Rachmaninoff's only chamber music is an 'elegiac trio' in memory of Tschaikowsky and a couple of sonatas. A large choral work, 'Spring,' has attained great popularity in Russia, and a recent one, founded on Edgar Allan Poe's poem, 'The Bells,' is said to reveal abilities of the highest order. For piano there are many pieces—notably the various groups of preludes, some hardly inferior to the famous one in C-sharp minor; a set of variations on a theme of Chopin; six pieces for four hands, op. 11; two suites for two pianos, op. 5 and op. 17; and two superb concertos for piano and orchestra, of which the second, op. 18, is the more popular. His minor piano pieces are among the most vigorous and finely executed in modern piano literature. His songs are of wide variety, especially in regard to national feeling; in some, as, for instance, 'The Harvest Fields,' he is almost on a plane with Moussorgsky. We should mention also two works for orchestra, a 'Gypsy Caprice' and a fantasia, 'The Cliff.'
Rachmaninoff's music is justly to be called conservative and even academic in its later phase. But this must not be taken to imply that it is cold or unpoetic. No modern Russian composer can better strike the tone of high and heroic poetry. Rachmaninoff has taken the technique of the West, especially of modern Germany, and the spirit if not the letter of the tunes of his own lands and fused them into a music of his own, which, at once complex and direct, stirs the heart and inflames the blood. His orchestral palette is powerful and inclined to be heavy. His contrapuntal style is complex and masterful. His melody is free and impressive. He is by all odds the greatest of the modern Russian eclectics.
A number of other composers, loosely connected with the 'Western' tradition of Tschaikowsky, should here be mentioned. Some of these are young men who may as yet have given no adequate evidence of their real ability. But all of them are able musicians with some solid achievement to their credit. A. N. Korestschenko (born 1870) won the gold medal at the Moscow Conservatory for piano and theory after studying under Taneieff and Arensky, and is now professor of harmony at that institution. His most important work includes three operas, a ballet 'The Magic Mirror,' and a number of orchestral works, notably the 'Lyric Symphony,' a 'Festival Prologue,' the Georgian and Armenian Songs with orchestra, and the usual proportion of songs and piano pieces. Nicholas Nikolaevich Tcherepnine was born in 1873 and studied for the law, but changed to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he energetically studied composition under Rimsky-Korsakoff. His style is eclectic and flexible. His name is best known through his two ballets, Narcisse and Le Pavilon d'Armide, but his overture to Rostand's Princesse Lointaine, his 'Dramatic Fantasia,' op. 17, and his orchestral sketch from 'Macbeth,' give further evidence of marked powers. His songs and duets have had great popularity, and his pianoforte concerto is frequently played. He has also been active as a composer of choral music, accompanied and a cappella.
Maximilian Steinberg, born in 1883 and trained under Rimsky-Korsakoff and Glazounoff, has worked chiefly in an academic way and has shown marked technical mastery, especially in his quartet, op. 5, and his second symphony in B minor. Nicholas Medtner, who is of German parentage, shows the same respect for classical procedure, together with an abundance of inspiration and enthusiasm. He was born in Moscow on December 24, 1879, and carried off the gold medal at the Conservatory in 1900. Since then he has been active chiefly as a composer, and has to his credit a number of very fine piano sonatas, as well as considerable chamber music. Attention has recently been attracted to his songs, which combine great technical resource with a fresh poetical feeling for the texts. There is nothing of the nationalistic about his work. The same, however, cannot quite be said for George Catoire (born Moscow, 1861), who, though educated in Berlin, has shown a feeling for things Slavic in his symphonic poem, Mzyri, and in his cantata, Russalka. Among his other large works are a symphony in C minor, a piano concerto, and considerable chamber music. J. Krysjanowsky is another modern eclectic, known chiefly by his sonata for piano and violin, which, though able, shows little poetical inspiration.
Let us complete this section of the history with a passing mention of certain minor composers of local importance. A. von Borchmann has shown a solid musical ability and a strong classical tendency in his string quartet, op. 3. J. I. Bleichmann (1868-1909) was the composer of many popular piano and violin pieces, of an orchestral work, several sonatas, and a sacred choral work, 'Sebastian the Martyr.' A. Goedicke has composed two symphonies, a dramatic overture, a piano trio, a sonata for piano and violin and another for piano alone, and numerous smaller pieces. W. Malichevsky is an able composer of great promise and has written three symphonies, three quartets and a violin sonata. M. Ostroglazoff is an 'eclectic' whose true powers are as yet undetermined. W. Pogojeff is fairly well known because of his able chamber music and piano pieces. S. Prokofieff (born 1891) is an able and classically minded pupil of Glière and Liadoff, and Selinoff (born 1875) has carried his early German training into the writing of symphonic poems. We should also make mention of E. Esposito, an able and charming composer of operetta.
IV
Of radical Russian composers two have in recent years become internationally famous. Alexander Scriabine is notable for his highly developed harmonic method, which makes sensible subjective states of emotion hardly possible to music hitherto. And Igor Stravinsky has in his ballets carried free counterpoint and a resultant revolutionary harmony to an extreme almost undreamed of in the whole world of music. How much there is of mere sensation in these two musicians is at this time hard to determine. The question will be determined in part not only by the extent to which they retain a hold over their audiences, but also by the extent to which the new paths which they are opening prove fruitful to later followers. If one may judge by appearances at this writing, it would seem that Scriabine, who was essentially a theorist and a mystic, had little to give the world beyond a reworking of the chromatic style of Wagner's 'Tristan'—a style seemingly inadequate to the intimate subjective message he would have it bear. Stravinsky, on the other hand, though still crude, seems to be at the threshold of a new and remarkable musical development. In addition to these new men we find in Russia a number who may justly be called radicals, being influenced by the radicals of other lands, chiefly France. No creative ability of the first order has as yet been discovered among these minor men.
Alexander Scriabine was born in Moscow on December 25, 1871. He was destined by his family for a career in the army, but his leaning toward music determined him to quit the cadet corps and become a student in the Moscow Conservatory. Here he studied piano with Safonoff and composition with Taneieff. He graduated in 1892, taking a gold medal and setting out to conquer Europe as a concert performer. In 1898 he returned to the Moscow Conservatory to teach, but in 1903 resigned, determining to devote all his time to composition. Since then he has lived in Paris, Budapest, Berlin, and Switzerland. In 1906-07 he made a brief visit to the United States, appearing as a pianist. He died, dreaming great dreams for the future, in 1915. His compositions have been numerous and have shown a steady advance from the melodious and conventional style of his early piano works to the intense harmonic sensualism of his later orchestral pieces. The first piano works were characterized by Cui as 'stolen from Chopin's trousseau.' This is not unjust, although the works show a certain technical originality in the invention of figures. The first symphony is written in solid and conservative style, with a due element of Wagnerian influence, and a choral finale in praise of art speaking for its composer's good intentions. The second symphony shows a development of technical skill and an enlarging of emotional range, but gives few hints of the later style. The smaller music of this period—as, for instance, the Mazurkas, op. 25, the Fantasia, and the Preludes, op. 35—also show progress chiefly on the technical side. The 'Satanic Poem' for piano, op. 34, points to Liszt as its source.
It is the third symphony in C, entitled 'The Divine Poem,' which first gives distinct evidence of change. This work, composed in 1905, undertakes to depict the inner struggles of the artist in his process of creation, and reveals the subjective trend of its composer's growing imagination. Its three movements are entitled respectively, 'Struggles,' 'Sensual Pleasures,' and 'Divine Activity.' Here the emotional element is well to the fore. The first movement is stirring and dramatic, the second languorous and rich, the third bold and brilliant. The orchestra employed is large and the technique complex. Other ambitious works of the earlier period are the concerto in F-sharp minor, op. 20, a work of no outstanding importance, and the 'Reverie' for orchestra, op. 24, which is distinctly weak. But by the time we have reached the 'Poem of Ecstasy,' composed in 1908, we have the composer in all his long-sought individuality. The harmonic system is vague to the ear, and weighs terribly on the senses. There is evidence of some esoteric striving. One feels that 'more is meant than meets the ear.' It is in a single movement, but in three sections, and these are entitled, respectively, 'His Soul in the Orgy of Love,' 'The Realization of a Fantastic Dream,' and 'The Glory of His Own Art.' The orchestration is rich in the extreme and the development of the motives shows a mature musical power. The effect on the nerves and senses is undeniably powerful. But withal it remains vague as a work of art; it is obviously meant to convey an impression, but the definite impression, like the 'program,' is withheld, and perhaps it is as well so.
But it is the 'Prometheus,' subtitled 'Poem of Fire' (composed 1911, op. 60), which shows Scriabine at his most ambitious. The work is written in the general style of the 'Poem of Ecstasy,' but the style, like the themes, is more highly developed. And there is super-added the color-symbolism which has helped to give the work something of its sensational fame. The music is meant to tell of the coming of 'fire'—that is, of the creative principle—to man, and the orchestra describes (one might better say 'experiences') the various forces bearing upon incomplete man (represented by the piano, which serves as a member of the orchestral body), until the creative principle comes and makes complete him who accepts it. But in addition to the tones Scriabine has devised a parallel manipulation of colors, on a color machine partly of his own invention, and has 'scored' the 'chords' as he imagines them to suit the music. 'The light keyboard,' says a commentator, 'traverses one octave with all the chromatic intervals, and each key projects electrically a given color. These are used in combination, and a "part" for this instrument stands at the head of the score. The arrangement of colors is as follows: C, red; G, rosy-orange; D, yellow; A, green; E and B, pearly blue and the shimmer of moonshine; F sharp, bright blue; D-flat, violet; A-flat, purple; E-flat and B-flat, steely with the glint of metal; F, dark red.' The first performance of the work, with the color machine used as the composer planned, was that of the Russian Symphony Orchestra of New York, in March, 1915. It can hardly be said that the experiment was convincing to many in the audience, but it seems altogether possible that some sort of union of the arts of pure color and pure tone in an expressive mission may be fruitful for the future.