Another musician who is clearly influenced by Tchaikovsky is Michael Ippolitov-Ivanov (b. 1859), a distinguished pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. He was afterwards appointed Director of the School of Music, and of the Opera, at Tiflis in the Caucasus, where his first opera Ruth was produced in 1887. In 1893 he accepted a professorship at the Moscow Conservatoire, and became conductor of the Private Opera Company. Ippolitov-Ivanov is a great connoisseur of the music of the Caucasian races, and also of the old Hebrew melodies. He makes good use of the latter in Ruth, a graceful, idyllic opera, the libretto of which does not keep very strictly to Biblical traditions. In 1900 Ippolitov-Ivanov’s second opera Assya—the libretto borrowed from Tourgeniev’s tale which bears the same title—was produced in Moscow by the Private Opera Company. The tender melancholy sentiment of the music reflects the influence of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Oniegin; but by way of contrast there are some lively scenes from German student life.
With the foregoing composers we may link the name of Vassily Sergeivich Kalinnikov (1866-1900), who is known in this country by his Symphonies in G minor and A major. He composed incidental music to Count Alexis Tolstoy’s play “Tsar Boris” (Little Theatre, Moscow, 1897) and the Prologue to an opera entitled The Year 1812, which was never finished in consequence of the musician’s failing health and untimely death. Kalinnikov hardly had time to outgrow his early phase of Tchaikovsky worship.
Another Muscovite composer of widely different temperament to Ippolitov-Ivanov, or Kalinnikov, is Sergius Ivanovich Taneiev,[51] born November 13/25, 1856, in the Government of Vladimir. He studied under Nicholas Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatoire and made his début as a pianist at one of the concerts of the I.R.M.S. in 1875. He remained Tchaikovsky’s friend long after he had ceased to be his pupil, and among the many letters they exchanged in after years there is one published in Tchaikovsky’s “Life and Letters,” dated January 14/26, 1891, which appears to be a reply to Taneiev’s question: “How should Opera be written?” At this time Taneiev was engaged upon his Orestes, the only work of the kind he has ever composed. The libretto, based upon the Aeschylean tragedy, is the work of Benkstern and has considerable literary merit. Orestes, although described by Taneiev as a Trilogy, is, in fact, an opera in three acts entitled respectively: (1) Agamemnon, (2) Choephoroe, (3) Eumenides. Neither in his choice of subject, nor in his treatment of it, has Taneiev followed the advice given him by Tchaikovsky in the letter mentioned above. Perhaps it was not in his nature to write opera “just as it came to him,” or to show much emotional expansiveness. Neither does he attempt to write music which is archaic in style; on the contrary, Orestes is in many respects a purely Wagnerian opera. Leitmotifs are used freely, though less systematically than in the later Wagnerian music-dramas. The opera, though somewhat cold and laboured, is not wanting in dignity, and is obviously the work of a highly educated musician. The representative themes, if they are rather short-winded, are often very expressive; this is the case with the leitmotif of the ordeal of Orestes, which stands out prominently in the first part of the work, and also forms the motive of the short introduction to the Trilogy.
Towards the close of last century the new tendencies which are labelled respectively “impressionism,” “decadence,” and “symbolism,” according to the point of view from which they are being discussed, began to make themselves felt in Russian art, resulting in a partial reaction from the vigorous realism of the ’sixties and ’seventies, and also from the academic romanticism which was the prevalent note of the cosmopolitan Russian school. What Debussy had derived from his study of Moussorgsky and other Russian composers, the Slavs now began to take back with interest from the members of the younger French school. The flattering tribute of imitation hitherto offered to Glinka, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner was now to be transferred to Gabriel Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel. In two composers this new current of thought is clearly observed.
Vladimir Ivanovich Rebikov (b. 1866) received most of his musical education in Berlin and Vienna. On his return to Russia he settled for a time at Odessa, where his first opera In the Storm was produced in 1894. A few years later he organised a new branch of the I.R.M.S. at Kishiniev, but in 1901 he took up his abode permanently in Moscow. Rebikov has expressed his own musical creed in the following words: “Music is the language of the emotions. Our emotions have neither starting point, definite form, nor ending: when we transmit them through music it should be in conformity with this point of view.”[52] Acting upon this theory, Rebikov’s music, though it contains a good deal that is original, leaves an impression of vagueness and formlessness on the average mind; not, of course, as compared with the very latest examples of modernism, but in comparison with what immediately precedes it in Russian music. In his early opera In the Storm, based on Korolenko’s legend “The Forest is Murmuring” (Liess Shoumit), the influence of Tchaikovsky is still apparent. His second work, The Christmas Tree, was produced at the Aquarium Theatre, Moscow, in 1903. Cheshikin says that the libretto is a combination of one of Dostoievsky’s tales with Hans Andersen’s “The Little Match-Girl” and Hauptmann’s “Hannele.” The contrast between the sad reality of life and the bright visions of Christmastide lend themselves to scenic effects. The music is interesting by reason of its extreme modern tendencies. The opera contains several orchestral numbers which seem to have escaped the attention of enterprising conductors—a Valse, a March of Gnomes, a Dance of Mummers, and a Dance of Chinese Dolls.
The second composer to whom I referred as showing signs of French impressionist influence is Serge Vassilenko (b. 1872, Moscow). He first came before the public in 1902 with a Cantata, The Legend of the City of Kitezh. Like Rachmaninov’s Aleko, this was also a diploma work. The following year it was given in operatic form by the Private Opera Company in Moscow. Some account of the beautiful mystical legend of the city that was miraculously saved from the Tatars by the fervent prayers of its inhabitants has already been given in the chapter dealing with Rimsky-Korsakov. It remains to be said that Vassilenko’s treatment of the subject is in many ways strong and original. He is remarkably successful in reviving the remote, fantastic, rather austere atmosphere of Old Russia, and uses Slavonic and Tatar melodies in effective contrast. The work, which does not appear to have become a repertory opera, is worth the study of those who are interested in folk-music.