Be it a song, instrumental composition, or opera, everything in Russian music breathes the ethnographic and social-psychologic peculiarities of the race, which is semi-Oriental in its foundations. Nationalism in music has been the watchword of most of the Russian composers since the very start. But, besides, there has been a strong tendency to subjective individualism, that often expresses itself in a wealth of sad nuances. This has been to a great extent the reason that foreigners consider melancholy the predominant racial quality, a view not just to Russian music as a whole, which is far too vigorous and healthy a growth to remain continuously under the sway of one emotional influence. To a foreign, especially an Anglo-Saxon ear Russian music may sound sometimes too realistic, sometimes too monotonous and sad without any obvious reason. It has been declared by foreign academicians lacking in cohesion, technique, and convincing unity. However, this is not a defect of Russian art, but a characteristic trait of its racial soul. Every Russian artist, be he a composer, writer, or painter, in avoiding artificiality puts into his creation all the idiomatic peculiarities of his race without polishing out of it the vigor of 'naturalness.' Russian music, more than any other Russian art, expresses in all its archaic lines, soft shades, and polyphonic harmonies the peculiar temperament of the nation, which is just as restless and unbalanced as its life.
The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian music was to create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school, but directly from the soul of the masses. Their ideal was to create life from life. In order to accomplish their tasks they went back to melodic traditions of early mediæval music, to the folk-songs, the mythological chants and the folk dances. Since the Russian people are extremely musical, folk-song is a great factor in the nation's life and evolution. Music accompanies moujiks from the cradle to the grave and plays a leading rôle in their social ceremonies. Though profound melancholy seems to be the dominant note, yet along with the gloom are also reckless hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet, as, notably, in Glinka's Kamarinskaya. The phenomenon is startling, for music of the deepest melancholy swings unexpectedly to buoyant humor and exultant joy. This is explained by the fact that the average Russian is extremely emotional and consequently dramatic in his artistic expression. Very characteristic is a passage of Leo Tolstoy on Russian folk-song in which he writes:
'It is both sad and joyous, on a quiet summer evening, to hear the sweeping song of the peasants. In it is yearning without end, without hope, also power invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the faith in preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our race, which explains much that in Russian life seems incomprehensible.'
The early Russian composers thus became creators in touch with the common people, the very opposite of the composers of German and Latin races, who created only for the salons of aristocracy. The latter were and remained strangers to the people among whom they lived. Everything they composed was strictly academic and expressed all the sentimentality and stateliness of the nobility. Although geniuses of great technique, in racial color, emotional quickness and spontaneity they remain behind the Russians.
In spite of the fact that all the early Russian composers were descendants of aristocracy, they remained in their feelings and in their themes, like Gogol, Dostoievsky, and Turgenieff in fiction, true portrayers of the common people's life. There has never been an aristocratic opera, a nobility music and salon influence noticeable in Russian musical development. This may be due to the fact that the Russian aristocracy is not a privileged superior class of the autocratic régime, as is that of Germany, Austria, Italy, and England, but merely an intellectual, more advanced element of the country. Thanks to Czar Feodor, the father of Peter the Great, who destroyed all the pedigrees, patents and papers of the nobility, saying that he did not want to see their snobbery and intrigue in his empire, there are no family documents in Russia which go back beyond the reign of Czar Feodor. There is no doubt that this autocratic proceeding has been beneficial to Russian art, particularly to music, in having made it democratic in its very foundations.
Though music has been cultivated in Russia since the time of Peter the Great, the origin of the true nationalistic school belongs to the Napoleonic era, the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Cosmopolitan that he was, Peter the Great disliked everything national, and invited Italian musicians to form a school of systematic musical education in his empire. But Catherine II became deeply interested in encouraging native music and herself took an active part in the work. Between her political schemings and romantic affairs, she took time to write librettos, to invite musicians to her palace and to instruct them how to use the themes of the folk plays, fairy tales, and choral dances for a new Russian stage music. It is said that sixty new operas were written during her reign and produced on the stage of the newly-founded municipal opera house. One of them, 'Annette,' is quoted as the first wholly Russian opera, in librettist, theme, and composer.
A very conspicuous figure of the pre-nationalistic period of Russian musical history is C. Cavos (1776-1840), an Italian by birth, but a Slav in his work. He wrote songs, instrumental music and operas, more or less in Italian style but employing both Russian text and theme. His opera, 'Ivan Sussanin,' was considered a sensational novelty and the composer was hailed as a great genius of the country. But his works died as soon as they had loomed up under the protection of the court and nothing of his compositions has survived.
Close upon Cavos followed Verstovsky, whose operas 'Tomb of Askold' and 'Pan Tvardovsky' were produced in Moscow when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. The first was built upon an old Slavic saga in which Askold, the hero, and his brother, Dir, play the same rôles as do Hengist and Horsa in Saxon chronicles. The other was founded upon an old Polish story of adventure somewhat resembling the Faust legend. Besides the operas Verstovsky composed a large number of songs, ballads, and dances. By birth a Pole and by education an Italian, his compositions resemble in many ways those of Rubinstein.
Russian musical conditions in the first half of the past century were very much like those in America at present. Besides Cavos and Verstovsky there had been and were a number of more or less conspicuous imitators of the Italian school. Their works were as little Russian in character as Puccini's 'Girl of the Golden West' is American. But the advent of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert in Germany made a deep impression upon the music-loving Russians. The men upon whom the romantic German music made the strongest impression were Glinka and Dargomijsky, both inclined toward romantic ideals and themes. Their first striking move was to rebel against the Italian influences. 'Russia, like Germany, shall have its own music independent of all academic schools and foreign flavors, and it shall be a music of the masses. Music is more vigorous and more individual when it is national. We like individuality in life and literature, as in all arts and politics. Why should the world not cling more to the racial than to the cosmopolitan ideal? The tendency of Italian music is cosmopolitan. I believe that the tempo of music must correspond to the tempo of life. Our duty is to speak for all the nation.' Thus Glinka wrote at the critical moment.