Modest Moussorgsky Mily Balakireff
Alexander Borodine Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakoff

In 1868 Moussorgsky began to write an opera to the libretto of Gogol's drama 'Marriage.' This, however, he never finished. He wrote quite a number of powerful orchestral works of which his 'Intermezzo,' 'Prelude,' and Menuette Monstre are the most typical of all. Having composed several piano pieces and orchestral works with little satisfaction to himself, he decided to devote himself only to vocal music. The period from 1865 to 1875 was the most productive part of his life. During these ten years he composed his 'Hamlet' songs, ballads, romances, and operas, every one of which is more or less original and hypnotizing in its own way.

Moussorgsky's letters to his brother throw a remarkable light on his unique nature and the change that took place in his mind in regard to his social environment. They are partly ironic, bitter expressions upon modern civilization and its wrong standards. Moussorgsky died in 1881 in the Nicholaevsky Military Hospital at the age of forty-two and asked the nurse that instead of a mass in church his 'Death Dance' be played for him by a few of his admirers.

III

The most widely known of the 'neo-Russian' group, outside of Russia, was Nicholas Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakoff. This man, the most prolific and the most expert of the group, proved himself in some ways one of the supreme masters of modern music. His command over harmonic color-painting and his astonishing mastery over all details of modern orchestration have made him a teacher to the composers of all nations.

Rimsky-Korsakoff was born March 18, 1844, at Tikvin in the department of Novgorod. On his father's estate he received all the advantages of a childhood in the open air, and of the best education available. From the four musicians who furnished music for the family dances he received his first initiation into the art of his later years. When he was six he received his first piano lessons, and when he was nine he was already composing pieces of his own. But it was in the family tradition that the sons should enter the navy, so when he was but twelve years of age the boy went to the St. Petersburg Naval School and entered the long required course. He did not, however, give up his music during this period; he worked hard at the piano and the 'cello, also receiving lessons in composition from Kanillé. But music was comparatively meaningless in his life until, in 1861, he met Balakireff, who had recently come to the capital to undertake the musical spiritualization of his country. Under Balakireff he worked for about a year, and during this time came into close contact with the other members of the famous circle. The contact was profoundly stimulating. 'They aired their opinions and criticized the giants of the past,' says Mrs. Newmarch,[13] 'with a frankness and freedom that was probably very naïve, and certainly scandalized their academic elders. They adored Glinka; regarded Haydn and Mozart as old-fashioned; admired Beethoven's latest quartets; thought Bach—of whom they could have known little beyond the "Well Tempered Clavier"—a mathematician rather than a musician; they were enthusiastic over Berlioz, while, as yet, Liszt had not begun to influence them very greatly.' Of these days the composer has written, 'I drank in all these ideas, although I really had no grounds for accepting them, for I had only heard fragments of many of the foreign works under discussion, and afterwards I retailed them to my comrades at the naval school who were interested in music as being my own convictions.'[14]

Then, while Rimsky-Korsakoff's technique was still being molded, while his ideals were unprecise and his appreciations fluid, he was called away on a long cruise on the ship Almaz—a cruise which was to last for three years and take him around the world. But with the huge energy for which Russians are so notable, he decided to add music to his regular official duties. He arranged that he was to send to Balakireff from time to time the things he would write on shipboard, and was to receive extended criticisms in return, to be picked up at the harbors at which his ship should stop. Thus he would maintain his active pupilship. The work which he managed to accomplish on shipboard is astonishing. But Rimsky-Korsakoff was endowed with a capacity for orderly and methodical work which enabled him in later life to discharge all sorts of onerous artistic burdens and keep his creative output undiminished in quantity. When he returned from the cruise in 1865 he brought with him his Symphony No. 1, in E minor, the first symphony to be written by a Russian. It was performed under Balakireff's direction at one of the concerts of the Free School of Music and made a favorable impression. For the next few years the composer's life was chiefly centred in St. Petersburg, and his association with the Balakireff group was once more resumed. In this period, too, began his close friendship with Moussorgsky, which continued until the latter's death. After composing the first Russian symphony he produced the first Russian symphonic poem in Sadko, opus 5, which revealed his marked power of musical narration and scene-painting. Directly he followed with the 'Fantasy on Serbian Tunes,' opus 6, which gave the first signs of his later brilliancy in orchestration. This work attracted the attention of Tschaikowsky, who became his ardent supporter and continued as a personal friend in spite of the fact that the ideals of the two composers were so disparate that close association was impossible. In 1870 Rimsky-Korsakoff began his first opera, Pskovitianka ('The Maid of Pskoff'), which was performed early in 1873 and was well received. Soon afterwards he completed his 'Second Symphony,' which is in reality rather a symphonic poem—the Antar, op. 9.

This may be taken as closing one period of his creative activity. He had entered music with all the lively nationalistic ideals of the Balakireff group, and with its naïveté as to musical technique. Like his associates, he had written chiefly in an intuitional fashion. But in 1871 he accepted an invitation to teach at the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music. And he has recorded that in attempting to teach the theory of music he became convinced that it was first necessary for him to learn it. He became profoundly dissatisfied with his musical achievement and set out deliberately to acquire an exhaustive knowledge of musical technique by means of hard work. During one summer he wrote innumerable exercises in counterpoint and sixty-four fugues, ten of which he sent to Tschaikowsky for inspection. From this severe period of self-tuition he emerged with a command of conventional musical means unsurpassed in Russia, but without any essential loss either to his individuality or to his nationalism. By some, Rimsky-Korsakoff's recognition of his need for further technical learning has been accepted as a recantation of his nationalistic principles. But it was not this in reality, for his later operas are all drawn from national sources and the folk-song continues to occupy a prominent place among them. The enthusiasm for classical learning may have changed his standards somewhat; many critics feel that the revision to which he later submitted the Moussorgsky opera scores reveals a pedantic cast of mind, a failure to appreciate the original genius of his friend. But, on the other hand, his severe training gave him that fluent technique which enabled him to accomplish such a great amount of work on such a high plane of workmanship.

In point of fact, Rimsky-Korsakoff 'recanted' nothing. His ideals and his fundamental musical method had been formed in his early youth. Balakireff's enthusiasm for folk-song never left him. The influence of the early ocean cruise was in his work to the end. Among all musicians Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the greatest describer of the sea. The effect of lonely days and nights out in the midst of the swelling ocean, at a time when his adolescent senses were still deeply impressionable—this we can trace again and again in his later music. 'What a thing to be thankful for is the naval profession!' he wrote in a letter to Cui during the first voyage.[15] 'How glorious, how agreeable, how elevating! Picture yourself sailing across the North Sea. The sky is gray, murky, and colorless; the wind screeches through the rigging; the ship pitches so that you can hardly keep your legs; you are constantly besprinkled with spray and sometimes washed from head to foot by a wave; you feel chilly and rather sick. Oh, a sailor's life is really jolly!' We see here the effect of the out-of-door activity on the young artist—that awakening of sensibilities to the external life of nature, rather than the introspection of the thinker who spends his time solely in the study of his art. It was this voyage, surely, that chiefly helped to make Rimsky-Korsakoff so objective in his music. He loves to describe the form and color of nature rather than the experiences of the soul. He paints for us the life of the senses. We recall the young naval officer in the mighty swell of the ocean in Scheherezade. We cannot doubt the effect of this early influence toward making Rimsky-Korsakoff the great story-teller of modern music.

His later life was an extremely active one. He retained his position at the conservatory for many years, and numbered among his pupils some of the most talented composers in modern Russian music—among them Liadoff, Arensky, Ippolitoff-Ivanoff, Gretchaninoff, Tcherepnine, and Stravinsky. He was an enthusiastic collector of national folk-tunes. He revised, completed, arranged, or orchestrated many large works, including operas by Moussorgsky, Borodine, and Glinka. He served for many years as conductor of the concerts of the Free School, succeeding Balakireff, and for a time was assistant director of the music at the Imperial Chapel. A perquisite post as inspector of naval bands, given him in 1873, enabled him to devote his time to music; for many years he remained officially a servant of the government. After 1889 and up to the time of his death in 1908 he wrote twelve operas, and at one period was looked to to provide one dramatic work each year for one or another of the great lyric theatres of Russia. Once or twice he was publicly at odds with officialdom, at one time going so far as to resign his professorship in the conservatory. But on the whole he was a figure of whom Russia, both popular and official, was proud. His books on theory and orchestration have long been standard.