The Mentor: Russian Music, Vol. 4, Num. 18, Serial No. 118, November 1, 1916

Anton Rubinstein is considered to have been, next to Franz Liszt, the greatest pianist the world has ever heard. His technical execution was not flawless, but no one paid any attention to that, because of the overwhelming grandeur and emotional sweep of his playing. Like Liszt, however, he tired of the laurels of a performer, his ambition being to become the Russian Beethoven. He got no higher, however, than the level of Mendelssohn. Both Mendelssohn and Rubinstein were for years extremely popular. If they are less so today, that is owing to the superficial character of much of their music. Yet both were great geniuses; in their master works they reached the high water mark of musical creativeness. Rubinstein is at his best in his “Ocean” symphony, his Persian songs, some of his chamber works for stringed instruments, alone or with piano, two of his concertos for piano and orchestra, and his pieces for piano alone, the number of which is 238. Among these there are gems of the first water.

A Rubinstein revival is much to be desired in these days, when so few composers are able to create new melodies. When it comes, in response to the demands of audiences, which are very partial to this composer, at least three of his nineteen operas will be revived: “The Demon,” “Nero,” and “The Maccabees.” Opera goers love, above all things, melody, and Rubinstein’s operas, like his concert pieces, are full of it. He was himself to blame for the failure of most of his operas, for he stubbornly refused to swim with the Wagnerian current, which swept everything before it. He hated Wagner intensely, yet he might have learned from him the art of writing music dramas of permanent value.

Five of his operas are on Biblical subjects. They are really oratorios with scenery, action and costumes. He dreamed of erecting a special theater somewhere for the production of these “sacred operas,” as Wagner did for his music dramas at Bayreuth; but nothing came of this plan, and he became more and more embittered as he grew older, because so many of his schemes failed.

Apart from their abundant melody there is nothing in Rubinstein’s best works that fascinates us more than the exhibits of glowing Oriental and Hebrew “coloring” – as we call it for want of a better word. He also made excellent use of national Russian melodies, though not nearly to the same extent as Glinka and his followers, the “nationalists.” Before considering them it will be advisable to speak of the greatest of all the Russian composers.

Tchaikovsky, the Melancholy

It is commonly believed that in music the public wants something “quick and devilish”; but this is far from the truth. For social, political, and especially climatic reasons, the Russians, with their long and dreary winters, are supposed to be a melancholy nation. The most melancholy of their composers is Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, and of his works the most popular by far, throughout the world, is the most lugubrious of them all, the heart rending “Pathetic Symphony,” which is today second in popularity to no other orchestral work of any country. “All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” might well be its motto. More than any funeral march ever composed, it embodies, in the adagio lamentoso, which ends it, the concentrated quintessence of despair, “the luxury of woe.” It was Tchaikovsky’s symphonic swan song. At the time of his death there was a rumor that he had written it deliberately as his own dirge before committing suicide; but it is now known that he died of cholera.

What endears the “Pathetic Symphony” to such a multitude of music lovers is, furthermore, its abundance of soulful melody. This abundance characterizes many of his other compositions. Indeed, so conspicuous, so ingratiating, is the flow of melody in his works, that one might think he was one of those Italian masters who made their home in Russia. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Italians have not a monopoly of melodists – think of the Austrians, Haydn, Mozart (who was the idol of Tchaikovsky’s youth) and Schubert; the Germans, Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner; the Frenchmen, Bizet and Gounod; the Norwegian, Grieg; the Pole, Chopin. With them as a melodist ranks Tchaikovsky, and this is the highest praise that could be bestowed on him. The charm of original melody gives distinction to his songs, the best of which are the “Spanish Serenade,” “None but a Lonely Heart,” and “Why So Pale Are the Roses?”

There is less of it in his piano pieces, but his first concerto for piano and orchestra, and his violin concerto, have an abundance of it and are therefore popular favorites – as much as his “Slavic March,” his “1812” overture, and his “Nut Cracker Suite,” which is also full of quaint humor, and which had the distinction of introducing a new instrument now much used in orchestras – the “celesta” – a small keyboard instrument, the hammers of which strike thin plates of steel, producing silvery bell-like tones. This suite consists of pieces taken from his ballet of the same name.

Among his stage works are eight operas, only two of which, “Eugene Onegin” and “The Queen of Spades,” have, however, been successful outside of Russia; but in Russia the first named has long been second in popularity only to “A Life for the Czar.”

Moussorgsky and Musical Nihilism

One of the works most frequently performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York during the last three seasons has been the “Boris Godounov” of Modeste Petrovich Moussorgsky. It is concerned with one of the most tragic incidents in the history of Russia. Boris Godounov usurps the imperial crown after assassinating the Czar’s younger brother, Dimitri. After he has ruled some years, he is driven to insanity by the appearance of a young monk who pretends to be Dimitri, rescued at the last moment and brought up in a monastery. In setting this plot to music Moussorgsky adopted the principles of musical “nihilism,” which consisted in deliberately disregarding the established operatic order of things. The musical interest centers chiefly in the choruses, leaving little for the soloists, apart from dramatic action. Moussorgsky not only liked what was “coarse, unpolished and ugly,” as Tchaikovsky put it, but he refused to submit to the necessary discipline of musical training, the result being that not only “Boris Godounov,” but his next opera, “Kovanstchina,” could not be staged successfully until Rimsky-Korsakov had thoroughly revised them, especially in regard to harmonic treatment and orchestration. The charm of “Boris” lies in the pictures it presents of Russian life, and its echoes of folk music.

Of the songs by its composer few have become known outside of Russia. Some are satirical – he has been called the “Juvenal of musicians” – and it has been said of his lyrics in general that “had the realistic schools of painting and fiction never come into being we might still construct from Moussorgsky’s songs the whole psychology of Russian life.”

Rimsky-Korsakov and the Nationalists

Moussorgsky and the man who helped to make his inspired but ungrammatical works presentable to the world – Nicholas Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakov – belonged to a coterie of composers known as the nationalists. The other three were Balakiref, whose output as a composer was small, but whose two collections of Russian folk tunes are considered the best in existence; Borodin, who is best known in this country through an orchestral piece called “In the Steppes of Central Asia” and his “Prince Igor,” which has been produced at the Metropolitan Opera House, and César Cui, who is more interesting as a writer than as a composer. He has well set forth the tenets of the “nationalists,” chief of which is that a composer cannot be a truly patriotic Russian master unless he uses folk tunes as the bricks for building up his works.

Because Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky did not do this to any extent these nationalists looked down on them, and decried them as cosmopolitans – belonging to the world rather than to Russia. Rubinstein, who had a caustic pen, retorted by declaring that the nationalists borrowed folk tunes because they were unable to invent good melodies of their own. To a certain extent this was true, but it does not apply to Rimsky-Korsakov, who is, next to Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, the greatest of the Russian melodists and composers. Theodore Thomas considered him the greatest of them all. With this opinion few will agree, but no one can fail to admire the glowing colors of his orchestral works, the greatest of which is “Scheherazade,” which is based on “The Arabian Nights,” and is concerned with Sinbad’s vessel and Bagdad. Of his dozen or more operas none has become acclimated outside of Russia. As a teacher he might be called the Russian Liszt, because not a few of his pupils acquired national and international fame; among them Glazounov, Liadov, Arensky, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Gretchaninov, Taneiev (tah-nay-ev) and Stravinsky.

Stravinsky and the Russian Ballet

Four of the most prominent Russian composers have visited America: Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Scriabin. Rachmaninov, the only one of the four still living, owed the beginning of his international fame to the great charm of his preludes for piano. Scriabin was one of the musical “anarchists” who now abound in Europe – composers who try to be “different” at any cost of law, order, tradition and beauty. One of his quaint conceits was an attempt to combine perfume and colored lights with orchestral sounds. Musical frightfulness is rampant in some of his symphonies, in which horrible dissonances clash fiercely and “without warning.”

The latest of the Russians who has come to the fore – Igor Stravinsky – also revels in dissonances, but in his case they are not only excusable but even fascinating, because there is a reason behind them. He uses them to illustrate and emphasize humorous, grotesque or fantastic plots and details, such as are presented in his pantomimic ballets, “Petrouschka,” and “The Fire Bird.” There is an entirely new musical “atmosphere” in these two works, and the public, as well as the critics, have taken to them as ducks do to water. If the Diaghileff Ballet Russe which toured the United States last season had done nothing but produce these two entertainments, it would have been worth their while to cross the Atlantic. They have made the world acquainted with a Russian who may appeal, in his way, as strongly as Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. His latest efforts are reported to be in the direction of the cult of ugliness for its own sake. But perhaps he will get over that – or, maybe some of us will come to like ugliness in music as we do in bulldogs. Opinions as to what is ugly or beautiful in music have changed frequently.

The Character of Russian Music

The musical character of the great masters is unmistakable. When an expert hears a piece by a famous composer for the first time he can usually guess who wrote it. But when it comes to judging the national source of an unfamiliar piece, the problem is puzzling. It is true that Italian music usually betrays its country. Widely as Verdi and Puccini differ from Rossini and Donizetti, they have unmistakable traits in common. The same cannot be said of the French masters, or the German. Gounod and Berlioz, both French composers, are as widely apart as the poles. Flotow, who composed “Martha,” was a German, but his opera is as utterly unlike Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” as two things can be.

The question, “What are the characteristics of Russian music?” is, for similar reasons, difficult to answer. As in other countries, there are as many styles of music as there are great composers. Moreover, Rubinstein is less like any other Russian than he is like the German Mendelssohn. If a “composite portrait” could be made of the works of prominent Russian composers, it might, nevertheless, give some idea of their general characteristics. Tchaikovsky’s passionate melody, reinforced by inspired passages from Rimsky-Korsakov and by the tuneful strains of Rubinstein, would give prominence to what is best in Russian music. A more distinct race trait is the partiality of Russian masters for deeply despondent strains, alternating with fierce outbursts of unrestrained hilarity, clothed in garish, barbaric orchestral colors. In startling contrast with the alluring charms of Rubinstein’s Oriental and Semitic traits are the harsh dissonances of Moussorgsky, Scriabin, and Stravinsky. Blending all these traits in our composite musical portrait, with a rich infusion of folk-songs of diverse types, both Asiatic and European, we glimpse the main characteristics of Russian music.