and the Voyevode Polkan, with their army, come to a narrow pass among the rocks which has evidently been the scene of a battle. The corpses of the warriors lie pale in the moonlight, while birds of prey hover around the spot. Here Dodon comes suddenly upon the dead bodies of his two sons, who have apparently killed each other. The wretched, egotistical king is reduced to tears at the sight. His attention is soon distracted, for, as the distant mist clears away, he perceives under the shelter of the hillside a large tent lit up by the first rays of the sun. He thinks it is the tent of the hostile leader, and Polkan endeavours to lead on the timid troops in hopes of capturing him. But, to the great astonishment of the King and his Voyevode, a beautiful woman emerges from the tent followed by her slaves bearing musical instruments. She sings a song of greeting to the dawn. Dodon approaches and asks her name. She replies modestly, with downcast eyes, that she is the Queen of Shemakha. Then follows a long scene in which she lures on the old King until he is hopelessly infatuated with her beauty. Her recital of her own attractions is made without any reserve, and soon she has completely turned Dodon’s head. She insists on his singing, and mocks at his unmusical voice; she forces him to dance until he falls exhausted to the ground, and laughs at his uncouth movements. This scene really constitutes the ballet of the opera. Finally the Queen of Shemakha consents to return to his capital and become his bride. Amid much that is genuinely comic there are a few touches of unpleasant realism in this scene, in which the ineffectual, indolent, and sensual old King is fooled to the top of his bent by the capricious and heartless queen. Here we have travelled far from the beautiful idealism of The City of Kitezh; the humour of the situation has a sharp tang to it which belies the spirit of Poushkin and Russian humour in general; we begin to speculate as to whether Bielsky has not studied to some purpose the plays of George Bernard Shaw, so much read in Russia.
The curtain rises in the third act upon another of those scenes of bustle and vigorous movement characteristic of Russian opera. The people are awaiting the return of King Dodon. “Jump and dance, grin and bow, show your loyalty but don’t expect anything in return,” says the sardonic chatelaine, Amelfa. There enters a wonderful procession which reminds us of an Eastern fairy tale: the advance guard of the King; the Queen of Shemakha, in a bizarre costume, followed by a grotesque cortege of giants, dwarfs, and black slaves. The spectacle for the time being allays the evident anxiety of the people. As the King and Queen pass by in their golden chariot the former appears aged and care-worn; but he gazes on his companion with uxorious tenderness. The Queen shows evident signs of boredom. At this juncture the Astrologer makes his appearance and a distant storm, long threatening, bursts over the city. The King gives a flattering welcome to the Astrologer and expresses his readiness to reward him for the gift of the Golden Cock. The Astrologer asks nothing less than the gift of the Queen of Shemakha herself. The King refuses with indignation, and orders the soldiers to remove the Astrologer. But the latter resists, and reminds Dodon once more of his promise. The King, beside himself with anger, hits the Astrologer on the head with his sceptre. General consternation in the crowd. The Queen laughs a cold, cruel laugh, but the King is terrified, for he perceives that he has killed the Astrologer. He tries to recover himself and takes comfort from the presence of the Queen, but now she openly throws off all pretence of affection and drives him away from her. Suddenly the Cock gives out a shrill, threatening cry; he flies on to the King’s head and with one blow of his beak pierces his skull. The King falls dead. A loud clap of thunder is followed by darkness, during which the silvery laugh of the Queen is heard. When it grows light again Queen and Cock have both disappeared. The unhappy and bewildered people sing a chorus of regret for the King: “Our Prince without a peer, was prudent, wise, and kind; his rage was terrible, he was often implacable; he treated us like dogs; but when once his rage was over he was a Golden King. O terrible disaster! Where shall we find another king!” The opera concludes with a short Epilogue in which the Astrologer bids the spectators dry their tears, since the whole story is but fiction, and in the kingdom of Dodon there were but two real human beings, himself and the Queen.
The music of this opera is appropriately wild and barbaric. We feel that in spite of forty years development it is essentially the work of the same temperament that produced the Symphonic Poems “Sadko” and the Oriental symphony “Antar.”
A close study of the works of Rimsky-Korsakov reveals a distinguished musical personality; a thinker; a fastidious and exquisite craftsman; in a word—an artist of a refined and discriminating type who concerns himself very little with the demands and appreciation of the general public. Outside Russia, he has been censured for his subserviency to national influences, his exclusive devotion to a patriotic ideal. On the other hand, some Russian critics have accused him of introducing Wagnerism into national opera. This is only true in so far that he has grafted upon opera of the older, more melodic type the effective employment of some modern methods, more particularly the moderate use of the leitmotif. As regards orchestration, I have already claimed for him the fullest recognition. He has a remarkable faculty for the invention of new, brilliant, prismatic orchestral effects, and is a master in the skilful employment of onomatopœia. Those who assert—not entirely without reason—that Rimsky-Korsakov is not a melodist of copious and vivid inspiration must concede the variety, colour, independence and flashing wit of his accompaniments. This want of balance between the essential and accessory is certainly a characteristic of his music. Some of his songs and their accompaniments remind me of those sixteenth-century portraits in which some slim, colourless, but distinguished Infanta is gowned in a robe of brocade rich enough to stand by itself, without the negative aid of the wearer.
Rimsky-Korsakov does not correspond to our stereotyped idea of the Russian temperament. He is not lacking in warmth of feeling, which kindles to passion in some of his songs; but his moods of exaggerated emotion are very rare. His prevailing tones are bright and serene, and occasionally flushed with glowing colour. If he rarely shocks our hearts, as Moussorgsky does, into a poignant realisation of darkness and despair, neither has he any of the hysterical tendency which sometimes detracts from the impressiveness of Tchaikovsky’s cris de cœur.
When a temperament, musically endowed, sees its subject with the direct and observant vision of the painter, instead of dreaming it through a mist of subjective exaltation, we get a type of mind that naturally tends to a programme, more or less clearly defined. Rimsky-Korsakov belongs to this class. Labelled or not, we feel in all his music the desire to depict.
This representative of a school, reputed to be revolutionary, who has arrayed himself in the full panoply of musical erudition and scholarly restraint; this poet whose imagination revels in the folk-lore of Russia and the fantastic legends of the East; this professor who has written fugues and counterpoints by the dozen; this man who looked like an austere school-master, and can on occasion startle us with an almost barbaric exuberance of colour and energy, offers, to my mind, one of the most fascinating analytical studies in all contemporary music.
CHAPTER XIII
TCHAIKOVSKY
TYPICALLY Russian by temperament and in his whole attitude to life; cosmopolitan in his academic training and in his ready acceptance of Western ideals; Tchaikovsky, although the period of his activity coincided with that of Balakirev, Cui, and Rimsky-Korsakov, cannot be included amongst the representatives of the national Russian school. His ideals were more diffused, and his ambitions reached out towards more universal appreciation. Nor had he any of the communal instincts which brought together and cemented in a long fellowship the circle of Balakirev. He belonged in many respects to an older generation, the “Byroniacs,” the incurable pessimists of Lermontov’s day, to whom life appeared as “a journey made in the night time.” He was separated from the nationalists, too, by an influence which had been gradually becoming obliterated in Russian music since the time of Glinka—I allude to the influence of Italian opera.