Balakireff was an artist such as perhaps only Russia can produce. Without really systematic study he was an accomplished musician theoretically and practically. No existing method could measure up to his ideas of musical study. He had mastered the classics and made their technique his own; his contemporaries he approached in a critical spirit, appropriating what was good and rejecting what he considered wrong. His watchword was individual liberty. 'I believe in the subjective, not in the objective power of music,' he said to his pupils. 'Objective music may strike us with its brilliancy, but its achievement remains the handiwork of a mediocre talent. Mediocre or merely talented musicians are eager to produce effects, but the ideal of a genius is to reproduce his very self, in unison with the object of his art. There is no doubt that art requires technique, but it must be absolutely unconscious and individual.... Often the greatest pieces of art are rather rude technically, but they grip the soul and command attention for intrinsic values. This is apparent in the works of Michelangelo, of Shakespeare, of Turgenieff, and of Mozart. The beauty that fascinates us most is that which is most individual. I regard technique as a necessary but subservient element. It may, however, become dangerous and kill individuality as it has done with those favorites of our public, whose virtuosity I despise more than mere crudities.'
The man who launched such a theory at a time when the rest of the world was merged in admiration of Wagner and his technique was an interesting combination of a scholar, poet, revolutionist, and agitator. Wagner, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky were technicians in his eyes, whose creative power moved merely in the old-fashioned channels of classicism. Of the rest of his contemporaries Liszt was the only genius worthy of attention. Between Balakireff, Rubinstein, and Tschaikowsky there was continual strife.[12] Rubinstein headed the newly founded Imperial Conservatory, Balakireff his Free School of Music. On Rubinstein's side were the members of high society, the music critics and the bureaucratic power. Balakireff and his group of young composers were outcasts. Music critics and public opinion stamped him a conceited dilettante, only a handful of intellectuals subscribed to his creed.
Balakireff's first composition was a fantasia on Russian themes for piano and orchestra, which he afterward rearranged for an orchestral overture. In 1861 he composed the music to 'King Lear,' which is his only work of a dramatic character. An opera, 'The Golden Bird,' which he commenced some years later, was never completed. One of the most significant of Balakireff's early works is the symphonic poem 'Russia,' commemorating the thousandth anniversary of the inauguration of the Russian empire by Rurik. That his own works are rather limited in number is explained by the fact that he spent most of his best years in organizing his campaign and in criticising the compositions of his followers. The symphonic poem 'Tamara,' some twenty songs and ballades, 'Islamey,' an oriental fantasy for piano, which was one of the most cherished numbers in Liszt's repertoire, and his symphonic poem 'Bohemia' represent the best fruits of his genius. His First and Second Symphonies are very beautiful, original and Russian in feeling, but they have somehow remained behind his above-mentioned works. Very fiery and popular are his two concertos, the Spanish Overture and a number of dances. 'Tamara' is a real gem of oriental wickedness and fascination.
In 1869 Balakireff was appointed conductor of the Imperial Musical Society and later of the court choir. In 1874 he retired from the directorship of the Free School of Music and the post was taken over by Rimsky-Korsakoff. From this time until his death Balakireff lived in seclusion in his comfortable home in St. Petersburg and avoided society. He died in 1910, having outlived all his contemporaries and many of his pupils. The last period of his life was overshadowed by a strange mystic obsession which caused him to destroy many of his compositions.
An artist of wholly different cast was Alexander Porphyrievitch Borodine. While Balakireff was the positive type of an active man, a born organizer and agitator, Borodine was a dreamer and tender-souled poet, the true Bohemian of his time. He was a most remarkable combination of very unusual abilities: Borodine the surgeon and doctor enjoyed a nation-wide reputation; Borodine the chemist made many valuable discoveries and wrote treatises which were recognized universally as remarkable contributions to science; Borodine the philanthropist and educator was tireless from early morning till night; Borodine the flutist, violinist, and pianist rivalled the best virtuosi of his time; and Borodine the composer was, according to Liszt, one of the most gifted orchestral masters of the nineteenth century.
Here is what Borodine writes of his visit to the hero of Weimar in 1877: 'Scarcely had I sent my card in when there arose before me, as though out of the ground, a long black frock-coat, and long white hair. "You have written a fine symphony," he began in a resonant voice. "I am delighted to see you. Only two days ago I played your symphony to the grand duke, who was wholly charmed with it. The first movement is perfect. Your andante is a masterpiece. The scherzo is enchanting, and then, this passage is wonderful—great!"' This was his Second Symphony, which Felix Weingartner has called one of the most beautiful orchestral works ever written.
Under what circumstances he produced his enchanting beauties is best evidenced from one of his letters to his wife in 1873: 'Thursday I gave two lectures for women [on surgery], received clothes sent from the institution, had a letter from Butleroff to take dinner with him and then to attend the meeting of the chemists. I brought there all my material and gave an account of my experiments. Then, Mendeleyev [the famous chemist] took me to his house. I worked this morning as usual, took dinner with Miety at Sorokina. Then Raida and Kleopatra called on me to request space for a sick man in the hospital.'
Who would believe that a man of such a versatile nature was at the same time one of the finest composers and musicians of his generation? In another letter to his wife he writes how he rushes madly from his laboratory to his musical study, sits furiously at the piano and starts to pour out the musical ideas that have haunted him day and night. His friends thought he would never be able to continue such a triple life for any length of time and urged him to devote himself merely to music. But to him this change of thought and work seemed a recreation and he lived in this very turmoil until he died.
Borodine was born in St. Petersburg in 1834. His father was Prince Gedeanoff, a descendant of the hereditary rulers of the kingdom of Imeretia in the Caucasus, and his mother, Mme. Kleineke, the widow of an army doctor in Narva. Borodine's oriental tendency can be traced back through his family. His nationalism was truly spontaneous and genuine, in spite of the fact that, unlike his colleagues, Balakireff and Moussorgsky, he never had an opportunity to come in contact with the peasantry. Borodine's nationalism is a product of heredity and owes nothing to environment.
Having studied medicine in the famous Military Surgery School in St. Petersburg, Borodine became a professor in the same institution after a short practice as a surgeon in various hospitals of the capital. He was, even as a student in college, an accomplished virtuoso in music. At the age of eighteen he had composed a concerto for violin and piano. But his real musical creative activity started when he met Balakireff and the members of his circle, to whom he was introduced by Moussorgsky, then a young officer of the guard in the military hospital. Though filled with Balakireff's ideals, Borodine was not close to his teacher. Balakireff's ideas were grand in outline, but rather rough in detail; Borodine's preferences were toward refinement in detail and melodic form. Though the opera 'Prince Igor' may be considered Borodine's masterpiece, he has enriched Russian musical literature by exquisite examples of orchestral composition—of which his Second Symphony and the symphonic poem 'In Steppes of Central Asia' are the best—chamber music, songs and dances. Borodine's orchestral compositions excel in richness of coloring and in the dramatic vigor of his melodies. Withal he has an almost mathematical mastery of form and style.