Russian music

“ There is perhaps no other people in the world so musical as the Russian, and perhaps no other people whose body of national music approaches so near to the real psychology and philosophy of the nation's life, the people's joys and sorrows, aspirations and strivings, achievements and failures. For the Russian, music is a delight. ”

“ Russian music, whether it be the fine liturgical music of the church, the rhythmic and somewhat monotonous singing of the Volga boatmen, the boisterous Troika song, or an ornate opera like Boris Godunov, is permeated through and through with the spirit of the endless plain and a sense of loneliness that rarely admits of majors. The somber hues of the landscape, the atmosphere of the boundless solitudes, dominate; Russian popular music is all in the minor key. ”

“ For the music brought forward by the visit of the composer who is at present in this country as envoy of his school, convinces us that the work of the men of his party, elegant and brilliant as it often is, is the work of men essentially unresponsive to the appeal of their compatriots. For them, as it is for every Russian musician, Russia was without their windows, appealing dumbly for expression of its wild, ungoverned energy, its misery, its rich and childish laughter, its deep, great Christianity. ”

“ The development of Russian music consists of a continuous struggle between the ideas of the composers of Western Europe and the peculiar genius of national music. Almost every Russian composer shows traces of such a struggle. And it is when the national spirit dominates over the foreign, that the musical art of the country rises to its sublimest heights. ”

“ A commercial age encounters even more difficulty than the "Maiden" in understanding the subject of Russian music, because the music of Russia is almost, if not entirely, free from the sensual element. It is truly spiritual.
Russian vocal music is not suited to mechanical reproduction. It must be heard as a living thing, from a living artist. It is the offspring of the song of the long-suffering Russian people. And whoever knows the Russian songs will understand why Russian music is so truthful, so sincere, so heart-felt, so humanly appealing. ”

“ Every Russian [Pg 39] artist, be he a composer, writer, or painter, in avoiding artificiality puts into his creation all the idiomatic peculiarities of his race without polishing out of it the vigor of 'naturalness.' Russian music, more than any other Russian art, expresses in all its archaic lines, soft shades, and polyphonic harmonies the peculiar temperament of the nation, which is just as restless and unbalanced as its life. ”

“ Russian music is the strangest paradox—it owes more to the music of other countries than any other school, yet no music is more thoroughly individual and unmistakable. It clothes itself after the form and fashion of its neighbours, but beneath its garb peeps out a physiognomy indubitably Sclavonic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Russian folk-songs, words and music are closely linked. They are an invitation to the dance; they set the peasant's feet a-dancing and make him clap his hands. It is not the words so much, as the melody that makes the songs so infectious. Far more definitely than language can do it, the melodies express the true national spirit. It is this dinstinctive quality that the great Russian composers have recognized, and they have done well in taking the Russian folk-music as the basis for the development of a native school of music. ”

“ Gifted foreigners, such as Cavos, had tried to catch some faint echo of the folk-song and reproduce it disguised in Italian accents; talented, but poorly equipped, Russian musicians had exploited the music of the people with a certain measure of success, but without sufficient conviction or genius to form the solid basis of a national school. Yet all these strivings and aspirations, these mistaken enthusiasms and immature presentiments, were not wasted. Possibly the sacrifice of many talents is needed before the manifestation of one genius can be fulfilled. ”

“ Russian lovers are quite inexhaustible in their endearing expressions, and the abundance of diminutives which the language possesses is especially favorable to their affectionate mode of address. With this exquisite tenderness of the love-song is united a pensive feeling, which, indeed, pervades the whole popular poetry of Russia, and which may be characterized as melancholy musical, and in harmony with the Russian national music, the expressive sweetness of which has been the admiration of all foreign composers to whom it has been known. ”

“ The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian music was to create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school, but directly from the soul of the masses. Their ideal was to create life from life. In order to accomplish their tasks they went back to melodic traditions of early mediæval music, to the folk-songs, the mythological chants and the folk dances. Since the Russian people are extremely musical, folk-song is a great factor in the nation's life and evolution. Music accompanies moujiks from the cradle to the grave and plays a leading rôle in their social ceremonies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the close of the nineteenth century has witnessed the triumph of Russian music at home and abroad proves how strong was the innate capacity of this people, and how deep their love of this art, since otherwise they could never have finally overcome every hindrance to its development. That from primitive times the Slavs were easily inspired and moved by music, and that they practised it in very early phases of their civilisation, their early historians are all agreed. ”

“ An artist! Why is she here? I must know her.
The song itself is plaintive, elemental, with the insinuating nuances that are vital to Russian music. The orchestra, with the violins and 'cellos predominant, is playing hauntingly, weaving a foreign exotic spell.
She has poise, grace, and is compelling attention even in this place. There comes a bit of melancholy in the song and she sings it as one possessed, giving it drama, pathos. Suddenly there is a change. The music leaps to wild abandon. She is with it. She tosses her head like a wild Hungarian gipsy and gives fire to every note. ”

“ The Scandinavians were soon followed by the young Russian dreamers: Glinka, Dargomijsky, Seroff, Balakireff, Moussorgsky and Tschaikowsky in music and also in ballet; Gogol, Turgenieff, Dostoievsky and Ostrovsky105 in drama and literature, turned in their creations to the rich and unexploited folk-lore of the people. Russian music, perhaps more than any other, is a true mirror of the racial soul. There is fire, gloom, sorrow and joy, remodelled and expressed in the same racial spirit as that in which the moujik sings his Ai Ouchnem, or builds his izba. ”

“ Rubinstein was a creative virtuoso, Tschaikowsky was a creative genius. They took the same general direction in form and themes, but otherwise a wide abyss separated these two unique spirits of Russian music. Tschaikowsky had Rubinstein's passion and technical skill, the same lyric style, and, like him, adhered to West European form, but in his essentials he remains a Russian of the most classic tendencies; his language is that of an emotional Slav. His music glows with the peculiar fire that burned in his soul; rapture and agony, gloom and gayety seem in a perpetual struggle for expression. ”

“ There should also be a knowledge of Russian literature, from the passion of Pushkin and the irony of Gogol, to Turgenieff's tales of life among the serfs, and the novels of Tolstoi, in which mysticism and realism are strangely blended. Inasmuch as Neo-Russian music is founded upon the folk-songs of that country, one should know first of all the conditions that made such songs possible, and one should breathe the atmosphere in which musicians who have used such songs have worked. ”

“ Before the nineteenth century, music in Russia was introduced almost exclusively by German and Italian musicians and composers, who were brought over by the Court and the aristocracy. They did not care to study the national music of the country, but composed according to their own Western ideas. ”

“ As before remarked, one might have imagined that opera would scarcely ally itself to his personal individuality; it seems probable, therefore, that various salient traits inherent in the Russians as a nation must have led him to the choice. First and foremost, any music which claims to proceed from the very heart of the Russian people must contain a vocal element. So universal a love of singing as exists throughout Russia is to be met with in no other country. ”

“ We may be uneven and amateurish as nature and human life are, but, thank Heaven, we are not artificial and sophisticated!'
Be it a song, instrumental composition, or opera, everything in Russian music breathes the ethnographic and social-psychologic peculiarities of the race, which is semi-Oriental in its foundations. Nationalism in music has been the watchword of most of the Russian composers since the very start. But, besides, there has been a strong tendency to subjective individualism, that often expresses itself in a wealth of sad nuances. ”

“ The music you hear in Russian churches robs you of the sense of time. On Christmas Eve in Russia you hear the music of the herald-angels, and see at the same time, in the likeness of the listening Russian peasants, the shepherds who heard the angels sing. You veritably escape from “the world” and from “to-day,” and are so potently reminded of the beauty and mystery of man’s life that you shake off all dull cares and the reproach of failure or success, the soil and stain of circumstance, and know that what is you is something utterly beautiful before God. ”

“ I stood among the pillars, a little removed from the principal aisle, one afternoon near sunset, listening to the melodious intoning of the priest, and the soft chanting of the small week-day choir at vespers, and wondering, for the thousandth time, why Protestants who wish to intone do not take lessons from those incomparable masters in the art, the Russian deacons, and wherein lies the secret of the Russian ecclesiastical music. That simple music, so perfectly fitted for church use, will bring the most callous into a devotional mood long before the end of the service. ”

“ THE RUSSIAN OPERA CHAPTER I
THE DAWN OF MUSIC IN RUSSIA THE early history of the development of the national music, like that of most popular movements in Russia, has its aspects of oppression and conflict with authority. On the one hand we see a strong natural impulse moving irresistibly towards fulfilment ”

“ The idea of raising and developing the standard of music was laudable, but was Russia truly in such sore need of that kind of development and elevation when an independent and profoundly national school was already germinating in our midst? In discussing Russian music, the first questions should have been: what have we new in our music ”

“ In politics Russia is the unknown quantity that fills the sleep of statesmen with restless dreams. In painting she is frankly imitative and too closely chained to the technical ideals of Paris; in sculpture the name of Antokolsky rivals Rodin, while in music she is a formidable foe of Germany.
One is almost tempted to write that much Russian music, certainly all modern Russian piano music comes from Frederic Chopin, if you did not remember Chopin’s Slavic affiliations. Yet in a sense it is true. Chopin plays a big part in the harmonic scheme of all latter-day composers, Wagner not excepted. ”

“ Of the first, the primitive period in Russian music, there are few records beyond the allusions to the love of minstrelsy which we find in the earliest known songs and legends of the Russian Slavs. When we reach the second period, at which the national music entered upon a struggle with the spiritual authorities, we begin to realise from the intolerance of the clerical attitude how deeply the art must have already laid hold upon the spirit of the people. ”

“ The common impression, because of the predominance of this minor, is that Russian songs are all ‘sad’ or ‘moody.’ This is not just, for the minor, which is an expressive means with us, is nothing more than a convention in Russian folk-music. It is the material out of which the music is made. It can be manipulated to express almost any emotion which the singer can feel. Hence the notion that the range of Russian folk-songs is narrow is quite false. They have a remarkably wide range, from the deepest gloom, through the tenderest sentimentality, to the fiercest exhilaration of physical life. ”