In a posthumous work entitled 'Mystery,' Scriabine intended to use every means possible, including perfume and the dance, to produce a supreme emotional effect on the audience. We should also mention the ten piano sonatas, of which the seventh and ninth are the best, which show their composer's musical development with great completeness, but suffer in the later examples from a harmonic monotony. This seemed to be Scriabine's besetting sin. It seems doubtful whether his harmonic method, as he developed it, is flexible enough for the continued strain to which he put it. For in truth it is not a daring or extremely original system, however impressive it may sound in the commentator's notes. If we may sum the matter up in a slang phrase we might say that Scriabine's harmony 'listens' better than it sounds.
The influence of the French 'impressionists' on Russian composers is represented at its best in the work of such men as Vassilenko and Rebikoff. The Russians have ever been citizens of the world and have been quick to imitate and learn from their western neighbors. But in the past century they have also been quick to assimilate and to give back something new from their own individuality. This may be the destined course of the French influence on Slavic musicians.
Sergius Vassilenko was born in Moscow in 1872, entered the Conservatory in 1896, and was awarded the gold medal for a cantata written after five years' work under Taneieff and Ippolitoff-Ivanoff. His early work was much under the influence of the Russian nationalists, and his epic poem for orchestra, op. 4, illustrates a taste for mediæval poetry which he supported out of his profound knowledge of modal and church music. But his larger works after this were chiefly French in style. These include the two 'poems' for bass voice and orchestra, 'The Whirlpool' and 'The Widow'; a symphonic poem, 'The Garden of Death,' based on Oscar Wilde, and the orchestral suite Au Soleil, by which he is chiefly known in foreign lands.
Feodor Akimenko, though less wholly French in his manner, may be ranked among those who chiefly speak of Paris in their music. He was born at Kharkoff on February 8, 1876, was educated in the Imperial Chapel in St. Petersburg, and later was instructed in one or another branch of music by Liadoff, Balakireff, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. The influence of these masters is evident in his work, however much he may have absorbed a French idiom. His is 'a fundamentally Slavonic personality,' says one commentator,[16] 'which inclines toward dreaminess more than toward sensuality or the picturesque. His music resembles the French only in suppleness of rhythms and elaborateness of harmonies.' His early works, which are more thoroughly Russian in method, include many songs and piano pieces, three choruses for mixed voices, a 'lyric poem' for orchestra, a string trio and a piano and violin sonata. After his journey to Paris his style changed notably. From this later period we may mention such works for the piano as the Recits d'une âme rêveuse, Uranie, Pages d'une poésie fantastique, etc. His latest compositions include a Sonata Fantastique and an opera, 'The Queen of the Alps.'
Another composer of much originality and of subjective tendencies is Vladimir Rebikoff, who was born on May 16, 1866, at Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia. Even in his piano pieces he has attempted to mirror psychological states. But this attempt is carried much further in his operas. 'The Christmas Tree,' in one act, attempts to contrast the feelings of the rich and the poor, and it was successful enough in its artistic purpose to gain much popularity with its Moscow public. Rebikoff has written two other 'psychological' operas—'Thea,' op. 34, and 'The Woman and the Dagger,' op. 41—not to mention his early 'The Storm,' produced in 1894. In his 'melo-mimics,' or pantomimic scenes with closely allied musical accompaniment, Rebikoff has created a small art form all his own.
M. Gniessin is one of the most talented of the younger Russians who have shown marked foreign influence—in this case German. His important works include a 'Symphonic Fragment' after Shelley, op. 4; a Sonata-ballad in C-sharp minor for piano and 'cello, op. 7; a symphonic poem, Vrubel; and a number of admirable songs. W. G. Karatigin is known as the editor of Moussorgsky's posthumous works and composer of some carefully developed music. Among the remaining young composers of this group we need only mention the names of Kousmin, Yanowsky, Olenin and Tchesnikoff.
There remains Igor Stravinsky, perhaps the greatest of all the younger Russian composers in the pregnancy of his musical style. He is regarded as a true representative of nationalism in its 'second stage,' for, though his work bears little external resemblance to that of Moussorgsky, for instance, its style is indigenous to Russia and its thematic material is closely connected with the Russian folk-song. Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum on June 5, 1882, the son of Feodor Stravinsky, a celebrated singer of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg. Though his precocious talent for music was recognized and was fostered in piano lessons under Rubinstein, he received a classical education and was destined for the law. It was not until he met Rimsky-Korsakoff at Heidelberg in 1902—that is, at the age of twenty—that he turned definitely and finally to music. He began work with Rimsky-Korsakoff and learned something about brilliancy in orchestration. But his ideals were too radical always to suit his master. The latter is said to have exclaimed on hearing his pupil play 'The Fire Bird': 'Stop playing that horrible stuff or I shall begin to like it.'
Stravinsky's first important work was his symphony in E-flat major, composed in 1906, and still in manuscript. Then came 'Faun and Shepherdess,' a suite for voice and piano, and, in 1908, the Scherzo Fantastique for orchestra. His elegy on the death of Rimsky-Korsakoff, his four piano studies, and a few of his songs, written about this time, hold a hint of the changed style that was to come.
Here begins the list of Stravinsky's important compositions. 'Fireworks,' for orchestra, was written purely as a technical tour de force. Music in the higher sense it is not, but it reveals immense technical resource in scoring and in the invention of suggestive devices. Pin wheels, sky rockets and exploding bombs among other things are 'pictured' in this orchestral riot of tone. In 1909 came the ballet 'The Nightingale,' which has recently been rewritten, partly in the composer's later style, and arranged as an opera. This led him to his first successful ballet. But before entering considering the three works which have chiefly brought him his fame let us refer to some of the later songs, e. g., 'The Cloister' and 'The Song of the Dew,' which are masterful pieces in the ultra-modern manner, and to the 'Astral Cantata,' which has not yet been published at this writing.
Stravinsky's fame in foreign lands (which is doubtless almost equal to that in his own, a strange thing in Russian music) rests almost entirely on the three ballets which were mounted and danced by Diaghileff's company of dancers, drawn largely from the Imperial Opera House, in St. Petersburg, who for several seasons made wonderfully successful tours in the European capitals. It must be understood that this institution, the so-called 'Russian ballet,' was in no wise official. It represented the 'extreme left wing' of Russian art in regard to music, dancing, and scene painting. It was altogether too radical to be received hospitably in the official opera house. But it proved to be one of the most brilliant artistic achievements of recent times, and on it floated the fame of Igor Stravinsky.