Mikhail Glinka

“ Glinka is the earliest of the Russians, as gifted as any, perhaps, but not so accomplished; there has always been a dash of dilettantism about his productions, spite of his obvious talents, his gift of spontaneous, and (to those who do not know much of Russian folk-songs and dances) original melody, and his undeniable cleverness in the manipulation of the voice and of orchestral instruments. Glinka's two Russian operas are held to be of national importance by his country-men. ”

“ There is no guide to the history of music in Russian, and it would be a good thing if I could occupy myself with a book of this kind; I often think of it. But then I should have to give up composing for at least two years, and that would be too much. To start upon a translation—that is not very interesting work. Write a monograph upon some artist? So much has already been written about the great musicians of Western Europe. For Glinka, Dargomijsky, and Serov I cannot feel any enthusiasm, for, highly as I value their works, I cannot admire them as men. I have told you what I think of Glinka. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is another composer whose name is extremely important in the consideration of the second period in the development of Russian music. Dargomyzhsky's career is in many ways like that of Glinka. He, too, at first, bowed to the influence of foreign models. He even imitated Glinka for some time. Among his many songs is one called the "Night Review," which is in structure similar to Glinka's song of the same name. One of his pieces, however, "Palladin," is a gem, and many think that it has never been surpassed in the treasure-house of songs. ”

“ Some critics have supposed that the composer really wished to give an impression of the Poles as a superficial people literally dancing and revelling through life, and possessed of no deeper feelings to be expressed in music. But Glinka was too intelligent a man to take such naïve views of national character. It seems more probable that not being supersaturated with Polish as he was with Russian folk-music, he found it difficult to indicate the personality of the Pole in anything but conventional dance rhythms. ”

“ In his letters and Autobiographical Notes, he often adopts the tone of a genius misunderstood, and hints that an unkind Providence enjoyed putting obstacles in his path. It is true that in later life, after the production of his second opera,{77} Russlan and Liudmilla, he had some grounds for complaining of the fickleness and mental indolence of the Russian public. But his murmurings against destiny must be discounted by the fact that Glinka, the spoilt and delicate child, grew up into Glinka, the idolised and hypochondriacal man. ”

“ Like a nightmare, the questions continually haunt me: How could such colossal artistic force be united to such emptiness? and how came this average amateur to catch up in a single stride such men as Mozart and Beethoven? Yes, for he has overtaken them. One may say this without exaggeration of the composer of the{564} ‘Slavsia.’ This question may be answered by those who are better fitted than myself to penetrate the mysteries of the artistic spirit which makes its habitation in such fragile and apparently unpromising shrines. I can only say no one loves and appreciates Glinka more than I do. ”

“ In the last act of A Life for the Tsar Glinka has concentrated the ardent patriotism and the profound human sympathy which is not only a feature of his music but common to the whole school of which he is the prototype. ”

“ Broadly speaking, they stand respectively for lyrical idealism as opposed to dramatic realism in Russian opera. To draw some parallel between them seems inevitable, since together they make up the sum total of the national character. Their influences, too, are incalculable, for with few exceptions scarcely an opera has been produced by succeeding generations which does not give some sign of its filiation with one or the other of these composers. Glinka had the versatility and spontaneity we are accustomed to associate with the Slav temperament ”

“ An innate love of song, an innate love of acting, a keen perception of dramatic unity, combined with a passionate love of colour and a strong sense of movement—here surely, without any manner of doubt, one has the basis of a well-nigh perfect school of opera. Glinka, the cultivated musician, himself a Russian, thoroughly appreciated these national qualities; indeed they were part and parcel of his birthright. He could assimilate the characteristics of his race and merge them into his own very remarkable originality. The first product of the combined motors was La Vie pour le Tsar, given at St. ”

“ The phenomenal success embittered the professional musicians of Russia and they began to fight the composer with redoubled vigor.
Fortunately the czar, and especially Shukovsky, were on the side of Glinka, so that all the intrigues of his enemies failed. Meanwhile he had composed several songs and a large number of ballads and orchestral pieces, of which Kamarinskaya and the 'Spanish Overture' are the most known. Glinka's songs and instrumental pieces are full of melody and color, and they are still sung and played in Russia, but the best he has created are his two operas. ”

“ Stassov, in his fine monograph upon the composer, lays stress on this view of Glinka’s career. The history of art, he argues, contains only too many instances of perverted talent; even strongly gifted natures have succumbed to the ill-judged advice of friends, or to the mistaken promptings of their own nature, so that they have wasted valuable years in the manufacture of works which reached to a certain standard of academic excellence, and even beauty, before they realised their true individual vocation and their supreme powers. ”

“ Russians themselves are all agreed that it would be difficult to select one whole folk-song from any single work of Glinka's. It would naturally require a native of Russia with an accurate knowledge of these native tunes to tell us exactly when and where he used them. He seized their mood. In this way he developed every species of Sclavonic folk-song—Great Russian, Little Russian, Circassian, Polish, Finnish—with a passing flavour contributed by Persia, for undoubtedly Oriental music had, at some remote period, influenced its Sclavonic neighbour very strongly. ”

“ Glinka is quite an unusual phenomenon! Reading his Memoirs, which reveal a nice, amiable, but rather commonplace man, we can hardly realise that the same mind created that wonderful ‘Slavsia,’ [78] which is worthy to rank with the work of the greatest geniuses. And how many more fine things there are in his other opera (Russlan) and the overtures! How astonishingly original is his Komarinskaya, from which all the Russian composers who followed him (including myself) continue to this day to borrow contrapuntal and harmonic combinations directly they have to develop a Russian dance-tune! ”

“ Although the best of relations existed between himself and his father, he does not seem to have shown him anything of his deeper artistic nature, and Glinka’s family accepted his music merely as an agreeable addition to his social qualities. Meanwhile he wrote many of the songs of his first period, and a few isolated dramatic scenas with orchestral accompaniment, including the Chorus on the Death of a Hero, in C minor, and an Aria for baritone, a part of which he used in the finale of the second act of his opera Russlan and Liudmilla. ”

“ The thematic material of A Life for the Tsar is partly drawn from national sources, not so much directly, as modelled on the folk-song{96} pattern. The crude folk-stuff is treated in a very different way to that which prevailed in the early national operas. Glinka does not interpolate a whole popular song—often harmonised in a very ordinary manner—into his opera, in the naïve style of Fomin in his Aniouta or The Miller. ”

“ Every entr’acte which follows the overture is a little picture drawn by a master-hand. These are symphonic marvels which would suffice a second-rate composer for a whole series of long symphonies.”
The idea of a second national opera began to occupy Glinka’s mind very soon after the production of A Life for the Tsar. It was his{105} intention to ask Poushkin to furnish him with a libretto based upon his epic poem “Russlan and Liudmilla.” The co-operation of Russia’s greatest poet with her leading musical genius should have been productive of great results. ”

“ Glinka, Pushkin, and their followers sought no foreign aid; they represent a Russian Renaissance. They were content, indeed, to abide by the forms universally adopted elsewhere, but the spirit of their art manifestation was Russian to its core. In literature, Pushkin and Gogol were never weary of delineating their compatriots in every grade of Sclavonic society, whilst Glinka took his musical inspirations from his native folk-songs and dance-rhythms—from the historic chronicles of his country or its legendary lore. ”

“ As all Russians have inborn love of song and as that is expressed in manifold ways in their actual life more than in the life of any other nation, Glinka's main idea was to found the Russian opera on combined passages of realistic musical life, giving them a dramatic character. ”

“ But, strange to say, the private life of Glinka did not affect his compositions, for there is nothing extremely melancholy or sentimentally sad in his music. An air of sentimental romanticism emanates from his numerous ballads, songs, and instrumental works. Like the rest of his contemporaries he is lyric, full of color and sentiment in his minor works. One and all are distinctly national.
Together with Glinka, Dargomijsky undertook to carry the idea of nationalism in music into practice, in spite of all the objections of contemporaries. They met frequently and became close friends. ”

“ Happily Balakirev showed no signs of departure. He took his place at the table and talked with all his old passion of music in general, but chiefly of the master who had dominated the renaissance of Russian music—Michael Ivanovich Glinka.
Russians love to prolong their hospitality until far into the night. But in May the nights in St. Petersburg are white and spectral. At midnight the world is steeped in a strange light, neither twilight nor dawn, but something like the ghost of the departed day haunting the night that has slain it. Instead of dreams one’s mind is filled with fantastic ideas. ”

“ The more I study the elements of our national music, the more I discover its many-sidedness. Glinka, who so far has been the first to extend the sphere of our Russian music, has, I consider, only touched one phase of it—the lyrical. In The Roussalka I shall endeavour as much as possible to bring out the dramatic and humorous elements of our national music. ”

“ Colonel Glinka growled. "A little jumpy in my business is good, but too much is bad for the health." And he went, straightway, and closed the back door of the conservatory and dragged a heavy rack of trailing orchids in front of it, humming a furious little march from The Guardsman as he worked.
"You must know," he said loudly, "that I do not altogether believe you, Stefanik, when you imply that you have abandoned this research. Nor will they. For who, then, are these degenerate wretches who stand upon the hills and gawk at us, and why must you feed them? ”

“ Colonel Glinka said. "Yet you were our white hope, Comrade Stefanik. We might have led the world, I am told, in organics as we now lead in physics. I have read all of your books upon the fascinating subject of chromosomic change and the morphology of rats. ”

“ But in order that the acclimatisation may be complete, he adopts the forms of the folk-songs. He is seeking, in fact, to fuse Glinka and Wagner, and produce a Russian music-drama. Serov was a connoisseur of the Russian folk-songs, but he had not that natural gift for assimilating the national spirit and breathing it back into the dry bones of musical form as Glinka did. In creating this Russo-Wagnerian work, Serov created something purely{158} artificial: a hybrid, which could bring forth nothing in its turn. ”

“ It was the chef-d’œuvre of Glinka—Life for the Czar.
Without, however, detaining the reader with the details of the manner of the representation, which probably would interest him but slightly, I will give my impression of the character of the music.
The Russians, who are not an inventive people, have, however, a national music of a kind special and original. ”

“ Younger Schools.—Younger schools having a strongly national character exist in Russia and Bohemia, but as yet they possess only local signification and have produced no practical effect outside of their respective countries. Michael Glinka (1803-1857) with his patriotic opera, Life for the Czar, founded the Russian opera in 1836. The Bohemian opera is of more recent origin and is associated principally with the names of Friedrich Smetana (1824-1884) and Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) . ”