Lecture Nine
Russian Nationalism and Some Church Music
"Russian Music is a miraculous language that everyone can understand. It is a language with an endless capacity to tap our intense longing for a better world. All of us hope for a future where these values are lived every day”-- Mikhail Gorbachev
We will begin the period with a Quiz, and then we turn to nineteenth-century Russian musical nationalism. The lecture begins with a brief history of St. Petersburg, a city built by Czar Peter the Great as his window on the west, the most ‘modern” and westernized city in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia. Russia’s entry into the greater European community as a result of the defeat of Napoleon and the Decembrist Revolution of I825 are discussed, as is the growing conviction, during the 1820s and l830s, that the Russian language and native Russian music were capable of the highest artistic expression, a conviction realized in the literature of Pushkin and the operas of Mikhail Glinka. The music and ideas of the “Russian Five”—Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin—are discussed and illustrated, with a special emphasis placed on Rimsky-Korsakov and his Russian Easter Overture. Lastly we will play a few examples of sacred music from the 19th century. There will not be enough time to listen to very many, so, as in Lecture seven, there are some examples listed at the end so you can hear them. Some selections will be on your listening test.
Mussorgsky
Outline
I. We begin with an introduction to Russian musical nationalism.
A. Russian musical nationalism was not so much a reaction to I848 as a reaction to Russia’s entry into the European mainstream during the early nineteenth century.
B. Western concert music in Russia had its beginnings during the reign of Czar Peter the Great.
1. Peter built St. Petersburg from scratch as Russia’s window on the West beginning in 1703.
2. The city was stocked with the best Western architects, artists, and musicians that rubles could buy.
3. St. Petersburg was (and remains) the most Westernized city in Russia.
C. Up until the nineteenth century, music in St. Petersburg consisted mainly of Italian opera, light Viennese- and Italian-style instrumental music, and aristocratic amateur concerts.
D. Russia became part of the larger European community as a consequence ofNapoleon’s defeat in 1812 and the Decembrist revolt in 1825.
E. Certain Russian writers and musicians consciously decided c. I 825 to cultivate a uniquely “Russian” artistic tradition.
1. Preeminent among these Russian nationalists was the poet and author Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837).
2. Through the model of his own work, Pushkin provided a literary heritage for the Russian language.
II. The dominant figure in the emergence of Russian music was Mikhail Glinka (1804-57).
A. Glinka became the hero and role model for the next generation of Russian composers.
Some Biographical information:
Mikhail Glinka: (born Smolensk, 1804, d. Berlin, 1857). Relatively early on the scene, Glinka was referred to as the “Prophet-Patriarch of Russian Music,” [Grove’s Dictionary], although he certainly received a great deal of his training outside of Russia. The son of a Russian military man, he was fascinated with the serf orchestras and their folk music, which were brought to his father’s country estate. He would join in with them, playing the violin or piccolo on the tonic or dominant notes, in his excitement. He was very, very sensitive to music and particularly loved the church and folk music of his country. As a young man, he went to an aristocratic private school in St. Petersburg, and there he met the celebrated Irish pianist and composer, John Field, with whom he studied for a time.
After studying the classical composers, he settled in St. Petersburg and took a civic job. Perhaps he would have never become a prominent composer, but his health caused him to seek a better climate. Resigning his position, he went to Italy in 1828 and lived there for three years. Charmed by Italian music for awhile, he began to long for his own country and its music, and formulated the idea of writing a genuine “Russian” opera. He spent a short course of study in Berlin, shortened still more by his father’s death, and returned to Russia, where he recommenced composing, this time with nationalistic Russian ideas in mind.
His first opera, styled on the model of French grand opera, was A Life for the Czar. Sometimes he got ahead of his librettist and wrote the music before the words! Then, he composed “Russlan and Lyudmilla,” which was a failure in the eyes of his countrymen. Going to France, he was thrillled to meet Berlioz, who, in his eyes, was the greatest musician of the century. The two composers were of inspiration and help to one another. It was at this time, also, that Russians were very fond of all things French, so the time spent in Paris did not hurt his reputation in Russia, at all.
Glinka was an important Christian composer, producing some music for the Russian Orthodox Church, for which he was the Choirmaster of the Imperial Chapel. In fact, he died in Berlin, where he had returned for additional studies of the Western ecclesiastical modes. There, in Berlin, he passed away, and was buried. His remains were later reburied at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg.
Featured Music:
Glinka, Ruslan and Ludmilla, Overture (I842)
III. The Five
A. “The Five” were a group of young, post-Glinka Russian composers who banded together and whose stated mission was to glorify the spirit and music of mother Russia through their concert works. These people kept Tchaikovsky out of their group because he wasn’t “Russian” enough! They were determined to use folk music and Russian themes to set a new style for their country, and to avoid simply imitating the German composers, as so many had before them.
1. Mily Balakirev (1837-1910)
2. Caesar Cui (1835-1918)
3. Modest Mussorgsky (1839-8 1)
4. Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-87)
5. Alexander Borodin (1833-87)
B. The self-taught Five made a virtue of their technical ignorance, and they raised the flag of their dogmatic nationalism at every opportunity. They particularly scorned the music of Anton and Nicolai Rubinstein, who to the Five represented the Western European academic tradition.
C. The Five created a characteristic “Russian” music based on Glinka’s model.
1. It uses Russian folk melodies or melodies created to sound like folk melodies.
2. It is essentially thematic with comparatively little development.
3. It is emotionally powerful and often unrefined to ears accustomed to German/Italian music.
Featured Music:
Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition, promenade (1874)
Pictures at an Exhibition, The City Gates (1874) (Sue Talley)
Alexander Borodin Polovtsian Dances or Prince Igor Overture
IV. Modest Mussorgsky, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and the Legacy of the Five.
A. By the 1880s, Rimsky-Korsakov had become the most technically accomplished composer of the Five.
B. In I 871 he accepted a teaching position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His work there allowed him to form the link between the the traditional European musical establishment and the amateurism of the Five
C. He was an important teacher whose students included Glazunov and Stravinsky
D. Rimsky-Korsakov is known in the West as the composer of many popular orchestra works. In his own time, as in Russia today, he was known mainly as an opera composer.
E. Featured Music:
Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Overture (I888)
1. This piece has extraordinary orchestration.
2. It is a concert/symphonic overture that tells the narrative story of a Russian Easter day.
3. It is nationalistic in both subject matter and use of Russian melodies merged with originally composed material. The seamless melding of preexisting melodies with original music makes it virtually impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.
4. The piece is based on religious melodies drawn from the Obikhod, a 1772 collection of Russian religious music. The Orthodox Church republished the works
of Tikon and Mazanetz in four books of Western notation and are nearly entirely znamenny chant with harmonies. These books were used all through the 19thcentury in Russia.
Some additional Biography:
1. Mily Balakirev was “the center of the Five and the teacher of Cui, Borodin, and Mussorgsky.” [Sachs, p. 305] He also was the Director of the Imperial Chapel, as Mikhail Glinka had been before him. Nevertheless, he is not well known in the West.
2. Cesar Cui was half Russian and half French. He wrote ten operas, but his occupation was that of a Lieutenant-General and a military engineer.
3. Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was an army cadet but resigned in 1858 to study music with Balakirev. His most famous opera is Boris Godunov, another story on nationalistic Russian themes. Of his other works, probably the most famous is the Pictures at an Exhibition, written for piano, but orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. This charming set of famous pieces was inspired by some mediocre pictures painted by a friend, and was united by a “Promenade” theme, in which the “viewer” goes from one canvas to another. It is very charming and very Russian. It ends with “The City Gates,” or “The Great Gates of Kiev,” which faithfully describes a procession from the gates of the city, complete with the ringing of church bells, the molieben, or prayers sung, and the triumphant dedication of the gates of Kiev—which were never actually built, as painted. (The Gates were to be built in thanksgiving to God for the deliverance of Czar Alexander I from a would-be assassin’s bullet, but the Czar thought that, perhaps, if they were built, the entire country would think him “weak” for being shot at.)
4. Nicholas A. Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer with “great enthusiasm and little knowledge,” accorinding to Sachs. He was somewhat precipitously appointed Professor of Composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Although he had more talent than knowledge at the time, he worked hard and wrote quite a famous book on orchestration, using examples from his own compositions. His works include Pskovityanka (“The Girl from Pskov”), 1872, Snegurochka (Snow Maiden) in 1881, and Sheherazade (1888), whose famous theme was later used as the hit tune, Stranger in Paradise. He worked so hard completing or revamping works for his friends, that he did not have time to compose more.
5. Borodin was a gifted amateur, a doctor and chemist by profession. He was, however, a brilliant composer, who wrote songs, symphonies, a string quartet in A major, and an unfinished opera (Prince Igor). Interestingly enough, the opera was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, after his early death.
Finally some church music, as we have time:
V. Romanticism and Church Music
A. Berlioz
1. He composed religious works for special occassions.
2. His Grande Messe des morts (Requiem, 1837) and Te Deum (1855) are dramatic symphonies with voices singing inspiring, liturgical texts.
3. His works call for huge forces with brilliant orchestral effects.
B. Liszt
1. He also composed sacred music for special occassions.
2. Liszt wrote about his ideal of Romantic sacred music.
a. He called his new music "humanitarian."
b. He believed in using contrasting values in these works, for example dramatic and sacred, splendid and simple
VI. The Cecilian movement
A. Named after St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music in the Catholic Church.
B. Inspired by the Romantic interest in the past
1. Revived sixteenth-century a cappella style
2. Inspired the restoration of Gregorian chant
C. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
1. Organist in Linz and Vienna
2. Religious person with training in counterpoint
3. Composed Masses as well as symphonies
4. Composed motets
VIII. Other religious music
A. Rossini composed a Stabat Mater that was banned for its operatic style.
B. Verdi composed a Requiem (1874) with powerful choruses and operatic style.
C. Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem, 1868)
1. Inspired by Handel's choral music
2. Combines sacred and newly-written texts
Featured Music: (Click on the selection to hear some excerpts)
Beethoven — Missa Solennis, Symphony No. 9
Berlioz — L’Enfance du Christ, La Damnation de Faust, Requiem
Brahms — A German Requiem
Bruckner — Te Deum
Fauré — Requiem
Gounod ‑ St. Cecelia Mass
Mendelssohn — Elijah, St. Paul
Rossini — Stabat Mater
Saint-Saëns — Christmas Oratorio
Verdi — Requiem.