Modest Chaikovskii

“ With all this, Tchaikovsky knows how to strike a note of tenderness. The third movement of his Symphony—the Scherzo ‘pizzicato ostinato’—is a masterly invention, which stands alone in musical literature. The vein of national feeling which runs throughout the work accords admirably with its style and beauty. Here and there it echoes the melancholy and sadness of some solemn, wailing folksong, but so inspired and perfect is the treatment that both heart and intellect are completely satisfied. ”

“ Such moments of solitude amid the flowers and green branches are incomparable; then I can watch every form of organic life which manifests itself silently, without a sound, yet speaks more forcibly of the illimitable and the eternal than the rumbling of bridges and all the turmoil of the streets. In one of your letters you say I shall not find a Gorge de Chaudière at Brailov. I do not want it! Such places satisfy one’s curiosity rather than one’s heart and imagination; one sees more English tourists than birds and flowers; they bring more fatigue than enjoyment. ”

“ When I joined the Conservatoire I was—as I have already told you—an enthusiastic worshipper of Rubinstein. But when I knew him better, when I became his pupil and we entered into daily relations with each other, my enthusiasm for his personality became even greater. In him I adored not only a great pianist and composer, but a man of rare nobility, frank, loyal, generous, incapable of petty and vulgar sentiments, clear and right-minded, of infinite goodness—in fact, a man who towered far above the common herd. As a teacher, he was of incomparable value. ”

“ It is not too much to say that in the whole world of music, in the entire range of lyrical emotion, there was not a single idea, or a single form, of which this admirable artist could not give a poetical interpretation. The timbre of her voice was more like the oboe than the flute, and was penetrated by such indescribable beauty, warmth, and passion, that everyone who heard it was fascinated and carried away. ”

“ Were I to vanish from the face of the earth to-day, it would be no great loss to Russian music, and would certainly cause no one great unhappiness. In short, I live a selfish bachelor’s life. I work for myself alone, and care only for myself. This is certainly very comfortable, although dull, narrow, and lifeless. But that you, who are indispensable to so many whose happiness you make, that you can give way to depression, is more than I can believe. How can you doubt for a moment the love and esteem of those who surround you? How could it be possible not to love you? ”

“ So long as her love has not yet ripened, Natasha dissipates her forces, so to speak, in current coin; it amuses her to make everyone fall in love with her with whom she comes in contact. She is merely a sympathetic, attractive, undisciplined woman; she knows she is captivating, and is quite contented. Lacking the enlightenment of religion and culture—for she is a friendless orphan—she has but one object in life—to live gaily. Then appears the man destined to touch the latent chords of her better nature, and she is transfigured. Life loses all worth for her, so long as she cannot reach her goal ”

“ What an inexhaustible source of enjoyment to admire this incomparable view, which stretches in all its beauty before our windows! All Naples, Vesuvius, Castellammare, Sorrento, lie before us. At sunset yesterday it was so divinely beautiful that I shed tears of gratitude to God.... I feel I shall not do much work in Naples. It is clearly evident that this town has contributed nothing to art or learning. To create a book, a picture, or an opera, it is necessary to become self-concentrated and oblivious of the outer world. Would that be possible in Naples?... ”

“ I desire with all my soul that my music should become more widely known, and that the number of those people who derive comfort and support from their love of it should increase. In this sense not only do I love fame, but it becomes the aim of all that is most earnest in my work. But, alas! when I begin to reflect that with an increasing audience will come also an increase of interest in my personality, in the more intimate sense; that there will be inquisitive people among the public who will tear aside the curtain behind which I have striven to conceal my private life ”

“ Modi, ever since I re-read Romeo and Juliet, Undine, Berthalde, Gulbrand, and the rest seem to me a pack of childish nonsense. Of course, I shall compose an opera on Romeo and Juliet. All your objections will vanish before the vast enthusiasm which possesses me. It shall be my finest work. It seems absurd that I have only just found out that fate has to some extent ordained me for this task. Nothing could be better suited to my musical temperament. No kings, no marches—in a word, none of the usual accessories of Grand Opera. Nothing but love, love, love. ”

“ Flashes of genius mingle with musical banalities; delicate and intellectual touches with effects which are often ugly. There is something uncompromising, restless, and jerky about his work. In spite of all his originality, and the unrestrained passion of his emotions, Tchaikovsky is too eclectic in his tendencies ever to attain to independence in the highest meaning of the word. An artist’s originality does not lie in the fact that he brings us what is strange and unusual. What deludes the senses is far from sufficient to satisfy the intellect. ”

“ Your march is so wonderful, Peter Ilich, that it throws me—as I hoped—into a state of blissful madness; a condition in which one loses consciousness of all that is bitter and offensive in life.... Listening to such music, I seem to soar above all earthly thoughts, my temples throb, my heart beats wildly, a mist swims before my eyes and my ears drink in the enchantment of the music. ”

“ The composition of the Manfred Symphony—a work highly tragic in character—is so difficult and complicated that at times I myself become a Manfred. All the same, I am consumed with the desire to finish it as soon as possible, and am straining every nerve: result—extreme exhaustion. This is the eternal cercle vicieux in which I am for ever turning without finding an issue. If I have no work, I worry and bore myself; when I have it, I work far beyond my strength. ”

“ I, too, when I am writing an opera feel so constrained and fettered that I often think I will never compose another. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that many beautiful things of the first order belong to the sphere of dramatic music, and that the men who wrote them were directly inspired by the dramatic ideas. Were there no such thing as opera, there would be no Don Juan, no Figaro, no Russlan and Lioudmilla. Of course, from the point of view of the sane mind, it is senseless for people on the stage—which should reflect reality—to sing instead of speaking. ”

“ If you had some private means, I could only rejoice in the prospect of your going to the Caucasus for a time. But it saddens me to think of you in the provinces, remote from musical centres, overburdened with tiresome work, solitary and unable to hear good music. You cannot imagine how it depresses me to think of men like Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, and yourself being obliged to worry with teaching. But how can it be helped? I think if you bear it for another two years, and work hard, little by little, you may manage to live by composition only. ”

“ I do not rave about the music of the new French school as a whole, nor about each individual composer, so much as I admire the influence of the novelty and freshness which are so clearly discernible in their music. What pleases me is their effort to be eclectic, their sense of proportion, their readiness to break with hard-and-fast routine, while keeping within the limits of musical grace. Here you do not find that ugliness in which some of our composers indulge, in the mistaken idea that originality consists in treading under foot all previous traditions of beauty. ”

“ You say music only produces in you a pleasant, purely physical, sensation. Against this I distinctly protest. You are deceiving yourself. Do you really only care for music in the same way that I enjoy a bottle of wine or a pickled gherkin? Nay, you love music as it should be loved: that is to say, you give yourself up to it with all your soul and let it exercise its magic spell all unconsciously upon your spirit. ”

“ But perhaps it is just because—being a child of my day—I feel broken and spiritually out of joint, that I find consolation and rest in the music of Mozart, wherein he gives expression to that joy of life which was part of his sane and wholesome temperament, not yet undermined by reflection. It seems to me that an artist’s creative power is something quite apart from his sympathy with this or that great master. For instance, a man may admire Beethoven, and yet by temperament be more akin to Mendelssohn. ”

“ Every preconceived theory chills his incontestable creative impulse. How could Wagner abandon himself to inspiration, while he believed he was grasping some particular theory of music-drama, or musical truth, and, for the sake of this, turned from all that, according to his predecessors, constituted the strength and beauty of music? If the singer may not sing, but—amid the deafening clamour of the orchestra—is expected to declaim a series of set and colourless phrases, to the accompaniment of a gorgeous, but disconnected and formless symphony, is that opera? ”

“ What really astounds me, however, is the seriousness with which this philosophising German sets the most inane subjects to music. Who can be touched, for instance, by Parsifal, in which, instead of having to deal with men and women similar in temperament and feeling to ourselves, we find legendary beings, suitable perhaps for a ballet, but not for a music drama? I cannot understand how anyone can listen without laughter, or without being bored, to those endless monologues in which Parsifal, or Kundry, and the rest bewail their misfortunes. Can we sympathise with them? Can we love or hate them? ”

“ But for a composer opera has some irresistible attraction; it alone offers him the means of getting into touch with the great public. My Manfred will be played once or twice, and then disappear; with the exception of a few people who attend symphony concerts, no one will hear it. Opera, on the contrary—and opera alone—brings us nearer to our fellows, inoculates the public with our music, and makes it the possession, not only of a small circle, but—under favourable circumstances—of the whole nation. ”

“ I have met one or two others, besides yourself, who have a fine feeling for music, yet nevertheless failed to appreciate Mozart. I should have tried in vain to make them discover the beauties of his music. Our musical sympathies are often affected by purely external circumstances. The music of Don Juan was the first which stirred me profoundly. It roused in me a divine enthusiasm which was not without after-results. Through its medium I was transplanted to that region of artistic beauty where only genius dwells. Previously I had only known the Italian opera. ”

“ During the month of July I finished a large part of the opera, and might have accomplished more but for my agitated frame of mind. I have never regretted my choice of subject for an instant. I cannot understand how it is that you who love music cannot appreciate Poushkin, who, by the power of his genius, often oversteps the limitations of poetry and enters the illimitable sphere of music. This is no mere phrase. Apart from the substance and form of his verses, they have another quality, something in their sequence of sound which penetrates to our inmost soul. This ‘something’ is music. ”

“ I want to read in your face the inspiration, the emotions, under the influence of which you write the music which carries us away to that world of ideal feelings, aspirations and desires which cannot be satisfied in life. How much joy, but how much pain is there in this music! Nor would we consent to give up this suffering, for in it we find our highest capacities; our happiness, our hopes, which life denies us. The Tempest was the first work of yours I ever heard. ”

“ Kamenka, September 14th (26th) , 1882.
“Never has any important work given me such trouble as this opera (Mazeppa) . Perhaps it is the decadence of my powers, or have I become more severe in self-judgment? When I remember how I used to work, without the least strain, and knowing no such moments of doubt and uncertainty, I seem to be a totally different man. Formerly I wrote as easily, and as much in obedience to the law of nature, as a fish swims in water or a bird flies. Now I am like a man who carries a precious, but heavy, burden, and who must bear it to the last at any cost. ”

“ Side by side with touches of genius and passages of imperishable beauty we find childish and weak numbers. What might not Glinka have accomplished had he lived amid different surroundings, had he worked like an artist who, fully alive to his power and his duty, develops his gifts to the ultimate limit of perfection, rather than as an amateur who makes music his pastime!
“I have explained that I compose either from an inward impulse, winged by a lofty and undefinable inspiration, or I simply work, invoking all my powers, which sometimes answer and sometimes remain deaf to my invocation. ”

“ You are afraid lest you should miss in my personality all with which your ideal imagination has endowed me. You are right. I feel that on closer acquaintance you would not find that harmony between me and my music of which you have dreamt.
“Accept my thanks for all your expressions of appreciation for my music. If you only realised how good and comforting it is to a musician to know one soul feels so deeply and so intensely all that he experienced himself while planning and finishing his work! ”