Ornamental sculpture seems to be superior to statuary in Russia: it is abundantly practised in the decoration of churches; the innumerable chapels standing at the street corners in honour of some saint possess icons and lamps of bronze and silver; the iconostases of the cathedrals are extremely rich,—gold, silver-gilt, silver, lapis-lazuli, malachite and enamel-work are lavishly employed there. In the churches of Saint Isaac and the Saviour there are many admirable and veritable chefs d'œuvre of originality and brilliancy to be found. The industry of bronze and goldsmith's work in religious objects is very flourishing and gives occupation to numerous workmen and artists in Moscow and St. Petersburg. An imperial manufactory produces the mosaics which occupy such a great place in the decoration of the churches.
Industrial arts are very prosperous in Russia and have made great progress during the last century: silken goods are no longer imported from Lyons; and the Russian cabinet-makers produce beautiful furniture, not only in their national style, but in the purest forms of French art of the Louis XV. and Louis XVI. styles. Civil goldsmith's work and jewellery have also been benefited by the national Renaissance: the Emperor Alexander III. restored to honour the national feminine costume for official balls, and ordered works of art to be made after the models of the Muscovite style, and indeed even after the marvels found in the excavations of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. The religious images, particularly those made in Moscow and Kazan, come very near being works of art. Numerous manufactories produce icons painted on wood or copper, ornamented with reliefs of copper, crysocale, silver, silver-gilt and gold. The workmen are monks and peasants: each part of the icon—eyes, nose, mouth, hands and feet—is executed by a specialist who always makes the same thing, after the immutable types that the Muscovite convents received from Mount Athos.
[RUSSIAN MUSIC]
A. E. KEETON
Russian music is the strangest paradox—it owes more to the music of other countries than any other school, yet no music is more thoroughly individual and unmistakable. It clothes itself after the form and fashion of its neighbours, but beneath its garb peeps out a physiognomy indubitably Sclavonic. Its utterances impress us as the most modern—yet the student who would correctly analyze many of its unique characteristics of harmony and modulation is often obliged to take a flying leap backwards over a space of centuries in order to investigate old Church modes, or Persian and Arabian scale systems, both so ancient as to be well-nigh forgotten in Western Europe.
Sixty years ago, there was no Russian school of music, properly speaking; then suddenly it sprang into being. The wonderful rapidity of its growth almost confuses one. Its exponents at once displayed the astonishing receptiveness common to their race. D'un trait, as the French would say, they appropriated the knowledge and experience which the Italian and German schools had been slowly amassing for centuries. Technique, form, counterpoint—all these they found ready made to their hand, and borrowed them unstintingly. Had they done this and no more, the onlooker might have dismissed them as clever plagairists, and probably no one would have paid them any further attention. But they had other means at their disposal. Their country contained a treasure-house of native melody and rhythm; a region albeit which few Russians had hitherto thought it worth their while to explore. It is true that, since the middle of the Seventeenth Century, tentative excursions had been made in this direction from time to time, chiefly, though, by outsiders settled in Russia, nor had any of their efforts led to very appreciable results. The man who first turned with serious intent to the pent-up musical resources of his own country was Michael Ivanovitch Glinka. He had sufficient strength of purpose to carry out his designs—he became the founder of the modern Russian school of music and the father of Russian opera.
Glinka belonged to a good if not very wealthy family, who lived upon their estate in the government of Smolensk, where he was born in 1804. From babyhood upwards he delighted his friends and relations by his aptitude not for music alone, but also for languages, literature, zoology, botany—in fact, for each and every intellectual pursuit which came in his way. The brilliance of his college course in St. Petersburg was noteworthy. He quitted it to occupy a civil post under Government, a position, however, which he soon abandoned, in order to devote himself solely to music. Like so many other men of genius, he married a woman quite incapable of comprehending his artistic aims and ambitions; to quote the words of a Russian writer, Madame Glinka, née Maria Petrovna, "was only a pretty doll, who loved society and fine clothes, and had no sympathy whatever with her husband's romantic, poetic side." One is glad to state that Glinka never had to struggle with poverty. He died at Berlin in 1857.
He did for Russian music what his contemporary, Pushkin, did for Russian literature, each in his own department representing a national movement. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched a theory to trace this movement to the momentous date of 1812, when it fell to the lot of Russia to administer the first check in Napoleon's triumphant career. Ever since the reign of Peter the Great it had been the fashion to ape foreign habits, to speak foreign tongues, to import foreign music, to mimic foreign literature. But when a foreign invader, who had marched all-conquering through the rest of Europe, appeared in serious earnest at the very gates of Moscow, there was a rebound: slumbering patriotism awoke with a great shout, and, united by a common danger, all classes gathered together for the protection of their Tsar and their Kremlin. To have repulsed a Napoleon was a mighty deed, which could reveal to the Russians of what stuff they were made. It taught them to rely upon each other and be strong in themselves; and as the art of a nation is invariably the outcome of its history, so the rising generation of Russian thinkers looked inwards rather than abroad. Glinka, Pushkin, and their followers sought no foreign aid; they represent a Russian Renaissance. They were content, indeed, to abide by the forms universally adopted elsewhere, but the spirit of their art manifestation was Russian to its core. In literature, Pushkin and Gogol were never weary of delineating their compatriots in every grade of Sclavonic society, whilst Glinka took his musical inspirations from his native folk-songs and dance-rhythms—from the historic chronicles of his country or its legendary lore. In reality, the foreign influences and environment with which he came so continuously into contact served more and more to convince him that Russia in her turn had as great a mission in music as any other nation. For thirty years the idea was gradually gaining strength in his mind. "I want," he said to a friend, "to write an essentially national opera both as regards subject and music; something which no foreigner can possibly accuse of being borrowed, and which shall come home to my compatriots as a part of themselves."
His fame depends solely upon the two operas, La Vie pour le Tsar and Russlan et Ludmille. That he should have chosen to express himself especially in opera is a significant fact. The unerring instinct of his genius evidently told him that in this form, rather than in purely instrumental music, he would most truly represent that people whose musical aspirations he wished above all else to portray faithfully, and certainly in opera lay his surest way towards enlisting the sympathies of his compatriots. As before remarked, one might have imagined that opera would scarcely ally itself to his personal individuality; it seems probable, therefore, that various salient traits inherent in the Russians as a nation must have led him to the choice. First and foremost, any music which claims to proceed from the very heart of the Russian people must contain a vocal element. So universal a love of singing as exists throughout Russia is to be met with in no other country.
By this one does not mean to infer that Russian cultivated singing, either solo or choral, is in any way superior to what is heard elsewhere. The Russian peasant knows absolutely nothing about voice production, nor, maybe, is he gifted with any unusual vocal material, nevertheless, singing is closely bound up with every rural event of his cheerless existence. During the last half-century many hundreds of the native melodies sung by the Russian country people for generations past have been collected and written down by different musicians—Balakireff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Prokoudin, and Lisenko amongst others. The variety of these folk-songs is astonishing. They never become monotonous, each song having its distinctive climax, and the air always suits the words. Often the untutored singer has one melody in his répertoire, but intuitively he modifies its strains according to the sentiment of his subject.