Stravinsky and the Russian traditions: a biography of the works through Mavra, Vol. 2 9780520070998

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges

the generous contribution provided by the Director’s Circle of the Associates

of the University of California Press, whose members are

Evelyn Hemmings Chambers June and Earl Cheit Edmund J. Corvelli, Jr. Lloyd Cotsen

Robyn Darwin

Susan and August Frugé Harriet and Richard Gold Florence and Leo Helzel ~ Raymond Lifchez and Judith Lee Stronach

TY. Lin Ruth and David Mellinkoff Thormund A. Miller

Ann and Richard C. Otter Joan Palevsky

Lisa See and Richard Kendall

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Retake Beetshoes dae AEact dartaie setae” PRS ON ! Even as he cultivated the facade of a sophisticated cosmopolitan, then, Stravinsky was profoundly un- and even anti-Western in his musical thinking (and much more so than any previous Russian composer had cause to be). Inevitably, the Eurasian aspects of the style worked out in his “period of exploration and discovery” marked him for life.°? They remained with him as permanent stylistic resources, however neoclassic or neoserial his overt stylistic orientation would become, and no matter how doggedly he would strive in his late years to “angle” himself with respect to the “German stem.” He was, ultimately, an outsider to all traditions of

West and East alike—at first a triumphantly self-proclaimed outsider, at last a humbled and suppliant outsider, but at all times the great “zarubezhniy” of twentiethcentury music.

The sources called upon to illuminate this central phase of the present study, which reaches its climax with the chapter on Svadebka (Les noces), include the documents surrounding the World of Art movement and the journal Mir tskusstva itself; the work of the new breed of Russian ethnographers and musical folklorists

of Stravinsky’s generation (Linyova, Kastalsky, et al.); the annals of the Ballets Russes; and a broad spectrum of cultural materials relevant to the Russian “Silver Age” (poetry and belles lettres, art and art criticism). Special attention is given to

. Stravinsky’s break with the representatives of his old St. Petersburg milieu (or rather, their break with him) and its proximate causes. Much documentation on the break, as well as musical materials that enable and justify a definition of Stravinsky’s style and practice as “Eurasian,” may be found in the Stravinsky Archive. When the dream of once again possessing Russia evaporated with the consolidation of Soviet power at the end of the Russian civil war, Stravinsky (like the Diast. Nicolas Nabokov, “The Peasant Marriage (Les Noces) by Igor Stravinsky,” Slavic Studies of the Hebrew Universtty of Jerusalem 3 (1978): 273. Precisely because this “reality” was a self-created myth, Stravin-

sky was able to evade the “threefold dilemma” Car! Dahlhaus has posited with respect to the creative appropriation of folklore (see Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. Mary Whittall [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 1-12) and create from it a style of unprecedented authenticity. First, his aim was not to restore, but to reconstitute; second, his radical methods rendered the question of modifying the original moot, since he manufactured his own “original”; third, and most important, he did not adapt elements of folklore to an established art-music style, but used them in unprecedented fashion to subvert and ultimately replace that style. For a suggestion that an adaptation of the folkloristic style epitomized in Les noces has itself lately become an established art-music style in his homeland, see Solomon Volkov, “The ‘New Folkloristic Wave’ in Contemporary Soviet Music as a Sociological Phenomenon,” in Report of the 12th Congress [of the International Musicological Society], Berkeley,

1977, ed. Daniel Heartz and Bonnie Wade (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1981), 49-50. Volkov speaks of a “new and heightened interest in folk performances and techniques, such as the sliding glissando, the cut-off words, the unstable structures, the improvisational style.” He goes on to observe that “these—one may say—maximal characteristics of the folklore were examined in the light of contemporary compositional systems,” without seeming to realize that there was a precedent of half a century’s standing for everything he was describing. What is ominous about the “new folkloristic wave” (novaya folkloristicheskaya polna) is that it appears to have been officially encouraged as a politically acceptable alternative avantgarde untainted by the cosmopolitanism (read: Jewishness) of Schoenbergian dodecaphony. §2. The term is Stravinsky’s, for the period following The Rite (see M&C:117/122).

[16] INTRODUCTION

ghilev enterprise that sustained him) turned resolutely toward the West. The pivotal work in this connection was Mapra, the real “epiphany,” as Stravinsky put it (though he had Prlctnella in mind), “through which the whole of my late work became possible.”°* Through Mavra Stravinsky approached the West as Russian music itself had done a century before. His stylistic renovation took the form of an accommodation between the irreducibly Eurasian elements of his style and the harmonic traditions and musical conventions of Italian opera. The result was a new Russian Italianism, modeled in some ways earnestly, in others parodistically, on the style of the Russian romances and operas of Pushkin’s time. This stylistic accommodation, in which the ontogeny of Stravinsky’s music recapitulated the phylogeny of the “Westernized” Russian music of the nineteenth century, was the occasion for all the clamorous switching of allegiances, the upholding of Chaikovsky over Rimsky, the self-conscious avowals of musical purity—in short, the sloganeering and pamphleteering of the “neoclassic” years and beyond. And alas, it held the seeds of the inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West that overwhelmed the composer on completing another Italianate opera three decades later, finishing off his neoclassicism and bringing on the one real creative crisis of his career. This impasse was resolved by a new and equally vociferous switching of allegiances and a new bout (the biggest) of pamphleteering, the consequences of which we have been sampling. It is evident that investigations such as that undertaken here will lead in direc-

tions of which the older Stravinsky would have strongly disapproved, both as to tendency and as to method. Although “purely” musical analysis is an indispensable tool for any stylistic study, and will be abundantly present in this one, it is no less true that justice can be done to the younger Stravinsky’s exceedingly complex and at times contradictory development only by adopting an approach he would have condemned as “literary,” as in his description of Jacques Riviére’s writings on The Rite of Spring, which, he complained, were “inspired more by the whole spectacle than by my music.”°* But how else approach any ballet, any opera, any song even? The purely musical purview, favored not only by Stravinsky but by most recent analysts of and commentators on his music, is an often blinkered one that has bequeathed many sterile studies, particularly of that most-studied of Stravinsky’s works, The Rite of Spring. For all its three-quarters of a century in the concert hall, The Rite is more than a score, and the music is much more than organized sound. Motivated and in many ways conditioned from without, that music possesses both meaning and signifi-

cance—both intrinsic sense, that is, and contextual relevance—on many other levels than the “purely” musical. And such is equally the case for practically every 53. E&D:128—29/113.

54.. Conv:60/56.

STRAVINSKY AND THE TRADITIONS [17]

other composition from the Scherzo fantastique to Mavra and beyond. One must cast a wide net, heeding seriously Robert Craft’s call for investigations into “the genesis of Stravinsky’s subject matter.”°> This means culling the work of anthropologists, historians, philosophers, poets, dramatists, and literary critics in search of anything that might have a bearing on the backgrounds to the masterworks of the Russian years. Where appropriate, one may also consult the writings of musicians. To finish with preliminaries, the new image of Stravinsky that will emerge in the pages to come may be anticipated in the form of five theses, as follows:

That Stravinsky achieved artistic maturity and his modernist technique by deliberately playing the traditions of Russian folk music against those of the provincial, denationalized Russian art music in which he had been reared, which he had at first accepted uncritically and in toto. That he came to his knowledge of folklore, and his attitudes concerning its creative utilization, not from his musical training, but from his association with the artists of the “World of Art” circle. That he deliberately retained that which was most characteristically and exclusively Russian in his musical training and combined it with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore in a conscious effort to excrete from his style all that was “European.” That the stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed him as a composer for life, whatever his professed stylistic and esthetic allegiances.

That for all these reasons Stravinsky was the most completely Russian composer of art music that ever was and, if present trends continue, that ever will be.

“If you had seen what he came from in Russia,” Souvtchinsky declared one evening in 1967 to Robert Craft, “you would believe in genius.”°° For Souvtchinsky, Stravinsky’s oldest surviving friend, Stravinsky was still both a miracle and a mystery, one of the great mysteries of world culture, and in particular of Russian culture, a mystery that will live forever, that will always be subject to fresh interpretations, and that will always be needed. His secret—which really cannot be explained—is first and foremost the secret of his genius, the mysterious unexpectedness and the marvel of his appearance in the music of Russia and the world. As Tolstoy said:

55. P&D:288. 56. R&C:265.

[18] INTRODUCTION

“Genius is that which cannot be called anything but genius!” Its basic characteristics, moreover, are unpredictability and self-evidence.>”

Amen. No book will ever “explain” the secret of Stravinsky’s genius. But Souvtchinsky’s declaration to Craft is a challenge to investigate Stravinsky’s origins as a way of enhancing our belief in his genius and truly appreciating the marvel of his appearance. Whatever illumination this book may provide is offered in that spirit and in celebration of the beginning of Stravinsky’s second century.

57. Pierre Souvtchinsky, “Stravinsky as a Russian,” Tempo, no. 81 (1967): 5.

STRAVINSKY AND THE TRADITIONS [19]

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PART I

A WALLED-IN ARTIST

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I RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

THE MYTH Igor Stravinsky was born in a jubilee year for Russian music. Glinka had died a quarter of a century before, and the anniversary was observed with great selfcongratulatory fanfare by Russian artists and critics of progressive or nationalistic bent. Vladimir Stasov seized upon the occasion as one of the pretexts for a mammoth survey of Russian artistic attainment in all media, the first of its kind to have been made from a patently nationalistic standpoint. “Twenty-five Years of Russian Art,” issued in six chunky installments over the course of a full year from November 1882 to October 1883 in the pages of the Vestntk Yevropi (European Courter), Mikhail Stasyulevich’s “thick journal” of historiography and liberal opinion, was dedicated to the proposition that, over the quarter century since 1857, Russian painting, sculpture, architecture, and music (the subjects of its four constituent sections) had achieved independence from Western Europe and were now forces to be reckoned with on the world stage. In all four areas, Stasov insisted, the new vitality had been won by nationalistic upsurges against an official neoclassical academicism, most dramatically in the case of painting, where the realist school known as the “Peredvizhniki” had originated in an actual secession from the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1863.’ In music, Stasov saw an equivalent to the Peredvizhniki in what he called the “New Russian School,” which had begun with Glinka, continued through Dargomizhsky, and reached its zenith in the group around Mily Balakirev, whose unflat1. The name Peredvizhniki comes from that of the association formed by the realist painters in 1870: Tovarishchestvo peredvizhnikh khudozhestvennikh vistavok (Association of Traveling Art Exhibits). The group is often called the “Wanderers” in English, but that gives the impression that they were nomads. From the name Peredvizhniki the abstract noun peredvizhmichestvo is derived, to denote their principles and practices.

[23]

tering sobriquet moguchaya kuchka, “mighty little heap,” had been inadvertently bestowed on them fifteen years before by Stasov himself.” “Yes,” he averred, “a Russian school has existed since Glinka’s time, with unique features that distinguish it from other European schools.”* He proceeded to list those features, beginning with what, he emphasized, was by far the most important: “the absence of prejudices and blind faith.” Beginning with Glinka, all the best Russian musicians have been very skeptical of book learning and have never approached it with the servility and the superstitious reverence with which it is approached to this day in many parts of Europe. It would be absurd to reject science or knowledge in any field, music included, but only the new Russian musicians, whose shoulders are not burdened with the long chain of European scholasticism ... can boldly look learning in the eye. They respect it, avail themselves of its advantages, but without exaggeration or genuflection. They deny the necessity of its arid and pedantic excesses, reyect the gymnastic frolics to which thousands in Europe attach such importance, and do not believe in vegetating submissively for long years over ritualistic mysteries. ... Such an attitude toward “received wisdom,” so esteemed by other schools, has saved the Russian school from creating pedantic or routine works—these simply do not exist in the New Russian School. This is one of its chief differences from earlier European schools.*

The list continues: the New Russian School strives for national character (and finds itself singularly well equipped to achieve it thanks to the vitality of Russian folklore, unmatched in Western Europe); the Russian school is drawn to Ontental (that is, Near Eastern) themes, in both the general and the specifically musical senses of the word; the Russian school favors program music over absolute. But all these additional factors are subordinate to the first, and can only flourish in the presence of the first. The great issue for Stasov, then, was that of defending the noble tradition of Russian autodidactism against the inroads of academic professionalism—an 1ssue that was in fact the preeminent bone of musical contention over the quartercentury that Stasov’s essay commemorated.° 2. The phrase was coined in the concluding sentence of Stasov’s review, “Mr. Balakirev’s Slavonic Concert” (“Slavyanskiy kontsert g. Balaktreva”), which appeared in the newspaper Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti on 13 May 1867. The concert was performed before the assembled delegates to

a Pan-Slavist congress. The concluding sentence ran: “We close our remarks with a wish: may God grant that our Slavonic guests never forget today’s concert, that they will forever preserve the memory of the poetry, feeling, talent, and sophistication that is to be found in our small but already mighty little heap of Russian musicians” (V. V. Stasov, Izbranniye sochinentya (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1952], 1:173). Although the phrase was coined as it were within the kuchka, it was the group’s enemies that took it up and popularized it. The word now athe neutral identifying label, whichrespectively. words like kuchkism and kuchkist have been derived to is denote group’s esthetics and itsfrom adherents, 3. Stasov, Izbranniye soclinentya 2:523.

4. Ibid., 525-26. 5. See Robert C. Ridenour, Nationalism, Modernism, and Personal Rivalry in Nineteenth-Century Russian Mustc (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981).

[24] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

But when compared with the situation in painting, the musico-political scene in Russia (which is to say, of course, in St. Petersburg) was curiously skewed. Among painters, the revolt of the young mavericks against the entrenched establishment had followed a familiar pattern. In music, however, there had been until quite recently no entrenched establishment. The autodidactism lauded by Stasov had been the status quo for Russian musicians since Western-style music first began to be

imported and conspicuously consumed under the “three empresses” in the eighteenth century. Professional musicians had been, almost by definition, foreigners or serfs. The revolutionary development had been the institutionalization and professionalization of musical life at the initiative of Anton Rubinstein, who, because of his European reputation as a virtuoso and by dint of tirelessly persistent effort, had succeeded in gaining aristocratic backing for two institutions that had transformed musical life in Russia, creating the material conditions through which, he hoped, a viable musical activity might flourish indigenously. In 1859 he had founded the Russian Musical Society, which sponsored the first regular, fully professional concert orchestra in Russia, and in 1862 he founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the first Russian school of its kind. As a matter not only of esthetic ideology, but also of practical necessity, both of these institutions had been mainly staffed at the outset with Germans. What Rubinstein conceived as a progressive program for bringing Russia into the mainstream of European musical life met with a great deal of predictable resistance from nationalistic quarters. Loudest of all was Stasov, who, two decades later, remained indignant, devoting a major section of his musical survey in “Twenty-five Years of Russian Art” to vilifying Rubinstein and his Conservatory. The intention to elevate and develop Russian music was, of course, a generally praiseworthy one. But was it precisely this kind of development and elevation that was needed, when there had already arisen among us an independent, original school—and one profoundly national at that? In any consideration of Russian music the first question should of course have been that of defining just what our new music and our new school were, what its character and its peculiarities were, and what exactly was needed for its further growth and for the preservation of its individual peculiarities. But the people who thought to benefit Russia in a musical way neither understood nor wished to understand this. From the heights of European conservatorial grandeur they looked down on our fatherland as on some kind of tabula rasa, as on some wild and desolate country, where the soil was still fallow, awaiting the importation of beneficent seedlings from Europe.®

Stasov went on to quote at length from an article he had written in 1861 for a reactionary newspaper called Severnaya pchela (the Northern Bee), in an effort to fore-

6. Stasov, Izbranniye sochinentya 2:536.

THE MYTH [25]

stall what he saw as impending disaster. One passage in that article called the whole concept of “higher learning” in the arts into question. “Higher” institutions for the arts are an altogether different matter from higher institutions in the sciences. ... A university imparts nothing but knowledge; a conservatory is not content with that but meddles in the most injurious way in the creative work of an artist trained there, extending its despotic power over the style and form of his work, attempting to force it into a certain academic mold, imparting to it its own customs, and what is worst of all, sinking its claws into the artist’s very mind, imposing on him its own judgment of works of art and their creators, from which it will later on be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for him to extricate himself.

The peroration sounded a call to arms against foreign intrusion, and at the same time issued a dire prophecy: It is time to call a halt to this transplanting of foreign institutions to our country and to give some thought to what will be truly useful and beneficial to our soil and the development of our nationality. The experience of Europe teaches us that to the same extent that modest schools which limit themselves to the rudiments of music are useful, higher schools, academies, and conservatories are harmful. Is this experience going to be lost on us? Are we then required to copy slavishly whatever exists in other places, so as to have the pleasure of boasting afterward nothing but an enormous quantity of teachers and classrooms, a fruitless distribution of awards and prizes, proliferating volumes of worthless compositions and legions of goodfor-nothing musicians?

Now, in 1882, Stasov was claiming that it had all come true. Of the two Russian conservatories (for since 1866 there had been one in Moscow too) he vituperated: Most deplorable of all is the fact that our conservatories have turned out to be purely foreign institutions—German ones. Within their walls no mention is made of Russian music, or of the Russian school, or of any Russian tendency, and hundreds of young men and women are trained there in superstitious veneration of everything that is venerated in the Leipzig or Berlin conservatories. Most of the “musicians”— performers, composers, and theorists—turned out by our conservatories nourish a healthy contempt for Russian art. ... [As for the Russian Musical Society], either it has completely ignored the New Russian School or it has treated the school with utter condescension—yust like our Academy of Arts with respect to the Russian school of painters.”

As an example of the Conservatory’s baleful influence, Stasov offered an unflattering portrait of Chaikovsky. 7. Ibid., 537-38.

[26] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

His talent was very strong, but on him the inauspicious influence of his conservatory training has made itself felt. In his tastes there reigned an excessively great eclecticism and a lack of discrimination, and this has told harmfully upon his work. ... The national element does not always succeed with Chaikovsky, though he has one chef d’oeuvre in this style: the finale of his C-minor symphony, on the Ukrainian folk tune “The Crane.” . .. But where Chaikovsky has least ability is in the realm of vocal music. ... A lack of discrimination in choice of material, an ordinariness bordering at times on banality in his themes, hurried and careless work have made [the “nationalistic” opera Vakula the Smith] just as insignificant as all the other operas by this author. But that did not prevent the Russian Musical Society from giving it a prize in a contest. The remaining operas of Chaikovsky, written indiscriminately in all different styles old and new, as well as his romances, attest to his skill in handling form and to his expert craftsmanship, but they are devoid of creative sincerity and inspiration, as a result of indiscriminate, constant, limitless overproductivity and his lack of self-criticism. They are all competent but indifferent works and, unfortunately, often trite in their melodies and in their habitual turns of phrase. In all this Chaikovsky is the comrade and disciple of his former master and teacher at the Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein.®

In contrast to this portrait is the one Stasov painted of Rimsky-Korsakov, the youngest member of the “mighty kuchka,” who was of an age that would have enabled him to attend the Conservatory but who instead became Balakirev’s most ardent disciple. The nature of his musical activity resembled Balakirev’s in many ways. He was selftaught in musical technique and in like manner he developed his own rich talent for orchestration to a point of rare perfection. In his earliest, most youthful period, Balakirev’s advice, suggestions, and criticism had a very beneficial influence on him. Later on, both of them compiled excellent, truly exemplary collections of Russian folk songs, which have already had and continue to have an enormous influence on the New Russian School and which are surely destined to play an even larger role in developing our future musical generations. Finally, both Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov, in the course of many years, stood in succession at the helm of the Free Music School and directed its concerts. That is to say, they have stood at the head of our whole new musical movement.”

The Free Music School had been founded in 1862 by Balakirev and the choral conductor Gavriyil Lomakin as a kuchkist “answer” to the Conservatory and the Russian Musical Society at once. In its pedagogical function the school fit Stasov’s description of a useful establishment—that is, a “modest school which limits itself to the rudiments of music”—while in its concert-sponsoring capacity it furnished a forum for the composers of the New Russian School. 8. Ibid., 563-64. 9. Ibid., 558.

THE MYTH [27]

Stasov praised all sides of Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical output equally (in sharp contrast to his omnibus disparagement of Chaikovsky) and reiterated emphatically that the poor reception Rimsky’s music had suffered up to 1882 had been due not to any deficiency but to the conservatism of the public and the press—a conservatism to be blamed, of course, on Conservatory influence. The chronicler finished his account with a little chapter on the youngest generation of Russian composers, centering on a deliriously enthusiastic welcome to the teen-aged Glazunov, who, he ended by predicting, “will one day be the head of the Russian school.” The emergence of this prodigy gave hope, and Stasov was able to conclude his fairly caustic survey of the contemporary Russian musical scene on an optimistic note: “Who knows, perhaps in a few years the ideas, tastes, and sym-

pathies both of our public and of its representatives, the critics, will be transformed from top to bottom regarding our new school, Glinka’s progeny.”!° This view of nineteenth-century Russian musical politics, polarized between the Mighty Five and the forces of Westernizing reaction, is the familiar one—except that in conventional musical historiography the dividing issue is usually portrayed as nationalism tout court, while Stasov’s account shows that at the time the national issue was dependent on more fundamental issues concerning institutions and professionalization. Otherwise, Stasov’s view coincides by and large with that of today’s music historians, both Russian and Western. But that is only because today’s music historians still base themselves by and large on Stasov. In the Soviet Union his pronouncements were canonized: the editors of the standard Soviet edition of his writings asserted of “Twenty-five Years” that “without knowledge [of that work] a correct understanding of the history of nineteenth-century Russian art and music is scarcely conceivable.”"' And the earliest Western writers on Russian music, like Rosa Newmarch and Michel Calvocoressi, diligently parroted Stasov’s work in their own.'* The foundation they laid, though by now rusty and rickety, still supports “common knowledge” of the period in the West. So it may come as a surprise to the reader, as it did to the critic Alexander Ossovsky upon discovering Rimsky-Korsakov one day in the act of reading “Twentyfive Years of Russian Art,” that the latter was agitated and indignant. “Nikolai Andreyevich had covered the article with a multitude of exclamation points and question marks,” recalled Ossovsky. “Then, turning to me (for I was in those days involved with newspapers and magazines), he said, “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to write an article called “Fact and Fiction on the ‘New Russian School.’”’”!* 10. Ibid., 567-68. 1. P. T. Shchipunova, “Commentary,” in ibid., 2:757.

12, Newmarch put “Twenty-five Years of Russian Art” at the top of her list of “indispensable sources of first-hand information for those who would study the question of Russian music au fond” (The Russian Opera, 216).

13. A. V. Ossovsky, “Memoirs,” ed. E. F Bronfin, in N..A. Rimskiy-Korsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, ed. Semyon L. Ginzburg (Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1959), 193.

[28] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

For by 1882 the static Stasovian view, faithfully reflecting as it did the musical politics of the 1860s, was already seriously out of kilter with fact, and over the next couple of decades it would become utter fiction.

THE ACADEMY To begin with what would have been most obvious and offensive to RimskyKorsakov, Stasov had deliberately withheld one important detail—one so critical, in fact, that to mention it would have brought his whole edifice tumbling down. Since 1871—that is, for over a decade—Ruimsky-Korsakov, Stasov’s rawboned Mr. Natural, had been a professor in Rubinstein’s Conservatory. He had received the surprising invitation not from Rubinstein himself, but from the latter’s successor as director, Mikhail Azanchevsky. His acceptance of the position was a turning point in his musical career and, as it turned out, a momentous event in the history of Russian music. Rimsky-Korsakov was transformed into a composer who completely belied Stasov’s profile of him and of his “school.” But he can speak for himself. Rimsky’s account of the fateful episode in his posthumously published Chronicle of My Musical Life is a touching passage that deserves to be quoted at some length. Had I ever studied at all, had I possessed a fraction more of knowledge than I actually did, it would have been obvious to me that I could not and should not accept the proffered appointment, that it was foolish and dishonest of me to become a professor. But I, the author of Sadko, Antar, and The Maid of Pskov, compositions that were coherent and well-sounding, compositions that the public and many musicians approved, I was a dilettante and knew nothing. This I frankly confess and attest before the world. I was young and self-confident; my self-confidence was encouraged by others, and I joined the Conservatory. And yet at the time I could not decently harmonize a chorale; not only had I not written a single counterpoint in my life, but I had hardly any notion of the structure of a fugue; nay, I did not even know the names of the augmented and diminished intervals, of chords (except the fundamental triad), of the dominant and chord of the diminished seventh, though I could sing anything at sight and distinguish chords of every sort. The terms “chord of the sixth” and chord of “six-four” were unknown to me. ... And now Azanchevsky took it into his head to offer a professorship to a musician so ill-informed, and the musician accepted without blinking. Perhaps it will be said that all the above information which I lacked was unnecessary to the composer of Sadko and Antar; and that the very fact that Sadko and Antar existed proved that that information was unnecessary. ... But it is shameful not to know such things and to learn of their existence from one’s own pupils. Moreover, soon after composing The Maz of Pskov, the lack of contrapuntal and harmonic technique displayed itself in the abrupt cessation of my creative fancy, at the basis of which lay the selfsame devices that I had ridden to death; only the development of a technique that I now bent all my efforts to acquire permitted new

THE ACADEMY [29]

living currents to flow into my creative work and untied my hands for further activity as a Composer. . . . Thus having been undeservedly accepted at the Conservatory as a professor, I soon became one of its best and possibly its very best pupil, judging by the quantity and value of the information it gave me! '*

Among those to whom Rimsky-Korsakov turned for guidance at this critical juncture was Chaikovsky. A little-known and very poignant letter from Rimsky to his Moscow colleague, written at the end of the summer of 1875, gives a glimpse into the travails of his belated conservatory education. I have written a great deal in the last three months, continuing my exercises in counterpoint, which you know about. ... Since the middle of May, and especially in July and August, I worked a great deal. Having gone through all the species of counterpoint during the winter, as well as imitation and a bit of canon on a cantus firmus, I have gone on to fugue and canon. This summer I wrote 61 fugues (long and short, strict and free, in 2, 3, 4, and 5 voices, with and without chorales), 5 canonic variations on one chorale, 3 variations on another, and several embellished chorales. It seems to me that that is not so little. [ want to know your opinion of all this, since you worked a lot while in the Conservatory and having graduated from there have always written much and quickly. Among the fugues I have written there are about 10, which I allowed myself to write freely, that is, in the Bach style, and which I want very much to show you, so that you might tell me your opinion of them and make concrete suggestions. ... You will see that my style of counterpoint has changed radically, and it may very well be, as in fact I wish, that it will be so with my next composition too. I expect to continue this fall with fugues and write a few double ones, triple ones, with answers by inversion, and so on, then I think Pll write some choruses a cappella in the same style, and then little by little progress to some kind of vocal composition with orchestra or perhaps a purely instrumental piece, and by then let things take their course.'*

Chaikovsky’s answer must have pleased and encouraged him: You must know that I simply bow down in reverence before your noble artistic modesty and astounding strength of character! All these innumerable counterpoints you have ground out, these 60 fugues and a wealth of other musical intricacies—all this is such a deed for a man who 8 years ago had already written Sadko, that I was seized with the wish to shout about it for all the world to hear. I am simply dumbfounded and don’t know how to express my boundless respect for your artistic personality. How petty, paltry, naively self-satisfied I seem to myself by comparison with you! I am but an artisan in composition; you will be an artist, yes, an artist in the fullest meaning of the word. "© 14. My Musical Lift, 16-19. 15. Letter of 5 September 1875; in P. I. Chaikovsky, Polnoye sobrantye sochinenty: literaturniye prowzvedeniya i perepiska, vol. 5 (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1959), 413. 16. Letter of 10 September 1875; in ibid., 412.

[30] 1 ¢ RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

From then on, Chaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were sincerely esteemed colleagues if not the closest of friends. Ten years later Chaikovsky offered to arrange Rimsky’s appointment as director of the Moscow Conservatory.'” He called the Capriccio espagnol a “colossal masterpiece of instrumentation” and assured Rimsky that “you may regard yourself as the greatest master of the present day.”’* To his diary, where there could be no question of flattery, Chaikovsky confided: “Read Korsakov’s Snow Maiden and marveled at his mastery and was even (ashamed to admit) envious.”!? Beginning in 1876, Chaikovsky became a regular visitor to the Rimsky-Korsakov home whenever he was in St. Petersburg.”” When in 1891 he came to the capital for an extended stay, there was for a time a greater closeness between him and Rimsky than between the latter and the surviving kuchkists. Between Chaikovsky and Rimsky’s prize pupils Lyadov and Glazunov there was genuine friendship. In a remarkably candid interview he gave to the magazine Peterburgskaya zhizn’ (St. Petersburg Life) in November 1892, Chaikovsky met the conventional (Stasovian) view of Russian musical politics head on. This forgotten document is so fresh and revealing, and the tact with which Chaikovsky expressed

himself so delightful, that the part of the interview relating to our present concerns demands to be cited practically in full: —In society and in the press there has been no end of talk about the so-called “mighty kuchka”; is there anything special about its aims? —At the end of the sixties and in the seventies, the word “kuchka” meant a group of musicians who were united by mutual friendship and by the similarity of their musical tastes and opinions. The musicians of this circle found solace and mutual support in their close-knit intercourse. ... The enmity that sprang up willy-nilly between [Balakirev] and the rest of the Russian musical world gave rise to the notion of a struggle between two parties, of which one was the “kuchka,” or—as, it seems, Mr. Cui used to call it—the “New Russian School,” and the other was......whatever was not the “kuchka.” The latter party was for some reason called the “Conservatory” party. This division into parties represents some kind of strange confusion of ideas, some kind of colossal muddle, which it is high time we consigned to the past once and for all. As an example of the complete absurdity of such a division into parties, let me point out the following, to me very lamentable, fact. According to the notion that is so widespread among the Russian musical public, I am assigned to the party that is supposedly the enemy of the one among living Russian composers whom I love and admire above all others—N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. He constitutes the finest adornment of the “New Russian School,” while I, it seems, am assigned to the old party, the retrograde faction. But why? N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov has submitted to a greater or lesser extent to the 17. Letter of 6 April 1885; in Modeste Chaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchatkovsky, ed.

and trans. Rosa Newmarch (London, 1906), 480. 18. Letter of 30 October 1886; in ibid., 521. 19. Entry of 26 March 1887; in The Diaries of Tchatkovsky, trans. and ed. Wladimir Lakond (New York: W. W. Norton, 1945), 163. 20. My Musical Life, 196.

THE ACADEMY [31]

influences of the present day—and so have I. He has written program symphonies— and so have I. This has not prevented him from also writing symphonies in the traditional form, from willingly writing fugues and, in general, working in the polyphonic style—nor has it prevented me. It has not prevented him from putting cavatinas, arias, ensembles in the old forms into his operas—still less has it prevented me. For many years I was a professor at a conservatory—supposedly hostile to the “New Russian School”—and so is N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov! In a word, despite all the differences between our musical personalities, it seems we travel the same path. I for my part am proud to have such a companion. Yet meanwhile, even very recently, in a serious book by Mr. [Pyotr Petrovich] Gnedich [1855—1925, art scholar] devoted to the history of Russian art, I am assigned to the party hostile to Mr. Korsakov. Here we have a strange misunderstanding, which has brought and continues to bring sad consequences. It beclouds the public’s understanding of what is going on in Russian music, it gives rise to pointless hostility, it exacerbates extreme positions on all sides and, when all is said and done, compromises us musicians in the eyes of future generations. The future historian of Russian music will laugh at us, as we now laugh at the quarrels that disturbed the peace of Sumarokov and Tredyakovsky [eighteenth-century neoclassical poets]. —TI confess I did not expect to hear this from you. —Well there you are! But why? For example, Lyadov and Glazunov are also listed among my musical opponents and yet I love and value their gifts very much.”!

By the 1890s, then, the description of Russian musical life drawn by Stasov in 1882 was nothing more than gossip. As Rimsky-Korsakov drew closer to Chaikovsky, he drew away from his erstwhile comrades, and they from him. Stasov eventually made his peace with the new Rimsky-Korsakov, but for a while he took to referring to the composer of the sixty fugues as a “renegade.”? And so he was, if viewed strictly from the perspective of “Twenty-five Years.” The older he became, the greater was the irony with which Rimsky-Korsakov looked back on his kuchkist days. What he had envied in Chaikovsky—the ability to write “much and quickly”—became for him the chief mark of craft and mastery, ultimately of talent. He prided himself on his fluency and emphasized the importance of this quality to his pupils, rating it above “mere” gifts. One of his most characteristic utterances is found in a letter to his close friend and confidant, the critic Semyon Kruglikov (1851-1910). It was written at the end of another superproductive summer like the summer of the fugues, only this time (1897) the fruits of his labor were real compositions, not exercises. And the now-deceased Chaikovsky was still a model to him! 21. “Zabitoye intervyu s P. I. Chaikovskim,” Sovetskaya muzika, 1949, no. 7, 61. 22. E.g., to his brother Dmutri from Paris, 17/29 August 1875; in V. V. Stasov, Pis’ma k rodnim, vol. I, pt. 2—vol. 3, pt. 2 (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1954-62), 1/2:268. In a letter to Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Stasov was even harsher, following a reference to Rimsky-Korsakov’s activities with “De mortuis . . .”; see A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N.A. Rimskty-Korsakov: ziizn’ i tvorchestvo, vols. 3-5 (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1936-46), 3:15.

[32] 1 «© RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

Having the bad habit of composing (Pyotr Ilyich’s expression), I lack the time to write to a sweet person like you. Forgive me! Still, I have to keep it short. The news that I have written 39 romances and the opera Mozart and Salieri is completely false—for I have written 40 romances, two duets, Mozart and Salieri, a cantata (Smtezyanka) for soprano, tenor, and chorus with orchestra, and besides that a trio for piano, violin, and cello, but only in sketch form, which I now plan to work up (mainly the piano part); all the rest, that 1s, Mozart and Salieri and Svitezyanka, is fully scored. After coming back to St. Petersburg in September I wrote a bit more—PII tell you about it later. You are no doubt amazed? Well, there’s nothing to be amazed at; that’s the way it ought to be. Thirty years have passed by now since the days when Stasov would write that in eighteen-sixty-soand-so the Russian School displayed a lively activity: Lodizhensky wrote one romance, Borodin got an idea for something, Balakirev is planning to rework something, and so on. It is time to forget all that and travel a normal artistic path.?°

In an earlier, more earnest letter to Kruglikov, written at the beginning of their acquaintance, when the young future critic asked Rimsky’s advice on whether he should devote himself to composition, Rimsky gave what might well stand as his artistic credo on the matter of talent versus technique: You have written me that [Pavel Ivanovich] Blaramberg [1841-1907, a Balakirev pupil and minor composer of operas] has advised you to concentrate on music, seeing ability in you. I haven’t seen your latest romance, but I remember the earlier one. Your musical ability, of course, cannot be doubted. About a talent for composition, however, I can say nothing as yet. You have tried your powers too

little. ... Yes, one can study on one’s own. Sometimes one needs advice, but one must study, that is, one must not disdain good technique and correct voice leading. All of us, that is, I myself and Borodin, and Balakirev, and especially Cui and Musorgsky, did disdain these things. I consider myself lucky that I bethought myself in time and forced myself to work. As for Balakirev, owing to his insufficient technique he writes little; Borodin, with difficulty; Cui, carelessly; and Musorgsky, sloppily and often incoherently. Blaramberg suffers from all these deficiencies to

Russian school... . : a greater or lesser extent, and this constitutes the extremely lamentable specialty of the

Do not think, however, from my rather brusque epithets, that I have changed in the slightest my attitude toward their works. If these people had good and competent techniques, what a thing that would be! Believe me that although I consider, speaking with complete sincerity, that their talent is much greater than my own, I nevertheless do not envy them a jot—although even of myself I will say that I re-

| gret having come to my senses so late and started my studies so late. But anyhow I have managed to learn a thing or two, and I know what Blaramberg means by studying on one’s own. It means writing and writing—symphonies, operas, and so 23. A.N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N.A. Remskty-Korsakov 4:10; italics original. Nikolai Nikolayevich Lodizhensky (1842-1916) was a prominent Russian diplomat (among other postings, he served for a time as Russian consul in New York) who dabbled in composition as a youth and was briefly associated with Balakirev’s circle. His sole publication (1873) was a book of six romances.

THE ACADEMY [33]

on, and learning as one goes. And it will all be incoherent and sloppy, awkward to perform; one’s every bright thought will be lost under all the weeds that will sprout up everywhere, on every line of the score. Now just look what passions you’ve unleashed in me!?*

That Rimsky could express himself this way to a relative stranger, while every one of his kuchkist confréres was still alive, is in itself sufficient testimony to his estrangement from them, and also an indication of the kind of teacher he had become. When first Lyadov and then Glazunov appeared on the horizon, ready to carry the torch of the “New Russian School,” Rimsky was ready for them. They never knew an atmosphere such as that which reigned in the Balakirev circle so enthusiastically pictured by Stasov. They may have been second-generation kuchkists in Stasov’s eyes, but their training hardly differed from Chaikovsky’s. An ideal of the strictest professionalism was instilled in them from the beginning. Lyadov, the older of the two, was one of Professor Rimsky-Korsakov’s earliest pupils in “practical composition” and instrumentation. The story of his Conservatory career is revealing. His proverbial laziness having manifested itself early, in 1876 he was suspended from the Conservatory for class-cutting. It was the newly professionalized Rimsky-Korsakov who most stiffly resisted the young man’s pleas for reinstatement.”° But he was eventually allowed to return and earn his diploma. From Rimsky’s account of the episode in his Chronicle we know that the diploma examination in composition consisted of writing a cantata to a prescribed text, which that year was the closing scene of Schiller’s Bride of Messina. Thus the Conservatory was imposing on its graduates the same kind of compulsory “neoclassical” (or in this case, “neomedieval”) theme as had sparked the Peredvizhnik re-

volt against the Academy of Arts a decade and a half before. Not only was a kuchkist now administering the examination, but when Lyadov’s prizewinning cantata was performed at the Conservatory’s graduation exercises, Stasov “made a great to-do about it,””° and even praised it in “Twenty-five Years.””” Lyadov spent the summer following his graduation in friendly contrapuntal rivalry with his former professor. He and Rimsky-Korsakov, by the latter’s recollection, amused and exercised themselves by each writing a daily fugue on the same D-minor subject.78 Back in St. Petersburg, they began amusing themselves with a project that now stands as a curious monument to the cult of technique that seized these representatives of the “New Russian School” in its conservatory phase. This

was the set of “paraphrases” on a “theme favori et obligé” known in Russia as , “Tati-tati,” and in America as. . . “Chopsticks.” 24. Ibid., 3:21; italics original. 25. My Musical Life, 161.

26. Ibid., 203. 27. Stasov, Izbranniye sochinentya 2:566. 28. My Musical Life, 206.

[34] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

The original idea had been Borodin’s, who had concocted a polka for piano four-hands in which the primo part, meant for a child to play, consisted of nothing but reiterations of the “Chopsticks” motif, performed by a single finger of each hand in alternation. The trick consisted in inventing all kinds of harmonic and contrapuntal complications in the accompanying part, which required an experienced pianist. (Borodin’s polka, for example, went through a series of modulations that touched on the keys of C, G, F, and A minor while the “Chopsticks” part, ostensibly in C, continued undisturbed.) Rimsky-Korsakov must have recognized the kinship between this idea and that of Glinka’s venerable Kamarinskaya, in which a trivial folk-dance phrase is endlessly repeated over a kaleidoscopically shifting accompaniment.’ Seizing upon Borodin’s novel “cantus firmus” as an opportunity to flaunt his newly won learning lightly, he proposed to Lyadov, his chief contrapuntal crony, and to his brother kuchkists at large that they all collaborate on an album of pieces like Borodin’s. Borodin naturally agreed, as did Cui, whose manner of writing favored short-winded piquanteries. Even Musorgsky tried his hand, but could not keep to the stipulated conditions, insisting rather on his right to change the cantus firmus to suit his inspiration.*° Balakirev indignantly opposed the idea; for him it signified not only an extravagant exaltation of technique but also a debasement of creative aims.*? In the end the album, published in 1879 by the firm of Rahter, consisted of a set of twenty-four variations plus finale (by Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Lyadov) in the style of Kamarinskaya, followed by fourteen individual pieces by Borodin (his original polka, a marche funébre, and a requiem), Rimsky (a tarantella, menuetto, berceuse, fugue grotesque, “Fughetta B-A-C-H,” and a carillon suggested by Stasov, with the contrapuntal lines layered in successive diminutions like the bells in Borts Godunov), Cui (a valse), and Lyadov (a 3-against-2 “Valse 4 la Chopin,” a galop, a gigue, and the concluding cortége).*” Some of this erudite salon music was indeed diabolically clever, and the Paraphrases remain noteworthy for their anticipations of the kind of eighteenth-century “stylization” later favored by Chaikovsky and Glazunov. But Chaikovsky was among those not amused. He wrote disparagingly and at some length about the Paraphrases to Mme von Meck, concluding that “only

29. Kamarinskaya had in fact grown out of Glinka’s habit of improvising accompaniments to it at the piano with a partner playing the tune, “Chopsticks”-fashion. See Stasov’s memoir, quoted in David Brown, Mikhail Glinka: A Biograplical and Critical Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 273. 30. My Musical Life, 204. 31. Ibid.; also Yastrebtsev, Vospominaniya 1:157. 32. In 1893 the set was reissued by Belaieff with a few additions: a posthumous mazurka by Borodin;

a supplementary set entitled “Bigarrures” by Nikolai Shcherbachov (uncle of the well-known Soviet composer), another dabbler briefly associated with the Balakirev circle; and a variation (1880) by Liszt (printed in holograph facsimile), who as late as 1884 described the album to the visiting Glazunov as a “Compendium aller theoretischer und harmonischer Kentnisse” (quoted by Stasov in a letter to Balakirev, 10 July 1884; in A. S. Lyapunova, ed., M.A. Balakirev 1 V. V. Stasov: perepiska, vol. 2 [Moscow:

Muzika, 1971], 66). .

THE ACADEMY [35]

dilettantes could think that every piquant little chord they dream up deserves publication.”34

These words, when published in Modest Chaikovsky’s 1903 biography of his brother, stung Rimsky-Korsakov painfully, for there was truth in them.** The tendency to regard compositional craft as a set of guild secrets, as well as the tendency toward collective endeavors of a fairly trivial sort, came increasingly to characterize the post-kuchkist conservatory set. The impression that these traits create is far from one of technical security—more nearly the opposite. For Lyadov especially,

the lighthearted but no less ostentatious display of contrapuntal virtuosity remained a favorite pastime. He published three sets of canons (of which one became a sort of Conservatory textbook) and loved to show off his ability to concoct canons and fugues in company. Lyadov began work as a theory instructor at the Conservatory during the year of the Paraphrases. He spent practically the rest of his life at this tedious job, mov-

ing up to a class in advanced counterpoint only in 1901, and at last taking over Rimsky-Korsakov’s class in practical composition on the latter's retirement in 1906.

The Conservatory was the center of his existence, and he alone among his postkuchkist confréres formed a close relationship with Anton Rubinstein. A perfect paradigm of the ambiguous situation of the “second generation” of kuchkists is Lyadov’s Ballade for Piano, op. 21, subtitled “Of Olden Days” (“Pro starinu,” 1889).

This essay in a Balakirevesque “neo-Russian” style was composed for and dedicated to Rubinstein on his sixtieth birthday.*° Lyadov’s opus 54 is a “Hymn” to the unveiling of a commemorative statue of Rubinstein in 1902, and his opus 55 is an orchestral polonaise written for the same occasion. Yet another indication of how far the second generation had strayed from the ideological position of the first is Lyadov’s opus 41, two fugues for piano (1897), dedicated to Herman Laroche (1845—1904.), Hanslick’s Russian apostle (and translator) and the béte noire of the original kuchka—so much so that Rimsky-Korsakov could never make peace with him. As for Glazunov, his astounding precocity obviated the need for conservatory study. By the time he was finished with the ginnaztya he already possessed the equivalent of a complete conservatory education, administered in private by RimskyKorsakov (after an abortive beginning with Balakirev). Glazunov took his first lesson with Rimsky on 23 December 1879. On 17 March 1882 the boy’s First Sym-

phony in E (“Slavonic”) was performed under Balakirev at a Free Music School

33. Letter of 18 November 1879; in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Polnoye sobraniye sochinenty: literaturniye proiwzvedentya 1 perepiska 7:17.

34. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:214.

35. N. V. Zaporozhets, A. K. Lyadov: zinzn’ 1 tvorchestvo (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1954), 52. Glazunov’s

Fourth Symphony 1s also dedicated to Rubinstein.

[36] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

concert. For the next seventeen years Glazunov, who as scion of a wealthy publishing family never had to work for a living, pursued a career as an independent, professional composer. His eminence assured him a place on the Conservatory faculty, which he finally accepted in 1899. After the political disruptions of 1905 he was elected director, a post he held until he left Russia in 1928 (and even after—he was officially listed as director until 1930).

Despite his echt-kuchkist upbringing and the early circumstances of his career, : centering as they did around Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, and the Free Music School, Glazunov amply confirmed in word and deed the mutual regard to which Chaikovsky alluded in the 1892 interview quoted earlier. In 1922, at the request of Boris Asafyev, Glazunov set down on paper an exceptionally interesting memoir of his first meeting with Chaikovsky—a document that conveys much of the flavor of the post-kuchkist eighties, when old alliances were crumbling and new ones were being formed. The meeting took place on 28 October 1884, when Glazunov was an impressionable nineteen years of age. The host was Balakirev, who still fancied himself the head of the New Russian School. He and Chaikovsky were then

in their second brief period of cordiality, centering on the latter's Manfred Symphony, which, like the earlier Romeo and Jultet overture, had been suggested by Balakirev. I must remind the reader [wrote Glazunov in 1922] that the [New Russian School] by the mid-eighties was no longer so ideologically closed and isolated as it had been earlier. Nevertheless we did not consider P. I. Chaikovsky one of our own. We valued only a few of his works, like Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Francesca [da Rimini], and the finale of his Second Symphony. The rest of his output was

either unknown or alien to us.... Among us, especially the younger members of the Balakirev circle, the awaited mecting with the “alien” Chaikovsky aroused a kind of enigmatic interest. We gathered at Balakirev’s at the appointed hour and began to wait for Chaikovsky to arrive with great excitement, and since he was not of our camp, the question of how we should behave toward him arose—probably, we concluded, we should be very reserved. Chaikovsky’s appearance immediately put an end to the somewhat tense mood that reigned among us, particularly the younger ones. Chaikovsky, with his mixture of simplicity and dignity and his refined, altogether European self-possession, made on most of us a very cordial impression. Somehow we breathed easily. Chaikovsky’s conversation was a fresh breeze amid our somewhat dusty atmosphere, and he effortlessly began speaking of things about which we had kept silent partly out of deference, coupled with some fear of Balakirev’s authority and that of the other members of his circle. ... The evening passed in a very lively manner. We spoke of music, and, I seem to recall, some pieces by [Balakirev’s pupil] Lyapunov and by me were played. Chaikovsky left earlier than the rest, and with his departure we felt ourselves once again in our former, somewhat humdrum surroundings. Many of the young musicians present, including Lyadov and myself, left Balakirev’s apartment charmed by Chaikovsky’s personality. We

THE ACADEMY [37]

went to a tavern to sit and share our new impressions. As Lyadov put it, our acquaintance with the great composer was a real occasion. Later I became more intimately acquainted with Chaikovsky, and in the end there arose between us a close friendship that lasted until his death.*°

Remarkable in this memoir is the sense of liberation, of widening horizons, that meeting Chaikovsky seemed to impart to the young neo-kuchkists. Theirs was the tense, walled-in atmosphere, his the free, creative one. A sense of what Chaikovsky meant to Glazunov may be gained by briefly comparing the latter’s Second Symphony, on which he was at work at the time of Chaikovsky’s visit (and of which he played some parts that evening), and the Third, which he completed after a long gestation in 1890—and which he then dedicated to Chaikovsky. The earlier symphony is a veritable summa of latterday kuchkism. It boasts a motto theme in the style of a folk tune or a neumatic (zmamenniy) church chant, “modal” harmonizations after the fashion of Balakirev’s folk song anthology, typically Balakirevesque orchestrational devices (e.g., plaintive woodwind solos over rushing pizzicato strings)—all of which had become by the eighties “style russe”

platitudes.?” The introduction to the Prologue from Boris Godunov (and the famous bell-ringing chord progression from that opera), a Borodin miscellany (the Polovetsian Dances, Second Symphony, and so on), Rimsky’s Snow Maiden, all pass in review. Above all, echoes of Balakirev’s second Overture on Russian

Themes (also known as Rus’) reverberate from beginning to end. The second movement is an essay in kuchkist orientalism (replete with chromatic passes in both directions between the fifth and sixth scale degrees, 4 la Ruslan). In the middle section of the movement the motto theme is given the “Mosque” treatment (florid English horn solo over muttering tremolando strings). Throughout, the method of construction is episodic. Themes go through a sort of mechanized transformation mill: new harmonizations, timbres, dance rhythms, tempi, all applied in standardized sequences. The Third Symphony, by contrast, is often referred to in the secondary literature as Glazunov’s “anti-kuchkist” symphony. Everything about it bespeaks a stylistic crisis of which the composer was only too conscious: “It’s terribly difficult to achieve stylistic unity,” he wrote to Kruglikov in 1888, adding that his “whole outlook has changed.”** Glazunov couldn’t shake his Borodinian habits completely— this is especially apparent in the Scherzo—but he was certainly trying. Echoes of 36. A. K. Glazunov, “Moyo znakomstvo s Chaikovskim,” in Vospominantya o PI. Chatkovskom, ed. Ye. Ye. Bortnikova (Moscow: Muzgiz, 1962), 46-48. 37. The motto theme has been compared with the chant-derived Ivan the Terrible leitmotif in Rimsky’s Maid of Pskov, but it also resembles the khorovod tune “Kak vo gorode tsarevna” (no. 31 in Balakirev’s anthology of 1866). 38. Yu. Keldish, “Simfonicheskoye tvorchestvo,” in Glazunov: issledovaniya, materiali, publikatsiy,

pis’ma, ed. M.O. Yankovsky et al. (Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1959-60), 2:162. :

[38] 31 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

Chaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and, in particular, the brand-new Fifth—both in the themes and in the key relations—are as obvious here as the kuchkist overtones had been before. Also Wagner: the slow movement 1s full of Tristanesque chromaticism, and one of the codas in the Finale is pure Gétterdammerung (while another is a late-Beethoven fugato in 6/4 meter). The stylistic changes go beneath the surface to the nature of the thematic material, which is now inclined to be of a pliant, modulatory character and given to dynamic, perorational construction. Glazunov’s orchestration, formerly a thing of bright primary hues like Glinka’s, is now full of dark doublings and dtvsst’s.

Chaikovskian influence was also responsible for setting Glazunov on the course—unprecedented for a kuchkist—of writing ballets for Marius Petipa. In ‘this sphere he was as if Chatkovsky’s ordained successor. By the nineties, Chaikovsky was on tutoyer terms with Lyadov and Glazunov, to the amazement and discomfiture of the circle around Rimsky-Korsakov.*? So close did they become that Rimsky, whose retarded development left him in spite of ev-

erything secretly defensive and insecure vis-a-vis the Moscow master, became alarmed and uncontrollably jealous. In the Chronicle, he limited himself to the dry observation that in the winter and spring of 1891, during Chaikovsky’s extended stay in St. Petersburg, There began to be noticeable a considerable cooling off and even a somewhat inimical attitude toward the memory of the “mighty kuchka” of Balakirev’s period. On the contrary a worship of Chaikovsky and a tendency toward eclecticism grew ever stronger. Nor could one help noticing the predilection (that sprang up then in our circle) for Franco-Italian music of the time of the wig and farthingale, music introduced by Chaikovsky in his Pique Dame and Iolanta.*°

To Kruglikov, though, he admitted his real fears: : Chaikovsky has told me that he intends (maybe it’s a secret) to leave Moscow and transfer his center of gravity to St. Petersburg, starting next season. This fact is very portentous. The minute he chooses St. Petersburg for his settled existence, a circle will immediately form around him, which Lyadov and Glazunov will certainly join, and after them many others. And Laroche will be there, too, clever as ever. Chaikovsky, with his inborn worldly tact, seduces everyone and surrounds himself with talented people. For Chaikovsky it’s very pleasant. The new circle will border on a Rubinstein cult. Don’t forget that Lyadov is already strongly under Rubinstein’s influence. Do you know Chaikovsky’s tastes? Laroche’s? Rubinstein’s tastes and convictions? And all the spaces that remain will be filled with all kinds 39. Yastrebtsev, Vaspominaniya 1:108. With Rimsky-Korsakov, by contrast, it seemed that everyone used the formal mode of address (as was the case among the kuchkists generally); see ibid., 2:77. 40. My Musical Life, 309.

THE ACADEMY [39]

of worthless hangers-on and faceless adorers. And so there you are, our youth will drown (and not only our youth—look at Lyadov) in a sea of eclecticism that will rob them of their individuality.*

Another letter, even more anguished, focused on the baleful presence of Laroche in the midst of Lyadov’s and Glazunov’s new circle of friends: “It’s disgusting to see how he’s ingratiated himself with everyone. Only in my presence do they refrain from falling all over him. . .. Lyadov abuses the New Russian School. Right now that’s fashionable around here. Glazunov does the same; the others too. They’re all spitting in the well from which they used to drink. There’s Laroche’s influence for you.”*? Things did not turn out quite as Rimsky feared. Chaikovsky did not move to St. Petersburg (though he did happen, unexpectedly, to die there a couple of years later). But the sea of eclecticism was real enough, and Rimsky himself could occasionally be found wading in it: compare the seventh scene of his opera Christmas Eve (1895), replete with “wig and farthingale” music, with the second act of Pique dame, its obvious model. After Chaikovsky’s death, which removed from the scene the one rival who inspired feelings of inferiority in him, Rimsky-Korsakov was released, at least temporarily, from all his emotional ties to the mighty kuchka, and no one could match him when it came to “cooling off.” This mood came particularly to the fore during his period of work on his first, heavily cut, revision of Musorgsky’s Borts Godunov, which filled him at times with a revulsion he made no attempt to hide. “It’s incredible that I could ever have liked this music,” he confided one day in 1895 to Yastrebtsev, “and yet it seems there was such a time.”** During an informal run-through of Musorgsky’s original Kromi Forest scene, Rimsky called things abruptly to a halt: “This is simply nonsense! It’s just a hodgepodge!”** On the day he finished the task of revision, he reflected that his conscience was now clear: “All of Musorgsky has been revised by me, and that means. . . ’ve done what could be done and what had to be done for the sake

of his works and for the sake of his memory.”*° _ Indeed, the whole era of which Musorgsky had been a part, and of which Stasov had written—and would continue to write—in such glowing terms, was by then only a memory. By the 1880s, the noble tradition of Russian musical autodidactism had come to an end, swallowed up by the conservatories. After Borodin’s death in 1887, maverick activity a la kuchka had been effectively stamped out, except in the 41. Letter of 9 May 1890; in A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N.A. Rimskty-Korsakov 3:104. Chaikovsky’s

soon-abandoned plan to resettle in the capital was a reaction to the sudden loss of his stipend from Mme von Meck. 42. Quoted in A. A. Gozenpud, “A. K. Glazunov 1 P. I. Chaikovskiy,” in Yankovsky et al. (eds.), Glazunov 1:366. 43. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 1:330.

44. Ibid., 55. 45. Ibid., 351.

[40] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

atavistic persons of Balakirev and Cui, by then entirely peripheral figures on the Russian musical scene. That a composer as much as a violinist was to be trained in a conservatory was a fact of Russian musical life that was simply taken for granted. All Russian composers born after 1850, whether an epigone like Lyapunov or a modernist like Scriabin, went through the same mill and thus shared a common, highly finished technical base. There was no more “Moscow,” no “St. Petersburg”; all Russia, at last, was one. Moreover, by century’s end, the theory and composition faculties of Rubinstein’s Conservatory were entirely in the hands of representatives of the New Russian School. Viewed against the background of Stasov’s predictions, there could scarcely be any greater irony. But there was another factor at work in the transformation of Russian music and musical life in the late nineteenth century, even more powerful and far-reaching than the Conservatory. This factor Stasov never foresaw and, confronted with it,

never understood. :

THE GUILD A number of political and social factors conspired in Russia, from the 1840s on, to stimulate intense economic and cultural growth in a stratum of society that had traditionally been among the most static and backward. This was the kupechestvo, the merchant class, a group centered largely in Moscow and despised by aristocracy and intelligentsia alike. “Bearded, patriarchal, semi-Asiatic in dress and manner, and fully versed in the arts of haggling and swindling, the Russian merchants in

the early nineteenth century not only lacked the distinctive urban ethos of the West but also clung to their obscurantist cultural traditions,” writes Thomas Owen, their foremost Western historian.“ Illiterate denizens of the “dark kingdom” immortalized in the dramas of Ostrovsky, they were described by one of their own as “nothing but trading muzhiks,” that is, peasants at heart.*” But with the belated—indeed, delayed—coming of the industrial revolution to Russia, cap-

italism on the Western model was finally born in the decades preceding the Crimean War.*® The hugely increased complexity of their operations forced the upper echelons of merchant society to begin educating their heirs. Whereas in the past it had been axiomatic that “the son should know no more than the father,”*? the rising generation of capitalist (so-called German-style) merchants acted like typical nouveaux riches: their tastes ran to balls, banquets, fine clothes, theater-

going, and art. Although at first they intended to educate their children only 46. Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Soctal History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855-

190s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1. 47. Vladimir P. Ryabushinsky, “Kupechestvo moskovskoye,” quoted in ibid., 9. 48. For a description of some of the impediments to industrialization imposed by the government of Nikolai I, see Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 20-22.

bid von Haxthausen, Studien dber die inneren Zustande ... Russlands (1847-2), quoted in

THE GUILD [41]

enough to equip them for the technicalities of factory management, the necessity for foreign business travel led to the acquisition of European manners by significant numbers of merchants and merchant sons, and eventually, in ‘some, to a passion for European culture. As Owen points out, “while this new behavior appeared to be a direct imitation of Western bourgeois culture, in fact it represented just a further extension of the old merchant habit of aping the Russian gentry,” who were long-standing consumers of Western art. (Musicians, of course, will recall Count Razumovsky and Prince Golitsin, Beethoven’s patrons.) However much merchants of the new breed may have affected Western bourgeois manners and dress, they did so “without . . . abandoning their old patriotic and religious attitudes toward politics.”°° Nor did the gentry (or the government) abandon their traditional haughtiness toward the newly dressed and educated merchants, no matter how wealthy the latter became. To the gentry a merchant would never be more than a kupchishka, a “little tradesman.” In Russia, as one writer has observed, “there was no great honor attached to working hard and becoming rich”—and no political influence or social prestige accrued therefrom, either. Hence, “if a Russian millionaire wished to gain fame and prestige, he would be most likely to turn either to charitable works, to publishing, or to art patronage as acceptable outlets for money,” and as a way of asserting social parity with the aristocracy.°! And that is how a class that before the Crimean War would have seemed the least likely quarter in Russia from which to expect art patronage, managed by the closing decades of the nineteenth century to rival not only the gentry but even the tsar himself in supporting artists and art institutions. Because of their Slavophilish political and cultural orientation, merchant patrons were more inclined than the aristocracy to lend their support to native talent. This was enough to win them Stasov’s wild approval, whatever he may otherwise have thought of merchants and their ways. He contrasted their activity sarcastically with that of the aristocrats, who, “slaves that they were of European fashions and lordly ways, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century had considered it their duty to bring back with them from Europe thousands of books they never read, and thousands of paintings they never looked at. It was all fashion—all pretense. ‘Noblesse oblige’ buzzed around their ears, and they bought. . . .”°? Stasov derided even Catherine IP?’s Hermitage and the magnificent art collection of the Golitsin family for neglect of native artists. But now the merchants had come to the rescue. Stasov’s summary of the development of merchant patronage is typically skewed, so. Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 23, 22. Most of the foregoing paragraph is a summary of pp. 22-25

of Owen’s work. st. Stuart Grover, “Savva Mamontov and the Mamontov Circle, 1870-1905: Art Patronage and the Rise of Nationalism in Russian Art” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971), 363-64. sz. V. V. Stasov, “Pavel Mikhailovich Tret’yakov 1 yego kartinnaya gallereya,” Russkaya starina 80, no. 2 (1893): 584.

[42] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

but it perfectly mirrors the preoccupations of his gloriously one-track mind, which welcomed support of national art from any quarter, no questions asked. Not even Stasov, though, could conceal his residual disdain for the merchants as a class: What would you expect to encounter most often among the Russian kupechestvo? A man who has gotten enormously rich, amassed his hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, and then, for the rest of his days, leads a life of idleness, selfsatisfaction, and insignificance ... a man who is no longer interested in anything at all, but who will sometimes, when nearing the end of his days, build a church, an almshouse, or a hospital, as if to atone for old sins. Such pathetic magnates have always been numerous in Moscow. But right there, in the very midst of the kzpechestvo, there appeared, and in the course of the first half of the present century there matured, an altogether different breed, merchant families with different needs and different aspirations, people who, regardless of their wealth, have little inclination for banquets or for high living, or for any of the usual absurd dissipations, but who instead have a great need of the intellectual life, a bent for all that relates to science and art. And these people seek their constant companions and friends among the cultured, the truly educated, and the talented. They spend their time among artists and writers, they are interested in works of literature, science, and art. Some of them will accumulate rich collections of books and manuscripts; others, rich collections of paintings and works of art of all kinds; some will become writers themselves, others men of science, still others artists or musicians; another group will operate a printing press and produce whole libraries of excellent books; and some will found public galleries, where all who wish may gain access. And everywhere, in everything, what comes first with them is the common weal, concern for the benefit of all the people.°*

All this was leading up to a tribute to the textile manufacturer Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832-98), foremost art patron in Russia and practically lone supporter of the Peredvizhniki, who in 1893 bequeathed his collection of over twelve hundred Russian paintings to the city of Moscow, having built for the purpose a gallery that still stands and now bears the peculiar name State Tretyakov Gallery. As a movement that was both nationalist and realist, the Peredvizhniki were a natural object of merchant support. Many of the Peredvizhnik painters, like Ivan Kramskoy (1837-87), the leader of the original secession, were themselves semieducated provincials with backgrounds not unlike that of their new patrons, who, like Tretyakov himself, tended to be home-schooled and parochial in their tastes. What the merchants responded to in Russian realist art was not the urgency of its social message so much as its autochthonous Russianness, its sympathetic and skillful portrayal of peculiar aspects of landscape, of daily life, and of character types with which they were familiar and which they loved. The more liberal-minded Peredvizhniki like Ilya Repin (1844—1930) occasionally chafed at pressure from the 53. Ibid., s91—92.

THE GUILD [43]

“quagmire of merchant freaks” to place the emphasis on genre rather than social theme. But they could see which side their bread was buttered on, and in their efforts to please Tretyakov and secure the financial rewards he offered they gradually relinquished their political idealism in favor of a preoccupation with national character that increasingly resembled their patron’s conservative and sentimental chauvinism. This influence, bolstered as it was by cash, was stronger than any exerted by the liberal intelligentsia, who could offer a painter nothing more than moral approbation or, at most, public praise. The general upsurge of nationalism and PanSlavism among the Russian intelligentsia at the time of the Balkan Wars of the 1870s also lessened the connection of peredvizhnichestvo with liberalism and social criticism, and strengthened the movement’s tendency toward Russophilia. All of this had the effect of pulling the Peredvizhniki from their maverick position so beloved of Stasov back into the mainstream of Russian art and society.>* By the 1880s, the Peredvizhniki were firmly ensconced in that mainstream. They were the established leaders in Russian art, a position that Stasov celebrated in “Twenty-five Years””> and tried to relate to the position of the mighty kuchka in music (though the kuchka had no such dominance in reality, only in Stasov’s imagination). The ultimate boost to Peredvizhnik fortunes came with accession in 1881 of the reactionary Tsar Alexander ITI, the so-called bourgeois tsar, who reverted to his grandfather Nikolat’s view that promoting art could be an important instrument of state policy, but whose tastes in art, like the jingoistic policies they reflected, differed little from the tastes and attitudes of the merchants. Alexander’s energetic art patronage, then, rather than representing a crushing resurgence of aristocratic values against those of the Peredvizhniki, raised the Peredvizhniki instead to new heights of prestige and personal success. They, and the artistic movement they represented, were decisively “co-opted,” as we now say, by a reactionary and xenophobically nationalist cultural ideology. Alexander founded a museum for Russian art in St. Petersburg (now the State Russian Museum) that was a twin to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Stasov greeted this event with delirious joy. As a leading Western historian of the Peredvizhniki has observed, with his usual obliviousness to any other point of view, [Stasov] claimed that the move was tantamount to recognizing the oexvre of the Peredvizhniki as the national school. As a matter of course, he assumed that they would take an active part in the museum’s organization and their work would form the core of the col54. Much of the foregoing paragraph summarizes Elizabeth K. Valkenier, Russian Realist Art (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977), 67-73. 55. There was an important anniversary in this connection, too: it was in 1857 that Tretyakov had

decided to collect nothing but Russian paintings.

[44] 1 + RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

lection. Quite prophetically, without realizing the irony of his phrase, Stasov, the defender of free unofficial art, proclaimed that what the Peredvizhniki had battled for was now fully recognized, that “their ship had reached a safe harbor.”°°

The safety proved fatal. “The Peredvizhniki were ensconced on the walls of an Imperial museum not as representatives of free art and critical realism but as beneficiaries of the Tsar’s bountiful, prestigious and jingoistic patronage.”°” With these benefits came a stultifying embourgeotsement. “La vie de bohéme” was not for them; no longer alienated and rebellious youths, the Peredvizhniki now aspired to social prestige and material comforts. Accompanying the latter were financial responsibilities. With expensive households and dachas to maintain, the Peredvizhniki willingly accepted commissions for routine society portraits and blandly fashionable genre scenes. They became jealous guardians of their own self-created traditions and only grudgingly admitted new exhibitors to their shows or younger members to their official association. Increasingly they became the conservative party in the artistic politics of the “Silver Age,” hostile to stylistic experimentation and watchful extirpators of art-for-art’s-sake.** Above all, they began to wield power, which, true to form, corrupted them and their movement irrevocably. Influential Peredvizhniki became members of selection committees and occupied the post of art critic for many newspapers and magazines. They now fought “decadence” with the same vehemence they had once shown against academicism.°? After 1894. the latter target disappeared altogether, when four Peredvizhniki became professors at the Imperial Academy of Art, the

| very institution from which they had seceded three decades before. For all practical purposes, the Peredvizhniki were now the academy, and so it would remain until the Revolution and beyond. This précis of the decline and fall of the Peredvizhniki provides a model by which to measure the entirely comparable history of the New Russian School of musicians from the time of Stasov’s “Twenty-five Years” until the death of RimskyKorsakov roughly a quarter of a century later. For it was precisely in the year 1882 that merchant patronage finally came to music in a massive, transforming dose. Why had it taken so long? The answer to this question would seem to lie partly in the belated organization of professional musical life in Russia, and in the profession’s almost complete identification, until the ferment of the sixties, with imported foreigners and with the gentry. Glinka and Dargomizhsky had belonged to the landowning class themselves;

56. Valkenier, Russian Realist Art, 125, the quotation is from Stasov’s “Nashi peredvizhniki ninche” (1889). Ibid., 127.

58. See ibid., 120-30. 59. Grover, “Savva Mamontov,” 153.

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they needed no patrons at all. Hence they made no move to organize Russian musical life. That job had to await the coming of a musician who needed an organized musical life as the instrument of his own social advancement, and that musician was Anton Rubinstein, the great virtuoso, who labored under a double stigma: he was a merchant’s son, and he was a baptized Jew. Rubinstein’s heroic labors on behalf of the musical profession in Russia were motivated in the first instance by his social ambition. He wished to gain for himself and for his fellows an officially recognized social status comparable to that enjoyed by graduates of the Academy of Arts since the time of Catherine II, that is, the bureaucratic rank of “free artist” (svobodniy khudozhntk). This status exempted its bearer from the poll tax and conscription and entitled him to hold positions and receive remunerations on a par with middle-grade civil servants (along with such other entitlements as that of living in big cities—a crucial matter for Jews—and that of being addressed in the respectful second person plural by social superiors). The Conservatory, then, was envisioned in the first instance as an agency for the achievement of social rank. The only source for the creation of such an instrument being the Imperial Court, Rubinstein was forced to seek noble patronage at the highest level. His eventual sponsor in the formation of the Russian Musical Society and the Conservatory was the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, the aunt of Tsar Alexander II. (The fact that she was German-born did its bit to stir up frenzied but irrelevant “nationalist” opposition.) The governing boards of Rubinstein’s orga-

nizations were a glittering array of princes, dukes, and counts (including such long-standing noble dilettantes of music as Count Matvey Wielhorsky, Berlioz’s

friend). A merchant patron could have had absolutely no role in such a venture. The earliest private musical patron of note, Chaikovsky’s sponsor, was the widow of an impoverished Riga baron who had built a fortune as a railroad entrepreneur. Thus, although Mme von Meck’s wealth had been acquired in a manner entirely comparable to that of the railroad tycoon Savva Mamontov, whose art patronage will be the subject of a later chapter, her social allegiances were entirely on the side of the hereditary nobility. And so were Chaikovsky’s. His opera The Oprichnik, for example, was dedicated to the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, brother of Tsar Alexander II, and during the reign of Alexander III he practically became a court composer. The immediate effect of the institutionalization of musical life under the protection of the Autocracy, then, was to foreclose the possibility of patronage from other quarters. Besides, an inclination for “art” music, requiring considerable training and exposure and having practically no indigenous tradition in Russia, seems never to have taken hold among the Moscow kupechestvo in any degree com-

parable to their passion for painting and theater. Music therefore remained, through the sixties and beyond, pretty much the plaything of aristocratic and bureaucratic “melomanes.”

[46] 1 + RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

And so the New Russian School had to wait some two decades before a capitalist patron turned up for it. He did so not in Moscow, the traditional merchant stronghold, where the New Russians had no institutional standing at all, but in St. Petersburg. The immediate occasion for his materialization, however (and fittingly enough), was a concert in Moscow at which Glazunov’s precocious First Symphony was performed under Rimsky-Korsakov’s baton as part of an AllRussian Exposition in the fall of 1882. “Before the rehearsal of the symphony commenced,” Rimsky later recalled, I was approached by a tall and handsome man with whom I was not acquainted, though I had run across him in St. Petersburg. He introduced himself as Mitrofan Petrovich Belyayev and requested permission to attend all rehearsals. M. P. Belyayev was an ardent music-lover, who had been completely captivated by GlaZunov’s symphony at its first performance at the Free Music School and who had come now expressly for its sake to Moscow.”

The man who thus burst unexpectedly upon the Russian musical scene would change its face completely in a matter of two decades.

The scion of the largest timber-manufacturing concern in Russia, Mitrofan Belyayev (1836—1903)°! was in some ways typical of his class, in others quite atyp-

ical. Like all merchants, he was a man of “simple conservative convictions,”© blindly loyal to the tsarist autocracy and jingoistically patriotic. Even RimskyKorsakov called him “a bit of a samodur [self-made fool],” falling back on the term Alexander Ostrovsky had coined in his play “My Drink, Your Hangover” to describe Kit Kitich, an archetypal Moscow merchant. Indeed, Belyayev’s letters, with their ubiquitous proverbs and homespun philosophizing, bear the characterization out only too well. So do reports of his misogyny. He never tolerated the presence of women at his musical gatherings (excepting only his own wife and adopted daughter, and then only for the duration of the meal). When Alexander Serov’s widow, herself a composer, once tried to discuss business with him, she was treated in an unbelievably insulting manner.°° Yet Belyayev was educated in a manner quite unlike that of the Moscow merchant heirs. He was sent to the Reformatskoye uchilishche, an elite German Lutheran

school in St. Petersburg, and it was here that a love of music (though, of course, not yet Russian music) was instilled in him. He studied piano and violin zealously, and his indulgent father, quite unlike the usual despotic merchant paterfamilias, encouraged his devotion to music. In the end, it was Belyayev’s own decision to go into the family business and cultivate his taste for Western music as an avocation. 60. My Mustcal Life, 261.

61. Belyayev died on 22 December 1903 (0.S.), so Western sources sometimes give the year of his death as 1904. 62. A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N.A. Rimskiy-Korsakov 3:57. 63. Ibid., 102.

THE GUILD [47]

g_errts—SsSCSCrsa ee Cltrrrs=sCrzsCO#COSCONNNC

FIG. 1.1. Mitrofan Petrovich Belyayev (1836-1903)

This meant playing for recreation in the amateur orchestra of the German Club in St. Petersburg, presided over by the venerable German-born conductor of the

Alexandrinsky (dramatic) Theater orchestra, Ludwig Wilhelm Maurer (1789— | 1878). When the orchestra folded on Maurer’s death, Belyayev joined the orchestra of an amateurs’ club of which Borodin was president. The hired conductor was Lyadov. Now at last the timber man came into contact with the members and the music of the New Russian School. Belyayev also engaged regularly in amateur chamber music—something quite rare in Russia outside of aristocratic circles—hosting a quartet, in which he played viola, every Friday evening. Although he personally directed the family business from the time he inherited it in 1866, in 1884. he withdrew from the day-to-day operation of the firm so as to be free to devote himself

to the advancement of Russian music, and especially to the cause of the young Glazunov.™ 64. Material in this paragraph is abstracted from ibid., 3:56-57; and from Alexander V. Ossovsky, “M. P. Belyayev i Osnovannoye im muzikaPnoye delo,” in Ossovsky, Muzikal’no-kritichesktye stat’t (Leningrad: Muzika, 1971), 344.

[48] 1 * RUSSIA AND HOW IT GOT THAT WAY

Belyayev followed up on his meeting with Rimsky-Korsakov and the seventeenyear-old prodigy with a proposal to finance the publication of the latter’s symphony as well as anything else he might produce. Into Glazunov’s lap thus fell a personal patron like Chaikovsky’s. But unlike Mme von Meck, Belyayev did not stop there. Whereas she, true to the traditions of noblesse oblige, had insisted on anonymity, Belyayev, true to the pattern of merchant patronage, wanted to contribute conspicuously to public life. He therefore entered the publishing business on a grand scale. Displeased with the quality of the products of existing Russian music printers and, in particular, disgusted by the lack of foreign copyright on works published in Russia (a situation not rectified until the 1970s!), Belyayev decided in 1884 to form a publishing house for Russian music, with offices and printing facilities to be located in Leipzig, thus overcoming both impediments at a stroke. In this way the “Edition M. P. Belaieff, Leipzig” was born, which by the time of the Revolution would boast a catalogue of over two thousand items, all composed by

nationals of the Russian Empire. Belyayev approached this publishing venture with a sense of high mission and an enlightened sense of business efficiency. The house was wholly subsidized by his personal resources, and Belyayev could afford to pay extremely high honoraria. His editions were very lavish, beautifully printed on paper much better than the Russian average, and boasting elaborate title pages often designed by recognized artists. An orchestra or chamber composition was always issued in a complement consisting of full score, engraved parts, and a four-hands arrangement. It is hardly to

be wondered that the “Belaieff” imprint quickly became a much-sought-after mark of professional arrival. Also in 1884, Belyayev initiated a concert series, conceived (like the publishing

house) out of his personal involvement with Glazunov’s career. He arranged a “public rehearsal” of the Glazunov Symphony, along with a pair of suites for orchestra (the second as yet unfinished), which were repeated at the end. The orches-

tra was that of the Mariyinsky Theater, conducted by Georgiy Dyutsh and Rimsky-Korsakov. Beginning with the 1885—86 season, Belyayev followed up on this semiprivate affair by inaugurating, at Rimsky’s urging, a yearly concert series that presented only works by Russian composers; this also lasted until the Revolution. By 1910, a total of 165 works had been given their premieres at Belyayev’s “Russian Symphony Concerts.”°°

Meanwhile, the composers associated with Belyayev began to frequent his “Quartet Fridays,” and the gatherings gradually turned into a meeting place for the New Russian School—sans only Balakirev, who would have nothing to do with any “circle” or situation be could not control (and also, of course, sans Mu65. For a survey of the Belyayev enterprise, full of statistics like these, see M. Montagu-Nathan, “Belaiev—Maecenas of Russian Music,” Musical Quarterly 4, no. 3 (July 1918): 450—6s.

THE GUILD [49]

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Union (Fig. 2.8).”” The manuscript is dated 2; January 1902, near the end of Stravinsky’s studies with Akimenko. While slighter in its dimensions than the piano piece, the song is in every way more interesting and mature. It is a real composition, not just an exercise, although, like the Scherzo, it was probably written to serve a didactic purpose—in this case, the application of the devices of enharmony and “false progression” treated by Rimsky-Korsakov in the last chapter of his textbook. The device of harmonic color that Stravinsky exploits so assiduously in this song—“common tone” progressions linking primary minor triads with auxiliaries at the flat submediant—is one that had its origins for Russian music in the famous opening of Rimsky’s Antar (1868, revised 1875, 1897). The harmonies in Stravinsky’s accompaniment, mm. 3-5, are precisely those of the “model” that informs Rimsky’s sequence (Ex. 2.4). Where Rimsky took the progression through a complete circle of thirds to the starting point, producing a nonfunctional prolongation of the tonic, Stravinsky uses single oscillations between functional and auxiliary chords that have the effect of appoggiaturas—literally so in m. 10, when the E flat is enharmonically reidentified as the leading tone, and the C and G fall by half-steps to complete the dominant triad. In the modulatory middle section (mm. 23-28), the common-tone appoggiaturas are applied to tones lying along a Balakirevesque circle of successive subdominants. The retransition is cleverly handled: E minor is approached from 77. Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1982.

FIRST STEPS [105]

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original pitch, but then spliced to a transposed continuation. The joint creaks, and its creaking speaks volumes about the kind of training a fourth-generation Belyayevets received. Also revealing is the oxymoronically literal recapitulation of an impetuous-sounding reminiscence of the opening theme in the midst of the second theme (compare mm. 71-76 and mm. 253-58). A sonata form in which such

a thing can occur is one conceived as a sum of discrete parts, an arrangement of tesserae.

The coda (mm. 287-318) is built on a cadential ostinato derived from the opening theme. The chromatic transformation of the bass line at the beginning shows how far the shadow of Beethoven’s Ninth extended, while at the climax (m. 296 with its upbeat), Chaikovsky’s Fifth is invoked (Ex. 2.9). These symphonic resonances are fully in keeping with the traditions of the “Grande Sonate,” a veritable symphony for piano. The best movement in Stravinsky’s sonata is the second, a conventional but pleasingly featherweight scherzo-and-trio. The opening section is an effective study in phrase elisions and illusory beat patterns. The Trio 1s in the traditionally “Russian” alternative key of the flat submediant, a relationship that in Russian music could govern local progressions (as in Stravinsky’s own “Tucha” of 1902, or the very last cadence of the present sonata) and long-range tonal contrasts alike (e.g., Glinka’s Kamarinskaya)."*© Once again specific models lie very close to hand: the Scherzo (third movement) of Chaikovsky’s Grande sonate is the source of the rhythmic displacements and the unexpected accentuations on diminished chords, while the Allegro scherzando (last movement) of Glazunov’s First Sonata supplied the syncopated, arpeggiated left hand (Ex. 2.10). Stravinsky skillfully manages the mediant and submediant relations in the Scherzo’s local harmonic progressions, evincing a degree of canny strategy in the tonal plan that is lacking in the first movement. Four times a degree-transforming pivot in the bass (root becoming third) introduces surprising flat submediants that interrupt lengthy or even complete circles of fifths (Ex. 2.11). The four submediants thus introduced lie along a circle of minor thirds that symmetrically apportion the octave. Thus the last of these seeming digressions 1s actually a cunning return to the tonic (Ex. 2.11b). It was something Stravinsky had done before (in “Tucha”), and one suspects that it was a device specifically imparted to him first by Kalafati and then by Rimsky, who “knew valuable details about harmony,” as his pupil admitted even in his most grudging recollections of his tutelage."! The general character of these passages, withal, 1s Chaikovskian, evocative of the famous “pizzicato Ostinato” in the Scherzo of the Fourth Symphony. 110. On Glinka’s tonal plan see R. Taruskin, “How the Acorn Took Root: A Tale of Russia,” r9thCentury Music 6, no. 3 (Spring 1983): 189-212. 11. M&C:55/57. The cycle of minor thirds was a favorite Rimskian device, intimately related to the

scale in Example 2.8b, as will be thoroughly explained in Chapter 4.

THE PROBESTUCK [125]

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b. Chaikovsky, Grande sonate, III, mm. 1-8

Allegro Blocoso ~ > oe

3> aCR —Of — ee | | jf_|. || Sm | gttiia ~~ aeg|ee eeAeyop ee are. mae Se| ffEe SS wa ee | . a a ee cE UE OOO

a) ) > A Oe tlLl ha]— OT et De etl Seeves: Ss 7ttTas 7.0 2. ;eeePa ees ee} — $f HF ee ee + _,.

_ 4... ee _£ - es |Te | | ©.Oe | SST SE eTafeee” eg -.._Ase B34 ““— ee >eee >OO Gud (3X a A GG Ce bn Cees bee EE GE ” A. ap eee ee ee” A

> oe,

| a 4 i ~. J — a> - aa>N a . ‘N . , a=

va —

—— —_ Fz } |==aa= |——~ gg | —NK

'

Ho. | 2 se © CL] Teme | aa atttwtfia © 11 Sf a7 TO fhe he. >..____}__| |_|CL | | ~~ |b tsJT Yf1 —_—{,2 &Qz~2 Tmo i | ee dt dTm4 CUI Wy 7 @»™Lo.—0 °&»+w@ a uy

SS ee a | NS SS es ee ee 6 ES en 2 ee ar a FAO 17. es Bee © ES 2 Fd 2 0 EP © eee Bs \ Se vr. a ee

1 2’ ae eeelaen Ce 0a 2(on en a2 ame 2 2 Cerr227 2 017a "© “It ee ee 2 a4es|)esUO ee |adL_.____|. |oa?

Ye 1 yD oa Y—Yp — er neers D— JPsa -—wor “YY__| 8! = @ 6

EXAMPLE 2.10 _ (continued) c. Glazunov, Sonata No. 1, III, mm. 1-8

ae ards te te tte ™ ‘a ~ Allegro scherzando ¢ = 100 >

ea eT tet- fe; -.vrat” i 7(ae 224 See), ——=a ee ee Aeee Pee 1.4aarti 1.4Ae eee 2 see eee © ee Se 1. O\)) 2, Se” Se eee eee 8 —— —— —- — See — | — lel — ee

SL KO Co . ; (ft. ~

Cl CO) BY ~ A EY , EY 2’ A 2

2TE >»SO x. |CCO TCS CSC SSCS Sa.” CTLOD ”DhU ooh Uhh.OOO Ohm COL oo rE eS jNY-N”Y.—_ 228 Oo oo

/ N— 3

oot ES _| > E28) A. 5 Fe —__ ee ees et en ) oeTO eS a /.. 2OY TE aeee aa

_—_—_ TS ™~nV".-."....”. >— Eee

Ee LL Ll! OOTe)97§ $ 4#4Jv--"-—"—" eo! NN" ..4ox>p™—~---..”.....VnnN......_. —>"-—,"—~—".0——--0 SS Eo Oeeeoooow"—”—=—O_ ™™™u|NMwW"mu.,””_"—TO.ODVDT_ ft QuU”)/,H™ ™— :

Ns

C/) Us. oe 1 Ae ee re — --1= th—eee __hh—_ ett) writs ta a st(an 7... 2s LOO_o" hDD OOnT D A+ _1.._ A.W “Waist Peal | Pala. &wz~tie’ tt aeTheo toto a bt ittePlttttl Pan”|”wae!) well wel Le CL

eS Cs Ne EXAMPLE 2.1!II

a. Sonata in F-sharp Minor, II, mm. 25—42

a) : e e Lis , x. FT Ooh T—E Lh et Ooh eealOT

5) OS A NW 2 a Ep

SL a eS S08 Sees SON SGN SG SS PG SL SR NERS ANNES Oe | GN SONNE GONE SOON

a ToT OLLI. Bb ..ca200n-.—._-_ wr Cee

TSwt. > eeee || 0A ES | ,

OO” A ATLA A CA NARSas A ANS A SS A AUNULL™OU*O..CUN A SW SN SS SEhaCE a nh | ttwaitottFLFtThLthLFTCCULwe tl L.UWT”™6™©™©U | ae es|

TAT tle wl ww ikb#ka ta tt tl? ft Nhe (tft thea! 7" _ (na tT ee —_t—_}—__ ff ++}Ant A ——|_ 9-2 NS eb ot,YA 2S 27|ee odtf OL. ATR LA Ss 2YS SS

TD NE | OS SS SS ME SS SS SO SA SL

|

(continued )

eo aa es. =F Tt EXAMPLE 2.11a _ (continued)

re ae . ee . b " i] > ° ° e yw oe 0 @ a . ans 8” AT. STL. | afTft_tT er].i fT |].f_yffTtT_eeeeeeseeeee ee DP 2) 2 |ee a2ee ee ee eS |_| bo:Ge I) [I] Il

_—_——__ ell

—_—aEE =e ere wee eee ‘'! e °

}> =e e e

>ie | MW (pm | |Or TT TT Taf eet eS CO TL| ha A|.2Oh WS SL a 0tfed ee Ce7 ft hae ol’ /tml.. || (um [ 1EC Tt I jee SS LE 4a, A As SQ) SD 0 LS ES ST SR EE RO

,a ° , ’

b. Sonata in F-sharp Minor, II, mm. 93-112

A» ¢ es ee Pa a aA ;, tft» » i,t t. | | til it | Ova | 2. + __ af 5AS) 7.inOL Ws se ee ee ee ee 0 = ee ee ee 8. SE 0 SP CO 0 - “ i,C §

SSS Sf e

Weir jy , °.».»..»”»”»”» »+~;~«T | FF FT| [art TT. SP ya UD >

>

=££| [se bdom| |bed pa iJ]| >f | Le Zier tevin. Cee ‘wee7a tt) ||i. |_ Tia | a7 Fw |P|| tt+t| awa |w@witiait | Oum oaft 7rit||| RA jy) 7 Tm, A AS OOS SD RE SS SE SS CC OLS OS |

. 4 b e e| mm b e etitaeiveEY AS izt4 wut @with$gt eSihe: ____Ib bieli]@ipa tp ww l[hiel 2 |ww ihn | oa || «tt | | IN [Ty

WL 4——_ a 0. Bn CO a ee) NS |yySS SS SS CS | Cs es ee es mmm i") : f

(——— ————— —_——_——_,

yw ° om ous all ’ 7 S.C Oe a -) | ee cee Oe B27 ee ee ee ee EEE ee ° . e b } . e e e r} ‘ e ° e y , y st ws wut i Wao || vat [| [nam [ | | Tt. (|) |=; = ae _es7 es 0| ae es esP. et tL, P|es| |8 |_| ae _ eT aA SR a©|||eeee | Re SR” A || Tey LA |||SY zx nT | Fipw wt CE -e |.SG) | J)RS [aoRS @ES of SE fy

ee re y ' 2s ee ee

—— |

NE nnn

Zhe ntei tt |te itt?| prt. | | Qf- Tr rT ay. Tee wee |l{Ve | 4S ve— (hoa =»aluns | Jwas!) |& Fr Or | i{||||| -:.—hULhCTSMS™”™”™©§™§6§ X §&8 | wae |) | i™| Mey yy we Sh SS SS HS SS SS SSS SD SRRNRNNES OF ORE aL) NRE GONG SANNA. \: | CE SRR SENET

A»CE 7 eeCE ee |ee=a|t|teina a ae “7 st ee tt. rs soa |... ss) CS ws es|,ee yr Rseee Le S/..wiv Sy ms PeNE Se ee eeesSeesta eee eee ee ©#2. ees

Sy 8. @ 2 @# ta @e@¢oseoe | so | 0 _

Zhor un| | CE °»°»+| i.| ||”|| 27 = |Se 24). @» | O_o @-.|||||al|. ore wera jj | || | ?27i| vp. | 27] AD ee ee ee ~~ | Pt -me | we, t-te, |] nae Te LU LLU LLL hh Le

a a a es |} 6} | nae =

wee

i? | "=p EXAMPLE 2.11 _ (continued)

c. Abstracts qd) (2) RAS: PL nl A“) +4 8b .. aa

i.oe.A : wv

mm. 25 26 27 28 |29-31| 32 33 34 35 36 37 | 38-40

a ————— rr (fundamental bass along circle of fifths)

41 42 93 94 95 96 97-99; 100

et ee oo oo SEE SE hs 1 es Se

te #2 | Oy(be) he wv

|2

es tta dor Oe rr 43o>

CO | ss G@@3 101 102 103 104 105; 106-108 | 109 110 |-107 118 120 126

RE - “Lb in + #t+8@—_ +¢ M6 ( BE eee

A: I viO7 ]I7 V I

the four bVI’s: @ ee TE Oe SS ama

————————————— ee |S eee SS =

Io 2. 2. ke a rT

It is in the third movement that Stravinsky comes closest to the world of ' Scriabin, not so much in the sighing sevenths of the theme (which seem equally beholden to Chaikovsky’s Manfred) as in the extended passages of swirling “nonfunctional” harmony. A comparison of two harmonizations of a chromatic bass progression, one from Scriabin’s Third Sonata and the other from Stravinsky’s, show a very similar technique (Ex. 2.12). The passages are “nonfunctional” in that their starting harmonies are re-achieved at the end, so that no root progression is accomplished. Structurally speaking they are static, if extremely colorful, prolongations of single harmonies. In both the scrupulous parsimony of the part writing—leading tones being resolved and common tones sustained wherever possi-

THE PROBESTUCK [129]

r| EXAMPLE 2.12

a. Sonata in F-sharp Minor, III, mm. 29-36

é . See Bee Qe. poco agitato

8@/(..WRi 7 Gs ee We eeeee eeeee en eee... eeeeee eeeee Gs See Ges 2S2.VEE EeBe: eebs OE eeeeee... eee" |ee eee «=eeee ee.eee eeeeee" aeseee Ee

AV '(4, 6 eee - |) eee AEE ¢ | 5" , ti‘ CO™S:stsCtiCSC eS

D4! GEERT 62 eee| eee eee es eee eee ee Me LyBEESS, LE 8LeeTE od Ff. 0" eee0... es ee 2 eseee) eee eee GadSees OF.eeOTR eeee” ee eee 0...eeL.eeae... Se ee 6 22”. eee" 4...

4 ‘ )aLJ e b aw ee am TT 7 ——{— :

iLhaa | ee > —=“ Fe ee

Ss We Game eee - (es ee ed es ee “eee eee -) eee

G7...OG WLeeCee |) Oe ee ee" Cee =. eee i Oe eee «=e SY TSeee rT iaeee) allem t~CSCL Y'..SCtCS;«;«; em . ° s o, : , = | , 1p y AS ES NR? SE SRA EXAMPLE 2.15b_ (continued) >

aah ooooeoeeOeONehma a eT OES ES 7f /.. GOR ee”ee4ee ee202eee eee ee 4) 2ee" ee ee eee eee es eee eee

—OF) — Pee... —_ 1 RR y id(eee Rad CC 4% Ww ey iF dhl Lf hh | if yc OttCOCOC(‘(‘ir;:;:tCtCtstC(‘(‘(‘“‘iOONNNNNUNUNNNNNUUUUUUUUULUU

i toEb > agita

EXAMPLE 2.16

a. Sonata in F-sharp Minor, IV, mm. 318-34

Sts teOU Te = I67O.—”n”.-.v”-0._ 0 TTTKr"”..”. _0._ c—_ ee .2@e 4 ee=©2 eee eee| ee Seeeee es -)See ee eee? eeeee eeee ee ee O/.. WeeKe GeeeCe es 0eeen ee-)eeOeen) / See eeeee

— CSeStlaspat i i _)tt_te__ Oe Ee a eo ff | _;__

eta ee Te ;iat = | hr tC ll lO el rere af 2“Tt | y~Jy fT | ST| TT TT gal: TT jfaitTiLLLUdlL,LULUdLU.ULULULULUm aefTULULULUdTLULULULULULUUU ?, uruo a Ss f; ga TgfFTy CTO ttti‘(‘CSSCOC:C:CtCtstC*tCLCUUTCOtCOCOOOOOOCOECE"*8L SS — tS po SUT CU p, _—}_| 4g —___—_

aA ing——} € jTOf ft ttt dee en aedeeEE ee ee eee| £ReJ po f AY... FE rar TT Ur, Nd .LTLCULDC‘CSNCOC(‘(R’’’’N’N$§;S OSC OCORAVSCtCi‘(‘C CQL Oe Td OP Oe a

F< Ue: we es eT es Sees) eee eeUC ee ee eee1.4) eeeOC ee 0 eeeeee eee eee ad Se)ee eee 2.4 | Le EC -Ge |«6 eeeee Se 0 ee" Ee eee eee,2.See SEOF. “WP” SE0"4eeCO. CO .sseeeOeeee 2eee eeeeeeee ——_ a a

@ UE. ee EeGtCSC(‘(‘(‘ —_—.}_——

Fo Ue: RS ees 0i 4!) ee Oh ee eee OCSe i tt> LO Old 4 SSee 4s EE EE -tddee e 6"LULL 6h lan?OF. &. °}°»&32zzI oe of FFes£38 OhL.UleeeLULU —mE Red ae... | .. eeGE en Se 2 eeA © We ee 2© eeSS 2 ..es*Ge ee 2” 4LAS | RSUE. CE*| © Gs02 ee”RE A©SO ”ee4 2SS EE Oe Ee SD PS” A De RT AEEE OS...EN BOGS A OS CS AS SES

Uy ¢

chi, Na gri - bi glya-dyu - chi, Po- ve - lel, _ pri- ka -

> . | es ee ee ee ee SE 2” eee Ee ee B's ee -) ee 2 | —_—_—__e__—_—___+4 SR... SE. EE P..« .. EE. EE Ten LLC LL ge hLLULULULLtiCOOeC(‘(‘(‘(‘CONO,LCOSN.UUNULULULUdglhhLULULUe LV... Ue

7 UP: SsST" ee eeeeeeee6 eee) ee eee eee eee0"eee ee "es 0lL. eeeeeeeeee ee ed OC. eeeee ee es eees ee ee)eee OP) ARE | Ts ES "ne GE ns ee eeee... es es eee eee

As —

ee adsEERE OT >) 4S VERE GEE OTOL ERS OE , eS ee 24-3 —— 42 —__# 8 7 ___@__F___-________f—_____________

zal Vsem gri - bam na voy - nu id - ti.

Le Tt Ee ee Cti—‘ nl ———— 9 fj ——, [.... tormented by sorrow, gloom, and want]

ee A i} aa EXAMPLE 2.20

a. “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War,” mm. 68—71

foyer aia | EE Eee OE EEE ge

Se Ue ” : Pt ty Eee eeeeeEeeeeeEeEeeeSeFSFSFSFSFSSSFSFFHFeH HHS

Ot-ka - za- li- sya be-lyan-ki: “Mi gri -

a. aEE«| df ES OLEE, EEE 0. es BN) )SE EasES - 1 _g—_}

Py 8 a Tan ee

Sh SR i” " Ee = 6” = Ee ee

Tee a, CS ne Cl bo - vi - ye dvo-ryan-ki, Ne po-

> NS. >) ° eeeee - T ,AGE EEEE CE Sn Ln Ps

tt eee tO oManN—-->-~”7»>?>@—"0O™

ee A OOO =a

Sek en on ee SE ——_—————————————————

EXAMPLE 2.20 _ (continued) b. Rimsky-Korsakov, 100 Russtan Folk Songs, no. 72, mm. 20-25

4 fn —i ——. SR TS EE ee EE ~ A |. | | Jf Ry uUcleU*T B.\\) A ee a” ee ee eee C2. Se ee {© fr 7 @° ye ae Bs MED ft LS eT 2 Ge Ge Cee ee(EEE eee Oo /. ” Lee 2 ees Fee? ~ see 4 .«|eee ee ae |< NS se © © —— _ PON) a ee ‘ow | Oy, Oe

eel sn im eS ff ff — ed oT Aa oe ei ed oe a et Ht} rr a /.. WE ee ee" ee Ee eee ee Et < "Cee 0 eee ee” eee ST «

- du_w__ ss zvon-cheyto - go zvon - chey to -

SN SS) AR CS SO NET OE SRY BES XO AOS SE SS RN RS SE {S

~~”

> a© SS|.RP «=. eeSESS eee” (yma @ Lt:t—CO BN SeWe 0.Oe©OE _eee2 OR) eeee 2 gL * eee 2“ee_OD _ei| rN

— AT ES CS». CE Ef —-G GT WT SY WU CS A anne SN |

go vo Kuz - nets - kom go - ro- du wee” EiN

O/..W ° eee Lee eee eee Lei ja j_—_—___.____i Ht |Ly fk. OOF S 7. eee ) OS aSe eee, ee =. eeSes Se 2b 2wel ee ee... __ eS Se 0eeeS 2 ee eeee’ ee ee ee ee ee -

I chto na sve-te pré- zhe - sto - kom,

es OOOO Te] Ee ee DF oe ee ae eee >) "eee Of. OO Oe Ae “ee eee aS aT — Se Lo ot a} 1~

———— ae Me —em ON a 4be Ue 0 Ss . ee © Ah. Se ~~ ee eee EET SS —=—gh Se—e —e

EXAMPLE 2.20C _ (continued)

SS DN eso yte eeoo B44. 42ee . A e Ee een eee eee 2ee eee

nee” wy NLS ns ee”

pre - zhe-sto-ka - ya lyu-bov’! O-sta-vlya-yet,po - ki-

last or eegfEe pg a a — jp ———=e eee

Pt a iF a ee eee NN ———— ee a

py pr > a ee ee Ee eege "ee ©——— ee ee 2 0 .. ._ Ss eee | ~~ ° , wey eee”

, Ses fn ig Rr hh cy° eYe ° —" U /.. WR GE ... Bs ee ee ee ee. = ee es ne es «|S es ee | rey Og dL CU T..LUCOeZTtO—OTTCTF"NNNN. ™. gy. if I — a —— +} -——_—_

ee pt er [2 ert ro EE tt ae yj ft eS I da -_ yet, zdes’ = v_ine-schast-noy sto - ro-ne.

Sl ee GE EE GE We. SS Se Cet NS) OS ES CD |___— 9) -——_—— -——--—-4 es |

——

ied OO... 2 ~ ME el Se Se Se 2 OS GE © CS |

[And the cruelest thing in the world is cruel love! It forsakes you, leaves you here in

misery. }

EXAMPLE 2.21

a. “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War,” mm. 131-34

poco meno mosso

7.0 26 4 STS ee eeeA ee En eee ee - ae..eee a OO. C.D . eee ... eee 2 Seee... .. Geee © eee e ..

pet —— ppp tf —_} | _____t hf ETN

Ot-ve - cha - li gruz-di: “Mi re - bya - ta druzh-ni, Na voy-

oe oe es A as es Se Se Ss

ap —— ——2;-—_—_—}}—_{ | tg ed OF ee ee. ee.—_}|__f ee .. _—_) ... Ee

OF i Hh ir pep} —____} ____f yf —_f|

Oe ty iairi nu poy-dyom, Vsekh gri- bov po-b’yom, Na voy-

ne he ST See Scns 7.226 GE “GE WEEE Oe eee eee eee eee

EXAMPLE 2.21 _ (continued) b. Borodin, Prince Igor, Prologue, no. 1, fig.

ae P dolce .

eS a ee raat DD 7, = —_ | > aa

ye reeeeer PPPPPF FRPP SS PPPE Pr

NN . ~ ——_——

[From the great Don to the littoral . . . }

clearly calling for brass (Fig. 2.10a). This much is easy enough to adapt to a pianistic texture in reconstructing the end of the song from the sketch. But the passage at mm. 48-40 carries, even in the fair copies, an extra line that cannot be man-

aged by the pianist (Fig. 2.10b). It has the distinctive look of an orchestral reduction, and was obviously inspired by recollections of Varlaam’s song from the first act of Boris Godunov (Ex. 2.22).

And with this observation we have stumbled at last upon a clue to the secret identity of Stravinsky’s curiously retrospective opus. For Varlaam had been one of his father’s roles. Indeed, there turn out to be so many references in this big basso aria to roles created by Fyodor Ignatyevich or otherwise closely identified with him, as well as to songs he is known to have sung, that we are led inevitably to

conclude that the piece was a tribute to the great singer—a memorial, even a “por- | trait,” by his son. This would account not only for the style of the song, but also for Igor Fyodorovich’s evident attachment to it, an attachment that to a considerable extent belies the militantly detached attitude toward his Russian heritage— and in particular, toward his father—that Stravinsky so insistently projected in his memorrs. We may begin our survey of elder-generation Stravinskiana in “The Mushrooms” with one last Musorgsky item: the early song “King Saul” (1863), which, as we know, Fyodor Stravinsky had frequently performed to Musorgsky’s own piano accompaniment. This was something the younger Stravinsky surely heard about countless times, and he made a vague reference to it in one of his books.'** 124. Conv:45/44.

[rso] 2 * BIRTH AND BREEDING

Oe, — | Wi} ellil Hy all. A he A a

Hh SHR ~ [lish a ee +h 4 Rill oe ail Te ie ont ec sail i Th | ty Su. lu ma any sat! i il Real “TL lie: ch Hsu) sine Ut it tt TS SHEN aa Sh | ileal +llul SUT Ls lin TP IX il IN |f |il st aH ie Hl an +ITk iil lk ‘ = ll igi 3 i ul hyC .| att] EOGT at Hk It “ . Natt) Ut ASH Uytt“tt

hl SI i A

*HTRE i Il| |Tl| tH (: Mt Sill| it alawe sae:aatt il) at H frI ‘h ane Ut) in eal Ua Hl) il abst STR | | y > u" nil | itp i Ht sill Hl / I y ath " ¢ ty | I S ; the i : li iti ‘alst] Sigh ewe! tulle ili it

aa th lll ae | BA Se Th [RLS Ta age HD Sut th CP Maden tH | f It 3s vy % Y 3g { : L \ + 5Oe Feeree E ag i ati| ih I. ll IttHlPal } IneRa Hy lat]2 f aKH A ral FTL r oe Al itiM

EXAMPLE 2.22 Musorgsky, Boris Godunoy, Act I, scene ii, Varlaam’s song, mm. 1-3

Allegro giusto e con forza.

es

| Sf ————Ob ° ee ee eens ee es es es ees ee Seee es 4 Ea .. ce __§ | 20o» {if #@es . |es|SS “ee@ m1ee|ee#esee ajee" J] TT USL

+ e e . 3 es e . ». e . 5 r4 ry

Sey Oo eeee es ee eee Red COEEE eee 0 Se ee eeoO es ee ee

So rr rr i —— a ee |2ee ttCR 2a aSe aIee8ed Ot Ee eseet eeOT es ee ee te dd ef Oe SC Od dd LTT kon’, to ver-blyud Khrab - ri-ye tol’ - ko i- dut,

@ 0. . a Cae Ne — Ceee ss ee G.... .. BEE eeee - eee ee © eee es 0eee eee eeSEE ee es ee 2 2- es Leee2)eeesEE eee - eee

EAP" REAaAGGGEhAaGHEE BIDE GY BAGG 2 DG eee Eee eee ee

oe °

[We cross the torrid steppe! The air breathes fire! Steeds, camels perish, only the brave go there. ]

ae EXAMPLE 2.25

a. “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War,” mm. 52—55

he OR Ty Fe?!) fo pp} pds ayettt 8 hE Ge Eee Ot- ka - za- li- syasmorch-ki: “Mi sov- sem uzh sta-rich-ki, Ne po -

A 2). TS [aaa BPC @. @.t Ses

ik oe eaeeen eee:y

2C7. | aWL eeBs I rr. eea =0aeeee ee eee esee esSS Se EE eS 2 Se ee ee ee 6. aOi0ee ee~2 eeeen eee BR) 2s SS ee . e2-.EE P 0e=nSe aeee Oea O6 0 eee

IF OD) OO )..UHOoonrO oD EDT TET _ nha. ao

a

EXAMPLE 2.25a (continued)

vin - ni mi Na voy - nu id - ti, Ne potT otA reeelh eeSeoe reAeeh ore 7 228 GV BGOT See See eeew Se Se Ae eee eee 2 eee ree leee AeltOt lnSeeet le iQw 2 a. ae0 Ge one ee ee eneseee BeSeeeGe ee Ces Le. Cl.Gees a). 7ee WnEe . =.ee WeGe J. FO leeee Cees ee 4 Ge SEeeEelCallUrereee Ee Se Cele Ceeseee a, | SEATS CARA MELISS SAMAR SOENSTNETS SESNSRRERNSSEDS SSCS ENNIS SORENESS SORA NUN GRRE AS RUT ED ES

b. Serov, The Power of the Fiend, Act 111, Yeryomka’s song to the balalaika, mm. I—7

ae | a eS Sn

Allegretto scherzando pes Ri eee aes a SE ae oe @/ - ee... 2 eee...EEE eee ee... Jee eee VV 2 es en _f.OF)hh | my OB

|Co 4 >ml=EE > r) => nid aeons SS SNe Se Ti, ku-

Pee ee2 4ASW"ee a "2 eeeeeee2 2eeee aeeee ee2"ee" 6 O/.. 04) Oe ee Se eee ee Ee 2 i ee. ee oe tr SL AS Oh Th CARS ©, VRE SEUNG Gn SS GANG GOONS GGRGGSONEENS 0, WNENEET Gn SEUORND WRU 0 RE RN fe

a” aESee a ee ee. aeSEeeES Ss O /..eS 4)SS SE ©. ONS FE Beee ES© EE .. SEeWs Oe=». EGae ee | he dl lm ti‘(‘(‘i‘—>—~monu-2=2EEao.

Grib _bo- ro- vik, Nad gri- ba- mi pol-ko-vik, Pod du -

OE Ee. DAB ‘Gh... See - 1 hg OO)

C_—_Jo—_ Py eT

SE SS 7, ES ” A © SS / SS 7 A OS SM SSR ©. MANNE © AOE J 77 / Ee

bom = si- dyu-chi, Na gri- bi = glya-dyu-chi, Po- ve -

aCC | a es ee | ae P.O LA 2 Gee... eee eee. es A LL CE 2 4aEee = ns «Se §8Sefins

7 .@26 GE -) SN Ee eee... eee eee ees ’ Of eee tee tt—t—‘“LUUUULULUDU

—— ry? 5 oly HE .— ——. EXAMPLE 2.26b _ (continued)

lel, pri-ka- zal Vsemgri-bam na voy-nu _ id - t.

(4) :

The declamatory role of Skula in Prince Igor provided Igor Stravinsky with the model for an occasional patch of naturalistic kuchkist parlante, in which the accented syllables of the text are placed on successive beats, the unaccented syllables arranging themselves evenly in between in freely varying gruppetti.'*° When a phrase ends or begins with unaccented syllables, a rest on the beat is mandated, so as to avoid an incorrectly placed accent. The result is what Soviet musicologists have christened the “mute ending” (glukhoye okonchantye): a string of unaccented small note values peremptorily cut off by a downbeat rest. There is a notable instance of this comic-naturalistic device in “The Mushrooms” (Ex. 2.274); 1n fact, it is a literal quotation of a phrase that occurs repeatedly, and very prominently, in Skula’s part in the final scene of Prince Igor, where Fyodor Stravinsky’s histrionic success had been legendary (Ex. 2.27b). But perhaps Fyodor Ignatyevich’s most historic success, as recounted at the beginning of this chapter, was in the role of the deacon Mamirov in The Enchantress. And so let us conclude our survey of “The Mushrooms” by noting that the passage leading to its peroration (Ex. 2.28a) paraphrases Mamirov’s big moment in Chaikovsky’s opera, the climactic forced dance by which the deacon is humiliated at the close of Act I (Ex. 2.28b). The codas of Stravinsky’s song and Chaikovsky’s dance are also similar in their cadential use of the flat submediant, something we have already observed as characteristically “Russian” in the coda to the Finale of Igor Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata. “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War” is no precocious masterpiece. A parade of naive stylistic clichés, it also fails to surmount the monotony inherent in the structure of its text. A more experienced composer might have harnessed the tonal plan to achieve this end; and indeed, Stravinsky’s setting shows some evidence of

an attempt to project the mediant relations of the refrain onto the long-range 125. For details on this declamational ye, sec Chapter 15; also R. Taruskin, “Handel, Shakespeare, and Musorgsky: The Sources and Limits of Russian Musical Realism,” in Stuates in the History of Mustc, vol. 1 (New York: Broude Bros., 1984), 247-68.

FILIAL PIETY [137]

eT eT i i EXAMPLE 2.27

a. “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War,” mm. 14—20

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b. Borodin, Prince Igor, Act IV, no. 28, 23 after

ea aog i) |)gf @tT Iv IY [VikattJ)aJ)oe | JY tej gi gigi +}[TY se [Vm ete |)JYceJYetJY) oe

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EXAMPLE 2.27b_ (continued)

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[We’re not Galitsky’s men, we’re local boys . . . Not us, sire, it was the others. We’re Igor’s men, local boys . . .}

EXAMPLE 2.28

a. “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War,” mm. 129-33

¥° 2eeeeeeeeees Real See... nesSs Oe Sseee i Cll Cs 2es4G | ns We Aas 2) ae aOX ES ONES ns9nnARN ” ..=e Ae poco

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—— — a ol >i 3 «1>5 I>

a ae nn nf | ee Cd ea e..LTLLDhCULDLCSW@aEFC NRC §$RNRNNNREDV SS b. Chaikovsky, The Enchantress, Act I, no. 7c, mm. 298—313

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Tour Ss ee [eteEE LE sO + Oeonee (continued)

a

EXAMPLE 2.28b _ (continued)

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structure of the song: the tonalities of the second refrain and verse are those of the mediant harmonies of the opening, and the return to the tonic at the sixth refrain is prepared through a succession of keys that corresponds with the harmony at mm. 11-13. But thereafter the song is tonally static and redundant, robbing the climax of its force. Nor is the vocal writing as effective as one might have expected. The range 1s timidly restricted (A to e’), and the high notes seem haphazardly placed. The last e’ comes in the seventh refrain (m. 109), which leaves the concluding verse and refrain dulled by comparison. The draft reveals that Stravinsky originally put a high F on the second “Ura!” (m. 136), but canceled it in favor of middle C, apparently to smooth the approach to the ensuing B-flat.'”° The resulting drabness cannot be taken as ironic or satiric; far too many other factors conspire toward a conventionally, somewhat naively triumphant peroration. So it is not hard to understand why in later years Stravinsky hid the piece from view. But neither is it hard to understand his fondness for the work in light of its 126. Both Soulima Stravinsky, editing the song for Boosey & Hawkes (not yet published), and the editor of a 1982 Soviet edition have restored the F.

[160] 2 * BIRTH AND BREEDING

teeming connections with the world of his father. There is no telling, of course, how intentional or even conscious each individual stylistic resonance or nearcitation may have been. Taken as a whole, though, the song 1s a touching memento of the period when, by Stravinsky’s own account, he spent “as many as five or six nights a week at the opera,” on a pass obtained for him by Fyodor Ignatyevich,’?” absorbing impressions from all sides, no doubt, but most of all from his feared and idolized parent on stage.'?5 The unremittingly negative image of his father that Stravinsky projected in his memoirs and interviews was only one side of a profound ambivalence. The other side, intense admiration and loyalty, was expressed only in private. One such ex-

pression took the form of a letter to the Soviet violinist and composer Mikhail Goldshteyn, whom Stravinsky met in Moscow in 1962.'?? Goldshteyn, who was working on an article about the elder Stravinsky, asked the famous composer to describe his father’s performances. The answer he received (8 August 1964) contrasts poignantly with the memortrs: Unfortunately I cannot tell you, or rather, impart to you with certainty my present thoughts on the “peculiar characteristics” (as you put it) of my father’s singing, for

: recollections of the impressions and judgments of a seventeen-year-old youth at the distance of seventy-five years [s#c] can hardly guarantee their critical validity. Having said this much I feel freer in imparting to you what I thought and knew at the time of the performing activity of my father, of his brilliant dramatic gifts as an actor and of his virtuosic singing (he was the pupil of Professor Everardi at the St. Petersburg Conservatory), of the uncommon clarity of his diction, of the exceptional beauty of his voice despite the declining powers of his vocal chords at the end of his career. I recall how I often thought, listening to him in ensembles in various operas, that the surrounding singers seemed, in spite of the fact that

127. EKD:47/43. 128. This alone, of course, does not suffice to account for the song’s seemingly fortuitous survival in the Stravinsky Archive. The only other pre-Firebird composition represented there is the first act of The

Nightingale, which Stravinsky must have brought to Western Europe in 1913 so that he could work on finishing the score. Since he never suspected that his 1914. visit to his homeland would be his last until 1962, he had no reason then to take out the score of “The Mushrooms.” It must have been brought to him by his mother when she left Russia in 1922. George Antheil, who saw Stravinsky daily in Berlin during the period when the composer was awaiting his mother’s arrival, wrote later that “when, finally, Stravinsky’s mother did turn up in Berlin, she brought with her a great pile of Stravinsky’s earliest attempts at composition” (Bad Boy of Mustc (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1945], 38). But if this is true, then there is another Stravinskian puzzle to solve, for nothing else from that great pile remained

with the composer in America. Did the rest remain with Theodore Strawinsky in Geneva? Was there : an auto da fé? If the latter, the fact that “The Mushrooms” was spared would be the best evidence of all for Stravinsky’s special nostalgic attachment to it. 129. Goldshteyn (b. 1917) is best known for having in 1948 perpetrated a famous Kreisleresque hoax in the form of a symphony by a certain “Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky” which he claimed to have discovered, but which in fact he had composed. The resultant scandal led to his emigration in 1964; he now lives in Hamburg. He published his two letters from Stravinsky (German translation only) in Mustk des Ostens 7 (1975): 280~83. The letter on Fyodor Stravinsky is cited here from a carbon of the Russian original in the Stravinsky Archive.

FILIAL PIETY [161]

sometimes their vocal powers surpassed his, to be virtual amateurs and sometimes simply “nouveaux riches” in comparison with the nobility of his interpretations. He was an aristocrat surrounded by mere mortals.

Another attestation to that admiration and that loyalty was “How the Mushrooms Mobilized for War.” Admiration and loyalty, a sense of heirship—these were the marks of Stravinsky’s propitious apprenticeship. Surely no composer later so famed for his innovative originality ever began his career in such utter docility, so absolutely un-

tainted by any discernible impulse to rebel. In part, no doubt, this was the inevitable result of a late start. But the kuchkists also started late, and were nothing if not rebellious. The crucial factor in Stravinsky’s case seems to have been that he was doubly an aristocrat, socially and artistically. He was the scion of one of Russia’s noblest musical houses and, on the death of his father, was adopted by an even

nobler one, where he was coddled and petted and made to feel as one anointed. Who would rebel against such blandishments? Stravinsky was proud to be a fourth-generation Belyayevets, and for the next few years that pride would only increase. When admiration and loyalty toward Rimsky-Korsakov and all he stood for

would finally wane, it would be for reasons no one, and least of all Igor Fyodo- | rovich,; could have foreseen in 1904.

[162] 2 * BIRTH AND BREEDING

3 ° FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

LESSONS Rimsky-Korsakov was an indefatigable teacher. In the course of thirty-five years at the St. Petersburg Conservatory he turned out some 250 pupils in theory and com-

position—enough to people a whole “school” of composers—and he taught at two other institutions as well. On Balakirev’s breakdown in 1874 he took up the reins at the Free Music School and remained its director until 1881. Two years later, Balakirev appointed Rimsky his assistant as director of the oldest music school in Russia, the so-called Court Chapel Choir (Pridvornaya kapella), the original function of which had been to furnish singers for the tsar’s chapel, but which was now a virtual conservatory, offering training in instrumental music and theory as well as singing. Rimsky held on to this job—distasteful to him because of the school’s Orthodox and Slavophile atmosphere, but offering the reward of a good pension after ten years’ service—until 1894.

All during the two decades between his appointment to the Conservatory and his retirement from the Chapel, Rimsky taught privately as well. His first private pupil was a young dilettante from a merchant family, Ilya Fyodorovich Tyumenev by name (1855-1927). Tyumenev took sporadic lessons from Rimsky over some half a dozen years beginning in 1875, following which he decided he was really a painter and enrolled in the Academy of Arts. Later still he became a writer of travelogues, with an emphasis on Russian antiquities, and at last rejoined the Rimsky circle in the guise of librettist. He wrote some additional scenes at Rimsky’s request for the latter’s opera The Tsar’s Bride (1899), otherwise based strictly on a play by Lev Mey, and later furnished the entire libretto of the opera Pan Voyevoda (1903)—of which more later.

[163]

In this last phase Stravinsky may have known Tyumenev slightly, for the latter visited a number of Rimskian jours fixes. But the two—Rimsky’s first private pupil and his last—were far from peers in their pedagogical relationship to their master.

To Tyumenev Rimsky had taught general theoretical subjects, even as he was learning them himself. “While studying harmony and counterpoint,” he wrote much later, “I found it both useful and pleasant to have a pupil in that field, to whom I imparted as systematically as possible the information and devices I had acquired through self-instruction.”" After Rimsky’s “theoretical” skills began to get bruited about a bit he found himself willy-nilly besieged by wealthy dabblers, mostly referred to him by Balakirev, who confined his own private teaching in these early “post-kuchkist” days to giving piano lessons to rich lady amateurs. This host of “Balakirev stringers and hangers-on,” as Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov called them,” did contain a few who went on to make modest musical names for themselves: the nobleman and very highly placed bureaucrat Alexander Taneyev (1850-1918), a distant cousin of the Moscow contrapuntist Sergey Taneyev, who served on every board, contributed heavily to every musical institution, and so was able to get his works (even operas) performed; the minor Belyayevets Alexander Kopilov (1854—1911), who later taught alongside Rimsky-Korsakov at the Court Chapel; another composer, Julius Bleichmann (Yuliy Bleykhman, 1868-1910), who went from Rimsky-Korsakov to Leipzig,

where he studied with Jadassohn and Reinecke and returned a Wagnerian. To these names can be added those of the singer and songwriter Sigismund Blumenfeld (brother of Felix) and the Argentine ambassador Eduardo Garcia Mansilla (1866—1930), who in other postings took lessons from Massenet, d’Indy, and SaintSaéns. None of these were, strictly speaking, composition students; like Balakirev’s ladies of the piano, they mainly studied general theory with Rimsky. In a class by

himself, of course, was the Mozartean prodigy Glazunov, who started his private lessons in 1880 at the age of fifteen and was within a couple of years an esteemed colleague. On his pensioned retirement from the Court Chapel in 1894, when he no longer needed the extra income, Rimsky-Korsakov was only too happy to forswear all this tedious private instruction. Thereafter he went back on this resolve only three times. During the seasons 1900-1901 and 1902-3 he succumbed to the importunings of the first violist of the Mariyinsky Theater orchestra, an Italian named Ottorino Respighi, and gave him a few practical lessons in orchestration. These ex-

ercises made so little impression on Rimsky-Korsakov that he never even mentioned them to Yastrebtsev; but Respighi called himself a Rimsky-Korsakov pupil for the rest of his life.

1. My Musical Life, 167. 2. A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N. A. Rumskty-Korsakov 3:28.

[164] 3 © FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

In 1896 Rimsky thought he had found another Glazunov in the person of Alexander Spendiarov (1871-1928), an Armenian from the Crimea who in Soviet times was elevated to the status of “founder” of his people’s “national” classical

music on the model of traditional Russian orientalism. Spendiarov came to Rimsky-Korsakov at the age of twenty-six after he had already finished the law course at Moscow University. His late start precluded his enrolling in the Conservatory, but he possessed qualities that made him irresistible to Rimsky. Yastrebtsev noted in his entry for 9 May 1896: “We spoke also of a certain young and, apparently, highly talented beginning composer, Spendiarov; Nikolai Andreyevich said he would give him lessons with the greatest enjoyment (his very words), since in

the work of this youth an amazing purity of voice leading, beautifully planned modulations, and even a rather clearly defined feeling for keys already peep through unmistakably.”* To Spendiarov himself Rimsky sent a visiting card the next day, on which he had written, “Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, having examined the compositions of Mr. Spendiarov, has come to the conclusion that the latter has indubitable abilities and also aspires toward correctness of style, and that study should begin forthwith.”* Spendiarov studied with Rimsky until February 1900. The lessons progressed from “strict style” through fugue, sonata form, and rondo, until “free composition” was achieved.” A very eager and obedient student, Spendiarov be-

came a great favorite, not only with Rimsky, but with his teacher's surrogates Lyadov and Glazunov as well. His music was often heard at the jours fixes that Stravinsky attended, and it was always praised. On one such occasion, after a performance of some Spendiarov romances, Rimsky exclaimed: “Now that’s real music, not your Wolf or your Strauss.”° It was at least partly because he gave no sign of being a Wolf or a Strauss that Igor Stravinsky was accepted by Rimsky, who had grown morbidly sensitive to any hint either of rebellion or of condescension in the younger generation, as the sole private pupil of his declining years. The reasons Rimsky had given for taking the twenty-six-year-old Spendiarov on as a pupil apply fully to the twenty-two-year-

old composer of the Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor. By the time Rimsky was ready to sacrifice uncompensated time and energy to the young man’s progress, he was reasonably sure of a return on his investment—both in terms of his pupil’s technical potential and in terms of his stylistic orthodoxy. Stravinsky was dependable. He would “do as it was commanded him” (to paraphrase Rimsky’s remarks 3. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 1:385.

4.G. G. Tigranov, “N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov i A. A. Spendiarov,” in Ginzburg (ed.), N. A. RimskiyKorsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 171.

s. Ibid., 171-72. The history of Spendiarov’s lessons was reconstructed from seven notebooks containing his assignments. 6. January 1908; in Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:462. Yastrebtsev recorded one occasion at which Stravinsky and Spendiarov were both present: the dress rehearsal of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh (3 February 1907).

LESSONS [165]

on his harmony text), believing implicitly that “it would be good.” He was also by far the most technically advanced of Rimsky’s private pupils, having already gone through basic training with Kalafati.

Although regular weekly instruction would not begin until the fall of 1905, Rimsky initiated Stravinsky into the method of instruction that has become so celebrated in the literature—that of giving Stravinsky his own unpublished music to orchestrate—in the summer of 1904, when Stravinsky showed up in Vechasha, the town where the Rimsky-Korsakov clan was vacationing, with the completed piano sonata under his arm. He arrived on 1 August and stayed over two weeks. Yastrebtsev, who was also a guest in Vechasha at the time, reported (23 August) that Igor Fyodorovich was “again shut away pondering the orchestration for winds of the beginning of the Polonaise from Pan Voyevoda.”’ Pan Voyevoda was Rimsky’s thirteenth opera. He had begun it in 1902, was working on it when Stravinsky called on him in Heidelberg, and had just finished it in July 1903, when Stravinsky came again, to Krapachukha, for advice on the first movement of his sonata. The opera was published (by Bessel, not Belyayev) in 1904 (Rimsky was reading proof at the time of Stravinsky’s third summer visit) and first

performed on 3 October of that year at the St. Petersburg Conservatory by the New Opera Company, a private troupe managed by a Georgian impresario named Tsereteli. Further productions took place in Warsaw (12 May 1905) and at the Moscow Bolshoy Theater under Rachmaninoff (27 September 1905). That was all. The Mariyinsky never thought to stage the work, and no wonder. With the possible exception of Servilia (1900), Pan Voyevoda was Rimsky’s weakest opera. Everything about it, from the recitatives to the orchestration, bespoke a fatigued imagination that had long since fallen back on well-practiced routine and cliché. Dedicated to the memory of Chopin, the opera was hardly more than a pretext for pretty Polish dances, hung on a conventionally absurd libretto contrived by former pupil Tyumenev out of the tritest stock elements—thwarted love, tyranny o’erthrown, poison, and revenge—much of it lifted transparently from the libretto of Rimsky’s own Tsar’s Bride, in which, as we have seen, Tyumenev had also had a hand. The music 1s similarly a patchwork of long-established and by now mechanical Russianisms—folk dances, nature painting (including a “Moonlight” intermezzo that shamelessly rehashes a similar spot in the 1880 opera May Night), spooky chromatics, and so on. As for the Polish dances, one would have thought them well worked out of Rimsky’s system in the decade-old Mlada. Two harmonic procedures 1n particular stand out for their quality of routine (in the next chapter we shall see that they are intimately related). One is “thirds rotation” in the harmony, something that Rimsky seemed by now to set in motion 7. Ibid., 311.

[166] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

at the flick of a switch. A stale sequence from the polonaise that Stravinsky orchestrated for his lessons can serve as illustration (Ex. 3.1a). The other device is that of

applying melodic appoggiaturas to an arpeggiated diminished-seventh chord, a procedure that had been wrung thoroughly dry in the operas between Mlada and Kashchey the Deathless (the opera immediately preceding Pan Voyevoda). Kashchey was an evil sorcerer; and sure enough, the embellished diminished-seventh arpeggios make their hackneyed appearance in Pan Voyevoda in the second act, where an evil sorcerer is consulted (Ex. 3.1b). This brief assessment of Pan Voyevoda, harsh though it is, should not be taken as the sort of blanket dismissal of Rimsky-Korsakov as a composer that has become so fashionable in the Stravinsky literature, licensed as it were by Stravinsky’s own belittling remarks in the third chapter of Memories and Commentaries.® Rimsky was

. a greatly talented and original, if notably uneven, writer. The unevenness was the price he paid for his passionately emotional commitment to high standards of professionalism, such as we have investigated in the preceding chapters, and to neurotic fears that any cessation in the pace of his creative work would spell its end.” Rimsky, whose detached self-awareness was one of his most impressive features, was fully conscious of these traits. In his personal copy of Modest Chaikovsky’s biography of his brother Pyotr, which came out in 1903 just as Rimsky was finishing Pan Voyevoda, he marked the following passage from one of Chaikovsky’s letters to Mme von Meck with a “Nota bene” and, in Russian, a marginal “very interesting”: There is not the slightest doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without the warmth of inspiration. The latter is the sort of guest who does not always come at the first call. But meanwhile one must always work, and a true, honorable artist cannot sit arms folded with the excuse that he is indtsposed.

If you await your disposition, and do not go out to meet it halfway, then you will easily fall into lethargy and apathy. One must be patient and have faith, and inspiration will infallibly appear unto him who has been able to overcome his indisposition. ... I think you will not suspect me of boasting, if I tell you that with me such indispositions as | have mentioned above occur very rarely. I attribute this to the fact that I am gifted with patience and have taught myself never to give in to reluctance. I have learned to conquer myself. I am very happy that I have not followed in the footsteps of my Russian confréres, who, suffering from a lack of selfconfidence and an absence of tenacity, prefer at the slightest difficulty to relax and postpone. Because of this, despite their strong gifts, they write so little and so amateurishly.*©

8. See, most recently and viciously, Claudio Spies, “Conundrums, Conjectures, Construals, or, 5 v. 3: The Influence of Russian Composers on Stravinsky,” in Stravinsky Retrospectives, ed. Ethan Haimo and Paul Johnson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 76-140 (see esp. 82-102). 9. See his letter to Nadezhda Zabela of 15 January 1900, in A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N..A. RimsktyKorsakop 3:11.

10. Ibid., 11-12. The italics correspond to passages underlined or commented on by RimskyKorsakov.

LESSONS [167]

EXAMPLE 3.I a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Pan Voyevoda, Polonaise, mm. 110-13, 117-20, vocal parts

omitted

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Minor

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Lento Ge. fs) frit; Ce. ae a ey a eepyeegg ee b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Pan Voyevoda, Act II, mm. 359—6s

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Pan Voyevoda was written completely according to this prescription, as Rimsky’s letters to Kruglikov testify. He wrote to his friend from Heidelberg complaining of fatigue, but also of his inability to stop working on the opera. “You will say to this,” he added, that when good ideas come unbidden, one can just accumulate them until one is rested enough to want to work. But I mustn’t do this: my memory has gone bad; I must develop them a bit right away, jot them down, derive what I can from them then and there—or else they will be forgotten and then there is nothing you can do with them. And if you do manage to recall them and work them up, it will only be with the greatest labor, and it will come out dry in the process. I have experienced this more than once."

When the opera was finished, Rimsky’s evaluation of it was hardly more indulgent than our own: “As to music,” he wrote, “Voyevoda is apparently just as pale and medium a piece (I don’t want to say mediocre) as Servilia.”'” The reason for dwelling on these matters, anent the work on which Stravinsky was set to cut his teeth, should be obvious: the philosophy they embody—of industry, of professionalism, of the nature of inspiration, of the necessity to put oneself in motion by formula rather than not to write at all—was imparted to the pupil along with the formulas themselves and became a permanent fixture of his own esthetic. (Anyone who doubts it has only to read the third chapter of The Poetics of Mustc.) It was the most important lesson Rimsky gave Stravinsky, and perhaps the only one the latter never outgrew. Stravinsky’s professed attitudes toward inspiration and convention are usually touted as anti-Romantic polemics (and as they are set forth in the Poetics and the Chroniques they do invite and to an extent justify the designation). But they were formed at precisely the stage of his development with which we are now concerned, and were administered to him by his teacher. They were in every way a product of the Russian conservatory mentality (pushed further in Rimsky’s case by his positivistic rationalism, of which there will be more to say below) and had only an ex post facto connection with all the French classicists, old and new, who are cited as authorities in the Poetics. Apart from this, what sort of a teacher was Rimsky-Korsakov? Stravinsky’s published testimony is dangerous, much of it having been concocted to distance himself from Rimsky and his world.'* Equally suspect are the numerous unctuous encomia by former pupils that have appeared in the Soviet Union, where Rimsky has 1. Letter of 10 August 1902 (N.S.); in ibid., 5:45. 12. Letter to Kruglikov, 30 September 1902; in ibid., 47. 13. A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov (N. A. Rimskty-Korsakop 3:27), perhaps mistaking Stravinsky’s motive in

his pique, already called the account in the Chroniques a “haughty attempt to discount the role of his teacher in the creation of his original artistic profile.” The discounting became more sweeping and far more explicit in Memories and Commentaries.

LESSONS [160]

been canonized.'* What all reports seem to agree on, though, is that Rimsky’s lessons always took ends for granted and concentrated in detail on technical means, no matter at what level the instruction took place. As Ossovsky recalled, “Nikolai Andreyevich would always say that in art one must know and know how [znat’

t umet’|, and the more you know the more you know how to do, the more you can express in music. This was his deepest conviction.”’> Another Rimskian con-

viction seems to have been the vestigial realist notion that if the short range is properly attended to, the long range will take care of itself. One of the most intriguing recollections of Rimsky’s teaching was that of Reinhold Gliére, who never studied with him (he was a Taneyev pupil from Moscow) but who did occasionally show Rimsky his work. The way he contrasted the approaches of the two masters reveals much: Recalling Taneyev as a teacher, I think he was still and all a bit too demanding toward the work of his pupils. He was especially intransigent in demanding the fulfillment of a precisely defined tonal plan in every work. I remember how he tore my first symphony to shreds: “This you have to change; remove the C-major episode from the development, transpose these themes,” and so on. I was dumbfounded. From then on I avoided showing him my work in progress, but only after a work was published would I submit the score to him. There was a different attitude toward new compositions in the Belyayev circle. Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, with whom I was especially close, never confronted young composers with such categorical demands. Their advice touched more on the substance of the music, the general content, the instrumentation. After meetings with Rimsky-Korsakov I always felt I had been given wings, spiritually refreshed. His advice was laconic and precise.'°

This contrast seems unwittingly revealing of the decisive difference between a view of music in which form and content (or “substance”) were equated and one in which they were dichotomized; that is, between Muscovite “classicism” and post-kuchkist “drobnost’.” It is no wonder that Gli¢re thought Taneyev’s approach unpleasantly demanding; what student wouldn’t? But while Rimsky-Korsakov may have had less exacting ideals where formal unity was concerned, his philosophy of composition was fundamentally no less formalist than Taneyev’s, in ways that resonate with some of the best-known tenets of Stravinsky’s “modernism.” The following passage, from a memoir of Rimsky-Korsakov “as man and pedagogue” by Mikhail Gnesin, could as easily have been a description of Stravinsky:

14. N.A. Rimskiy-Korsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, a volume devoted entirely to RimskyKorsakov as musical educator (ed. Semyon L. Ginzburg), appeared in 1959, unfortunately just a bit too early for Stravinsky, rehabilitated as a “Russian classic” in connection with his 1982 Soviet tour, to have been taken into account. 15. Ginzburg (ed.), N. A. Rimskty-Korsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 191.

16. Gliére, “Vstrechi s belyayevskim kruzhkom,” 69.

[170] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

Underscoring the organic bond between the artistic and the technical bases of the creative process, Rimsky-Korsakov pointed out that artistic form is an indispensable “restraint”: the artist must know how to limit himself. He rejected “raw” emotionality or anything improvisational in creative work, seeing in them only manifestations of dilettantism. “Thus only amateurs compose: mood is all and form is nothing,” he once remarked.’”

Once again we seem uncannily to hear the voice of the author of the Poetics of Music. The co-author of Conversations with Igor Stravinsky was also given to secret paraphrases of the views and aphorisms of his teacher, as in his response to the ques-

tion, “What is theory in musical composition?” “It doesn’t exist,” Stravinsky asserted.'® “In art there is no such thing as theory,” Rimsky had asserted half a century before.'? More valuable than any other Stravinskian testimony to Rimsky’s teaching is the

unique and therefore precious passage in one of the few surviving letters from Stravinsky to his master, in which the pupil warmly expressed a gratitude he later felt the need to qualify. Meanwhile, in a jocular aside, he left us an example of Rimsky’s “precise, laconic” style, revealing an ideal teacher had sought to instill in pupil. “Dear Nikolai Andreyevich,” Stravinsky began, I was terribly glad to get your letter and was also glad once again to be assured of your attitude toward me and toward my labors. This awareness, that you are constantly interested in my compositions, affects me in an amazingly beneficial way, and I feel like working long and hard. Perhaps all this sounds very stilted to you and you will say, “Couldn’t it be any simpler?” [Nel’zya lt poproshche?], but believe

me, I will never find those words of sincerest gratitude that might express it to a sufficient degree.”°

OPUS I: CHRONOLOGY Beginning in the fall of 1905, when he was twenty-three years old, Igor Stravinsky visited Rimsky-Korsakov at home every Wednesday from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. for his

lessons in practical composition and instrumentation.”' On Wednesdays when jours fixes were scheduled, Stravinsky stayed to dinner. This agenda was maintained over the next three “academic” years—that is, for the rest of Rimsky-Korsakov’s 17, M. F Gnesin, “N. A. Rimskiy-Korsakov: pedagog 1 chelovek,” Sovetskaya muzika, 1945, no. » “B. Conv:12/16. 19. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, “O muzikal’nom obrazovanii,” in Muzikal’niye stat’t 1 zametki (1869— 1907), ed. N. N. Rimskaya-Korsakova (St. Petersburg: Tip. M. Stasyulevicha, 1911). 20. Letter of 10 July 1907; in [StrSM:441—42. 21. The exact time is mentioned in Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov’s supplementary “Chronicle” in My Musical Life, 430. In Conversations With Igor Stravinsky, the composer recalled that the lessons “usually lasted a little more than an hour and took place twice a week” (Conv:39/39); but as he gave his period of study with Rimsky as 1903-6, we can only conclude that his memory was doubly inaccurate.

OPUS 1: CHRONOLOGY [171]

life. Although the lessons were private, they were in essence no different from the course of study Rimsky’s Conservatory pupils followed. Stravinsky’s description of his early orchestration assignments tallies precisely with Prokofiev's description of Rimsky’s orchestration class at the Conservatory: the same Beethoven sonatas, Schubert marches, and all the rest.?7 A letter from Rimsky-Korsakov to the French composer and critic Alfred Bruneau, who had been sent to Russia by the French Ministry of Education and Fine Arts on a fact-finding mission and who had asked Rimsky for a description of the Conservatory composition course, gives full details. It is dated 20 January 1902: At the St. Petersburg Conservatory the study of composition is divided into six courses (years), according to the following plan: First year—harmony. Second year—counterpoint; strict and free styles. Third year—fugue; at the same time musical analysis and the study of orchestration. (The orchestration course is led by Mr. Glazunov.) The fourth, fifth, and sixth years are devoted to practical work in composition. Sometimes the better prepared or better equipped students can shorten these three years of study into a single year. The work is distributed thus: Fourth year—practical composition in small forms, including piano sonata. | Fifth year—symphony and chamber music. Sixth year—vocal music, opera, and oratorio.?*

Stravinsky, the best prepared of all Rimsky’s private pupils, had already had the equivalent of the first three years of study (and more) with Akimenko and Kalafati,

and then a final year in which he had written a successful piano sonata, corresponding to the assignment in which the fourth Conservatory year traditionally culminated. And so it was precisely according to plan that when he began taking his formal lessons with Rimsky, he should have embarked at once on the composition of a symphony. In a way the Symphony in E-flat Major (op. 1), Stravinsky’s first “public” composition, could be regarded as his last pre-Rimskian piece, for he began sketching it immediately upon finishing (or abandoning) the “Mushrooms” song. Indeed, the earliest notations for it are found on the last outside page of the unbound fascicle that 1s otherwise completely devoted to the composing draft of the song, completed 26 December 1904. So it is reasonable to assume that these early sketches were made at or near the beginning of the year 1905. The next musical document relating to the symphony is a complete particell (short score), laid out generally in four staves, but often expanded to five or six. 22. Conv:39/39; cf. Sergei Prokofiev, Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer’s Memoir, ed. David. H. Appel, trans. Guy Daniels (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), 182-83. 23. Ginzburg (ed.), N.A. Rimskty-Korsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 247-48.

[172] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

This manuscript is now housed in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris (MS. 16,333).-* The preparation of such drafts was generally the last stage of composition

before orchestration. The one for Stravinsky’s symphony was written out in Ustilug in the summer of 1905, immediately following his graduation from the university. The four movements are dated 18 July, 21 July, 4 August, and 24 September, respectively. These dates, incidentally, provide an answer to the question of why Stravinsky called his symphony “opus r’ and the vocal suite The Faun and the Shep-

, herdess “opus 2,” even though the suite was finished over a year earlier than the symphony. The particell reveals that opus 1 was completed in draft form before opus 2 was even begun. From the speed with which the particell was prepared, it is evident that (particularly in the case of the second movement) the dates are those of copying the score, not necessarily of composition. The particell represents a final collation of sketch work that was evidently done over a span of as many as eight or nine months. In any event, the symphony was complete but for the orchestration, or so the

composer thought, by the time he began his weekly lessons with RimskyKorsakov. But the published symphony differs greatly from the particell, showing that Rimsky not only oversaw the orchestration, but also prompted a radical revision. Comparison of the two versions of the symphony will therefore give us a glimpse of Rimsky the teacher in action. We will be able to tell just what parts or aspects of Stravinsky’s score he accepted or rejected (in some instances through his own penciled indications in the particell), and also what it took to satisfy him. In some cases it will be possible to extrapolate the nature of Rimsky’s advice to his pupil and the remedies he may have prescribed. The one movement that Rimsky accepted immediately and more or less 1n toto was the second, which, as in the 1904 piano sonata, was the Scherzo. Only two passages in the particell were fundamentally altered in the published version (one

of them being the coda), and the whole was transposed down a half step from B major to B-flat when it was orchestrated, presumably for the sake of a more “classical” relationship to the key of the outer movements (and also, perhaps, to make execution easier: Rimsky had made a similar adjustment when he revised his own First Symphony in 1884, transposing it up a semitone from E-flat minor to E minor). Not only was the Scherzo the least revised, but it was also the first to be orchestrated, Rimsky evidently having given Stravinsky an immediate green light. The numerous and detailed indications of instrumentation in the particell (there is nothing comparable for the other movements) probably reflect an early stage of 24. This manuscript has been confused (P&D:608) with the holograph score of the symphony, now

in the Leningrad Public Library, and misidentified as a piano-duet reduction (Charles M. Joseph, Stravinsky and the Piano [Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983], 40). Although often on four staves, the draft is in no sense for “four hands.” The doublings and distribution of materials among the staves make this clear.

OPUS 1: CHRONOLOGY [173]

work with Rimsky. The full autograph score of the Scherzo (now at the State Public Library, St. Petersburg, in the Rimsky-Korsakov Archive) is dated “St. Petersburg, Autumn 1906.” The other three movements were heavily revised in the process of scoring them. The most extensively rewritten of all, the third (slow) movement, was the next to be orchestrated. The full autograph score is dated “St. Petersburg, Winter 1907.”

The outer movements were completed in full score at the Nosenko estate in | Ustilug in the summer of 1907. The first movement, by a fluke, was completed on 18 July, the second anniversary of its particell.?> Among the reasons for the delay in the orchestration of the symphony were Stravinsky’s marriage, the birth of his first son, and the building of his house in Ustilug. Another reason was that he interrupted work on the symphony in 1906 to compose The Faun and the Shepherdess as a wedding present to his wife. A third was Stravinsky’s enthusiastic sketching of yet another work, the Scherzo fantastique (op. 3), on which he embarked in June 1907. And even in the last stages of work on the symphony Stravinsky still found it necessary to make fundamental revisions, as he wrote somewhat sheepishly to his teacher on 18 June 1907, adding that he hoped to complete the first movement within two weeks—a goal that, as we know, he failed to reach. The letter goes on to reveal that the full score of the fourth movement, which bears only the approximate date “Summer 1907,” was in fact the last to be completed; as of 18 June Stravinsky had not even begun to orchestrate it.”° Before proceeding to a detailed examination of the symphony it is necessary to clear up a further point of confusion concerning its chronology. In Memories and Commentaries Stravinsky gave the date of the symphony’s first performance as 27 April 1907, adding, “I remember the date because my Uncle Ielatchitch presented me with a medal commemorating it.”?” But as we have just seen, by April 1907 only two movements of the symphony had been orchestrated. The fact is, Stravinsky did remember the date of his semiprivate orchestral debut correctly (though he gave it in the “New Style”), but he did not remember what was performed. It was The Faun and the Shepherdess. The evidence is a brief review that appeared in the newspaper Peterburgskiy listok on 15 April 1907 (0.8.), by the critic Vladimir Konstantinovich Frolov (1850-1915), an old admirer of Fyodor Stravinsky, who had been delighted, the night before, to see the singer’s son make good.”* But then again, Stravinsky’s memory may not have played him entirely false. Yastrebtsev recorded (18 April 1907) that Rimsky-Korsakov “presented [Stravinsky] with the orchestral score of his ‘Musical Pictures’ to The Tale of Tsar Saltan on the occasion of the performance of his, that is Stravinsky’s, compositions for orchestra, 14-16 [27— 25. Dates on the full score are given in Beletsky and Blazhkov, “Spisok,” in Dialogt, 376. 26. For the letter, see [StrSM:440—41. 27. M&C:56—57/58. A photograph of the medal can be seen in SelCorrlI:448. 28. Quoted in A. Kuznetsov, “V zerkale russkoy kritiki,” Sovetskaya muzika, 1982, no. 6, 69.

[174] 3 © FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

29, N.S.] April 1907.””” So it seems that more than one piece was played, on more than one date. The only possible candidates for performance on 16 (29) April were the Scherzo and, possibly, the Largo of the Symphony in E-flat—at most, then, half the symphony.

SOURCES, MODELS, REVISIONS Since the movements of the Symphony in E-flat were drafted in one order and revised in another, a strictly chronological account of its creative and stylistic evo-

lution would be confusing. Therefore the survey that follows will proceed in a straightforwardly sequential way, starting with the grandly rhetorical first movement, conceived, like so many nineteenth-century symphonic allegros in E-flat, in the spirit of Beethoven’s Erotca.

At the very outset we encounter what was evidently the biggest stumbling block, for no other passage in the symphony was as frequently, as extensively, or as agonizingly worked over as was the opening “group.” The early sketch on the back of “Mushrooms” (Fig. 3.1a; transcribed in Ex. 3.2a) shows the first theme as originally conceived—a lilting melody, full of Schumannesque hemiola syncopations (the “Rhenish” Symphony!), and so far from the final version that without the intermediary evidence of the particell it would be virtually impossible to prove, or even guess, that the one stands behind the other. The opening of the particell (Fig. 3.1b; transcribed in Ex. 3.2b) incorporates a typically Glazunovian motivic rhythm

in syncopes. The model may have been the first movement of Glazunov’s Sixth Symphony, for Stravinsky changed his original meter signature (4/4) to accord with Glazunov’s unconventionally expressed cut time (2/2 instead of the more usual { ). In all other essentials, particularly as regards harmonic progression and motivic sequence, the version in the particell is faithful to the “Mushrooms” draft through the thirty-third measure—and with what flat-footed result! It was a serious miscalculation to turn the neutral arpeggiations of the early sketch into so sharply profiled a rhythmic motive. Like a stutter, it deflects attention away from the underlying harmonic rhythm onto the short-breathed reiterations at the surface. Nor do the overarticulated half-cadences (mm. s—6, 15—16) help the momentum. The whole effect has become static and labored, as Stravinsky must have realized. As late as the summer of 1907, in the last stages of work on the symphony, he was still dickering with his troublesome Ansatz, “mending what seems poor to me in the opening of the first movement,” as he wrote to Rimsky on to July, a week before completing the final draft.*° What he ended up with, undeniably an enormous improvement, is shown in Example 3.2c. 29. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:422; “14-16 April” is the date inscribed on the medal (see n. 27 above). 30. 1StrSM:442.

SOURCES, MODELS, REVISIONS [175]

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the Glazunov Eighth (to jump ahead for one moment) was the final coda of the last

movement. Again, it was an emergency patch to replace an unsatisfactory prior draft, one so conventional and empty there is no point in quoting it. The replacement copies Glazunov in every particular—even down to his triple meter, achieved in Stravinsky’s cut-time piece by the use of full-measure triplets. Most conspicuously borrowed of all, perhaps, is the scoring. Only full-score pages, therefore, will do this particular comparison justice (Ex. 3.6).

The reason Stravinsky resorted to Glazunov’s Eighth only at the doctoring phase, rather than in the original process of composition, was simple. An almost exact contemporary of his own particell draft, Glazunov’s score was available for plunder only at the long-delayed stage of revision and orchestration.*! Recourse to it was inevitable, perhaps even mandated: from the moment of its creation it had become Rimsky-Korsakov’s favorite symphony and the model of models for his pupils. One of them recalled encountering Rimsky in September 1905 and being told, “P’ve just come back from [Glazunov’s dacha at] Ozerki; I heard the scherzo from the Eighth Symphony. What a remarkable work, what astonishing mastery, and how new and fresh it all is!”°* The symphony was unveiled at a RimskyKorsakov jour fixe on 14 December 1905, when Glazunov played it to an assemblage that included three Stravinskys: Igor, Gurty, and their cousin Catherine Nosenko, by then Igor’s fiancée.** The next week the work was discussed at the dinner table following Stravinsky’s orchestration lesson.** It was played again at RimskyKorsakov’s (this time in a four-hands arrangement) on 4 January 1906, at a large gathering to honor Stasov on what would be his last (eighty-second) birthday.*° The first public performance took place at a Russian Symphony (Belyayev) concert in December 1906. Stravinsky, perhaps needless to say, was present on all these occasions. He even played the symphony himself (four-hands with another RimskyKorsakov pupil) at Rimsky’s request at his teacher’s last birthday party (6 March 1908) .3°

But Glazunov’s was not the only eminent Belyayevets symphony that acted as midwife to Stravinsky’s. There was also the Symphony in C Minor, op. 1, by Sergey Taneyev. Completed in 1898, the work was published in 1901 and won the Belyayev-sponsored Glinka Prize in November 1904. Its moment of greatest prestige, then, immediately preceded the drafting of Stravinsky’s symphony. Stravinsky’s close acquaintance with the piece is attested by Yastrebtsev, who reported 31. Glazunov’s symphony was composed in the summer and early fall of 1905: the first movement was completed on 30 July and the last on 18 October. 32. L. B. Nikol’skaya, ed., “Vospominaniya M. O. Shteynberga,” in Ginzburg (ed.), N..A. RimsktyKorsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 208-9. 33. Yastrebtsev, Vaspominantya 2:368.

34. Ibid. 35. Nikol’skaya, “Vospominaniya Shteynberga,” in Ginzburg (ed.), N.A. Rimskiy-Korsakov i muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 208. 36. Yastrebtsev, Vaspominantya 2:484.

[186] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

that “I. Stravinsky and N. I. Richter played the First Symphony [sc: the work ts now known as the Fourth] of S. Taneyev” four-hands at Rimsky-Korsakov’s on 9 November 1905.°” This was after Stravinsky’s symphony had been completed in particell; but any doubts as to whether Stravinsky knew Taneyev’s symphony in time to gather its fruits for his own may be quelled by comparing the second themes of the two first movements (Ex. 3.7). Stravinsky’s is quoted not from the published score but from the particell, which shows the resemblance more clearly, since its beat level, like Taneyev’s, 1s the quarter note. In the published version, Stravinsky’s note values were doubled—no mere notational change either, but an actual halving of the tempo. This is one of the most curious features of Stravinsky’s first-movement revision: note-value alterations like this are common, and occur both as augmentations and as diminutions. Some, but by no means all, of these shifts are indicated in the particell—in both Stravinsky’s and Rimsky’s hands—with phrases like “vdvoye shtrye” (twice as slow) and “vdvoye skoréye” (twice as fast). Sometimes Stravinsky was undecided how best to vary the excessively even pace of the movement. A case in point is the beginning of the development, in which fragments of the first and second themes are brought into juxtaposition. As Fig. 3.1d shows, Stravinsky’s first idea was to augment the note values of the second theme, as he had done in the exposition. He indicated half notes above the staff in the third measure shown in the figure. Rimsky-Korsakov crossed

them out and replaced them with the Russian word tak (thus), equivalent in this

context to “stet.” On the free top staff of the page an alternate solution was found—to diminish the note values of the first theme, thus achieving the same relationship between the speeds of the first- and second-theme fragments, meanwhile doubling the general pace. (Rimsky-Korsakov always pressed for concision:

three out of the four movements of Stravinsky’s symphony were significantly abridged on revision.) The revised passage is given in Example 3.8a; the close resemblance of the first theme in diminution to an analogous passage in the development section of the first movement from Glazunov’s Sixth is worth noting (Ex. 3.8b; for echoes of Glazunov’s imitations, cf. Ex. 3.4b). But to return to Taneyev: it was his symphony that provided Stravinsky with a model for the contrapuntally saturated texture that pervades his first movement. In his C-minor Symphony, a cyclic work obviously beholden, both in general and in certain particulars, to the Franck Symphony, Taneyev provided many examples of the vertical superimposition of themes—particularly in the perorational finale, where themes from all movements come back in contrapuntal mosaics like those in Franck’s or in Dvorak’s New World. In the first movement of Taneyev’s symphony, such contrapuntal devices form the basis of the development section, and so they do in Stravinsky’s as well. The 37. Ibid., 363.

SOURCES, MODELS, REVISIONS [187]

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[194] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

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(continued )

a

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EXAMPLE 3.20

a. Symphony in E-flat Major, IV, mm. 44—s50

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we eOPri er eererie-rrer ir

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4 Sods 1 Te A Te _

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Vya-net kra-sa mo - ya vtyazh-koy ne - vo - le, chto v pozd-nyu-yu 0 - sen’ [My beauty will entrap [him], as in late autumn. . . ]

Fifth Symphony has gone this long without comment (incredible, too, that Rimsky let it pass). The near-identity of the two prestos extends beyond the actual thematic material to encompass the bass line, the orchestration, and even the startling harmonic shift at the climax (Ex. 3.21a—b; the harmonic shift is labeled “NB”). As already noted (see Ex. 3.6), Stravinsky replaced the continuation that had followed this passage in the particell with a second coda, lifted from Glazunows Eighth as arrantly as the Presto had been lifted from Chaikovsky’s Fifth. This latter coda is

introduced with another Glazunovian augmentation/diminution counterpoint based on a Borodinesque pentatonic idea (Ex. 3.21¢), and it is followed by a final appropriation from Chaikovsky for the last cadential flourish (Ex. 3.21d—e). Thus Stravinsky ended his symphony, and began his career, with arms raised in salute to the apostles of Russian “symphonism,” to borrow the Russian word

for it. Attempted denials of this annoying fact, to which we have become so

SOURCES, MODELS, REVISIONS [219]

EXAMPLE 3.21

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accustomed in the wake of Conversations, are as idle as they are implausible. “Every

writer starts off as a compendium, or revised anthology,” Wilfrid Sheed put it neatly in answer to similar disingenuous disclaimers on behalf of Hemingway.”’ Nor will it do to complain that, by the standards of a later time and another place, music such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s or Glazunov’s “may be more accurately judged a

deterrent, rather than an encouragement, to emulative efforts.”°? (Sheed: “It is probably commoner than not for great writers to be influenced by nobodies, the first food they eat.”) Stravinsky’s Symphony in E-flat was an oath of fealty to figures who were far from nobodies where he came from, and early audiences only too happily received the work in that spirit.

RECEPTION The first complete performance of the symphony was given on Tuesday evening, 22 January 1908, by the Court Orchestra (Pridvorniy orkestr), the same organization that had given a preliminary hearing to the inner movements the year before. This orchestra, supported by the Imperial Chancel (headed by Alexander Taneyev, Rim-

sky’s pupil), had been formed in 1882 as the Court Musicians’ Corps (Pndvorniy muzikantskty khor) to entertain Tsar Alexander III and his entourage on Sundays and holidays at the nine-hundred-room Gatchina Palace, some twenty-five miles southwest of St. Petersburg, where the tsar had set up his permanent residence in the early years of his reign. Originally staffed almost entirely by uniformed cavalry musicians, the orchestra was expanded in 1886 to full symphonic complement. In 1896 (under Nikolai IT) it became a civil service rather than a military organization. Only 1n 1902 did the orchestra begin giving public concerts in the capital on a regular basis. This was not an ordinary concert series, such as those of the Russian Musical Society or the Belyayev organization. Public concerts, just a sideline for this purely functional body, were initiated as a kind of public service by the conductor, Hugo Wahrlich (1856-1922), a German-born violinist who had headed the Court Orchestra since 1888. The announcement of the orchestra’s first season precisely pinpoints its concerts’ special character: Over the twenty years of its existence, the Court Orchestra has amassed a noteworthy musical library, consisting at the present time of 6,700 items of music literature old and new, of various styles, genres, and nationalities. This library, continually accumulating novelties, contains many items that are unknown or little known in Russia. On the assumption that many in the musical world are interested in novelties of musical literature but are not able to obtain the scores, much less hear them

51. New York Review of Books, 12 June 1986, 12.

52. Spies, “Conundrums,” 104.

[222] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

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a. The Faun and the Shepherdess, Ul, fig.

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b. Musorgsky, “The Billy Goat,” m. 14

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a. The Faun and the Shepherdess, Xl, fig.

dad Allegro moderato

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This plan is evident first of all in the keys of the three songs: B-flat major, C minor, and B major, respectively. The choice of tonalities may have been symbolic: the faun and the shepherdess meet halfway between their own respective tonics. The modulatory circuitry within each song, dictated and justified by the vagaries of the text, has already been described with regard to the first and most successful of them. The others are less successful owing to the obtrusive final modulations

back to their respective opening keys. Either Stravinsky did not know that there were reputable precedents by 1906 for songs that followed their texts into remote keys and stayed there (such as Mahler's Lieder eines fabrenden Gesellen, already a decade old, in which the open-ended tonal structure seems to have been meant as a reflection of the title characters wayfaring), or else—very likely— Rimsky-Korsakov did not permit him such a thing. But withal, Stravinsky’s early Wagnerianism was real and conscious, and should

be documented, if only because the composer promoted himself in later life as “Wagner’s Antichrist.”*' We have already noted a letter from Findeyzen to Fyodor Stravinsky in which the latter's son is amiably characterized as “the Wagnerite musician.” That much need not be taken too seriously, since the Wagnerite in question had as yet composed nothing. But admiration for Wagner was much intensified under Rimsky-Korsakov’s tutelage. This fact might occasion surprise in those who know only enough Russian music history to be aware of the mighty kuchka’s resistance to the German master. But that resistance, like the mighty kuchka itself, was a thing of the dimly remembered and largely repudiated past by the time Stravinsky came on the scene. The turning point had been the Ring, first performed in Russia in 1888. In his memoirs, the minor Belyayevets Joseph Wihtol pinpointed the change with amusing precision: The Russians prepared for the Ring, zealously studying the score. Just then, on one of the darkest early mornings in December [1888] or January [1889], when... the [Conservatory] faculty had gathered before going to their classes, RimskyKorsakov came flying in with quick long strides, a fat score under his arm. “Anatoly Konstantinovich, Anatoly Konstantinovich!” [he called to Lyadov], “Look at this (opening to some page in the score, pesante)—this is damn good!” [Da ved’ éto kho-ro-sho!| From that moment on, Wagner was not begrudged the honor due him, even if he never succeeded in toppling Musorgsky from his pedestal.”

81. For the term, see Craft, “My Life With Stravinsky,” 6 (in the reprint version, “Stravinsky: A Centenary View,” in Present Perspectives, it appears on p. 220). The most systematic professions of Stravin-

sky’s anti-Wagnerianism are in the description of a (perhaps apocryphal) visit to Bayreuth in Chroniques de ma vie (An Autolnography, 38-40) and the third chapter of The Poetics of Music.

82. Yakov Vitolin, “Iz vospominaniy Yazepa Vitola,” in Ginzburg (ed.), N.A. Rimskty-Korsakov i

muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 221. .

OPUS 2. [247]

The effect of this discovery on Rimsky-Korsakov’s work was immediate: his very

next work for the stage, Mlada, was in all kinds of ways (some of them not untinged with naiveté) a veritable Russian Rimg opera. Continued study of Wagner led to a crisis and an eventual transformation of Rimsky’s approach to orchestration and harmony. (We will examine the harmonic implications in the next chapter, for they form an important part of the background to Stravinsky’s modernism.) Yastrebtsev chronicled many enthusiastic discussions of the Rimg within the Rimsky-Korsakov circle, in a good number of which Stravinsky, who regularly attended Wagner performances with his teacher, took part. Here are a few of them, as it were covering the whole Ring, beginning precisely with the period of The Faun’s gestation: (25 January 1906): I chatted with Nikolai Andreyevich and Igor Stravinsky about Das Rheingold and especially about how that E-flat introduction grows and grows, and then, having reached forte, passes to A-flat major. (14 March 1908): Went to Die Walkire. In the intermission before the third act I saw Nikolai Andreyevich from afar, talking very animatedly about something with Stravinsky. Could I then have dreamed that on this day R-K had heard that creation of genius, the “Magic Fire,” so full of boundless beauty and poetry, for the last time in his life? (29 March 1908): Went to Stegfned. In the first intermission I dropped in on Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky in their box. Igor Fyodorovich and I shared our delight in the first act of that opera, a work of genius. (4 April 1908): At Gétterdammerung | saw Rimsky-Korsakov from afar. In the intermission, when I looked in on him in his box, no one was there but Volodya [Vladimir] Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai Andreyevich and Stravinsky having gone out for a smoke.*®*

Of possibly Rimg-derived harmony (heavily filtered though it may have been through a Korsakovian prism) there is only one example in The Faun and the Shepherdess worth quoting. It comes at the very end of the last song (Ex. 3.31). The thing to focus on 1s the tritone play of the faun leitmotif under the F-sharp (dominant) pedal. Half a century after the fact, the composer remarked of The Faun, in a well-turned phrase that has become a byword in the Stravinsky literature, that it sounds “like Stravinsky not at all, or only through thickly bespectacled hindsight.”8* And that is perfectly true. But with spectacles in place, the eye leaps to this passage above all others, for reasons that will be best explained in the next chapter.

84. Conv:26/27. ) 83. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:374, 487, 490.

[248] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

EXAMPLE 3.31 The Faun and the Shepherdess, III, end

a piacere a tempo

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STRUGGLES The performance and publication history of The Faun and the Shepherdess, well documented in surviving letters and reviews, is interesting, since it affords us a rare glimpse of Stravinsky as one aspiring young unknown among others, struggling for local recognition in the years before he was so suddenly and irrevocably launched by Diaghilev on the world stage. It also gives us our closest view of the quasi-filial relationship that obtained between Stravinsky and his teacher. Soon after the first, semiprivate audition of the suite in April 1907, Stravinsky submitted it for publication (it seems at Alexander Siloti’s suggestion) to the firm of Julius Zimmerman (1856-1922), Balakirev’s publisher. He described the outcome of this venture in a letter to Rimsky-Korsakov, written from Ustilug on 18 June 1907, of which the first three paragraphs are given below in full. I want to write you a few lines about my domestic circumstances, my work, and my first failure. Pll begin with the last, since it’s a longer story than the rest. What happened was that about three weeks ago I received a letter from Zimmerman junior, in which he apologized a great deal for making me wait so long for an answer, but the reason was his father, etc., etc. Then came the worst—I quote from the letter directly: “As we have a backlog of orchestral pieces in press, my father, unfortunately, cannot use the manuscript you have graciously submitted. But if you have perchance any piano pieces, then be so kind as to send them for examination and possible acquisition.” He sweetened the bitter pill in the guise of possible acquisition and publication of piano pieces of some kind and that was that. Q.E.D. A week later I receive the ill-fated “manuscript.” I wanted at first to write him straightaway and give him a piece of my mind, but I decided to cool off, and a few days later, before the suite came back, I wrote a tactful letter in which I proposed that they buy the whole suite from me outright, both the orchestral score and the vocal score, and print just the vocal score, and as for the full score, that they might print it when their orchestral backlog subsides. If he doesn’t agree to even this, then that will prove I am right about the bitter pill. Then, since Siloti has asked me about it, I will inform him, for he has promised in that case never to recommend anyone’s works to Zimmerman again. Up to now there has been no answer, although at least two weeks have gone by since I sent my reply. What should I do if I get no answer at all? Perhaps you can advise me what to do. I will be very grateful to you.®°

Rimsky’s reply, like all his correspondence with Stravinsky, was left behind in Ustilug to perish in 1914, but we know from his correspondence with Nikolai Artsibushev, his successor on the Belyayev Executive Board, that he took immediate steps on behalf of Stravinsky’s suite, which testifies not only to his feelings toward a pupil in distress, but also to his regard for the composition itself (he did nothing comparable, after all, for the Symphony in E-flat) and his evident convic85. IStrSM:440.

[250] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

tion that it fully met Belyayevets standards. Rimsky demanded that The Faun and the Shepherdess be included on a Russian Symphony program the following season and then be published by Edition Belaieff. Artsibushev wrote (12 July 1907) that, Glazunov having agreed, all that was necessary was to inform Stravinsky and get from him the score, “or at least the titles of the movements.”®° He asked RimskyKorsakov for Stravinsky’s summer address. Rimsky, however, requested Artsibushev’s permission to inform Stravinsky himself, since “he will be unspeakably glad. I think that he might get away without submitting the score in August, since Alexander Konstantinovich [Glazunov] has seen it and can testify along with me that it actually exists in full readiness for performance. Stravinsky also has the orchestral parts; perhaps a few more need to be added.”®” Rimsky-Korsakov wrote Stravinsky as he had promised, and he was not wrong in predicting his pupil’s reaction to the news. “Dear Nikolai Andreyevich,” wrote Stravinsky, “Yesterday I received your letter with its super-flattering and superjoyous news. I exult! In my thoughts I bow low to my benefactors, and to you, dear Nikolai Andreyevich, especially.”®®

Fortunately for us, Stravinsky immediately wrote to his mother about his good fortune, summarizing for her not only the letter just received, but also the letter Rimsky had sent in response to his first plea for advice: N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov has just informed me that this winter, in the Russian Symphony Concerts (of which there are to be two this season, and will take place at the Conservatory) my suite The Faun and the Shepherdess will be performed. That is really great, and now I can be a very proud little lad (for a much nicer reason than the proud lad in the story) and so I will stand up straight to the delight of one and all and hold my nose in the air, though I will probably not go around in a velveteen waistcoat and lacquered boots. But that’s not all. Nikolai Andreyevich writes as follows: The suite will be performed first by the Court Orchestra, then by the Russian Symphony, and after that we will see about publishing it. In his first letter he wrote me that I should kiss Zimmerman good-bye and publish with Belyayev when possible. Thus, connecting these two references to publication, I

. dare think that my suite will find itself a sponsor in one of the Belyayevtsi. Nikolai Andreyevich cannot decide this matter himself, unfortunately, since he is no longer a member of the committee, but sweet old Lyadov is, and he is sympathetic to me (as I am to him four times over, besides which I adore him) and he in all probability is the one who arranged the performance of the suite for me, since he is very “pleased with it.”®°

On the last point Stravinsky was mistaken; Glazunov (so often portrayed as Stravinsky’s enemy), not Lyadov, was his benefactor. Also, Stravinsky had evi86. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Polnoye sobrantye sochinenty: literaturniye proizvedeniya i perepiska 7:355. 87. Ibid., 355-56 (dated Lyubensk, 14 July 1907).

88. IStrSM:442; the letter is undated. 89. IStrSM:443 (6 August 1907). The “proud lad” remains unidentified.

STRUGGLES [251]

dently (and most curiously) underestimated Rimsky-Korsakov’s continuing power and prestige within the Belyayev committee, even though he was no longer officially a member of it. For it is clear that Stravinsky’s “sponsor” was none other than his loving teacher, and that the performance and publication of Stravinsky’s suite under the Belyayev aegis were Rimsky’s idea and were undertaken at his initiative. The publication of the vocal score in 1908 was Stravinsky’s debut in print. (Ironically enough, the full score was held in abeyance, as Stravinsky had proposed to Zimmermann, and was issued only after Stravinsky had become unexpectedly

famous.) As it turned out, except for his tiny funerary prelude in memory of Rimsky-Korsakov, The Faun would be the only Stravinsky composition ever performed at a Russian Symphony concert.

, But that was hardly to be predicted. Rimsky-Korsakov having gotten him in, ~ Stravinsky could only have looked forward to a long and comfortable association with the guild showcase. It was the kind of creative sinecure to which all the Belyayevtsi aspired. It is perhaps worth a reminder at this point, then, that the occasion for Stravinsky’s “exultation” and his preening to his mother was hardly a prestigious one from any standpoint outside the Belyayev guild itself. The Russian Symphony Concerts, as we know, had by 1906 sunk very low in public esteem and

attendance. But the performance and the publication did mean full acceptance by : his teachers professional peer group, and at this point Stravinsky could have wanted nothing more. It was his reward for docile submission and obedience to a set of received principles and values, very much as Cherepnin described the process in the memoirs quoted in Chapter 1. Far more than the Symphony 1n E-flat, which charmed its early hearers with its bodrost’ whatever their reservations may otherwise have been, The Faun and the Shepherdess was received along lines suggested by the circumstances just observed. It seemed, like most products of the Belyayev hothouse, to lack a distinctive musical personality—or rather, it displayed all too clearly the drab collective personality of the Belyayev artel’. Its gentle pastel-colored lyricism (especially next to the garish colors of the heavily scored symphony) gave rise to complaints about its “illdefined musical content” when the two works were presented side by side.”° Nor could Pushkin lovers forgive Stravinsky his clumsy adaptation of the poem or his naive treatment of it. Karatigin, reviewing the Court Orchestra program of 22 January 1908, had this to say about the symphony’s companion piece: In the suite Faun and Shepherdess (text by Pushkin) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, the instrumental accompaniment is very interestingly worked out. In each of the three movements (The Shepherdess, The Faun, The River) there are many beautiful episodes of a programmatic character. Everywhere there is excellent technique and good knowledge of the orchestra. The vocal part is weaker. ... The melodic design is sometimes rather pale and undercharacterized. But the biggest 90. Novoye vremya, 24. January 1908; quoted in Kuznetsov, “V zerkale russkoy kritiki,” 69.

[252] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

transgression in the whole suite is the absence of style. In Stravinsky’s decorative music there is not a trace of that delightful naiveté, that coquettish frivolity which Pushkin’s verse exudes. One feels at all times an inner disharmony between the text and the music.”?

The anonymous RMG review of the Belyayev premiére (16 February 1908), probably by Findeyzen or Ossovsky, was more detailed. The symphony was not there to deafen the critic’s ear. The performance, by the Mariyinsky Theater orchestra under Felix Blumenfeld’s baton, was a fully rehearsed one, not a sloppy Court Orchestra run-through. And yet the verdict hardly differed. One has to take a certain prejudice into account. Association with the Russian Symphony Concerts already entailed a stigma, but on this occasion there was an additional handicap. The concert at which The Faun and the Shepherdess was performed was supposed to have included as well the long-awaited premiére of Scriabin’s Poéme de Vextase, but the printed parts were not ready in time. The reviewer

devoted an inordinate amount of space at the outset of the review to grumbling about this failing and to raillery of a familiar sort at the expense of the Belyayev enterprise, which apparently could get its act together only on behalf of nonentities and debutants, not on behalf of its greatest star.?* In truth, the program as it finally took shape was not a very interesting one to review. The Belyayev board fell back on the tried and true: Borodin’s First Symphony, three Musorgsky songs in new Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrations (they were sung by Yelizaveta Petrenko [1880~1951], who was Stravinsky’s soloist as well), and an early tone poem by Glazunov, The Sea (Morye, op. 28). The other premiére on the program was a pair of orchestral excerpts from Le cog d’or (the Introduction and the Wedding March),

which Rimsky-Korsakov had grudgingly allowed as a replacement for the Scriabin. Stravinsky thus made his real debut (if we discount the shabby Court Orchestra readings) at a dispiritingly retrospective neo-kuchkist affair, the sort that justified the Belyayev concerts’ reputation as “the most conservative musical insti-

tution in St. Petersburg.” In any case, here is what the reviewer for St. Petersburg’s music journal of record had to say about [gor Stravinsky’s debut as a composer before a paying audience. It is a faithful record of the first impression the young man made on the Russian musical world at large. The composer has approached this theme with a seriousness that befits his tender

| age, and therefore Pushkin’s piece is deprived by the music of its delightful frivolity—that is to say, its character has suffered a fundamental alteration. This is in itself no reproach. A more substantial shortcoming 1s the fact that the spirit and 91. Stolichnaya pochta, 25 January [7 February] 1908, 6. 92. There was some Justice in these strictures. The Rimsky-Korsakov/Artsibushev correspondence shows that the Russian Symphony Concerts board was eager to sell the first performance rights for the Poéme de Vextase to Siloti but was dissuaded by Rimsky. In the end Scriabin’s symphony was given its remiére in New York (10 December 1908) under Modest Altshuler. The eventual Russian premiere, in january 1909, was at a “musical novelties” reading by the Court Orchestra under Wahrlich.

STRUGGLES [253]

character of such a subject would have come most clearly to the fore in graceful melody; but the composer approached melody in altogether too severe a way. He is not concerned with giving the melodic lines individuality, but is satisfied with a fairly faceless, though lyric, declamation. The composition is very well developed—we would even say too well, for in this gold-star [ pyatibal’noy| elaboration and finish one still senses the diligent sweat of a gifted pupil. A feeling for form, apparently not only innate but beautifully well bred, has been brought to fruition in this young author. There 1s not the slightest diffuseness, not the slightest excess. All that needs to be said is said neatly, precisely, distinctly. The orchestration is very musical, and on it, as on everything else, there 1s a stamp of sober restraint, perhaps, at present, of caution. No empty rhetoric, no banality either, and one can applaud that (and the author was in fact applauded amicably). In view of the aforementioned severity toward melody—a severity that has vouchsafed a distinct melodic narrative but removed its passion, its distinctive tone—the center of musical gravity 1s transferred to the accompaniment, and the latter goes along in a series of lightly and harmoniously shifting scenes. Of these scenes, some are not only successful but artistic. And the most successful of all seemed to us to be the concluding episode of the entire suite (“The river her grave... No! Lila is saved”). The author has really “found” something here, created a musical image that is truly suggestif.”°

This review slights the first song, which seems in spite of everything a little gem

(perhaps because its inspiration was spontaneous and rooted in the composer's own emotional life). By the time the suite was over, no doubt the piquant whole tones of the second and third song had erased it from the reviewers memory. On balance, though, there is no gainsaying the justice of his faint praise for the suite and for its well-behaved composer. It was aristocratic work, the work of a musical dvoryanin. But it was clearly, too, the work of a composer looking gingerly over his shoulder at authorities great and small, one whose esthetic was governed by “shalt nots” and whose first thought was obedience. In fine, it was the work of a cardcarrying Belyayevets from whom no traditionalist had anything to fear.7*

But the RMG critic had sharp ears withal. The last pages of The Faun and the Shepherdess do indeed contain a “find,” as already mentioned, and even cited, above (Ex. 3.31). To give it proper assessment, though, we shall have to backtrack once more and survey some aspects of the development of chromatic harmony in Russia. 93. “Khronika,” RMG 15, nos. 89 (24 February—2 March 1908), cols. 213—-14.

94. Indeed, it is both instructive and amusing to read with what all-forgiving nostalgia traditionalists began to look back on The Faun once its composer had established his reputation as a modernist. The following is the review of a performance of the suite at a concert given in December t91s by the venerable Russian Musical Society under Nikolai Malko: “The delightful suite The Faun and the Shepherdess by 1. Stravinsky belongs to the early period of this composer's work. Vivid talent, taste, a sense of style, and a subtle interpretation of the Pushkin text, together with the elegant orchestration, combine to deliver the liveliest and most immediate pleasure to the listener. One cannot help regretting that this period of I. Stravinsky’s work already belongs to his distant past” (Khrontka zhurnala “Muzikal niy sovremennik,” no. 12 [1915]: 15). The fact that this review is unsigned shows it to be the work of the editor of the Muzikal’niy sovremenntk, none other than Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov.

[254] 3 * FOURTH-GENERATION BELYAYEVETS

4° CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

SCHUBERT TO GLINKA One Wednesday evening early in 1906, at a sour fixe at Rimsky-Korsakov’s apart-

ment in St. Petersburg, Igor Stravinsky sat down at the piano with his teacher's wife to play Schubert’s late C-major symphony in a four-hands arrangement. “Listening to it,” Vasiliy Yastrebtsev recalled, “Nikolai Andreyevich repeatedly called

my attention to those spots in that work that subsequently had an influence on Glinka and Borodin. ‘You know, he said, ‘Schubert was the first composer in whom one can meet such bold and unexpected modulations. Before Schubert there was no such thing.’”? It is easy to guess the passages in Schubert that made him, for Rimsky, the father of modern music and the godfather of the New Russian School; they can only have been those that prominently display the mediant progressions that are the very essence of early Romantic harmony. These third relations operate in Schubert at every structural level, beginning with momentary atmospheric digressions from primary harmonies (what Joseph Kerman called “X” chords in an illuminating article

of 1962).” In the Great Symphony their use is a bit more formalistic than in the songs of the same period, but the coda to the last movement illustrates the procedure well, meanwhile dramatically juxtaposing it with the classical key relations from which it is such a radical departure.

In Example 4.1 the harmonic progression embodied in a forty-bar passage in Schubert’s Finale is set out in block form. In this passage the chord of the flat submediant and a diminished triad on the raised fourth degree are presented both in

their normal cadential (pre-dominant) role (although not without an interesting 1. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:374 (25 January 1906). 2. Joseph Kerman, “A Romantic Detail in Schubert's Schwanengesang,” Musical Quarterly 48 (1962): 36-49.

[255]

Dt} e —tb

ne 8 oe 2 EXAMPLE 4.1 Schubert, Symphony in C Major, D 944, IV, letter N (mm. 1057—1105), abstract

,_= bf 2s ~~ = #f 2 3 oo .

detour before resolution) and in a radical guise (marked “X” after Kerman) that alternates directly and in brusque unruly fashion with the tonic. The question immediately arises as to the status of the diminished triad marked “X.” No longer functioning as a leading tone—no longer really functioning at all, structurally speaking—its root simply bisects the octave. Only the sustained C in the highest voice, the common tone, gives tonal coherence to the progression, aided, perhaps, by the precedent set in the previous progression, which guides the ear to interpret the flat-submediant chord and the diminished chord as interchangeable. Schubert’s progression may be viewed as embodying two incipient circles of thirds, one major and the other minor, the tritone being the sum of two minor thirds. Beginning in the work of Schubert and his contemporaries, such mediant cycles offered composers an alternate course of harmonic navigation that bypassed the circle of fifths. They apparently had their origin in sequential extensions of the flat submediant—the Romantic color chord par excellence—which would account for the fact that most of the earliest circles, like those we are about to examine, descend by major thirds. A large chapter in the as-yet-unwritten history of nineteenth-century harmony will show how composers increasingly availed themselves of these new harmonic paths that short-circuited the traditional key system. The next structural levels above that of mere oscillation are those of progression and modulation. A locus classicus of novel thirds relations operating at these levels occurs in the Great Symphony during the codetta of the first movement. The reduction given in Example 4.2 abstracts the harmonic motion of a sixty-bar passage beginning five measures before letter EF The boxed material shows a complete circle of major thirds inserted within a circle of fifths. Seen within its overall context, this circle of thirds, which achieves closure after only three progressions, has to be classified as a “prolongation”—nonfunctional in the sense that it could be removed without disturbing the coherence of the fifth-related successions that bind the passage together and connect it with the rest of the movement. But of course the really memorable music in the passage 1s contained precisely within the box. And especially memorable is the A-flat—minor episode (the famous

trombone solo) that shows up in our analysis simply as a digression within a di-

[256] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

jc Se eae

8 —— 8 ee pee we 6): 0 SS Se Se See oe Ce EXAMPLE 4.2 _ Schubert, Symphony in C Major, D 944, I, 5 before F

oO

to 13 after G (mm. 181-240), abstract

— _— eo yt pf __f\ ___ bt _ To aa eee a > RE ee) |) |) ee 2.” eS een | tt |) ae a er A a ane Cnet EE SLES 8 A ee Ee) Oeoe a”.

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ee ee a Br hh EXAMPLE 4.9 Liszt, Etude de concert No. 3, Un sospiro, alternate ending

CEE

published in Lina Ramann, Klavier-Kompositionen Franz Liszt’s nebst unedirten Veranderungen: Zusdtzen und Kadenzen nach des Meisters Lehren paidagogtsch Suossirt (Leipzig, 1901)

2 es oe? ee ee eS | oa c

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ml 9 11 17 #19 385 46 48 59 61 65

Oe Se Se: >: es - Ke > =

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The same year he finished the Concerto in E-flat (1848), Liszt also sketched his first symphonic poem, Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (the so-called Mountain Symphony), which actually has some, perhaps unintentional, thematic similarities with the concerto. This was an epoch-making score, not for its formal innovations alone, but because in it Liszt employed minor thirds in complete symmetrical rotations like the ones on major thirds we have been observing.” The Mountain Symphony begins with the long, drawn-out succession of harmonies abstracted in Example 4.10. As Schubert did in his Mass in E-flat, Liszt starts out by connecting his roots with passing tones. These break off after two progressions at the beginning of the 7. For this usage, too, there is some precedent in Schubert. In the slow movement of the Octet (letters F—G), there is a passage that touches all the minor-third bases (A-flat, B, D, F), albeit in two distinct sequences. Also see the passages from the String Quartet in G, D. 887, and the Piano Sonata in C, D. 840, cited and analyzed by Stephen Blum in a Communication to the editor, Journal of the Amerwcan Mustcological Soctety 39 (1986): 212-15.

LISZT TO RIMSKY [265]

piece; but later, when a bass line connects all the roots in a circle, we may observe

what is, but for an anomalous anticipation in Scarlatti(!), perhaps the earliest “functioning” octatonic scale in European music, and one, moreover, that arises out of analogous conditions to those that attended the birth of the whole-tone scale. It takes the form of a descending bass line supporting a succession of triads related by thirds (Ex. 4.11).° The rest of a very long treatise could be devoted to Lisztian devices like these, and in fact several have been.” For our purposes it will suffice to note those works of Liszt that had a direct influence on musicians of the New Russian School, and in particular on Rimsky-Korsakov. The tone poem Sadko (1867) is the natural starting place for these comparisons, as Rimsky candidly acknowledged Liszt’s influence on that work, and in particular the influence of the Mountain Symphony: What musical tendencies guided my fancy when I composed this symphonic pic-

ture? The Introduction—picture of the calmly surging sea—contains the harmonic , and modulatory basis of the beginning of Liszt’s “Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne” (modulation by a minor third downward). The beginning of the Allegro 3/4, depicting Sadko’s fall into the sea and his being dragged to the depths by the Sea King, is, in method, reminiscent of the moment where Lyudmila is spirited away by Chernomor in Act I of Ruslan and Lyudmila. However, Glinka’s scale, descending by whole tones, has been replaced by another descending scale of semitone, whole tone, semitone, whole tone—a scale which subsequently played an important part in many of my compositions.'°

That is certainly putting it mildly. And it is a little strange that Rimsky did not , associate the “tone-semitone scale” (gamma ton-poluton), as he always called it, di-

rectly with the Liszt model or with the process of “modulation by a minor third downward.” Possibly by the time he wrote his memoirs, a quarter century after the fact, he had forgotten that the scale had actually appeared in the Mountain Symphony. It is also somewhat disappointing that, having thus acknowledged the scale’s

importance in his work, Rimsky made no further reference to it in the course of 8. There is an even earlier complete, though noncontinuous, octatonic scale in the introduction to the Sonetto 104. del Petrarca (first composed as a song in 1838-39), which may be viewed as an interme-

diate stage between the mere embellishment of a diminished-seventh chord and a true third-related root linkage: momentary dominant-seventh chords emerge out of the part writing at each of the octatonic nodes (0, 3, 6, 9). See Zoltan Gardonyi, “Neue Tonleiter- und Sequenztypen in Liszts Friihwerken (zur Frage der ‘Lisztschen Sequenzen’),” Studia musicologica 11 (1969): 181. (GArdonyi also cites the coda of Un sespiro, which was coeval with the Mountain Symphony.) The Scarlatti passage is also of

this intermediate type, although its descending whole-step/half-step bass progression is complete and continuous. See Eytan Agmon, “Equal Division of the Octave in a Scarlatti Sonata,” In Theory Only 11, no. 5 (May 1990): 1-8 (the music 1s given on p. 3). 9. Besides Gardonyi, see, inter alia, Lajos Bardos, “Ferenc Liszt, the Innovator,” Studia mustcologica

17 (1975): 3-38; Bengt Johnsson, “Modernities in Liszt’s Works,” Svensk tidskrift for mustkforskning 46 (1964): 83-117; R. Larry Todd, “Liszt, Fantasy and Fugue for Organ on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam, ” r9th-Century Music 4 (1981): 250-61. The last-named cites an extensive bibliography. 10. My Musical Life, 78.

[266] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

re EXAMPLE 4.11 Liszt, Ce qgu’on entend sur la montagne, 16 before Y

5 a Se a a ee a Se Do S [— a _. $$ net ——— :

on — J

PP is : TT |

So ——_———_————— — —— -— 84

his Chronicle. But in a way, the testimony he did give is even more valuable, for it points up the conceptual (or, as he characteristically put it, “methodological”) par-

allel between the whole-tone and tone-semitone scales. They were functional equivalents: both were outgrowths of mediant interval cycles, both first appeared as descending basses, both were originally used as modulatory devices; and both, for Russian composers, were evocative of evil magic. A letter from Rimsky to Balakirev (1 August 1867), in which the scale is described, is of considerable historical interest, for it announces the entrance of the scale, so to speak, into the world of Russian music. Rimsky had been giving Balakirev a narrative account of his tone poem in progress: “Then there appears a harmonized scale (descending): A, G#, Fl, F, Eb, D, C, B, and A and so on, over a pedal A, which comes across rather ferociously.”!’ This passage, which recurs several times in the course of Sadko as a leitmotif, is given in Example 4.12a, together with a reduction of the enharmonically disguised root progression it embodies (Ex. 4.12b). The root progression is one admittedly abstracted with the benefit of hindsight, with knowledge of what Liszt had done in the Mountain Symphony and what Rumsky would do in the future. Actually in Sadko, the thirds represented as auxiliaries in the reduction occupy the strong beats, while those represented as structural occupy the position of passing tones. From this reversed perspective, the octatonic scale here would seem to connect not a series of triadic roots, but a series of trans-

u. Lyapunov (ed.), “Perepiska Balakireva i Rimskogo-Korsakova,” Muzikal niy sovremenntk 7 (March 1916): 92.

LISZT TO RIMSKY [267]

OO , - is EXAMPLE 4.12

a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko (symphonic poem), op. 5, 18 before C (mm. 63-73)

8va_-----------------------------------------4

Fie — 3 at |__.4—4§—_| 3 —__ __ 8 _-¢ jst. —

a) a: SS OP” A SY - CS a A SS - See

7Le SeA~ Se PS EE Ce ~ 5EE Oe ~ ED ~ Ke Ge ~ CC ~ Xs PD ~~ Ke SE ~~ COPS ~5 —Y__ ~__ SE Y__ ~~ ee

Heat oi a* 5Tio a i eT rr EE “a 1 the Fd

ft nd} — bat —_ | oe —_ Fg —__¢—_—_ _

ee

BN ry eee ef ter b. Reduction of same

Pe ‘ a Aaa. SS ,SS eS eee, a artikel 2», (i b

nae -

et °c ° by Mozart.’* But if these are to be admitted as examples of early octatonicism, then the passage given in Example 4.14 from the Sarabande of Bach’s Third English Suite is also octatonic. It is no accident, moreover, that practically all examples of this kind of “octatonic” usage come from virtuoso keyboard music, for the impulse to embellish a diminished-seventh chord is essentially a thing of cadenzas and passage work. As long as the diminished-seventh chord so embellished 1s eventually resolved by leading-tone progression, that is, in the conventional tonal way, the use of the term octatonic to describe the scale produced by passing tones is unjustified. Nor can the origins of the scale be traced to such local embellishments of diatonic functional

harmony as the juxtaposition of the Neapolitan sixth with the dominant, for all that it displays a tritone root progression.» True octatonicism preempts functions normally exercised by the circle of fifths, whether by a rotation of thirds or, more radically, by a tonally stable diminished harmony—of which more below. It is important, therefore, to interpret the downbeat harmonies as appoggiaturas in Example 4.12. For it is that interpretation which makes it Rimsky’s and Russia’s first octatonic scale. That Rimsky probably intended such an interpretation 1s sug-

14. Donald Street, “The Modes of Limited Transposition,” Musical Times 117 (1976): 820. Street rightly calls these occurrences “incidental,” locating the earliest use of the scale “as a mode in its own right” in the work of Liszt. 15. See, for example, Joel Eric Suben, “Debussy and Octatonic Pitch Structure” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1980), 8-15. For more on the “tritone link,” see R. Taruskin, review of two books on Scriabin in Mustc Theory Spectrum to (1988): 143-69.

LISZT TO RIMSKY [269]

gested first of all by the doubling of the scale in thirds, for this is what assures complete minor triads on the third quarters. Had he meant only to embellish a diminished harmony, he might have limited the scale to a single voice, as Liszt did in the Totentanz and as Liszt’s many forerunners had done earlier. There is also the evidence of Antar, where a whole-tone scale plays almost precisely the same role as the tone-semitone scale in Sadko: a ferocious descending line in tremolo violins and violas over a pedal (Ex. 4.15). Here the root progression by

major thirds coincides with the downbeats and is therefore salient to the ear.'© The similarity between the two passages points up once again the early parallelism in concept and usage between the whole-tone and octatonic scales.!” For a final demonstration of this parallelism, compare the harmonization of a descending tone-semitone scale (Ex. 4.16a), which prepares the final cadence in RimskyKorsakov’s Skazka (Legend) for orchestra, op. 29 (1879), with Liszt's harmonization of a descending whole-tone scale in the Dante Symphony (Ex. 4.16b). The one passage might well have been modeled on the other. In both, every degree of the

scale is harmonized with its own chord, every second chord assuming the role of a passing harmony linking the essential props of the circle of thirds. In Rimsky’s case this is even clearer than in Liszt’s: the essential chords are in root position, and the linking chords assume the character of traditional passing six-fours. Such clarity and orderliness were wholly characteristic of the Russian master. Indeed, while the academicized Rimsky-Korsakov of the 1880s and beyond never lost his interest in novel harmonies and modulations—the interest, in fact, only seemed to increase as time went on—he became positively obsessive about voice leading. He saw in it the only way to retain control of his harmony and avoid the ever-encroaching “sea of decadence” for which his favorite ironic term was d’Indism, after the French composer, chosen for its punning resonance with dandisme, “dandy-ism.” As he wrote concerning Kashchey the Deathless, his most unremittingly chromatic composition: —_. In the works of French d’Indism there are many brusque harmonies and modulations, just as there are in Kashchey. But despite that I have absolutely nothing in common with this d’Indism. And the difference lies not only in rhythm, but in the implacable logic of my [harmonic] combinations, in the invisible presence of the tonic at all times, and in my impeccable voice leading. In d’Indism the sharp combinations are linked for the most part with artistic thoughtlessness and caprice.'® 16. Liszt stood godfather to Antar as much as to Sadko. Compare the opening chord progression in

Rimsky-Korsakov’s program symphony with the harmonies in the eight bars preceding letter D in Prometheus.

17. The early incidental use of the octatonic scale to embellish a diminished-seventh harmony has its whole-tone parallels, too. Cf. Liszt’s Sursum corda, the last piece in the Années de pelerinage cycle: at its

climax, a French-sixth chord is composed out in the form of a complete whole-tone scale through two m8, Letter to E. M. Petrovsky (librettist of Kashchey the Deathless), 1 January 1903; in Sovetskaya muzika, 1952, NO. 12, 69.

[270] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

EXAMPLE 4.15 a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Antar (Symphony No. 2), op. 9, I, fig. (mm. 103-11)

SS’ ee 1 es Oe - | ee) ee: ee ee es eee

7len’.Qh GED 26! ‘CSNNSNS 22 ARSSN4]| CUD. Bee)Oti“‘(‘(CCST 6S” OS)! 6! Lee a OeWEE rti“‘i‘“SC‘(‘#STNS$#“ OSC!Oe e.LULULUL

eT eee OT TT

_@o° sc aOLad —e—Eee CET lm eeCC(CN ee TFT r”t™—TTT.TTCTOTOTCOCOTNENO | dLfbOL dic |DFdais |. hgsi>s TigiTCG| SS —_ SEO ——_ CEO —_ SS” eee ath _gaA___F Qe 4 $lAi Bs — Ow.-—_—_5F° we UW ee COA “Se OE Se4_., eee Oe|.|)eld €/..Wanwe Be eee ee eee ee eee Oe Lee's

eet COSCO ——CCC—i ee

‘(or° a. dl Od CU‘ ‘N.COCOCOCO#OCO#*[email protected] fm inteeee ieeen sc ore dCtsC—sSSCSC‘“‘(C‘CS*S*ts*s*s*SsiséaSCaSC_ a eT! Le t™~—~—,.TC‘“‘(WCCLGS—______ [oC UU Ld_ nteS Le cree. lf __

.’

EXAMPLE 4.16

| a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Skazka, op. 29, mm. 529-35

iO\i\'\fpAeNN oe tH ae pe 6a i ms -) K-? Ce T Eee eee Se ee Te KO! ee.

er y 4 bd “1 ° ; >. ‘\ . a ‘J

© Uh-« SGWw Es PON ee 2" C1 eeeeee oe "ae..." eee ee CF...) OO eeCe) 6 eee CeeeeeOe ee Q/..Gane WRIA eeeeeeee

/ ' “% “Tha: y SS =

F.C ee: eeEEee ee eeeeeee =.eeeeee eee ee Sed Aesee eee eeOe 2eee ee 20See 2ee eee = AGOF GE 2~ ¢ es ee ee ee ee ee ee |.ee ee ee 66 ee a Se eee

[oe s——“‘id;LCUTTCC“‘(CS*rSCOCdrzC UCC TCC COC Od ea a ae UL Ca b. Liszt, Dante-Symphonie, as abstracted in Lajos Bardos, “Ferenc Liszt, the Innovator,” Studia musicologica 17 (1975): 32 tae we TCinA aeeCo), :Cs CS0. SL Oe =Wey: S111 Ls -aes oo @ ST) 0s 0THaye } 3 a ae a3ee >

* shee a

Bt Sommer seersWE SS ESCN SC | SE «2 eeEE. eS esbe eee{|= eee eee OPCORE ARE EE EE ee ~~ —™™—™———C~t*”*~é*=“#“é#B——=x—=—ET ——EXX_EX__“_Z__].T.-_|$-:s&. hh. SE > = aA el s

(| fy i SE AS RE, Se 2 bea ———_—_—— Uh nen =e eeee ee .~pe; —-ONON_ oO CE eee Lop

> . eee ee 2«ES es aSON “" |AON -m ;272A _; ff CS [i] NLD . b. ee

a@eo NNT TTT TTT ee A WEEE Gb ee © Eee ee LA: ) P" 1EN Eee|= oe 6s ~ ee Zt... TTTTTWrTrTrTTrUrLCTCC~™S:S~—.°°°>e°°.;

A rather primitive example comes from the end of the second scene of Sadko (Ex. 4.31), where the Sea King rises up to banish Sadko from his kingdom (his ascent,

by the way, is accompanied by a quotation of the early octatonic passage in the tone poem of 1867). The voice part here, doubled by the bass line, seems to be a simple melodic projection of the diminished-seventh chord by means of a transposition of the melody scale in Example 4.23, the kind of thing analysts have trivially traced back to the eighteenth century. But the accompanying harmony consists of a circulation of half-diminished sevenths. The foreign elements thus introduced— G-sharp, B, D—belong to the octatonic harmony scale. A sense of root progression is achieved, and the three roots thus presented—A-sharp, C-sharp, E—are represented by chords with diminished rather than perfect fifths, the same fifths that are emphasized by the contour of the vocal line. No resolution of them 1s given or even implied. By analogy to the now familiar rotations of major and minor triads, the half-diminished sevenths are functioning here as “potential centers” in temporary equilibrium. More sophisticated examples of such stable tritones or diminished-seventh chords—“tonic tritones” we might even call them (after Yavorsky)—are encountered in Mlada and in The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh. The third act of the latter opera actually ends on a tritone. No less interesting are instances where per-

[286] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

|=

EXAMPLE 4.32 Rimsky-Korsakov, Sketchbooks, p. 262

Andante ee

ote an —— a ao ili [or]

aT |S . CS PS CS BS | CS OS CS B.C EXAMPLE 4.33 Rimsky-Korsakov, Sketchbooks, p. 101

Allegro (Ptitsi[Birds}]) ry Fg el A. A «A SS SS ND NE aS April 7LY le = 1 eee ee 1899 fect fifths are applied as dissonant appoggiaturas to diminished fifths. Several sketches reveal Rimsky’s apparent process of thought. In one intended for Mlada (Ex. 4.32), a simple arpeggiation of a diminished-seventh chord with appoggiaturas at the upbeats (cf. the passage from Pan Voyevoda illustrated in Ex. 3.1b) is deliberately remodeled as an explicit resolution of a perfect fifth to a tritone, by ap-

proaching the fifth as a direct leap. There is a refinement of the same idea in a sketch for Tsar Saltan (Ex. 4.33). The phrase structure has been turned into two parallel rhythmic periods. As is by now Rimsky-Korsakov’s familiar habit, the upper staff is derived from the melody scale and the lower staff from the harmony

scale. Thus the A-natural in the first bar is a dissonant appoggiatura, while the A-naturals in the last bar are consonant scale tones. In a sketch for the leitmotif of the Tartar invaders in Kitezh (Ex. 4.34), the whole process has become even more concrete and explicit. Now there is no need for the somewhat banal support of the diminished-seventh chord: the thinking has become more purely intervallic. Moreover, the perfect-fifth appoggiatura has been fastidiously respelled as a diminished sixth. (Outside of barbershop harmony, are there any other instances of this interval in the music of the time?) And this in turn leads to such commonly occurring Korsakovian bass lines as the one given in Example 4.35 (from Kitezh), which one writer has already compared with the mature Stravinsky.”

29. Robert Moevs, Review of The Harmonic Organization of “The Rite of Spring,” by Allen Forte, Journal of Music Theory 24 (1980): 103-4.

MELODY SCALES AND HARMONY SCALES [287]

:———— 1903 0 ee —p ° na y . i rr ONS) a A a = EXAMPLE 4.34 Rimsky-Korsakov, Sketchbooks, p. 229

ie eee , ——— ' Ya anuary

aser Se|— |ee EXAMPLE 4.35 Rimsky-Korsakov, Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh,

ee 7 oFyee a 2 oo s, 7) s Act IV, scene 1, fig. (mm. 745-49) Ghost (Prince Vsevolod)

} Ti poy - mi, ne - ve - sta kras - na - ya,

po _————

}1

se —————— . s, y s,

TO eT SS | SSaSeaa A a ae A Se ee ee

Ti 1 Ss | ra - zu-mey ikh re-chi ve - shchi-ye.

_——.. —_——— a —— i’f 2! 2 - ieee eee ee EE ee eae eee

anBCS & o-_|ES 7. EE SD FS A cee EE | ES a CS HE SRS nna GRR ED [ Understand, beautiful bride, make sense of their prophetic speech]

TRITONES AND TETRACHORDS

All these tritones bring Wagner to mind, of course; and the inevitable question of his influence, always problematic with respect to Russian composers, must again be raised. While Rimsky, like all the kuchkists, had been brought up by Stasov and Balakirev to despise Wagner and to worship Liszt, he underwent a conversion and the usual Wagnerian crisis about the time of Mlada, as we have seen, when he first heard the Rimg complete. The Wagnerian influence on Mlada and the several operas that followed upon it in the 1890s did not affect harmony very much, except in the matter of harmonic rhythm: some passages of long, drawn-out chord se-

[288] 4 » CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

quences seem indebted in obvious ways to the Rhetimgold prelude. The influence

| was mainly confined to orchestration and, so to speak, imagery—forest murmurs in Sadko, magic fire in Tsar Saltan, and the like. There is evidence, however, that at the turn of the century Rimsky had another Wagnerian seizure,*° and from the works that followed this one we may infer that he had been studying Wagner’s harmony as well as his scoring. Rimsky’s son published a letter from the composer to Yastrebtsev that affords us a very good lead. Writing from his summer house in Krapachukha on 15 June 1901, Rimsky confided to his disciple: Here I can’t seem to get started on anything, so meanwhile I have been zealously going through the score of Siegfried, which I have bought for myself. As always after a long interval, Wagner's music has become alien to me, and I had to get used to it. Now that I’m a little used to it, I started to like it, but then I again experienced something akin to disgust. I began to grow indignant at all his blunders of the ear, and his constant crossing of the boundary of what is possible in harmony—to

put it simply, the nonsense and the falseness that you find strewn about Siegfried at every step. ... Could my musical ear be better than Wagner’s? ... No, of course, not better; maybe even worse; but I have a musical conscience, to which I am obedient, and Wagner frittered his conscience away in his quest for grandiosity and novelty.... Its terribly hard to define the limits of what is posszble in music; it’s a much too complicated question, into which everything must be reckoned: not only harmony, but melodic and rhythmic considerations. I could not hope to solve it, but I feel that I am right. Where Wagner is peerless is in instrumentation.**

Out of this exacerbated ambivalence we might expect a spate of tendentious Wagnerian emulations—exorcisms, really—in which Wagner's excesses would be tamed by Rimsky’s conscience. And that is exactly what did ensue. The first fruit of this new Rimskian period was a work of small significance: a “prelude-cantata” on the Nausicaa episode from the Odyssey called From Homer, which the St. Peters-

burg wags lost no time in rechristening “From Wagner.”* Its near-plagiarisms from the Rig (the Ride of the Valkyries in particular) are indeed so obvious as to be embarrassing. (They found echo, though, in Stravinsky’s Fireworks, op. 4.) But there was another work directly inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s love-hate affair with Wagner, and in particular with Stegfred. This was one of his most important works—one, moreover, that was especially fraught with stylistic and technical harbingers of the work of his most famous pupil. Less than a month after his testy letter to Yastrebtsev, Rimsky sent another, this time cryptically triumphant: “There is still powder in the flask,” he wrote, “there

30. See, for example, the remarks on the Ring reported by Yastrebtsev; cited in Chapter 3, n. 83. 31. A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N..A. Rimskty-Korsakov 5:62. 32. See Vladimir Derzhanovsky, “K ispolneniyu prelyudii-kantati “Iz Gomera,’ ” Muzika, no. 28 (10 June 1911): 603.

TRITONES AND TETRACHORDS [289]

are still new harmonies under the sun.”°? And a bit later, to Glazunov, he reported

that he had been “looking through and even studying Szegfried,” and then all at once revealed: In the last few days of June I started work on another opera—archfantastic, modest in length: in two acts (four scenes). I cannot tell you its name, for I gave the librettist my word I would not... . I think that by the end of the summer it will be all sketched, or nearly so, for the material all came into my head in one fell swoop. ... The form will be Wagnerian; there will be abrupt transitions and chords with incoherent voice leading. .. . **

The opera was Kashchey the Deathless, a calculated and deliberate attempt, as Rimsky put it in a letter to Semyon Kruglikov, to “take harmony to the furthest limits without crossing over into hyperharmony [sverkh-garmontya],” a phrase that brings to mind his comments to Yastrebtsev on Wagner and the boundaries of the

possible.*° Ir is obvious, in view of his reports of summer reading, that his jumping-off point had been Act IT, scene 1, of Stegfried (Alberich and Wotan at the mouth of Fafner’s cave). This scene—itself heavily indebted to the introduction to

the dungeon scene in Fidelio—was a tour de force of suspended tonality, whose “tonic” was a tritone (C and G-flat/F-sharp) and whose key signature was perpetually oscillating between those of F minor and B minor.*° The same tritone is practically ubiquitous in Kashchey, where it lends the same sense of stability. There

are many details of melody and harmony that establish the relationship between Wagner's scene and Rimsky’s opera beyond doubt. To enumerate them would deflect us unduly from our real concern, but let one be entered in evidence as perhaps in itself conclusive; the resemblance is self-evident (Ex. 4.36). The differences between Examples 4.36a and 4.36b are as significant as the manifest similarities, for they indicate how Rimsky sought to tame Wagner's extrava-

gances. Wagner’s chains of thirds are built up over the root A in a consistent filling-in and extension (to an eleventh) of the dominant ninth sounded at the outset. One or two of Wagner’s thirds, however, are anomalous, particularly the Fi—A combination, which was surely an example of what Rimsky-Korsakov thought “incoherent voice leading.” Rimsky’s thirds, in contrast, are consistently deployed

33. Letter of 10 July 1901; in A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N.A. Remskty-Korsakov 5:65.

34. Ibid., 64. 35. Letter of 11 April 1902; in ibid., 67.

36. Of course, these signatures define the aforementioned tritone as a kind of double dominant (altered to French-sixth quality); and this is in keeping with the general character of Wagnerian tonality, with its ever more elastically prolonged dominant functions. In the present instance, however, the tritone itself lends greater stability than any putative tonic because it recurs so often and ends the scene with a definite sense of closure, and because cadences on F and B are so rare. There is, in fact, only a single authentic, unevaded resolution to either F or B, Alberich’s “Der Welt walte dann ich!” (p. 149 in the Schott/Schirmer vocal score).

[290] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

ee 7eit I| EXAMPLE 4.36

7 f0000 ee P ua! oh | FL a. Wagner, Siegfried, Act II, scene i, mm. 39—42

) flay pe OS. . ) * FS a 0S SS ES CE 2.) see a rl > 12s Oe es os

Zo eeGe =Ipete 2G: ne E-) ee ESee

. | dim. V. Oe eee we CC) ee eee eee 6 lee 2 ee eee 6k

st . _? i iA ' M |n>0NEE OE” b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey the Deathless, scene ii, fig. (mm. s5—11)

_y,aaftTes at i oF ee ee” ha Te 2"oeica: eo Hest$$eB a BR

Pp ' ke a —

ey eri ae a BR) A eee - te — that a -—_— it ———} al } tl a

et hp ha rH its pean,

ON i) a ae a a7 mr 5g — gay’ avr 4

2 .th f

he 3 —"Y

a en! i a a - e Le CY ee ae ~

along what Yavorsky called the “chain mode,” which—following Wagner’s lead— he treated in Kashchey in a more purely intervallic fashion than in any other work. The chain mode, as we have seen (n. 28 above), is a special case within the octa-

tonic (diminished) mode. And the latter, along with the whole-tone scale, was Rimsky-Korsakov’s salvation, offering as it did a ready-made modus operandi for harmonizing the tritone. Kashchey became an exhaustive repository of mechanistically (Rimsky would have said “rationally”) constructed derivations from the symmetrical scale formations with which he had been experimenting for over three decades, only without his former emphasis on major-minor triadic cognates. This

TRITONES AND TETRACHORDS [291]

gave his music the tonally suspensive ambience that had impressed him in Wagners scene, without casting it adrift on Wagner's “sea of harmony,” to say nothing of the d’Indistic “sea of decadence.” Rimsky kept close watch on his compass. His music moves at all times within narrow, clearly marked paths determined by his Lisztian symmetrical scales. Wagner, had he lived to see them, would no doubt have been as derisive of these rigid techniques as Rimsky was of Wagner’s willful freedom. Stravinsky, in a characteristically impatient aside, dismissed them in his late memoirs of his teacher as “a few flimsy enharmonic devices.”°” They were, however, of decisive importance to Stravinsky’s development. For an example of this new intervallic octatonicism—and at the same time a demonstration of Rimsky’s dependence on the Stegfried model—consider the passage given as Example 4.37, constructed entirely over Wagner's tritone. No key is adumbrated; the tritone 1s as stable a point of reference as it had been in the Siegfried scene. Numbering the degrees demonstrates that the music is totally referable to the octatonic collection (in its melodic form). The rising thirds move in a fashion reminiscent of the chain mode, except that major and minor thirds are intermixed. The zenith of diminished-mode construction comes at the end of the first act, when Kashchey conjures up a snowstorm with his magic self-playing zither (gusl samogudi). The zither is represented at the beginning of the scene by the harp, playing a continuous diminished-seventh arpeggio up and down through its entire range. Thereafter, as Rimsky himself observed with some pride in his autobiography, “The rather lengthy scene of the snowstorm I succeeded in plotting almost entirely on the sustained diminished chord of the seventh.”** At the height of the storm, an offstage chorus sings it a song of welcome (Ex. 4.38). In this very noteworthy passage the continuous diminished-seventh chord provides the stable point of harmonic reference, like the C/F-sharp tritone in Example 4.37. The chorus, meanwhile, sings a tune of marked folklike quality (the only such in the opera). The tune is sung twice, starting on each member of the “tonic” tritone in turn. Most remarkably, the total pitch content of the two tritone-related statements of the folk tune is the melodic version of the octatonic scale. We have here a very rare instance—for Rimsky-Korsakov—of the octatonic scale partitioned not into triads or other tertial formations but into inversionally symmetrical minor tetrachords (T-S-T). This tetrachord is the melodic basis of a great deal of Russian folk music, as Rimsky surely knew better than anyone. The melodic octatonic scale offers minor tetrachords at each of its four nodal points, but the tritone is the obvious interval of choice in the present context. With specific reference to the piece 37. M&C:57/s9.

38. My Musical Life, 400. Elsewhere in the same passage Rimsky refers to what Yavorsky called the

“chain mode” as “false relations formed by the progression of major thirds”—a definition to keep in mind when examining Stravinsky’s Nightingale and Firebird.

[292] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

i5Ft eeZr ee or i ee EXAMPLE 4.37 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey the Deathless, scene ii,

, @®ee @ Se ® OO 10 before (mm. 171~75) (let c = 1)

Kashcheyevna

(Dobro po-)zha - - lo - vat’, zhe - lan - - niy

ee ee Oe ee ee pe © Sy > Q) (2) r——j— ——3—

Leg le °ya2°e

FN) EY SS NS A Ce SY SS SS AT See Caen

© ® @®

/ ra 5 © wy 16} eS rr Er ie eld | Sn gost’! Da - lyo - kol put’ svoy der-zhish’?

CT 1 fH ZT Se (77 2 ee eeK) ay, “KR

CS mt le, * -o.,¥

[Greetings, welcome guest! Has your journey been long? ]

at hand, it coincides with the prime structural, tonality-defining harmonic unit in the opera. More generally, the tritone transposition offers complete pitch variance, as well as complete representation of the octatonic collection. This rare octatonic partition, which provides a meeting ground between the two worlds of Russian music—the folk/diatonic and the fantastic/chromatic— always took place at the tritone when it was employed by composers of Rimsky’s generation.*” Perhaps the earliest precedent occurs in the Prologue to Borodin’s Prince Igor (Ex. 4.39). The background harmony here is French sixth rather than diminished seventh (or perhaps a Musorgskian dominant-seventh axis on 39. The phenomenon described here has nothing to do with the Slavic “folk octatonicism” occasionally described in the Soviet ethnological literature (e.g., F A. Rubtsov, Osnovi ladovogo stroentya russkoy narodnoy pesni [Leningrad: Muzika, 1964]; S. Pushkina, “Tol’ko li diatonika?” Sovetskaya muzika, 1967,

no. 3, 102-4) and which has been mentioned by some writers in connection with Stravinsky (e.g., R. Birkan, “O tematizme ‘Svadebkr Stravinskogo,” in Iz stortt muzikt XX veka, ed. M. S. Druskin [Moscow: Muzika, 1971], 178). Also see the description of the “Istrian scale” from Croatia in Jerko Bezié¢, “Yugoslavia, Folk Music: Croatia,” New Grove Dictionary 2:594. For composers of Rimsky-Korsakov’s

generation, folk music was by definition strictly diatonic.

TRITONES AND TETRACHORDS [293]

EXAMPLE 4.38 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey the Deathless, scene 11, fig. [38] (mm. 642—49)

2»27. )©«(Ce aE/E 7..ES see eee. iSES es @A -0A! eee eee 24 eee eee 9| ee © WE 2 6©..Gee ee” eee NSA SR 9Ree EEeee WEE, ° AE Soprano

é f at ee Ee oe Ler of be) eee ee

P Oy - li, ran -_ niy ti mo - r0z, 22 GY A |- Cae | T.. Je Peeeee..eeCee =e see! Oe ee eee ., ee|)2 eee

Taz G\O'A.i) VPfT, Se 4 EOE} *_ es ee Tenor

ES — i ———_—_____ een) —_ Ee ——_$$_} on ——$§$ a ——|

P TT 4 > ; . : a7, ; CUO) Re ee ees eee 6 eee eee eee ee eee @ 468 eee CameEE GE See... Eee OO ETeeeeeee.eed >

D

Alto 2’ ef _ _t_ FT TFTVTVWVVWV Vr OT )]>—on--.202—22--L_10W@_._. }>H0Om9N)]

A. ra JiSE »2Jjee0ff jy ..ULULLUUY S /.. «? Wn4B? 2 UR 9@ en 9{/ eeeEE 2SE ©jieee” eeeEe ee |eeCO eee .2aes eee 2§UU eee GQ!) / Os 0” ee ies

ee i a a ete ett rs em stoy po-krep - che kras - niy nos! Oy li, ran - niy

i.\)re A Gee .. Ce ee PC. 2... Ge ae ) 4» SS / 2s GE PS 0” A, SE Ss "A 7 A ee ” Aes Bass

2G Gy eeeBh 86WR eee © eee eee0 eee 1 _.4 .. eeeeL 2 2Fs” eeee eee /.. WE ee2... © Cs © ee=e © 6ee .ee Ge 2 eee 2s ... 2 eee

'/.. UU nn __ ee ee ee ee ee ee ee es ee ee

pleas le te |

9—

dé OE eee eeee — Ee eee eee 6 SdSE 4, Le . ee > _A...2 ee neoeee86 Eeee Ee

PF oT eee Alto and Bass

LY

@ aresPee 2 OEEee ee See b. Wee OEeee © se2 0eee. 2 ee2eee eee S/..W eee ee 2 eee Pm 0eee ee eee

O\0 4 . 4.0 EE Ce Cee Dt Ce OL eee ee eee eee ti mo - roz, stoy po-krep - che kras - niy nos!

Fe a Al ss ee ee ee esaes |eeiee| ee a\ a Se ~. | . wx | ys. |

7 nee Bee ee ee 6 6 eee eee CU eee 622 ee 6 Oe

le | eee lee |

(ob? [ee Lfmo7 >, »LS (tetoot) [| #. || CL) Le SR ES S.A SS&@ Abe ST. if... | j{| F-CS ft@e@. |ii... ji °ifLS [Hey, early frost, stand firm, red-nose! ]

ee ae ae Se | EXAMPLE 4.39 _ Borodin, Prince Igor, Prologue, 9 before [6] (mm. 162-65)

Zi: ou a iw ie we a \lwoa-

; - ~—~ ~~ Raz - bey vra- gov, kak — raz - bey ikh tak, kak bil ti ikh za Var - loy! __

bil ikh pri Ol-ta - vel SSSSCSFSCSFSF

[Rout the enemy as you beat them at Oltava! Rout them as you beat them at Varia! ]

D-flat and G); Borodin did not live to see Rimsky-Korsakov develop the diminished mode. Other instances of what we may call tetrachordal octatonicism in RimskyKorsakov occur sporadically as far back as Antar and can be found more abundantly in Sadko and Mlada (Ex. 4.40). Compared with Kashchey, however, these are mere happenstances. In the first instance, the melody scale is harmonized in such a way as to emphasize its tritone axis, while in the second we have little more than a composed-out diminished-seventh chord (the middle voice), with the upper and lower voices splitting the total chromatic into two octatonic scales (semitone— whole-tone and tone-semitone, respectively) such that augmented triads occur on the offbeats. In Kashchey, for the first and practically only time, Rimsky purposefully split the octatonic melody scale into two tritonally related tetrachords held in equilibrium

within the diminished mode. It was something that would go straight into Stravinsky, beginning with the “find” at the end of The Faun and the Shepherdess,

to which, as we saw in the previous chapter, an early reviewer called attention. With its tetrachordal octatonicism it is a veritable chip off Kashchey (Ex. 4.41). Once Rimsky had discovered tritonal equilibrium in Kashchey, he occasionally applied the device to tetrachordal tunes with intervallic species other than T-S-T. In the passage from Kitezh given as Example 4.42, two major (T-T-S) tetrachords are so treated.

But if the source of Rimsky’s late tritonal experiments was a scene from Stegfried, \t is no less true that Rimsky significantly (and creatively) “misread” his model, and that, like all Russian composers but Scriabin, he remained first and last

TRITONES AND TETRACHORDS [295]

Sc. Fe ee ee eee ee ef EXAMPLE 4.40

a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko, scene vii, Lullaby, 4. before (mm. 102-5)

eae ES a ee SS |

tse | ee} ee) | 0> A |ee ee SV A OS EE, es SP - s C eS a’

aSE. oe et a 4 oeeeePO id*}ee Pe 'es b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Mlada, Act IV, scene vi, fig. (mm. 9-11)

Harmony scale Bua = nny

a/..W) ..4 PROS .eeP PR eS Res eeeSet eeaeee) eee. eSPseee eeNT eetGs.. ANS YAGE dA EE ME Od A A4 PS CET

GES © as |2.) esen) eele eePee aieMelody lg2— eg Eee Sl O\3) ee ces eeLeU 8scale ee = 0TT 2S a Er Es -

Qa el

EXAMPLE 4.41 Stravinsky, The Faun and the Shepherdess, III, 2 after

oie » Pye», Ff SO OL Se 1, LNwT| SI AR a.

st rope

neta=a PN Pb BL dl LS ce ih

ND | eS PE 6 SE ———— 7 nD OE ae ~~ wy

a Lisztian. The difference between Wagnerian and Lisztian harmony is fundamental and easy to descry. Wagnerian harmony 1s essentially dominant harmony, prolonged at times to the breaking point and often prevented from resolving in con-

ventional ways. However modified or attenuated, though, the driving force behind Wagner's tonal vagaries is the same dominant tension one feels in Beethov-

en’s retransitions. Lisztian harmony, in contrast, with its circles of thirds, 1s har- | mony that seems at times to deny the existence of the dominant. And it was this quality, perhaps above all, that appealed so to Russian composers, who in other

[296] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

EXAMPLE 4.42 Rimsky-Korsakov, Legend of the Invistble City of Kitezh, Act IV, scene i, fig. (mm. 733-37), voice part omitted

TTS a SS b gee oe Sarre ee “tea TS RE a Octatonic

oSi. eS = eS el r r ee fas ll — tg

ee et a

pti ty ie te het, 4 ~+———+—

——— eae rr oe

ways as well (as in their “modal” folk song harmonizations) tended to avoid or weaken the dominant function in their music.*° Where Wagner’s pervasive tritone in Stegfried had been a prolonged double-dominant pedal (or so, at any rate, he thought, as we can tell from his key signatures), Rimsky’s in Kashchey was a duplex tonic (as Yavorsky was perhaps the first to recognize), an incipient interval cycle or “tonal axis.”

TRANSMISSION Reliance on tonal axes of this sort (stable tritones, circles of thirds) kept RimskyKorsakov, or so he was convinced, from contamination by the free-flowing, amorphous harmonic lava of “decadents” like his two bétes notres, d'Indy and Strauss. But he paid such a high price for this escape from freedom that one begins to wonder if his experiments in fantastic harmony did not on occasion do his music more harm than good. They offered a ubiquitous opportunity for easy tonal rotations around the trusty axes—a line of minimal resistance to any composer. And thus they seduced Rimsky-Korsakov into a penchant for melodic/harmonic sequences that may have been unequaled in any music since the days of Corelli and Vivaldi, when composers were fascinated by tonal rotations around another then-new har-

monic axis, the diatonic circle of fifths. Virtually nothing happens in a late Rimsky-Korsakov opera that is not immediately and literally restated a third or a tritone away. This pattern obtains at every level, from the measure to the period to whole sections of a piece. There can be no denying that Rimsky-Korsakov’s use of 40. For more on Russian dominant-avoidance, see Taruskin, “How the Acorn Took Root,” 198~ 200; and “ ‘Little Star,’ ” 57-68.

TRANSMISSION [297]

symmetrical modes and axes became mechanical, and his sequences trite, obsessive, and—we may as well face it—somewhat philistine. His music has sunk into such low repute with many modern writers that, as we have seen, they have attempted to discount or even deny his influence on his celebrated pupil. Rimsky cannot be so easily shrugged off, however, for his octatonicism was explicitly acknowledged, widely discussed, and openly emulated by the whole Belyayev school. It probably even gave Scriabin his first nudge in that direction. The earliest explicit mention of the tone-semitone scale in print, so far as I have been able to trace, was made by Yastrebtsev in a 1900 jubilee article celebrating Rimsky-Korsakov’s thirty-fifth year of creative activity.** Yastrebtsev’s diary, however, recorded discussions of the scale as much as five years earlier. And the scale turns up in the work of Rimsky’s pupils as early as 1889, for example in Lyadov’s sketches for an unrealized ballet called Zoryushka, sketches with which the notoriously dilatory Lyadov continued to tinker for the rest of his life (Ex. 4.43).47 A thoroughly Rimskian brand of octatonicism also informs Lyadov’s fantasy miniatures for orchestra, Baba-yaga (190s) and Kikimora (1910).*° Octatonicism is rare in the work of Glazunov, who was never much drawn to the depiction of the fantastic. Nevertheless, it can be found. There is a fascinating ro-

tation by minor thirds through four “Russian minor” (Dorian) keys in his Third Symphony (1890), dedicated to Chaikovsky (Ex. 4.44). The derivation of this rotation from Rimsky’s example might be questioned insofar as it could be seen as a compression of the conspicuously novel key relationships in the first movement of the dedicatee’s Fourth Symphony (1876)—first theme in F minor, second theme in A-flat minor, codetta in B major, recapitulation in D minor, coda in F minor— and was thus an act of homage to Chaikovsky, who had made his own adaptation of Liszt’s modulatory habits. The passage cited in Example 4.45, however, is undeniably faithful to the Rimskian prototype. It is from the coda of the third tableau in Glazunov’s ballet The Seasons. In it, a typical arpeggiation of a diminishedseventh chord is linked by passing tones in the bass, producing an explicit octatonic scale with passing reference to dominant sevenths (the last an augmented sixth) on each of the four octatonic nodes. 41. RMG 7, no. s1 (17 December 1900), col. 1269: “Rimsky-Korsakov has introduced into the art of

music the utterly new, and before him unknown, artistic treatment of the augmented triad, the chords of the second, ninth, and eleventh, and the ‘tone-semitone’ scale.” The knowing quality of the reference and the lack of a definition lead one to suspect that Yastrebtsev had written for publication about the scale before this.

42. Lyadov began work on this ballet at the same time Rimsky-Korsakov was composing Mlada. Rimsky’s sketchbook for Mlada opens in fact with the notation, “conceived 15 February 1889 . . . at Anatoly’s [i.e., Lyadov’s] suggestion” (N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Polnoye sobrantye sochinenty 4[suppl.]:40). The two must have exchanged many octatonic ideas, Lyadov acting as Rimsky’s sounding board much

as he had done ten years before in the very different context of the “Chopsticks” paraphrases. 43. A manuscript page containing virtually the same sketch as the one given as Example 4.43 is found among the materials intended for the ballet Leyla 1 Alaley, which Lyadov planned together with the novelist and fabulist Aleksey Remizov and on which he worked sporadically in 1912 and 1913. The page is reproduced in Zaporozhets, Lyadoy, 175.

[298] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

EXAMPLE 4.43 Lyadov, sketch for Zoryushka (after V. V. Yastrebtsev, N.A. RimskiyKorsakov: vospominantya 1886—1908, ed. A. V. Ossovsky [Leningrad, 1959-60], 1:188)

rrrr

Melody scale: 5S 5 55 te 270) eee 2 eeSe ee eee Oeim 4a 1D.eeBie ee ee ke2 ee ees©| l- M-l-M-1l-w-1l-M

it — 3 oF 6 oOo gO — He

2—

EXAMPLE 4.44 Glazunov, Symphony No. 3, op. 33, I, letter L (mm. 276-92)

) PPP re reer s PPP re rere

Or STF, | 7 4

See ra é : a r ———— Loy ft G TT See ee Eee eee ee eee |. 2 eee.

zs _ ae a 4 —— oe +o — xa AT ta 1 a Sa 2 .Se ee. ..y2

(eee See fate aS ere See a eee eee

6 ae ee a

. —Ss “ >eee 'aom, bith Bo | oy -t alg ot '7g oe __ | =eo es —— 2 2 t SS 2 t 2—S SS ——eeT =

By the time we reach the next Belyayevets generation, that of Stravinsky’s immediate seniors, octatonic scales and octatonically referable chord progressions are so legion that the prospect of selecting examples is daunting. So let us allow Yastrebtsev to make the choice for us. Describing the program of the fourth Russian Symphony (Belyayev) concert of the 1903 season (at a rehearsal for which he first made the acquaintance of “a very sweet and musical youth” named Igor Stravin-

TRANSMISSION” [299]

EXAMPLE 4.45 Glazunov, The Seasons, op. 67, coda of third tableau (L*été), 9 before (mm. 170-79)

f ——— | See ——— — en

aA: i fff Bm) ee ee eee eee! ee eee eee

3 —_|} _} SZ rr rr ir rit ad ag a) Fo lite td eg

ys +. Aa | L__| 1 _____ Sa OS2G.ta4 .————— —gdp $ ai ET, te rr

wT — i = Lo — —)] Js ta am a ite @ ©): — a a i re re eeo@ eg

OF rl

--te__,| © £ 4ee 1: ey te a)resteer¢ £Eee SCE | SRS SERRE ROS eNO AE sky), Yastrebtsev remarked that Nikolai Cherepnin’s Fantaisie dramatique (Dramaticheskaya fantaztya), op. 17, used “the Korsakovian scale [korsakovskaya gamma}:

semitone—whole-tone.”“* He referred, no doubt, to the rather obvious climactic passage given in Example 4.46 from the turbulent middle of the piece. Also on the program was the orchestral fantasy that Rimsky-Korsakov had arranged from the Triglav Mountain scene in Mlada, a piece full of passages in the diminished mode that were to resurface treacherously in the “Danse infernale” from The Frrebird. And no wonder. Attendance at this concert and its rehearsals constituted Stravinsky’s initiation into the Belyayevets inner circle, a great event in his early musical

life. It would be safe to say that everything about the occasion and the works played would have made a deep and lasting impression on him. At any rate, it must be clear by now that the tone-semitone scale, a.k.a. the Korsakovian scale, a.k.a. the octatonic scale, had become a St. Petersburg specialty by the time Stravinsky came upon the scene, and so it would remain for a long while thereafter. Prokofiev picked it up in his turn, as can be observed in numerous passages in such works as the cantata They Are Seven (Semero tkh, 1918), the opera Love 44. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:277 (28 February 1903).

[300] 4 * CHERNOMOR TO KASHCHEY: HARMONIC SORCERY

i) , ¢ “i af i] at To ee TEE CS Se SS eT i] f s “I “t *l |A r|* : a a OF, a aS A SC | ee = KC

EXAMPLE 4.46 Nikolai Cherepnin, Dramaticheskaya fantaztya, op. 17, mm. 506-30

a TS | A A | A SS AN SS) 1 A A SAS | SO SS MS RO) 1 Se OR ast EET EO EET oo E—EqX TOT SETOE ETTom™m. EET ND OT OOOO IO OOTOOTT_OOTOEEEE—E_——

Ale rage Va" e

So. Fe _8Gerscnmn—-nNn."--’”-wnn-’N’-’-.CZ20—6€@—2un.””nnw..—----.———_{X{qx..vrw™”’”n.xv”-e_

Ft oO T_T —nN-”_-t>~’-’-’v-wNw70W0AWnM_G_m—-.-..——"“1~»™N.1”)..........””.....-”-n}

oo to oo T—E—E—=EO 7SE TO hes aTOT-EET | -OE|OOTEEEET ee -| | OO TTT

ff ff

LOOT OOE—O—EE—EEEETOE—E—*—=£{T——=D—=—_—TE=E—— eo

NY 7 KOR OY - A __ AR Wh | RRND

wT OT r-"'N7”70"’---’'---T-..0.---......”.”.””...—>——>>>——?_ "HH@#@on-——-"."...~7~7~”~-— ee]

, ; , i) ' , ¢ ; ' ia a | hg} i to oo ot a TO hh Thee OT HL eT OD TE Oe , . . . . . ¢( : . . ‘ . . . ooo Owy Ow Pw a pi: ioOo www OT . “7X Pm mom é t b f : b f b Fa | As as a SS Se Ss 1 SN SS “1 GS 2, RL ke 4 eeRSG4.

o_o CF wn Q020w"“-'’'---.-.”" _"---O--”_—_]

oI. 2.z27“5“««0-n"--"-0--T---W.:.1#$}'—-"'-"-T"---"-"-".-.’””.”."”"-......n...V..’-”..”..—2—-—=)}

te

iC—O I$ I“5 I nd i ts Tro a ITt oo oe ee EO) FF ee Lg g g ne an TT One. eno)

“wi | ve if | iw _. itt 07 it | wt. is) vw sift | Ww +)

a OR Fy ES a GY Se lO FePoouMom.-—--v----—-..92-nNT—-.".".. '.-0-/”/””” ”—™—-™™—-—”- SE”

7SC,GAS GS MR -|REee LA | AST | ANN A | TM SeRN A |0| oe SS NS) A A LE SS NS SE SS| OS ES||

ee a

Or ee ST > |AJ A_TS—PSA _d Red OX SS _. es Sener a ae

7, CL__ | SSo_o | DN_RC ytLA ye? $1Se_RE2 GE ee OO eT ell ll _‘“@WC0C“0xVVv71.'7w"—"2——= 80)

TT E.:Y A$7 ee aey PTht en HO © ee |hr ti 8 o tate te © be ke ta | td 7d | te |

Assignment: Write ascending progressions.

l. 2. motive motive yay ay a ty FO 2 a b) False preparation, but correct resolution of dissonances.

————_——T7— a]

ee oO T#-O—F SE, a +|| __ y ——— —th ———— a |

je 2 to to to“|"| 8 Séu2 te dey te” Assignments: 1. Complete the examples. 2. Elaborate them with chromatic passing tones.

Vv motive Jmotive Or OO——es 84 8 et ah oOo} tt itty ti c) Correct preparation, but false resolution of dissonances.

2222

0. | StOEGtSetoSTtr | oe ee ee ee

Tl | reel LH

Assignments: 1. Complete the examples. 2. Elaborate with chromatic passing tones.

(299. From dissonances alone. Dominant sevenths:

V V _ Vv _ Vv V I

lo ne |

oy: t¥ EY fe 7 56 ~ 34 20 3g 7 2 7

Assignment: Write similar progressions with half-diminished and diminished-seventh chords. The last progression will be indistinguishable to the ear, but visible in writing.

§ ° BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

A FRENCH LEGEND In his memoirs Stravinsky always liked to point to early unorthodox (that 1s, Francophile) leanings he claimed to have cultivated as early as 1897, guided by an older friend named Ivan Vasilyevich Pokrovsky. In three different books he emphasized the importance to his musical development of this “thin and phthisical” youth, “a pupil of Liadov, if I remember correctly.”’ His memory may have been correct, but

the information, presented without qualification, is misleading. Lyadov taught only elementary harmony at the Conservatory until 1906, and this must be what Pokrovsky studied with him, not (as Stravinsky seems to imply) composition. What is certain is that Pokrovsky attended Rimsky-Korsakov’s counterpoint class in 1900-1901, and that he left the Conservatory without graduating.” According to Boris Yarustovsky, the young man died of consumption in 1906.° Like the teen-aged Stravinsky whose mentor he briefly was, Pokrovsky was a gentry dilettante. He fell in early with the musical satellites of Mer tsskustva. In the Chroniques, Stravinsky promoted him to the status of cofounder of the concert se-

1. An Autobiography, 11-12; M&C:28/29; esp. E&D:27—28/26. The quoted phrases come from the last-cited source. 2. Ginzburg (ed.), N..A. Rimskty-Korsakov 1 muzikal’noye obrazovantye, 266. After leaving the Conservatory Pokrovsky worked as a music teacher at an elite primary school in St. Petersburg, where, on 7 December 1901, he led the school chorus in a performance of a little suite he had composed called “The Four Seasons” (Chetire vrement goda). The nineteen-year-old Igor Stravinsky accompanied the performance. An announcement of the concert in the newspaper Novoye premya (3 December 1901) was

Stravinsky’s first mention in print. See Anatoliy Kuznetsov, “Muzika Stravinskogo na kontsertnoy estrade Rossii (1907-1917),” Muzikal’naya akademiya, 1992, no. 4, 119. 3. B.M. Yarustovksy, Igor’ Stravinskty, 2d ed. (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1969), 17.

[307]

ries Evenings of Contemporary Music,* but he was exaggerating.” Pokrovsky did participate as pianist in the very first public concert sponsored by the Evenings (31 March 1902), accompanying songs both of his own and of Walter Nouvel’s creation, among other things.° That Stravinsky remembered this even in a distorted way would seem to show that he attended the Evenings from their very inception; but it must be taken into account that Nouvel ghostwrote the Chrontques and possibly contributed to them to some indeterminable degree.” Pokrovsky composed over two dozen songs in the course of his brief career (mainly to texts by nineteenth-century poets, but also to Konstantin Balmont), of which a few were published by Jurgenson. One of them, “Tt’s cold, it’s quiet” (“Kholodno, tikho”), was set to a poem by Stravinsky’s cousin Yevgeniy Yelachich.*

Evidently an accomplished pianist, Pokrovsky appeared for the Evenings at least

twice after the debut concert. Both times he performed Reger—not exactly a Stravinsky favorite.” Indeed, his activity on Reger’s behalf somewhat belies Stravinsky’s recollection of Pokrovsky as one who cultivated “a taste for everything French.”!° But by the time Stravinsky was composing seriously, and Pokrovsky half-seriously, they could no longer have been close, for there is no early Stravinsky composition dedicated to Pokrovsky, as there are to Nikolai Richter, Stepan Mitusov, and the Rimsky-Korsakov sons, the comrades of his fledgling composing years. In any case, the French music Stravinsky explored with Pokrovsky was of a pre-Impressionist vintage—the memoirs mention Gounod, Bizet, Delibes, Offenbach, Chabrier—stuff that was merely sneered at in the Belyayev world. If it had any direct impact at all on Stravinsky’s early imaginings, it showed up only in his early symphony’s “balletic” Scherzo. To understand why Stravinsky made so much of Pokrovsky (and especially in the Chroniques, written in Paris), one must bear in mind the lingering effects of the postwar Ballets Russes ideology, in which the musiquette of the Second Empire was taken up as a cause, partly because Chaikovsky had admired it and partly because it was as un-boche as music could be. Diaghilev and, following him, Stravinsky swore by it and ostentatiously claimed it as an ersatz patrimony. But all of that lay far in the future during the Pokrovsky period. So when aid Stravinsky begin to respond seriously and creatively to modern 4. An Autobiography, 17.

5. The actual founding board consisted of Alfred Nurok, Walter Nouvel, Vyacheslav Karatigin, Ivan Krizhanovsky, and Alexander Medem. Sec the next chapter for additional information about these men and about the Evenings of Contemporary Music. 6. RMG 1, no. 14 (6 April 1902), col. 441. More songs by Pokrovsky were performed during the 1905—6 season; Karatigin pronounced them “well put together” (“Vechera sovremennoy muziki,” Vest 3, Nos. 3-4. [1906]: 70). 7. See App. K (“Walter Nouvel and Chroniques de ma vie”) in SelCorrl1:487—502. 8. See G. Ivanov, Russkaya poéztya v otechestvennoy muzike 2:187.

9. Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach, op. 81 (20 February 1906); Piano Quintet, op. 64 (4 April 1906). 10. E&D:28/26.

[308] 5 * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

French music? The question is of consequence at this point, it being so often held that French influence showed up for the first time in Stravinsky’s orchestral pieces of the years 1908—9 and that it played a critical part in helping him find his true composer’s voice.'’ There is not a shred of evidence, whether internal or external, to support such an assumption, though Stravinsky abetted it greatly. Which is not to deny the sincerity of his many avowals to the effect that “the musicians of my generation and I myself owe the most to Debussy,” as he put it in Conversations.'” By 1959 Stravinsky vastly preferred Debussy to Rimsky-Korsakov as a creditor. But he simply knew too little Debussy—and knew it too late—to have amassed any such debt. As far as one can gather from the available documents, Stravinsky’s earliest exposure to Debussy’s music probably came at the Evenings concert of 22 January 1903, when the suite “Pour le piano” was played alongside works by Franck, Rachmaninoff, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Ludwig Thuille, and Alexander Davidovich Medem (1871-1927), one of the founders of the series, whose music, forgotten today, was ubiquitous on “advanced” St. Petersburg programs in the early years of the century. Stravinsky’s earliest exposure to really mature and characteristic Debussy evidently took place at Rimsky-Korsakow’s sixtieth birthday party (6 March 1904), when we know Felix Blumenfeld played Estampes as a kind of practical joke.!? The next month, Pelléas was played and discussed at Rimsky’s as a symbol of the state of music in the West: “not progress but decay” was the Korsakovian verdict." In the summer of 1904 Vincent d’Indy conducted the Prélude a Paprés-midi d’un faune (the Russian program translated the title as “Prelude: To a Faun in the Afternoon,” much to d’Indy’s amusement),*° as well as Dukas’s L’apprenti sorcier, before a tiny audience in the resort town of Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg.'© Stravin-

sky, working away on his piano sonata at the Yelachich estate in Pavlovka a thousand miles away, did not attend these performances (nor is there any reason to suppose that an ardent young Belyayevets would have been especially eager to hear them), but it is certain that he heard the St. Petersburg premiéres of both pieces, which took place the following season. L’apprenti sorcier was given under Alexander Siloti on 16 October 1904.1” It is the one French “influence” that does show up unu. Cf. New Grove Dictionary 18:243: “[The Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks] show . . . the impact (so

much deplored by Rimsky-Korsakov) of the new French music”; Vlad, Stravinsky, 6: “The influence of

French impressionism on Stravinsky becomes more specific and more marked in the

Scherzo fantastique, op. 3”; P&D:61: “Stravinsky’s debt to Debussy began while Stravinsky was still a student of Rimsky-Korsakov.” 12. Conv:50/48. 13. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:303. 14. Ibid., 307. 15. “A. N.” [A. P. Nurok], “Vensen d’Endi v Pavlovske,” Mir iskusstya, 1904, no. 6, 123-24.

16. Memoir of Walter Nouvel, in Arnold Haskell, Diaghileff: His Artistic and Private Life (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 146. 17. L. M. Kutateladze, “Predisloviye,” in L. M. Kutateladze and L. N. Raaben, eds., Aleksandr Ilyich Zilott, 1863-1945: vospominantya 1 pts’ma (Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1963), 32.

A FRENCH LEGEND [309]

equivocally in Stravinsky’s pre-Nightingale oeuvre (the well-known near plagiarism of its opening “magic formula” at fig. [9] in Fsreworks, op. 4, will be inspected in due course). But surely it is not insignificant that this was the one French import that earned the Rimsky-Korsakov seal of approval: “In orchestration he’s run rings around us all,” the old man confessed to Yastrebtsev (23 November 1905), “and amazingly enough, the music is relatively free of nonsense.”'® Laprés-midi d’un faune was first performed in St. Petersburg under the prestgious auspices of the Russian Musical Society by the visiting conductor Camille Chevillard in January 1905.'? Stravinsky called this premiére “one of the major events of my early years,””° the other one being the Russian premiére of the Nocturnes for orchestra (minus “Sirénes”) under Siloti on 15 December 1907. The influence of the latter composition, and in particular on the Scherzo fantastique, has been called “pervasive.”?' But in point of fact the Scherzo had been sketched the previous summer, as we know from Stravinsky’s letters to his teacher.” As for Ravel, his Rapsodte espagnole, which Stravinsky recalled as the “dernier cri in harmonic subtlety and orchestral brilliance” for the young musicians of his

day,”* was not heard in St. Petersburg until Siloti gave it on 3 January 1909. Stravinsky’s recollection of the work’s réclame was certainly accurate: the RMG, issue of 30 November 1908, gave it a fifteen-column razbor (descriptive commentary with examples) in preparation for the premiére, and the Rapsodte was so successful that Siloti repeated it the next season (12 December 1909).7* But knowledge of this score came too late to be of use to Stravinsky, creatively speaking, in any work prior to the first act of The Nightingale. And while there certainly are traces of Rapsodie and Nocturnes alike in Stravinsky’s opera (and in his first ballet as well), they should not be evaluated without due account of a constant underlying irony. That irony consists in the fact that the French composers who interested the Russian composers of Stravinsky’s generation were themselves heavily indebted to the Russian composers of Rimsky-Korsakov’s generation. This is particularly evident in the case of the Rapsodte espagnole, with its numerous Rimskian affinities ranging from woodwind cadenzas a la Sheherazade or Capriccio espagnol to rushing octatonic scales a la Sadko. Some of the very features of Debussy’s or Ravel’s music that seem to have affected Stravinsky’s most directly were actually Russian borrowings of this kind. It may be worth jumping ahead for a moment to The Firelird for a particularly piquant example. “I was more proud of some of the orchestration than of the music itself,’ wrote Stravinsky many years later, going on to specify: 18. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:365. 19. Yarustovsky, Stravinskty, 38.

20. E&D:85/s9; he mistakenly recalled Siloti as the conductor. 21. New Grove Dictionary 18:243.

22. One of them has already been cited in the Introduction to this book (p. 7). 23. E&D: 86/s9-60. 24. Kutateladze, “Predisloviye,” in Kutateladze and Raaben (eds.), Zdott, 33.

[310] 5 © BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

For me the most striking effect in The Fereberd was the natural-harmonic string glissando near the beginning [1.¢., at 7 before fig. [1] in the introduction; Ex. 5.1a], which the bass chord touches off like a Catherine-wheel. I was delighted to have discovered this, and I remember my excitement in demonstrating it to Rimsky’s violinist and cellist sons. I remember, too, Richard Strauss’s astonishment when he heard it two years later in Berlin.”>

But Stravinsky had “discovered” the effect in Rapsodte espagnole, where it appears in the viola and cello six bars into the last movement (“Feria”; Ex. 5.1b). And where had Ravel discovered it? In Rimsky-Korsakov! It appears in the suite from the opera Christmas Eve (Noch pered rozhdestvom), in the section called “Demonic Carol” (“Besovskaya kolyadka”;, Ex. 5.1c).2© This suite was heard in Paris under Rimsky-

Korsakov’s own baton, at one of the concerts put on by Diaghilev in his first year of musical impresario activity in the French capital. The concert took place on 16 May 1907.7” Ravel, who was in the audience, finished the Rapsodie espagnole in Oc-

tober of that year, and completed the orchestration in February 1908. Meanwhile, the Christmas Eve suite remained popular in Paris and, by a strange coincidence, was performed by the orchestra of the Concerts Colonne on the very program that included the premiére of the Rapsodie espagnole (15 March 1908).7* Now, the reason why Stravinsky may have learned about the harmonic glissando from Ravel rather than directly from his own teacher is that Christmas Eve (1895) was an old composition by the time Stravinsky became close to Rimsky-Korsakov and (to judge by the Yastrebtsev memoirs) was rarely discussed or played in those years, while the Rapsodte espagnole was all the rage exactly when Stravinsky received the Firebird commission. Yet in the event, his glissandi were obviously modeled on

Rimsky’s: the cello part in the Firebird passage might almost have been copied right out of Rimsky’s score. St. Petersburg gossip concerning Ravel’s sources must have sent Stravinsky back to Rimsky’s old opera. As for Strauss, he too was at the Paris concert in 1907; that was where he made his famous comment on the works of the Russian composers so dear to the French: “This is all very well, but unfortunately we are no longer children.”?? It hardly seems likely that Stravinsky would have surprised him five years later with the same orchestral effects, even though the glissandi are far more conspicuous in The Firebird than they were in the work of

) 2§. E&D:150/132. |

26. Rimsky included the passage as example 276 in his Principles of Orchestration (Osnovi Orkestrovki),

but the book was first published posthumously in 1913, too late to have furnished either Ravel or Stravinsky with the harmonics idea. It is not impossible, though, that Rimsky spoke of the device in the course of putting the book together and that Stravinsky thus picked it up directly from his teacher. Rimsky included the passage under the heading “Artificial Effects,” which he defined as “operations which are based on certain defects of hearing and the faculties of perception[!],” meaning that they employ sounds either foreign to the harmony or out of tune, the falseness of which the ear has no time to detect (Principles of Orchestration, trans. Edward Agate [New York: Dover, 1964], 16). 27. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:422~-23.

28. Arbie Ornstein, Ravel: Man and Musician (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), an Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:423.

A FRENCH LEGEND [311]

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Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas, as we have noted (see Exx. 3.27b and 3.28, from Sme-

gurochka and Kashchey). Rimsky had two ways of resolving such whole-tone chords: either “outward” as French sixths, or “inward” to an augmented triad belonging to the other whole-tone collection. Stravinsky combines both approaches. On its first appearance (end of Ex. 5.24) the chord resolves to the B-major tonic quite conventionally. The next time it occurs (fig. [17]), it resolves to the third B/D-sharp, which is then provided with the rest of the complementary whole-tone collection to which it belongs, creating a typically Rimskian development by parallel sequence. The periodic recurrence of the unalloyed whole-tone harmony of the beginning points up the fact that, like Rimsky in Snegurochka, Stravinsky conceived it as a leit-harmonie, probably meant in the first instance to represent the queen bee. More abstractly, it functions in the piece as a static point of reference to introduce many major sections and all reprises. For the rest, the harmony of the Scherzo consists mainly of octatonic successions deployed with a practically unprecedented single-mindedness. All the characteristic Rimskian partitions are employed: from simple (0 3 6 9) thirds-rotations harm-

lessly chasing their tails (as in Ex. 5.2b); through tetrachordal partitions of the “melody scale” (cf. the Kashchey storm music shown in Ex. 4.38), including a passage that goes Rimsky one—no, two—better by placing minor tetrachords at each of the four octatonic nodes (Ex. 5.4a); all the way to elaborate sequences based on the Lisztian/Rimskian “chain mode” or “ladder of thirds” (cf. Exx. 4.25 and 4.26),

including what must surely be the passage singled out for admiring discussion around Rimsky’s piano, as reported by Yastrebtsev (Ex. 5.4b). In this last passage, the “chain” of thirds on the upper staff sums up the octatonic “harmony scale” as defined in the previous chapter, while the lower line in contrary motion sounds the “melody scale” on the downbeats, with intervening chromatic passing tones. The full-bar chords, meanwhile, sum up the two whole-tone collections. This diabolically clever concoction, partitioning the semitonal scale according to four different symmetrical patterns at once, must have seemed to the Rimsky-Korsakov circle the ne plus ultra of rationally justified nonfunctional chromaticism (and therefore

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE [327]

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“progressive” as against French and German “decay”). The whole thing is later repeated in a much accelerated retrograde that juxtaposes octatonic linear relations (the successive strong beats) with whole-tone verticalities in dizzying—yet always “rational” (read: sequential)—profusion (Ex. 5.4c). Stravinsky would return to the “ladder of thirds” again and again in his compositions up to The Firebird, ringing change after change upon the simple basic

[328] 5s * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

idea. In so doing, of course, he was affirming the peculiar Belyayevets faith in quasi-scientific, gradual linear progress in art (Rimsky to his pupils: “You absolutely need to know the last word in [musical] science!”).°* Deliberately omitted from most of the examples so far have been the tunes, for in this work they are merely an epiphenomenon, a secondary outgrowth of the harmonic sequences. A few basic contour/rhythmic shapes are endlessly reversed, inverted, and otherwise permuted to accommodate the shifting successions of 1nexorable harmonic routines. The themes being just a surface adornment, It was not difficult to pile them up in impressive “contrapuntal” or quasi-canonic concatenations, such as the one illustrated in Example 5.3b. Just how elaborate this melodic/figurational “composing out” of Rimskian harmonic symmetries could get may be seen at fig. [56], reduced in Example s.sa. Here, a complete whole-tone collection, expressed in terms of two permutations of the opening trumpet motive, provides a root progression, over which a sequence of diminished-seventh chords rises in parallel motion by whole steps through a

| complete whole-tone scale. Meanwhile, each diminished-seventh chord is complexly elaborated with passing tones in the dvisi strings so as to form complete octatonic collections (at the same time contributing little motives and retrogrades of their own). The winds play a melody (Ex. 5.sb) that is similarly an octatonic embellishment of the whole tone—related diminished-seventh chords, except for the strong downbeat appoggiaturas, which are borrowed from the whole-tone collection in the bass. Again we have an ingeniously engineered, mechanistically calculated interpenetration of the two “fantastic” symmetrical scales, supporting a surface melody that is not the generator but the product of the harmony. As befits its origin—as its origin, in fact, dictates—the melody in Example 5.sb is rigidly sequential. It should be added that this whole passage unfolds in the course of an expertly executed “composed diminuendo,” whereby the number of instruments playing 1s scaled down, by imperceptible degrees, from a near tutti at fig. [56] to a mere trio (piccolo, flute, solo violin) at [63] (Ex. 5.5c). This quiet passage was the one that made the best impression on the composer when he reencountered the Scherzo fantastique after more than three decades.°? The instruments having exchanged textural functions several times in the course of the long decrescendo, the flute and piccolo are now playing a remnant of the octatonic string dzvist, and the solo violin is down to an obsessive reiteration of the whole tone—borrowed appoggiatura. If taken by itself the passage is incomprehensible and “atonal,” there being no local explanation of the violin D-sharp that clashes so tinglingly, in this wispy texture, 58. R. V. Glezer, ed., M. F. Gnesin: stat’, vospominaniya, materiali (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor,

en Before the eightieth-birthday-year Canadian performances and recording, the last time Stravinsky seems to have conducted the Scherzo fantastique was in Bucharest in February 1930, on a strangely retrospective program that also included Fireworks and the Symphony in E-flat (see SelCorrI:203n.).

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE [329]

TT [SS EXAMPLE 5.5

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The symmetrical pitch collections indeed control and condition every aspect of this music. Because of the need to make quick transitions among the three octatonic fields, for instance, three harps were required (see especially figs. [13]—[15],

[330] s © BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

EXAMPLE 5.5 _ (continued)

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y=

nena aera name imaeennnreem nn

[67], [74]-[76]). Even the rhythm 1s affected. When major-third (whole tone/augmented) harmony (dividing the octave into three groups of four semitones) takes over from minor-third (octatonic/diminished) harmony (dividing the octave into four groups of three semitones), metrical hemiolas, embodying an analogous shift in the grouping of rhythmic pulses, are often brought into play. All in all, then, one can fairly say that Stravinsky’s Scherzo fantastique represents the state of the art of symmetrically patterned harmony, vintage 1908. Rimsky-Korsakov had little more to teach its composer either about instrumentation or about “flimsy enharmonic devices.” All the more annoying, therefore, is the formal and structural naiveté the piece reveals; for this, too, was the product of Rimsky’s teaching. The stylistic contrast introduced by the brief and (in the absence of the program) perfunctory-sounding Trio (figs. [37]-[48]) amounts to an incongruity. Stravinsky compared the alto flute melody, a flabby attempt at mock-Wagnerian lyricism, with the “Good Friday

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE [331]

a

EXAMPLE 5.6

TCO =j

ee 63

a. Scherzo fantastique, fig. [38], flute

r) ‘ 3 Bite 4—; b. Wagner, Die Meistersinger, Vorspiel, mm. 104—7, violin I

7 AVC: OE TT ec ——— OE

A» ¢ ~tO —_™ oe ooure— Ct ool eee EXAMPLE $5.7 _ Scherzo fantastique, figs. ~[48], harmonic abstract

, maar , ° (compare with full score)

oct. rot oct. rot. ow Oct. rot. _ Fot. em lt LLU a »CCU CN .*_——_ 2C(‘“C(‘C‘iT a EE. BAI 2 2 apt EE a esa, S.-i ol

—J * a .an L__________._ by whole tones —————

-@ yo ©) TT”. =? bv_ ——————_——_——————_ V (of B,, orig. tonic)

Spell” in Parsifal. It seems at least equally beholden to Die Meistersinger, which Stravinsky had heard by 1907 in actual performance,°’ at a time when Wagner’s last music drama was still restricted to Bayreuth (Ex. 5.6). A stylistic lapse of such magnitude can only have been due to a literalistic adherence to the ill-fated program, coupled with the received notion that a scherzo had to have a slower, more lyrical trio. The only interesting feature of this particular Trio is the transition back into the Scherzo, where whole-tone and octatonic harmonies begin to insinuate themselves into the limp diatony of the midsection. The result is a passage that strikingly anticipates the coda to the “Ronde des princesses” in The Firebird (Ex. 5.7). The other disappointing aspect of the Scherzo fantastique is one that could not be avoided, given Stravinsky’s commitment to the “rationalized” chromaticism of his 60. E&D:88n./62n. 61. See his letter to Wolfgang Wagner in R&C:116-17 (T&C:206-7).

[332] 5 * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

teacher: he had picked up Rimsky’s rigid habits of phrase construction to an appalling degree. “The phrases are all four plus four plus four, which is monotonous,” Stravinsky complained after half a century;©” but that kind of phrasing is a foregone conclusion when one’s conception of chromatic harmony consists of dogged rotations around a fourfold cycle of thirds that come three to the octave. “Four plus four plus four,” indeed, for the simple reason that 4 X 3=12 (Q.E.D.). Historians of serialism could actually make a great deal more of this piece than they have been able to make of the Scriabin who so fascinates them, though it were equally a factitious case and though the compulsively protoserial aspect of the Scherzo fantastique is at once its chief point of technical interest and its esthetic Achilles’ heel.

A BELATED WEDDING GIFT Awareness of the Scherzo’s deficiencies seems implicit in the extreme compression of Stravinsky’s next opus, the Fireworks (Feyerverk), op. 4—1n all but name another “fantastic scherzo” for orchestra. The two works are so alike in harmonic and sonorous texture, yet so radically different in structural approach, that the second almost seems a revision of the first—and decidedly for the better. Where the form of the Scherzo had been dutifully schematic and its harmonic contrasts an 1dée recue, the Fireworks presents a real and original interpenetration of the chromatic and the diatonic, together with a motivically integrated structure that projects a continuous development through its superficially identical scherzo-and-trio form. Stylistic and technical debts to Rimsky-Korsakov and others remain but no longer obtrude. Technical interest and esthetic appeal are in far better balance.

If Fireworks was truly intended as a wedding present for Rimsky’s daughter Nadya and her bridegroom, Maximilian Steinberg, Stravinsky would have had to begin composing it immediately upon finishing the orchestral score of the Scherzo. As we know, the latter is dated 30 March 1908, while Nadya’s engagement had been

announced on 12 February and formally celebrated on 8 March.°* The wedding took place on 4 June in a village church near Lyubensk, the Rimsky-Korsakov summer home, only three days before Nikolai Andreyevich’s sudden death.™ In his autobiography, Stravinsky wrote that he composed the whole piece in Ustilug in the space of six weeks and sent it off to Rimsky. “A few days later,” the oft-quoted passage continues, “a telegram informed me of his death, and shortly afterwards

my registered packet was returned to me: ‘Not delivered on account of death of addressee.’”®° This story, and particularly the colorful final detail, does not ring 62. Conv:41/41. 63. Yastrebtsev, Vospominanivya 2:474, 486-87. 64. Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, supplementary chronicle to My Musical Life, 460. 65. An Autobiography, 24.

A BELATED WEDDING GIFT [333]

true. It seems inconceivable that the Rimsky-Korsakov household would not have accepted delivery of a packet containing Fireworks, especially as the company at Lyubensk included the bridal couple to whom the piece was dedicated. As we shall see, there 1s documentary evidence that Stravinsky did send a packet to RimskyKorsakov that summer; but, as will be argued in the next chapter, it contained something else. As to the rest of the story, Stravinsky does seem to have gone to the country a bit early in 1908, since his last “live appearance” in Yastrebtsev’s St. Petersburg diary was on 4 April, at a Mariyinsky performance of Gétterdammerung that he and Rimsky-Korsakov attended together.©° The work he embarked upon at Ustilug was not Fireworks, however, but a set of four concert études for piano (op. 7). The autograph of the first of them is signed and dated “Ustilug, 1 May 1908.”°” Only in May, then, could Stravinsky have even started Fireworks, which would have given him only five weeks in which to compose and copy the whole score and send it off to Lyubensk before receiving word of Rimsky’s death. Far more creditable is the story Stravinsky gave a London interviewer in October 1927 (several years before

the Chroniques), that he “put Fireworks aside in order to compose an homage to Rimsky-Korsakov’s memory,” namely the now lost Pogrebal’naya pesn’, op. 5, generally referred to in the West as the Chant funébre.©* This very short composition (Myaskovsky characterized it as a “prelude-epitaph”)®’ was composed and entirely scored by 28 July, as Stravinsky informed his teacher’s widow by letter.”° But work on Fireworks was not even then immediately resumed, in seems, for the autographs of the second and third études are dated 29 August and 8 September, respectively.”!

The composition of Fireworks, a complicated score despite its brevity, must surely have occupied Stravinsky (along with the first act of The Nightingale) throughout the fall of 1908 and even into the next year. The location of the autograph is at present unknown; there is, however, no dated Stravinsky manuscript extant between that of the third étude and that of the orchestration of Musorgsky’s “Song of the Flea” (21 August 1909). Fireworks could have been completed at any point during the intervening fifty weeks. That the actual date of completion came much nearer the end of that span than the beginning may be gleaned from a letter 66. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:490. A recently published letter from Stravinsky to the Rimsky-

Korsakov sons concerning their father’s illness confirms his presence in Ustilug as of 24 April (“Iz pisem k V. N. Rimskomu-Korsakovu,” Muzikal’naya akademtya, 1992, no. 4, 124).

67. A photograph of this manuscript, now at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, may be seen in Joseph, Stravinsky and the Piano, 47-50. 68. P&D:602. 69. Shlifshteyn (ed.), Myaskovskty: sobrantye materialov 2:70.

70. IStrSM:445. 71. The location of the autograph for the fourth étude, and consequently its date, are at present un-

known; see J. Rigbie Turner, “Nineteenth-Century Music Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library: A Check List (II),” 19th-Century Music 4, no. 2 (1980): 178. Rosyanka, the second song in Stravin-

sky’s opus 6 (settings of Gorodetsky poems), was also composed at Ustilug in the summer of 1908.

[334] 5s * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

Stravinsky sent Maximilian Steinberg from Ustilug on 12 May 1909: “Only now, that is in the last few days, have I sat down in earnest to reorchestrate Fireworks; Pil finish in a few days—there’s lots to do over.””? A reliable terminus ante quem is suggested by the correspondence between Alexander Siloti, the conductor of the premiére,’* and Ludwig Strecker of B. Schotts Sohne, to whom Siloti sent the score on 9 June 1909. Putting the date of Stravinsky’s letter to Steinberg together with that of Siloti’s letter to Strecker, it emerges that the correct date of completion for this “Fantasy for Large Orchestra” is not 1908, as given in all existing lists of Stravinsky’s works (tacitly following the story in the Chroniques), but late May or early June 1909. It was a most belated wedding

| present. , |

It is also an extremely brainy little piece. In Fireworks we encounter for the first time the elaborate covering of technical tracks that would become such a distinctive Stravinskian ploy. The scalar symmetries that govern the rather complicated

harmonic sequences no longer lie naked on the surface of the music, as in the Scherzo fantastique, but have to be dug out through at times quite arduous analysis. Octatonic and whole-tone configurations are mixed in far subtler, more advanced ways than in the Scherzo, but just as methodically; never does Stravinsky loose his tight Rimskian grip on his harmonic compass. This composition is still worlds removed from the outwardly intuitive ways of “impressionism.” The approach 1s still rigorously schematic, even “scientific.” Despite Stravinsky’s oft-remarked and (in the Chroniques) self-advertised creative habits, this is one piece that was not composed at the piano but meticulously deduced on paper. Any gifts Stravinsky may have received from his fingers on this occasion were then submitted to an exceptionally stern intellectual scrutiny.”* With a piece this short, a chronological narration of its events may be the best way to proceed. Fireworks begins with a three-note octatonic fragment tossed back

and forth between two flutes, hocket-fashion, and almost immediately expanded to encompass three additional notes from the same octatonic collection. The motive

(m) is then doubled back on itself, that is to say joined to its retrograde (mR), as shown in Example 5.8a. Except for grace-note slides, the first two degrees of the octatonic scale laid out in Example s5.8b are avoided at this point. The reason for avoidance is that the first thirty-eight measures are based on an opposition between this octatonic scale and 72. [StrSM:447.

73. In his commentary to the Soviet edition of sixty Stravinsky letters in IStrSM, Igor Blazhkov makes reference to “a conservatory evening in 1909” at which Fireworks was performed in its first instrumentation, while Robert Craft asserts (P&D:23) that the piece “had been performed three times privately before Siloti’s concert of January 22 [N.s.], 1910.” Neither writer gives a source for his intel-

Tae Not that these were necessarily insignificant or inconsiderable; Martin Just has made a strong case that many of the melodic figures in the middle section of the piece were shaped by the hands at the keyboard (“Tonordnung und Thematik in Strawinskys ‘Feu d’artifice, op. 4,” Archiv fiir Mustkwissenschaft 40 [1983]: 61-72).

A BELATED WEDDING GIFT [335]

the tonic scale specified by the key signature (E major), deployed in a kind of plagal form through an octave ambitus from B to B. In Example 5.8c that scale is laid out

with its points of divergence from the octatonic collection indicated. A theme based on the tonic scale is gradually unfolded (Ex. 5.8d). From two bars after [2] until [5], the thematic content of each measure is tossed back and forth between horns and trumpet; from [5] through [6], the complete theme is exposed in canon, with a redundant entry (three horns and a trombone) on the last phrase. After a startling abruption and a slow recovery, the canonic process is resumed at [7], with a whole slew of redundant entries on the last phrase. All the while the octatonic

circulations begun in the very first measure have been continuing as an accompa- | nying ostinato. The whole modus operandi here 1s based on that of the orchestral prelude to Rumsky-Korsakov’s cantata From Homer, op. 60 (1901). Every aspect of Stravinsky’s

exposition—triple meter, turbulent ostinato accompaniment, a fanfare-like theme in the brass that is full of triplets and subjected both to echo and to canonic treatment—corresponds to Rimsky’s except that what took 154 measures to unfold in Rimsky 1s over and done with in Fireworks in under forty. Also noteworthy is the resemblance between Stravinsky’s diatonic theme and the vocal melody in the second half of Rimsky’s cantata, a likeness that extends not only to key and contour, but even to the use of close canonic imitation (Ex. 5.8e). Octatonic/diatonic interaction 1s dramatized throughout the opening section of Fireworks by opposing diatonic C-sharp to octatonic C-natural. The diatonic theme has a difficult birth: three times its first measure is stymied by the C-natural before

breaking through to C-sharp and thence to B, the attainment of which frees it from the grip of octatony and allows it to continue. The already-noted abruption at fig. [6] is brought about by the unexpected reassertion of C-natural. Nothing has happened so far that could not have happened in Rimsky, or even in Liszt.”” The octatonic collection is definitely part of the “background” here, providing a series of appoggiaturas to the same dominant-seventh of E that the main theme so conspicuously outlines. At fig. [8], however, the octatonic set comes decisively to the fore, Stravinsky working some dazzling changes on it that have precedent only in Scriabin (though precedent in this case need not imply model). Like Scriabin, Stravinsky begins to play with the octatonic collection as if it were a “key,” that is, a set of stable tones to which auxiliaries can be applied as “chromaticism.” It is here, and 1n this way, that whole-tone sonorities are at last introduced into the harmony. The passage from [8] to [9] can be most clearly understood if we reverse the usual discovery procedure, presenting first the result of the analysis and working back from it to the surface of the music. At the core of the 75. For an obvious “literary” as well as musical antecedent, see Liszt’s “Feux follets” (Etudes d’exécution transcendante, no. $).

[336] 5s * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

EXAMPLE 5.8 a. Fireworks, opening motives in flutes

r—-m—mR, 4 ee ee ee eee ret .l Je) Fe arynes ie

\3 | S- a Ss a ae

AT©O's) aeenTt SA bY | a.eeoaSU | FF t'AE weep TTT efa.eeOT eRe ll (.. GRIGG AEE Oo © ee Oe eS b. The octatonic scale of reference c. The diatonic scale of reference

b initial wind figuration

vw @ =

Cc.

==

w==

A» fF 3 aYY ai ,. bdre 4x.Soprano a @t.i Tus ts 0 ee Mezzo-soprano © d. The diatonic theme

FO AUULE «A )dd ES SS A NSeee GO SO a Rn ST Ada OP, eee | —"e e. Rimsky-Korsakov, From Homer, mm. 222-~26, voice parts only

S.C SE SSREL © A” A 0S RS7,0OS ZOE Ce WY A A) ERLT © HERE ANN WNE.R AESA WS ~ A GE S Sacacn ces See vi-shla naj ne-bo si - yat? dlya_ bla -|zhen-nikh bo-gov i dlya

aS" tev7ae v, Laman-t TE ee A”26 ATUr. RLE A 0Xe... On CS SA Ge i AN enE2>A Laan ® 2 ay © Be .. A CeCS eeSNH oe eei Kennan eee ee eee Lee eee

vi-shlanane-bo si - |yat’dlya bo - gov E - - -

Rte Bt a en

OO A 6ES AeTE a Se WAY linens xSF. iso. —”” i.Secs j.Se lyk [Te DT SL HS ,oWES -feeBN) 2© Re yO YN JS 2s"Ss Se Contrralto

Ne 2 ¢.. WR Gee es

vi-shla na ne-bo si-yat’ dlya bla-zhen -

BAAS a ee

@ . Gn OX . SE Se ee aK

bee ~

.@ne _. eee .eeeS ee 0 | 0@BANS 7.... SWEL 0 ee eiee 7 | . eee SEeePeeee ‘> ED cee eee

- - nikh bo -_ gov.

[Eos came out in the sky to shine for the blessed gods and for mortals, too. |

passage lies a typical octatonic “rotation” of dominant-seventh chords with roots a minor third apart, based on the same collection as the opening woodwind figuration (Ex. 5.9a). The first stage of its elaboration is the simple arpeggiation of the bass along the (0 3 6 9) cycle (Ex. 5.9b). At the same time, a lower neighbor is applied to the third of each chord; these neighbors are not “foreign” tones but are drawn from the same scale as the rest (Ex. 5.9c). The final touch is the embellishment of the top voice by means of a chromatic scale that does introduce conventional auxiliaries (“chromatic passing tones”) from without. To fill in the harmony, moreover, Stravinsky anticipates the fifth of each downbeat chord on the preceding upbeat. The result is Example 5.9d. The chords on the weak beats in Example 5.9d are whole-tone formations. Those at the ends of measures are French sixths—the one harmony referable to both symmetrical modes and the trustiest bridge between them. Just as the scales that contain its tones are “modes of limited transposition,” the French sixth is a chord of limited inversion: the first and third chords in Example 5.9d, likewise the second and fourth, form pairs of invariant pitch and interval content resulting from trans-

position by a tritone. The two pairs together exhaust the octatonic collection of reference shown in Example 5.9a. The middle chord in each measure—the one Kermanesquely marked “X”—is the one that contains the passing tone and is hence “chromatic” with reference to the source collection. Functionally it could be compared to a modal mixture (the alternate symmetrical modes in this context bearing a relationship to one another that 1s analogous to the alternate diatonic modes of common practice). As a sonority it is “unclassified,” having no common-practice occurrences. It has historical precedents both in Le cog d’or’® and in L’apprenti sorcier;’” but Stravinsky’s use of it is nonetheless unprecedented. Once it had been as it were “logically” derived according to the process analyzed in Example 5.9—and thereby given a “rational” theoretical standing (Stravinsky, after all, was still anticipating Rimsky’s judgment! )—the composer felt free to use the chord as a stable harmony without resolution. This license is already implied by the melodic surface of the passage fol-

lowing fig. [8], consisting of chromatic transformations of the diatonic theme quoted in Example 5.8d. In the second beat of each measure the “chromatic” tone, which had been derived as a dissonant (passing) auxiliary and hitherto treated con-

trapuntally as one, 1s now treated as a consonant “chord tone” (Ex. 5.10). The chord at the very end of the example, actually played fortississimo as a brusque offbeat eighth note, belongs to none of the collections drawn upon up to now, nei-

76. See Yastrebtsev’s discussion of the chord and its resolutions with Rimsky, cited in Chapter 4 (p.

7) Viz., four bars after fig. [56]. There it is not a stable sonority but a dominant 4/2 with an appoggiatura to the fifth of the chord (in the viola solo) that is resolved before the harmony changes.

[338] s * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

EXAMPLE 5.9 Fireworks, figs. [s]-[9], harmonic analysis a.

‘ . re gy _ oe v

omit 3 $+ 4 —__—_—____2r—__+——_+— pee b.

te oO

; SER Es By or nee

SS A» A | XS

ogee | Eee ee SSC cd

Cc.

Se KS DP nsaCk|:© eS nn Oc2) ¢ nnn On ©Hace | Savnnl

7 de gf gy

2 SO ¢“’NvrvWvwvN"YxY.0.-- TT —— TET oe

d.

per | ee oh lig ae

-ol,t pO tg | fp||| [ |i] | jf oo id v en Fr 6 Fr6

ther to “B Mixolydian” or “B octatonic” as given in Example 5.8 nor (obviously) to any whole-tone grouping. It signifies another abruption, in which a new octatonic collection is brought into play. Sounding it is tantamount to modulation from one octatonic “key” to another.

The music in this contrasting octatonic key, marked “Lento,” might be com- , pared with the second theme in a sonata movement. It is here that the oftremarked allusion to L’apprenti sorcier takes place. While the homage may have been real enough, the resemblance is only skin deep. Only the contour—the “gesture,” one might say—is copied; the actual harmonic content is dissimilar. Dukas’s “magic spell” was a pair of old-fashioned common-tone progressions, one circling

A BELATED WEDDING GIFT [339]

ee 6

OO OS A) EXAMPLE 5.10 Fireworks, melody at [8]

en SS ee (Oseeaeehrtig hr— a 2be2— rr 4. Picc. yg (f a _ 8va-_----------------

secitigttistetg, |_| saa = nanan

Ce

by minor thirds (Ex. 5.11a), the other by major (Ex. 5.11b). Stravinsky’s progression,

by contrast, 1s another octatonic rotation; only this time instead of dominantsevenths he uses half-diminished sevenths, and every other chord is preempted by an “X”, fast on its way to taking over the harmony (see Ex. 5.12). The last “X” chord in Example 5.12¢ lives a life of its own from the bar before [10]

through [11], alternating with whole-tone frisons in clarinet and flute that derive from its own pitch content, and with the solo oboe phrase given at the end of the example, which bridges two of the notes of the “X” chord with a neighboring A, thus producing an octatonic configuration that will be recognized as a transposition of the initial motive in its mirrored form (mR in Example 5.8). The oboe phrase inaugurates a section in which mirror-writing in both dimensions (retrogression and inversion) is pursued with a special vengeance. To understand what Stravinsky is about here one must note the way he exploits the pitch configuration (0 6 10)—a tritone plus a major third—as the common element linking several of the octatonic sonorities derived thus far, while its inversion (o 4. 10)—major third plus tritone—provides a link between the symmetrical modes and the unequivocally diatonic (Ex. 5.13a). The enigmatic arpeggio figures between [11] and [13] maneuver the “X” chord to an “impeccable” tonal resolution (as Rimsky would have said) that prepares the passage of multifarious mirror-writing through a threefold chromatic ascent (Ex. 5.13b). And now comes the iridescent Piacevole, which could be likened, from either a tonal/harmonic or a motivic standpoint, to a development section. The pitch con-

[340] 5s * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

EXAMPLE 5.11 Dukas, L’apprenti sorcier

. - abea—— 4 it tle Le = (some spellings enharmonic) a. Mm. 2-3

’ eG) ReU7GY WA... Been... Be ee ee WAG ese 40 a eeEL ee 1 ee Le! ABE Ree EE» Ee.) 6 Cae Ue Edee Wea. (404 ME -W-X] Eee eee68eee. 4 eh 4 Cee Oea eee PC.

Sy GFa |pr —s™ ee peUU) eeneee — To b. Mm. 8—9

~~ —— ry SOS eo eo C= ’ 2) FW: We oS i) cee ee A ee 1... «On Ly Cee SyWe Cee eeOn,ee eel.)|a A hiv @g sf. “fF I ger FF YY Ce” ULULULULUCeLULUU™SLULUWDDDLULUd Ce Oe

nearness ay eer espana a

f)5fUt) ' A oePe te©tO Sy_ re EXAMPLE 5.12 a. Model

L Coll. III (harmony scale)

Soros = TO a —? ee b. Fireworks, fig. [9]

ear tah Peeran 8le2) ©. SE .)> ae [eed Se ee eei ger Lee -ef Ts F . . ae Sotye wm @ . .

5 . . e 27

FIG. 5.2b. litle page of Gorodetsky’s

Akh, ti pélye, moyd vélya, Ah, meadow, my freedom,

Akh, doréga doroga! Ah, road I crave!

Akh, most6ék u chista pdlya, Ah, path through open field,

Svéchka chfsta chetverga! Holy Thursday candle! Akh, moyé goréla yarko, Ah, mine burned brightly,

Pogasdla u nego. His went out.

Naklonilsya, dishet zharko, He bent down, his breath was hot,

Zharche sérdtsa moyego. Hotter than my heart. Ya otstdla, ya ostalas’ I dropped back, I remained

U visékogo mosté. By the high bridge.

Plamya svéchek kolebdlos’, The candle flame sputtered,

Tselovalisya v usta. We kissed each other on the lips. Gde ti, miliy, lobizaniy, Where art thou, beloved, whom I kissed,

Gde ti, laskovi takéy! Where art thou, my oh so tender one! Akh, pari vesni, tumani, Ah, the spring mists, the fog, Akh, moy dévichiy spokdy! Ah, my carefree maidenhood! ZvO6ni-stdni, perezvoni, Tolling-moaning, tolling ever more, Zv6ni-vzd6khi, zv6ni-sni, Tolling-sighing, tolling as in dreams,

Visoki krutiye skléni, High are the steep slopes, Krutoskl6ni zeleni. The steep slopes are green. Sténi vibeleni bélo: The walls are whitewashed white: Mar igumen’ya veléla, The mother superior has ordered,

U vorét monastiry4 At the monastery gates Ne boltdt’sya zrya. Not to chatter foolishly.

This poem had built-in attractions for an aspiring composer in the post-kuchkist orbit.** The setting of “artificial folk songs” was a tradition that reached back to the days of Glinka and beyond, while imitations of ringing bells had given rise to

some of the most characteristic pages in all of Russian art music. As RimskyKorsakov himself had exclaimed anent the Coronation scene in Boris Godunov: “Once again the tolling of bells! How many times and in what different forms had I myself reproduced in the orchestra this invariable feature of ancient Russian life which is still preserved in our own days!”** Stravinsky must have felt certain that Rimsky would approve his choice of a text, and also approve his approach to setting it. He was in for a painful surprise. Stravinsky deliberately strove to place his setting of Gorodetsky’s poem within the traditions outlined above. His tolling bells, with their accelerating harmonic rhythms, were in every way a chip off Musorgsky’s (Ex. 5.16), and his mock folk 83. Indeed, it was the most-often-set poem in Gorodetsky’s book, made into songs by at least three other composers by 1915: Vsevolod Bagadanov (1907), Vladimir Po? (1910), and Dmitriy Zernov (1915). See G. Ivanov, Russkaya poéziya v otechestvennoy muzike 1:104. 84. My Musical Life, 331.

[348] 5 * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

setting in the middle was just as patently modeled on such strict-diatonic prototypes as Musorgsky’s “Where Art Thou, Little Star!” (“Gde ti, zvyozdochka”), or better yet, Sadko’s wistful folk song in scene 11 of Rimsky’s opera, which interrupts chromatic proceedings in a manner copied here by the composer’s pupil (Ex. 5.17). Stravinsky’s setting is eclectic: the cadential motion at the end of the maiden’s first quatrain is appropriated from Grieg (cf. “Solvejg’s Song”), and in the next verse Stravinsky adopts an accompaniment figure from the crowd music in the first scene of Musorgsky’s Prologue to Boris. The two borrowings come together in a veritable magpie’s nest (Ex. 5.18). If, as these examples tend to show, Stravinsky’s “aria” after Gorodetsky was such a derivative affair, why was it precisely this work that began to raise doubts about him in the Rimsky-Korsakov circle? After Stravinsky unveiled the piece at Rimsky’s, singing it to his own accompaniment at the first jour fixe of a new season (31 October 1907), Yastrebtsev noted his response tn his diary: “Involuntarily the joke about the poet [Alexey Nikolayevich] Apukhtin [184.0—93, a friend of Chaikovsky] came to mind. ‘Mama,’ asked the little child, who had just seen the incredibly corpulent figure of the poet, ‘is that a gentleman, or just on purpose?’ So might one ask of that opening sonic orgy, ‘is it music, or just on purpose?’ ”®° This impression of Stravinsky’s bell music was not Yastrebtsev’s alone. Five days later he recorded the master’s reaction: “In the opinion of Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky’s talent has not yet emerged with sufficient clarity, since in the fourth movement of his First Symphony he still imitates Glazunov excessively, while in his new songs (on words by S. Gorodetsky) Igor Fyodorovich has become far too zealously addicted to modernism.”®° The passages in Example 5.19 must be the ones that offended. From the stand-

point of voice leading they are full of what could only have struck RimskyKorsakov as willful solecisms—chord sevenths that don’t resolve by step, leading tones that are contradicted by false relations, and so on. To proceed backwards along a circle of fifths (that is, by fourths) must have particularly impressed Rimsky as “on purpose” illogic. “The middle of this romance,” Rimsky allowed on another occasion, “is in many places very nice and expressive, but the very beginning is something else again—wildly unrestrained and harmonically nonsensical.”8”

True enough, the passage shows the Rimsky-Korsakov stamp even yet in its dogged sequences. One is willing to bet that if the song had had a “fantastic” sub-

ject Rimsky might have muted his complaint at least about the second passage quoted in Example 5.19 (the piano retransition to the reprise of the opening refrain). It embodies the sort of progression with which Stravinsky had filled

85. Yastrebtsev, Vospominaniya 440.

86. Ibid., 442 (4 November 1907). 87. Ibid., 456.

NIGHT AND FOG [349]

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EXAMPLE 5.18 “Vesna (Monastirskaya),” mm. 53-56

Na-kKlo- nil - © sya, di -_ shit zhar -_ ko,

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Rot tee teere both his orchestral scherzi: a chromatic line doubled in thirds 1s accompanied by a bass that proceeds by fifths, producing whole-tone sonorities of varying types. Yet it is rather ineffectively cluttered, Rimsky would be sure to point out, by the triad-completing additives in the right hand part (note heads in parentheses in Ex. 5.19d).

Rimsky conceived an instantaneous dislike for Stravinsky’s “Song of the Clois-

ter,” and he voiced it every time he heard the piece, which was often, since his daughter Nadya learned it and sang it at gatherings. On Christmas Day 1907, Nadya sang the Gorodetsky “aria” to the composer's accompaniment—along with the little Pastorale Stravinsky had dedicated to her (and to which we shall return) —

at a party that was attended not only by Igor Stravinsky, but by his brother Gury and his mother as well. Rimsky-Korsakov must have embarrassed his pupil considerably with his blunt comments: “I stand by my previously stated opinion with respect to the first of these pieces, and while Pm at it, strictly speaking, I personally don’t quite understand what pleasure there can be in writing music to verses like Gorodetsky’s ‘zvoni-stoni, perezvoni.’ For me all this contemporary decadentimpressionist lyricism with its squalid poverty of ideas and its pseudo-folksy Russian lingo is full of ‘night and fog.’ ”®° This tirade points up an extremely touchy esthetic gap that was widening between the generations at this moment in the history of Russian art—one that will 88. Ibid., 453.

[352] 5s * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

EXAMPLE §.19

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loristic elements into the technique of professional art—and set it as if it were a conventional, subjective lyric. His song betrays a great stylistic confusion (Stephen Walsh aptly speaks of “an air of stylistic crisis”)'®° that would surely have pained Rimsky-Korsakov, most knowing of all connoisseurs of the various genres of Russian music, had he lived to see it. It 1s ironic indeed to contemplate “Rosyanka” from the vantage point of our present knowledge of Stravinsky’s development, for the neonationalism he so flagrantly overlooked in Gorodetsky would in a few short years become the basis of his own stylistic emancipation, and the tendency inaugurated by the poet would be brought to its magnificent peak by Stravinsky himself. What the songs of opus 6 teach us is that Stravinsky’s later nationalism was no direct outgrowth of his teacher’s. Its seeds and roots will have to be sought elsewhere.

The opening scene of K#tezh had an influence on another Stravinsky lyric besides “Rosyanka,” one that Rimsky knew very well indeed. At the height of pantheistic

rapture, Fevronia calls out to her friends the forest birds and animals—“A-oo! A-oo!” And in so doing she furnished the “text” of Stravinsky’s delicious little Pas-

torale, usually called a chant sans paroles. It is not really wordless, though. Its “A-oo” text places it in a Russian tradition of feminine nature ecstasy that includes four of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas besides Kitezh.'°° “A-oo” was also a kind of password among the Russian Symbolist poets. Konstantin Balmont, for instance, used it as the title of two different poems,’°” both of them postdating Stravinsky’s 105. Stephen Walsh, The Music of Stravinsky (London: Routledge, 1988), 12.

106. Yastrebtsev actually discussed askantye (“calling ‘a-oo’”) with Rimsky-Korsakov on the ) evening of 27 February 1907, but Stravinsky was absent (perhaps attending Landowska’s recital; see below). See Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:415. The first appearance of “a-oo” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s work was the title character’s entrance in the pantheistic Prologue to Snegurochka. Napravnik’s Dubrovsky (1894, libretto by Modest Chaikovsky) begins with an elaborate women’s chorus of aukantye set in picturesque natural surroundings and consisting of nothing but the ecstatic cry. Fyodor Stravinsky created the role of Andrey Dubrovsky (the hero’s father) in Napravnfk’s opera; the basso’s son must have seen

it often. 107. One of them was set by Rachmaninoff in 1916 (op. 38, no. 6).

[364] 5 * BELLS, BEES, AND ROMAN CANDLES

Pastorale, which was given its “premiére” at the same Rimsky-Korsakov soirée at which “Vesna (Monastirskaya)” had its fiasco. The soloist was Rimsky’s daughter Nadya (Nadezhda Nikolayevna, usually called “the younger” to distinguish her from her mother, who had the same given name and patronymic), for whom it was composed only days before (the manuscript is dated St. Petersburg, 29 October 1907). Yastrebtsev was perplexed by this piece—“an original song, but not without strange harmonies.”!°® Here, however, he spoke for himself only. The Pastorale became a favorite fixture of the Rimsky-Korsakov Wednesdays for the rest of the season (which, as it turned out, was the last). The little piece was indeed “original,” as Yastrebtsev said—though in Russian (as in French) the word can be barbed. It is in fact the earliest Stravinsky composition to which that word may be unequivocally applied. Alongside the Gorodetsky songs it sounds, for all its slightness, remarkably authentic and impressive. Its texture has often been described in terms of a quasi-painterly plein air. Asafyev compared it with the landscapes of the Miriskusnik painter Konstantin Somov (later a good friend of Stravinsky’s), but that, of course, was with much benefit of hindsight.?°? The airiness and freshness are quite real, however, and not difficult to account for in technical terms. The piece is arranged in a layered three-part counterpoint, the parts (piano left-hand, piano right-hand, voice) at all times clearly differentiated in range and articulation. There is no sonorous “fill”; the texture is open and pervasively linear (the last chord, in fact, is an open fifth). Most striking of all is the practically ceaseless rhythm of even sixteenth notes in the piano left-

hand, marked “Sempre staccato”—the kind of thing that even today we call “Stravinskian.” The composer later (1925) arranged the accompaniment for a trés sec ensemble of four winds (three of them double reeds), and it comes off perfectly.'*°

Surely there is no other composition of its vintage that would fit such an echtStravinskian sonority. What is not so easy to account for is the sudden emergence of such a texture and (not counting a few octatonic zephyrs that waft gently through the middle section) such a diatonic strictness (without benefit of folklore) in 1907, a year otherwise

given over to the orchestration of the Symphony in E-flat, the sketching of the Scherzo fantastique, and the composition of the first Gorodetsky song, all works that are absolutely antithetical to the style of this impudently naive little piece. A clue seems to lie in the curious five-hemidemisemiquaver turn-figure that crops up so often in the piano part alongside other, conventionally signed ornaments. That, 108. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:440. 109. Glebov [Asafyev], Kniga o Stravinskom, 32.

110. Ten years later still he arranged it for violin and piano (meanwhile extending it by means of extra sectional repetitions to nearly twice the original length), so that he could perform it with Samuel Dushkin. This arrangement he then transferred to the wind ensemble. (For details, see SelCorrII:293— 311.) All this arranging, expanding, and above all, self-performing testifies to an abiding affection for this piece in which, looking back, Stravinsky must have seen the roots of his maturity.

A-OO! [365]

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lyrical effusion.” The RMG’s report of the Belyayev concert in memory of RimskyKorsakov lefthandedly suggests—a pleasant surprise!—that Stravinsky’s memorial ode, despite its flaws, pleased the audience on that occasion more than Glazunov’s: Of the two works dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov’s memory, Mr. Stravinsky’s Pesn? is written with temperament, but it is not well enough soldered together from a formal point of view. It sounds good and made an effect. In our evaluation of Glazunov’s Elegy we depart both from the public and the press in our opinion, as far as we can tell from the comments we have heard and read. It is a positively beautiful, substantial, and artistic thing. We are not even talking about the instrumentation or the intended melodic and harmonic reminiscences, somehow permeated with the creative spirit of the departed artist. The Elegy is a masterly work, noble in structure, in music, and in the feeling expressed.®”

ON HIS OWN When Stravinsky wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov’s widow for advice on placing his Pogrebal’naya pesn’, he included another request: “If it’s not a burden, please ask Andrey [Rimsky-Korsakov] to write me whether he has received the package (registered parcel post) about which I spoke with him when we saw each other in St. Petersburg [i.c., at Rimsky’s funeral].”8* This, on the face of it, would seem related to the familiar story of the return of the Fireworks manuscript, so often quoted from Stravinsky’s autobiography. In the previous chapter, several reasons were adduced for why that story could not have been true. What, then, did the registered package contain? The best guess would seem to be that it contained a fair copy of the Scherzo fantastique, which Stravinsky had meant to present to Rimsky as a gift but now wanted back so that he could submit it to Siloti in case the latter turned down the Funerary Chant. In any case, the Scherzo was performed by Siloti on 24 January 1909 (exactly one week after the Pogrebal’naya pesn’), at the seventh concert

in his sixth regular subscription series. A grateful Stravinsky dedicated the score “To the great artist Alexander Ilyich Siloti.” He had ample reason to feel grateful, for this performance was his first real success. Unlike all previous Stravinsky performances, which had taken place before coteries of the right (Belyayev) and left (Evenings), this one took place under wellattended, even glamorous auspices. The rendition, by the orchestra of the Martyinsky Theater, must have been a thrill, both for its sheer quality and well-rehearsed precision and also because Stravinsky had known these very men since his teens, when his father was the theater’s leading basso and he was the orchestra’s little mascot. The reviewer for the RMG had his reservations about the piece, but he honestly reported the public’s enthusiastic reception: 87. RMG 16, no. 4 (25 January 1909), col. 110. 88. Letter of 28 July 1908; in IStrSM:445.

[408] 6 * RIVALRY, RECOGNITION, REALIGNMENT

The other novelty [the first had been Elgar’s Symphony No. 1, of all things], an orchestral scherzo, op. 3, by I. F. Stravinsky, entitled “Fantastic” (its expressive echoes from Wagner’s Venus grotto might permit calling it also “Venereal”), came off smartly, a piece written with taste and imagination, artfully orchestrated and not without a certain diabolical humor in its rhythms and sonorities. Its considerable dimensions are maintained somewhat at the expense of the intended piquancy of the material. Its length causes one to grow accustomed to the music’s peculiarities of style and character; but one mustn’t get used to the fantastic lest it stop being fantastic. The scherzo achieved a well-menited and sincere success; the composer was called out.*°

From that moment on, Stravinsky’s local reputation was established, and he began to be sought after in other Russian centers as well. Although the relatively mild, well-behaved chromatics of the Scherzo were fully approved by RimskyKorsakov, they were enough to earn for Stravinsky the reputation of a “modernist”

in the eyes of other members of his teacher’s generation. The reception of the Scherzo fantastique marks the beginning of Stravinsky’s transition, in the eyes of the Russian musical public, from the status of docile Belyayevets to that of brash young man. From now on, moreover, he would lead the life of a professional. A little over a week after the Scherzo’s St. Petersburg premiére, it was conducted

in Moscow by Emil Cooper (2 February 1909, the first Stravinsky performance outside his native city) under the auspices of the Russian Music Lovers’ Circle (Kruzhok lyubiteley russkoy muzikt), an organization that, like the Russian Symphony Concerts, played only Russian music, with special emphasis on the mighty kuchka, and, again like the Belyayev organization, had acquired a reputation for conservatism.?° The Moscow enterprise, which existed between 1896 and 1912, is often called the Kerzin Circle after its founders, Arkady Mikhailovich Kerzin (1857-1914), a wealthy lawyer and biographer (1906) of Musorgsky, and his wife, the pianist Maria Semyonovna Kerzina (1865-1926). César Cui was extremely close to Mme Kerzina, the real leader of the organization, and, in the capacity of informal adviser to the Circle, carried on a huge correspondence with her. In connection with the impending Moscow performance of Stravinsky’s Scherzo, Cui wrote to her about it no less than three times; and inasmuch as Stravinsky’s memoirs of

Cui contain the remark that “though I think he was present at the first performances of the Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks, I recall no hint of his reactions to

89. RMG 16, no. 5 (1 February 1909), col. 147; italics added. This, not the Fireworks premiére, was the occasion recalled by Pierre Souvtchinsky, quoted by Eric Walter White (Stravinsky: The Composer and Hts Works, 143): “There were cries of ‘Author!’ after its performance, and Stravinsky appeared on

stage walking very rapidly and holding his fur hat in his hand.” As we shall see, the author was not called out after the Fireworks premiere. 90. The rest of the program on which the Scherzo appeared was typical: Balakirev’s First Symphony; Gliére’s Sirens, op. 33 (1908); Glazunov’s Ouverture solennelle, op. 73 (see Z. A. Apetyan, ed., S. V. Rakhmaninov: pis’ma [Moscow: Muzgiz, 1955], 366).

ON HIS OWN [409]

these pieces reaching my ears,””' it may be of interest to cite these amusing letters for the record. They certainly testify to the ossification of “kuchkism.” Cut’s esthetic vantage point may be gauged best from the way he lumps Elgar and Stravinsky together: 25 January [1909]: ... I was at Siloti’s concert last night. He continues to propagandize the modernists zealously. He performed last night the terribly long Symphony (about an hour) of Elgar and the terribly long “Scherzo fantastique” by Stravinsky. It’s all the same old puffed-up incompetence, absence of all music, pursuit of sheer sonority, of orchestral effect, various curious combinations of various instruments, absence of any logic, of taste, frequent discord, and all the rest. And as a result, the complete conformity of all the modernists with one another, the horrible monotony of their pseudomusic—{ producing] either indignation or boredom, depending on one’s temperament. But the gros public, afraid of the charge of being old-fashioned, listens to all this nonsense in holy silence and dares not withhold its applause. P’'d be interested to know whether the public will go on letting itself be fooled like this for long. I’m afraid it will and that I won’t live to see the reaction in favor of real music that the appearance of a strong, true talent will bring about. 29 January [1909]: About Stravinsky’s Scherzo, don’t worry, dear Maria Semyonovna, I’m sure it will go there with the same great success as here. There is little music in it, but many curious sound effects, and besides it has the completely “moderne” sound, for which the Muscovites have such a weakness, at least to judge by their houses [a reference, no doubt, to the famous residences of the Moscow art collectors Shchukin and Morozov]. Pil even say that of the three existing works of Stravinsky [the other two being, evidently, The Faun and the Pogrebal’naya pesn’, both performed at the Belyayev concerts Cui habitually attended], this one is the most bearable. It’s just terribly long. . . . 6 February [1909]: It’s really too bad you didn’t get to hear the Stravinsky Scherzo, since that leaves you completely unacquainted with musical modernism. In a small dose and on first acquaintance this exclusive pursuit of sonority is rather diverting and amusing. But in big portions it is monotonous and intolerable. These gentlemen are like a man who has chased a good woman away and has taken up with God knows who, all dyed and rouged, but heartless, yes, and mindless, too, if you please.”?

All the Moscow reviewers took the cue provided by the juxtaposition of Stravinsky’s Scherzo and Balakirev’s First Symphony to reflect on the passing of generations. Most favorable to Stravinsky was Yuliy (Joel) Engel, who began with the kind of sally that would dog Stravinsky for decades—“little ‘music’ but lots of ‘orchestra’”—but ended with a remarkably just assessment of its highly individual 91. M&C:59/61.

92. C. A. Cui, Izbranniye pis’ma, ed. 1. L. Gusin (Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1955), 387-89.

[410] 6 °- RIVALRY, RECOGNITION, REALIGNMENT

: coloristic virtues, even nearly divining the hidden apiarian program: “It was strange to hear so many musicians produce so little sound. And practically all of this sound encompassed only half the range of frequencies accessible to human hearing—the upper half. From the strings, the winds, the harp, the percussion, Stravinsky draws special effects: except for the trio, everything in his scherzo chirrs, whistles, hums, buzzes, flits. A curiously brilliant, even masterly piece in its way!”??

The review by Rimsky-Korsakov’s old confidant Kruglikov, by contrast, sounded a note that chimed with Cur’s scathing letters, if a bit more decorously because meant for publication: “Stravinsky’s harmony went beyond the limits of refined contrivance.”?* Stravinsky was in effect being disowned by the old kuchkists—but then, so, even, was Steinberg (Cui to Kerzina: “Thank God we have only a few decadents so far: Steinberg—though a former Korsakov protégé— Stravinsky, and Scriabin. The first two are nonentities, but it’s too bad about Scriabin.”).?° Stravinsky’s next St. Petersburg performance took place exactly one month after the Scherzo premi¢re—24 February 1909—when his Pastorale and the Gorodetsky songs (both of them this time) were given by the Evenings of Contemporary Music, for a total of four performances within five weeks. (The performers were Anna Zherebtsova and Mikhail Bikhter.) Testimony to his newfound cachet is implied by the mere fact of repetition, an extremely unusual occurrence at an Evenings concert, where novelty was all. Also noteworthy is the way the R.MG, writing about

him now for the third time 1n two months, went for a familiar name when confronted with a list of relative unknowns: This was a strange concert: much too motley, both from the point of view of performers and that of composers (10 performers, including a string quartet; around Is composers), but more uniform when it came to the character of the works performed. Without listing all the works on this long-drawn-out program, we will note that the greatest attention of the public was attracted by the quartet of Mr. Pogozhev . .. and the songs of Messrs. Gnesin, Senilov, and Stravinsky.”°

In the wake of his success with the Scherzo fantastique, Stravinsky received his first commissions. Siloti, having done both Stravinsky and Steinberg the favor of rescuing them from the doldrums of the Russian Symphony Concerts, now put

93. Russkiye vedomosti, 7 February 1909; in Yu. D. Engel, Glazami sovremennika (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1971), 242-43. 94. Golos Moskvi, 6 February 1909; in Kuznetsov, “V zerkale russkoy kritiki,” 69.

95. Cui, Izbranni'ye pis’ma, 368. The editor dates the letter 21 January 1907, but the year must be wrong. Stravinsky’s music had never been performed in public as of that date, and the way Cui refers

to Steinberg suggests that the letter was written after Rimsky’s death, most likely in 1909 ™ 06, RMG 16, no. 10 (8 March 1909), col. 273.

ON HIS OWN [411]

them to work on orchestrations for future concerts in his series. From Steinberg he ordered an arrangement of Bach’s solo violin chaconne (it would not actually be performed until the season of 1911-12). From Stravinsky Siloti commissioned orchestrated accompaniments for the settings of Mephistopheles’ “Song of the Flea” by the young Beethoven (“Aus Goethe’s Faust,” op. 75/3, first sketched in 1792) and of course by Musorgsky, to round out a nonsubscription concert devoted to “compositions written on the subject of ‘Faust’ ” in belated commemoration of the cen-

tenary of Part One of Goethe’s poem, to be given on 28 November 1909 with Chaliapin as featured soloist.”” Stravinsky was eager to accept the assignment, but his inexperience put him in a ticklish position. He turned to Steinberg for advice in a letter posted from Ustilug on 21 May 1909. In view of Stravinsky’s later legendary business acumen (what he himself would call his “ambition to earn every

penny that my art would enable me to extract from the society that failed in its duty to... Mozart”),”® the diffident tone of the letter takes on a particular irony: Siloti has assigned me to orchestrate “The Song of the Flea” by Musorgsky, and another one by Beethoven (!!!22?). About the first task he wrote me a week or so ago, and I wrote back agreeing; now he has proposed the Beethoven. Here is where I wanted to turn to you with a certain question. Here it is. When Siloti gave you the Bach to orchestrate for the coming season, did he mention any terms to you, and if so, how much? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about it. He made me no offer, and I don’t know how to act. I myself don’t want to write about it, it’s awkward as hell, but he says nothing about this. Do me a favor, write me back on this right away.”?

The Musorgsky was ready by the end of the summer: the manuscript is signed and dated Ustilug, 21 August 1909.'°° It is an imaginative, colorful, and boldly individual job, making typically Russian “bardic” use of a pair of harps and articulating the familiar laughing ritornello in an idiosyncratic but effective manner that wears well in its manifold repetitions (Ex. 6.7). The virtuosic woodwind writing gives a foretaste of the ballet scores that were soon to follow: Stravinsky doubles the harp’s rolled chords with quick anacrustic arpeggiations in the flutes, clarinets, and bassoons—a device he would exploit to the hilt in Firebird and The Rite of Spring. The last verse is accompanied by little insect squeaks (not in the original)

97. The rest of the program consisted of two selections from Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust sung by Chaliapin (yet another “Song of the Flea” and the “Serenade”), Henri Rabaud’s Procession nocturne after Lenau’s Faust, and Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie. 98. I. F. Stravinsky, “A Cure for V.D.,” Listen: A Music Monthly 1, no. 5 (September—October 1964): 2; reprinted in revised, retitled, and somewhat bowdlerized form in Themes and Episodes, 91.

99. [StrSM:446. 100. The date is given in Beletsky and Blazhkov, “Spisok,” in Dialogt, 377. [gor Blazhkov had located

the autograph in the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography and wrote Stravinsky with the news on 27 August 1964 (Stravinsky Archive).

[412] 6 * RIVALRY, RECOGNITION, REALIGNMENT

EXAMPLE 6.7 a. Musorgsky, “Song of the Flea,” refrain

se) 9 nn —eern} BA) —h 2 ee 29eereee— es ee Se eS eee ns po

Sei a a ee NN nL 3et en ee eS to at tg > : ‘ ' f" o> Fi > ; a f eT eo er ho | 2 —_ ea be | ee OT ee

LE Og Mn "ERS CONT nae MERU ” SOE URNS O/.. ee GIDeeAetaSeeet FS ot ee SEES eee ee eeOE ee ee ee DE ee ee... Be eee SS EEee A ~~”

amftef \/

3—

b. The same in Stravinsky’s version (Leningrad: Muzika, 1970)

, Harp ee eee ee at 1 , 7 oa ee ee

WwW. leggiero Cl., B. cl., boucht A» Oboe a ——— Fag. wr> Ai: a

—Yee ee ED id Eng. hn. ©& 3 et beg —

Horns,

ff — ~ **

OP ee oe Vn. IT, Ve. (pizz.)

Strings -_— $d OLEnwp‘aeres. T_T Let | VC. ap cresc. f

Vn. I, Via., Cb. (arco)

that bring the birds and mosquitos in Lyadov’s then-recent Eight Russian Folk Songs (1906) to mind. Stravinsky dragged his heels on the Beethoven orchestration; it was finished less >

than four weeks before the concert. The inscription over the signature at the end of the autograph score (“Orchestrated St. Petersburg, 3 November 1909”) suggests that the whole job was accomplished in a single day, and the manuscript in fact has all the earmarks of a rush job. Strophic repetitions are not written out; Stravinsky penciled in a note to Siloti by way of apology for this: “I trust you will bear me no

ON HIS OWN [413]

grudge for not copying out the same thing a second and a third time.” The unisonchorus refrain is omitted (another penciled note: “The notes for the chorus I have not written out, since I doubt their rhythmic correspondence to the verses of the Russian translation”).’°! Scored (probably at Siloti’s stipulation) for a “classical” orchestra (winds in pairs, two horns, and strings), the arrangement is much simpler than that of Musorgsky’s song, but far from perfunctory. Its chief point of 1nterest is Stravinsky’s reuse of the little mordent figure from Beethoven’s ritornello to accompany the punch line of each stanza (Ex. 6.8). The quality of his work notwithstanding, Stravinsky earned no personal success with his “Flea” orchestrations. Reviewers of the concert scarcely bothered to men-

tion his name (if that), turning all their attention to Chaliapin.'°* The most extended comment was a single sentence by Alfred Nurok in Apollon: “The naive hu-

mor of the Beethoven song and Musorgsky’s bitter sarcasm were brought excellently to the fore in I. Stravinsky’s talented orchestrations.”'°* Musorgsky’s “Flea” was a milestone for Stravinsky just the same, for Chaliapin recorded it soon after the premiére. This was, by a very wide margin, the earliest Stravinsky recording (though of course he was given no label credit).'™ Stravinsky’s Musorgsky orchestration was published by Bessel (the original publishers of the song) 1n 1913. Steinberg helped out there, too. In a letter written in St. Petersburg on 3 December 1912 (0.8.) to Stravinsky in Berlin, Steinberg 1nformed him of the following “piquant tale”: Bessel has proposed that I orchestrate Musorgsky’s “Flea” for him. I played innocent and said that as far as I knew, your orchestration still existed; why not publish it? Then Bessel started assuring me that he couldn’t wait for an answer from you 101. Siloti had commissioned a singing translation of Beethoven’s setting from Victor Pavlovich Kolomiytsev (1868-1936), 2 prominent music critic and specialist translator of librettos and song texts; Musorgsky had used a translation by the Russian poet Alexander Strugovshchikov (808-1878), which had first appeared in the journal Sovremennik in 1856. Information on Stravinsky’s manuscript is from A.I. Klimovitsky, “Dve ‘Pesni o Blokhe’-—Betkhovena 1 Musorgskogo—v instrumentovke Stravinskogo (k izucheniyu rukopisnogo naslediya i tvorcheskoy biografii Stravinskogo),” in the yearbook of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Pamyatnikt kul’turi: Noviye otkrittya for 1984. (Leningrad: Nauka,

1986), 196-216. Klimovitsky, after Natan Fishman’s death the Soviet Union’s leading Beethoven scholar, discovered Stravinsky’s Beethoven autograph in another archive in the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography and printed a complete photographic facsimile of the unpublished score along with his commentaries. 102. E.g., RMG 16, no. 49 (6 December 1909), col. 1012. 103. A. P, Nurok, “Kontserti Ziloti,” Apollon, 1910, no. 4, 69. 104. In his extensive listing of Chaliapin’s recordings (“Gramofonniye zapisi F.]. Shalyapina,” in Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin: stat’, viskazivantya, vospominaniya (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1958], 2:584—95), Ilya

Boyarsky gives the impossible date 1907 for this recording (Gigant 022096). Undoubtedly it belongs to

the second series of one-sided acoustical discs Chaliapin cut for Gigant between 1910 and 1914. Chaliapin recorded Musorgsky’s song in Stravinsky’s orchestration twice more, in 1921 and 1926, the latter an electrical recording that transmits the sound of the orchestra well (alas, a piano 1s substituted for the harp). These records were circulated in the United States as Victor 6416 and 6783, respectively.

Boris Christoff also recorded Stravinsky’s arrangement (with the Orchestre de la Radiodiffusion frangaise under Georges Tzipine) in his integral recording of Musorgsky songs (issued in America as Angel 3575 d/LX), still without attribution(!).

[414] 6 © RIVALRY, RECOGNITION, REALIGNMENT

6

EXAMPLE 6.8

, ana—~°D4; A. a. Beethoven, “Aus Goethe’s Faust,” op. 75/3, opening ritornello

, 1M) _ ee | TTT Te a —————

| ) , a : ten ema:

ana 0 === *)) rie aS

A a So

2a

—————————— _

SS ee ee es ec cresc.

b. The same, mm. 18-21, showing Stravinsky’s addition (Stravinsky:)

Pree pp te pP tee lyae " yo a aTe ee O_O a | ye i ee a aer es.eat *

eee eeee esof Fo ee ee Se ae a

——__-@ J $$} pp aa o_o RE, Ge es eee wee

(he has a horror of Diaghilev, who, for reasons unknown to me, was supposed to arrange this matter), that he doesn’t know your address (I kindly offered to give it to him forthwith). In the end, of course, I flatly refused, for I certainly have no intention of indulging Bessel’s mercenary pranks.’

Besides the “Flea” orchestrations, Siloti gave his new protégé a really substantial premiere during the season of 1909-10: Fireworks. He did more than introduce the piece, in fact. He enthusiastically recommended it to B. Schotts S6hne for publication, and helped Stravinsky past another barrage of “mercenary pranks.” In a let105. Stravinsky Archive. The Archive also contains correspondence between Stravinsky and the Seearet including Stravinsky’s agreement (dated 9/22 October 1913) to accept an outright payment of 600 (U.S.) for both the “Song of the Flea” and his finale to Khovanshcinna (about which see Chapter 14), and a receipt from Bessel (dated 18 October 1913 [0.s.]) stating that “through Guriy Fyodorovich Stravinsky we have received from A. I. Siloti the orchestral score of Musorgsky’s ‘Song of the Flea’ in I. Stravinsky’s orchestration.”

ON HIS OWN [415]

ter to Ludwig Strecker, then head of the firm, Siloti called Fireworks “a splendid and very effective piece, in its way a masterpiece of witty elegance.” To this Strecker made a wily reply: “If you say it’s a masterpiece we've got to believe you, although as we peruse it (hear it, of course, we cannot) it makes a fairly wild impression, a bit like having a whole swarm of wasps flying about your head.” For this reason, and because the outsized orchestra required would limit performances, Strecker offered to publish the score only if Stravinsky would waive his honorarium. Siloti intervened on Stravinsky’s behalf in a letter of 9 October 1909, and Schott finally tendered the composer the sum of two hundred marks for the rights to what was, after The Faun and the Shepherdess, only his second piece to

see print. '° Originally announced for performance at the second subscription concert of the season (24 October 1909; see Fig. 6.sb), Fzreworks was postponed to the fifth (9 January 1910), where it shared a very long program with Chausson’s Symphony in Bflat, Debussy’s Nuages and Marche écossaise, Schumann’s Cello Concerto (Casals was the soloist), a “Spanish Serenade” by Glazunov, and another premiére, Hyrcus nocturnus, or “The Flight of Witches,” after a novel by Merezhkovsky, the work of

a promising young Russian of “fantasist” proclivities, the Muscovite Sergey Vasilenko (1872-1956), who came up to St. Petersburg to conduct his piece himself. According to Vasilenko’s memoir of the occasion, his witches soared but Stravinsky’s pyrotechnics fizzled: At rehearsals I met the young composer I. F. Stravinsky—-a very nice and highly cultured fellow and an enthusiast of orchestration like [Yuriy] Sakhnovsky [1866— 1930, another Moscow modernist] and myself, a seeker of new paths, unexplored sonorities. His Féreworks did not succeed: there was no time to make sense of his original, at times brusque combinations. The “Flight of Witches” had a roaring success. I was called out many times.'©°”

Vasilenko recalled, too, that his piece was received with particular relish by the Belyayevtsi: Glazunov, Lyadov, and Cherepnin communicated effusive felicitations and invited him (not Stravinsky) to a postconcert repast.

The critique in the RMG confirms Vasilenko’s account of the concert, and makes clearer what he meant by a lack of time to appreciate Stravinsky’s effort:

106. Siloti: “ein prachtvolles und sehr effectvolles Sriick in seiner Art als ‘feines Esprit’—ein Mei-

sterstiick.” Strecker: “Wenn Sie sagen, da es ein Meisterwerk ist, so miissen wir es Ihnen ja wohl glauben, obschon uns bei der Durchsicht (héren konnten wir es ja nicht) einen etwas wilden Eindruck

machte, ungefahr so, als wenn Einem ein ganzer Schwarm von Wespen um den Kopf herumflége.” Fuller texts of all cited letters may be found in the preface by Herbert Schneider to the Eulenberg pocket score of Fireworks (no. 1396, 1984). My thanks to Dr. Peter Hauser of B. Schotts Séhne for making an advance copy available to me. 107. S. N. Vasilenko, Vospominaniya (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1979), 251.

[416] 6 © RIVALRY, RECOGNITION, REALIGNMENT

I. Stravinsky’s Fireworks might have had a greater success—this is a capricious “fantastic scherzo” (evidently the young composer’s favorite genre), not devoid of individuality, and effectively scored into the bargain. But the little piece is simply too short and insufficiently vivid, so that the public had no time to adjust to it properly. All the same it’s a piece “with paprika,” as Liszt used to say. As one of the movements of a suite it might make a greater effect; as it is, one might say, one’s lips are greased with a tasty sauce, but the dish is not served!!°®

Opinion on this particular Stravinsky opus divided along clear party lines. Nikolai Bernshteyn, the reviewer for the Peterburgskaya gazeta and later a dependable Stravinsky detractor, found “more art than imagination” in the piece,!°? which cutting remark may have been transmuted in Stravinsky’s memory into the philistine dismissal (“kein Talent, nur Dissonanz”) he rather improbably attributed, much |ater, to Glazunov (why would Glazunov have expressed himself in German?).'!° The St. Petersburg avant-garde (that is, the Evenings crowd) eagerly claimed the erstwhile Belyayevets for their own. Karatigin’s critique, published in the aristocratic Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters, though not devoid of reservations,

did rate Stravinsky’s work above the immediate competition: Silotr’s last three symphony concerts brought us several novelties. ... Of the Russian novelties the best impression was left by the brisk and brilliant fantasia Fireworks. Of course, in the department of chic and glitter it did not evade the noticeable influences of Rimsky-Korsakov and Debussy. But with what skill and finesse does it employ all the best harmonic and coloristic attainments of our musical present! Not a trace of blind imitation here, not a trace of outward onomatopocia, so tempting in the present instance. The piece is wholly devoid of any “profundity,” but on the other hand it is full of such “fiery” merriment and “flaming” temperament, “sparks” of such piquant humor are strewn at every turn through the whole range of the orchestra, that this piece has to be counted among those by young Russians of recent years that display the most talent.'"'

By all odds the most significant review was Nurok’s in Apollon, a brand-new journal that saw itself as successor to Mir iskusstva as forum of chic Petersburg modernity, where Nurok was now continuing the “musical chronicle” he had contrib-

uted to Diaghilev’s magazine in its time. It was a review, then, from within the esthetic camp with which Stravinsky was shortly to become irrevocably identified. Nurok contrasted Fireworks with its neighbor on Siloti’s program and quite archly reversed the judgment given by the audience, by the RMG, and by the Belyayevtsi:

108. RMG 17, no. 3 (17 January 1910), col. 79.

109. Quoted in Kuznetsov, “V zerkale russkoy kritiki,” 69. 10. D&D:100 (Dtalogues, 132). ut. V.G. Karatigin, “Kontsertnoye obozreniye,” Yezhegodntk imperatorskikh teatrov, no. 4 (1910): 163.

ON HIS OWN [417]

In the persons of [Vasilenko and Stravinsky], a modernized Moscow joins battle with contemporary St. Petersburg. As an old Petersburger through and through, fervently devoted to the artistic interests of my native bogs, I cannot conceal my delight at the brilliant, decisive victory of our “contemporaneity” over the eastern capital’s “contemporizing” [sovremenshchina}. To the same extent that Stravinsky’s pithy little piece (it’s only 2-3 minutes long), with an aim that is modest even for program music, testifies to his bright, original talent, his richly ingenious mastery, his refined and cultured sensibility, so the long-winded, garrulous composition by Vasilenko, which competes in pomposity with the text that inspired it, testifies to the ordinariness and the obsolescence of its author’s creative means. . . . Stravinsky’s virtuosically realized miniature is not by any means devoid of real musical substance, for, without going further than witty hints at a sonic reproduction of bursting rockets and rackets, it truly captures in its purely musical essence that singular psychic elation that pyrotechnical displays evoke. And such an impression can be achieved in music only through its substance, however it may be bejeweled.!!?

This is a major document, for it spells out what it was that attracted the esthetes of the “World of Art” to Stravinsky: terseness of expression, absence of rhetoric, virtuosity of technique, brilliance of surface, above all the composer’s failure (at least this time) to meet bourgeois expectations—a recipe, in short, for snob ap-

peal. There were “feelings” galore in the piece, but one had to be au courant enough to catch them on the fly. But none of this was news within the circle. Nurok’s review was already partisan propaganda, not the joyful welcome it was made to seem. By January 1910 the World-of-Arters had been thinking of Stravinsky as their man for almost a year. Siloti was not the only one to commission orchestrations from Stravinsky on the strength of the Scherzo fantastique and its boisterous premiére. As all the world knows, Sergey Diaghilev was also in the audience that fateful night and spotted in the composer of that brilliantly colored piece the very man he needed to provide ballet orchestrations for his upcoming season in Paris.''? Although Diaghilev could not have known it, Stravinsky—having been shunted aside by Steinberg and released by Rimsky’s death from his Belyayevets loyalties—was at loose ends just then and fretful about his prospects. Diaghilev was the very man he needed. The flattering interest and encouragement from an impresario on the brink of a great Western adventure gave back to the composer the possibility of feeling himself

12. A. P. Nurok, “Muzykal’naya khronika,” Apollon, 1910, no. 4, n.p. 113. One still reads that Fireworks was “the score that captured the attention of Diaghilev” (P&D:23) and that the Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks were jointly premiéred (e.g., White, Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, 141, 142; Walsh, Music of Stravinsky, 299), as if these two compositions, so similar in style, mood, and even form would have done anything but hinder one another in conjunction. Not

only did the two premiéres take place a year apart, but by the time Fireworks was heard in public, Stravinsky was already hard at work on Firebird, having received the commission before the end of 1909.

[418] 6 - RIVALRY, RECOGNITION, REALIGNMENT

anointed—not just independent of, but superior to the milieu that had once nurtured his talent but was now turning its back on him. Faced with a choice between Glazunov and Diaghilev, there is little wonder in the fact that Stravinsky was impelled henceforth to follow the example of Maeterlinck’s bees—to “break with the past as though with an enemy” and to cast his lot with “the devouring force of the future.”!'* 114. Maeterlinck, Life of the Bee, 216, 175.

ON HIS OWN [419]

BLANK PAGE

PART II

A PERFECT SYMBIOSIS

BLANK PAGE

7*RIGHTISTS OF THE LEFT

It was a fateful nexus of circumstances that led Stravinsky out of the Belyayevets cage for good. His jealousy of Steinberg and the “indifference” of the Conservatory set gave him a powerful push. Rimsky’s lamented yet timely death, just as the former Mir iskusstva (World of Art) group around Diaghilev was embarking on its historic adventure in the West, freed him to respond to their pull. The symbiosis was a miracle. As Myaskovsky wondered as early as 1911, “Were it not for Diaghilev, would Igor Stravinsky’s incomparable talent have bloomed with such might and brilliance?”’ Yet by the same token, as Falla wrote to Stravinsky on Diaghilev’s death, “Without you, . . . the Ballets [Russes}] would not have been able to exist.””

Diaghilev and Stravinsky marked an epoch for each other, and together they marked an epoch for the world.

OUR YOUNG ARE OLD The new peer group into which Stravinsky was drawn from 1909 had existed as a faction in St. Petersburg artistic politics for about a dozen years, but as a loose comradely association it went back yet another decade, to the grmnaztya friendship

that sprang up among a trio of artistically inclined St. Petersburg teen-agers: Dmitriy Vladimirovich (“Dima”) Filosofov (1872-1940), whose main preoccupation was literature; Walter Fyodorovich (“Valechka”) Nouvel (1871-1949), the musical dilettante whose later activities as cofounder of the Evenings of Contempo-

1. “Peterburgskive pis’ma,” Muzika, no. 53 (3 December 1911); reprinted in Shlifshteyn (ed.), Myaskovskiy: stat’, pis’ma, vospominantya 2:31.

2. Letter of 22 August 1929; in SelCorrII:171.

[423]

rary Music we have already had occasion to observe; and Alexander Nikolayevich (“Shura”) Benois (1870-1960), who would become world famous as an art historian and theatrical designer. What linked them, beyond their enthusiasm for art,

was a shared attitude toward it, and this attitude was conditioned in turn by a shared social outlook. Whether by birth or by aspiration they were aristocrats— dvoryanye—and passionately identified themselves as such. It was this concern above all that shaped the esthetic their as yet unformed faction would embody. Filosofov’s family was the genuine article—blue-blooded landed gentry with an immense ancestral country estate (Bogdanovskoye) replete, until the reform of 1861, with serfs. Dima’s father, Vladimir Dmitriyevich Filosofov, had so distinguished himself as a military procurator that on retirement he was made a privy councillor (tainiy sovetnik), the highest rank in the Russian civil service, and there had been talk of raising him to the station of count.* That elevation did not take place, and the Filosofovs remained untitled. Thus, as Benois recalled, “despite the ancientness of their line (it was thought that their lineage descended back to before the days of St. Vladimir and the Christianization of Russia), .. . they could not be inscribed among the circle of the court aristocracy.” But, he continued, in a passage that is crucial to the understanding of Mir sskusstva, Still and all they were not bourgeoisie. Theirs was that very class to which all the chief figures of Russian culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries belonged, the class that created the delights of the characteristic Russian way of life. From this class came all the heroes and heroines in the novels of Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, and Tolstoy. This very class was the one that achieved all that was calm, worthy, durable, seemingly meant to last forever. They set the very tempo of Russian life, its self-awareness, and the system of interrelationships between the members of this extended family “clan.” All the subtleties of the Russian psychology, all the twists of what is typical Russian moral sensibility arose and matured within this very milieu. ... Frequenting the Filosofov home, I gradually and imperceptibly learned its nature and in so doing came better to understand and to love the very essence of Russian life... . In this atmosphere I discovered the muchvaunted “Russian soul.”*

Here we already find in embryo the notorious Stravinsky/Diaghilev revisionism of the 1920s, according to which (to choose its most piquant surface manifestation) Chaikovsky was exalted over the so-called Five as the “most Russian” composer. Far from a break with tradition, this seeming volte-face was absolutely in keeping with the essential roots and spirit of mertskusnichestvo (Mir tskusstva-ism). What of Benois’s own social and family background? As his name suggests, his ancestry was Western European. On his father’s side he was descended from the youngest of three sons of a French village schoolmaster, all of whom fled the rev3. Benois, Mot vospominantya 1:500.

4. Ibid., 504-5.

[424] 7 * RIGHTISTS OF THE LEFT

SR es ee _ ee PE RR ee ea SOUR i i |.

eo ER CO nr3eeeR of Saunas iSe i =. ss oo eS OTE aa lr= r—“‘“‘OCOOO:C*CO*isOiCOrsOC:CsCiCsSstststétsiéi rrrr—“‘C iéC*sCsiCsCr_“HwVWw*cvrwT—-—--— | ie oF Piano ___-__ 9 -___

a 08s Te ee

— thSAG: oh 89 2 CE Se @ .@ AVVO), ee Ges eee eeeee ee a /..048) S09 "GeA eee Pee! eee ee S/.. 04m) S- - e -) ee e Se eee )

OSU| 7) | SO@) SRA TD 7 SA |? A) bh 1{Da NS as SS 8

See eee XS”

b. Fig. [6], underlying chord progression

2D: SS 0 ED

be- @

et Pe

a Se Oi ae a et ee EXAMPLE 7.3 (continued) c. Fig.

A444.

Violin solo KS 2 gl a A2 A p+ FF ott, Pw [CO nata Ee: a eo eee Sei eee eeer

A | EO RS—— Cr r~_— i ff: A —— +t ; . . . . . . . . . °

Ad. ee OoooooomvroahaR—eSL , a

Pr ———., eee f—____ CO

yo Sf i eee 9 “he a a Poet — —__ 3

Ca SS SS SS SSS See wf °*- —f * an epigraph, just as the piano-harp-celesta complex must surely represent the “quiet bells carried on the dawn breezes” that are evoked at epigraph’s beginning and end (Ex. 7.3c). For the rest, let it suffice to enumerate a trio of themes that sum up Cherepnin’s technique of constructing melodies out of various sources: (1) the tones of the aug-

mented triad with nonharmonic tones selected from the whole-tone scale (Ex. 7.44); (2) the diminished-seventh chord with nonharmonic tones selected from the octatonic scale (Ex. 7.4b); and (3) Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade (Ex. 7.4c). Noteworthy, too, is the Rimskyishly regular harmonic sequence given in Example 7.4d, which neatly combines a chromatic descent with an implied whole-tone progression. It lies at the heart of an extremely fragmented quasi-contrapuntal texture (fig. [13], sostenuto maestoso) of a type that the critic Boris Tyuneyev, writing in 1915, was already calling “pointilliste.””?

71. RMG 22, no. 15 (12 April 1915), col. 282.

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Flute 0 he Po? he ee | EXAMPLE 7.4 Cherepnin, Le royaume enchanté

a. Fig.

—_—~

9

b. 3 after

Cello ~~ om ta ete tiie Ne eee at kK jn ee os —— ————— er. ae

Eo) Se + & (fe,aeYY fe ew 5 Hey NE NF

Ae tte es — —— —-

c. Fig. ,

‘ “ial 1@. @: ° — 2

d. Fig. [13], underlying chord progression

rm Ar Ar — 2 Aa A a 2 2 A

Ly — tC | ee ) CHEREPNIN AND STRAVINSKY There would be scant call to dwell in such detail on Cherepnin’s Enchanted Kingdom if it did not provide such an excellent angle from which to consider Stravinsky. Parallels with The Firebird are only too easy to draw: consider, for one, the celesta and harp figures in the “Jardin enchanté” episode of Stravinsky’s ballet (Ex. 7.5) in light of Example 7.3a. Yet there was another piece of Stravinsky’s that stood even closer to Cherepnin’s quintessentially Miriskusnik manner and mood, and that was the first act of The Nightingale, the opera on which Stravinsky was working when

he received the call from Diaghilev. It would not be too much to say that The Nightingale, Act I, reflects Cherepnin’s direct influence, and that this preliminary influence was an important part of Stravinsky’s preparation for his contact with the inner circle of the Miriskusniki and with Diaghilev. Without it, the transition

CHEREPNIN AND STRAVINSKY [459]

EXAMPLE 7.5 The Firebird, 1 after [1], 8 after [2]

Celesta er | re E|

|eT | 2ee a — ———— Oe ae a Lr

'A) ee

oe = 72

,_ ==tT 1 See Celesta___——— 2 dS ——— sss

———— Harp_ ——___ 12

TS A

HG }—-—_____-____f A

from the machine-tooled techniques of the Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks to the poetic world of The Firebird might not have been so easily manageable. In Chroniques de ma vie, Stravinsky asserted that Mir iskusstva (along with the

Evenings of Contemporary Music) was his most important formative influence, and even claimed that his contact with it was facilitated by his “association with the Rimsky-Korsakov family,” who provided him with the “highly cultured environ-

ment” and the “ever-widening circle” of friends and contacts he needed to break free of the constraints of his family upbringing.”? In a memoir of Diaghilev written in Russian at the same time as the Chroniques (1935) but first published (in English) in 1953, Stravinsky maintained that by the time he met the impresario in 1909 he had, “of course, known for a long time about the magnificent results obtained by his excellent publications and his brilliant exhibitions,” which had “displayed a

prodigious activity in the world of art, struggling stubbornly against the prevailing state of cultural ignorance and of provincialism.””* No one who has read this far will be surprised to learn that these claims require modification, or that they in

72. An Autobiography, 17.

73. I.E. Stravinsky, “The Diaghilev I Knew,” trans. Mercedes de Acosta, Atlantic Monthly, November 1953, 33. The English translation was made from a French translation of the Russian original, dated “Mars 1937.” Typescripts of both the Russian and the French versions are in the Stravinsky Archive.

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all likelihood represent the wishful thinking of Walter Nouvel, Stravinsky’s chief ghostwriter of the period.”* The fact is, Stravinsky’s devoted relationship to Rimsky-Korsakov and his circle effectively shielded him from exposure to Diaghilev and Mer skusstva. As Stravinsky (Nouvel) put it, “Living in the same city, I naturally had more than one occasion to meet him, but I never sought these occasions.””° In the Diaghilev mem-

oir, the reason given for this avoidance was Diaghilev’s reputation for being “haughty, arrogant, and snobbish”; but it was really because in the RimskyKorsakov circle Diaghilev was a long-standing figure of fun, a status that went all the way back to his grotesque first meeting with the great composer. This had taken place in the fall of 1894, at a time when Diaghilev, freshly arrived in the capital, was contemplating a musical career. As an anecdote the story of this encounter has made the rounds in the Diaghilev literature, in various stages of embroidery.”° Here is Rimsky-Korsakov’s own version, as recorded by Yastrebtsev almost immediately after the fact, on 22 September 1894: Rimsky-Korsakov told us about the curious visit he received from a certain young man, Diaghilev by name, who, though he probably already considers himself a great composer, nonetheless wished to take theory lessons from Nikolai Andreyevich. His compositions turned out to be worse than nonsensical. Rimsky-Korsakov told him his opinion straight out. The other, it seems, took offense and, leaving, said, not without arrogance, that he still believed in himself and in his powers, that he would never forget this day, and that some day Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinion would occupy a place of shame in his future biography and would make him more than once regret his rashly uttered words of long ago, but that then it would be too late.””

This was the springboard, in Yastrebtsev’s account, for a merry discussion of the theories of the psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso, then widely accepted, which sought to explain “decadence” of all kinds, including cultural and artistic, in terms of literal genetic decay. Diaghilev was dubbed a “mattoid,” to general hilarity.”* Yastrebtsev also recorded Rimsky-Korsakov’s philistine ironies with respect to Diaghilev’s portrait exhibition 1n 1905: “I’m afraid I won’t understand a thing there

and that it will seem boring to me. After all, I, in contradistinction to Merezhkovsky, possess not the slightest erudition, and peering into an infinite number of 74. For evidence of Nouvel’s participation in the memoir, see SelCorrI:492n.5, where a letter from Catherine Stravinsky to her husband (4 March 1935) is quoted: “Valechka [Nouvel] is writing your memoirs of Diaghilev and he has already finished about a quarter of it; at first the work went well, but now he feels that it does not contain a sufficient number of anecdotes to please the American public.” 75. Stravinsky, “The Diaghilev I Knew,” 33. 76. Cf. Haskell, Diaghileff, 50; Lifar, Diaghilev, 35; Buckle, Diaghilev, 27. 77. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 1:207.

78. “Mattoid,” from matto (Italian for insane), was Lombroso’s term for what other fin-de-siécle psychiatrists called “ “borderline dwellers—that is to say, dwellers on the borderland between reason and pronounced madness,” and especially “graphomaniacs,” that is, “semi-insane persons who feel a strong impulse to write.” See Max Nordau, Degeneration, sth ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1895), 18.

CHEREPNIN AND STRAVINSKY [461]

unfamiliar faces is just plain depressing.””” As long as Stravinsky was part of Rimsky’s circle, he, too, would have thought of Diaghilev in Rimskian, if not Stasovian, terms. He had no contact at all with any member of the Mir iskusstva faction,

nor would it be reasonable to think he craved it. The exception was Cherepnin, the sole figure who, within Rimsky-Korsakov’s lifetime, was at home in both worlds, though perhaps a first-class citizen of neither. Rimsky liked the innocuous music to Le pavillon d’Armide, “though there is little of [Cherepnin’s] own in this Louis XV ballet.” After tea one evening at a Rimskian jour fixe (; December 1907), Cherepnin and Steinberg played the suite from the ballet in a four-hands arrangement while Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky followed along with the full score.®° Nor was the Rimsky-Korsakov clan Stravinsky’s only link with Cherepnin. The two must have been acquainted since Stravinsky’s childhood, for one of Cherepnin’s closest friends was his gimnaztya buddy Nikolai Yelachich, the son of Igor Stravinsky’s beloved uncle Alexander Yelachich, at whose Samara estate Stravinsky composed his Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor.** As early as 1899, Stravinsky wrote

to a family friend that “next year I plan to take theory lessons from Cherepnin, who, they say, Rimsky-Korsakov recommends to everyone.”®? One can therefore believe Craft’s statement, which must have come from the composer, that “a close relationship had existed between Stravinsky and Cherepnin, in whose St. Petersburg home the fledgling composer had often played his music,”®* even though the statement stands uncorroborated in the literature.** One piece that must have been played there to great approbation was The Nightingale, Act I, for no other composition of the young Stravinsky was quite so Cherepninesque, and no composer could be more readily imagined in the role of godfather to it in the year following Rimsky’s death than the one Belyayevets who was also a Miriskusnik.

THE NIGHTINGALE BEGUN There 1s little to wonder at concerning Stravinsky’s choice of subject from Hans Christian Andersen. Indeed, had he chosen some other kind of subject for his first opera, that would have been cause for wonder. The world of fantasy had long since

achieved dominion in Russian art and music by 1908. In part this had been 79. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 2:347 (25 May 1905).

80. Ibid., 447, 448. 81. Cherepnin, “Pod sen’yu moyey zhizni,” 7; on Stravinsky’s Yelachich cousins, see the family tree in SelCorrlII:s00—so01.

82. Letter to M. E. Osten-Saken, 22 April 1899; in IStrSM: 499. He actually took his earliest lessons

in theory not from Cherepnin but from Fyodor Akimenko (see Chapter 2, p. 99). 83. SelCorrII:219.

84. As with so many of his seniors from the early period, Stravinsky’s scattered recollections of Cherepnin were uniformly unflattering: “reckless academician,” “musical dullness” (anent Le pavillon @Armide), etc.

[462] 7 * RIGHTISTS OF THE LEFT

Rimsky-Korsakov’s legacy, but the underlying causes go beyond him. Soviet writers were always eager to attribute the “retreat into fantasy” that characterized the Silver Age to the harsh realities of life and society (and censorship) under the last two tsars. Even at the time the thought was rife. Boris Tyuneyev opened a 1915 feature article in the RMG—on Cherepnin, as it happens—with an elegant little consideration of the issue, couched in the form of a “Lord Banbury” letter to Russian musicians: With you Russians, your public life presents, indeed graphically depicts, such a broken, twisted aspect that I can easily understand both the extreme realism of a Musorgsky and the pathological subjectivism of a Chaikovsky—and, as a certain counterweight to these, the fairy-tale fantasy of Rimsky-Korsakov. But take a closer look at the nineties: were they not an uninterrupted series of disillusionments and the ruination of a whole host of social ideals? ... And the beginning of the twentieth century—the horrible years 1905 and 1906? Now, that is when art came to the aid of life, transforming life and its nightmares into something that distracted from life: a striving for the fantastic, the imaginary, the mystical seized both your poets and your musicians. ... After Saltan, Kashchey, Kitezh, you saw just such a magical world, but only on canvas (Victor Vasnetsov, Nesterov the religious mystic, Bilibin), you heard the peal of ancient bells in the new and transporting verses of Balmont. Do you see what I mean? A wave, a powerful, mighty wave, swept over you; you turned your sights on an unreal world, which alone could refresh your exhausted, weary spirit.®°

This thirst for fantasy provided yet another meeting ground between the legacy of Rimsky-Korsakov and the world of the early-twentieth-century Russian avantgarde—between the rightists of the left and the leftists of the right. For Andersen in particular there was a veritable craze that found reflection both in the World of

Art and in the world of the Belyayevtsi. Benois, who would collaborate with Stravinsky on an Andersen ballet as late as 1928, recalled fondly in his memoirs the

“strange mixture of sad drama and of something radiant and magical” that drew him again and again to the Danish fabulist.*° And Andersen had no greater fan in Russia than Lyadov. “What a delight!” he wrote, “What poetry! What a poet! Let him but touch a holey old shoe—and it’s gold. A very miracle worker! And how much goodness and tenderness he contains! ... In three little pages he has more love of people than in volumes of Tolstoy. Andersen loved without computations and timetables; he loved the way a rose sheds its fragrance.”®” Out of all of Andersen, The Nightingale was the most natural choice for an op85. RMG 22, no. 15 (12 April 1915), cols. 275-76. “Lord Banbury” (Francis Knollys, son of William

Thomas Knollys, eighth earl of Banbury) was private secretary to King Edward VII of England. His published letters went through many editions in many languages. 86. Alexandre Benois, Memoirs, trans. Moura Budberg (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), 1:88. 87. A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, “Lichnost’ Lyadova,” 40. Stravinsky also recalled Lyadov’s love for Andersen and for “tender, fantastical things” (M&C:61/63).

THE NIGHTINGALE BEGUN [463 |

era, since it was a veritable Orpheus tale, a celebration of the power of art, and of music in particular. It was also a parable of “unfettered” artistic inspiration versus learned artifice and routine, which, given the background out of which Stravinsky was emerging, seems a touch ironical.** Finally, as a story of an emperor and a bird it paralleled Ramsky-Korsakov’s just-completed last opera, Le cog d’or, whose every

stage of gestation and birth Stravinsky had witnessed, and which was just beginning to have its earliest fragmentary performances (the Introduction and Cortége, for example, premiéred alongside Stravinsky’s Faun and the Shepherdess on 16 February 1908) precisely when Stravinsky “became pregnant” with The Nightingale.

The quoted metaphor is from a letter by the opera’s librettist, Stepan Stepanovich Mitusov (1878-1942), a close companion from the Rimsky-Korsakov circle with whom Stravinsky had taken his lessons from Kalafati several years earlier. In later life Mitusov found his niche as a minor Leningrad chorus director and piano teacher, but in the Rimsky-Korsakov days and for a while thereafter Stravinsky regarded him as his “literary” friend. It was at Mitusov’s apartment that Stravinsky, as his friend’s letter testified, conceived his opera.®? The two of them immediately went to consult Vladimir Ivanovich Belsky (1866-1946), the librettist of three of Rimsky-Korsakov’s fantastical operas, including the last (Tsar Saltan, Kitezh, Coq). At Belsky’s St. Petersburg apartment, and with his help, Stravinsky and Mitusov adapted a scenario from Andersen’s tale on 9 March 1908, which the composer jotted down on the spot. This pencil draft, which is still preserved in the Stravinsky Archive (though missing the second act),” is a fascinating document both for the techniques of adaptation it displays (in which Belsky’s guiding hand is evident) and for the ways in which it differs from the final libretto. Following is the draft of the first act, the only one actually set to music at the time:

ACT I The forest at dawn. A fisherman is mending his net and lamenting his fate, in which his sole consolation 1s the singing of the Nightingale. And here is the Nightingale; it sings and comforts the Fisherman with its song. Cautious steps are heard (as if stealing up)—the Nightingale flies away. Enter, led by the junior kitchen maid to the Chinese Emperor, [a group] that includes the chief Court Bonze [chaplain] and the Emperor's chief retainer. The kitchen maid 88. For a stimulating, if possibly anachronistic, reading of Stravinsky’s opera as ironic commentary on the fairy tale’s manifest content, see Daniel Albright, “The Nightingale: How the Music Box Killed the Nightingale,” in Stravinsky: The Music Box and the Nightingale (New York: Gordon & Breach, 1989), chap. 4 (19-24). 89. Letter of 24 May 1925, in the Stravinsky Archive; quoted in P&D:615 and SelCorrII:432. For details on Mitusov’s career, see Larisa Kazanskaya, “Stepan Mitusov,” Sovetskaya muzika, 1990, no. 12,

soe A full autograph libretto in both Stravinsky’s and Mitusov’s hands was still in the possession of Mitusov’s daughters in Leningrad as of 1973 (see Igor Blazhkov, commentary to the letters published in 1StrSM:508).

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turns to the retainer and says that in these very trees the Nightingale sings at dawn and that they will now hear it. But just then the Fisherman’s cow begins to moo. Everyone is transported:

RETAINER: — What strength! BONZE: _ Tsing-pe! And what power in so smail a bird. CHORUS: — We never would have thought it. At which point the Fisherman respectfully observes that it was his cow, and in answer is given the fig. The kitchen maid confirms that it was a cow, but that the

Nightingale will start singing right away. But in the meantime some frogs have : begun croaking.

BONZE: _ Tsing-pe! How delightful, just like the silver bells in our chapel. RETAINER: It seems there must be silver in its throat.

CHORUS: How delightful! A CHAMBERMAID: __ But no, that’s just some frogs in the marsh. The Nightingale isn’t here yet. RETAINER: _Little Cook, Pil let you watch the Emperor eat if you find us the Nightingale. COOK [i.e., the kitchen maid]: But there’s the Nightingale now. EVERYONE: — Where? Where? The chief retainer asks to be introduced.

COOK: Little Nightingale, the chief retainer to the Emperor of China.

NIGHTINGALE: = The Emperor's wishes are my command. The retainer lets it be known that the Emperor wants to see the Nightingale at court, hear him sing, and reward him, in the event of success, with golden slippers, lapis lazuli, etc. The Nightingale agrees and flies down onto the Cook’s arm. —Exeunt omnes. The Fisherman watches them leave and says that now his sole consolation has been taken from him, that they are happy there in the palace and that’s fine, but where am I to go, etc.

The final libretto follows the general outline of the scene as sketched here. Some of the actual lines of dialogue (Belsky’s?) even survived into the finished opera. Also Belsky’s was the happy idea of turning the Fisherman into a “framing” character, functioning very much the way the Astrologer had functioned in Le coq d’or. Andersen’s fisherman had just been a part of the paysage, and was disposed of with a characteristically ironic little twist:

THE NIGHTINGALE BEGUN [465]

The forest stretched all the way to the sea, which was blue and so deep that even large boats could sail so close to the shore that they were shaded by the trees. Here lived a nightingale who sang so sweetly that even the fisherman, who came every night to set his nets, would stop to rest when he heard it, and say: “Blessed God, how beautifully it sings!” But he couldn’t listen too long, for he had work to do, and soon he would forget the bird. Yet the next night when he heard it again, he would repeat what he had said the night before: “Blessed God, how beautifully it sings!”?!

Belsky contrived by means of the Fisherman to give the act a “social” theme (the poor fisherman deprived of his only joy by the nobles). Pointedly enough, Stravinsky and Mitusov later contrived to remove that theme—“pure art” answers pereAvizhnichestvo! Their Nightingale was a vatic visitor from the World of Art, something on the order of Bakst’s snowy eagle, and their Fisherman was the prophetbird’s acolyte. He prepares the Nightingale’s arrival (“From the heavenly heights,” as the bird announces on its appearance) with priestly benedictions. So important, indeed, to the concept of the opera were these incantations of the Fisherman that they were reprised also at the ends of the second and third acts (fixed in libretto form in 1908—9 but not set to music until 1913). Taken all together, the five stanzas sung by the Fisherman are a pretty mock-liturgical hymn setting forth the essence of Andersen’s tale in the guise of a myth from the cosmogony of beauty: ACT I, beginning

1. Névod brosal nebésniy dukh, He flung his net, the breath of God,

V séti svoi ribu lovil. and with his nets he fished.

V séti rib morskikh nalovil. And with his nets he fished for the deep sea fish. Mnégo poymal nebésniy dukh. Many caught he, the breath of God. 2. V nébo unyés nebésniy dikh: To the heavens he took them, the breath of God, V morye svoy6 ribu pustil. And set the fish free in his sea. Ptitsami on sdélal ikh vsékh, Birds he made from all of them, Golos im dal nebésniy dukh. Gave them voice, did the breath of God. ACT I, end

3. Gdlos im dal nebésniy duikh. Gave them voice, did the breath of God. Golos plenil zemli vlad ik. Their voice did charm the lords of earth. Sly6zi ikh glaz mudrikh tekli. Tears flowed from their wise old eyes. A slyézi té zvydzdi nebés. And the tears became the stars in the sky. ACT II, end

4. Tachami vsé zvydzdi sokriv, Having hidden all the stars with clouds, Kholod i tmu smért’ prinesla. | Death brought cold and darkness here. 91. Hans Christian Andersen, The Complete Fatry Tales and Stories, trans. Erik Christian Haugaard (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983), 203.

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Smért’ samuyu golosom ptits, Death itself, by the voice of birds, Smért’ pobedil nebésniy dukh. Conquer death itself did the breath of God. ACT III, end 5. SdIntse vzoshl6, kénchilas’ néch’. — The sun is risen, night is over.

Grémko poyut ptitst v lesakh. The birdsong loudly fills the woods. Shishaite ikh: gdlosom ptits Listen to them: in the voice of birds S4m govorit nebésniy duikh. Is the very speech of the breath of God.”?

To show just how deliberately Stravinsky and Mitusov excised the “social” theme, we can trace the evolution of the text of the little recitative that comes between the first and second stanzas of the Fisherman’s song. In the earliest draft libretto, where the two stanzas are consecutive, there is a note in Stravinsky’s hand that some expository material needed to be inserted. This would eventually become the passage from fig. [11] to fig. [13] in the score. Another sheet contains four early drafts of this recitative, in Mitusov’s hand. The first couplet, which is not repeated in the following drafts but which is a part of the final text, was evidently meant to begin each of them; it is set below as a kind of preface:

Rassvet uzh blizitsya, The dawn approaches, A solov’ya vsyo net. but still no nightingale. a. Uzh v éto vremya kazhdiy den’ While every day around this time

On priletal i pel. Zabiv it would come and sing. Forgetting O nevode svoyom ya dolgo my net I would long

Slushal yego pesnyu. listen to its song. b. Uzh v éto vremya kazhdiy den’ While every day around this time

On priletal 1 pel. it would come and sing.

Zabiv o nevode svoyom, Forgetting about my net,

Ostaviv zhalobi svoi, leaving off my plaints, Ya dolgo slushal yego peniye Id listen long to its singing

I zabival svoi zaboti and I'd forget my cares I tyazhkuyu sud’bu svoyu. and my bitter fate. c. Uzh v éto vremya kazhdiy den’ While every day around this time

On priletal i pel, tak it would come and sing, so Yego chudniy golos zvonko loudly would its wondrous voice resound, Zvuchal v tishi prokhladnoy. sounding forth in the cool silence.

Akh, dolgo slushal ya yego Ah, long would I listen to it,

Zabiv pro nevod svoy forgetting my net I pro svoi nevzgodi. and all my adversities. d. I zabival vsyo na svetye And I'd forget everything on earth I tyazhkuyu sud’bu svoyu and my bitter fate as well, Tak divniye bili pesni éti so wonderful were those songs; 92. Translation adapted from William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 246—49.

THE NIGHTINGALE BEGUN [467]

I v pesnyakh tekh neobichainikh —_and in those extraordinary songs,

V nikh uteshen’ye nakhodil. in them [d find comfort. Gde ti, solovushka, otkliknis’ Where art thou, little nightingale, give answer,

I pesney chudnoyu svoyey and with thy wondrous song Razbey kruchinu starika. dispel an old man’s sorrow. Except for the very brief first version, all of these variants make some reference to the Fisherman’s unhappy lot (tyazhkaya sud’ba, nevzgodi, kruchina), as in the Belsky-supervised scenario. On a separate sheet we find the final draft, very close to the text as published. It is Mitusov’s hand except for two notations by Stravinsky: he wrote “bene!” in the margin and carefully crossed out the penultimate line,

thus eliminating once and for all what he no doubt thought a banal, bourgeois sentiment: RECHITATIV

Rassvet uzh blizitsya 1 solov’ya vsyo net. The dawn approaches, but still no nightingale.

Uzh v éto vremya kazhdiy den’ on While every day around this time it priletal i pel tak zvonko pesn’ yego v tishi would come and sing so loudly would its song resound

prokhladnoy razdavalas’. in the cool silence.

Akh dolgo slushal ya ego Ah, long would I listen to it,

zabiv pro nevod svoy forgetting about my net, pro-tyazhieryt-sid’bu about-my-bitter-fate

1 pro svof{ zaboti. and about my cares.

Despite this touch of aristocratic elitism that would have displeased the bourgeois liberal in Rimsky-Korsakov, many traces of Rimsky’s manner may still be found in the opera (including, at fig. [10], a passage for the strings that Stravinsky himself, in a letter to Mitusov, blushingly characterized as “pizzicato 4 la Sheherazade”)??, though serious work on it began only after Rimsky’s death. (An early draft is signed and dated thus: “Begun 16 November 1908, St. Petersburg.”) Some of the Korsakovian echoes are homages to the recently deceased, all the more understandable in that both composer and librettist had been members of Rimsky’s intimate circle. Thus the Nightingale, on its appearance, answers the Fisherman with a song about roses and dew, echoing Rimsky-Korsakov’s early setting of Alexey Koltsov’s lyric “The Nightingale, Captured by the Rose” (“Plentvsins’ rozoy, solovey,” op. 2, No. 2) in which there had appeared for the first time in Rimsky’s

work the languorous “Oriental” melismaticism that descended from the role of Ratmir in Glinka’s Ruslan. For composers of Rimsky’s generation, the Oriental

demtya, 1992, NO. 4, 146. . 93. Ustilug, 7 June 1909; see Victor Varunts (ed.), “Iz pisem k S. S. Mitusovwv,” Muzikal’naya aka-

[468] 7 * RIGHTISTS OF THE LEFT

vein had evoked voluptuous enchantment and mega—an untranslatable Russian word at once connoting drowsy bliss, creature comfort, and sexual allure. The ultimate embodiment of Oriental mega in Rimsky-Korsakov’s music was the role of the Shemakhanskaya Tsaritsa, the femme fatale in Le cog d’or; and she it was who provided the model for the coloratura that suffused the song of Stravinsky’s Nightingale (Ex. 7.6). These affinities become even closer in the second and third acts, composed a few years later. (There is no reason to cite the author of Lakmé, on whom many commentators, including the later Stravinsky, have fastened in their eagerness to establish a link with Delibes, one of Chaikovsky’s acknowledged models.) ”* There are echoes, too, of Sadko, not all of them terribly subtle. The Sea Princess, another famous Rimskian coloratura role (like the Shemakhanskaya Tsaritsa, it was written for Nadezhda Zabela), also haunts the part of the Nightingale.”° The Fish-

erman’s song owes a no less conspicuous something to Rimsky’s “Song of the Hindu Trader” (popularly known as “A Song of India”) in the fourth scene of Sadko°°—compare the saccharine final cadence the two songs have, as it were, in common (Ex. 7.7). The debt to Rimsky-Korsakov goes far beyond these superficial citations, however; it reaches deep into the structure of the music. This is something that can be gauged in The Nightingale to a much surer degree than in any other pre-Sacre com-

position, because, owing to the interruption in Stravinsky’s work on it, he was obliged to bring his sketches out of Russia in 1913 so that he could finish the opera in Switzerland. He kept the Nightingale sketches with him thereafter to the end of his life. Therefore, sketch material for Act I survives in the Stravinsky Archive in a quantity unique for works of its period. The earliest musical notations for the opera can be found as penciled marginalia in the draft libretto for Act I, prepared by Mitusov in the summer of 1908. They are all in the nature of leitmotifs. The ones that went with least change into the score as we know it were the ones for the courtiers in the middle scene, which Stravinsky initially worked out as settings of specific répliques. The Chamberlain (the charac-

ter referred to in the original draft libretto as the Chief Retainer) has the pair of } notations given in Examples 7.8a and 8b, while the Bonze has 7.8c. Unsurprisingly, these grotesque melodies are carved out of “tone-semitone” scales; in the case of the Bonze leitmotif, the melody exhausts Collection I (in

94. Cf. M&C:123/131.

95. Cf. the decorative roulades that accompany the mermaids’ chorus in the second scene of Sadko; also compare the Sea Princess’s “Far, far away” (““Dalyoko, dalyoko,” fig. [107]) with the end of the Night-

ingale’s song in Stravinsky’s first act (fig. [24]). 96. Stravinsky’s “recollection,” reported by Craft, that he “remembered the day Rimsky composed that piece” (D&D:144) is mistaken. Sadko was completed in 1896, years before Stravinsky met the composer. The “Song of India” was itself a near-plagiarism from the eunuch Vagao’s “Indian Song” in the fourth act of Alexander Serov’s Judith (1863).

THE NIGHTINGALE BEGUN [469]

EXAMPLE 7.6 a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Le cog d’or, Act II, mm. 86—88 (Shemakhanskaya Tsaritsa)

we be wy te Sy.

, 2.—} UL rrr Se A.W. Jae1eee (5 — eetEMR. — ofEF1 Pee. Yt — >i AS | en ACS 7 AS GE ee 7 A SE ES ” ADEE WY AOE GEE

Ya tos - ku - yuod-na na_tomost - ro-ve_ gryoz, [I pine alone on that isle of dreams, Pp

aSmr ~ ~eoa “a 4 us b. The Nightingale, Act I, 1 after

(.. 4) 29“Oe — —— 2 eeOS ee eeA ee A es ee a eeA ee A eee eee NS SEeeOO. SE A”

yyg

y 5 No EE eo Te Akh, sro -- zi, «Ss go’ - los_ moy vi sli-shi-te v no- chi? —

{ Ah, roses, do you hear my voice at night? |

EXAMPLE 7.7

a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko, scene iv, “Song of the Hindu Trader,” end

————— NS 0 A ES DS CE SO thn Rt (polu)-den-nom,da-lyo-koy In - di - 1 chu - des.

[eye Se yt peCn ttt th et tet FH eee eee |i4 .nsfN6 bd 7 2 De Ee eee Eee eee eee 2 eee... eee a eee see 2

iMsy re ee

Dn a Sor

A»RSG.— A, ee Os—~f es eeAee —————————_—

s.—_—- U)

A: aA A SS AY © . aGR GEa "ee ee ee 0: NR Cees¢| [.. . the charms of far-off India. ]

EXAMPLE 7.7 _ (continued)

A oS = = b. The Nightingale, Act I, 4 after

7A .|2~~ Tg -_2LOC gg ~|eCCC _» #eee | TT OE eeeee eee Eeeee o/.. o_Oye / eee» eee 20/4 Cee / ee QE Aes ee A slyo - zi te ZVYOZ-—- di __ ne Br --epec on] Qoapse , fant (29 best Sl’ SY GT lk ES A>t EE a aldfl? . .. Of. ..a SE .. .0s ——. —S |, UES —=' Tor” YS |. _ {dT —=es 7. tCSN TT—gp__ —e ZN _Fh. oeEs ES CS, Oh CS A OE ee... —.____.___....... eo TTT OODS ee —_-——_———____———

a. ws @Pibpt we.mpttetftei\y wet ta a@Vvfoqgiet, @i t{T@iise’spi TT @ _jg Ta ws' Mlireoeisysl {qeaeemi | titSe ye; Jt iGe x..ULULULUfe SANS) Ey GE es Oe ee Se ee ~~ ee ee 0 ee ee| ee 0 ee 2 2 eee

Ze fe.v--O~oN_-Onvw—_ —— ———— TT set-ou2.,.7.70.._ eee

aFF OO OO 7... a ens NS FR bes. ———.~ ——_—

I HOvXRAN—Ta-"™ 7]@—-—aoWW2mY>x*nDNDN

—_.

eID — a fa SY ef ae FO el ee

aa7 /.. PTWSU. | | Une gyOe-@i— + fy GOV eee eS 2 eeee eeee ee ee ee eee eee ee._-O-.00... 2. COSY OD OE we eee Cl—“eg 7 SN aCe 4G... Ge Ps aa Trr—OS eeees __l—“h

a. :

BXAMPLE 7.8 The Nightingale, musical marginalia in typescript libretto

crei CE-a.. ma itiW tf 4,ijsee Jfle@o ET (Zh. Zi TATEi ET Gee 2 EE © Ss © es EP es

Ti sso-lo-v’yom vpe-ryod i - di! b.

gee: TTT TN TN Te6 eee "a hi Eee Vee 6 TT 2[| fe ees{Ty Ie Pe :jlyjEE =*-)| “TRY ;eefy Chamberlain’s scale || rm”Uy 1 Fy FYeee [7 @itiircr FE OP SYfES DY"S|Py Aeefill8eee\hoa 2144 eee ne to. bi plo-kho nam pri-shlos’ Ye -shcho bi! Cc.

ioei | Kh 2 | gm fl UTQG, Bonze’s Kobe _scale le Bo be

===

Tsing-pé! Nu sla-va_ Bo-gu so- lo - v’ya na-shli mi

Pieter van den Toorn’s numbering).”” The partitions are novel, as is the idea of confining the two characters respectively to separate octatonic collections, so that when they exchange repliques an octatonic “modulation” is always involved. What accompanies their repliques in the orchestra is always based on the four tones the two collections have in common (G, Bb, Cf, E), usually boiled down to a single tri-

tone acting as an ostinato pivot (e.g., the exchange right after fig. [30] in the score). It is a purely intervallic approach to tone-semitone writing, implying no triadic affinity. It is thus the most forward-looking music in the first act; specifically, the spot where the Chamberlain addresses the invitation to the Nightingale (fig. [44]), his leitmotif sounding both in the voice part and in an obbligato trumpet against an unharmonized F-sharp pedal (second violin), is the passage that sounds the most like the music of the acts that would follow in 1913. While the passage no longer sounds anything like Rimsky-Korsakov, it 1s based, like so much

early Stravinsky, on direct extension of Rimskian (in this case, “Kashcheyan”) techniques. One of the early marginal notations provided the Head Retainer with a “Leitharmonie,” as Stravinsky expressly labeled it (Fig. 7.7). The term had been employed (coined?) by Rimsky-Korsakov in his exhaustive analytical commentary (1905) to his own Snegurochka, with which Stravinsky had to have been familiar, since it was written at the time of his greatest closeness to his teacher. In that essay,

Rimsky applied the term Leitharmonie to the chords associated with the Wood Sprite (Leshty), which make up what Rimsky called “a motive that 1s exclusively rhythmic/harmonic.””® The same is true of Stravinsky’s motive; like the Wood Sprite Leitharmonte, it is a whole-tone chord preceded by an appoggiatura, an essentially rhythmic effect (Ex. 7.9).”? In the end this French-sixth Leitharmonie does not seem to have been used as such, but it did contribute to the beginning of the Introduction as originally written (Ex. 7.10a), which but for its scoring bears little resemblance to the music we know.

The earliest recognizable sketch for the Introduction exists only in the form of a piano reduction (Ex. 7.10b). Whether this opening actually derived from that of Debussy’s Nuages has been much debated. It was Constant Lambert who first suggested that Debussy may have unwittingly transcribed a song from Musorgsky’s 97. See Van den Toorn, Music of Igor Stravinsky, 50-51. In Van den Toorn’s nomenclature the octa-

A

tonic scale that contains E and F represents “Collection I,” that containing F and F-sharp represents “Collection II,” and that containing F-sharp and G represents “Collection ITI.” 98. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, “Razbor ‘Snegurochki,’” in Polnoye sobraniye sochinenty: literaturniye

rR a

proizvedeniva 1 perepiska 4:405.

99. There is one more marginal notation for The Nightingale, perhaps the earliest of all. It is meant for the Fisherman, but resembles none of his music in the finished opera:

[472] 7 « RIGHTISTS OF THE LEFT

NP

|Be et teccen Mpeg fo Cogee ge rri ee ee cr FE Lr LL Sing oe fee aes Bef —sC es ead eg ae ee ee lee, rt ee Tr— afe -.Se=errr—™—“ ## ; # i | |

Do be

BES oie SRAM a SRE CEs bs EE ESE EEE SSS gg STE SS eee ae Saetcc gee CE ES SESE aa

BS a SS Ss oS SE TS ESC SR ES NS RS ee SEU Sg ea re eR ein

Hitihigh) Daag sek | (oh BORO FF

NA Ae oan ee elrtrs—O ae en ee LL PSHoe ee Ae lr,——C =. Ve 2He > hlcfrr—i“ ;wrmLmCN AEE BE Sr—~—OO re ee ee ee ee Se ee rr—“‘sSCS*sSsi‘(‘ 4=GE Oe —| v7 Cee a $5 —— "+ -—

ia

bt OW AEE VG 1a eee

eT B44 Bee ee.

7py RR hg ee

b. “Instrumentovat’ tak” (“Score it thus”)

ro bbe

aE CE SS8ee)ee SY |eeee ee ee D> 25 eeen eeEE eeEC EE ee i) 8A ee eee ee SL22 E/E EE GN 2Se BA 2 OES RESE ee eeeSE es en es ee24 ee ES eee is

8 ee ooeee oooee ’ 2D ooo A ES*— 4 eeeo" = ee*ee YJ

c. Variant of the foregoing '

7. 0 eeeeee... ee. Se Ae ee... se eeeet eeeeee ee I/..Ne04) ee"

pa gt ————$_§$§_ 1 _—____————

en mT GRE On ER ee 2 EE AE eseee ee

ii. VS En .Rs ae———— ee es |=RE ee SS 8 RS es OUD 19.41p Ee es ee ee nT BE |e yl ee eee eee2” ee ee eee

, b é aAN. : b ° (b 2; Me. : bOe . —_ bal meq ods oS ae ewe) 1 tH iS? & Ba —e et ep ET EEE Pee | eo | f= = = ited A A OE a GS AS — As CS nA A Ae e. The Nightingale, fig. [5]

2, A ee Oe es =. eee ee 2 We!) ) 4 |) | 06 ” ee 24 .. Ge eee oe eee ae

op $4} gt ly Ee ee 2 oh SS DF Eee EE

ed CE GEE ee eee nnn As Es | Sn | see , —Ci‘CisQ _s e3' | y 7] e J ° ° ° ’ é 2 y Ke&}—jo-- 0 1 . °K =. © .aeee 0.

Gl’WA 2 See es eee eeeOeSee ee eeeeee 2 f/. Ge)eee ) One| eee0eee ee S\N), Be eee... 2... eeeee ee eee eee ee Cc.

inl nn. |. | TCO yc 7

eo ee ee 1 | ¢Ti= ey SY Fr, ne : te >" fa "| ee iT Oe 2»ee| |a| Se |.)a— [Wf a.eee tJ

aAS EN 5StiLS RS itaes|...) ee 8aSa EES a:dL Segg EER |= ee rr en ee ——

Te ee ee eee a | es L——___.——— | ee i; 7;ee|; ee | | J;oa" J) o>7ae es en ee eeee Esee es es en ee,Se 0aTO ee ee "ee ae >) ies 2 eee a a th ag OO a tag BORO Ht yy FF weve Ver 6 LLU AT en UT

Rr ee, ee ns ee eeeOO eee Cd ee ee4aee eseeSN Cee Ce OeGy eees ee Ee EE L_____-_____—— 3

dS

et ae” NS FS _— ae EXAMPLE 7.16 _ (continued)

d.

1¥,'17 7

ZCbe SSS a - oo TT ee ess Oe EOD IEE2aeeeee Cn eS Sse Te Bia Prt ae lene | SS) aia i} Pt ata0eseaF«do ar Alt Od J ell LS kTes tall rtedeeoOL ES

4iAa eee oOESOOOO S/F SO .___—_____] fseee °°».@©§ = if OS #YyOoo [VP yo oT"—STNT_—-];)?>~N"-97”-”wWNWWnWw-."*.\.-.’...’.’'nn0W re

> TO ._ Sanne L________—— 3

OTe --7-21dquQo-2ON>—>->?-—.-_—>~-2-—_—.——"—"—"—. aa]

sa : " ES Gee ee . EE na, |__|. |... |. COS 7

xeADOT 2 OPa __{_t_ _ in Cree. he DT#2 (HT i | | {_—_{-__ ______Vo___@ ta wl

ES ” AOR RN | da | = | PS SS SD SO A GD RS eee, RD

, r a $ n “rt e i]

26 —— an [$$$ oe $$$ ee 7ee ee ee _______ $F

KLTTFeFSONuNx"”-.-———TI—E—_— TT sos>m--’-”[7?{_—s—S TOET Tetdl/”—-—Or"-NnwWw)] eT OTTO TTT IF -7N>](?7——._]

CO| ee Toena OHO NwNr-NTNW-—_ 1 Oe Oh Oo

Oe Dee eee eT ;

2 OO OlOTOTTTT—O— ec.

3 a ———__

Td.be bah hebtatghe 2 te BT — te A PS 10 / foe

EXAMPLE 7.17 _ The Firebird, figs. 195 |-| 197. (Rassvet), reduced to demonstrate derivation from the ladder of thirds

‘ft s is = = te #3 hs $3 YS its 2 oe .@ mG?

« beee 8 | eee of OT CE| Ge Cest| Se Po. “= Sed CS > < GS GR. Ob.

8 > TRAJECTORIES

To understand how the creative energies of Mir iskusstva were eventually channeled in the ballet enterprise through which Stravinsky met his destiny, we must consider two all-important aspects of its creative ideal that have been withheld from discussion up to now. The first of these, known in its day as “synthesism,” was a Striving to unite the various artistic media in all-embracing theatrical manifestations. The second, a trend that today’s art historians call “neonationalism,” sought stylistic renewal in the professional assimilation of motifs derived from folk and peasant arts and handicrafts. These two tendencies, as they developed in Russia, were intimately related. Their symbiosis led ultimately, in Mir iskusstva thinking, to an epochal reassessment and revival of ballet. Finally, we shall have to consider the conditions that led Diaghilev to concentrate his activities in Paris, as well as those that eventually led to his commissioning from Stravinsky what was in fact the first Russian “nationalist” ballet. The resultant work, long established as a world classic, is very hard by now to see for the anomaly it was. Yet The Firebird represented the explosive and improbable confluence of a bewildering array of volatile artistic and esthetic trajectories. These must now be enumerated and explained.

SYNTHESIS In conversation with his biographer von Riesemann, Sergey Rachmaninoff recalled a strange discussion he had with Scriabin and Rimsky-Korsakov in a Paris café in the spring of 1907. (The three musicians had been brought to Paris, as it happened, by Diaghilev; but let that story wait for now.) Scriabin had been holding forth about synesthetic correspondences between musical tonalities and

[487]

colors and how he planned to exploit them in Prométhée. Rachmaninoff listened patiently and without much interest to Scriabin’s description of his latest eccentricity. But then: To my astonishment Rimsky-Korsakov agreed on principle about this connection between musical keys and color. I, who do not feel the similarity, contradicted them heatedly. The fact that Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin differed over the points of contact between the sound- and color-scale seemed to prove that I was right. ... In other keys, it is true, they agreed, as, for example, in D major (golden-brown). “Look here!” suddenly exclaimed Rimsky-Korsakov, turning to me, “I will prove to you that we are right by quoting your own work. Take for instance the passage in The Miserly Knight [Rachmaninoff’s opera on a text by Pushkin, premiéred the year before] where the old Baron opens his boxes and chests and gold and jewelry flash and glitter in the light of the torch... well!” I had to admit that the passage was written in D major. “You see,” said Scriabin, “your intuition has unconsciously followed the laws whose very existence you have tried in vain to deny.” I had a much simpler explanation for this fact. While composing this particular passage I must unconsciously have borne in mind the scene in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko, where the people, at Sadko’s command, draw the great catch of goldfish out of the lake Ilmen and break into the jubilant shout, “Gold! Gold!” This shout is written in D major. But I could not prevent my two colleagues from leaving the café with the air of conquerors who were convinced that they had thoroughly refuted my opinion. '

This anecdote shows how widespread notions of synesthesia had become among

Russian musicians in the early twentieth century, whether or not they moved in artistic circles that could be considered avant-garde. In particular, it suggests that it is high time to stop ascribing to Wagner’s influence every turn-of-the-century manifestation of the tendency to mix artistic media or see union as their highest aim. Which is not, of course, to deny that Wagner’s music dramas—not to mention the tons of theorizing that surrounded them—had played a major role in shaping the Aeschylean ideal of a “collective work of art” (Gesammtkunstwerk, as

Wagner spelled it)” that inspired the Russian theurgic Symbolists and Scriabin toward their vision of a transcendent art-religion whose temple would be a musical theater.

In Wagner’s original meaning, and as he was correctly understood by the Symbolists, the Gesammtkunstwerk was not a single work by a single creator that 1. Rachmaninoff’s Recollections as Told to Oskar von Riesemann, trans. Dolly Rutherford (New York: Macmillan, 1934; rpt. New York: Books for Libraries, 1979), 146—47. While it is true that Rachmaninoff made a show of disavowing this book (see Geoffrey Norris, Rakhmaninov [London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1976], 67), what occasioned his disapproval were factual inaccuracies in matters relating to his biogra-

phy and von Riesemann’s somewhat impertinent critical evaluations, not the anecdotal content, which was the product of conversation with the author. 2. Cf. Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1871), 29.

[488] 8 + TRAJECTORIES

united all the artistic media, but a work that would be, like the Greek drama (or the Oberammergau Passion Play), the product of a Gemeinschaft, a community, and would further a sense of religious brotherhood—what the Russian Symbolists called sobornost-—among its participants. It would be not “the voluntary act of

an individual,” Wagner wrote, but “the necessary joint work of the men of the future.” The idea that artistic genres are mutually bolstered in combination hardly originated with Wagner. It was part and parcel of the original conception of opera, and Wagner himself had more or less consciously educed his ideas on the matter from French and German prototypes, both philosophical and practical.* In its most general terms the idea is implicit in Romanticism. According to one of Schumann’s most characteristic dicta, “the aesthetics of one art is that of the others, too; only the materials differ.”° Wagner’s specific contribution to the esthetic of synthesis was the notion that the individual arts, having lost the unity of purpose they enjoyed in the period of the Greek Gesammtkunstwerk—which loss reflected society’s loss of a true Gemeinschaft—were in a state of decline that could be reversed only by reuniting them in the “artwork of the future.” It was a challenge to the “enlightened” or Darwinist notion that the increasing diversification and “absoluteness” of the various artistic media testified to their increasing maturity. Although Benois could call the Gesamtkunstwerk (to revert to its more common spelling) “the idea for which our circle was ready to give its soul,” he used the convenient Wagnerian catchword in a loose sense that was not particularly Wagnerian. By the turn of the century Wagnerism was a vague cult that had long since lost touch with its ostensible originator. It was cultural folklore of the most malleable kind. The prime Wagnerian text for the Miriskusniki was not a work of Wagner’s but Henri Lichtenberger’s Richard Wagner: Poete et penseur (Paris, 1898), a book that belongs, properly speaking, to the history of Symbolism. Upon its partial serialization in Mir tskusstva, under the title “Wagner’s Views on Art,” the text

was acclaimed by theurgic thinkers like Beliy and Ivanov not because it had “in-

fluenced” them, but because it confirmed their existing convictions as to the mythic basis of art and its furtherance of religious collectivity.” For Benois and Diaghilev artistic synthesism had no such grandiose aim; rather, it was a means of 3. Ibid., 60. 4. See Jack M. Stein, Richard Wagner and the Synthesis of the Arts (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1960), chaps. 7 and 8; also Robert T. Laudon, The Sources of the Wagnerian Synthesis (Munich: Katzbichler Verlag, 1978). s. Quoted from Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften uber Mustk und Musiker (Leipzig, 1854); in Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin (eds.), Mustc in the Western World: A History in Documents (New York: Schirmer Books, 1984), 361. 6. Benois, Reminiscences, 371.

7. G. Likhtenberger, “Vzglyadi Vagnera na iskusstve,” Mir iskusstva, 1899, nos. 7—8, 195-206. Also published in Mir iskusstva (1900) was a translation of Nietzsche’s “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth” by Alexander Koptyayev (1868-1941), a composer and Wagnerian propagandist who had previously published excerpts from Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft in the RMG (1897-99).

SYNTHESIS [489]

enhancing esthetic experience in a thoroughly “heathen and hedonist” fashion, to borrow an epithet that had been hurled at Diaghilev from the theurgist camp.® Their synthesist appetite could be satisfied by juxtapositions—“counterpoints” of media—as well as by actual fusions. A good case in point was the striking and controversial layout of the first issue of Mer iskusstva, in which reproductions of paintings by Victor Vasnetsov were strewn as if at random among articles on a variety of subjects to which they served not as illustration but as a sort of implicit evocative commentary of one “absolute” artistic manifestation on others. In any case, the history of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Russia as a programmatic ideal extends back much further than either Mér tskusstva or even Russian Wagnerism itself. Exposure in Russia to Wagner’s mature music dramas was relatively late,

becoming possible only in March 1889, when Angelo Neumann’s troupe first brought The Ring of the Nibelung to St. Petersburg. By then an indigenous Russian movement combining the equally valued efforts of front-rank painters and musicians had been in active existence for close to a decade. In 1882 the state monopoly on theaters in Russia was rescinded. It was now possible for private impresarios and patrons to present dramatic performances, and a new chapter in Russian theatrical history began. Indeed, a theatrical patron/impresario quickly materialized within the Moscow merchant class: the railroad tycoon Savva Ivanovich Mamontov (1841-1918), whose contribution to the development of

Russian art and theater would be even more fundamental than Tretyakov’s had been a generation earlier. Mamontov was not just a collector, but an active instigator and participant in artistic enterprises. His gravitation to opera was natural: in his youth he had studied singing in Milan with an eye toward a career on the operatic stage; earlier he had taken part in performances of Ostrovsky’s Thunderstorm (Groza), under the playwright’s own direction; he wrote plays himself and had penned some seven opera librettos; and he was acknowledged by figures as distinguished as Chaliapin (whom he discovered) and Stanislavsky (another gifted scion of the merchant class

who saw in Mamontov an eminent role model) as a theatrical director of great talent.” Together with his wife, Mamontov had founded an arts colony on their country estate (Abramtsevo, some forty miles outside Moscow), where theatrical decoration was raised to new heights of accomplishment. As a result of this manysided activity, Mamontov conceived—quite without benefit of Wagner—the “idea that all forms of art are compatible and should be unified for the highest possible 8. That is, by Merezhkovsky’s wife, the poet Zinaida Gippius; see John E. Bowlt, “Synthesism and Symbolism: The Russian World of Art Movement,” in Literature and the Plastic Arts, ed. lan Higgins (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973), 39. 9. Both Chaliapin and Stanislavsky devoted whole chapters in their respective autobiographies to Mamontov; see Chaliapin: An Autobiography as Told to Maxim Gorky, trans. and ed. Nina Froud and James Hanley (New York: Stein & Day, 1967), chaps. 7 and 8; Constantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art, trans. J. J. Robbins (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), chap. XIV.

[490] 8 - TRAJECTORIES

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However much it may have departed from Musorgsky’s original conception or his text, Diaghilev’s production was no capricious overhaul but a thoroughly considered redaction that began with a study of the original sources—that is, Musorgsky’s manuscripts, both those deposited by Stasov in the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg and those still in Rimsky-Korsakov’s possession. The changes involved not only a large number of cuts but also the reinstatement of several passages (such as the scene of the hallucination with the chiming clock) that Rimsky-Korsakov had excluded from his first revision of the opera (1896), and even whole scenes, notably the “revolutionary” scene at Kromy, which had not been seen in Russia since 1879, when the first production had left the boards. Diaghilev also requested and received from Rimsky two orchestral inserts to lengthen the Coronation scene to accommodate the movements of the huge crowd of supernumeraries he wished to deploy on the vast stage of the Palais Garnier. Two ruling principles already stand revealed: the casting of the title role into maximum relief, and the maximum emphasis on theatrical grandeur and pageantry. The cuts and the even more controversial rearrangements in the order of scenes were similarly motivated, and a third principle, the conservation of momentum, is introduced. We may judge these matters in two stages: a preliminary plan, revealed in a very long letter from Diaghilev to Rimsky-Korsakov (17 June 1907); and the final realization as staged. In the letter, Diaghilev announced his intention of dropping three items: the scene in Marina’s boudoir, the first scene of the Prologue (in which the crowd is forced to beg Boris to accept the crown), and the “revolutionary” scene. Marina’s scene is often omitted; few would cavil with Diaghilev’s opinion that musically it is the least interesting scene in the opera. The other two, however, are generally counted among the opera’s glories, albeit glories of a particularly Peredvizhnik kind. Diaghilev’s explanation to Rimsky shows that his considerations were not so much esthetic as practical (or, to use his word, “theatrical”): About the first scene of the Prologue: . . . it begins magnificently with squabble and plaint, then it goes over into recitative ... later on it slips into the pilgrims’ chorus, which is short enough but ends the scene on a totally indefinite note. The main thing is that there then must be an entr’acte of not less than fifteen minutes,

| for the Coronation Scene must be staged in such a way as to drive the French wild with its grandeur. That 1s, besides the scenery one must position no fewer than three hundred people, and this cannot help but take over a quarter of an hour. So you see that the effect of the opera would be immediately slackened, and would be very hard to regain in what followed. In my theatrical realization it would come out like this: the madly brilliant coronation, the bells, the entrance of the central figure of Boris, the populace falls prostrate, Boris at prayer; then a practically instantaneous change: the cramped cell with its icon lamps, images, perhaps visible in the distance the procession of monks on the way to Matins, and Grigoriy immersed in Pimen’s reading of his chronicle; and finally, again almost instanta-

ANTILITERARY ESTHETICS [531]

neous—the drunken tavern with its madcap finale. Now, here one could do with a break and it would be a good place for an intermission. ... My chief doubts concern Kromy. It’s a matchless scene, but it has no end of difficulties in performance, and mainly—it interrupts the action. [Rimsky’s version of the opera ended with the death of Boris.] I think that after the whole of Act IT, Act III should consist of the Scene at the Fountain and the Death of Boris. The whole impression of the opera would become exceptionally unified and irresistible.*°

In the end both the crowd scenes were reinstated, but the tavern scene was dropped. The second act in Diaghilev’s production consisted of the scene at the fountain (Musorgsky’s Act III, scene 11) played before Musorgsky’s original second

act (at the tsar’s quarters in the Kremlin). Most controversial of all, Diaghilev solved the problem of proceeding from the first scene of the Prologue to the coronation by playing the Cell scene between them. This produced a situation to which Rimsky-Korsakov’s widow made disdainful reference in an open letter otherwise devoted to protesting Diaghilev’s adaptation of her husband’s Sheherazade for Paris in 1910: “To put the Pimen scene between Boris’s refusal and the scene of his acceptance and coronation is an absurdity: how could Pimen write in his chronicle about Tsar Boris, when Boris is not yet tsar?””” It was easy to accuse Diaghilev of cynicism, to portray his venture as what Rimsky, in a rather embittered letter, once called an opportunistic “theatrico-political” campaign in which artistic integrity and coherence were cheerfully sacrificed on the altar of “effect.””° Such attacks on Diaghilev’s Parisian spectacles became commonplace. But his aims and motives are often misunderstood. It is not our present business

to justify Diaghilev’s Bors. Such a production could not and should not be defended on its merits vis-a-vis the opera as written, though as Gozenpud has shrewdly pointed out, it was effective enough to become for a while a kind of canonical version in its own right, its influence extending up to Karajan’s Salzburg production of 1965 and beyond.” Yet the Diaghilev Boris proceeded from an esthetic vantage point that is essential to understand if we are to perceive its roots in Mir iskusstva and its status as forerunner to the Ballets Russes and to Stravinsky’s early stage pieces. To put it briefly, Diaghilev’s production of Boris Godunov was born of an unlit-

erary, even antiliterary conception of musical theater, one the impresario made ex- , plicit some years later in an interview with a New York reporter: “Literary things one reads. It is not necessary to hear them spoken on stage.” The roots of this prejudice are already apparent in Benois’s loving description of his earliest child96. Cited in Zilbershteyn and Samkov (eds.), Dyagier 2:102-3; the letter 1s also excerpted in Gozenpud, Russkty operniy teatr mezhdu doukh revolyutsty, 206. 97. Rech’, no. 267 (1910); quoted in Gozenpud, Russkty operniy teatr mezhdu dvukh revolyutsty, 206-7. 98. Zilbershteyn and Samkov (eds.), Dyagtlev 2:106. 99. Gozenpud, Russkty operniy teatr mezhdu dvukh revolyutsty, 207. 100. “Diaghileff Talks of Soul of the Ballet,” New York Post, 24. January 1916.

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hood experience in the theater, one of the most exquisite passages in his memoirs.

Recalling the Harlequinade he was fortunate to have witnessed in his fourth year—only one year before such spectacles disappeared from the Russian (and the world’s) stage forever—Benois emphasized “the outstanding fact... that nobody spoke. The magic spell woven by the music, which, though faulty, was still ‘the celestial language of the gods,’ was unbroken by any foolish words.”!® That, of course, was the judgment of a sophisticated artist in retrospect; it could scarcely have been the spontaneous reaction of the “unspoilt child’s imagination” Benois purported to recapture. But the sophisticated artist and esthete, and the views he communicated to Diaghilev, are precisely what interest us. A reflection of Benois’s views is already apparent in Diaghilev’s letter to Rimsky-Korsakov, where the overriding considerations are obviously visual, and where the rights of the “text” as such are conspicuously snubbed. Writers on Diaghilev often wonder why the impresario decided in the end to throw out the tavern scene, even though it

contained Varlaam’s song, with which Chaliapin had made a sensation at Diaghilev’s concert series the year before.°? One can hardly accept at face value Nouvel’s bland assertion that the scene was dropped for being “too ambulant [i.e., Peredvizhnik] in tendency,” for the epithet could be applied with even greater justice to the crowd scenes.'°* The real reason must have been the fact that with the exception of Varlaam’s song and that of the Hostess, the whole scene is a verbatim recitative setting of a prose scene from Pushkin’s original play, in which, just as in the play, the whole effect lay in the comic dialogue. Not only would the scene have been unintelligible to the French audience if performed in the original language, it represented a philosophy of opera as “sung play” that had by the time of Diaghilev’s production been repudiated even by the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov, who had dabbled with it earlier in his career. It was a method that focused attention on details, and one that privileged that very component—the words—that in the Miriskusnik view was at best a necessary evil. As his letter to Rimsky reveals, Diaghilev’s ideal of theatrical synthesis was a series of vividly projected impressions carried to the eye by the movement of bodies and by the sets, costumes, and lighting, and to the ear by the music. In its cumu101. Benois, Reminiscences, 36. 102. E.g., Buckle, Diaghilev, 105. 103. Haskell, Diaghileff; 155. Benois elaborated a bit on this point in his memoirs, attributing the cut

to Diaghilev’s cold feet: “All at once it seemed tmposstble to him to show the elegant, fastidious Paris public something that crude and ‘dirty’” (Mot vospominantya 2:489—90). This, however, was only the “public” reason, the one given at the time to the press. Alexander Sanin, Diaghilev’s stage director, told the Moscow magazine Teatr that “Mr. Diaghilev found [the Inn scene] contained too much crude realism; he argued, drawing upon his first-hand experience of the Parisian public, that much here would

be shocking an unprepared audience, and the mightthat feeltheinsulted” and Samkov [eds.],toDyagilev 1:415). As for Chaliapin, heaudience was convinced scene had(Zilbershteyn been omitted simply because he, cast as he was in the title role, was unavailable to sing Varlaam, and “no singers of stature were available” to replace him, “in spite of all the talent to be found in Russia” (Chaltapin: An Autobtography, 16s). This, it may be presumed at any rate, was what Diaghilev had told him.

ANTILITERARY ESTHETICS [533]

lation and contrasts, the sequence of images created its own coherence and logic. That sequence could if necessary override the conventions of narrative logic, creating what critics of a later age would dub “spatial form.” Language only made a distracting counterclaim on the faculty of hearing. Not that there was anything very new in this stance; it had reigned at the Paris Opera at least since the days of Scribe and Meyerbeer, and in Russia it had been the viewpoint of Glinka, Chaikovsky, and even the kuchkist Borodin,’ to say nothing of Alexander Serov, who in his capacity as critic propounded an elaborate theory of opera as “musico-scenic

fresco.”' By 1908 a significant reaction had taken place even in Russia against what had come to be viewed as an excessively literary view of opera. Rimsky-Korsakov, referring to the work of Dargomizhsky that was the very fons et origo of the sung-play ideal, had exclaimed around the turn of the century, “Enough of The Stone Guest! Music, too, is needed!”!©° Thereafter he was at pains to insist, as he put it in a performance note (dated 1905) in the vocal score of Kitezh, “As in the case of prior publications of his operatic works, the author herewith states explicitly his conviction that all such works are, first and foremost, musical works.” !©” What was new in the Diaghilev synthesis (or at least what seemed particularly new to the Parisians) was the overriding importance accorded the visual. (Diaghilev in New York: “People can no longer endure a representation which is not a spectacle for the eye.”)'°® In Boris he really outdid himself, far exceeding the Mamontov example of synthetic “artistic truth.” No less than five artists of the front rank contributed to the execution of the sets, mostly copied from Golovin’s designs for the Mariyinsky. (Golovin himself, as well as Korovin, were now employees of the Imperial Theaters, whose intendant Telyakovsky refused to release them to participate in a competing production.) These designs were freely supple-

mented: the tsar’s Kremlin quarters and the “revolution” scene (omitted at the Mariyinsky) were newly created by the Moscow painter Konstantin Juon (brother of the well-known composer Paul Juon), while Benois did the scene at the Fountain. Other scenes were the work of Boris Anisfeld, Stepan Yaremich, and Benois’s nephew Evgeniy Lanceray. The costumes were designed by the outstanding neo-

104. Chaikovsky: “In composing an opera the stage should be the musician’s first thought; he must not abuse the confidence of the theatergoer who comes to see as well as bear” (to von Meck, 27 November 1878; in M. Chaikovsky, Life and Letters of Tchatkovsky, 358); Borodin: “In my opinion, in the opera itself, no less than in the sets, small forms, details, niceties should have no place; everything should be painted in bold strokes, clearly, vividly...” (to Lyubov Karmalina, 1 June 1876; in Dianin [ed.], Pts’ma Borodina 2:109).

105. See R. Taruskin, “Opera and Drama in Russia: The Case of Serov’s Judith,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (1979): 74-117, €Sp. 95-97, IOI. 106. A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N..A. Rimskiy-Korsakov 3:198. 107. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Skazantye o nevidimom grade Kitezhe i deve Fevronit (Leipzig: M. P. Be-

reg. « Daachilelf Talks of Soul of the Ballet,” New York Post, 24 January 1916.

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nationalist Bilibin, after originals procured in the “Tatar junk-shops” of St. Petersburg (as Benois, who helped search them out, recalled).'°? It was the visual aspect of Diaghilev’s Borss, then, that was most significant in historical terms, even if Chaliapin’s singing inevitably produced the most immediate sensation. “Golovin’s share in the triumph of that night was instantly recognized,” wrote W. A. Propert. “The art of painting had justified its admission into the hierarchy of the theatre, and the truth of Diaghilev’s theory could no more be questioned.”!'° Propert’s formulation of that “theory”—“a theatrical production could only claim recognition as a work of serious art if it were the result of an association, on equal terms, of the arts of literature, music, and painting”'''—was, however, questionable indeed. As painting was exalted, “literature” was debased, just as it had been in the history of Mar iskusstva itself. The Diaghilev enterprise really came into its own when it renounced the verbal altogether. Ballet represented in its purest form the synthetic ideal to which the World of Art aspired. It was through ballet that the Diaghilev enterprise would have its shattering, transforming impact on European culture. And it was through his contribution to this transforming impact that Igor Stravinsky would unexpectedly emerge as a major force in twentieth-century music. One final trajectory must be described.

BALLET REDUX The importance of the Russian ballet as a source of artistic renewal in the twentieth century was something else no one would have dared predict in the nineteenth. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century theatrical dance had been in a state of decline. Its fortunes mirrored those of the European royal courts, for ballet was originally and essentially a court spectacle. In Russia, the strongest autocracy in Europe and one where the theaters remained until 1882 under the absolute control of the crown, ballet was fostered to an extent unheard of anywhere else on the continent. Russia, in fact, was the only country where one could regularly see “pure” ballet—that is, ballet as a separate entity rather than an adjunct or appendage to an opera or a play. At these Wednesday and Sunday Mariyinsky matinees, “the half-empty auditorium contained a special public—a mixture of

children accompanied by their mothers or governesses, and old men with 109. Benois, Reminiscences, 265. Diaghilev’s pretty neonationalist fable, to the effect that he had Bilibin “search the northern provinces, particularly those of Archangelsk and Vologda, [going] from village to village buying up from the peasants a mass of beautiful hand-woven sarafans, head-dresses and embroidery, which had been hoarded in chests for centuries,” is perpetuated uncritically by Buckle (Diaghilev, 105).

110. W.A. Propert, The Russtan Ballet in Western Europe, 1909-1920 (London: Bodley Head,

en Ibid, 8 BALLET REDUX [535]

binoculars.”!!? Intellectuals and “serious” artists were not altogether unjustified in thinking ballet an entertainment for snobs and tired businessmen—“the fruits of M. Petipa’s and St. Léon’s nonsensical imagination,” as Apollon Grigoryev, a very serious critic indeed, put it in the pages of Dostoyevsky’s journal Epokha as early as 1864.''%

The names Grigoryev cited were those of the Frenchmen who guided the fortunes of the Russian ballet from the 1840s until the end of the century. Hardly a “national” art, and degraded by association with empty operatic divertissement (often forcibly interpolated into otherwise serious dramatic works), ballet was regarded by most Russian composers as something to be left to specially imported hacks like Cesare Pugni (1802-70, in Russia from 1851), Ludwig Minkus (1826— 1907, in Russia ca. 1850-90), and Riccardo Drigo (1846-1930, in Russia 1879-1920).

The only exceptions were Chaikovsky and, latterly, Glazunov—and even Chaikovsky had found himself at first somewhat stigmatized for his willingness to be

associated with ballet. With what seems remarkable effrontery, the twentytwo-year-old Sergey Taneyev, writing to his former Conservatory professor, had delivered himself of the following opinion with respect to Chaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, composed shortly after the composer had taken the balletic plunge with Swan Lake: “In my opinion the Symphony has one defect to which I shall never be reconciled: in every movement there are phrases that sound like ballet music: the middle section of the Andante, the Trio of the Scherzo, and a kind of march in the Finale. Hearing the Symphony, my inner eye sees involuntarily ‘our prima ballerina,’ which puts me out of humor and spoils my pleasure in the many beauties of the work.”!'* Chaikovsky’s answer was ambivalent: “Do you mean to say that the Trio of my Scherzo 1s in the style of Minkus . . . or Pugni? It does not,

to my mind, deserve such criticism. ... When the music is good, on the other hand, what difference does it make whether /a Sobiechtchanskaya {the Moscow prima ballerina) dances to it or not?”!!* The latter point was one that members of the mighty kuchka would never grant; they could not reconcile themselves to what seemed to them the inherent inanities of the genre. When in 1872 the group (minus the stiff-necked Balakirev) accepted a collective commission from Stepan Gedeonov, then intendant of the Imperial Theaters, to collaborate with Minkus on Mlada, a ballet for Petipa on a national subject, it was with the distinct idea that they would be stumming. Musorgsky, for one, soon begged out (“in order to save the maiden innocence of our circle, in

112. Prince Peter Lieven, The Birth of the Ballets-Russes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1936), SO A. Grigoryev, “Russkiy teatr v Peterburge,” Epokha, 1864, no. 3, 232. 114. Sergey Taneyev to Chaikovsky, Letter of 18 March 1878; in M. Chaikovsky, Life and Letters of Tchaskovsky 1:292-93.

115. Letter of 27 March 1878; in ibid., p. 293.

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hopes that it will not be turned into a streetwalker”).''© The project foundered; indeed, it was doomed from the start. When Rimsky-Korsakov undertook to complete Mlada on his own, his experience with the Mariyinsky corps de ballet and its trainers (one of them the young Enrico Cecchetti, who would later work for Diaghilev) confirmed his every prejudice. The handling of the dances and of the mimetic movements was poor. The ballet masters [Lev] Ivanov and Cecchetti usually do not know the music to which they fit the dances they put on, and if the music is not of the routine ballet type, they don’t understand it at all. Despite the detailed directions given by me in the piano score, they looked into it too late. As in ancient days, the ballet rehearsals are usually conducted to the playing of two violins which are to translate the entire orchestra. The music becomes almost unrecognizable, not to the ballet-master alone, but even to the musicians themselves; hence the character of the movements invented by the ballet-masters is invariably ill-suited to the character of the music. To the accompaniment of a heavy forte, graceful movements are put on; to a light pianissimo, ponderous leaps; the short notes of melodic runs are thumped out with the feet with a zeal worthy of a better fate.''”

Consequently, when in 1900 Kruglikov asked him whether the examples of Chaikovsky and Glazunov had not shown that ballet had matured under Petipa to the point where composers of the front rank might profitably apply themselves to it, Rimsky was adamant: I'm inclined to think not, probably. And therefore I myself will never write such music. In the first place, because it 1s a degenerate art. In the second place, because miming is not a full-fledged art form. In the third place, balletic miming is extremely elementary and leads to a naive kind of symbolism. In the fourth place, the best thing ballet has to offer—dances—are boring, since the language of dance

| and the whole vocabulary of movement are extremely skimpy. With the exception of character and national dances (which can also become tiring), there is only the classical, which makes up the greater part. These (that is, classical dances) are beautiful in themselves; but they are all the same, and to stare for a whole evening at one classical dance after another is impossible. In the fifth place, there is no need for good music in ballet; the necessary rhythm and melodiousness can be found in the work of any number of able hacks today. In the sixth place, in view of its paltry significance in the spectacle, ballet music is usually performed in a sloppy, slapdash way, which would tell sorely on the work of a highly talented composer. !!®

In sum, as of the turn of the century, the Russian Imperial Ballet was an anti-

116. Musorgsky to Stasov, 31 March 1872; in Musorgsky, Literaturnoye nasledtye 1:129. 17. My Musical Life, 321. 8. Letter of 2 February 1900; in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Polnove sobraniye sochineniy: literaturniye proizvedentya i perepiska 8b:105.

BALLET REDUX [537]

quated French entertainment preserved in amber, or, in Benois’s words, “in a state of mummification.” But it was just that mummified state that had saved it from the general decline of the art throughout the rest of Europe. “In Russia the ballet continued to live its own life, remote from all disturbances; carried along, almost, by its own vis inertiae.”'!? The Russian ballet, in short, was a kind of belle au bows dormant, an outmoded aristocratic toy, whose irrelevance to all serious artistic endeavor in Russia was a standing joke until, by a curious quirk of fate, the nature of serious artistic endeavor changed in such a fashion as to make it relevant once more. It was Mir iskusstva that planted the awakening kiss. Precisely because ballet had stood aloof from the main trends of serious art in Russia, precisely because it was mere purposeless play and divertissement, precisely because it had remained true to seemingly superannuated principles of beauty and stylization, it was far less tainted than opera with the hated residue of realism and was uncompromised by the didactic and social concerns that encumbered modern Russian literature. The ballet

was an inviting terrain for the kind of indulgent, untrammeled creativity that was the essence of Mir iskusstva. It was a Gesamtkunstwerk without words, hence without “ideas” and without the need to adhere to the conditions of a “fettered” reality. It was Benois who discovered ballet first. His love for it was nurtured by his family traditions and by his constant longing for an imaginary “Versailles” of the spirit. He was old enough to have witnessed as a young adult the premiére performance of Chaikovsky’s Belle au bois dormant. “Chaikovsky’s music was what I seemed to be waiting for since my earliest childhood,” he wrote in his old age.!?° What made this miracle of regeneration possible was a confluence of circumstances that, as Benois describes them, would have made old Stasov choke. They

were “the aristocratic spirit, untouched by any democratic deviations, which reigned in Russia under the sceptre of Alexander III; the unique atmosphere of the | St. Petersburg Theater School and the traditions that had been pursued in consequence”— including, first and foremost, the maintenance of a line of virtuoso male dancers, a dead or dying breed in France and Italy—“and finally a rejuvenation of these traditions so that, on this occasion, shaking off the dust of routine, they should appear in all the freshness of something newly-born.”!7! The man who deserved the credit for “creating this masterpiece,” as Benois put it (the italics were his), was Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky (1835-1909), then intendant of the Imperial Theaters, who was the ballet’s scenarist and costume designer as well as the score’s dedicatee. Benois described him in terms that will bring the later Diaghilev instantly to mind, for it was Vsevolozhsky who, more than anyone else, provided Diaghilev with his role model. “He made the produc19. Benois, Reminiscences, 372, 373. 120. Ibid., 124. 121. [bid., 130—31.

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tion of the ballet his own personal work,” wrote Benois. “It was he who, by en- . tering into all the details, became the link as well as the head of the whole production—a feature indispensable in the creation of a Gesamtkunstwerk. This resulted in a coherence and polish hitherto unseen.” Benois’s depiction of this Diaghilev prototype extended even to personal details. “Vsevolozhsky had exceptional tact and never forced his ideas on anyone, striving to convince by persuasion, and, as Ivan Alexandrovich was a great charmer by nature, he found it very easy to convince. Thanks to his aristocratic politeness, he always managed to

get what he wanted from people without using the authority to which he was entitled.”!??

An early, indeed premature, attempt by the Miriskusniki to realize for themselves the ideal of a “purified” (that is, nonliterary) Gesamtkunstwerk on the order of the Chaikovsky/Petipa/Vsevolozhsky masterpiece involved a ballet production whose aborted fate not only cemented the attitudes of the circle toward the ballet and toward the Imperial Theaters, but also lay behind the transfer of Diaghilev’s activities to Western Europe. In 1899 a friend of Benois’s, Prince Sergey Volkonsky, was chosen to replace Vsevolozhsky as intendant of the Imperial Theaters. All at once Benois, Bakst, and Somov were put to work as designers, Dima Filosofov was appointed to the repertory committee, and Diaghilev was placed in charge of the theaters’ lavish annual souvenir book (Yezhegodnik imperatorskikh teatrov).'?°

The stunning volume he produced in 1900 so impressed the tsar that Diaghilev gained an entrée at court. Thereafter he secured permission, through the intercession of the tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Sergey Mikhailovich, to oversee the production of Delibes’s Sylvia. Thinking himself protected on high, Diaghilev exceeded his authority as Volkonsky’s assistant. He assigned the sets and costumes to a whole committee of his friends—Benois (Act I), Korovin (Act IT), Lanceray (Act III), Bakst and Somov (costumes)—even though not all of them were on the Imperial Theaters payroll. When this fact was pointed out to him Diaghilev made a scandal about bureaucratic interference and threatened to resign the editorship of the yearbook. He succeeded only in getting himself fired, and in a particularly ignominious way that carried with it a lifetime prejudice against employment in the imperial civil service.'** Thus Diaghilev, who had nurtured hopes of succeeding Volkonsky as intendant—not unreasonable hopes, one might add, and with what potential impact on the course of Russian art and music!—now found himself, as 122. Ibid., 131. Stravinsky, too, recalled Vsevolozhsky—‘“the great aristocrat, the friend of Tchaikovsky, the artist’—whom he knew through his father, with the greatest admiration: “a monumentally imposing figure of a man” (E&D: 56/50). The 1902 deathbed visit to Fyodor Stravinsky, which occasioned Igor Stravinsky’s memoir, was not, however, an “official” one. Vsevolozhsky was intendant only until 1899, after which he became curator of the Hermitage. 123. See Benois, Reminiscences, 204-6.

124. Zilbershteyn and Samkov (eds.), Dyagtlev 1:24. On the prejudicial “article three,” under the terms of which Diaghilev was dismissed from the civil service, see ibid., 2:384. The ban on Diaghilev was lifted in January 1902 (ibid., 386).

BALLET REDUX [339]

of 2 March 1901, debarred for life from consideration. It is no wonder that he regarded the man who did succeed Volkonsky—Vladimir Arkadiyevich Telyakovsky (1860-1924, served 1901-17), the last intendant—with unappeasable rancor. One of the earliest expressions of this animosity came in the form of an article on Delibes’s ballets, an article positively reeking with sour grapes, which Diaghilev published in Mer tskusstva the next year. It was paired with a companion piece on “operatic reforms” under the general rubric “In the Theater.” Although these articles must be understood 1n the context of a personal vendetta, they nevertheless demonstrate dramatically the high place accorded ballet in the Miriskusnik scheme of things artistic—a higher place, perhaps, than in any comparable artistic movement in Europe. Coppélia, for Diaghilev, was “a pearl” of “a purely classical art of forms,” and its composer “a great master,” a “French classical master” on a par with “Lully, Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, and Bizet.”!*° This judgment, which perhaps deliberately echoed and surpassed Chaikovsky’s,'*° contrasted ironically with that of Delibes’s own compatriots, who no longer took him seriously, if indeed they ever had. (As early as 1899, for example, Debussy was calling the composer of Lakmé a “sham.”)!*” The epitome of Miriskusnik propaganda on behalf of Terpsichore came with Benois’s “Colloquy on Ballet” (“Beseda o balete”), a contribution to a symposium entitled Teatr published by the avant-garde St. Petersburg house of Shipovnik in 1908. Other contributors to this heady farrago of Symbolist and socialist opinion included Lunacharsky, Meyerhold, Sologub, Bryusov, and Beliy. Benois’s article took the form of a dialogue between an “Artist,” representing the author, and a hypothetical “Balletomane.” To the Balletomane’s contention that ballet is a “fragile, aristocratic amusement” that can have nothing to do with “the serious questions of our day,” and whose very existence is threatened by any political “crisis, not to speak of revolution,” the Artist replies that, on the contrary, “the history of ballet is far from over; before it lie even greater prospects, perhaps, than lie before opera or drama.” Thus for the first time was enunciated the prime article of faith in the Ballets Russes catechism. '?®

The Artist continues: “One thing is clear. After all the temptations of our brains, after all words, tedious and confusing, insipid and foolish, murky and bombastic, one wants silence and spectacle on the stage.” (The Balletomane: “So go to the movies!”) “But it would be wrong to call the ballet a dumbshow. Ballet is per125. Ibid., 148—s0, passim.

126. E.g., his letters to von Meck of 26 November 1877 or 5 February 1883, in which he expressed his

oft-repeated opinion that France had overtaken Germany in music and that Delibes was, with Bizet, France’s foremost composer. The second volume of Modest Chaikovsky’s biography of his brother, in which these letters were published for the first time, appeared in 1901 precisely. 127. Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 1:208.

128. Alexandre Benois, “Beseda 0 balete,” in V. Meyerhold et al., Teatr (St. Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1908), 100.

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haps the most eloquent of all spectacles, since it permits the two most excellent conductors of thought—music and gesture—to appear in their full expanse and depth, unencumbered by words, which limit and fetter thought, bring it down

from heaven to earth. In ballet one finds that liturgical quality of which we [i.e., the Symbolists] have lately come to dream so strenuously.” (The Balletomane: “Nous y sommes. | knew you'd bring up liturgy, God, sobornost’. Can’t you just talk about art without dragging in theological questions?”) “What I’m talking about is something that goes beyond music and dramatic gesture . .. but gestures of an absolutely esthetic character: that is what I wish to call liturgical.”!?°

The Artist’s point is that words, unlike music and movement, are inevitably “utilitarian.” They lead to laughter and tears—to emotions tied to objects and hence unesthetic. “A baby crying for its milk 1s utilitarian and boring. But a smiling baby—that one is holy, surrounded by a divine aureole, full of regal radiance.” And that smile is the essence of art. For the root of the esthetic is its separation from all that 1s utilitarian. Even the most abstract and exalted drama is burdened with utilitarianism. In most cases it conceals (sometimes very artfully) a didactic utility, or else at its very peripeteia it reflects our vain concerns, our strivings, our clamberings, our aggressions. In the dramatic theater one either laughs or cries. ... In ballet, though, the chief meaning is in the smile (and not in laughter or in tears). In the drama the big moment comes when the spectator is most shaken by the depicted sufferings; in comedy it comes when the spectator bursts out laughing; but in ballet it comes when the spectator smiles. That is the reason for its existence. The dance is nothing but “a full-length smile,” a smile in which the whole body participates. '*°

The fatal contradiction in opera is the attempt to force music into fusion with the “utilitarian” medium of words—not to mention the fact that the two media impede each other’s comprehensibility. When the Artist begins to suggest subjects for his “new” ballet he turns clairvoyant: “The legend of Joseph . . . [or] Romeo and Jultet would make a wonderful ballet subject, but Pd prefer Daphnis and Chloé (an absolutely great subject!).”'>! The very end of the “colloquy” consists of a “prophecy” of what Benois already knew to be fact-in-the-making: ARTIST: It’s not a question of means but of ideas. The important thing is to outline new desiderata. It makes no difference whether they are realized today or tomorrow. BALLETOMANE: In that case you risk never seeing the realization of your projects. If you wish, Pl tell you what impression I shall carry away from this

129. [bid., 103, 104, condensed. 130. Ibid., 106-8, condensed. 131. Ibid., 11, 114.

BALLET REDUX [541]

meeting: you are full of good intentions, but you are lacking one thing: that blunt and obstinate single-mindedness it takes to be a reformer. Perhaps, to express things your way, you are “ahead of Apollo” and more right than someone who would overturn the whole past and make something new from scratch just for the sake of making it. But here’s the rub: with your uprightness you won’t get far. Others will use your ideas and will inevitably spoil them. ARTIST: I have no doubt of it, but, in all probability, “thus it has to be.” In any case I have no wish to assume a single-mindedness I haven’t got, and if someone else wants to use my ideas, that’s fine as long as it is ad majorem deorum gloria. Spoiling is no problem. It’s unavoidable, and something will come through anyway despite mistakes. We have all eternity to correct our mistakes.'*?

If Benois’s conclusion seems smug, it was because he knew something his Balletomane—and his readers—did not: that Diaghilev was about to bring ballet to the Parisian audience he had conquered with Boris Godunor, and that one of the works to be presented was a creation of Benois’s own.

BALLET EXPORTED Le pavillon d’Armide, with a scenario by Benois and music by Cherepnin, his nephew by marriage, was the theatrical embodiment par excellence of World of Art esthetics, circa 1895, brought up to date by the eventual participation of the . young Mikhail Fokine as choreographer. It was based on Théophile Gautier’s Omphale, or “Le Gobelin en amour,” a “conte dans le style Rococo” first published in 1834, which had been urged on Benois by Somov, if anything a greater Versailles fanatic than Benois himself. This little allegory of esthetic rapture was a bit more

than “an innocuous and enchanting tale”;'*? it was a calculated promoter of “smiles without laughter or tears.” As Benois described his scenario, “It was a mixture of reality and fancy: the hero finds a lock of hair in an old chest of drawers and falls in love with the beautiful woman, portrayed on an ancient Gobelin, whose lock it turns out to have been.”/** The action of the ballet consists of a dream in

which the hero imagines that the tapestry has come to life. For the sake of theatrical effect, Benois gave the story a “tragic” ending reminiscent of the way Modest Chaikovsky, in his libretto for his brother's opera, had melodramatized the ending of Pushkin’s Queen of Spades: the hero, hopelessly confused between dream and reality, goes mad.'*° 132. Ibid., 120—21.

133. Bowlt, Silver Age, 195. 134. Benois, Reminiscences, 225.

135. Gautier’s story is both more frankly erotic than Benois’s scenario and lighter in tone. It is cast in the form of a reminiscence by an old aristocrat of his initiation into the rites of amour by a “Marchioness de T———” who comes down off a tapestry and gets into bed with him. The ending is jocular and sans regrets. He has lost the tapestry, but “they say that one should not go back over one’s first love, or go to see again the rose admired the day before; then I am no longer young enough or good-looking enough for figures to be coming down out of the tapestry in my honor” (Théophile Gautier, Complete Works, trans. and ed. S.C. de Sumichrast [London: Athenaeum Press, n.d. (1904) ], 11:285).

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Benois had conceived this ballet when his friend Volkonsky succeeded Vsevolozhsky as Imperial Theaters head and made Benois his unofficial adviser. At first it was to have been a full-evening affair to rival the Chaikovsky ballets in sumptuousness. (The parallels between its scenario and that of The Nutcracker are obvious.) By the time it came to the stage of practical discussion, however, Volkonsky had been replaced by the terre-a-terre Telyakovsky, who insisted on two conditions: that it not exceed a single act, and that it contain waltzes, as “waltzes create the success of ballets.”'*° Benois swallowed hard over the second point, as his heart was set on “reviving my beloved eighteenth century” the way Chaikovsky had done in The Sleeping Beauty and The Queen of Spades. But if the creator of The Sleeping Beauty had not scrupled at producing waltzes for Vsevolozhsky, Benois decided he could make his peace with Telyakovsky’s conditions. Cherepnin produced the requisite numbers, very much a la Chaikovsky, and the ballet was accepted. The project fell victim in the end to the widening rift between the Imperial Theaters directorate and the editorial staff of Mir iskusstva. Benois had quite quixotically contributed to the mélange of invective Diaghilev was heaping on the Imperial Theaters, despite the fact that he had a project pending there. So Cherepnin’s music was performed as a concert suite by Siloti (13 December 1903), had a modest succes d’estime (Rimsky finding it “pretty but insufficiently original”),'*” and that, for the moment, was that.

| Within a few years, though, Mikhail Fokine had emerged as the white hope of the Russian ballet, and he was put in charge of the graduation exercises of the Imperial Theater School. Through Cherepnin, by then a Mariyinsky staff conductor, he learned of the existence of Benois’s unrealized scenario and adapted it to the music of Cherepnin’s concert suite for the graduation program of 15 April 1907.

Benois took no direct part in this production. The scenery and costumes were from stock, and the use of the scenario was only partial: it was presented under the title “The Gobelin That Came to Life” (“Ozhivlyonniy gobelen”).'3® It was a “pure” dance divertissement rather than the ballet d’action Benois had originally conceived. Nonetheless, it made a sufficient impression for the directorate to revive their plans to stage the ballet in full despite Telyakovsky’s strained relations with Benois (which had in any case been rendered moot with the demise of Mir tskusstva). This time work proceeded in an active and harmonious three-way collaboration,

Fokine joining the original creators in accordance with the Mir sskusstva ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk, and with Benois, the designer, the undisputed primus inter pares, thus satisfying another Miriskusnik requirement. Benois described their

136. Benois, Reminiscences, 226. | 137. Yastrebtsev, Vospominaniya 2:448.

138. V.M. Krasovskaya, Russkty baletniy teatr nachala XX veka (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1971-72), 11194.

BALLET EXPORTED [543]

working sessions in a manner that already captures the spirit that was to reign in the Ballets Russes: During these talks it was quite usual for Fokine to display certain steps on my parquet floor or for me to sketch on a piece of paper a “pose” or the group I wanted. ... These meetings and discussions sometimes took place at Cherepnin’s initiative. After he had composed a scene or a dance, he usually let us know about it so as to play it to us... . This music, which had just matured and was “served up at once,” used to inspire Fokine and me. . .. Those were indeed very happy times for all three of us!!*?

Then followed the rehearsals, at which Benois became privy to the sanctum sanctorum of the Imperial Theater School. Watching Fokine at work achieving the technical realization of their plans, Benois was seized with the revelation of “how great an influence school traditions exercise over artistic expression, and what a store of experience they have amassed.” In his Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet he expanded on this point in a little sermon on tradition and technique that

would be echoed time and again in the writings and public pronouncements of Diaghilev, Stravinsky, and their numberless disciples: It is only the experience of many generations controlled by actual performances, that could produce an exact calculation of the effects of distance and thus deter-

mine the laws of perspective that are peculiar to miming. ... Seen from near in | the rehearsal hall [the] acting and mime seemed poor and helpless; here, before the footlights, everything took the right shape; the precision of the gesture and mime, that I had disapproved of so strongly before, seemed only to make the general effect more convincing. Without it, indeed, there would have been the pettiness, the haphazardness, the “messiness,” which 1s so much in evidence on the ballet stage of the present day. '*°

It is worth stressing that Benois received this lesson in the value of école from an artist whose public reputation was that of an iconoclast, a “revolutionary.” This

would ever be the quintessential quasi-paradox of the Ballets Russes, and of Stravinsky too. Benois was convinced that Le pavillon d’Armide would usher in a new epoch

in the annals of artistic synthesis. He told an interviewer a week before the Mariyinsky premiére that he, Cherepnin, and Fokine had attempted “to create something harmonious to the point of perfection,” and that they had “succeeded fully.”'*! The critical response to the ballet justified Benois’s confidence and 139. Benois, Reminiscences, 248. 140. Ibid., 254—ss.

141. “U Aleksandra Benua,” Peterburgskaya gazeta, no. 317 (1907); quoted in Zilbershteyn and Samkov (eds.), Dyagiev 2:422.

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showed how seriously its synthetic ideals were taken. It created the biggest stir, in fact, not among musicians or balletomanes, but among painters, who saw in it the vindication of their place in the theater. It provided the focus and culmination of a harangue by the painter and art historian Igor Grabar (1871-1960, best known, alas, for the Stalinist work of his late period), which appeared in the Moscow Symbolist journal Ves# under the title “Theater and Artists.” Grabar hailed the revival

of theatrical art in Russia—a revival he correctly traced to the artists around Mamontov in the 1880s—as a resurrection of the lost art of the fresco, with all that

that implied for the importance of painting in the world. “The theater in our time,” he wrote, “is the single area in which the artist can still dream of creating a grand feast for the eye, in which there is room for the full display of his imagination.” And the protagonist of this triumphant moment was Benois, whom Grabar compared with the legendary Pietro Gonzaga (1751-1831), the chief designer for the Imperial Theaters in the reigns of Alexander I and Nikolai I, when sumptuous aristocratic display was at its height. “Here is an authentic stage designer, who brings all the old theatrical traditions to mind. This is a man whom electrical technology will never smother,” Grabar added, as if to put a fine point on Miriskusnik nostalgia for an aristocratic golden age.'*? It was the sumptuousness of it all—the dazzling virtuosity of the dancing, particularly the male dancing (with the teen-aged Niinsky as Armida’s slave); the freshness of the choreography, which showed renewed vitality in a medium that the French thought exhausted; and above all the harmony with which the elements of the “synthesis” were blended—that impelled Diaghilev after the performance to greet Benois in the theater with the words, “This must be shown to Europe.”'*? In that moment the Ballets Russes were conceived. Gestation lasted a year and a half, while Diaghilev busied himself with his production of Boris Godunov at the Paris Opera. The initial plan was to follow up on that success with a saison russe in the late spring of 1909 that would feature a number of complete operas as vehicles for Chaliapin: besides a revival of Boris they were to include Rimsky-Korsakov’s Pskovityanka (rechristened Ivan le Terrible for the occasion so as to feature Chaliapin once again in a title role), Borodin’s Prince Igor, Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, and finally Judith, an opera by Alexander Serov, the

father of Diaghilev’s favorite contemporary painter (who of course would design the production), which contained one of Chaliapin’s greatest vehicles (as it had been one of Fyodor Stravinsky’s), the role of the Assyrian commander Holofernes. '** That Chaikovsky was absent from this veritable retrospective of Russian operatic achievement, and that Rimsky was to be represented by his earliest and

142. I. E. Grabar, “Teatr i khudozhniki,” Vesi 5, no. 4 (April 1908): 92, 94. 143. Benois, Reminiscences, 266.

144. S. L. Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet, 1909-1929 (London: Constable, 1953), 9.

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most typically “kuchkist” opera, speaks volumes about the nature of Diaghilev’s plan and his (correct) reading of Parisian taste. For variety, a single evening of ballet was planned,'*° to consist of Le pavillon a@’Armide showcased along with two other recent compositions of Fokine: Les sylplides, to music of Chopin; and Cléopatre, which had been performed in Russia under the title Egyptian Nights (Yegtpetsktye nocin, after Pushkin’s erotic poem) to music by Arensky. For Paris, Diaghilev scrapped the latter's original score and substituted what Nouvel sneeringly called a salade russe:'*© fragments of Arensky preceded by the overture to Sergey Taneyev’s opera The Oresteia, interspersed

with music by Rimsky-Korsakov (the apparition of Cleopatra from Mlada), Glazunov (the Autumn Bacchanale from The Seasons), and finishing off with the Persian dances from Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina. Cherepnin supplied some connective tissue. Les sylpindes had had its origin in a suite Glazunov had concocted in 1892 under the title Chopiniana, comprising four orchestrations from the work of the Polish master: the Polonaise op. 40, no. 1; the Nocturne op. 15, no. 1; the Mazurka op. 50, no. 3; and the Tarantelle op. 43. This suite was given at a Belyayev concert under Rumsky-Korsakov’s direction in 1893, published by Edition Belaieff in 1894, and forgotten until 1907, when Fokine choreographed it for a charity performance at the Martyinsky. At his request, Glazunov added an orchestration of the C-sharp— minor Valse op. 64, no. 2 (preceded by a short introduction based on the Etude Op. 25, no. 7), to be inserted between the Mazurka and the Tarantelle. When later he redid the ballet for a graduation exercise of the Imperial Theater School, Fokine made an expanded version (it was listed as Grand pas to Music by Chopin, but he always called it the “Second Chopiniana”)**’ in which he retained only the Valse from the earlier ballet and commissioned orchestrations of some new pieces from a Mariyinsky répétiteur named Maurice Keller. The national character dances that

had begun and ended the original suite were thrown out, and the “romantic réverie” that has become a ballet classic was devised. The music now consisted of the following: Nocturne in A-flat, op. 32, no. 2 Valse in G-flat, op. 70, no. 1

Mazurka in D, op. 33, no. 2 Mazurka in C minor, op. 67, no. 3 145. In some interviews given in the summer and fall of 1908, right after his return from Paris, Diaghilev announced his intention to present no fewer than three Petipa ballets the next season: The Nutcracker, Glazunov’s Raymonda, and the last act of The Sleeping Beauty (see Zilbershteyn and Samkov [eds.], Dyagtlev 1:209, 210). These ambitious projects were dropped before any serious practical plans were made for 1909. 146. Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet, 8. 147. See Mikhail Fokine, Mesmozrs of a Ballet Master (original Russian title Protry techentya [ Against the Current}), trans. Vitale Fokine, ed. Anatole Chujoy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), 121ff.

[s46] 8 * TRAJECTORIES

Prélude, op. 28, no. 7 (played three times through)

Etude introduction) |

Valse in C-sharp Minor, op. 64, no. 2 (in Glazunow’s arrangement with the Grand Valse brillante, op. 18

Not content with Keller’s work, Diaghilev commissioned orchestrations for Paris of all but the C-sharp—minor Valse. They were done by Lyadov, Taneyev, Cherepnin, and (as we have seen) Igor Stravinsky, in the immediate aftermath of the success of the Scherzo fantastique in January 1909. To Stravinsky, in fact, were

entrusted the opening and closing numbers, a singular mark of confidence.'** These orchestrations, premiéred in Paris at the Théatre du Chatelet on 2 June 1909, have never been published, and are not in current use despite the fact that Fokine’s

Sylphides has become a staple of ballet repertoire everywhere.'*? They were of slight importance for Stravinsky’s musical development, but in the development of his career they were of decisive importance, for they were what brought him into

the Diaghilev fold. They are worth dwelling on for a moment, not so much because they represent at last the intersection of all the trajectories we have been tracing (the real intersection, after all, would be The Firebird), but because certain misconceptions have arisen in the Stravinsky literature concerning their circumstances.

One of these is the assumption that Stravinsky was present at the premiére, an assumption on which a great deal of embroidery has been overlaid.’°° Stravinsky was not there; before 1910 his only trips abroad had been to German spas during his father’s lifetime. A couple of letters from the late spring of 1909 show him in Ustilug waiting on pins and needles for news of the Paris performances. To Steinberg he wrote, “Do you know how the rehearsals of ‘Chopiniana’ have gone? And how did my pieces go? Please write me what you know.”"*' And to Mme RimskyKorsakov he wrote, “I have read of the incredible success of Pskovityanka in Paris. Cherepnin, who promised to write me how my orchestrations of Chopin’s pieces came out, has of course not written, so I know nothing about it. Pm very upset.”!>* He heard the pieces innumerable times beginning in 1910, of course, since Les sylphides never left the Ballets Russes repertoire.’”? 148. In the event, Diaghilev decided to add a preliminary rendition of the Prelude before the raising of the curtain. 149. After Diaghilev’s death the materials for Les syiphides passed into Serge Lifar’s possession and

have been unavailable for performance. Orchestrations in current use include one by Alexander Grechaninov and one by Benjamin Britten (the latter for Fokine’s revival of the ballet for Ballet Theater

" oH Se, e.g., Jann Pasler, “Stravinsky and the Apaches,” Musical Times 123 (1982): 403-5. 151. Letter of 12 May 1909; in IStrSM:447. Steinberg was in Paris for his father-in-law’s Pskovi-

pant Letter of 3 June 1909 (0.S.), two weeks after the premitre on 2 June (N.S.); in IStrSM: +47 Stravinsky’ account of a run-in with a French clarinettist over a certain passage in Les sylpindes wrongly implies that 1910 was the year of the premiére; Conv: 29—30/30.

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Another misconception concerns a different arrangement Stravinsky made for Diaghilev—one of his obscurest works. This was an orchestration of Grieg’s Smatroll (better known by its German name, Kobold), the third in the tenth and last series of “Lyric Pieces” (op. 71 [1901]), which Diaghilev commissioned as a solo variation for Niyinsky. It is often stated that this piece formed part of the divertissement called Le festin that was premiered in Paris on the opening night of the first sasson russe (19 May 1909, preceded by an open répétition générale the day before).'°* The program for this occasion, reproduced by Grigoriev,'>> shows that this was not the case. The Kobold arrangement was actually part of the divertissement entitled Les ortentales that replaced Le festin the next season. It was first performed on the same program as the Firebird premiére (25 June 1910) but was never revived after 1910 and was of such small importance that it was never even mentioned, for example, in the Haskell/Nouvel volume on Diaghilev. Several other sources of dance history set the record straight; '°° and Richard Buckle has quoted an entry from Diaghilev’s account book, showing not only that he commissioned Kobold from Stravinsky in February 1910, but also that he paid him exactly seventyfive rubles for the job.!>” And what was Le festin? An answer to that question will reveal what made ballet all at once the focus of Diaghilev’s 1909 season, with results that have been historic

in sO many ways—ways unforeseeable as little as four months before the season was to open. On 9 February 1909, without warning, the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the tsar’s uncle and Diaghilev’s principal backer, dropped dead. This event led, through a series of court intrigues and mysterious cancellations of contracts, to the sudden withdrawal of a crown subsidy Diaghilev had secured through the grand duke to finance the Paris season.'°® A huge cutback became necessary, and Diaghilev came up with the following scheme. Only one opera, Pskovityanka, would be presented in full. Two others, Ruslan and Prince Igor, would be represented by single acts, each of which would play on a triple bill with two ballets. This plan required the speedy concoction of a fourth ballet. The result was Le festin (in Russian, Pirshestvo), a hastily thrown together sutte de danses, excerpted from various existing operas and ballets by Petipa and Gorsky (Mlada, Ruslan, Raymonda). Even Chaikovsky was included: the Bluebird pas de deux from The Sleep-

ing Beauty was performed by Karsavina and Niyinsky under the title “The 154. See White, Stravinsky: The Composer and Hts Works, 499; Beletsky and Blazhkov, “Spisok,” in Dialogt, 377, etc. 155. Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet, insert following 272. 156. Ibid., 39-40; Kochno, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 56. 157. Richard Buckle, Néjinsky (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971), 130. 158. For some of the details, see Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet, 1-13; Benois, Reminiscences, 279-80; Buckle, Diaghilev, 130-33.

[s48] 8 » TRAJECTORIES

Firebird.”’°? To these Fokine added a few extras: the fopak from Musorgsky’s unfinished Fair at Sorochintsi; the trepak from Chaikovsky’s Nutcracker, arranged as a solo for the troupe’s premier danseur, Georgiy Rosay; and an ensemble finale set to the last movement of Chaikovsky’s Second Symphony, already familiar to Parisians

from Diaghilev’s 1907 concert series. , The two ballet/opera bills now consisted of Le pavillon d’ArmidelPrince Igor (Act II)/Le festin, and Ruslan and Lyudmila (Act 1)/Les sylphides/Cléopatre. Toward the

end of the run (10 June), the fourth and fifth acts of Judith were performed as a vehicle for Chaliapin, with Felia Litvinne, already a favorite at the Paris Opera, in the title role. This addition was undoubtedly made partly as a gesture to Valentin Serov, the composer’s son, but it was unexpectedly successful thanks to its star performers, and for the last week of the season it replaced Ruslan and Lyudmila in the

second triple bill. Ballet, contrary to the original plan, was now more conspicuous than opera in the programs of the saison russe. The first triple bill in particular was essentially a ballet evening with only a little singing, since the second act of Prince Igor is dom: inated by the Polovetsian Dances, which Fokine choreographed brilliantly for the occasion. Danced thrillingly by the male corps de ballet headed by Adolphe Bolm, it made the greatest sensation of the season, Chaliapin notwithstanding.’® The ballets had been carefully calculated to represent a balance between the expected Slav exotica and the supercivilized, raffiné European Russia the French knew nothing about, but which was the one closest to the hearts of the latterday Miriskusniki, particularly Benois. It was a definite risk, for the French, who loved the Russians’ semi-Asiatic barbarism, considered the “style rococo” of Le pavillon @Armide and the Romanticism 4 la Taglioni of Les sylphides to be their property. Diaghilev feared they might object to Russian poaching on their preserve. At the conclusion of the season, however, Benois was able to report, in triumph, that those among the French who were accustomed to the chocolate-box pictures that the French stage presented as rococo regarded the Russian interpretation as overornate, the colors too bright, the gracefulness of the performers exaggerated. But then those Frenchmen who still retained the capacity for understanding that period from Versailles, the Gobelin tapestries, the Sevres, the gold ornaments, and 159. Fokine rather absurdly accounted for this retitling in Memoirs of a Ballet Master (162; the story also appears in Haskell, Diaghileff, 180) by stating that Diaghilev had already announced the full ballet

of that name for the 1909 season but that it wasn’t ready in time. In fact, The Firebird was not even commissioned from Lyadov, let alone Stravinsky, until the fall of 1909. The reason for the retitling had to do with the brilliant orange-and-gold costume Bakst had created for Karsavina (see André Levinson, Ballet Old and New, trans. Susan Cook Summer [New York: Dance Horizons, 1982], 13, 22n.2). 160. This was the only fully professional staging Alexander Serov has ever been accorded in the West. Simon Karlinsky informs me that there have been amateur performances of Serov’s third opera, The Power of the Fiend (Vrazhya sila), in Paris (early 1950s) and San Francisco (1979). 161. The act became even more of a ballet thanks to the deletion of its big lyric number, the title character’s aria “O Give Me Back My Freedom.”

BALLET EXPORTED [349]

the bobbed wigs, those who understood the actual spirit that breathed through this delicate art, felt and understood the meaning of Le pavillon d’Armide. Its aim was achieved: Russians had shown that they could outvie the French on their own ground. '°?

Still and all, it was Cléopatre and the Polovetsian Dances that had the greatest success, and for all the predictable reasons. Benois managed to see this, too, as a defeat of the French on their own soil. It was Russian culture that trrumphed in Paris, the whole essence of Russian art, its conviction, its freshness, its spontaneity. ... Our primitive wildness, our simplicity revealed itself in Paris as something more refined, developed, and subtle than the French themselves could do. The success of the ballets is based on the fact that Russians are still capable of believing in their creations, that they still retain enough spontaneity to become absorbed, just as children are completely absorbed in their play, in the God-like play which 1s art. This secret has been lost on the Western stage, where everything is technique, everything is consciousness, every-

thing is artificiality, whence have gradually disappeared the mysterious charm of | self-oblivion, the great Dionysiac intoxication, the driving force of art.'©4

Benois saw in the Parisian triumph the specific vindication of his “Colloquy on Ballet.” The conversion of the French had shown that, far from an entertainment for “children, hussars, and senile dignitaries,” ballet was “the most closely knit and yet the freest of theatrical forms.” And further, that “the very principle of ballet—

to present a beautiful spectacle, to sway the mind of the spectator by means of beautiful forms, beautiful rhythm, beautiful combinations of movement—contains something truly divine and mystic.”'™ Opponents of Fokine’s Duncanesque art, such as André Levinson, tried to persuade their readers that the real heroes of the hour had been not the dancers or

their choreographer, but the artists Bakst, Roerich, and Benois: “the ‘Saisons Russes’ captivated the likes of Auguste Rodin, Maurice Denis and Jacques-Emile Blanche, primarily as a revelation of a painterly-decorative order, as an avalanche of unbridled and farfetched colors.”'®° And indeed, the immediate impact that Bakst’s and Benois’s costumes and color schemes had on Paris fashions is powerful

testimony to the truth of Levinson’s assertion, though it was certainly not the whole truth. A famous example is the egret plume described by Proust, which came from Niyinsky’s costume as Armida’s slave in the first Russian ballet Parisian

eyes espied.' 162. Alexandre Benois, “Russkiye spektakli v Parizhe,” Rech’, 25 July 1909, 2; italics original. 163. Ibid.; this extract adapted from the translation in Lieven, Birth of the Ballets-Russes, 99. 164. Benois, after Lieven, Birth of the Ballets-Russes, 99. 16s. Levinson, Ballet Old and New, 33. 166. Cf. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), 2:770.

[sso] 8 * TRAJECTORIES

Where everyone agreed was on the poor showing of the musical component within the otherwise unflawed Russian spectacles. What had been the dominant element in the Wagnerian synthesis had unaccountably become recessive in Diaghilev’s, to the great consternation of the French critics. Louis Laloy, their dean, was scathing on Le pavillon d’Armide: “The only extenuating circumstance one could invoke in favor of such insignificant music is that after five minutes one no longer hears it.”’©” The venerable Camille Bellaigue, whose credentials as propagandist for Russian music in France were nonpareil,'®® asserted flat out that the music had contributed nothing to the success of Cléopatre or Les sylpindes. The former had a score “woven out of any old remnants,” while the orchestrations in the latter (two of them by the unknown—indeed anonymous—Stravinsky) were “unspeakably vile.”'©? Even Michel Calvocoressi, Diaghilev’s paid publicist and

French liaison, and as staunch a partisan as the Russian impresario would ever have, came away from the 1909 season with fundamental misgivings about the fate of Russian music: “The young Russian composers had better get to work seriously and furnish some works of a more personal character, worthy of being shown here; otherwise the displays of Russian music abroad will be forced to maintain a retrospective character that will no longer interest anyone except historians.”!”° Diaghilev, in effect, was put on notice by the French critics that in any future productions music would have to be brought up to the level that dance and design had reached by 1909. They wanted a musical frisson to match those administered by Benois, Bakst, Roerich, Fokine, Nyinsky, Pavlova, and the rest. And this could only mean a neonationalist score that would provide a novel and worthy counterpart to the decorative and choreographic delights of the Polovetsian Dances and Cléopatre, for these represented for the French the quintessence of Slav exoticacum-erotica, the raison d’étre, so far as most of them were concerned, for Diaghilev’s activity in their midst. Another factor spoke even louder and clearer than the critics. When the receipts were tallied it was evident that only Cléopaétre had been a money-maker. This was clear, actually, even before the end of the brief season, and Diaghilev began tacking extra performances of the Bakst/Fokine sensation onto performances of Ivan le Terrible as a sex lure to fill the hall for Rimsky’s serious historical opera, which, despite Chaliapin’s presence in the title role, had been enjoying only a marginal success, 167. Louis Laloy, “Le mois,” Revue musical S.I.M., no. 5 (June 1909), 583: “La seule circonstance atténuante qu’on puisse invoquer en faveur d’une musique aussi insignifiante, Cest qu’aprés cing minutes on ne Pentend plus.” 168. He had launched his career by contributing the “Notice sur César Cui” to the book-form publication of Cui’s Mustique en Russie three decades carlier. 169. Camille Bellaigue, “La saison russe du Chatelet,” Revue de deux mondes, 15 July 1909, 450; quoted in Krasovskaya, Russkiy baletniy teatr 1:337. 170. Mercure de France, quoted by Laloy, 589: “Il faut que les jeunes compositeurs russes se mettent

séricusement au travail, afin de fournir des oeuvres d’un caractére plus personnel, dignes de nous étre montrées; sans quoi les expositions de musique russe a Pétranger, forcées de garder le caractére rétrospectif, n’intéressent plus bientét que les historiens.”

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diminished by the inevitable invidious comparisons with the previous season’s dazzling Boris Godunov.’’' The other operatic presentations (not counting Prince Igor, which was really another ballet) had not done even that well. Taking stock, it was obvious that the relatively cheap ballets had succeeded where the insanely expensive operas had failed. Chaliapin alone had cost Diaghilev more than all the ballet soloists combined, and the other principal singers plus the chorus cost the equivalent of two and one-half corps de ballet. Diaghilev finished the season with a deficit of thirty-eight thousand francs, and he was now without a crown subsidy to absorb it.'’? When word came from Chaliapin that he would not be available for Paris appearances in 1910,'’* Diaghilev made the inevitable decision. In the perhaps not quite ingenuous words of Benois, “looking to the future, Diaghilev saw himself, quite contrary to his own taste, forced to limit his Parisian repertoire to ballets.”!”*

The 1910 season, then, would have to have as centerpiece a major new work in an unprecedented genre: a Russian neonationalist ballet that could take the place of the operas that were no longer economically feasible to produce but that had represented for the French an authentically and seductively exotic Russian art. If the Russian ballet was to continue to attract the attention of the Paris public, it would have to develop a deliberately, in fact self-consciously, “Russian” repertory, one with no indigenous antecedent but rather created expressly for a non-Russian audience. It would be a repertory manufactured specifically for export, for without Diaghilev’s “export campaign” (to use Benois’s ironic term for it) there would never have been any call for it to exist, least of all in Russia. The ballet’s subject was a foregone conclusion. Benois, in fact, had pinpointed it precisely in his “Colloquy on Ballet” of 1908, where the “Artist” had affirmed: In Slavic mythology any episode at all would make a ballet subject. Only it’s not easy in our day and age to approach this perhaps most precious of all treasures. The stage is too glutted with operas in “authentic Russian” style, and it would be necessary to find a new style to impart a “Slavonic” mood without resorting to clichés 4 la Rimsky (and am I not a fan of his? But all the same, Pm “glutted”!). But what horizons would be opened up! And how one would want to see it happen tomorrow or the day after, while we have theatrical artists on hand like Korovin and Golovin, while we still have real Russian villages to inspire us, and all of Russia has not yet become an election ward or a factory meeting...

171. See Gozenpud, Russkty operniy teatr mezhdu dvukh revolyutsty, 230-32. 172. For all the figures, see Buckle, Diaghilev, 153. 173. Ibid., 157. Chaliapin spent the year 1910 crisscrossing the length and breadth of Russia, appearing in every city from the Baltic to the Caucasus, after which tour he was rewarded by the Russian Mu-

sical Society with an honorary membership and was created a “soloist to His Majesty” by Nikolai IT. See V.N. Dmitrievsky and E. R. Katernina, Shalyapin v Peterburge-Petrograde (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1976), 129-31.

174. Benois, “Origins of the Ballets Russes,” 16.

[ss2] 8 * TRAJECTORIES

And the “Artist” had said all this in response to the “Balletomane’s” exasperated cry, “Don’t tell me you’re going to start talking about the Firebird!”!”° It was that obvious. Our trajectories all having intersected upon it at last, it is time now to turn our attention to Igor Stravinsky’s first masterwork. Stravinsky had the incredible good fortune to be chosen by fate as the protagonist of this extraordinary nexus. History has shown us how ready he was. 175. Benois, “Beseda o balete,” 114-15.

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BLANK PAGE

9°*MYTHS FOR EXPORT

SUBJECT AND PLAN “Two years ago,” boasted Benois, describing for readers back home the undisputed “hit of the Russian season in Paris” for the year 1910, “I gave voice . . . to the dream that a true ‘Russian (or perhaps Slavonic) mythology’ would make its appearance in ballet; this looked perfectly feasible at the time, since all the elements for such a choreographic drama are present in the imagic as well as the ‘psychological’ aspects of our ancient epics and tales.”! He then proceeded to give a detailed account of how this dream of his had achieved realization in what is now one

of the cornerstones of the world ballet repertoire, and how in the process it provided the launching pad from which the rocket of Igor Stravinsky’s international career took off on its sixty-year flight. There have been countless memoirs of The Firebird from participants and onlookers alike. Benois’s alone was written within a year of the work’s conception, with its creative history fresh in mind, and with little or no apparent animus to becloud the veracity of its details. And because it is details—largely absent from subsequent accounts—that Benois supplies in abundance, his account must serve as the basis for any attempt to reconstruct the early history of the ballet. The original aim had been to create at last the definitive neonationalist Gesamtkunstwerk: “One felt that . .. people enamored of our ancient past had only to seek the means of its embodiment in our scenic and musical activities, and the thing would be done of itself. . .. So, when the decision was taken within the ‘Diaghilev

1. Alexandre Benois, “Khudozhestvenniye pis’ma: russkiye spektakli v Parizhe: ‘Zhar-ptitsa,’” Rech’, 18 July 1910. This lengthy, on-the-spot critique formed the basis for the discussions of The Firebird in all of Benois’s subsequent memoirs.

[sss]

Directorate’ that the moment had arrived for the creation of a Russian choreographic tale [skazka] ... everyone began to work on it together.”? The circumstances that led up to that fateful decision have been traced in the last chapter. They were chiefly financial concerns, the chief artistic need being some new Russian music that might stand comparison, on the one hand, with the new Russian choreography of Fokine and the dazzling Russian innovations in stage design and, on the other hand, with the older Russian music, the colorful “kuchkist”

music so beloved of the French audience, for whom it represented, as Prince Lieven noted with a twinkle, “du vrai Russe.”* The fact that the new ballet was a stand-in for the economically unfeasible operas that Diaghilev really wanted to

produce should be held paramount in mind when considering the nature of the ] finished work. Another paramount theme was the wish—the failed wish, as Benois ultimately thought—to create not the usual fairy-tale ballet for children, but what

Benois called a “skazka for grownups,” meaning that the emphasis would be placed not on spectacle or magic divertissement, but on solid dramatic values. And even more than that: the ballet was to be a step on the way to what Benois called a “Russian mysterium.” Only then, he wrote, would it be “a genuine contribution to Russian scenic art, a starting point from which, one had to hope, further paths would lead.”*

All of this harks back quite obviously to lturgichnost’, the liturgical quality Benois had associated with dance in this “Colloquy” of 1908. It was a Silver Age cliché, much abetted by Isadora Duncan’s Russian tours. No less a cliché was the magical Firebird as a subject. In the context of nineteenth-century Russian culture she was as much a stereotype, a traforetto (to use Benois’s sneering word), as anything to be found in The Little Humpbacked Horse (Konyok-gorbunok), the St. Léon/ Pugni ballet of 1864 that served the Diaghilev company as its prime negative example. The Firebird, indeed, was among the things to be found there. She was a part of every Russian’s prepackaged dreamworld, put there, if by nothing else, by Yakov Polonsky’s much-loved poem “A Winter Journey” (“Zimnty put’,” 1844), which Russian children still recite on demand. In it, the passenger in a ktbitka, a covered sledge of the kind so vividly described by Berlioz,” takes refuge from cold and discomfort in dreams of fairyland: ... And in my dreams I see myself on a wolf’s back Riding along a forest path To do battle with a sorcerer-tsar In that land where a princess sits under lock and key, Pining behind massive walls. 2. Ibid. 3. Lieven, Birth of the Ballets-Russes, 106.

4. Benois, “Khudozhestvenniye pis’ma: ‘Zhar-ptitsa.’”

5. See The Memoirs of Hector Berlwz, trans. David Cairns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 420.

[ss6] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

There gardens surround a palace all of glass; There Firebirds sing by night And peck at golden fruit; .. .°

As an embodiment of pure, heartless, unattainable beauty, the Firebird enjoyed a renewed celebrity among the Symbolists and Miriskusniki. She was one of a whole array of magic birds that inhabited Russian and European folklore and, with the nineteenth century, professional art as well. Schumann’s prophet bird, Wagner's forest bird, their Russian cousins Gama6n (immortalized by Alexander Blok), the Slavonic phoenix (portrayed by Rimsky-Korsakov in Sadko), Alkonost and Sirin (portrayed by him in Kitezh), the Swan Queen (in Tsar Saltan)—these were her relatives and ancestors. She was traditionally aloof from, even hostile toward, men. “Don’t pick up the feather; there'll be trouble” (“Ne beri pera; budet bedd”) was the warning given fairy-tale heroes who were attracted to her plumage (of course they never listened). Gorgeous yet enigmatic, a thing of preternatural, elemental freedom, she personified the indifference of beauty to the desires and cares of mankind. In this she was the very symbol of art-for-art’s-sake; for, as the saying goes, “Life is fettered; Art 1s free.” The cult of the Firebird reached a peak with the publication in 1907 of Konstantin Balmont’s collection of poems Zhar-ptitsa, 1lt sire? slavyanina (The Firebird; or, Panpipes of a Slav), with a frontispiece by Konstantin Somov, a book in which the poet approached the “self-created Slavonic mythology” of Gorodetsky’s Yar’, published the same year, and with an even more overt and literalistic neonationalist methodology. “It 1s obvious,” writes one well-informed critic, “that Balmont worked with collections of Russian bilini [epics] and dukhovniye stikhi [spiritual verses] open before him.”” The Firebird remained a rallying point for neonationalists and Symbolists as long as any life remained in those movements: witness the short-lived émigré journal Jar-Ptitza, a “russische Monatsschrift fiir Kunst und Literatur” founded in Berlin as late as 1921. In view of its programmatic significance, the choice of the Firebird as subject for a neonationalist ballet to be presented by the old inner circle of Mer iskusstva was altogether inevitable. The subject was “found,” Benois tells us, by one of the circle’s minor hangerson, the poet and balletomane Pyotr Petrovich Potyomkin (1886—1926), who under the pen name Vestris, after the great French dancer of the eighteenth century, contributed regular ballet reviews to the newspaper Russkaya molva, and who gained entrée into the Diaghilev councils as Walter Nouvel’s lover.® In a later version of his memoir, Benois refined his description of Potyomkin’s contribution: “The ba6. In Ya. P. Polonsky, Polnoye sobrantye sttkhotvorenty, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: A. EF Marx, 1896), 27. 7. Vladimir Markov, “Balmont: A Reappraisal,” Slavic Review 28 (1969): 237-38.

8. Buckle, Diaghilev, 159; Boris Kochno is named as source. Potyomkin was mainly known for his contributions to the magazine Satyricon. His creative specialty was the “theatrical miniature,” comic sketches in verse (see A. Chorniy, “Put? poéta,” in P. P. Potyomkin, Izbranniye stranitsi (Paris: Tair, 1928], 5). One of these, on the opening bill of Lukomorye (the Strand), Vsevolod Meyerhold’s legend-

SUBJECT AND PLAN [557]

sic elements of the plot,” he now said, “were prompted by the young poet.”? What this “prompting” or “finding” must have amounted to is plain. Although the Firebird was one of the most standard Russian mythological creatures, there was no particular skazka in which she was the central character and which could thus serve all by itself as the basis of a scenario. What was needed was a conflation, coherent enough to serve this purpose and sufficiently endowed with dramatic values to lift the story above the childish world of the individual tales. Precisely this conflationary aspect has always been a bone of purist contention: Prince Lieven compared the Firebird scenario to one in which “Alice of Alice in Wonderland were partnered with Falstaff in a Scotch jig.”'® Yet without resorting to patchwork methods there could have been no Firebird ballet. Nor was the plot finally arrived at quite as arbitrary or incongruous as all that. What “prompted” the scenario—Pyotr Potyomkin’s contribution, if, as seems perfectly reasonable, we are to believe Benois—seems to have been the inspired idea of constructing its main line exactly out of the contents of Polonsky’s famous verses quoted above. Polonsky’s dream vision had itself been a deliberate ragbag of skazka ingredients, but it did contain the ingredients of a potentially strong if conventional dramatic narrative: the hero (the dreamer of the poem, casting himself in the role of Ivan-Tsarevich, the “Prince Charming” of Russian tales), the antagonist (the “Sorcerer-Tsar,” that is to say, Kashchey the Deathless, as any Russian knows), and the love interest (the captive Princess). No authentic Russian skazka offered such a triangle. The only part of the dream vision that had no assigned function, ironically enough, was the Firebird herself; but this function was easily found, even if it meant altogether distorting her role in actual folklore. The next step was the elaboration of this basic premise, which, as Benois tells us, was carried out by “a whole, very peculiar ‘committee’ in which the participants included Cherepnin, Fokine, myself, [the painters] Stelletsky and Golovin, along with a few /ittérateurs.” The chief role at this stage may well have been played by Fokine, who in his own memoirs gave himself full credit." He has stated that he arily short-lived little St. Petersburg theater, which opened on 6 December 1908 (and closed forever a week later), took the form of a mock puppet play in which live actors sat behind a screen, in front of which wooden legs dangled from their torsos. The name of this entertainment, for which Mstislav Dobuzhinsky did the decors and costumes, was Petrushka (see Benois, Moi vospominaniya 2:481, 703). For details of ballets to scenarios by Potyomkin up to the year 1922, see Krasovskaya, Russkty baletniy teatr 1:513, 518. Potyomkin died in emigration. Nikolai Otsup included an appealing memoir of Potyomkin—“something of a dilettante to the end of his days, [but] still the soul of the new [i.e., postSymbolist] Petersburg atmosphere”—in his Sovremenntki (Paris: YMCA, 1961), 111-15. 9. Benois, Mot vospominantya 2:253. 10. Lieven, Birth of the Ballets-Russes, 107. 1. Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, 158-59. Here is how Fokine disposes of Benois’s “committee”:

“At that time we met very often, during the evening hours, at the home of Alexandre Benois for tea. During some of these tea-drinking sessions, I narrated the story of the Firebird. Every time some new

artist-visitor appeared who was not yet familiar with the new ballet, I had to repeat the libretto. I would try to decline, but Benois would insist and I would describe the ballet and be carried away by my own fantasy. With each description I added new details, so that, when the last guest had heard it described it was in all its details the synopsis of the ballet known as “The Firebird.’ ”

[558] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

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a. Konstantin Somov, frontispiece to Balmont’s Zhar-ptitsa (1907). be]

pieced the scenario together out of published anthologies of skazki, among which he singled out by name Alexander Afanasyev’s Russian Folk Tales (Russktye narodniye skazkt), far and away the most famous and comprehensive compilation.“ Indeed, with the aid of Afanasyev—but not only Afanasyev—it is possible to retrace the process of construction. Polonsky’s poem alludes to the hero’s ride on a wolf?’s back to the land where the Firebird resides. This is a reference to what 1s perhaps the most famous skazka of of Ivan-T ich,thethe Firebird, the Grey Wolf.” fi them all, the “Tale e of Ivan-Tsarevich, Firebird, andand the Grey Wolf.” It wasIfirst published in an anthology drawn from peasant woodblock broadsides (Lubkt) 1ssued in Moscow in 1819 under the title Dedushkini progulkt (Walks with Grandpa). Afanasyev reprinted it in the seventh installment of his Tales in 1863, and his ver-

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12. Ibid., 158. They were procured for him by the company régisseur, Serge Grigoriev, according to the latter’s memoirs (Diaghilev Ballet, 28).

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den. But Tsar Vislav is not satisfied that henceforth no more apples shall disappear from his garden. Nor is he satisfied with the wondrous feather of the Firebird. He orders that the bird itself be brought to him, and so the three sons go off in quest—but the youngest son only with difficulty gains his father’s permission to go, and the two older tsareviches are filled with envious hatred for their more successful younger brother. The adventurous journcys begin, and all success comes to the third and youngest, Ivan-Tsarevich. Above all, on the way he meets with a grey wolf who first tears his horse to pieces but then, taking pity, becomes his most trusty ally, giving advice on how to accomplish his exploits and even transporting him on his back with the speed of lightning from one place to another. The first thing the wolf does is to bring Ivan-Tsarevich to the kingdom of Tsar Dalmat, who keeps the Firebird in a golden cage. Ivan-Tsarevich abducts her by night without any impediment and is ready to return to his father, but he takes it into his head also to take with him the Firebird’s golden cage, though the wolf has expressly forbidden this. He has hardly touched the cage when all at once a tremendous din and thunder start up, the invisible strings leading to the cage begin to twang, and the awakened sentries seize Ivan-Tsarevich and bring him before Tsar Dalmat. The latter wishes to punish him, but then agrees to forgive him if he will bring back the golden-maned horse that belongs to Tsar Afron. A new expedition begins. The grey wolf takes Ivan-Tsarevich to the kingdom of Tsar Afron, and the Tsarevich has almost succeeded in stealing the golden-maned horse—and just as easily as he had taken the Firebird—when again he has an unhappy thought: to take as well the horse’s golden bridle, which the wolf has forbidden him. Once again a din arises in the royal stables, invisible strings twang, leading from the bridle. The awakened watchmen of the stable seize Ivan-Tsarevich and bring him before the tsar. The latter wishes in his rage to punish him, but then promises forgiveness if Ivan-Tsarevich will bring him Queen Helen the Beautiful [Yelena-Prekrasnaya|. The grey wolf leaps, with Ivan-Tsarevich on its back, across thrice-nine lands, to the thirtieth kingdom, and there he beholds Helen the Beautiful through a golden lattice, strolling with her chaperones and nannies in a marvelous garden. The wolf abducts her, then runs back, with the Tsarevich and the Queen aboard, so fast that the posse sent in pursuit cannot catch up. Arriving before Tsar Afron, Ivan-Tsarevich receives from him the golden-maned horse and gives him in return the grey wolf, disguised as Helen the Beautiful. Soon after, the wolf, having discarded its disguise, catches up with the Tsarevich and the Queen. Ivan-Tsarevich sits on the wolf, Helen the Beautiful on the golden-maned horse, and they travel to Tsar Dalmat. Here the wolf transforms itself into the goldenmaned horse, and Ivan-Tsarevich gives the wolf to the Tsar, receiving the Firebird in return as promised, and goes back to his father’s kingdom. As soon as he is gone, the wolf discards his second disguise, once again overtakes Ivan-Tsarevich, and says farewell, since he has now fully repaid him for the horse he had torn to pieces in the beginning. Thereupon Ivan’s brothers return upon the scene, having tramped through the entire world and found nothing. They come upon their brother asleep in the open field, surrounded by all he had gained with the help of the wolf. In their hatred and envy they kill him, take the Queen, the goldenmaned horse, and the Firebird, return to their father, and take credit for all their brother’s exploits. Meanwhile, the grey wolf finds Ivan-Tsarevich dead in the field, brings him back to life by sprinkling the dead and living waters, which a raven has

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flown in at his command, and then brings Ivan-Tsarevich, once again on his back, to the kingdom of his father, Vislav. Everything is explained, the brothers are disgraced, their father has them thrown in the dungeon, and Ivan-Tsarevich marries Queen Helen the Beautiful. *

The remaining main characters from Polonsky—the evil Sorcerer-Tsar and the captive Princess—are found in a number of skazki in Afanasyev’s collection, but they occur in conjunction in only one tale, which moreover is the only one to promote Kashchey to the rank of king. Obviously this tale, which is found not in Afanasyev but in another Muscovite anthology of /ubkt published around 1830, was the one Polonsky had in mind, and the one on which Fokine drew as well. It is called “The Self-playing Gusli” (“Guslt-samogudi”), and the titular theme, too, pinpoints the story as Fokine’s source, since, as he tells us in his memoirs, he had intended to include the magic gusli in his scenario as the device that initiates the Infernal Dance, but was dissuaded “because it was planned to present in Paris, during the same season, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko, in which the gusli also figures importantly.”!> The relevant part of the tale runs as follows (the speaker at the outset of the extract is Baba-yaga, the traditional Russian witch): “Go your way, in God’s name, and when you come to the realm of the deathless Kashchey, manage to arrive exactly at noon. Near his golden palace is a green garden, and in this garden you will see a fair Princess walking about. Leap over the wall and approach the maiden; she will rejoice to see you, for it is now six years since she was carried off from her father’s court by the deathless Kashchey. Enquire of this maiden how you can obtain the self-playing gusli, and she will direct you.” Thereupon Prince Astrakh mounted his good steed and rode far and fast, and came into the kingdom of the deathless Kashchey. Then he repaired to the golden palace, and heard the sound of the self-playing gusli: he stood still to listen, and was absorbed by its wonderful music. At last he came to himself, leaped over the wall into the green garden, and there beheld the Princess, who was at first sight terrified; but Prince Astrakh went up to her, quieted her fears, and asked her how he could obtain the self-playing gusli. Then the Tsarevna Darisa answered: “If you will take me with you from this place I will tell you how to obtain the gusli.” So Prince Astrakh gave her his promise. Then she told him to wait in the garden, and meanwhile she herself went to the deathless Kashchey and began to coax him with false and flattering words. “My most beloved friend and intimate, tell me. I pray you, will you never die?” 14. V. V. Stasov, “Proiskhozhdeniye russkikh bilin,” Vestnsk Yevropi, no. 3 (1868): 208-10. The full

version of the tale via Dedushkini progulkt and Afanasyev may be read in [Afanasyev,] Russian Fairy Tales, trans. Norbert Guterman (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945), 612~24 (“Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Grey Wolf”). This tale is very closely paralleled by the tale of “The Golden Bird” in the Grimm collection, as many readers will have recognized. See Grimm’s Fairy Tales, trans. E. V. Lucas, Lucy Crane, and Marian Edwards (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1945), 7-17. 15. Fokine, Memotrs of a Ballet Master, 159. In the event, only one scene from Sadko was presented,

the underwater act, and it was held over until 19n.

SUBJECT AND PLAN [565]

“Assuredly never,” replied Kashchey. “Then,” said the Princess, “where is your death?” [Twice Kashchey gives false answers and sends the Prince on fruitless errands. | Then said Prince Astrakh, “Go again and ask him right lovingly where is his death.” So the Princess went, and said to him with tears: “You do not love me, and don’t tell me the truth, but treat me as a stupid girl”; and at last King Kashchey yielded to her entreaties, and told her the whole truth, saying: “My death is far from hence, and hard to find, on the wide ocean: in that sea is the island of Buyan, and upon this island there grows a green oak, and beneath this oak is an iron chest, and in this chest is a small basket, and in this basket a hare, and in this hare a duck, and in this duck an egg; and he who finds this egg, and breaks it, at that same instant causes my death.”

[Prince Astrakh follows these instructions and returns with the egg. ] : As soon as he arrived and told her that he had found the egg, the Princess said: “Now fear nothing; come with me straight to Kashchey.” And when they appeared before him, Kashchey jumped up, and would have killed Prince Astrakh; but the Prince instantly took the egg in his hand and fell to crushing it gradually. Then Kashchey began to cry and roar aloud, and said to the Tsarevna Darisa: “Was it not out of love that I told you where my death was? And this 1s the return you make?” So saying he seized his sword from the wall to slay the Tsarevna, but at the same moment Astrakh, the king’s son, crushed the egg, and Kashchey fell dead upon the ground like a sheaf of corn.*©

A great deal of the eventual scenario is adumbrated here: the Tsarevich leaping over the wall into Kashchey’s garden, his encountering the Princess there (though it is in the other tale that he marries her), his vanquishing Kashchey by breaking the egg containing the monster's death. There is a whole genre of Kashchey tales that end like this one, with the killing of the “deathless” sorcerer, whose death is located outside his body in some remote, inaccessible place, usually inside an egg that must be broken in Kashchey’s presence to finish him off. Three of these tales were printed by Afanasyev, and one of these provided the Fsrebird committee with additional details. This time Ivan-Tsarevich is in search of his promised bride, who has been abducted by Kashchey. Her name, Unearthly Beauty (Nenaglyadnaya Krasa or Krasota, literally, “Beauty one cannot get enough of gazing at”), was retained for the leader of the Princesses in the ballet. The tale ends with a bit of busi-

ness that went right into the scenario: Ivan-Tsarevich took the egg from out of his bosom and shows it to Kashchey: “And what is this?” The light in Kashchey’s eyes went dark, all at once he became meek and humble. Ivan-Tsarevich tossed the egg from hand to hand—Kashchey the Deathless was thrown from one corner to another. This amused the Tsare-

16. Robert Steele, trans., The Russtan Garland of Fairy Tales (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1916; rpt. Kraus Reprint Co., 1971), 23-27, condensed. In this translation the word gusit is rendered as “harp.”

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vich—he threw the egg back and forth faster and faster. He threw it and threw it and then broke it altogether—and Kashchey fell in a heap and died.'”

Another episode from this tale, though not directly reflected in the ballet scenario, was in an oblique way even more important to it. It concerns the manner in which Ivan-Tsarevich secured the egg that contained Kashchey’s death: Ivan-Tsarevich went off neither by path nor by road, came to the wide ocean-sea and knew not whither to proceed. His food was long gone and he had nothing to eat. All at once a hawk came flying. Ivan-Tsarevich took aim: “Well, hawk, Pm going to shoot you and eat you raw.” —“Don’t eat me, Ivan-Tsarevich! At a time of need [Il be of use to you.” A bear came running. “Ah, clumsy Mishka! ’'m going to kill you and eat you raw.” —Don’t eat me, Ivan-Tsarevich! At a time of need Pll be of use to you.” He looked—on the shore a pike was twitching. “Ah, toothy pike, you’re done for! I am going to eat you raw.” —“Don’t eat me, IvanTsarevich! Better throw me back into the sea; at a time of need Ill be of use to you.” The Tsarevich stands and thinks; someday there will come a time of need perhaps, but now I’m going to starve! All at once the blue sea began to heave and toss and flood the shore. IvanTsarevich was thrown into despair. Wherever he ran the sea was at his heels. He ran up to the highest ground and climbed a tree. A little while after, the water began to recede; the sea calmed down, flowed back, on the shore one could make out a big log. The bear came running up, lifted the log and threw it against the earth with such force that it was smashed. A duck flew out of it and climbed higher and higher! All at once the hawk came flying out of nowhere, caught the duck, and in an instant tore it in half. An egg fell out of the duck, straight into the sea. And at once the pike seized it, swam to shore and gave it to Ivan-Tsarevich.'®

__ This episode became the key to the integration of the two basic skazki—that of Ivan-Tsarevich and the Firebird, and that of Kashchey the Deathless—and also the model for the Firebird’s role in the scenario, which is utterly unlike her role in the skazka. In the scenario, as in Polonsky’s poem, Kashchey is given the attributes of Tsar Vislav in the Firebird tale. His is the enchanted garden and the golden apple tree on which the Firebird feeds by night. In pursuit of the Firebird (a pursuit that is not actually motivated in the scenario), Ivan Tsarevich enters the garden. He catches the bird but listens to her entreaties and spares her, as he spared the hawk, the bear, and the pike in the authentic skazka. Like them—or, for that matter, like the grey wolf—the Firebird promises to be of service; it is she who thus becomes that essential ingredient of all heroic skazki, the “magical helper” who assists the 17. A.N. Atanasyev, Narodnive russkive skazki, ed. M.K. Azadovsky, N.P. Andreyev, and Y. M. Sokolov, vol. 1 (Moscow: Academia, 1936), 406. The tense inconsistency is original and charac-

eee. Ibid. 405-6.

SUBJECT AND PLAN [567]

hero in his quests.'? She leaves Ivan-Tsarevich with her feather as an earnest of her good faith and as a magical protection—a complete reversal of the significance of the feather in the original tale, where it had been a trophy gained by force and then the bringer of woe. Thus not only was the narrative structure of the folk tale fundamentally altered by the scenario, but so was its moral import, and this was at the heart of its transformation into a “fairy tale for grownups.” What is chiefly evident in the plot summaries and extracts from the skazki we’ve seen thus far 1s their infantile amorality. The hero’s deeds are accomplished through the intervention of unearned supernat-

ural assistance, and in the “Tale of the Firebird and the Grey Wolf” he ends up keeping all he has won and breaking all his promises by means of deceptions engineered by the same supernatural agent. The authentic Firebird tales, in short, are all fantasies of selfish gratification. In the scenario, by contrast, Ivan’s magical assistance comes as a reward for what Stravinsky, in an interview, once termed his “Christian pity,””° and his mission is one of rescue, not greed. Yet the moralizing surface, and Ivan-Tsarevich himself, were after all unimportant. The real essence of the ballet scenario lay in its allegory of light and dark, warmth and cold, symbolized in the Firebird’s triumph over Kashchey. Here we transcend morality and begin to approach that quasi-liturgical “Russian mysterium” before the altar of beauty, the choreodrama of Benois’s dreams. As Afanasyev himself pointed out in his magnum opus of comparative mythology, The Slavs’ Poetic Outlook on Nature (Poétichesktye vozzrentya slavyan na prirodu)—a book

Rimsky-Korsakov, who drew upon it endlessly, had called “the pantheistic Bible of the Slavonic peoples””!—the Firebird was one of countless avatars in Russian folklore of the ancient sun-god of the pagan Slavs, the very Yarilo to whom Stravinsky’s “Great Sacrifice” would be offered three years later, a sacrifice that appeared to the composer in a vision, he insisted, while he was putting the finishing touches on The Firebird. According to Afanasyev, the Firebird’s chief attributes were those connecting her with “the heavenly flame and with fire in general,” with light and warmth, from “glowing hearthstones” to “summer's heat.” The feathers of the Firebird are effulgent with silver and gold, . .. her eyes shine like crystal, and she sits in a golden cage. At darkest midnight she flies into the garden and lights it as brightly as if with a thousand burning bonfires; a single one of her tail feathers, if carried into a dark room, can take the place of the most lavish illumination; such a feather, so the story goes, is worth more than a kingdom, while the bird herself knows no price! ... She feeds on golden apples which 19. The term magical helper is Vladimir Propp’s; see his classic protostructuralist study Morphology of the Folktale (1928), ed. Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson, trans. Laurence Scott (Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, 1968). 20. Edwin Evans, Stravinsky: “The Firebird” and “Petrushka”; quoted in White, Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, 148. 21. Yastrebtsev, Vospominantya 1:175—76 (25 April 1894).

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grant her eternal youth, beauty, and immortality, and her symbolic significance is just the same as that of the “living water.” ... When the Firebird sings, pearls drop from her open beak.7?

The name Kashchey, contrariwise, 1s traced to kost’, a bone, whence ossification, freezing.”* The legend of Kashchey and his captives is thus a metaphor of winter; the achievement of his death signals the release of spring, symbolized by the captive Princess.** The whole scenario is thus a metaphorical vernal rite. Additional details came from a wide variety of sources and individuals. The largest chunk of action as yet unaccounted for—the central scene of the twelve enchanted princesses with Nenaglyadnaya Krasa at their head, who emerge to dance

two dances and then retreat with Ivan-Tsarevich in pursuit—was indisputably Fokine’s personal contribution, for it is a wholesale adaptation of a choreographic interlude he had composed earlier in 1909 for a production of Fyodor Sologub’s “dramatic skazka in three acts” Nocturnal Dances (Nochniye plyaskt, 1908). This little playlet, in all probability never meant for actual enactment, is a parody of an eponymous skazka found in various versions in Afanasyev, as well as in the Grimm collection under the title “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”?° In the skazka, a tsar offers the hand of one of his twelve daughters to whoever can discover where they go each night and dance their shoes into tatters. In the authentic skazki, the hero is variously an impoverished nobleman or an old soldier, who outsmarts the princesses by only pretending to drink the sleeping potion they

offer him, then following them down a secret stairway to an underground kingdom.”° In Sologub’s version, the hero is a young poet who distracts the princesses by literally entrancing them with his banal verses and then pours the potion out onto a bedspread.”” He brings back from the underground kingdom, as evidence of the princesses’ whereabouts, a golden flower and a goblet engraved with the words “Love me!”—that ts, love the world of poetry and imagination, love art! Sologub’s play, like so many artistic skazki of its day, was a Symbolist parable. The 1909 production was a semi-amateur one in which many of the leading lights of St. Petersburg’s artistic and literary avant-garde, including Bakst, Bilibin, and Boris Kustodiyev, had taken parts. The Young Poet was played by Sergey Gorodetsky himself. There were two performances, on 9 and 20 March.”® Because 22. Afanasyev, Poéticheskiye vozzreniya slavyan na prirodu (Moscow: K. Soldatenkov, 1865-69), 1:512-

* 23. Ibid., 2:594. 24. Ibid., 597. Afanasyev compares Nenaglyadnaya Krasa with Mariya Morevna (Daughter of the Sea), the Slavonic Freia/Venus. 25. Cf. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 1-6. 26. Cf. Afanasyev, Narodniye russkive skazki, vol. 2 (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1938), 516—19.

27. Fyodor Sologub (real name, Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov), “Nochniye plyaski,” Russkaya misl 29, no. 12 (December 1908): 158. For this purpose Sologub paraphrased what is surely the most threadbare of all Russian sentimental romances, Lermontov’s “All Alone I Go Out on the Road” (“Vikhozhu odin ya na dorogu’). 28. Krasovskaya, Russkty baletni’y teatr 1:277.

SUBJECT AND PLAN [3569]

Sologub had not provided an actual scene in the underground kingdom, Fokine composed in its place a short ballet interpolation to music written for the occasion by Vladimir Senilov. The twelve princesses danced what one enchanted reviewer described as “half-aerial khorovods, the groups of slender women curving fancifully, weaving in and out and slipping away from one another.””? She might just as well have been describing the “Ronde des princesses” in The Firebird. It is noteworthy, moreover, that in one of the versions of Nochniye plyaskt given by Afanasyev, the descent to the underground kingdom is made not by a secret stairway in the palace, but as follows: At this the Princess and her handmaiden dressed themselves in fine raiment, ran out of the palace, descended from the veranda right down into the garden; the soldier kept quietly behind them. As soon as they were in the garden, the Princess picked three apples, threw one of them through the apple tree, and uttered these words: “Fly, my apple, through the tree, and part my damp mother earth.” The earth parted, and both maidens went through the ravine to the underground kingdom. As they disappeared into the ravine, the Princess threw the other apple out and said: “Fly out, my little apple, and fall upon the damp earth, and you, O mother earth, close up again.” The earth closed up.*°

The soldier then duplicates the trick, having first shaken off two sentries with a game of catch. Although there is only one princess in this version of the tale, there can be little doubt that this very episode provided the model for the “Jeu des Princesses avec les Pommes d’or”—the Princesses’ game of catch with golden apples—ain the Ferelird scenario. As inserted into the scenario, moreover, the enchanted princesses, who dance in

the garden by night but must return by day to the palace and, one supposes, to some transmogrified state, are reminiscent of the enchanted swans in Chaikovsky’s great ballet of 1876. This parallel would not have been lost on Fokine, needless to say, and it provided him with a rationale for involving Ivan-Tsarevich (= Prince Siegfried) in the action at this point. Additional details, all claimed by Fokine as his contributions, came from the skazka “Vasilisa the Fair” (“Vasitisa Prekrasnaya”), another of those recently issued in the gorgeous Bilibin-designed albums. They included the Horseman of Day and the Horseman of Night (eliminated from the ballet after one hapless performance) and the garden gate made of petrified heroes, which in the original skazka surrounded not Kashchey’s palace, but the Baba-yaga’s hut.?? Benois ended his account of the evolution of the Firelurd libretto by singling out 29. Lyubov’ Gurevich, Slovo, no. 734 (12 March 1909); quoted in ibid., 228. 30. Afanasyev, Narodniye russkiye skazkt 2:519. 31. Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, 170-71. For “Vasilisa the Fair,” see [Afanasyev,] Russian Fasry

Tales, 439-47. : [s70] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

for honorable mention one of the “littérateurs” from the “committee.” “Inestimable advice and materials,” he wrote, “were imparted to us by A. M. Remizov, the greatest of all connoisseurs of the Russian skazka, a wonderful artist, who simply lived in skazki and spoke of the most incredible creatures as if they were his intimate acquaintances. Remizov’s way with this material greatly facilitated the bring-

ing to life ot our balletic creation. He gave us a sort of inner faith in it and smoothed out much in our work that was artificial.”*? Elsewhere Benois states specifically that he and Fokine had two sessions with “this great eccentric” and that as a result “we no longer approached our work theoretically, but became inflamed with it.”** The contributions of this forgotten collaborator merit some special attention. Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov (1877-1957) was the great Russian fabulist of the twentieth century. In the period of his emigration (from 1921), Remizov was particularly close to Pierre Souvtchinsky and the Eurasianist group that published the

journal Vyorsti, the very first number of which (1926) carried a major essay by Arthur Lourié on Stravinsky, replete with portrait. In St. Petersburg, Remizov had been part of the circle around the journal Voprosi zhizni (Questions of Life) that included a number of important Symbolists and Miriskusniki: Blok, Beliy, Vasiliy Rozanov, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Somov, among others.** Yet despite their having moved in such similar circles both in Russia and abroad, and although they

numbered many friends in common, Stravinsky and Remizov seem somehow never to have met.*° 32. Benois, “Khudozhestvennive pis’ma: *Zhar-ptitsa.’” 33. Benois, Mot vospominaniva 2:514.

34. Olga Raevsky-Hughes, “Chronology,” in Natalic Reznikotl, Oqnennaya pamvyat’: Vospominantya

o Alekseve Remizove, Modern Russian Literature and Culture: Studies and Texts, vol. 4 (Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1980), 146. 35. A letter dated 26 April 1964 from the composer to Natalie Reznikoff (Natalya Viktorovna Rezni-

* kova), Remizov’s translator and secretary, reads: “To my great sorrow I did not know Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov personally. A week before his death [ sent, through his circle of friends (having heard of his grave condition) some small pecuniary assistance. And only after his death did I receive from Paris (as if by way of answer) a whole series of his books and in cach of them a personal dedication to me inscribed at his request by various people close to him and only one in his own hand, which I especially valued since he was almost blind. There you have all that I can tell you about my personal relations with a great Russian writer and poct with whom I was unacquainted but whose works have been dear to me since the vears of my youth and have deeply stirred me” (Stravinsky Archive; original in Russian). The books referred to in this letter are listed as nos. 230-40 in the typescript “Catalogue of Source Books and Music Inscribed to and/or Autographed and Annotated by Igor Stravinsky,” prepared in 1984 by Robert Craft and Brett Shapiro. One of them is inscribed in English by a member of the writer’s household (not his daughter, as stated in the catalogue, for she died in 1943): “To Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, 11 October 1957—vour concert in Paris. A. M. Remizov was ill; it was six weeks

before he died. He was so happy that we could see and hear it [the program included the European premicre of Agon]. You have conducted it. He was questioning us: ‘How did everything go in the Salle Plevel?? Your greetings were transmitted to him before his death.” Remizov’s published letters do in fact contain a number of admiring references to Stravinsky, but also this observation, made as late as 2 June 1952: “I listened to some music by Steinberg. Steinberg is further along than Stravinsky. New combinations of sounds and a new sonority. One has the feeling of an explosion and a new sky” (Natalva Kodrvanskava, Remizov v svotkh pis’makh | Paris: Private printing, 1978], 272). Did he mean Schoenberg?

SUBJECT AND PLAN [571]

....

a .4

ee —FIG. 9.4a. Alexey Remizov.

The first of Remizov’s sixty books, published in 1907 by Ryabushinsky’s Golden Fleece and dedicated to Vyacheslav Ivanov, was a kind of prose-poetic counterpart to Gorodetsky’s Yar’. Its untranslatable title, Posolon’, refers to the direction (“sunwise”) in which the folk ceremonial dances known as khorovods are danced.*° The volume contains twenty-eight “skazki” arranged in a seasonal cycle to reflect the

pagan agrarian/ritual calendar. They are written in a style so recherché that an eighteen-page glossary had to be appended to the book, as if it were a work of ethnography. Remizov’s second book, To the Ocean-Sea (K moryu-okeanu, 1909), was in every way a companion piece to Posolon’, right down to the glossary. Scanning the contents of these volumes, a Stravinskian eye is drawn to two out of the many titles that evoke an authentic or else self-created mythological bestiary: “Kakimora,” in the earlier book, and “Boli-Boshka” in the later one. These creatures entered the dramatis personae of The Firebird: “Suite de Kastchei, Les Kikimoras, Les Bolibochki, Les monstres 4 deux tétes, etc.,” to quote from the program of the original production.*” The first of these monsters is an authentic figure of folklore, as Remizov himself indicated in the glossary to Posolon’: “a mischievous, naughty creature; in the north 36. See Olga Raevsky-Hughes’s Introduction to Reznikova, Ognennaya pamyat’, 9. Posolon’ was one of the books Stravinsky received in the package described in n. 35.

37. Reproduced in the published full score (Moscow: Jurgenson, 1910; rpt. New York: Broude Bros., n.d.).

[s72] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

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poser’s most famous score. These sketches were the ones made at Lyubensk.” They do not contain any references to the Introduction as we know it; indeed, they could not have done so. At the time of writing Stravinsky was unacquainted with the scenario and could not have known that the legend of Kashchey would figure in the ballet. Therefore he could hardly have thought of sketching an evocation of Kashchey’s “enchanted kingdom,” such as he (like Cherepnin before him) would eventually provide for an Introduction. Instead we find some high-spirited, highpitched fanfares that were surely meant to open the ballet, as Stravinsky at that early point assumed it would have to open, with a blaze of fiery birdsong (Ex. 9.1). This music left no trace on the score we know, but the other sketches in the bifolio do have analogues in the finished ballet. The second entry is somewhat akin to the eventual “game with the golden apples” (Ex. 9.2); and the remaining music, consisting of a pair of particells that show a single passage in two stages of elaboration, is a sort of cross between the “Carillon féerique” and the “Supplications de POiseau de feu” (Ex. 9.3). Yet all of these desultory Lyubensk sketches must have been conceived as depictions of the title character, since that was the only character of whose role in the ballet Stravinsky could at this point have been certain. They were in any case invalidated when, in December 1909, he received the official commission and began work in earnest with Fokine. The first document pertaining to their discussions is a list of musical numbers very sloppily and peremptorily scrawled by Fokine

over Stravinsky’s calligraphic title page. Evidently Stravinsky had brought the Lyubensk sketches to his first working session with the choreographer, only to be told they did not fit the plan. The composer then received his “assignment,” a list of the musical numbers Fokine wanted to see first (the use of italics in the transcript below denotes a second layer of writing interpolated within the first): IL I. First Horseman [.¢., Horseman of the Night] 2. Flight of the Firebird I 3.4.Entrance of the Princesses Musical number: Alarm Second Horseman [i.c., Horseman of the Day] 59. For a photograph of it see SelCorrII:223. 60. The origin of the bifolio at the Rimsky-Korsakov dacha is attested further by a list of names (all in dative case, as in a list of invitations to be sent or of gift recipients) that includes virtually the whole

of the “Korsakovian youth”: Volodya and Andrey (the Rimsky-Korsakov sons), Stepan (Mitusov), Kolya (Nikolai Richter), an unidentified Victor, and Gilyanov (Mikhafl Artemyevich, Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov’s brother-in-law and a long-standing member of the company at the RimskyKorsakov jours fixes of old). This is scribbled upside down on the last page of the bifolio. The list may represent a gathering at Lyubensk: possibly the earliest audience The Frrebird ever had.

[s80] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

EXAMPLE 9.1 _ Earliest sketches for The Firebird (Lyubensk bifolio, fall 1909), p. 2 (top)

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a. Firebird sketches, Lyubensk bifolio, p. 3

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pp ey 5. Musical number with bells 6. Musical number after the general dance 7. Darkness 8. Light

Doubts about the last two items are indicated by a marginal question mark. They were later crossed out and replaced by 7. Release of the Firebird.

This is not a complete list, nor, despite its careful numbering, does it follow the order of the scenario. It represents Stravinsky’s working relationship with the choreographer quite faithfully, though. The music was composed throughout to Fokine’s exacting specifications. In all but a single instance the choreographer was at

the creative helm, the composer acting in an altogether subordinate capacity. However it may later have rankled Stravinsky to hear Fokine refer to the score as the “musical accompaniment” to his “choreographic poem,”°’ and however absurd such a characterization may seem to us in light of the music’s independent career as a world classic, Fokine’s locution does reflect his working relationship with Stravinsky at the time of The Firebird’s creation. Except for Pulcinella, where the circumstances were quite different, it was the only time Stravinsky would ever compose music to a virtually fixed and finished scenario he had had no hand in planning. In later projects, having replaced Cherepnin as “staff musician” to the Diaghilev enterprise, Stravinsky would participate fully in the planning process

| (and not only for his own works), to the extent that he would be listed at times as co-scenarist. But the first time, on account of his junior status and his late arrival on board, he was treated as a hired hand. Naturally, he tended later to distort this aspect of his role in the Firebird project: “To speak of my own collaboration with 61. M&C:34/35.

AN UNEQUAL PARTNERSHIP [583]

Fokine means nothing more than to say that we studied the libretto together, episode by episode, until I knew the exact measurements required of the music... . I

have worked with choreographers in the same way ever since. I like exact requirements.”©” But he never worked with anyone again in so a posteriori a way. He supplied music not only to a preset libretto, but in many cases to preconceived steps. Fokine’s description of their work together flatly contradicts that of Stravinsky (who in later life was always embarrassed and antagonized by any hint of “improvisation”). Yet the greater detail of Fokine’s account, and the way it accords

with the nature of the score, lend his version the ring of truth: I have staged many ballets since The Firebird, but never again, either with Stravinsky or any other composer, did I work so closely as on this occasion. . .. I did not wait for the composer to give me the finished music. Stravinsky visited me with his first sketches and basic ideas, he played them for me, I demonstrated the scenes to him. At my request, he broke up his national themes into short phrases corresponding to the separate moments of a scene, separate gestures and poses. I remember how he brought me a beautiful Russian melody for the entrance of Ivan-Tsarevich. I suggested not presenting the complete melody all at once, but just a hint of it, by means of separate notes, at the moments when Ivan appears at the wall, when he observes the wonders of the enchanted garden, and when he leaps over the wall. Stravinsky played, and I interpreted the role of the Tsarevich, the piano substituting for the wall. I climbed over it, jumped down from it, and crawled, fearstruck, looking around—my living room. Stravinsky, watching, accompanied me with patches of the Tsarevich melodies, playing mysterious tremolos as background to depict the garden of the sinister Kashchey the Deathless. Later on I played the role of the Princess and hesitantly took the golden apple from the hands of the imaginary Tsarevich. Then I became Kashchey, his evil entourage—and so on. All this found most colorful interpretation in the sounds that came from the piano, flowing freely from the fingers of Stravinsky, who was also carried away with his work.°?

In its regimented precision, the Fokine/Stravinsky relationship has reminded some writers of the noble precedent set by Petipa and Chaikovsky.°* But what Petipa had required of Chaikovsky (and later, of Glazunov) seems quite loose and even abstract by comparison.®° To find a real precedent one must go back practi-

cally to the beginning of nineteenth-century theatrical ballet, to the days of 62. E&D:146—47/129.

63. Fokine, Memories of a Ballet Master, 161; somewhat adapted to conform to the nomenclature used elsewhere in the present account. 64. E.g., Buckle (Diaghilev, 160), who, however, expresses a naive astonishment that a composer of Stravinsky’s stature could have submitted to such a regimen. He was thinking, obviously, of a later Stravinsky.

6s. See the Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, and Raymonda scenarios in Yu. I. Slonimsky, ed., Marius Petipa: materiali, vospominaniya, stat’t (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1971), 129-51; these, conflated with another

set of “Balletmaster’s Plans” now in the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow, are given in English by R. John Wiley as App. D of his Tchatkovsky’s Ballets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

[s84] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

Noverre and Didelot. A memoir by Alphonse Duvernoy, a staff composer for the

Paris Opera ballet, detailing the conditions under which his predecessors had worked, resembles to a startling degree the way Stravinsky, according to Fokine, composed The Firebird: In olden days the scenarist began by finding a choreographer. ... Between the poet and the dancer a close collaboration was formed. Once the plan of the piece and the dances were arranged, the musician was called in. The ballet-master indicated the rhythms he had laid down, the steps he had arranged, the number of bars which each variation must contain—in short, the music was arranged to fit the dances. And the musician docilely improvised, so to speak, and often in the balletmaster’s room, everything that was asked of him. You can guess how alert his pen had to be, and how quick his imagination. ... He had to have much talent, or at least great facility, to satisfy so many exigencies, and, I would add, a certain

amount of philosophy.

This was the tradition in which Petipa had been raised; but one could not treat a musician like Chaikovsky or Glazunov quite the way one treated a Pugni or a Minkus, to say nothing of the anonymous “musician” described by Duvernoy. In Stravinsky, though, Fokine had a virtually anonymous collaborator; and he fancied himself not only “dancer,” but “poet” as well. The “close collaboration” of which he writes in his memoirs had in reality been a dictatorship. Fokine reveals the extent of his control precisely where he had thought—no doubt in all ingenuousness—to demonstrate the equality of his working relationship with Stravinsky: “I... do not mean to suggest that a ballet must be choreographed precisely, as was done in our work with Stravinsky on The Firebird. But I can state that the most absorbing system of creating a ballet 1s that of close collaboration between the choreographer and the composer, when the two artists work out the content of each musical moment together.”°” What this means, of course, is that having set both scenario and choreography in advance, Fokine sought to meddle in the composition of the music as well. There is no suggestion here of a comparable “close collaboration” on the story or the steps. Small wonder if Cherepnin had grown disgusted and withdrew. The less experienced Stravinsky, eager to learn and to succeed, found it possible to submit. He found it possible, that is, up to a point. On the matter of the ballet finale (or “apothéose,” as it was initially conceived), Stravinsky seems to have put a foot down and got Fokine to accede. The original plan called for a whole second scene devoted to “gay processional dances” at the end, in celebration of Ivan-Tsarevich’s wedding to Nenaglyadnaya Krasa.°* This was a banal idea lifted straight out of 66. L’art du thédtre, January 1903; quoted in Ivor Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1966), 11. 67. Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, 162. 68. Ibid., 159.

AN UNEQUAL PARTNERSHIP [585]

Raymonda,®’ in which the third act, as conceived by Petipa, had consisted of the “Wedding Celebration and Apothéose,” comprising a cortége of all the characters and the corps de ballet, a tableau in which the wedding couple “ascend a platform and receive felicitations,” and a concluding divertissement. The cortége and tableau suggest a quasi-“liturgical” ritual, especially when accompanied by the stately strains of a khorovod. The divertissement, though, would only have evoked The Little Humpbacked Horse, the favorite target of nationalist and, later, neonationalist derision.”° Its deletion from the scenario was probably not the result of an uppity Stravinsky’s single-handed triumph over Fokine (though Fokine put it that way in a resentful memoir).”' More likely it was a decision taken as a result of an impasse within the Diaghilev directorate, in which Stravinsky—‘reacting,” as Benois put it in his affectionate memoirs, with his “absence of the slightest dogmatism . . . [and] his ‘typically Russian’ abruptness”’*—had offered the solution on which compromise could be reached.”*

“‘LEIT-MUSIQUE”’ It is a measure of the huge esthetic gulf separating the co-author of Exposttions and Developments trom the composer of The Firebird that the former could complain that some of the Firebird music is “as literal as an opera.”’* The normally acute memoirist expressed himself a little crudely here. (How literal is an opera?) His meaning, though, is clear enough: the mimetic specificity with which the dramatic scenes are portrayed in The Firebird, and the closeness with which the music followed this portrayal, were unprecedented. What is ironic is that, far from a weakness, this “literalness” was perceived to be the ballet’s greatest merit in 1910. It was, after all, through his serious attention to dramatic values that Fokine had earned

his reputation as a reformer. He had sought to raise ballet far above the level of pretty divertissement and show that, yes, it could be as substantial as opera—the

69. Cf. Slonimsky (ed.), Petipa, 1s1. 70. Pugni’s concluding grand divertissement had consisted of a “Procession of all the Peoples of Rus-

sia,” in which an endless serics of national dances was pertormed in colorful national dress. It always brought down the house, and was largely responsible for the longevity of Konvok-Gorbunok in the repertoire. At first there were only four dances to Pugni’s music, representing respectively the Ukraine, the Urals, the Baltic (a Lettish dance), and the Caucasus (a lezghinka), but as time went on they multiplied ad infinitum through interpolation of extra numbers to music by Chaikovsky, Liszt, and many others. See Natalia Roslavleva, The Era of the Russian Ballet (London: Victor Gollancz, 1966), 71. 71. Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, 159. 72. Benois, Reminiscences, 302.

73. Stravinsky put it a little differently in his grudging memoirs of his early association with the Diaghilev directorate: “I had not yet proved mysclf as a composer, and I had not earned the right to criticize the aesthetics of my collaborators, but I did criticize them, and arrogantly, though perhaps my age (twenty-seven) was more arrogant than I was” (E&D:146/128). But as this remark is offered in conjunction with (and in claboration of) Stravinsky's altogether implausible assertion that he accepted the Firebird commission reluctantly, it should be taken with a fair amount of salt. It was the success of The Firebird, not the mere composing of it, that gave Stravinskv's voice authority within the councils of the Diaghilev directorate. 74. E&1D:146/128.

[s86] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

opera Diaghilev could no longer afford to produce. The Firebird is ballet d’action raised to a new power. The action was so graphic and detailed—and so natural and realistic—that Fokine dared dispense, in his choreography, with the traditional explanatory gesticulations of conventional mime. The Tsarevich did not say—as was customary in ballet tradition: “I have come here.” Instead, he just entered. The princesses did not say: “We are having a good time.” Instead, they had a good time, in reality. King Kashchey did not state: “I will destroy thee,” instead, he attempted to turn the Tsarevich into stone. The fairest princess and the Tsarevich did not use sign language to express their love. But from their positions and looks, from their longing for cach other, from the very fact that Ivan wrenched at the gates in order to follow her, and from her tearful pleading with him in trying to save him from King Kashchey—from all this one could conclude and feel their mutual love. In short, no one had to explain anything to anyone else or to the audience; everything was expressed by action and dances... . This is a vital difference between the old and the new ballet.”°

There is more of this direct presentational—as opposed to representational— miming in The Firebird than in any ballet before or since, and it alternates with dance in a manner exactly analogous to the interplay of operatic recitative and aria. The Firebird could thus be called a ballet aspiring to the condition of opera, and this is what made it, for its time, a progressive and controversial experiment. The music Stravinsky composed to accompany the miming was of an unprecedented sort (for ballet): a kind of purposively “formless” instrumental recitative, which derives its coherence strictly from the story line and from the deployment of leitmotifs. As Fokine had sought, through his novel “choreodrama,” to transcend

ballet, so Stravinsky relied for these mime sections on the techniques of the old Wagnerian “music drama” that had a couple of generations back aimed to transcend opera. All of this later embarrassed him. He apologized for it explicitly in the introductory paragraph to the program notes he composed in 1927 for the pianola rolls of The Firebird that were issued two years later by the Aeolian Company: “When I composed The Firebird I had not yet completely broken with all the procedures of the music drama. For example, I remained as yet rather susceptible to the system of musically characterizing the personages and the dramatic situations. And this system involved the introduction of some procedures of the type called leit-musique.”’° 75. Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, 169. 76. “Quand j'ai composé P’Oiseau de Feu je n’avais pas encore complétement rompu avec tout ce que comportait comme procédés le drame musical. Par exemple je restais encore assez sensible au systéme de caractéristique musicale de différents personnages, ou de différentes situations dramatiques. Et ce systéme se traduisait par Pintroduction de quelques procédés de ce qu’on appelle leit-musique” (Typescript, signed and dated London, 1927, in the Stravinsky Archive; when published in 1929 [trans. Edwin

Evans] these program notes were printed directly on the rolls).

‘“LEIT-MUSIQUE"™ [587]

By the 1940s Stravinsky came absolutely to detest this /ett-musique—so much so that he actually eliminated most of it from the score, a “direct musical criticism,” as he put it, that was “stronger than words.””” The so-called Ballet Suite for Orchestra he prepared in 1945 1s really the whole ballet shorn of the “recitatives.” And

Stravinsky went on record as preferring this suite to the “too long and patchy” original score, even for choreographic purposes.” Yet it is not out of mere perversity that we shall begin a close examination of The Firebird precisely with the music Stravinsky deleted. It is this music, after all, that most faithfully reflects the collaborative aspects of the ballet. In its leitmotifs, it most succinctly reflects the score’s various contrasting musical idioms. From a stylistic and historical point of view, moreover, the recitatives contain practically the only music of interest in the score, surely the only music that gives any inkling of the Stravinsky to come. The brutal passage at fig. [46], for example, an artificial,

atonal contrivance constructed by superimposing brusque syncopated outbursts Over an ostinato (the latter being one of Kashchey’s leitmotifs) and with harmony based on a rigorous intervallic expansion, would be quite at home if transplanted, say, into the “Evocation des ancétres” in The Rite of Spring; and the beginning of the “Carillon féerique” (fig. [98]) quite strikingly prefigures the “Cortége du sage” in the later ballet. Clearly, this “recitative” music deserves a closer look than it has been given up to now by analysts.”” The sections in question, which never formed part of any suite, include the end of the scene-setting “Jardin enchanté” movement and most of the “Apparition de POiseau de feu, poursuivi par Ivan-Tsarévitch” that follows (4 before [2] through [7]; 4 before [9] through [13]); the whole “Capture de POiseau de feu par IvanTsarévitch” (figs. [22]-[27]); a section including the “Apparition des treize princesses enchantées” (figs. [42]—[s3]); a huge chunk beginning with “Lever du jour,” continuing through “Ivan-Tsarévitch pénétre dans le Palais de Kastchei,” “Carillon féerique,” “Apparition des monstres-gardiens de Kastchei et capture d’IvanTsarévitch,” “Arrivée de Kastchei Pimmortel,” “Dialogue de Kastchei avec IvanTsarévitch,” “Intercession des princesses,” “Apparition de P’Oiseau de feu,” and concluding with the “Danse de la suite de Kastchei enchantée par POiseau de feu,” which leads into the Danse Infernale (figs. [89]—[133])—a total of forty pages of score given over entirely to mime; and, finally, the passage consisting of “Reveil de Kastchei”—“Mort de Kastchei”—‘“Profonds ténébres,” that comes between the Berceuse and the Finale (figs. [188]—[196]). These were the passages Fokine acted out for Stravinsky to the latter’s improvised accompaniment. The list of them corresponds fairly closely with the list of numbers scrawled on the cover of the bifolio 77. E&D:151/132. 78. M&C: 32/33.

79. Even Pieter van den Toorn, in his discussion of The Firebird, confined himself to the 1919 concert suite (Music of Igor Stravinsky, 1-30).

[s88] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

that contained the rejected early sketches. These semi-improvisatory recitatives, then, clearly represent the earliest “layer” of Firebird music, and the core from which the more formal numbers (the “arias”) were derived. Stravinsky’s first task, just as in The Nightingale, was to develop a fund of leitmotifs and /eit-harmontes a la Rimskv. Surely the first item chosen for this fund was the one that had already come to the composer, as we have seen in Chapter 7, during his work on The Nightingale and that, were it not for the Firebird commission, he would surely have developed further in the opera. “If an interesting construction exists in The Firebird,” he allowed later, “it will be found in the treatment of intervals, for example in the major and minor thirds in the Berceuse, in the Introduction, and in the Kastchei music.”*° Indeed. So interesting did Stravinsky find this “construction” that he elucidated it in technical detail in his Aeolian piano-roll notes. This, amazing to relate, was the only technical description of his music Stravinsky would ever publish: Thus in The Firebird, all that relates to the evil spirit, Kashchey, all that belongs to his kingdom—the enchanted garden, the ogres and monsters of all kinds who are his subjects, and in gencral all that is magical, mysterious or supernatural—is characterized musically by what one might call a lett-barmonte. It is made up of alternating major and minor thirds, like this:

A minor third is always followed by a major third, and vice versa.*!

We have seen how the peculiar voice leading that Stravinsky employed, whereby each melodic line comprises alternately the higher and the lower members of suc-

| cessive thirds, was worked out for a pair of clarinets in the Nightingale sketches (see Ex. 7.15b). It makes its first appearance in The Firebird at the entrance of the two trombones that symbolize Kashchey in the fifth measure of the Introduction (Ex. 9.4). We have also noted that this idea was obviously related to the ladder of major thirds ascending by minor thirds that Rimsky-Korsakov had borrowed from Liszt for use in so many of his own fantastic stage pieces (Chapter 4). The source 80. E&D:151/133.

81. “Ainsi dans POiseau de Feu, tout ce qui a rapport au mauvais génic, Kastchei, tout ce qui appartient 4 son royaume: le jardin enchanté, les ogres ct les monstres de toute sorte qui sont ses sujets, ct cn général tout ce qui est Magique ou mystéricux, merveilleux ou surnaturel, est caractérisé musi-

calement par ce qu’on pourrait appeler une lett-harmonie. Elle se compose de tierces majeures et mineures alternées, comme ceci.. . Toujours une tierce mincure est suivie dune tierce majeure, et vice versa” (Typescript, 7).

‘““LEIT-MUSIQUE” [589]

eee Cnt as EXAMPLE 9.4. Firebird, trombones at mm. 5—6 of the Introduction

Tr-no [) —7™™. aN

Tr-no Il —— — see Ex. 9.6 | PPP

of Stravinsky’s particular variation of the device, namely the use of major and mi-

nor thirds in alternation, was a passage from a Rimsky-Korsakov opera that Stravinsky knew very well, one already discussed, in a different context, in Chapter 4. Example 9.5 shows the relevant thirds progression from Rimsky’s score, assigned, just as in Stravinsky’s Nightingale sketch, to a pair of clarinets. The opera, of course, was Kashchey the Deathless. In view of the diligence with which Stravinsky modeled his Kashchey music on his teacher’s, his later contentions—that at the time he composed The Firebird he was “in revolt against poor Rimsky,” and that “the two strains of Rimsky and Tchaikovsky appear in The Firebird in about equal measure”®?—must be written off as variations on a familiar, indeed tedious, theme. The score of The Firebird is a veritable monument to the

still-revered Rimsky-Korsakov, consisting of many homages as specific as the one just cited. In light of Stravinsky’s denials—all too willingly accepted at their face value—it will be worth our while to focus on these Rimskian references as they arise. Now to analyze a bit of lett-musique. In a “pure” ladder of thirds, the bottom voice of each third 1s a semitone lower than the top voice of its predecessor. In the passage cited in Example 9.5, Rimsky-Korsakov cheated at every third progression, so that his ladder would be replicated at the octave and thus stay within one oc-

tatonic pitch field. Without such cheating (as Stravinsky found out), the ladder of alternating major and minor thirds 1s an endlessly modulating one that goes through twenty-four progressions—the maximum possible—before achieving closure. What it really amounts to is a double circle of fourths (of twelve progressions

each), one linking the major thirds, the other the minor (see Ex. 9.6, where the twenty-four progressions are numbered for later reference). Stravinsky put the sequence through a sixteenfold progression in the passage leading into the Firebird Finale (quoted in Ex. 7.17). Elsewhere, he presents it in small bits chosen more or

82. E&D:146/128.

[s90}] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

EXAMPLE 9.5 Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey the Deathless, scene ii, 10 before , 2 clarinets in Bb

iy -

EXAMPLE 9.6 __ Stravinsky’s ladder of thirds, each rung numbered for future reference

majorigh thirds: )2 tasig _ = rhe &se \ Ctr yg re -— ge Os ee 8va - ------- 7»~2--

12 34 5 6 78 9 10 1112131415 16 171819 2021 2223 24 (1)

minor thirds:

less at random as serves his immediate purpose. Example 9.7 is a sampling of mime phrases that play in desultory fashion with the Kashchey /est-harmonte (numbers above or below the music refer to the numbering of the rungs of the complete ladder in Ex. 9.6). Examples 9.7a and 9.7b show the /ett-harmomie in its simplest form. At the beginning of Example 9.7b the ladder is taken exactly as far as it will go without leaving a single octatonic collection. Toward the end of the same example the device of splitting the ladder into two “voices” is employed. In Example 9.7c, two ladders are interspliced in such a fashion that a progression of complete triads with appoggiaturas is implied. In Example 9.7d, two ladders a tritone apart are unfolded concurrently, to give an expanded four-part harmony of alternating French sixths (the

major thirds superimposed at the tritone) and diminished sevenths (the minor thirds so superimposed). These, of course, are the two common-practice chords in which tritones interlock: we are dealing here with Yavorsky’s “diminished mode.” The music at fig. [193], the very moment of Kashchey’s death (Ex. 9.8a), 1s a ver-

itable quotation of one of the leitmotifs in Rimsky’s Kashchey opera, already quoted in Chapter 4 for comparison with Wagner’s Siegfried. Again, the difference between Rimsky’s passage (Ex. 9.8b) and Stravinsky’s is that the teacher’s ladder was composed of major thirds exclusively, while the pupil’s, as usual, interlocks major thirds with minor. The most elaborate progression of interlocking ladders of thirds in The Firebird is in the Introduction (schematized in Ex. 9.9a). At the climax, the two constituent

major thirds of the French-sixth chord are complemented with perfect fifths to produce major triads, which in combination render what we now call a “Petrushka

‘“LEIT-MUSIQUE”’ [s9r]

i

SS TE or

EXAMPLE 9.7 _ Kashchey music

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a. 4 before |2| (Piano-roll synopsis: “In the darkness, Kashchey watches for victims”)

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b. Fig. (“Arrivé de Kastchei Pimmortel”)

Tro To ooo >p14g = Fe Fe 8 ee Cs 8 o, — 2I2]23432

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2 te Ez St es a hays hal a = |

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EXAMPLE 9.13. The Firebird’s let-barmonie

Sf

jay: . Bese . Soe

PP a

EXAMPLE 9.14

a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Snegurochka, Prologue, mm. 34-37 (Wood Sprite’s “leyt-garmoniya”)

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lee ee LT ee Ne °S2°€-—~W2-——— pf» NeoO ET EE EEE LTTSCSC* Eee ST —COCCCCdCTSCdS TTTTCs~C“‘HSONOCisS

b. The Firebird, fig. (Princesses)

i>G7... HO ort Pag jf .oo? aera . ee 1 ee ee es2ee |.. eee Ye Pr.«Pe eee ee ee ee“Es eee ee BAI 74 .6 1eeEE, EE EE Ge0. Cee | | a Ld SO ‘A> GE ©

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ara cre

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a , tty a a F 3 te (. See ee > ee) I8 V[EEE __be-f pa ~ 12 13 14 5 | 6 | 7 __| 3

Se aaa) i 2ee es osL-A - i2*D . Se ees 0 eee 4 Se eee 2 eee eee 4aC7... 2 6A0Se eee LOLA EE | . generating ladder-of-thirds sequences 4

a~ ba> bh Lo ~ 7G) RES EE RE DT OS SS a — ee |

a SS — se es es ee ee ee ee en ee es eee

4 4. 7k + OL. i Rf 7 y—— Wehea: A ~~ Aes 0a Da: 7 eee VAs eeDY. 27.KO AD ii15S) eeeDPO 0S nes ©©Seef~- BK WS

;Ca ant Th he 8 a |SS Te «4 ~ QC * 7 3159 16 10 17 — EXAMPLE 9.21 Rimsky-Korsakov, The Maid of Pskov, Act I (Tucha’s entrance)

)BN)WLSL»tp-Oeej}Ff — ae 9Se|/ 10..| ______a YF Re re a7. a |0— eee ee PPAR. a gle —oet2A. —t Adagio molto (At first the stage is empty; Mikhailo Tucha sings from behind

3 =44 the fence) A N

2) ee Le hy | gj 4 Lebo e 2. 2 OO Ee EE ee ee Ras-ku-kuy - sya_ ti,ku-ku-shech-ka, vo _____ tem-nom bo-

(He climbs atop the fence and sits there

ey ee ee Go ri hw rN A OE; TS nn a OS EO = GEood Wal: LAO eee Ieee ee ee ee eee pao eee Ee Ee : a aS en SE es On EE

y » ye . —_—— ) ey Le eT epfneesinging EO aa - ru, vo tem-nom bo-rudu-bro - vush - ke. Po- schi-

AE, VLE IO ES OSSEEE GOES 0 ~~eT fl ES te Ee ee |eee EEE EEE OTi —_ SS oo, o%

(continued)

EXAMPLE 9.21 _ (continued)

Ye Tt = ~ — ———— :

8’ A 2:ff| ee ee ane 2ae0 en{ft eee eee eee Ff eeee{ij} ee. aA ey | FPisyl @ ee iitee i jfee oo 2 aim Of...fb WHR en es ee Fei 2 [Tg eee eee ee. "Ae. 1. oe iee[|ee Pe

7 re ee eS SOCN (NS SD ¢ SS (a

nn ee ————————————————— ee - tai ti do-bru mo-lod - tsu ye-vo go. - di, ye - vo A» + ‘A 2’ AF STL: Se ee ee ee 0 eee ee eee eee eee NS 9 es Rs — EE ___. i a © Se @ eae GT EElA..eet—=a“E’'C(##ETEE 6. ee ee" Oe ee M.TCCOt—t——C“(C ee ee.) Lee ee OOOO Cee lon OUD BPN ee Oe oo a eee” EE rr eT CFT

poco cresc. (hee TTT ae‘ Gn Ft a OR, em SL |:TTT a a ES cre SE

«i 'T._.4 _— ___ fn On’ a.seajf eee eee. I HD?" SE eeEejf) P G6Ft] ee 2 ee eee (ram YY f\2G ff, 2fFee @vr@g@ {fy {| _ gfUl Fy

Au i ee NOs A, STL (NNO ./.. QR4|Eee ee : —_——————

AND) SE LS * A A OY AES OE SO On NT OP RS OY” ATE

go-di bes-ta-lan - mi -_ ye. Dol-go I’

a lL Oa eee —‘ O™O™sSsSsSsSsSsSCS mm Dt eT

fee TT fa flds > 4 ‘OL 2ON ns cnn / “CleSee i Gi. es Te Oe.oe TF SS OAS ee t—‘“‘#‘’CCQ“SQ.OOLLULULULULULULULULULULULULULULULULUUW UCU Nw!

PA _——

fad OF JRL Sn... nnn i. Le” Anne ena ee

2 : |J =| of, oP,

SHS th oH TF tas or (From behind the kremlin the moon peeps out)

: on, “~ eee ———————_ . x eee 2’ & aL eee. 6 ae eee eee eee ee ee).

@ . da Ge WWesoeee . vee W.Aeeeee ee ..eee eee ee eeeeee ee eewe eeeOe eeeeee. eae eee Oe @ Gee 7... Or WL) es ee 0 ee 2 ee 24.4...

bu - du tak- to ma - yat’- sya, go-ryu-chi slyo-zi glo-ta- yu -

@ Ga. WL UT.| I——_ es Le 8Pee ae: 2eee: eee ee... OG. 7. 2 eseeeeOe ee ee: ee eee ee ee eeseee es Pe...

NS 9 6 GS $>”—-— ee nea Cf in Fe? iE Dn. 20 Ge ee AeToeee

--

16 ————_—_—___——_——_—_—__—_—__> 17

EXAMPLE 9.2 8 a. The Firebird, fig. , bass melody only

f >S (‘to “call SS SS ST TS A SO — A 6 A A

.4

eo

xX ee I SF OED OE3.Le __.Nw”. te eee _ Pee LO. CU| -IJ-NvVcan---r---7—_ SOoe —=EZ_ — oTTZ _ ZC! OOOO ee _T._.-—

bgoee te WPL Sere Og S_... , let tae. 27 rein V EE W, Go WS ORES ROE 1 ies Di AT hel Ti ae ae FF (SE GA 4/4 an ee ee SS a A a a A ee

SL eS ae Saeco ’ (h a” 70°V’-07-nm.?002000-0-0200O2D2Q a. 22x08.7°*#10700-—-002—— | __”:2«Xr-----.--.-.’'"-.-1”77. 77 — LOT ———— EEO ¥KP3"™7—™7—-"-"—NNWN22o—*"_-—

(ob

oho ge teik 7 eta 0 SS ]#90—=€_#7:---.-.—_._. aees | aT ame eeeeSRTT 7enOL TOT CO 7A AG Ts ca ES eS eSeee 2 eeeyen

EE Ss ey a Nabe @is io, Cn oh ool ee mi (Axe ooo EO aera T—T—T— —= TE SN é--...-.——.__ ee Fh OCT ee EE oo O_O TF OD eee, TEST TT TED ee TTT o_O en ———$ EXAMPLE 9.28b_ (continued)

fGene, (ea) i in ah, an oe

ONS, Se |e eS Ee i a

2’ SS SNe 2) ee Se. Cee ee Ne 2) eee eee

OS’ ES Ee -. | . ca... Gs ee OF 5 es ) Y=

SE — Ce Se eae ee ES ee ee ee ee

extracted.”” In its preliminary appearance, the tune is given in a sort of third-

species mensuration canon with dissonances falling freely as they may. For its day a remarkably linear bit of writing, it 1s one of The Firebird’s most imaginative, if mechanistic, bits.79 The trouble was that this time Stravinsky’s imagination was his memory in disguise—unless this was one more conscious tribute to Rimsky, who had written almost the very same music for Kashchey, Chernobog, & Co. in the exactly analo-

gous “Hellish Kolo” for the Triglay Mountain scene from Mlada, some twenty years before (Ex. 9.29).

THE STYLES OF ITS TIME To turn from the mad, fantastic “recitatives” in The Firebird to the “arias”—that is,

the dance numbers familiar from the suites—is to turn from music that may be structurally trivial (read: improvisational) yet radical, to music that is highly, if conventionally, structured, and rather tame. With reference to the suite numbers one can readily concur with Stravinsky’s later write-off of his first ballet as “belonging to the styles of its time.”** One concurs, that is, with two provisos. The first is that the styles in question are all Russian; French influence, despite what has usually been said about The Firebird from the time of the premiére up to the present day, is still a negligible factor, confined to details of scoring (like the orchestral glissando at the end of the Danse Infernale, rather brazenly cribbed from 92. Actually, as Charles Joseph has shown, this passage was composed as part of the “Danse infernale” and was later transferred to its present position (Stravinsky and the Piano, 267-69). The discovery does not affect the point here, since both the main theme and the passage at fig. [103] are based on the idea first presented at fig. [101], indubitably conceived as part of the “recitative,” rather than as part of

the “aria.” Joseph discusses some other minor revisions taken between the completion of the piano score and the preparation of the full score (261-66). 93. Stravinsky evidently forgot about it when he complained that the “few scraps of counterpoint in The Firebird are derived from chord notes, and this is not real counterpoint” (E&D:151/132). 94. E&D:149/131.

[614] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

ee pe i. oy |. ff ti gf Tee OS Cie Se Sha. eee eee EXAMPLE 9.29 Rimsky-Korsakov, Mlada, Act III, scene i

7. OTetnT Peeee 9 1(eu Trofog ag

ee 1.1 6 ae TL 2 ——————

0) a ro 0 er 8 —~ 7. Ce ee _ly, | ft te | a Pa GRD ewes oe a a = 4 :

—~

2 bh ge |. “he [@ Thy PY FT TT haa hg! PLL Ud dhe

PF

Sha... ee ne ee eee

OE — et er rr er

ay EStat| =8ee Oe OS "= _ Pe 8ba--------------------4

the ending of the Rapsodte espagnole). And second, the stylistic resonances in the Firebird dances are still mostly specific reflections of specific models. They are extremely diverse. The fact that Stravinsky could assimilate them all without falling into a fatal eclecticism is ample testimony to his taste and craftsmanship, both of which operated at a level high enough to warrant the use of the word genius, were that word not fatally wed in ordinary parlance to the criterion of originality, a criterion that, apart from the music of some of the mime recitatives, The Firebird hardly meets. The successful assimilation of so many contemporary Russian idioms was facilitated, of course, by the stringent stylistic dichotomy. As Rimsky-Korsakov had put it of his own Tsar Saltan ten years earlier, The Firebird “was composed in a mixed manner which I shall call instrumental-vocal; its entire fantastic part belonged rather to the first manner, the realistic part to the second manner.””° This approach Stravinsky inherited directly from his teacher. Rimsky’s definition of styles is entirely appropriate to this particular ballet, despite the lack of actual singing, since The Fireltrd was written completely in the tradition of the Russian operas it was meant to replace in the Diaghilev programs and had little to do with the traditions of the Russian classical ballet. So it will not surprise us to find specific resonances of that operatic tradition at every turn. But neither are the stylistic resonances in The Firelurd limited to that tradition. If we take up the dance numbers in the order of the score, we first encounter the 95. My Musical Life, 380.

THE STYLES OF ITS TIME [615]

Firebird’s Dance, which begins at fig. [14]. This was always Stravinsky’s favorite number in the ballet. He exempted it from his general strictures in Exposttions and Developments, and in his pianola program notes he bragged about the ingenuity of

its harmonic and rhythmic facture: “This dance of the Firebird contains no mel- : ody, but consists above all in a flourish of harmonic progression, based always on the thirds-turned-to-sixths, and fourths-turned-to-fifths, with chromatic and diatonic passing tones, fitted to a brisk, pecking rhythm, a rhythm determined by the notes of the bass, falling pizzicato.””° Indeed, the dance has been compared with the traditional “Allegro pizzicato” of the Franco-Russian ballet.”” To hark back to Rimsky’s stylistic delineation, there

could hardly be music more “instrumental” than this. Of melody there is, as Stravinsky says, hardly a trace—just a few Firebird leitmotifs subtly insinuated by the celesta, practically hidden in a thicket of woodwind arabesques (Ex. 9.30). The “thirds turned into sixths” are of the type illustrated above in Examples 9.17 and

9.27, so characteristic of the Firebird’s music. The fourths and fifths to which Stravinsky refers are augmented and diminished, respectively. Thus, the harmonies in the Firebird’s Dance are of a type associated with Scriabin: French sixths with added ninths and appoggiaturas. And again like Scriabin, Stravinsky plays with the self-invertibility and the tritone-invariance of the French-sixth chord (that is what

he means by “fourths-turned-to-fifths”). Between the first and second chords in Example 9.31 the only notes that differ are the added ninths, which factitiously identify the “roots” on C-sharp and G respectively. The pitch at which the leitmotif joins the second chord completes the whole-tone collection. The resultant chord— a complete whole-tone collection arising from additives to the French sixth—is a particularly characteristic Scriabin harmony.”® To choose precisely the pitch that completes this chord as the one on which to initiate the Firebird leitmotif seems an act of deliberate emulation (see Ex. 9.31). The specific passage in Scriabin that gave rise to the Firebird’s Dance can be eas-

ily identified once we have been put on the scent, and it shows once more how strikingly prone the young Stravinsky was to musico-literary parallelisms. It is the thrice-recurring passage in the Poéme de Pextase (1908) marked “Allegro volando.” The bracketed bars in Example 9.32a, an extract from this “flying” music, are the

self-evident source—down to exact pitch content and even details of orchestration—not only for the beginning of the Firebird’s Dance (the pizzicati mentioned by Stravinsky in his program note) but even for the thrice-recurring leitmotif (figs. 96. “Cette danse de POiseau de Feu ne comporte pas de melodie, mais consiste plutdt en un élan de passage harmonique, basé toujours sur les tierces retournées en sixtes, et des quartes en quintes, avec des notes de passage chromatiques et diatoniques, taillé dans un rythme net et becquetant. En voici le rythme, qui est déterminé par les notes de la basse, tombant en przzicato” (Typescript, 12, followed by the first four measures of the Firebird’s Dance in piano reduction). 97. Smirnov, Tvorcheskove formirovantye, 123.

98. See, inter alia, Roy A. Guenther, “Varvara Dernova’s System of Analysis of the Music of Skryabin,” in McQuere (ed.), Russtan Theoretical Thought in Music, 183ff.

[616] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

EXAMPLE 9.30 _ Firebird’s Dance (3 after celesta and woodwind)

a , Flute ISs : SRO3O330™. i) 2oe wa — — iO ia EE OT Nee (ee ee eS ee Ee © AE ”A

NS Fs a Celesta Clarinetto piccolo

i lo EXAMPLE 9.31 _ Firebird’s Dance, mm. 1-8, harmonic/motivic abstract

Pine piv ersrrrrie Spor.

— SS

=a PF

AO T6 a ——___] 3| |?rr4th|oS 4th | 0J er whole-tone aggregate whole-tone aggregate

Sum of the two French sixths

Octatonic Collection I

[4], [41], and [118]) of the Firebird’s flight, on which Stravinsky based the harmonic progressions in the Dance (Ex. 9.32b—c; also compare Ex. 32d, from Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata, the immediate chronological predecessor of the Poéme, and its programmatic mate).” Of all the myriad Russian-school resonances in the Firebird dances, the ones in the title character’s solo variation were without doubt the freshest. Their model was only about a year old at the time of writing, and the canny changes Stravinsky managed to ring within the domain of whole-tone harmony were something of which he could be justly proud. Resonances of a very different (much staler) kind

inform the next dance, the Adagio (pas de deux) entitled “Supplications de POiseau de feu,” and thereby hangs an intriguing tale. The pas de deux is “Oriental” in the peculiar nineteenth-century Russian sense

of that word, meaning that it is shot through with languorous “Arabian” and “Central Asian” melismas that Russian music of the kuchkist period had so eagerly 99. This is not the only near-citation of the then-recent and much-discussed Poéme de Vextase in The Firebird. Compare the orchestral texture of Stravinsky’s “Carillon féerique” (figs. [99]—[101]) with figs. [28] and [39] in Scriabin’s score.

THE STYLES OF ITS TIME [617]

oe ae de EXAMPLE 9.32

a. Scriabin, Poéme de Vextase, 16 after (Allegro volando) Fl. pice.

ys? eTFEHEmna->™“*#4084.Q-0=—_2022 0 eoEDTED_QEIE— TEETER eo © CE EEE © IE * 8 Oe 2 ee ee Se S02 © ee ee ee Se 2 ee ey ee © ee

Se .oeIng. ee ee oe ee Ne ee AE 2 a a ° A See cresc.

| mi o_o os wn ”Rlcrese.

ae eeeWR Ee PO eee 6. eea=e SAeee ee en ee a eee 0 ee es eee aA. SN) LC TTT tT OS OE ee |aee ee ee eee Oe CNS7,™C™CCCOCOC;SCNNSC RE SS RSa 6eeES SEPe SSesER EeesEEE ES Bsee! Gs Cseee Cs

Te Ee NN Pan ly Ley a Clar. I

i2aAa a, Aiea neeST n anne ED PEES* SS , __ S SS a Sean a PP,

ye zy —), SE a oF pe — pt ht erm

;IVli a —_ ™ oe TT ee eS ee NT Ee Sa, aS anne GND SNe ee if cresc.

SO,AEEE 8)PF AS ESCER ONY - RRS Oi _4 — eS ND 6 AS ES-ED RD — SETUAeS S CSSS ne Il pp

SE [a iS) ———_* arco ; ; ; Cor.

ree I Ir LO ep rp ee pnp sane ne gene paemmnemnarnereer nen na cnet enema eemncensrtraemerve

PP poco cresc. 5 —— ——— se a se ae as a es SS ro PP

Piatti

Apa fp cress | eee ae a a et Se ee ee Oe ee ee ee ee ee ee ee hey —_——! EEE * AE 2 N° A 2 GE A GE CS ES” A Ge A

SP EES CN Re aaa nD Sa a eee SSA ee

a yenrtiasivio a T—oTTTT—eoeTOEohE—Eq—EE—E ZOO 4eetC—s—et—eeE SO eee Oe EES eee ee eee C—O

2’ SeSSeee eee eeeeeee eee. 2 Se = ’6 > OY es es et ee ee RE,eee. es ee ee es eeeee. ee * ee2. er ee See eee. en 0 en2. 2 ereee eee ee ee ees

Viol. Il gp cresc.

TTT TE ES Ls i 2D? queen eee ee eee eee |e PP cresc. 2 irr YY SY Fr OT eS oe © ABBE, SEES 2 SE Oe Bt Ne eee

_' .G wee26“ee. eee ’ )4. eSeee SE FO lll TET. ee_———eP 4s J 8 sees 2 OO eee.mana..Q.QDDDDQQLeeSE 2. eee ee eee ee eeeCN Oe. eee

C/.. ee Se 640 64.lee eee Ces 2. eee eee S|. eee! Oo. DEES ee DS eeeTH es eee ee B\)Ww EGET +B} Bee e.

a ae ee ie Vel.

FC ES SKaCS SS A SNA. Ce” SS Cae CE 0 EE ne,OS SEE. nsCa, 2 eS Aen y pizz.

cresc.

eh | el

es eS rb as ee a ,HGS SE SN a aS | ee ee aONrrr EXAMPLE 9.32a _ (continued)

Fi. pice. a Lt) —_# fH

, Sp ef, Ex. 9.32 —_______

i re FT — OO ST oot Cor. Ing.

accel. Sf

,IViHil —~esf | ES SS accel. A| Aas

Samo Fl Te a | i SS ST eS SS | Piatti

rol

mp

Ph J EE |

i—f)—_j@ — tpgea ee TC CL je Tee CS NNN TS (OTR eens |

——_———— 7 rrrt—‘(i‘isi‘stststststststsLC(‘(‘(‘(CUCdr:Cr EE TE TS |

(eee EE eee Et Viol. I div. accel. —_ f ——e_ ee en plzz. ~~ ea a | —79 | Pe a 2. «.......... tf ES WA OY NT ” | pizz. A

—f- 9 Tr as F ww FP Pf — tf mA Fa a

ap OO . _'Sr--o00"7:-4]iImuumw7m—-7.”.”"”—”—”—”—.—-”——_—_——__ > o."—".” ->-s2"6@"#”"n"—a0—un-/#2?"#@—@—_ TL

+A) ——— 8 $< —___—____ SEE We See 5 ~—— 2 — #___________-___}_ | —— —

accel. —_f a(OweAnne '*¢ Ei er OE EET DD a i aEEaEOEenSScn a ne Vel.

‘one... fy | ~——————__} #am ed CHRIST ORS OP Y SO 00 GE * ES "A YAY OS DE... ee &

b. The Firebird, fig. | EXAMPLE 9.32 _ (continued)

FI. pice. (3 4 (34 aA. UD ont aPP 2: .”._ SS _.._____ |_|| |rend ~~ 2) a °”°»°»°””°””°”””°””~ €~+L\ |OE 6 de yOs. rd, OO Ee SS eee Allegro rapace d.= 80

Ob. I Be A SE __ ND 9 A aS a ®t. th, ih Ae< eee? 2. SSEA le gn cgerred pp eel PF A RO er a reread pf Vl©ae pepe geRD reed SR Ne CNS RR aS RT ee sits ta So -o-NWr--.0c.ww.-C:.:.-C-.-vw.W—Oae aS —m—E—=a—EE

Fl. gr. I a P — om a rN aw i Aa ues wv @«: >«lel _SS ee _nSgn Le Tae fTLE _..__.___ | _______ laes veeeed NS *2 es SE ©..___s_____|._ nS ~~ —— eR — eSTe FC SD TS ST ee Ch Pee _——~ ae af Ps a mma Dw mes >t De es a Aw. es A al A SS SE las! £)UCU eee eee of |. OT le 8 eee a\) A? eee eee ES ERR A eevee, Ce P

st os. oO ee oNwNAATIAVT.X.T/T-/T|™-.-DNOOOOS_._ II

| «. , ? ES a A Ss an LS SY XE ” A GE GS OER A SS Oe Ee —». 2 «2|.2- «eh ” 2 0Ff. «a2a * en =.’ en ft et Fie =.” 2ft ee

_Oo eee EE 7 aa/.. ee: ST)As Se “Os eeoo WARD T° S.A ASEE A Aee As AL As ee Ane 7GN)? RRCA Ts Cs Ds= nsRE SsCRS Ss PS. SgED Sg E..0 TN SF, | CE SSDS NEns NEOR NE A SC RS SRRR LA © RE SS ESAS SS ES ES CE SEns CSRTE ED

BS ALP RRSE OC A A, anner aoa\‘Ane Liiva «oe Oi tr li OL, > RE RA (Sn, Al Zt WT RM SO©yo AB A, nS (a ne Ane Bc CR LE ES /\*OO “Tl 2 |,.ssstas.L|LhLS|.|S——CTCTC"':CT. >AP AAR ET RASA aRn RS * Oe A FB RT& ai @ Oy eine 2a qf«fh, fT fg WRN eg pe ——— apwuy\ SaAS md REE G2df le

V.rc. pizz. eT P cresc.

tees 2wee eS if a a een Se

fO\)Fi. fo. > —“tet En Se | SES SS ae 3gr.ash3IESSrc— EXAMPLE 9.32b_ (continued)

Fl. pice.

OE A Le Sa |Tf a en aed fe. on iBe | | Fer TTee yyeens Feo...ee_ ae [qfPG... {[t7” |afr. Fe: UU! Tenpm DT LT CdTC‘(‘CNCOCOC:#CNC#:COCt‘(‘C}N NN||_SE TaeWE UO

An 4 aT. | be ee ee CAS “PG | A CNAQWOF SS, aNSTT—r—e—T—™—™—™™—™—“#A YT fT T_T] FR OE | SERENE SEEDS SERS SN NTNU iA. h hc eonT.Wv.!vhUvmvrCOr.O™..CSCT.C.C~C;:~C;:C:~C~™CT.C.C..CCC;‘(CitsS.OT..TWTWWTTTTUCU UF eee LdTlCUmdTl lUCUrLVrtttCMWGL CC LLU

aA. une if | | ft OF Oe | Cl. pice. p, 4a. ' 2 id SP SR SE YR ¥A RSAORN LS PFEn A So| SF, RRALS TS SS (GRR COO ee Oe SO

meow a tr | aN,N re eh nr eg then * SARA Ue Celesta mf Fl. ee ee ee ee ee ey eer —~O~_-

¢ 3 —— °

a OR TUL | ae... rs Ce: in Aer * nes ' ae Ra

Ss” STL SASSO ” >“asa, TL a. | NES STA «= WE CEES We ¥WE Re Sn nn NS FS NARS SEEDED

Eh Sythe SF — >

‘.. ea a a I ad f’ ‘AsteeeOe a4 Oe : ee ek

Ome Ot. —— si ae een en ee ’ eeeeeee— ee’feel] eee ee ee es ' ee ee(ee Y A —— > ———_ EEE tCreLs*C Viol.1 TF eure 2 AS | PS ____ er Sf Cc. £0, WO 77 ee O_o __.‘'NOo)]

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Tn UCU TTTtO—COCLFTCOCtCON—O—OCOTCNTNCi‘COOOLOOOCOCOCSAOCOCOCC‘CSLOOOCST Of

as i ———_ eee © ..|. Ge. ak i Ue le. LLL OO ett(‘C(‘(‘C(‘OOOWOCOCOCOC#C:#C:*#(‘(‘#K’SSCOCGH UUGQM UT OQ OT Ff COD ee COO

arawes 2 a ree TD 7ee y.

A. UnUe atakes .. #3a«5 ££ "a 4” a ftCC | Pr.» fF eee gg FF ire UU Se6ee ee TCL OLCULrPti‘CNCOCOCNC(‘;C*SOUN#YCNSSTC____e,, (| -F I PF 3| 2...) ) ihA .Cok ee Ge Weofeee eee eeeaorees eee ae«a "&/eee

S'S A CERES GSS NU a SS OS >Ye 2Vs -!—t—*=“#. SsEeee Gud STR:a 2D GE ’ Se .eT ee Y es | 0 Ges "_ Ay© ’ RE Sa Y fA, ed: OFPR OL _Ws SE ed Ldjf O26 2 Dur’ Pl Pe eee eee se * eee. |. 6” eee ee eee” =; . ae Y "es "en. * ee

ten OD CU ea Ge ee.h6LULLLLLUCC Ul CUO lLULLdhmLUCLC‘(‘(¥WTCNNCOCOCOC‘COQNd”COCOCSDP Eee; sf... | Pf i{.i..__j

he a ee TT ———E—E—E—E—E—E—E—E_—E—E—E—E—E—E—ETETE—E—EEEEEEE ee DDT Oe SW... _!

EXAMPLE 9.32 (continued) c. The Firelnrd, 3 after

tte Tie ie ite oe oie

d. Scriabin, Fifth Sonata, mm. 258—59

== 2 —= @ = 1@

37 374 p283oe is

ot “SH SS appropriated from Glinka’s Ruslan. Again the immediate source would seem to lie quite close at hand in Le cog dor, just as that opera had furnished a model for the title character’s florid songs in The Nightingale. Compare a representative flute roulade from the pas de deux in The Firebird and one of the Shemakhanskaya Tsaritsa’s typical coloraturas in Rimsky’s opera (Ex. 9.33). The question is why Stravinsky should have endowed his magic bird with these Eastern features. It suggests that he and Fokine were familiar with the now discredited theory that the Firebird had flown into Russian folklore from the Persian or the Hindu.’ Stasov was an especially enthusiastic adherent of this view. In his

huge essay “The Origins of the Russian Epics,” he had stated flat out that “our

Firebird, or Golden Bird, is none other than the bird Zolotel of the Indian tales.”!°! Despite the near concordance in the Grimm collection to the legend of the Firebird and the Grey Wolf, Stasov insisted that a rather loosely congruent In-

dian legend had to be parent to them both.’

100. Cf. George Vernadsky, The Origins of Russia (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 124. tor. Stasov, “Proiskhozhdeniye russkikh bilin,” 218. The connection is drawn on the basis of a very facile etymology: zéloto is Russian for gold. 102. Stasov’s theory is actually a vulgarization of what was in the 1860s a widespread scholarly viewpoint, traceable to the work of the German philologist Theodor Benfey (1809-81). In the preface to his edition (1859) of the Panchatantra, a third-century collection of Hindu tales, Benfey traced the history of the work’s transmission and migrations and demonstrated the concordances between the Indian tales

[622] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

Ss FD) EXAMPLE 9.33 a. The Firebird, fig.

4, ————-—_ eSify — f’Flute . ay = b : ' ME) ne aa SD RS «dA LS SD . de

re pet ‘i I a

7 A AES AE. SCRA At NE CNR eT eee OOE—E————E————_———————

SS eee Oe ee er ee b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Le cog d’or, Act III, fig.

[SS ——— >

Flute | Se aicheather tnhcele swe care.

eee eeeeenemeenasnneenenennne TN rr re

It was Stasov, moreover, who had persuaded Balakirev to compose a Firebird opera in the 1860s, an opera that was to have been a study in early-kuchkist or1entalism 4 la Ruslan. A single number intended for that unrealized opera survives in written form. It is a Georgian folk song that Balakirev had copied down in the Caucasus “from life,” for which he began sketching an accompaniment in the pure-

and those of Europe. The theory of cultural borrowing thus propounded was a direct assault on the mystically Romantic attitudes toward folklore as embodiment of a unique national spirit, such as were previously entertained by Schelling, Herder, and the brothers Grimm in Germany, or by Slavophile olklorists like the Kireyevsky brothers in Russia. Afanasyev, though he is often placed in the Romantic mythological camp, notes connections between the Firebird and the fabulous golden-winged bird Garudha of Indian lore (Poétichesksye vozzrentya 1:512). For more on the Benfeyist controversies in Russia, see Yu. Sokolov, Russkty fol’klor (Moscow, 1938) (or the English version, Rsssian Folklore, trans.

Catherine Ruth Smith [Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Associates, 1966]), chap. 2.

THE STYLES OF ITS TIME [623]

diatonic style of his Russian folk song anthology.'°* Some of the woodwind melismata in Stravinsky’s pas de deux, especially at the passage where (according to annotations on the 1929 pianola roll) the captured Firebird attempts to cajole IvanTsarevich with “visions of the fantastic Orient,” seem almost to have been modeled on the opening bars of Balakirev’s accompaniment (Ex. 9.34). It 1s quite plausible that Balakirev’s then all but unknown notations should have been familiar to a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, who had inherited all of Balakirev’s Firebird material

from his erstwhile mentor (who wanted him to complete the project). Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, the musical executor of his father’s estate, certainly knew this manuscript, and one can hardly imagine that he would have omitted to show it to his friend when the latter embarked on a Firebird project of his own.'* The two numbers danced by the Princesses are the most traditional in the ballet,

and the ones most directly indebted to the work of Stravinsky’s Belyayevets seniors. Stravinsky called the “Jeu des princesses avec les pommes d’or” a “Mendelssohnian-Tchaikovskian Scherzo,”'® but it is really an imitation of Glazunov’s salonish and academic ballet style, much as the scherzo movement from

the Symphony in E-flat had been. Two specific models suggest themselves: the Third Variation (“Hail”) from the opening tableau (Winter) of The Seasons, op. 67—which we know Stravinsky had borrowed from Glazunov to study—and the “Scherzino” (no. 4) from Glazunov’s Scenes de Ballet, op. 52. Both belong to the

tradition of balletic scherzi in 2/4 that move in sixteenth notes, moto perpetuo stvle. The tempo of the Seasons variation is marked at 84 to the quarter note, precisely the same as in Stravinsky’s dance. The two pieces are closest at their respective endings (Ex. 9.35).

The “Ronde des princesses (Khorovod),” where the Tsarevich joins the enchanted maidens, is one of the two numbers in which Stravinsky incorporated authentic folk tunes. It is at once a deliberate throwback to the early-Belyayevets, 103. The whole autograph sketch is published in photographic facsimile with annotations by Boris Dobrovolsky as an appendix to Abram Gozenpud’s essav on Balakirev’s unrealized opera, in E. L. Frid, Yu. A. Kremlvov, and A. S. Lvapunova, eds., Miliv Alekseverich Balakirev: issledovaniva ¢ stat’? (Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1961), 383-87. In his autobiography, Rimsky-Korsakov noted down from memory an additional theme that was to have gone into Balakirev’s Firebird—a fire worshippers’ chorus—which he recalled Balakirev often plaving on the piano (My Musical Life, 64).

104. See Gozenpud, “Neosushchestvenniy operniy zamiscl,” in Frid, Kremlyov, and Lyapunova (cds.), Balakirer, 381-82. The verv first Firebird to grace the Russian musical stage also had a conspicuous Oriental patrimony. This was Zhar-ptitsa; or, The Adventures of Levsil-Tsarench, an opera “with choruses, ballets, combat, military games, aerial flights, magical transformations, and magnificent spectacle,” staged at the St. Petersburg Bolshoy Theater in 1823, with music by Catterino Cavos and Fer-

dinando Antonolini. There is no reason to assume Stravinsky knew this antiquated, never-published piece, but he certainly knew about it, if for no other reason than because Cavos was Benois’s great-great-

grandfather. Benois may have described to Stravinsky or Fokine the opera’s plot, which revolved around the love of the Slavonic prince Levsil (“Lion's Strength”) for the Arabian princess Zoraida. See Gozenpud, “Neosushchestvenniy operniy zamisel,” 367; also Semyon L. Ginzburg, Istoriva russkoy muziki v notnikh obraztsakh (Moscow: Muzika, 1969), 2:469. An aria of Levsil is printed by Ginzburg on pp. 144-46. 108. E& D:150/132.

[624] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

EXAMPLE 9.34 a. Balakirev, sketch for Zhar-ptitsa (“Georgian Song”) (Frid, Kremlyov, and

0 tSeal eaeOc — Lyapunova, eds., Milty Alekseyevich Balaktrev: sledovantya 1 stat’t [Leningrad, 1961], 385)

RA hh {|V¥ivep i, , jy jf | J J — 7 7 f ¢[ [ | [TT TT ~~ Tit tg lta ta J i tf

Sy Vv & ep; | p= ~~ YF ~~ ~~ ~~; p | gC hie. =

‘wav YT) 2B.LhUdTrlrmwWwWT!TULdlUCUCmUM PCa I a Oe ea Batata | i.i i j|Z@aVr@a*-@F- @°- @& a |

’ a Pe “ae Se ae joao atakna ~~ |; gf

RR |ffVy, gy hf Ce Orft i\liFfiriFrirwswta—{| f{t[ 4)| ‘ony , jt @MPrifTst J | j[T —, | | 1 FrP@g@ae. | |]ji[yf Sy Vv yf Year ttegerefepegeféeéeypgfetfrferfreoeyreiyeroeiyfpesegfpséig¢geés”iYy~sidysérg7g@i xz... fj

OO SR OS a “

f 7 oeeeeaeee ee '7e e , 6 ae b. The Firebird, fig. [33]

kK epJZ” |, Jy umm” YT JT JT TYen YTee” fT fyeefTSP” YT sy|y _{ ee {, | Tue ff f..W Gee ee ee - e [.ee2

SY & 5 — , w= gs ~ {4 Feo mm se s..48 oe «. dd EE: bah

eee rp iy '

a ee ee ee— Se aeee Phage Nee”

(.. WEP ee een ee” eee ee eee es

EXAMPLE 9.35 a. The Firebird, “Jeu avec les pommes d’or” ((70] to the end)

HS oe ee ee i ee ee ee ST aT kl Te eek | Ce | | eee eu =| | fee ee ANS FS CN TE LS CRED CRN SE enceeencenne Re ——~— ~~~| ge | pm — ss == == a. —— eo tt ooo EEE EET (or | Da gv i UD ue Te fT | TH TT ty fl le AP eR AD eee iwi 9 | ws _e-. rol sa usiwy {,tfsetiitestr, |! i 2#2lf ainra -. i“ WF @€ |S - [|r| 27 - | ka ao'iit atl l7 Ft rpA jj [Tt“™TUL ‘

Oe a el P Lames | —_ ae | ee 2, es eee

SAAS CERES TATA. \S ¥ 2h RES SORTS UN, 3 9 AE AED EEE EEDA RS AS PS es

Hes eS

ob ee © 1d Ol a! PO ad - + j id [i | {| \ | eee ieee | eee i = =—=—=—K—lll | iA Csi tat? e#2 fae Crista |x °° °° i Wi teeta (2 oie VFzer..ULULULULUU

@ 4 | , rN —-5— _ — a7... Waa0eee OAS eti @ . GRE, en Ge Gee Ee ee Ce

2’ ae Awe eee Os) eee ee ee

BANS 2) a 1

C$ $$ __—_—_——___—_—_——#! y ig PH

WW

EXAMPLE 9.35 _ (continued)

Cc q ° : 53

b. Glazunov, The Seasons, “Variation de la Gréle,” end

—_—— ene SS ———— , sta la ta te te | @_ 1 S¢ rt?

WT wf. @#ti@ yTriiaey-s a bh(0. | ff0@reah Ge [|@2@@@@eaGa@aeiteaea@enLaeas @ | @ @1 ##@Gara f ,_ meets; fjwaste | fF vr ¢ yn mfahs. y|

a — =). a === ‘yon’ TeSs| FV FPsela@ a @eeiuenEE SW NS VA. a, | ee ee 2 428alii WEaif a en) eeelhee| ln a ee ee |.eee

-_—_— -ene~aa|ee ee| oe

wei Ole AY a Yn iF tlizLtpT wa| |e +; egJY jitTA pySE i¢The (vOS eg[OT Piyj # fF2 | efm (* Vvfy 7 &ss |yp7eiN NY pO) A | ‘zy-.UCUd|.!.LCUSSTtt””TCTTTUTUTMSAS-_s§-_ ("tm TC CULhlUGmO_C—tt—OSASOXm—U—™C.CC—™—t™O™"™"NENENTNN. TC “=e CCC ll—“=me OP

— EE ——— V——————

f) ‘ PY ‘ aa: a | ar —he| || eae’ TTrp TyaTUL | elmer een =| Wit. FTL PltSS FPie@ vidA rv pial Ff if nh | hs VPmane ¢ cell |“Sta ce | A- RS RAS A NN Fiver NS SE)| |RS RSfF, NS££ SS sa 2 Wh. S.A3 ) ee ee eee eee ———— —__ ——_ 2 eee ht... J Eee... CC

+— “*an 4 is nr a—a

4 +) , Tobe mm TTT Oia tsts—(ti‘(‘, enn DM Ti ny en ey See Ye Oe EeSRA ee On BO. ee SE QE SERRST GS nses OFsa SS ANS 90 ES 00) nn: A Do - ko - - le du 2>rey. Gn|Ae) need a "ee ee eeaee — es es eeel ee eea 2 eee ee ee ee eeaee ee ee es eee af * Vee ~*~ Fs ga iF if TjTféemw TF i * te qa jf Tt

A Ss ee Se UB /.. WA ee ee" ee es ee ee ee es ee es eee eee es ee" ee ee ee ee ee eee ee eee

2. CO ee es ee ee es ee es ee es Se ee ee ee ee ee ee

EXAMPLE 9.37b _ (continued)

ATT" ED4OOO ooo EDS _/7—"wWn"”."..0———_ =I 7)YH CCC ep} fF .— +EE+ew phatS r)

_ YY Ss ee i /(_—"nrv__?>-7°7-7>7"-"#4wo@m@onnmnnO=ODTVDT —_—_—0—"wn”n. —=—_— = ?X™rO

FC

, — ~~||> _—0wnuwv”"--"" — Ss comeiin an) - sha Ya - ro-mi - ra_ pod cha - - ra - - mi

CA SSWE eee RAE GR= een, EEAT SO ee — G MN —— enn, © 7. SP ED TSET eeSTN A— RE 0 YY SE ES VE._MG Se

ky ____a oe te. oh }—} — > Fo HH, p+ ee" ee "ee ee

weeeg a au! Oea_iee irnelir| artneert (3 meas.)

4We FE=_ sneeeeenass >C | “| aSt |... a] ey? ee ) > oeEae-— ? OOO OLS OO Hi$Fcvrc0Cnnnw”.>7#*7UAOcr--..W8"—@§"_COo06oH8$-0wWw0w0unwr won _:.-v-.---oNVrv-_--_

RN NT Oh ODED NN WS—_W’. NS OhTo YSEee Peay eeeorBae SE OS OO QT ODE Toon4OS —*-N-..__ [Nr He) -@—___—_}——___4—_ 4 +____-__++_}+___ -+-}—__p\—_4 > ——FH9) pre - le - sti zhen - skoy ne znat’ Cher-no-bo - gu u-

eee Oe ee ene TT OO s=éx"....__—— “ Aae, —SO esaaaoC Se en) SRD

hap — pr pa

ee

th a ool Oooo OOO OOOO C OHOOOODEQNNRTOSE) AGS J /—_—__¢—_____/ ___t f~—+-+ /-——— a ——_-—_—— Ae 7

re SE A YS es etl et eee

- da - chi, ne ve - dat? Mo-re -_ ne po -

= ae a J a” es a — a —— a a oe SE i Ga See a — —— S|

er p) re aN be - - - - di! fe Oe on. ~~ . /

A 1Sa wr hea reat GING Suleae ShasLA Gale So Ga Ge OMeLA SaaS SS ESETS OTe2Me MeaCS2oO o-ooFe on on ot on. ona ste a a 2 ean __e

r= SS ee ee ee ee ee ee a es 5S RNS TEE A Oa! A a Se SS ST SS ee!) Sey seen Mee * Te Ls foo| 7 _ || PEt 4 oe Oe Pe Pat ee JF se PLS 7 mame eo en ___________avan me se RENTS SIRS VA Cente Ta

es Se Ss Es ES es Sy SE SES: ERE Cline Geeks Seles Cees RNR WET GENES TEE aS GE ED EE SS eee Mee ee ahs GREED Sy Ge: ee | Ee oe _———————-——_f]

— _—— cine | on a Sas or See i —— ? rr ——-. PS aea a a+. a: Te a: a ae. Ae=a Sa oeSens eee ee eeES eee eee eee oe oe ee RD eeeRS See ee ES OeCRS ee ee eeeee eesGeeeGes eee ee ee eeSE? ee eee __eeeee 6 SReee ee ee SSee RNeee DRUES NEED SEES eSee Se eee Se, ED SSee ESees eS ee Gees One eee Ee =e + 2

SS hE SE Se ES TE ORES CRED RES CRED QOD NS ES Cees ee a a a SE SES

0k SS PS OE ADTETS iA a aALaa eea ae A Re VeeyAoeeeeee a| ise OP SEE ET ES 2 fs A iiA NS 2a _ SS SlAD eeeee—e———eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—e~===e=eeeeeeSeeSeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee EEE OO eS '

Od FE _ NS AEE SES SERS «WE SS. RS A _ SR AL a Snel CAO © SN: ES ER A SN ae ge ee | Ae GD Oe os om ate

a_ >a AS A Le A oS a AS a SH LL LS LT LS A sk os 0fad Ry ,_ EEE EEEE REESE, NEED EETNRL wae A Ve TS mt ER,RRRER ee SD. aSAS VLGEREN Aa 2 2G | ‘ene AAAe EE 6S Pe SF AAERR SEES La: a.EE iSSee ie:SE TS A Ce Wy | a:i |Tl es |

~ > ee ee es As Timp. Lf ~ wv Lo marcutiss " d

_ SS eeaeaaeaoaoaeSS—=eeE=sseeSeSeeeeeeeeeaee——_~=ee=~=S=eee==S=S——eeeEe=Eeee—e==meeeeeeeeee—eeeee—— ee SF |

A AS SS )(cuivrez) A eS ie LU ie aa2LY ei Ma eS A oA fe ;FS bouchéx ouverts EE ASeANE SS SSRETéa SS| EE AA A a SA SSTnES AES TDSERRE ES SEoe PROG, TETAak TREES TERRE, Tannen en ad PEE beOES EET,SEES _ ESCR TE 2eSEEE a PLWS Se A A Ti ADi Pa PS A, AA © hE5 FEFS CURRY LSAe, CTCE MSNS o Tee

x8 ————— oS >*»epno0on—-"-"0#*#0.:.08?".:.:(nn2nnn.:-"—”/~n..——QDa——__ Sn A rc

bouchés (cuivrez) HL IVa2 a 4 SAE [Sans i Ss ~ ee DOs Vins Sn in ne Tne |

ee ESS Eee ee eee CE TT TS AS SS SAS SA CS CRE, ES Se FS a eT, Silene Seca SD CEE SS Ce ee 2 SE a LS, iS A I a TS ee .th ewHt es 21S ES TS A a T_T. ASEE eS eS a CES oS | Se VSS \SlesssleasssssasaSsiapeAannannnans CR _ SS, AS ST __CE, A CE. a el Se ST je WENN SL cena AS EE, SR CUNT EE WS SES CSaS SS] i RS SE A WS

Spor ; Aspe a3 ; Vn. { Le 2 Pt _ =

i Tube(consord) i Ci” Ls A a Me i,es CSesLY MET MT eS . a af mE Lope FS Vs dF ESEE. ED EE SSeS CTA A A TSa|A4 a aA, A Aite Aee ST ae sDoe oD Ly

ee 5 RE _ SE SS SS TES SE, ES ER SE CS, AS RE «SS ES 2 WN, AT CS La «sms

Le. a aLn LSsa aA. Ve EE!ee APT SE. _~cnnenae 2a EE OER: Tii aeS eSaiS eS wv PANEER men ERNeee ERR A ARSee Te i, aAT Ce |AA, aaneen er euanaeumenmeanmenmeapentemeeneenat oS te a eee a

a x ee ae ee Se eenee a ee errs eee rere ee ee——__ cae es rereSessa: eee aBees Seems | 2See SpeerBE SORE ae ———__) — a aeee _—_~_ Oo ee eee a aeee OeSeeaeGn oe Lf aeeAS Ss Soccseccsos Sa | eee. ee A( on—SS AVescase See

a -—_._ 2 —_o-—_ 2 —_ 2-2 2. ——_2—__2—_ __2—__2—_2_2—___a) — = sw nn — ee oe

r% = SS 222 SSS SS SSS S22 S55 5225S 222555. = Se Ts

! ee ee oe om Oo oe4Eee div.

0ad 8 ere eCLS etetmmmmnnnttaa SOO AS SS ae SeSA. Om a a: ASse aT YL SS Te TSIDDEUEG SSneat i, EE en: men STE Ci Vo. ll Sin. ee ee ISeen NGUDEIEIIEE 1k EE ss —2—8 3-6 1s 4 2 i ss 4 Ph ————————— ma ———————————————— ————— — TT o— Tr eEeeTEeT ET—EeE—e—xvEE=ETEEEEEE_eeE—oeE>T—E—EeE—TETE=eeQ®QQQeeeeeeee eee) os

SSSeETT SRS SeOne eeeeee eemall =~.2) EE, a CA fh SS ee SRS CS CT Aa OS |. STA. i

aco sul A —— a bela——— Ve. EE — ee ak Tt [8 wa re|ee eee ee + ST) ___.______ S sempre sul A ———_—____ — af cresc

- Swe ow

Iet IETngESPoel dl ON a _SS edSE..-2393.NNv.|. _ 2QE taaoa pert +}Oe—______. SE A) ng A SOS SS | RE, CS AS A | 2a GE RD eR ee ee! +--+ Ok ee ee ook oe - a (——‘ome Ses sos sulG ——___..___,

EXAMPLE 9.38 _ (continued) b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Mlada, Act III, scene iii, 7 after (i) aaa aa ean a RE OS ORE CR OE VO EI RI IORI ORS OEY RII PARAS CORE ORS PORES VE VOR

|SOC Er ce Un ee TS EOE oO be a aaIInet2D—

eee ee ee ee ee

Pie ee ee ee ee SL SSS aS ats Gt pr dettd ttt | 8 ttt Mt ttt ltt de tetede MBM dd

ey ee aA=a

CE A OS a , eS SS a A A a Ls a Ee | O_——— ee a nnn tenet mpm nepmamnagananenen nay eeeeng-ane-geengmaepumnremmnnnne eo aeemereumenigareennaearecuntiamnmeniee ramen amen ate

3 Cor.a~af 2Y| vp) rs OO OO, ~~

ee

= me Ee eS

ae ees — ee (div)

CORO

7 a eS I PE a a.

| J eet? j=mNuonM™nu84éuM#quJ7II™W@™#"707#”-"#7IwTII.-”.I-—I-.".-.-.naS CS eo_FeE”"”-=>EE5"7.5>=2E{[=[.>— EEE

1 ne ees a Ss ran anppnnereenonre ld regenera ean ren tie a gens renner

———————— eS | enn Gnen aaaacaiaeranee

a ee aaa

ee eer ae er eee ee er ee er | es Ne, A

Fg — pove rr aed EXAMPLE 9.39

a. Lyadov, Kikimora, 1 after [2]

, C. ing]. a R= rom oti, > >

es so eedolce ase ee Se ee— oe dim. ee sees => VEE, ~ _ ~ ~ —_~ ~ —_ ~ ‘a mu — Ay —P a So Ge oa a eae Se Sa ho ee lee LS ie Fg if oe te - oo »-| o_o »f o_o» oi 2+ os} o—

AL LS Ee ee —s Oe Ee

3 —>—">-’-—>02.0>—-0-0—oNOooEOEOEOE™ehNeODODOOOOO nooo wy

—— | ——— | —— |" | COE es ©ee Seee 4 COR. ALa Ce Dad Ol 0EEE ES OE eee eS ed ©

mw | t ftnn. | f 2.4 |ee TTel“ Tl )l—"="e’._ TT dL fas SO OU |_d) _Lf Oe". Hs)||1-4 Oe. 4 aTO ee TT J —LULU ee Ee Een b. The Firebird, fig.

Fag. I. SOLO AL — tO ‘ a o—__, ere Fi rtreo— fLzeaee SSS rl eer

er ee ee ee ee —> ee ee ee eee eee P

Vie. \ =

PP Ve. -_ a

PP

FCyb!eS WC or = fsES f= |AS —- |TS = | en cen div. pizz.

Cb.

Pp

he bf be ° i rl — —...

EXAMPLE 9.40 a. The Firebird, fig.

8va------------------ ee ee ee ee ee ee eee ,

ht tte +EEee229" "G Ae eee. theeseee @ ee .. ee |. 4-) es ee 2.ee |. 4eeee 0. ee eee O /... RW 4)(EE BSA) ORR GEE 64Wee) ee ee| a -2| EE ee |0..|) eeess ee)Se eee| BN) EE, SE «SE: EE0.|i|.GE ae ee) EES Aee es

eg A,tt fe ee rt rt 7 tt te rt ftEee tg oteee HH ot

wt | —=ee* 2 . ee GSS 4 «eeDee ee 0| TrCSOCSCSCSCSCSCCCS 0 eee ee ee eee... eee eee...

ty ft 2)

, | & || Eee adds iiieee isis ee gs 2 iiy Je |

i EXAMPLE 9.40 _ (continued)

et —p—> eT b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Snegurochka, Berendey’s cavatina (Act II), mm. 4-9

a|EE Oe ee

Pol - na, pol - na chu - des mo-

.PF = . =| -s. —— TE a

O20 Va Sa Sa 2... Dee ee - gu - cha - ya pri - ro -_ da

} ay te be | te be J | late 9 |e be J | [ Mighty nature is full of wonders]

the song to Stravinsky for his solemn wedding cortége (he chose to ignore the outcome as related in the later strophes of the song, where Dunyushka takes ill and dies). The treatment of the melody is straightforward and repetitive, as befits a khorovod, building to a climax upon which the Firebird, represented by her leitmotif, confers one last benediction. The mirror writing here is especially strict (Ex. 9.41).

This leads to the famous passage in 7/4, so often cited as a harbinger of the Stravinsky to come. In reality it is one last homage to the Rimsky that was, whose

operas are full of hymns in asymmetrical meters. A particularly close analogy would be to the finale of Snegurochka, a stately, strophic hymn in 11/4 to Yarilo the sun god, of whom the Firebird is said to be an avatar, and whom Stravinsky would soon be worshiping directly in The Rite of Spring. Rimsky’s diatonic harmonization, replete with added sixths and sevenths, cannot fail to bring Stravinsky’s per-

oration (Doppio valore: maestoso at fig. [206]) to mind (Ex. 9.42).""?

111. One might also compare the coda in the first movement of Glazunov’s Second Symphony, a Belyayevets favorite, which was among the works presented by Diaghilev to Paris in 1907.

[636] 9 » MYTHS FOR EXPORT

aee

EXAMPLE 9.41 _ The Firebird, fig.

EE —— ee eee eee ee 8 Sgt go | inven) | wm: 2. re | Jd aa? red mr? rd QTC D2, he. .o

TR: OSee; ee OlgeSERN a es a Se RL a ee RS 5 ees re 6 eer eeePea TS aes

wu: ae xf # ‘s ]

EXAMPLE 9.42 a. The Firebird, fig.

(ee SS = SS SS aS SS

Cin = = a a

i.— o> —i.—

ore ae oe ee b. Rimsky-Korsakov, Snegurochka, Final Chorus (Act IV), mm. 28-29

Z 4 ° ° > 4 4 —_ ° ° . > AMBIGUITIES OF RECEPTION The Firelird’s smashing success on its premiére at the Paris Opera, 25 June 1910, catapulted Stravinsky into a world celebrity he would enjoy for the next six decades. Everyone associated even collaterally with the production had smelled a clou in the

works, and excitement mounted as the fateful day approached. The Miriskusniki were in ecstasy. Stelletsky wrote to Golovin, “I’m staying till Sunday; I must see The Firebird. 1 have seen your dazzling drawings and costumes. I like Stravinsky’s music in the orchestra and the dances tremendously. I think the whole thing together with your sets will look spectacular. Serov has also put off his departure because of this ballet.”'!* Audiences were wild. “With every performance,” Tamara 112. Letter of 3/16 June 1910; in Zilbershteyn and Samkov (eds.), Dyagzlev 1:428.

AMBIGUITIES OF RECEPTION [637]

Karsavina, who danced the title role, told an interviewer, “success went crescendo.”''* Yet French and Russian estimations of the ballet show a curious and telling divergence. For the French, the ballet as a whole was a revelation of what could be accomplished in the name of “synthesism.” Thus Henri Ghéon: The Firelird, being the result of an intimate collaboration between choreography, music, and painting, presents us with the most exquisite miracle of harmony imaginable, of sound and form and movement. The old-gold vermiculation of the fantastic back-cloth seems to have been invented to a formula identical with that of the shimmering web of the orchestra. And as one listens, there issues forth the very sound of the wizard shrieking, of swarming sorcerers and gnomes running amok. When the bird passes, it is truly the music that bears it aloft. Stravinsky, Fokine, Golovine, in my eyes are but one name.''*

This review set the tone for a whole tradition of highfalutin French nonsense about the tribal communalism of the ame slave and its creations that would surround the Ballets Russes till the end of its days. As to native reactions, except for Yakov Tugenhold, whose appreciation of the ballet’s neonationalist achievement was cited in the previous chapter, no Russians except its participants have left us an eyewitness account or evaluation of the production. By far the most revealing of these is the one we began with, Benois’s, and it shows him far from satisfied. For him The Firebird had failed both as a Gesamtkunstwerk and as an embodiment of the “lsturgichnost’” that was the special and signal potentiality of ballet. “It is just another children’s fairy tale,” he wrote in frustration, “not a tale for grownups.” Nor had it done justice to the symbolism inherent in its title character, for it had viewed its own ingredients as colorful exotica; that 1s, it had viewed them cynically from the traditional standpoint of its intended audience. Cynical, too, had been the comic treatment of Kashchey and his “bellyboshkies,” which had stripped them of mythic power. Inconsistently, perhaps, but no less sincerely, Benois made one exception from his strictures, forgetting for the moment that to separate one artistic medium from the rest was to deny the very foundation of his artistic credo. “If in other ways The Firebird was not all that we had dreamed of,” he wrote, “in its music it achieved complete perfection. Music more poetic, music more expressive of every moment and shading, music more beautiful-sounding and phantasmagoric could not be imagined.” And Benois became the first of innumerable writers to pay tribute to Diaghilev’s prescience in spotting Stravinsky: “One must admit that Diaghilev’s daring guesswork in assigning such a risky matter to an artist with nothing serious as yet to his credit turned out to be lucky in the highest degree.” But even with respect to the music a split opens between Parisian and Russian 113. “Teatral,” “U T. P. Karsavinoy,” Peterburgskayva gazeta, no. 197 (21 July 1910). 114. Henri Ghéon, in Nouvelle revue francatse (1910); quoted in Lifar, Diaghilev, 176. 115. Benois, “Khudozhestvenniye pis’ma: ‘Zhar-ptitsa.’”

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reactions as soon as we begin examining professional opinion. Calvocoressi, whose negative appraisal of the music performed in 1909 had acted as a spur toward the creation of the new ballet, received it ecstatically. “When last year,” he wrote in an article for the Russian musical press, “Stravinsky’s Firebird was staged, all who took an interest in Russian music and saw its future in terms of the strength and richness of its first flowering experienced a great joy... . In The Firebird, the wonderful school to which we owe Boris Godunov, Thamar, and Antar was brought back to active life.”'"© Calvocoressi cast himself immediately in the role of Stravinsky’s Western propagandist, and wrote what stands today as a milestone: the first

critical article devoted entirely to the new composer to be published anywhere. Both its primacy and its particular tendentious viewpoint entitle “A Russian Composer of To-Day,” which appeared in the Mustcal Times of 1 August 1911, to an extensive citation. Igor Stravinsky is one of the youngest, but also the best, representatives of the actual Russian School whose vicissitudes have of late been so many and so confusing. As soon as one studies the evolution of Russian music, one cannot help being struck by the fact that after a period of rapid progress—during which a few masters like Glinka, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov displayed surprising originality and, creating a style entirely their own, endowed musical art with new resources, new objects, and new vitality—came a period of reaction, due mostly to foreign influences; so that for a time it seemed that the School was fated to enjoy only the brief period of splendour for which it stood indebted to the few masters named (and accessorily to a few minor artists who more or less followed their lead), and thenceforth to compromise, according to Mr. César Cur’s nice distinction, “not properly Russian composers, but composers who were Russian.” Without opening the vexed question of nationalism versus universalism in music, one may briefly aver that such a reaction was ominous, for the simple reason that the nationalist composers alone had created beautiful works and opened new paths; and it appeared deplorable to all lovers of Russian music that the younger men should have been led astray by a sort of self-consciousness and the false shame of remaining true Russians instead of adhering to the tenets of western (and in the particular case mostly German) conventions. Mr. Stravinsky’s chief merit is that he remains free from this dangerous prejudice. Russian born and Russian in spirit, he has no ambition but to assert his personality in the fullest and most independent way. He has eagerly drunk-in the often misunderstood or forgotten message of Russia’s greatest masters, and thereby learned to stand his own ground, exactly as they had done, and to a great extent by the same means. He has undergone no foreign influence, except perhaps to a slight extent that of the modern French “impressionist” School—itself much influenced by the more progressive Russian musicians, like Borodin and Moussorgsky. I would not venture to say that he is at present the only young Russian composer who shows himself not an imitator, but a continuator of the chiefs of the national116. Calvocoressi, in Muzika, 1911, 688, 690; quoted in Smirnov, Tvorcheskoye formirovantye, 9.

AMBIGUITIES OF RECEPTION’ [639]

ist School; but assuredly he stands apart among his colleagues for the abundance, boldness and vigour of his imagination as well as for his command of craftsmanship; his originality is greater and at the same time more typical: he is the only one who has achieved more than mere attempts to promote Russia’s true musical spirit and style. Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky . . . studied composition as a private pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, but almost from the beginning showed himself far less conservatively minded than his master, who always was at great pains to reconcile freedom of fancy with sedulous discipline in diction, and thereby diverged more and more from the uncompromising leaders, Moussorgsky and Borodin. As far as brilliancy and love of the picturesque is concerned, Stravinsky remains the true disciple of Rimsky-Korsakov; but the details of his style show how deeply he has been impressed by works like Moussorgsky’s songs and “Boris Godunov” or Borodin’s symphonies. Rimsky-Korsakov appears to have found his young pupil’s independence and daring rather startling, but not repellent; and when he heard for the first time the music of “The Bird of fire” he is said to have tersely given vent to his feelings in this sentence; “Look here, stop playing this horrid thing, otherwise I might begin to enjoy it.”. . . “The Bird of fire”... remains mostly picturesque, as befits the musical setting of a mere fairy tale; but under its brilliant display of fancy, is informed with a deep and poetic feeling that appeals not only to our taste for the weird and to our sense of physical pleasure, but also to our higher emotional faculties. One might compare it, in that respect, to Rimsky-Korsakov’s last fantastic works, like “Mlada.”!!”

This tirade is really less a musical critique than a sort of political tract, aimed on

behalf of the French admirers of the mighty kuchka against an unnamed Chaikovsky, and directed at an English public that had recently acclaimed a production

of Swan Lake, imported from Russia by Olga Preobrazhenskaya (a production Diaghilev regarded as a threat), but a public that would not be given a chance to see “The Bird of fire” until the Diaghilev company’s third London visit (June 1912), by which time the impresario felt potential audiences to have been sufficiently primed by advance publicity like Calvocoressi’s.''* There is little point in refuting the critic’s deeply distorted historical premises—the merest recollection of the opening chapter of this book should suffice for that—except to note the ironic contrast between the portrait he paints of the young Stravinsky and the composer his compatriots had been getting to know for the past couple of years, especially as he had been described in print by Timofeyev and Karatigin, both of whom emphasized Stravinsky’s place within a “denationalized” musical scene, of which they heartily approved."!? French critics would continue to regard Stravin117. Michel-Dmitri Calvocoressi, “A Russian Composer of To-Day: Igor Stravinsky,” Musical Times

* 9 eon Nesta Macdonald, Diaghilev Observed by Critics in England and the United States, 1911-1929 (New York and London: Dance Horizons and Dance Books, 1975), 22, 64. 119. Calvocoressi’s portrait of Rimsky-Korsakov, it will be noticed, already contains the seeds of the controversy that would be unleashed some years later over his redactions of Boris Godunov. Fairly hi-

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sky as the “heir presumptive” (as Calvocoressi dubbed him)'?° to the mantle of high kuchkism, until he betrayed them all with Mapra in 1922. In contrast to the French, Russian critics tended to greet The Firebird with considerable reserve, though all had to acknowledge the composer's extraordinary skill and coloristic imagination. The very first Russian account of the music as such had been published even before the Paris premiére. It was a report of a soirée at the editorial headquarters of the journal Apollon, where Alfred Nurok covered music, on the evening of 10 April 1910, less than three weeks after Stravinsky had completed the piano score (signed and dated St. Petersburg, 21 March 1910).’7* On this occasion, the composer played a few sections of the ballet to an assemblage representing a cross-section of the St. Petersburg intellectual and artistic avant-garde. (He also accompanied Petrenko in the two Gorodetsky songs.) Nurok was there, of course, and it was he who gave the first verbal glimpse of The Firebird to Russian

readers, calling attention to its “attractive sonority in the composer's rendition” and “the utter sonic representationalism of these picturesque excerpts.”!” He may actually have been a bit disappointed at what he heard, compared with Fireworks, about which he had written so ecstatically two months earlier (see Chapter 6). In any case, he betrayed no inkling that he had witnessed the birth of a classic; he gave the Firebird excerpts uncharacteristically short shrift and turned his attention to other items on the program. The contrast between his laconic reaction and the enthusiastic, oft-quoted remarks of the French critic Robert Brussel, who heard Stravinsky run through the ballet at Diaghilev’s apartment around the same time,'?? can be taken as a sort of paradigm. The first public hearing in Russia of Firebird music came in the form of a performance by Siloti (23 October 1910) of the so-called first suite from the ballet. This

collation of all the actual dances in the ballet up to the Danse Infernale was published by Jurgenson in 1912 (and kept in print after the Revolution by the State Music Publishers of the USSR). Its five numbers were these:

1. Introduction and Dance of the Firebird (essentially this was the ballet score through fig. [21], minus the music between [3] and [7]) 2. Pas de deux (figs. [29]—[41])

, 3. Scherzo (figs. [ss]—[71]) , , larious is Calvocoressi’s garbling of an anecdote, evidently a mainstay of Diaghilev-circle gossip, that is already familiar to readers of this book (see Chapter 6, n. 17), which the critic must have heard countless times in innumerable suspicious variants from his Russian friends. 120. Calvocoressi, Musicians Gallery, 221.

121. A photograph of the final page of the autograph piano score (now at the Morgan Library in New York) is given in Joseph, Stravinsky and the Piano, 257. 122. “A. N.,” “MuzikaPniy vecher v ‘Apollone,’” Apollon, 1910, no. 7, 55. 123. Robert Brussel, “Avant la féerie,” Revue musicale 11, no. 110 (December 1930): 40; quoted in Lifar, Diaghilev, 168; White, Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, 146; etc.

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4. Khorovod (figs. [75]-[89]) §. Infernal Dance (figs. [133]—[182])

This was what all the early Russian critics heard.'** One of the most interesting reviews was that of Timofeyev, summarizing the 1910-11 St. Petersburg musical season for readers of the Moscow journal Russkaya misl’. Two years earlier he had written about Stravinsky in the same pages, in a review of the Belyayev season that had been expanded and translated into French for the Bulletin frangais de la S.I.M.

(quoted in part in Chapter 8). In the Russian version of the review, Timofeyev made the same large point as in the French article, namely that “the work of all three composers [Senilov, Steinberg, Stravinsky] is devoid of that special Russian character that was so vividly expressed in the works of their teacher.” But he immediately added something that did not appear in the translation, and for which he deserves high marks for foresight: “But it seems to me that from I. FE. Stravin-

sky, sooner than from the other two, one may anticipate compositions of a national-Russian cast.”!° Now, with the arrival of the Firebird suite, Timofeyev might have claimed vindication. Instead, and in striking contrast to Calvocoressi, Timofeyev stresses the ostensible French sources of Stravinsky’s inspiration and complains of a general lack of individual creative profile. The kuchkist continuity—all-important to the French critic—is taken for granted by the Russian, who actually passes in silence over the music of the pas de deux, with its echoes of Balakirev’s Orient. From the French modernists [Timofeyev had just been discussing a Siloti program of works by Ravel, Debussy, and Fauré] it is a small step to many a young Russian composer. The mutual influence of the French and Russian schools has been vividly underscored in recent years, especially since Diaghilev’s propaganda for Russian music in Paris. If in Debussy’s opera “Pelléas et Mélisande” one sees the influence of Musorgsky, and in the string quartet of Maurice Ravel that was recently performed at an “Evening of Contemporary Music” one feels the strong influence 124. Somewhat later the Berceuse was separately published by Jurgenson (1912) and quickly became

a concert favorite, both by itself and in tandem with the Finale. These two were later the numbers

Stravinsky arranged for reduced orchestra, so that “excerpts from The Firebird will be accessible to orchestras that do not have the necessary instruments to present the work in full” (Stravinsky to B. P. Jurgenson, 24 July 1914; in SelCorrII:225). This arrangement of the Berceuse was made late in 1913 (see Stravinsky to Florent Schmitt, 14 December 1913; in SelCorrII:110) and first performed under the composer’s baton in Bordeaux, 8 February 1914. (program in the Stravinsky Archive). On at least one occasion (Rome, Accademia Santa Cecilia, fall 1916) Stravinsky conducted all the Firebird dances in one sequence, that is, tacking the Berceuse and Finale onto the 1910 concert suite (letter to Gerald Tyrrwhit

[Lord Berners], 13 October 1916; in SelCorrII:138), thus producing what, with the addition of a few connecting “pantomimes,” would become the “Ballet Suite” of 1945. For further details on the suites and on Stravinsky’s transcriptions and arrangements from The Firebird, see White, Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, 151-54.

125. G. N. Timofeyev, “Muzikal’niy obzor: Peterburgskaya muzikaPnaya zhizn’ v 1908 g.,” Russkaya misl’ 30, no. 2 (February 1909): 160.

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of Borodin, then on the young Russian composer I. F. Stravinsky, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, there tells the strong influence of French modernism. In striking proof of this there is his ballet “The Firebird,” written on commission from Diaghilev and given last vear with brilliant success in Paris, in a delightful production by Fokine. The suite from the ballet performed at Silotrs concert combines in one package five separate episodes from the ballet. From the very beginning, when the composer sketches in the features (akin to the Introduction to RimskyKorsakow’s Sadko) of Kashchev’s garden, a fairy-tale mood envelops the listener. The Firebird’s dance is full of character; the woodwinds plav a major role in the evocation of this original image. Especially pretty and elegant ts the delightful Khorovod, in which a Russian theme (woodwind) ts echoed prettily by the cello. The music of the Khorovod is also distinguished by its warmth of atmosphere. Very vivid and colorful is the concluding episode, the Infernal Dance of the Kashchevan Kingdom, with its capricious syncopated rhythm. Here again the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov shows through. But the even larger influence of French modernism, in the persons of Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel, has also affected the author. The same mannerisms of vagueness, of disyuncture in the melodic design, spicy and recondite harmonies, diffuseness of form. But all is redeemed by the rich imagination of a subtle orchestrator. From beginning to end, the instrumental color never ceases to charm and astonish. All the same, one cannot help wishing that the talented author would throw over all influences and find himself; for his own physiognomy, and with it a truly Russian style, does show through from time to time in his music. '7°

The exaggeration of the French influence, and the clichéd terms in which it ts described, both testify to the critic’s provincialism. That provincialism emerges even more vividly from Karatigin’s description, in the snobbish pages of Apollon, of the behavior of Siloti’s audience at the premiere: The lovalist faction of our public was offended by the last number on the program. [The rest had consisted of Schumann’s D-minor Symphony and piano concertos by Schumann and Saint-Saéns (the Second) performed by Yvonne Arnaud.] Many deserted the Hall of Nobles during the performance of this suite. I doubt whether this in itself will be a sufficient argument in favor of Stravinsky’s music for those who have not vet heard it, but I have no other means, even the most approximate, to give a “pen portrait” of The Firebird. This could be done only by “telling the tale” itself. Such sonorities, such wonderful coloristic legerdemain, such modulations, such tiny, evanescent little themes, constantly playing off one another’s iridescent surfaces—such an entrancing musical sorcerv 1s possible only in a fairy tale. And one has to hear this astonishing Firebird tor oneself to appreciate all the beautv of its rainbowed fairy-tale hues, or to understand why no other voung Russian composer than Stravinsky could write such music now, saturated through and

126. G. N. Timofevev, “Iz peterburgskov muzikalPnoy zhizni,” Russkava misl’ 32, no. 2 (February IQII): 242-43.

AMBIGUITIES OF RECEPTION [643]

through by fairy tales, and why in this sense Stravinsky is one of the worthiest pupils of his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. '7”

It may be hard to hear The Firebird as “modern music” now, and so reports like Karatigin’s are helpful reminders that the ballet was, for its earliest audiences, “a taste of the avant-garde.” The phrase was Ravel’s,’?8 and was heavily barbed—his way of accounting for the ballet’s enormous success with the Paris snobs. Russian audiences were actually put off for a while by the work’s “ultra-eccentric orchestral sonorities,” its “sharp, motley, sometimes piercing sonic colors,” and its “broad deployment of dissonance in modo cacofonico.”'*” The critic who penned these epithets was not so obtuse as he sounds, though, for he alone among Russian review-

ers, discerning the kinship between Stravinsky’s orchestral fairy tale and the “decorative canvas of a Bilibin,” made the crucial neonationalist connection. The most judicious response to the Firebird suite on its first Russian outing was Karatigin’s, in a different review from the one cited above, composed later and with benefit of reflection as part of an end-of-season roundup. He used the occasion as a pretext to modify and to a certain extent rescind his earlier general assessment of Stravinsky’s talent, made in comparison with Steinberg and reported in Chapter 6: So be it, suppose [Stravinsky’s] music is a bit superficial for all its brilliance; but having heard The Firebird, wouldn’t you rather say the opposite: how brilliant this music is despite a certain superficiality! How luxuriant and ravishing its colors; how much life and action there are in these sonic phantasmagories; how eagerly one forgets the many and, perhaps, the great shortcomings of the suite in the moment of rapture at the even greater merits of its best parts!!*°

The earliest Russian critic to deal with the ballet as a whole was Nikolai Myaskovsky, reviewing the piano reduction for Derzhanovsky’s Muzika in October 1911. Having had unprecedented leisure to examine the music visually as well as aurally, Myaskovsky makes a number of telling technical points. He succeeded in descrying the harmonic basis of the Kashchey music—“a tiny theme made up of a succession of a major third and a minor third at a mutual distance of a tone and a half,” is how he put it. He recognized in the Firebird’s Dance “an elegant scherzo that harmonically almost approaches the latest achievements of Scriabin.” He understood the tour de force of the “Carillon” as consisting in “the realization of orchestral and technical schemes out of the most insignificant raw material.” He 127. V. G. Karatigin, “Muzika v Peterburge,” Apollon, 1910, no. 12; quoted in Kuznetsov, “V zerkale russkoy kritiki,” 70. 128. E&D:149/131.

129. Bforis] T[yuneyev], “S.-Peterburgskiye kontserti,” RMG 17, no. 44 (31 October 1910), CON 974 elk khudozhestvennoy zhizni, 1910, no. 4; reprinted in V. G. Karatigin, Izbranniye stat’t (Moscow: Muzika, 1965), 48.

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sensed in the “bracing freshness” of orchestral color and harmony the “hovering aspect of the genius who created Snegurochka, Kashchey, and Kitezh.” And, mirabile

dictu, he never mentioned a French name in the course of his discussion. “What can one say,” he concludes, “after following the whole ballet through, scene by scene? —What a wealth of invention, how much intelligence, temperament, talent, what a remarkable, what a rare piece of work this is.” And yet, despite his subtle, nuanced appreciation of the score—or perhaps, rather, because of it—Myaskovsky held back the ultimate accolade. Despite our burning wish to do so, we cannot agree after all with Alexander Benois’s assertion that this music is a work of genius. Something is lacking. And the answer comes unbidden: what is lacking is originality. The pointedness, the spiritedness, the cheerfulness (so rare in a contemporary musician) that set Stravinsky apart from the ranks of his extraordinarily talented peers, give him the right to claim the title of heir apparent to Rimsky-Korsakov and, taken in conjunction with his other qualities, guarantees an even greater flourishing of his astounding talent. But the essence of his musical material does not yet bear the imprint of a vividly expressed individuality. But it is hardly a small thing to be the heir apparent and the successor to the greatest luminary in Russian music!!4?

What emerges most clearly from all the Russian critiques is that although reviewers recognized in Stravinsky’s ballet “a wonder”—to quote a letter from Myaskovsky to Prokofiev, where there can be no questioning his sincerity'**—and although they may in some cases have even regarded his style as repellently modernistic, still, without exception they perceived the work as being esthetically old hat. “Insofar as the world of the Russian skazka is dear and precious to us, and reproduced so beautifully by Stravinsky, we cannot but love his Firebird,” wrote a Moscow critic reviewing the first orchestral concert anywhere to be devoted exclusively to Stravinsky’s work. But without the saving poetic framework of the skazka, Stravinsky’s creative profile (as revealed, say, in Fireworks, also on the program) was “musically empty and worthless.”'* When it came to his reception at home, Stravinsky was in a predicament. 131. All quotes from Myaskovsky’s review follow Shlifshteyn (ed.), Myaskovskty: stat’t, pis’ma, vospominantya 2:21-24. 132. Letter of 23 June 1911; in M. G. Kozlova and N. R. Yatsenko, S.S. Prokof*yev 1 N. TA. Myaskovskty: pereptska (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1977), 93. 133. G. P. Prokofiev, “Teatr 1 muzika,” Russktye vedomosti, 24. August 1912, 4. The same Moscow con-

cert (described in detail in Chapter 3 in connection with the Symphony in E-flat) gave Leonid Sabaneyev (1881-1968), Stravinsky’s most persistently hostile Russian critic, his earliest pretext for an attack: “Stravinsky is a typical figure on the contemporary musical horizon. If one were to characterize him in a few words, one might call him a composer of the fashionable marketplace, a composer who promotes a music for which there is at present no demand among the broad masses, but only in the circles of fashionable esthetes, in that company which chases after recherché but essentially shallow impressions, after raffiné harlequinism, an evocative exterior, unheard of instrumental effects—in general, a whole arsenal of external means unrelated to content” (“Kontsert iz proizvedeniy Stravinskogo”).

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IRONIES OF NATIONALISM A letter from Stravinsky to Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, written from Paris on 26 November 1910, shows his awareness of the predicament—one shared by virtually everyone connected with the Diaghilev ballet’**—and how it perplexed and distressed him to be valued so much more highly abroad than at home. All Paris was going wild over Russian music and giving it frequent performances of unprecedented quality. Meanwhile, Stravinsky had just caught up with the reviews of Siloti’s performance of the Firebird suite back home—not Myaskovsky’s or Karatigin’s, but those of the hacks who wrote for the daily press. I have just returned from a rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert at which [Louis] Hasselmans [1878—1957, then conductor at the Opéra Comique] will play my Fireworks.

Unfortunately, I cannot stay in Paris until tomorrow, since the tickets are bought and I must go back to Beaulieu. I showed up at the rehearsal accompanied by one of my Paris friends [probably Calvocoressi] and listened to Fireworks “incognito.” At the end, though, I did want to meet Hasselmans and thank him very much for the wonderful performance. For the first time I was hearing the thing in a really beautiful performance. All the difficulties were overcome, all my intentions were realized. The whole thing sounded positively golden. I was touched. When I approached Hasselmans to introduce myself, he was so taken by surprise and embarrassed that he lost his wits altogether. I, as I said, thanked him heartily and showed him one place that should have gone a little differently. He went over it immediately, and when they finished playing, the orchestra rapped their sticks for me enthusiastically. They also did Musorgsky’s superb “Commander” [the final song in the cycle Songs and Dances of Death). In Nikolai Andreyevich’s orchestration it came off exquisitely. Not one concert goes by in Paris nowadays without Russian music. This week they are playing Balakirev’s Second Symphony, Lyadovw’s Baba-yaga, and my Fireworks. Last week they did Sheherazade, Capriccio espagnol, Thamar, Borodin’s

Second Symphony—and all of it (well, of course I don’t know yet about Fireworks) meets with enormous success. Besides all this, my Fireworks is going to be played in the “Concerts Colonne” by [Gabriel] Pierné [1863—-1937, conductor of the Firebird premiere]. All here are astounded at the way, judging by the papers, my Suite was received [in St. Petersburg] and are full of indignation.'*° 134. The best example was Nijinsky, who, fresh from his Paris triumph in Carnaval, Sheherazade, and Giselle, displeased the empress with his revealing costume at a performance of the last-named at the

Mariyinsky, and was summarily dismissed from the imperial ballet company. It was a great break for Diaghilev, who was able to sign Nijinsky to an exclusive contract for the Ballets Russes, then (early 1911) in the process of formation. 135. [StrSM:451. According to a letter from Stravinsky to Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, written from Beaulieu a week before (IStrSM:450), Siloti had wished to omit the Ronde des Princesses from his performance of the suite, but had given in to Steinberg’s insistence that it be included. Steinberg had 1nformed Stravinsky of this bit of news, which embittered Stravinsky about Siloti’s role as propagandist

for young Russian composers. In a third letter to Rimsky-Korsakov (Beaulieu, 22 February/7 March 1911), he wrote, with respect to a recent Steinberg premiére: “Tell Max that I... completely empathize with the failure of his Dramatic Fantasy at the hands of Siloti. It seems Siloti intends to specialize in the failure of our compositions” (IStrSM:457).

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These ambiguities of reception reflect the considerable irony of the position to which The Firebird brought its young composer both within the “horizontal” spectrum of contemporary music, vintage 1910, and the “vertical” spectrum of Russian music and its historical traditions. But this irony only reflected that of The Firebird itself, this eminently, self-consciously Russian work that was called into existence by an export campaign, and which would never have been created for a Russian audience. Its intended recipients hailed it as a natural and welcome continuation of the traditions of the mighty kuchka, while in Russia the score was looked upon as a derivative compound of elements either artificially revived or imported from France. Stravinsky’s music, according to this view, was a “synthesis of that branch of Russian musical art that had flowered luxuriantly in the... Russian national music of a generation ago and the rich achievements of the modern French school

with its harmonic spiceries.”!*© Without exception, the important Russian critics | saw Stravinsky in a stylistic cul-de-sac, whatever their opinion of The Firebird. — And right they were, despite their parochial overstatement of the French debt. It was only after the Frrebird premiére, when Stravinsky found himself willy-nilly lionized by the French social and musical elites, that any real Frenchification of his style took place. But for its orchestration, The Firebird is as insularly Russian a composition as any product of the Belyayev hothouse. More so, in fact, since it dug back deliberately to an earlier Russian style that even the Belyayevtsi had discarded. The central irony for Stravinsky was that the intensified Russian identity of his music had been part of Diaghilev’s formula for conquering Paris. There is no reason to think that Stravinsky would have come to folklorism by himself; at the time he received the Firebird commission he was immersed in The Nightingale, as far from the ways and means of the mighty kuchka as can be imagined. In The Firebird, the folkloristic episodes are precisely the ones least personal and stylistically most derivative. They are altogether uninteresting today. That Stravinsky contin-

: ued to mine this lode at all was solely the result of his continued association with Diaghilev’s satson russe.

It is significant, then, that between 1910 and 1913 Stravinsky wrote three highly folkloristic “kuchkist” ballets for the Paris public—the works that made his endur-

ing reputation—and four smaller works “for himself.” These latter pieces—the Verlaine songs (1910), the Balmont songs (1911), Zvezdolikty (1911-12), and the Japanese Lyrics (1912—13)—had nothing to do with Russian folklore and everything to

do with assimilating the international Parisian modernism in which he found himself suddenly prominent. It was in the course of work on The Rite of Spring that Stravinsky finally managed a complete fusion of the modernistic and the folkloristic. It was, not only for him, the neonationalist peak, as well as the great watershed in his personal creative development. Such a fusion cannot be foreseen in The Firebird. 136. G. Prokofiev, “Teatr 1 muzika,” 24 August 1912.

IRONIES OF NATIONALISM [647]

What impelled Stravinsky toward this watershed was the radical change in his peer group. The latterday Miriskusniki among whom Stravinsky now moved, and who after The Firebird were hailing him as a genius, were a group that consisted in the main of artists, not musicians. They took a dim view of the ossified traditions in which Stravinsky had been reared, and which he had accepted, up to Rimsky’s death, with unquestioning docility. They scorned particularly the bourgeois values of the Belyavevtsi and the tepid respectability so prized within the walls of the Conservatory—walls that, by extension, enclosed the Rimsky-Korsakov home where Stravinsky had taken his instruction in the Belyayevets faith. And they

prized an aristocratic liberality of spirit totally unlike the atmosphere of the Stravinsky or the Rimsky-Korsakov home. The young Stravinsky, increasingly constrained and isolated within his provincial artistic and domestic milieux, found

these attitudes utterly irresistible. His new circle made him identify, in a way he had never dared identify before, with the values of the social class to which he had been born. This was certainly among the topics Diaghilev broached with the young composer as soon as they began to have “serious talks about my ‘future.’ ”!9”

Stravinsky’s memoir of Diaghilev is a fine document of this spiritual transformation. True, it contains the usual multitude of factual inaccuracies; and true, too, it was ghostwritten by Walter Nouvel, who also wrote the contemporaneous Chroniques de ma vie. The latter circumstance, however, only enhances the value of the

document, for Nouvel was an insider to the aristocratic and elitist attitudes to which Stravinsky was converted in 1909 and 1910. More than any other testimony Stravinsky or any other party would ever give, this little-known, never reprinted piece reveals just what Diaghilev meant to Stravinsky.

To tell the truth, I found, after I met [Diaghilev], that the reputation people had . given him [for haughtiness, arrogance, and snobbery] was not entirely without foundation. He had many unsympathetic traits—which, however, were not the essence of his nature. They were simplv a defense that he felt was useful in order to protect himself from the stupidity of people and to keep them at a distance. But I never saw him rude to anyone. No matter with what class of people he chanced to meet, he was alwavs very well bred. To use a Russian term, he behaved like a barin, which means a grand seigneur. I think the expression “Russian barin” characterizes Diaghilev’s nature and ex-

plains his amazing activity. ... It is only by understanding the nature of a cultured barin such as used to exist in Russia (a nature generous, strong, and capricious; with intense will, a rich sense of contrasts, and deep ancestral roots) that we can explain the character and originality of Diaghilev’s creations, so different from the avcrage artistic cntcrprises. ... Diaghilev was a worthy descendent of a long line of Russian barins who did not 137. E&1):33/31.

[648] 9 * MYTHS FOR EXPORT

know the meaning of the word economy, and who, in order to satisfy their slightest whims, went into debt with nonchalance and inconceivable unconcern. He inherited their same generous nature, only his fancies led him into the realm of art and culture. Had he been a millionaire he would certainly have ruined himself, but no doubt he would have enriched our artistic inheritance with accomplishments still more beautiful and grandiose than those he was permitted to produce. '**

We have circled right back to Benois’s description of the household of the Filosofov clan—Dhaghilev’s kin—with which we identified the roots of Mir iskusstva a generation before. But for a better view than any words can give of Stravinsky’s spiritual and moral transformation at the hands of the Miriskusniki, compare two photographs (Fig. 9.5). The first shows Rimsky-Korsakov “amid the palms and yuccas” at Riva, a spa on the Lago di Garda in northern Italy (then Austria), where he went with his family on vacation in the summer of 1906.'3° The second shows Stravinsky at Ustilug during the summer of 1912, in a photograph he sent to Florent Schmitt, Maurice Delage, and other French friends of the “Apache” persuasion. '*° The pictures were taken only six years apart, but their subjects clearly inhabited different mental and spiritual universes. Between the punctilious vested suit of the one and the insouciant nudity of the other lay a chasm Stravinsky could never have bridged without the contact with Russian barins and Parisian bohemians that The Frrebird had miraculously vouchsafed him. As he put it much later, St. Petersburg—until 1910 the center of his world—began to look “sadly small and provincial” after the success of his Paris ballet.'*! Nor did St. Petersburg, for its part, fail to notice the change in Stravinsky. Mme Siloti, née Tretyakova, who saw him during his first post-Fzrebird visit to his native city, wrote to her sister that “his head has swelled; he goes around like a genius putting on airs of modesty.”'4? There would be no keeping this former protégé down on the farm, that was clear; from now on Stravinsky would operate on the world stage. And for a while, the more cosmopolitan the career, the more Russian the music, as Stravinsky came to terms with the radically new, neonationalist attitude toward the folk heritage that his new circle of friends and mentors espoused. If Tugenhold, in the inspired review of The Firebird quoted in the last chapter, had captured to perfection the esthetic tendency the ballet had represented as a whole, Stravinsky’s music was still from that most important point of view the laggard element. 138. Stravinsky, “The Diaghilev I Knew,” 33, 36. 139. Photo inscribed to Dmutriy Stasov, reproduced in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, Polnove sobranive sochinenty: literaturnive proizvedentva i perepiska, tacing $:465. 140. Robert Craft, ed., Igor and Vera Stravinsky: A Photograph Album (London: Thames & Hudson,

1982), 69. On Stravinsky’s relations with the musicians of the Parisian avant-garde who had referred to themselves somewhat carlicr as “Apaches.” see Pasler, “Stravinsky and the Apaches,”

arn E&D:154/135. 142. Vera Siloti to Alexandra Tretvakova-Botkin, 28 December 1910; in Kutateladze and Raaben (ceds.), Zeloti, 380.

IRONIES OF NATIONALISM [649]

Pe. rc ‘LS ert a eee sl tS

ee lL a rere ij. i ee ee. §===.,. CLL Cc Cds Csi a$+ Oe ie a a tet eet eet ee pb LL =e TT "= LT ~ >‘ad‘” “eee : a:4 id f~ te eee

ya et eee o>} ee ar? HB wy TO S, ip f _™ ee eh ap ee -_ a

AE EE SS PC A OE ES LT a el ~ Ge ae Se iE )

Moltoaemoderato __le funga ASP es CTC _“(a ea a f~dim. 3 ~ == hes — _— p dim. SE) dca’ FF A

Hep 23 ———————______________—____—__} _,, ______1 + _i¢- 9" rT) 4 oooh

G.P. £ Pet ShSSSee SS SS a.YY SS SL CaS CaS Allegro molto

7a, eres ea ae OSa Oe = =e Se (4a ee Req fp fe a eeietgon, AOE lt oS §

y

b. Reduction and analysis

yg a ‘eo ~~as

Vv. (ee. 42 Cp reread meena -f e——_$_~_—__—__ ha —_ $e fo a -—_—

te |

pe __] ae : ' ——— |

+o}: —__ | __-__ fet ert 7 Amb—} * AC. + SSEP = b—_} 7 22 SE SEE CEE BD.or rt! LAWS whole-tone octatonic

0 EXAMPLE 10.18 _ (continued)

c. Rimsky’s theme compared with Stravinsky’s

3 t 3 ! 3 a et, OT ef a =

ee SS 4 Seeeeeate comes Saeed ch mee aa

G x |? Pr

==

EXAMPLE 10.19

CSS Ee ee Eett ee Tee tt : a , a Jyata, a. Rimsky-Korsakov, Sheherazade, I1, 6 before

. ON ne ):—_} | Lee Eee ig hd thfTeg —F iy _—+}— att — at id + |= TEEN ee

» axes a teceee \Jaeas SS See| JN ee EE Es oe eee | ae Oe 8! ———————————————————————————

» Jel | | a tg a Jgdlieldim~~d J | JT 4 sh Cb REESE

en ST SF

frsOeedEXAMPLE 10.19 _ (continucd)

|pew a ee Ht ee ee |) | SSS ar ES b. Reduction and analysis

ppg eg] i

pivot “terminating convenience”

| whole-tone octatonic

forth in virtuosic cascades over a sustained harmony in the cellos. Rimsky’s

cadenza passage after [F], moreover, is exclusively and exhaustively octatonic, referable to Collection III. The harmonies of the second and third bars, in fact, sum

up the exact contents of the Petrushka chord. As a progression they adumbrate what might be called (with apologies to Siegmund Levarie) the “tonal flow” of “Chez Pétrouchka,” which begins with a passage centered on C and ends with a cadence on F-sharp.'”* This observation is the first step toward an understanding of Petrushkian tonality. The (0 6) C/F# tritone polarity exists not only in the local vertical conjunction that has become so famous, but is extended in the temporal dimension to govern the overall tonal coherence of the music. And (shades of Sheherazade) the (0 6) polarity exists in an important tonal sense as a subset both of the octatonic and of the whole-tone collections, between which it represents the point of intersection. As an expression of the midpoint of the whole-tone scale it provides a frame for the modulatory plan of the movement, which, though rather rigorously octatonic in its referential ordering through fig. [52], is nonetheless centered through the fortysecond bar on C, as will be demonstrated below. The Adagietto at [52] is centered on D and carries a signature of two sharps, while the music from [54] to [58] has E as its center (from [54] to [56] the key signature of E minor is explicit). As noted above, the final cadence is on F-sharp. Thus the sequence of tonal centers forms an ascending octave-bisecting whole-tone progression C-D-E-—F# that mirrors the descending progression so suggestively embodied in the Shahriar leitmotif from Sheherazade (Ex. 10.20).

172. Cf. Siegmund Levarie, “Tonal Relations in Verdi’s Un Ballo tn maschera,” t9th-Century Must 2 (1978): 143-47.

THE MUSIC: HARMONY AND TONALITY [745]

SSS Ee oes PS lee ee i eS ee EXAMPLE 10.20 “Chez Pétrouchka,” overall tonal flow

el

beginning end | ___— (06) ———

EXAMPLE 10.21 “Chez Pétrouchka,” mm. 1-8

8va----------------4

:D

gE Fr 7, —_____,.$efe\, 2An)) Spee

S _ ON ee LEZ Y

rn? oy) — 2? le bh __ Lig “ge Nae CU ___ 8va----------------

’ : ee

hy — Bethe Hete De hh 9 oe

pfLe—}td=e eege Pe OT et tt — —— UE a° Oe The C of the opening section is not a conventionally established tonic, to be sure, but a primus inter pares: the favored member of the fourfold array of potential centers implicit in the Collection III complex. Berger accounted for its dominance by citing the “liaison” of the opening phrase with the end of the first tableau, a clear and almost conventional authentic cadence in C major. Thus the G is heard as the “supporting fifth” of the C.'’* Even without reference to the first tableau (which, of course, did not exist when the beginning of the 1910 Konzertstiick was composed), it is possible to justify the ear’s assignment of unmistakable priority to C by virtue of the quasi-cadential approach to it at m. 6, for which purpose the downbeat B-natural, not endemic to Collection ITI, functions as an imported leading tone (as it might, say, in C minor). Although its resolution to C 1s indirect, since its position in a chromatic stepwise descent is alone what justifies its intrusion within an octatonic context, it surely reinforces the contributions of the other half-step resolutions (Ft-G, Di—E) to what is in weak but sufficient effect a tonicization of the C-major triad, despite presentation of the latter in inversion, both in m. 6 and one measure later. In m. 7, the tonicized role of C is reinforced 173. Berger, “Problems of Pitch Organization,” 135.

[746] 10 * PUNCH INTO PIERROT

by the way the E-flat harmony (a potential rival as an octatonically referable center) is applied to it as an acciaccatura, restating on a more structural plane the local res-

olution D#-E in m. 6. The whole passage is given in Example 10.21, with tones for- | eign to Collection III circled, as in Example to.17a from Sheherazade, and as in the Sadko excerpt analyzed in Example 4.19. As in Rimsky’s compositions, all the foreign pitches are applied to Collection III pitches by means of the most ordinary techniques for handling “nonharmonic” tones—either as passing tones or, in the

case of the chord preceding the French sixth in m. 4, as neighbors, complete (D-—Eb) or incomplete (G—A, B—C#).

When the Petrushka chord is first sounded by the clarinet arpeggios in m. 9 (fig. [49]), the C-major component retains its dominance because it is placed on top, which gives it greater salience, and also (as Berger noted) because it is in the same stable form as it had assumed at the beginning—to which we associate it on rehearing—while the F-sharp arpeggio, previously unheard as a discrete harmony, is voiced in its six-three position, making it more difficult to identify aurally than its companion. As Berger also pointed out, the “principal defining agency of the total configuration” produced by the pair of clarinet arpeggios is the dyad AW/C,’”* both because it is the high point and because it is prolonged in notes lasting as much as two measures and more (mm. 10-11, 13-15). Stravinsky capitalizes on this dyad’s

property of belonging to both the octatonic and the whole-tone collections that share C/F# as their defining (0 6) nodes of bisection, by introducing a figure in the bassoon that completes the whole-tone tetrachord from C to F-sharp. The foreign tone thus introduced, G-sharp, is a borrowing such as Rimsky-Korsakov himself might have made from the octatonic “melody scale”: literally a “nonharmonic” tone. It is immediately contradicted by the first clarinet’s “harmonic” G-natural in m. 12, and then (m. 16) resolved indirectly—that is, through a diminished-seventh

arpeggio consisting of all the potential centers of Collection III—to A, the one Collection III nodal point that has not been heard up to now, however transiently, as a chord root. The A is sounded in m. 16 only as a sixty-fourth note, but it is a nonetheless functional root, for it immediately picks up a third and a seventh, C#/G, the latter pitch introduced by the bassoon’s G-sharp, now given to the muted trumpet, as appoggiatura. The melody scale gives way to the harmony scale through the resolution of an unstable perfect fifth to a stable tritone, for which there are endless precedents in Rimsky-Korsakov (see Exx. 4.32~35). The C#/G tritone now fleetingly assumes the status of focal point. It is a far weaker one than C/F# had been, since its constituent pitches are not available as triadic roots within the Collection

III complex. Its main function is to provide a pair of thirds—or, in Rimskian 174. Ibid., 136.

THE MUSIC: HARMONY AND TONALITY [747]

terms, a “common tritone”—for the roots Eb(D!)/A, which fill in the interstices between the C and Ft of Collection III. This happens in mm. 21 and 22. The cascades in the piano part are a kind of composed-out Petrushka chord, reminiscent of the complex arpeggio figuration in Stravinsky’s Fireworks, op. 4, and, indeed, constructed according to methods Stravinsky had worked out in composing that piece. There, a complex whole tone—derived chord (one that appears prominently in Le cog d’or) had been slyly resolved as a sort of inverted augmented-

sixth chord to a more stable dominant-seventh harmony, as shown in Example 10.22. The same kind of multiple voicings and resolutions operate in the Petrushka cascade. The precedent set in Fireworks, reinforced by the clarinet’s independent repetition of half the cascade in m. 22, suggests that the ten-note cascade is to be heard as two groups of five. The first of these exhibits a very clear neighbor progression to the dominant seventh on D#/E> (Ex. 10.23a); the second is a more abstruse progression that relies, for its interpretation, on the precedent set in mm. 3-4 (Ex. 10.23b). The basic harmony is a fifthless dominant seventh on A, which together with the D-sharp harmony yields the content of the Petrushka chord. The extraordinary passage adumbrated in m. 19, and developed fully beginning in m. 23, shows that despite the octatonic interpretation of its genesis, there may be some validity after all in regarding the Petrushka chord as a polytonalism. In m. 19, the Ci/G tritone generates another burst of arpeggios, in which the piano joins (or rather, opposes) the clarinets. The latter confine themselves to the C-major and F-sharp—major triads as before (the G and C-sharp of the generating tritone as-

suming the identity of chordal fifths). The piano right hand, however, builds a triad from the root G to clash against the F-sharp arpeggio in the left hand. This G-major arpeggio, which imports two tones from outside Collection III, could be looked upon as an appoggiatura to the F-sharp arpeggio, following the many neighbor-note precedents already established in “Chez Pétrouchka.” Another way of looking at the chord, and in some important ways a preferable one, would be simply to regard it as the dominant of the first clarinet’s C-major arpeggio. This has the “dramaturgical” advantage of casting the opposition of piano and orchestra, which we know to have been at the core of the programmatic idea that motivated the Konzertsttck, into higher relief. It further enhances our sense that C en-

joys priority within Collection III, for it alone is licensed to import auxiliary harmonies from outside the octatonic field. At any rate, the apparent application to

C of its conventional diatonic dominant (foreshadowed, one recalls, by the accented B-natural in m. 6) suggests that Stravinsky regarded the two triadic subsets of the Petrushka chord as potentially independent functional agents. This interpretation is corroborated by many passages later on in the piece (to be noted on their occurrence). During the passage at m. 19—and the one following (mm. 23-26), in which the piano and first clarinet exchange harmonies (the latter taking over the G-major arpeggio, while the piano reverts to C)—it seems proper to speak of

[748] 10 * PUNCH INTO PIERROT

EXAMPLE 10.22 a. Fireworks, 1 after

55

Celesta Fee TN Flute and

Ce ne oe Oe oe ee

fSa“a2 = ‘ See b. Reduction

° ETT CL © TS ; a ” P= Sa (vii7/ V-—~ V)

EXAMPLE 10.23 “Chez Pétrouchka,” m. 22 a.

b.

ee a oa a he cf. Fireworks 7™

au —_—_—=——— yo cf. mm.3-4 3 VV

“music in two keys,” as Stravinsky continued to do throughout his life,’”° so long as it is borne in mind that the keys in question were chosen not simply ad libitum but from among the circumscribed and historically sanctioned wares of the octatonic complex. The ensuing passage for the piano—the first of several cadenzas in which, according to what we know of the original (pre-Petrushka) conception of the Konzertsttick, the soloist was envisioned as a mad genius in a frac, rolling “objets hé-

téroclites” up and down the keyboard—combines both G and C chords in the right hand against the F-sharp arpeggio in the left, which by now has taken on the character of a pedal. The white key/black key opposition, which plays a role of everincreasing prominence in the piano’s rhetoric, is nothing if not “heteroclite.” By

175. E.g., E&D:156/136.

THE MUSIC: HARMONY AND TONALITY [749]

EXAMPLE 10.24 a. “Chez Pétrouchka,” m. 29, second beat

, 7™ ~ ~ —

’ va: ‘ Fai 4 __ aay Nee ~ implied +fh——— common . | Sy E®= tritone: L.

(Oy or 7S SS) == 5 a el b. “Chez Pétrouchka,” mm. 31-32

[a Jom rn

——- 7

gate # NS le LY dl —— EXAMPLE 10.25 Double-neighbor relation governing first section of “Chez Pétrouchka”

l 9 18-29 34.042

oe oe Y“"we ™— aeo

NS | EE | 0 TRS Ch: PS || © EE | the third measure, however, the figuration has been modified so as to conform to the Frreworks-like “cascade” figure heard shortly before (compare m. 29 with m. 21).

Two more white notes—C and F—are added to the pitch repertoire of the piano’s right hand; but more important, the new pitch configuration demands a reinterpretation of the relationship between F-sharp and G. The former, so far a stable element, is now heard as an appoggiatura to the latter, so fara mere epiphenom- — enon. In other words, a modulation has been effected, implying a new governing tritone: B/F (see Ex. 10.244). Sure enough, these very tones are filtered out and conspicuously prolonged in mm. 31 and 32 (Ex. 10.24b). This momentary departure prepares the climactic return of the original, uncontaminated Collection III complex at fig. [51], the “Malédictions de Pétrouchka.” Once again C is asserted as the pitch of priority, if for no other reason than because the curse itself, blared out by four muted trumpets in unison, fortississimo, is confined for the first five bars to the notes of the C-major triad, and thereafter the notes of the F-sharp subset behave, both rhythmically and in terms of implied voice leading, as ornamental tones. This concludes the first major section of “Chez

[7s0] 10 * PUNCH INTO PIERROT

Pétrouchka,” if by section we mean a closed tonal span. The essential tonal motion it encloses consists of a double-neighbor relation to the governing (or common) tritone, which could be represented graphically as in Example 10.25. The tonalitydefining progression F/B—F#/C, which in the present contexts acts like a dominant proceeding to the tonic, was encountered, one recalls, in exactly this form in Sheherazade (cf. Exx. 10.18 and 19).

The second section begins with the surprising resolution of the Petrushka chord, two bars before fig. [52], to a strongly voiced D-major triad. This 1s actually the first complete and uncontaminated triad, in block form and in root position, to be sounded thus far in the course of “Chez Pétrouchka,” so it seems to presage, not another octatonic complex, but, purely and simply, the key of D. And such seems to be the case—with one telling exception: the “D major” of the Adagietto at fig. [s2] is consistently contaminated by a G-sharp in place of the normal fourth degree. This pitch, persistently sounded against the tonic triad, maintains the level of

tritone saturation we have by now come to regard as normal for this piece. It would make little sense, though, to try to explain it away by invoking the “Lydian mode.” Nor does this particular “raised fourth” behave the way an altered degree is supposed to do. With one apparent exception to be dealt with later, it is never applied to the fifth degree, but consistently falls back onto the third, both within the main tune and 1n the piano cascade that interrupts it in m. 48 (Ex. 10.26). Indeed, the note A (the fifth degree) is the one pitch that has been suppressed from the cascade. In short, what we have here is a composing-out of the bassoon’s Gi—F# “lamentoso” motive from mm. 1-15, providing a thematic and an affective link between the sections. The apparent exception to this generalization as to the behavior of the G-sharp comes in m. 49, when it is used to initiate a piano cascade like the ones already heard in mm. 21 and 29 (Ex. 10.27). The meaning of this cascade, though, has little to do with the behavior of the previous G-sharps. Instead, it reidentifies the last G-sharp as a center in a Petrushka chord-like deadlock with D, and only enhances the structural importance of the “borrowed” tritone. Moreover, the im-

plied fulcrum of the progression, the “common tritone” that links the D and | G-sharp components of the cascade, is the original “tonic” tritone, C/F#. This is very much like what Rimsky-Korsakov had in mind when he wrote of his care to govern the tonal relations within his “fantastic” music so that no matter how chromatic and recherché the local context, all is ruled by “the imvisthle presence of the tonic at all times,” lest the music degenerate into “artistic thoughtlessness and caprice.”!”° It is evident that Stravinsky inherited this concern. 176. Letter to E. M. Petrovsky, 11 January 1903; in Sovetskaya muzika, 1952, NO. 12, 69.

THE MUSIC: HARMONY AND TONALITY [751]

EXAMPLE 10.26 a. “Chez Pétrouchka,” fig.

a ee - Peeeeee — ) 4 ——— — > aa b. “Chez Pétrouchka,” m. 48

ne,

= i. te!

8va.-.-----.---- - 2g —-

I EEE

a SaseseTeeesees ==

3 :> :0al 0, § : e' a piena voce

on Oeestor F--’--———" H.R>>Se RSeee ee es ee ee ee en ee ee eee"En ee eeTT eeeoe ee

wee” Ne” New” ha ooo ooo —EoETTE EEE Qe oo*=Eg”O '/.00@ Ae eee 2.4. a eee ym TdT ee lal FF TT —“e ry & ABD @ F—=e | BV... - see - eee =e. O, — szhal’-sya ti, szhal’- sya na - do __ mnoy,_—— tir

Ba i aac ~~~ ft >

eo} 3 TE HH -—} ff }—-_ |} + —}-— + —_

r ) i —!

SR” A Es 2 ES ee, SE EE EE ee ee eee

r] is ~ 2 tad a -

>—_*_#*_#__ 25 G...44 ee - eee a si‘“‘(arrrCds Nee”

vi - dish’, ya gib - nu ot__ te - bya,

es? hh ot rere op Ce a a a a a (ore 8 8=— ET Ga CO eee ee ee es esiesee ee ee eee [O take pity on me, you see that I perish on your account. |

EXAMPLE 10.29 “Chez Pétrouchka,” figs. (56]-[58], abstract melodic center

—aeaee

oro -77/)][]9IIWW708#0@”0._"—*—0—_.-.-.-.-"w~——"-—"’........=

ee eeeeeseeeeeOeeEeEeeeeeSesSeessesees 0 —__—_—_.__|__————~4, 2 eet Ts Ste Veo Vos

Sd oO Ole or ote

local harmonic roots

EXAMPLE 10.30 “Chez Pétrouchka,” diatonic-octatonic transition

m. 86 m. 87 be all-diatonic—> octatonic (Collection I)

EXAMPLE 10.31 “Chez Pétrouchka,” mm. 89—90

, ae pt a _—— —~ Naa —_~ aan on E and C-sharp, which Stravinsky marks “lamentoso assai.” This is the one really

atonal-sounding moment in the composition, since the octatonic collection has been split into mutually exclusive constituents, neither of which can function as a tonic sonority in common practice. The piano immediately tries to duplicate the clarinet’s feat; it makes it as far as the high C-sharp, which it pounds seven times in a vain effort to break through to the E. Failing to accomplish this, it comes plummeting down to the B-natural whence it had started out. The B is taken up by the English horn in seeming mockery of the piano’s efforts, and maintained thereafter as a kind of pedal-pivot against the piano’s antics, through which a return to the tonic matrix (Collection ITI) will eventually be vouchsafed. As soon as the English horn has entered, the piano repeats and extends the cascade illustrated as far back as Example 10.24. The extension consists of an extra quintolet inserted between the two original members of the cascade, which recapitulates the harmonic content of the Adagietto at fig. [52].

The effect of the middle quintolet is to add D and A to the B/F tritone that underlies the cascade to create a complex of tones that will eventually resolve to the tonic matrix (Ex. 10.31).

The biggest “heteroclite” white key/black key roulade now begins, this time rather consistently accompanied by other instruments that ferret out its structural pitches. The harp in the measure before fig. [60] does the best job of this, picking out all the B’s and F’s, the right hand of the piano filling out the white-key component with the aforementioned D’s and A’s to form a half-diminished chord that

cries out for resolution to the C of Collection III. When resolution comes, though, it is clouded by a suspension. The three notes from the white-key component of the roulade that make up the D-minor triad (filtered out and obsessively arpeggiated no fewer than nine times in succession in mm. 94—98) are filtered out again from the half-diminished chord in the last descending cascade and applied as an appoggiatura to the C-major component of the Petrushka chord at fig. [60]. The trumpets, blaring their fanfare of Petrushka’s despair just as they did in the first

THE MUSIC: HARMONY AND TONALITY [755]

05 EXAMPLE 10.32 “Chez Pétrouchka,” fig. ff., abstract

, * 2 Fo g g —~¢ Nw = — ———

section (fig. [51]), now reinforce the appoggiatura progression with arpeggios on both the D-minor and C-major triads. At fig. [61] the complete half-diminished chord is applied to the C-major triad in the pianist’s right hand, doubled by the comets and trumpets, fortississimo. The F-sharp triad, confined to the piano left hand and the string tremolo that mixes the two triads, can hardly be called the

equal partner of the C triad any longer. When the last progression (halfdiminished seventh to C major) is repeated by the horns in the next measure (m. 108), the F-sharp component of the Petrushka chord is dropped altogether, replaced in the accompanying bassoon by a G, which completes a dominant ninth whose resolution to C (albeit in six-four position) suggests that the F-sharp triad has been vanquished by the C, or that the diatonic collection has vanquished the Octatonic. Or—to put it in terms of the 1910 Konzertsttick as Stravinsky described its scenario years later—that the orchestra has vanquished the obstreperous “heteroclite” at the keyboard. The whole passage is summarized in Example 10.32. The triumph, however, is fleeting. Like the eventual ghost of Petrushka himself, the Petrushka chord suddenly “comes to” in the same pair of clarinets that gave it birth (mm. 108—11)—up an octave in fact, alive and kicking. The F-sharp, seizing its chance, dragoons its old associate G-sharp (recall the original Petrushka chord passage at fig. [49]) into providing it with a preparation. The G-sharp arrives with the rest of “its” triad in tow, the formerly triumphant C now transformed into a subservient, enharmonic B-sharp. F-sharp gains the upper hand to end the piece with a cadence—or, if not a cadence, at least what Van den Toorn would call a suitable “terminating convenience”—that effectively tonicizes the note seemingly left for dead only a few measures back.

This description of the final pages of “Chez Pétrouchka” is cast in blatantly anthropomorphic and academically disreputable terms because something of the sort was obviously very much on Stravinsky’s mind when he wrote his Konzertsttick. His harmony is animistic; the Petrushka chord is conceived, nay motivated, by a sense of struggle, an antagonism of order and chaos reflecting the roles of pianist versus orchestra. Again it transpires that there is practical and poetical—if not

“theoretical”—validity in the “polytonal” idea. We are meant to hear C and F-sharp in terms of an active, not a static, polarity—as competing centers, not

[756] 10 * PUNCH INTO PIERROT

merely as docile constituents of a single, static, octatonically referable “hyperharmony,” to borrow an apt term from Rimsky-Korsakov’s vocabulary.'”” When it came, moreover, to synthesizing the “Chez Pétrouchka” harmonies with the street music of the outer tableaux in the coda to the ballet (composed in Rome in the weeks immediately preceding the premiére), Stravinsky projected that animistic opposition more starkly than ever, in what is surely the most inspired stroke in the whole extraordinary score. More than once Stravinsky confessed his pride in having authored this music,!”® which takes the interpenetration of the octatonic and diatonic collections to a new structural level, unprecedented both within the ballet and within the traditions that fed it. The whole twenty-eight-bar passage, from the Lento after fig. [130] to

the end, consists of a magnificent composing-out of the II-I progression that formed the final cadence to “Chez Pétrouchka,” now very explicitly associated with the folkish garmoshka harmonies of the crowd scenes.

At first the D-minor chord is just an appendage to the C-major triad that emerges from a Petrushka chord, as in the second tableau at fig. [60]. At [131], the C-D oscillation takes on a new dimension. The C chord is given simultaneous upper and lower triadic neighbors, a direct reminiscence of the opening of the fourth

tableau (and the end of the second, too: the 1 and the vii add up to the halfdiminished vii7 at fig. [61]). Surprisingly, the whole complex is then jacked up a whole step, as if to tonicize the D. (This had been the tonality at the opening of the tableau, and thus the allusion may have a recapitulatory aspect.) After the two major triads on D and C have gone through another oscillation, each accompanied by

its own set of double neighbors, the D complex is sustained. And all at once Petrushka’s ghost appears—in a piercing trumpet arpeggio on the notes of the F-minor triad. Now, F minor 1s part of the same octatonic complex as D major (i.e., Van den Toorn’s Collection II), and this puts the final stamp of certainty (if . any is still needed) on Stravinsky’s consciousness of the octatonic complex as a referential set. Only by conceptualizing the collection in its typically Rimskian (0369) triadic partition would the minor-third relationship have occurred to Stravinsky as a viable substitute for the tritone of the original Petrushka chord complex. The ascending F-minor trumpet arpeggio is answered by a descending arpeggio on the notes of the E-flat—major triad, the accompanying garmoshka harmony simultaneously slipping down to the original C major/D minor oscillation. As summarized in Example 10.33, the whole “apparition” is a muted, varied, and harmon-

ically enriched reprise of the “Despair” music at fig. [60] in the second tableau, 177. Letter to Semyon Kruglikov, 1 April 1902; in A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov, N..A. Rimskty-Korsakov

8 E&D:156/137; M&C:6s/67: “It is obvious to any perceptive musician that the best pages in Petroushka are the last.”

THE MUSIC: HARMONY AND TONALITY [757]

EXAMPLE 10.33 _ Petrushka, fourth tableau, fig. ff., abstract

ee ee I. ee ee ee Ss > sO > = | a | nr: . CaaS EE es 2a ee2 ee eeees eee iBAG?, (..1OinD ee =ee eeaee ~~ a

ae: ! =! (4) =a Akh ti_ be-lIiy go - lu - bok, 8-71 874

7. RN SOS ON SE of

en2san CE = te| © oy de | _sas QLeee Re ate

| NES AES} 4 —_________+________ SP RS SA SUE SES RRO SS OY

oF 4 #8 [Cd CEL | aD

b. “Chez Pétrouchka,” fig. [55], piano omitted

OO 7 ree eee ee

‘a stle

7, AAT ~ A NS SS SN NES ANS NS SNE RNAS SE NS OS NR NN A SEN MS eT

B04. WT eee = WY 4 Eee ee See Ae AEG 2

~~ 7 AESitAL. |ae,i| as 5S ET IteOEE OS (.. WS J SS ee

A 4 | 2 —— K PL | SS OE SE SES SS ee ee Sy _—_—_ > _ Oo toro gg a fC NO 8va---.----------------- a |

Se | a Se aEE2SSer aa OO EEse,ee CS FAY. as Se -T |__| ff =e | -

songs, chromatically (that is, octatonically) conceived passages contrast and interact with folkishly diatonic ones. In the second one, “The Dove” (“Golub”), the resemblance to the “E-minor” middle section of “Chez Pétrouchka” amounts to a virtual quotation (Ex. 11.1). The orderly way in which pitch collections succeed one another from quatrain to quatrain of its twelve-line text makes “The Dove” especially useful for studying Stravinsky’s octatonic/diatonic techniques. The middle quatrain (letter [C]) 1s entirely restricted to the pitches of Collection III, with a characteristic (even oldfashioned) sequential third-rotation corresponding to the line-by-line scansion of the poem (Ex. 11.2). It is pure “Rimsky-Korsakoffery,” occluded only slightly by the double-inflected sevenths on the strong beats (E/E#; G/GK). The harmonic structure of the first quatrain is the most interesting. With a single exception (the C-sharp at the very beginning of the song, which immediately falls back as an appoggiatura to C-natural), its pitches are rigorously confined to octatonic Collection II, except that A-sharp consistently substitutes for A. This substitution is related to a device previously noted in Rimsky-Korsakov (cf. Ex. 4.42): viz., the asymmetrical variation, shown schematically in Example 11.3a, of the tetrachordal structure of the octatonic “melody scale.” In the present case, the extraneous pitch, combined with the sustained D/F# in the piano left hand, enabled Stravinsky to begin the song with a whiff of whole-tone harmony in the form of a “tonic” augmented triad repeatedly approached by appoggiaturas (Ex. 11.3b). This technique of importing whole-tone color by inflecting a single member of the octatonic scale has been identified as a favorite device of Scriabin’s,°! and Stravinsky’s usage may well have been a derivation from Prometheus. Resolution of the A-sharp to A-natural in the first measure after letter [B], preceded by a reiteration of the C-sharp (functioning now as a stable scale tone), signals the change from the modified Collection I to Collection III. The little transitional phrase in the piano, full of chromatic passing tones and semitonal clusters, foreshadows the text by representing the dove’s cooing (cf. the first line of the middle quatrain: “Beliy golub vorkoval”).©? The other transitional phrase (accom-

panying “Nasladtlsya, uletel,” the last line of the quatrain) consists of a pair of quasi-cadential approaches to octatonically conceived chords belonging in turn to each of the two collections not used in the setting of the middle quatrain. Thus it is in the most literal sense a modulatory bridge. The chords in question are in fact incomplete and enharmonically concealed Petrushka chords. Their preparations include tones that are foreign to the octatonic collection of the cadence but have precedents within the song (or within common 61. See George Perle, “Scriabin’s Self-Analyses,” Music Analysis 3 (1984), 104ff., where the technique

is described as it operates in the Seventh Sonata. 62. In the orchestrated version of the song (1954), scored for the same ensemble as the Japanese Lyrics, the word painting is intensified by the instrumentation (two clarinets and a flute in its lowest register) to the point of onomatopoeia.

NEW HARMONIC INTERACTIONS [801]

0

|re| as 2py eeLE

YE ee SeEEE] SS? ee eA." ER ——~ ——— EXAMPLE 11.2 “The Dove,” fig.

2CCSS Ses ST enSenne * ee ST,a1ee) LE SDT Ss 1 |aeSs | iS-)Wy

na ee ae On tsve - toch - kom za - vila - del,

SEy rn winey oP plesECR pis pr jeer’jis7 ORS RR EDP ELLee

_’, ees ees SS A SS Sa EDoor, —= [-—-—* ~

Yh F/O —

SSeS

ONE 7 ST ” SS 2 AS V Sa SS Sea aca On ye - go za - cha - ra ~-_ val

'teke + ieee ee0 re BS PT TP OD ded hedee Oe

GY a ST SS Se C /.. es ee ee ee ee ee «= ee = Se iy _—}—— —. —i . a 1" “a ss LE , ~~ —=si( mene TC C:C‘“‘“RSCC(‘(YNS)

a OO I EXAMPLE I11.3

a. Referential scales for “The Dove,” tetrachordal analysis

TE a ee ee | aOEoSa|e—= aSCae Sn otaa Ota|| scale ACollection a | 2 II1Modified | es ee eee) a |

VV V T S OV T tr V SSVV T TVV T SVTVV ST

b. “The Dove,” first quatrain, harmonic sketches

first vocal phrase accompaniment figure second vocal phrase

practice) as “nonharmonic” tones. The first of them (B-sharp) is an inflected chord

seventh, a typical harmony for this song. The second (C-sharp) is an ordinary chromatic passing tone. The example shows a hypothetical continuation of the implied sequence of descending whole steps, which would have led the harmony back to Collection IIT. The sequence is interrupted in the actual setting by the Petrushka-like cascade in the piano part, illustrating the next word of the text: “[the dove] flew away.” The illustration is not merely gestural but harmonic: octatonic reference “flies away” here, dissipated by a massive infusion of chromatic tones that render moot any question of harmonic distinction. At letter [D], as we have already seen (Ex. 11.14), the harmony is restructured along strictly diatonic lines. The interrupted modulatory sequence is nonetheless completed at the very end of the song, precisely where the text calls upon the dove to return. The final chord is in fact the hypothetical sequence-completing chord of Example 11.4. The whole harmonic texture, in effect, has “returned” to Collection III for the setting of the last line, in which the piano part is entirely based on the Petrushka-chord relationship: the offbeat harmony in m. 18 is identical to that of the last chord, transposed by a tritone. Taken together, the two harmonies complete the Petrushka chord; each is thus a symmetrically partitioned subset of the chord. And what is most remarkable, this very subset, in precisely this voicing, will become one of the defining harmonic components of The Rite of Spring (Ex. 11.5). To recapitulate: the tonal-harmonic progress of this brief but very sensitive and concentrated song illustrates Stravinsky’s preoccupation with whole-tone/octatonic/ diatonic interactions. Each successive quatrain illustrates one aspect of this troika. The first is based on a contaminated octatonic set that (ambiguously in this context) emphasizes a characteristic whole-tone harmony; the second is based on a straightforwardly presented octatonic collection, treated according to what were, for a Russian composer writing in 1911, standard operating procedures; the third is based on a diatonic scale that shares a tetrachord with each of the previously employed octatonic collections. Thus there is a sense of progressive tonal clarification © as the song unfolds—a device that would reach a climax a decade later with the Symphonies of Wind Instruments (see Chapter 18). Furthermore, the various harmonic collections are used symbolically to illustrate the meaning of the text. The dove approaches through a whole-tone mist; its presence, and its ecstatic union with the flower, are accompanied by the unimpeded octatonic music; its departure is lamented in a diatonic threnody; and its return is evoked by a resumption of the

| octatonic ambience. These relations are summarized in Example 11.6. 63. Of course Stravinsky was not the only composer of his generation to be fruitfully concerned with such interactions; they are, for example, fundamental to the techniques Barté6k was evolving at the same time and even earlier. See Elliott Antokoletz, The Music of Béla Barték (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), chap. 7.

NEW HARMONIC INTERACTIONS [803]

EXAMPLE 11.4 “The Dove,” m. 13, with harmonic sketch showing sequence continuation

F eas eae SN) A 7 ee eee eee

' Le ;

O /.. Wy A ee / eee / eee 4 ee

Na - sla - dil - sya _———~

i >) nn i anePT| yae hypothetical iL sequence) continuation

Fe |

, ts = yg ann =a

Petrushka-chords: -fx7e@\————_ 4 |-_ 9

\SVAY 2. (AEE & 55 as. ,

Coll. I Coll. I Coll. IL

EXAMPLE 11.5 “The Dove,” end

,“yor p. t.YOO 7... SEROUS EE..0M 2 2 Se Ee 6 eee 6 eee ET All pitches referable to Collection III unless circled

the esCO —?VO aA LC Sd LM oo Ge Vo - ro - tis’ khot’ na_ cha-sok! 3 “a 74

,_—

Cad, nN ro a

Double inflection (cf. == in Ex. 11.2) Summary of harmony: Collection III Petrushka-chord (cf. sequence continuation in Ex. 11.4)

EXAMPLE 11.6 “The Dove,” summary of tonal relations via

—-] lI a ee ee oe a ee referential scales

-————- 2nd quatrain (Coll. 111) ——_—_, ' st quatrain (modified Col ) _ |

te te \—— 3rd quatrain (e minor) —— ,

Interactions of a far subtler, more elusive kind inform the attenuated textures of “Forget-Me-Not” (“Nezabudochka-tsvetochek”), the first of the Balmont settings. The tonic of this masterly little song is B, but it is never established in a conventional tonal way. In the outer sections of a minuscule da capo structure, the B 1s introduced by the Phrygian resolution of a C that is uniformly associated with an octatonic entourage drawn from Collection IIT (Ex. 11.7). In Stravinsky’s notation the C is always spelled B-sharp out of deference to the accompanying trilled fifth on G-sharp and D-sharp. This locates the B and the C within a competing octatonic frame of reference (Collection IT). The slyly placed accompanying harmony disguises the essential tonal motion of the melody as a simple major/muinor interplay over a G-sharp root. The two octatonic fields converging on C can be represented as a Rimskian melody/harmony complex (Ex. 11.8; cf. Ex. 4.23). This whole complex functions as a Phrygian auxiliary to the tonic B, as in the closing pages of Petrushka two octatonic collections had expressed a fall to the tonic from the second degree. The note B finally emerges unclouded at letter [A] (mm. 4-5). The melody here is in the purest B minor, the G-sharp that had formerly masqueraded as an ersatz root having been absorbed into a melodic-minor approach to B. Once the tonic is achieved, the melodic line reverts to the natural minor, making its final, folksy-modal cadence through an A-natural (Ex. 11.9). But once again the accompaniment insinuates a whiff of octotony into the proceedings: the dominant is suppressed and replaced with an augmented fourth. If the E-sharp of the accompaniment is taken into account, the whole texture in mm. 4—6, excepting only the modal-cadential A, could be referred to octatonic Collection I (Ex. 11.10). There is little point in attempting to decide whether the music at [A] is octatonic except for the A-natural, or diatonic except for the E-sharp. The two collections have interpenetrated each other inextricably—or rather, they have intersected on B, and in this way the harmonic center of the song is finally established. At the concluding reprise of the opening section, Stravinsky at first quotes it literally: mm. 16-18 is a note-for-note playback of mm. 1-3 except for a differing placement of the bars (the first two notes are now notated as a pickup to the first beat rather than the third). Unlike Stravinsky’s notorious later rebarrings, this one does not affect the stress patterns in any way; the difference is purely visual. Thereafter, the composer elegantly sorts out the pitch collections he had intermixed the first time around. The reprise of the second phrase is transposed in such a way that all of its pitches are now referable to Collection II without diatonic contamination. The last (unaccompanied) phrase of the song, approached through a common tone (C-sharp), makes a final Phrygian-octatonic gesture toward B. In the absence of the accompanying G-sharp, Stravinsky finally felt free to spell the note hitherto designated B-sharp as an unambiguous C, which clarifies its relationship as Phrygian supertonic to B and validates our interpretation of the opening passage (Ex. 11.11). In this incomparably deft close, Stravinsky encapsulates the whole

NEW HARMONIC INTERACTIONS [805]

EXAMPLE 11.7 “Forget-Me-Not,” mm. 1-3

, r~~ Oe |oo ae ee a—— ae 22 Eee ee 1i rc th “eee” rw

7

Ect tit errs

Ne-za- bu-doch-ka tsve - to-chek o-chen’ — la-sko-vo_ tsve-tyot,

————> — _

/—________§ —__$e__§—___—_—__* $e hS13: Phrygian progressions

EXAMPLE 11.8 Octatonic melody/harmony scale complex on C

y ( l ) y, l y, ] y ] Y, (fr)7= l$ —F ° l a?i ar ] ” ] Melody (Coll. II

Harmony (Coll. ITI)

EXAMPLE 11.9 “Forget-Me-Not,” melody at mm. 4-5

7 2G Ns a eS a cece.” es Diya te - bya moy drug-dru-zho-chek, nad vo - di - tse - yu ros-tyot.

EXAMPLE 11.10 “Forget-Me-Not,” derivation of melody and harmony from Collection I Collection I, by tetrachords “b minor”

(melodic minor cadence)

a— .SEE ..Tea2.. aTeAN LN . a. aBA) RN Ne Ne Eeme) —__} ley f/f ff DeNS OT Um (i fg 2 2 7 ee ee, Dain 0ee eee | ee _. oy __ p44 Ft _ 4J-FA| EXAMPLE 11.11 “Forget-Me-Not,” mm. 19(bis)—end

N , N ‘ N eS as Se a Ses TAeefea. | od) gmLae Ee| } Pe ee Pm , —— Coll. Hl | Coll. | | hae Af ls EN PTV ee Vsyo zo - vvot te - bya dru-zho - chek Sli- shish’ ton-kiy go-lo|- sok?

rs es Ta ALL PAS WD ee Le Le ‘eal Ul Oe ST OT SS-

eo ee Ni7nate:©7OS 7 tg: F CO els SE § FF4 oe GY

DF a. ee ee es OE IS ce Wh EE EY SS GN el SER | a FT: OoHCEFEOCTOon-~ANE-ONW?....__ T_T a He Lo)

OR Phrygian progression

harmonic structure of Petrushka’s concluding pages in fewer than three dozen notes. His subtle virtuosity in the handling of his Rimskian legacy has taken him far beyond the “Rimsky-Korsakoffery” of Petrushka into a realm of concentration and technical refinement neither his teacher nor his peers ever achieved.

PROMETHEAN RESONANCES Unquestionably, Scriabin helped him get there. Both in its particular chord colors and in its technique of circulating freely among the octatonic collections to achieve a sense of harmonic progression and modulation, “Forget-Me-Not,” like the close of Petrushka which it recalls, bears traces of contact with Prometheus. Dates amply support this surmise. Prometheus, completed in the spring of 1910, was published (by Koussevitzky, Stravinsky’s new publisher) in time for the premiére performance, 2 March 1911. Stravinsky composed the closing pages of Petrushka, as we may recall, in May of the same year. As we may also recall, the close of Petrushka rings novel changes on the Petrushka chord idea: triadic and dominant-seventh sonorities are combined in octatonically referable polychords of which the constituent roots lay not a tritone but a minor third apart. These constructions are foreshadowed in Prometheus (Ex. 11.12). Scriabin’s Eb-C polychord is referable to octatonic Collection III. Ten measures later the passage it initiates is restated a whole step higher, so that the polychord refers to Collection II. The effect is quite similar to the transposition effect Stravinsky obtained by using the same octatonic complexes, one functioning as a supertonic auxiliary to the other (see Ex. 10.33). The same Prometheus chord, or rather its extremities, leads us into the world of Zrezdolikty, whose oft-quoted motto begins with a major/minor superimposition on C, the tenors’ E-flat clashing against the E-natural of the basses (Ex. 11.13). This particular octatonic derivation, later to figure so prominently in Stravinsky’s work (especially his “neoclassical” work), had been anticipated by Scriabin in several pieces, and reached a normative status in his music by the time of the Sixth and Seventh Sonatas, generally viewed as the works that ushered in the composer’s last creative period. This final phase includes a number of pieces that are as rigorously octatonic as anything in Rimsky-Korsakov or Stravinsky. Scriabin, however, resolutely avoided the routines of triadic octatonicism described in Chapter 4. With him, the tone-semitone collection tends not to interact with diatonic harmony or to emphasize simple major/minor triadic cognates. Rather, the three octatonic sets act as autonomous referential collections, functionally equivalent (like Collection IIT in “Chez Pétrouchka”) to keys. While a given set is in force, it furnishes the entire pitch content for as many as seventy measures at a stretch. In the Sixth Sonata, for example, large sections (mm. 64—127, mm. 166-235, and mm. 252—

319) are respectively referable to each of the three octatonic collections in turn, allowing for a modicum of ornamental chromaticism—passing tones, appoggiatu-

PROMETHEAN RESONANCES [807]

(ES ee oe}

— A ee ge

Et 1 tr )pyoe! ht EXAMPLE 11.13 Zvezdolikty, motto

eo Coll. IIT

H SY ©eeSOR 6 7"|ee - ee /8A” Lacs > ce PN | 7yrCANAL = GNA

' Zvez - do - ii -_ kiy |

2Se 62 ee 0 ”SsSEee et| / ER

fNe 7

EXAMPLE 11.14 __ Scriabin, Seventh Sonata, source chord compared with “Mystic Chord” and with Collection II

Ye eG i Fre TT

Tm |e [re | 6): -O-—| 1} $-o—_|-—__ + # @—7 “Mystic Chord” Seventh Sonata Coll. ILI, (Prometheus) source chord —_ complete

ras, and the like, which lie outside a given octatonic “key” but resolve to scale tones according to traditional voice-leading rules. We have observed such techniques already in Sadko, in Petrushka, and elsewhere. The difference, of course, lies in the actual harmonic structures, which, in their

novelty, have seduced many analysts into regarding Scriabin’s late music as “atonal.” It is no such thing, for his modulations from one octatonic collection to another (usually accomplished by means of common-tone pivots such as we have

observed in Stravinsky’s “Forget-Me-Not”) are fully comparable to more traditional tonal modulations and vouchsafe a traditional sense of tonal motion and closure. That Scriabin conceived of his octatonicism as a novel form of tonality and emphatically not as any sort of atonality is evident in the fastidiousness with which a Scriabin essay in octatonicism, whatever the vagaries along the way, will always end in the same octatonic “key” with which it began. It is worth pausing for a closer look at the Seventh Sonata, op. 64, both for the reason that some misleading analyses of it have appeared in print® and because, as we are now aware, Stravinsky knew the piece and loved it. Although it was written a bit too late to count as a direct influence or model for Stravinsky’s Balmont settings, it lays out with exceptional concentration and clarity the post-Promethean technical procedures that briefly attracted Stravinsky’s attention. Like many late works of Scriabin, the Seventh Sonata is based on an a priori source chord consisting of a French sixth plus additives. The one employed in this sonata is, but for the inflection of a single tone, identical to the source chord of Prometheus, the redoubtable “Mystic Chord” (Ex. 11.14). The inflection of D to D-flat is what makes the chord of the Seventh Sonata fully referable to the octatonic scale (Collection III). The spelling was evidently chosen to reflect the chord’s conscious adaptation from the Mystic Chord, for just as Scriabin regarded his Fifth Sonata as an appendage to the Poéme de Vextase, the Seventh was designed

as a parergon to Prometheus. The remainder of Collection III, if added to the source chord, would complete a second French sixth chord on the “additives,” as demonstrated in Example 11.14. Scriabin’s favored way of completing and parti, tioning the octatonic collection 1n this piece 1s to extract from the source chord a double-inflected triad (with the conflicting thirds at the extremities)—deriving its note spelling rigorously from that of the parent set, thereby occluding its triadic nature—and then transposing it by a tritone. This derivation is demonstrated in Example 11.15.

The spelling of the scale as given in the example remains meticulously uniform

for the duration of the sonata (with a single exception: C and B-sharp are 64. See esp. James M. Baker, The Mustc of Alexander Scriabin (New Haven: Yale University Press,

an An especially influential protoserial analysis of the Sonata is in George Perle, Serial Music and Atonality (1962), sth ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 41-43.

PROMETHEAN RESONANCES [809]

Se EXAMPLE II1.1§

a. Scriabin, Seventh Sonata, mm. 1o—1

i ——— eS =. = ' , hae he aan SS SS a. a ae a 'y; > D—j— Da =>

mystérieusement sonore

>—

a

>

b. Analysis in terms of partition and exhaustion of Collection II

WY

3

yt nee DF 8:Anna EE Ce OS te tT 5 ¢ try i “eae F# maj./min. bg ny % 3 pars ee

er

'_— Coll. III, complete ———_ ~ © maj-/min.

Coll. IH, spelled as “double diminished-seventh” mode

Ss en |fitREPg} ff sees ff — cf. Scriabin’s chord orthography

7 . > r—3j—_ >

AOS — & ooo 2 ee

eS b. Scriabin, Seventh Sonata, first draft (from APshvang, A. N. Skryabin: k 25-letiyu so dnya smerti [Moscow: Muzgiz, 1940], p. 159)

a. ry 7 47 7

ED 85 —f 1 Hh 48 yo Hh LA

A Se a oe se Sc Ses

Ne — al — al — a a — al fT

EXAMPLE 11.17 Scriabin, Seventh Sonata, mm. 16, harmonic abstract

mm. ]-2 3-4 5-6 7 8 9-16

rh oo us |fey a8 en “ieeo ia.tt . leeds : 8— ' ' .gig ' * ‘_—— ‘ a1 — th ayot>att ee ea ess

De | Fev - [oD |

oOo P=% ‘an ~ .

ode mn L—_—. Coll. II——— “———- Coll. | ———_-§ UL _ Coll. I ——— j LC —____-__. M2, ——____—_—__ M2 ————_*—- M2 ——2

EXAMPLE II.18 __ Tonal relations of the octatonic collections Coll. { (Dominants)

J g 8——_ og 3 #4 Bib 0 a | Coll. If (Subdominants)

EXAMPLE II.I9

SS Aa eyEE le] nTee fPs—4Ge er Be eS a, ot eo ee aa = ’ ial a. Scriabin, Seventh Sonata, mm. 197—201

‘Me ae. — la & | Fa Re a. SE A ee oe,

pty t_—_]:”..-.-CT..—-.....—_[__?_ Vee Te 2 |) 4“ 2 »-—-e_-a—

CZ ae —}----| a. ES EE an a ' — ara __ — wun Y( = {2°97 =7 7LSIF =VL NN SS” Ww ‘ Ly Nea Na, NY \Y NS pre aa mS

|Se hin fog ee JE Ge eeaeee eeeeee

ch: 22°.0-oeE0..”’-’-’.”. Ee EB ee NN

whole-tone segment

Coll. TI —————— |

+ “9th tone” + thes Fo} -— theo — whole-tone

L_ succession

3—— ee PL! AS GS ES te GR id8Gs b. Scriabin, Seventh Sonata, mm. 335—end (composed-out “Mystic Chord”)

Gf Weworoowrronnowwe eee eee eee

,| 'rae3CCed Dt ee PP E P,3

SP EE | Pe ee2erSS SeeeSeeeEsein a RE}SS——1 — A. 9) _| a5SS at!ES 5 08 Hib (4) 6) LL 3 —___ L_____. 3 —__

py} _¢efetf _, ew te2 eee eel COREE EY een Es ee A eeee a|__| ee ee Ae 2 1eee ee ee eee eee eee ”_ABEE a. GE a “ee, ee ee eeeeeSee ee we ee ee

ST AE OS Oy SRS SE cece SELENE ORONO, SS * 0.1.5 SRS CE COUN COREE SURRNUN

OF ppaseeseseepyyrsereeseseserseseeseapeypesenneeensemeseggpeenennenen

0 [-G$-=«”*mnnNaeoo —_dd a >Qonm_....n— SS ee Ses Oo. ss Se OE Se) A, 2 Ahe©.

©. || ND * ES Sn nan SATOES 2 SS an Lae De

i@eee eTee"ert Gy SS ea Gs Gee es 0"ae ee 2pftd———_t_yee es ee eee 0" ee 0 ee i ed 2 2 eee ..2)__t 24 o e! L—_____ 3 —_____ Source chord, “Mystic t6 (Coll. III) chord”

way, we will be able to trace virtually every one of the distinctive features of Scriabin’s Seventh Sonata, as just described, in Zvezdolskey. These parallels, as already noted, begin with the first chord of the motto, a major/minor construction such as made up the most conspicuous identifying “clang” of Scriabin’s composition. The second chord of the motto, too, resonates strongly

with the Seventh Sonata: what the tenors sing is, both in sound and in spelling, the sonata’s very first chord (compare Exx. 11.13 and 11.16). Furthermore, with the precedent of Scriabin’s habitual spellings in mind, we can explain the way in which Stravinsky spells the third chord: A major with D-flat in place of C-sharp. It might be argued that this spelling 1s motivated from within the Zvezdolikty motto. But

one could hardly explain the spelling of the A-major/minor chord in the fourth measure of the cantata proper on that basis; these D-flats clearly show the impact of Scriabin’s octatonic orthography. As Pieter van den Toorn has pointed out, the first five measures of Zvezdolikty, like the opening phrases of “Chez Pétrouchka,” are wholly referable to octatonic Collection III. Thereafter, progressions and circulations 4 la Scriabin become the rule. To pick a simple case for starters, consider the music between figs. [5] and [6]: for two bars the harmony rocks back and forth on the half measure between

Collections II and III. (For the next two bars the rhythm of this oscillation is slowed down to coincide with the bar.) As shown in Example 11.20, this amounts to a kind of octatonically conceived plagal cadence.°’ Scriabin’s use of an appoggiatura in his second theme parallels Stravinsky’s setting of the first line of the third quatrain (Ex. 11.21). The whole texture is referable to octatonic Collection II except for the C-sharp in the second tenors, which resolves in traditional fashion to B-sharp. (For simplicity’s sake, only the voice parts are given in the example; the orchestral accompaniment, complex though it is, is confined entirely to Collection II.) Following this there is a furious harmonic circulation, which finally settles into the placid oscillation quoted in Example 11.20. It is impossible to hear this parade of octatonic polychords and not think of late Scriabin, any more than one can look at the eccentric note-spelling in the piano reduction (in the full score notes are spelled more for the players’ individual convenience) and not be reminded of Scriabin’s “self-analyses” (Ex. 11.22). Stravinsky’s adherence to Scriabin’s “theory” of octatonicism as a double-diminished-seventh mode is once again demonstrated near the end of Zvezdoltkty: the really outré and, on the face of it, arbitrary note-spelling of the viola solo (later repeated by the cho-

66. Van den Toorn, Music of Igor Stravinsky, 473n.3.

67. This observation should be supplemented by noting the use of chromatic passing tones, something for which there is precedent in Petrushka and even Sadko. On the third beat of the 7/4 measure, the use of chromatic passing tones in all voices gives rise to a passing chord referable to Collection I; but in context this chord is clearly accessory to the main harmony, and does not affect the validity of the general observation.

[814] 11 * NEW TIMES, NEW BIRDS; NEW BIRDS, NEW SONGS

‘ at Pe

EXAMPLE 11.20 Zpvezdoltkty, fig. [5]

a” a a | PR as A , fo ., ee eee. NS FA AE ES NE DR AS SO OES USD

AN eM

* I sem’ zo-lo - tikh se - mi - zvyoz -_ diy kak

eee EEE} CR” OSeee Ne|SIOo «1 OS G7... aWE 1OT 2 EB + es= IOU ; |” A esPO © | SN PK (bouches fermées)

= 2) es ae ee ee Se Ae Sn 2SF a eee ae eee ee 2 ee es ee eee A iSSES —KS KeDa Se BAAD) BDCe | ~ aeB ES + CEes DSEE SY — — 7, = pt -?2eeee1 = LYWS eg aOg

| >, So CR Too CY OTTO MTMTYTg oo AOND. | ee es ee ee es OP ee ee 0) arth XS TS Sf f por tet r¥ +—H ‘© an —-3 Oeee3_! 3ee eee =éar‘ 1Pm ae EE eae > , CURE I LA .. ee.. ee.. “See 0 ee 0 7. Wn Ee ee ee 2| 2A0 .21... ee 20ee CANS) a SS A ORR “A ASN ” A” A TS * sve - chi go - re-li pred nim

a ee ee—CC‘(‘ aemmernenenemne SareeaRT ) eee CSC 7.2 eee eee 2 2/7... 81% 7 CESe ee 1 Ce? =i aes

8\5)4..:*. a Ds BS ees es 2 2 A” 2 ee2 en ee 2” 2” 2 ee eee 00 ER” S/S” EP 22 iee O53 02 SE I ES | ©AE AA AO A No snég_ po-shdl, Ne ra-zo-brat’, gde snég____ i gde tsve-ti

, fal fal EXAMPLE 11.39 _ Ending of “Mazatsumi”

a. Sketchbook b. Hypothetical original

,— or tr Ee TH I > SB ee te

,I

ra-dost-noy ve - sni.__ ra-dost-noy ve - sni.

c. Published score

(0 eet| SYAR5 0. EEds0GE Lpee.J CP 0DeeSe ra-dost-noy ve - sni.

or lreee-r——eretrtrrt ee—e—es——es—SsSsSe

7. - i, i@@@@e.... ° §.\ i |] ee a — r——eE Ul tll,lUlCc HeLrrt—tsSS a ee lUC — BS SSE RE Sc & i.@8@£.£ |£ iéO2OC-. . Ci‘ ;- iS, Sg +». |ee YS rrr- ieee cc& RE cl ccUG—~S ed ees ee eed it as EXAMPLE 12.32 Petrushka, first tableau, fig.

i) “source chord” _ monic constructs, which with few exceptions can be analyzed as combinations and mixtures of Rite chords. In the chromatic glissandi that introduce the dance and return three times in the course of its progress (figs. [103], [106], [107], and [117]), the Rite chord acts as a stable unit of parallel doubling. This may be seen most clearly in Stravinsky’s particell (p. 51, showing fig. [117]), which appears both on the cover and on page 47 of Strawinsky: sein Nachlass, sein Bild. Example 12.334

shows the flute parts as they look in that manuscript, all on one staff. The first of these glissandi leads into the famous prefatory 11/4 measure, whose single harmony consists of a Rite chord and its inversion (nicely analyzed for us by the composer’s note-spelling and staff distribution in the sketchbook), which together yield six of the eight tones in octatonic Collection II (Ex. 12.33b). The same harmony resurfaces, though without the maximalistic repetitions, after the other

glissandi, and in many other places in the dance (e.g., the measure before fig. [109]). The parenthetical bottom note of the source scale in Example 12.33b acts as

the specious tonic in this dance, constantly reiterated as a bass note by the tubas and timpani. At fig. [104], the beginning of the dance proper, the referential collection “pivots” to Collection III (the other octatonic collection containing the note A), and the harmony underlying the theme again consists of the Rite chord plus its inversion, the two being presented this time in succession rather than superimposed. The G-sharp, foreign to Collection III, 1s always resolved as an appoggiatura (Ex. 12.34a).

The source chord and its inversion are also frequently alternated in parallel propressions, as shown in Example 12.34b. Stravinsky’s evident consciousness of the chord as a stable harmonic referent may owe something to Scriabin, who had furiously exploited its compound inversion in his Fifth Sonata of 1907 (Ex. 12.35). Stravinsky used the chord in this spacing, too (cf. the bottom staff of Ex. 12.31C).

Elsewhere in The Rite, the source chord is filled out in a number of ways,

[942] 12 + THE GREAT FUSION

!=

EXAMPLE 12.33

a. The Rite, particell, p. 51 (second measure, flutes only)

5 ‘ veto! 6, , ‘ 48: 20 Se es ee) a le; ce ay

‘ ———— | : eo ‘Sud MUP Oe:wee tat eC I Ot ee Oe Oe ee Ot eae OPrT ledtele est 5 tg tSaant ot(A)ee OF ee te — Sie a aS

b. The Rite, 1 before [104], spelling according to Sketchbook (p. 67)

} compared with spelling in four-hand arrangement

inversion 6, 11 IIth_ reading down)(0, Collection

. x r__ X Ay | ' Y nen &. oT ED OT OS ee F.U0 2 64 cee ee ee eee. SS Oe | eee 2) eee eee

. . ° , ___-____}

ste cf. spelling in “tonic? — eh \———~ y piano four-hand

score:

Hot gtee —___} {| _____}___6): Sed COM 2 Rs Se Se et ae4 WAfet Se Sas &.Cfeee —eee gg eae ae i eee source chord (0, 6, 11 reading up) (cf. Ex. 12.32)

EXAMPLE 12.34 a. The Rite, fig. (spelling simplified)

oo

abstract: inv.—> Rite-chord

, (Sma III he SoDavo bbe (be oe TN —---~-q".__=~ DTColl. ee _..._ —

, Laer , — ee inn ie spose “tonic” “flute slide”

7AROS 48) 0’ eeeEt ATE Lee ee “ae pyPY appors htEEtaeeHHH —_ ho| TF reer

|.MEM.§)DY|Tl.ae QT “RE i>.“ seas

b. The Rite, figs. |109], 1 before

(0,5,11) (0,6,11) (0,5,11) (0,6,11) (0,5,11) (0,6,11) (0,5,11)

in ed re

- —————————————————

bh lS i — i rr ri

Oo) Gf —— — — —- f —- —f

EXAMPLE 12.35 Scriabin, Fifth Sonata, mm. 9-1 (=m. 453—end)

A ffTIeH a ahyA yetPresto te es the

vpecu aie ef BVa-- ~~~ 2 eg

et, ——_gie = tp ee _

SS 5 a CE rh. , Lh. inv. “ Rite-chord” some of them quite notorious. One way is to insert a fourth note that bisects the

tritone component, creating a diminished triad plus a diminished octave—a harmony that, having originated within classical practice as an appoggiatura to the diminished-seventh chord, was current in late- and post-Romantic music as an especially tense dissonance whose resolution could be delayed for especially powerful expressive effects. Used, like all stable harmonies in The Rite, as a hypostatized, nonresolving sonority, the chord, moving in a clashing parallel line of its own, lent

an aspect of sublime terror to the climactic statement of the Spring Khorovods melody (Ex. 12.36a). The static punctuating chord in the vivo midsection of the same dance consists of a Rite chord of this type, combined with a C-minor triad, its octatonic relative, whose root and fifth the Rite chord subsumes (Ex. 12.36b). Another way of filling out the Réte chord is to supply it with an ersatz root, turning it into the perceptual equivalent of a dominant-seventh chord with either the third or the seventh double-inflected. In a passage from the Mystic Circles that was actually the very last music in The Rite to be composed, '*? the spell-casting motif of the trumpets is accompanied by the Rite chord and a bass line that supplies each of the two possible ersatz roots, as described above, in turn. They lie, of course, a Korsakovian tritone apart; the passage is vibrant with echoes of two generations of Russian “magic” harmony (Ex. 12.37). 143. The eleven measures from [86] to [87] were inserted by Stravinsky into the full score on 29 March 1913. (The score is inscribed “Clarens, February 23/8 March 1913,” at the end of the Sacrificial Dance—see E. Lichtenhahn and T. Seebass, eds., Mustkhandschriften aus der Sammlung Paul Sacher [Basel: F Hoffmann-La Roche, 1976], for a facsimile.) On the insertion, see Schaeffner, “Au fil des esquisses,” 185.

[944] 12 ¢ THE GREAT FUSION

EXAMPLE 12.36 a. The Rite, fig.

8va------------ ee eee ee eee eee eee ee eee ee ee ee eee eee

BF. BS A SE nS_ SSeeCE ee ANS) AE Os “ES MEE CS NERO NORD SRS es es eseee

@ ONS Ve eee eee “eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee. eT)

' ae 0

Embellished Rite-chords (coll? ottava): co

con” 7 bh gf NN Ee

ah toSLAG AAS CE MST STS CEA Ws2" ENS SE RS ETS EES @ 2 ES 2 \P" Gee" ee" en eee" eee" ee" eeOS 0 MS "ee"WR: ee OT Se ST ee CE ee

9

Ly CUS nS Oe ,---—_ aT ae ne ;——_t }-- ;-— #—___+ Ws }— +—--—¢ yg 1-4

DAB Se ee a =... Se A ) AONG = - GA , ee eee Oe ee eee=eee an AL 8va--.--------------------------4

oy tf = _____f _+—oo a __ Hes Q\i) a a:Py OT

i See Se: NN }¥

on a eee Middle line, reduced to essential Rite-chords:

i ;\eo =: ibd =ndoeiw; :he b. The Rite, 1 after

2s:

2 4A)ee | eeoo ee ee" eee.ee eeeHE ee ee)SS ee oo thee

Pr 4

B'S. TE A SB an 1 - pf ‘1 wae Rite-chord oe

2.4 Aeeeeeeeesae Gee n.- 2 A) "ne A ee eee es ee y

(os: & ft @ | @A@ee @£@ i; §@686hl| ee Um Gd||OL EN ee @£ ee @f@ ee ee@ee eee eeevOees Oe

EXAMPLE 12.37 The Rite, 4 after [86]

f+ —VP Ps oe OOJ aSSS WZ, te | oot ——_ a he ae TAL Ys eee

3 3 _—i

SD Es... OO ===-—-—"«"—NNrnNtp7TT

a: (a:

—— ane — AY tzShe a —_~ ‘22

p- — PSS Se se a

i=i

EXAMPLE 12.38 _ Derivations from the Rse-chord a.

oo ST RS Cy eT FZ to Coll. III

MA Oe '¢ (Dance of the Adolescent Girls, Part I)

A

eo 8 8 b.

Coll. II

Oo pj ig GY te

EXAMPLE 12.39 Pair of early sketches (transcribed by Robert Craft, in review of Forte’s monograph on The Rite [Musical Quarterly 64, no. 4 (October

yo . p+ lara ob 1978): 530])

a.

i b.

ee “eeel

||

f6— $$ — $e 5 0 re Br

Ged CREE AES A a 2 "es Cs Zh hh. Oh TO [email protected]”——————..”...0V..--”’"”-——

Coll. I (cf. m. 1) Coll. II (cf. m. 2)

SY PT ep ge—— B' eee

Finally, and most memorably, Stravinsky turns the bass note of the source chord into a triadic root. This technique, which might be described as the acoustic doubling of the “x”-tetrachord’s representative (following the terminology of Example 12.31), is responsible for many of the most celebrated “polychords” in the score (Ex. 12.38).

The Rite chord’s status as putative harmonic source is much enhanced if Craft was correct in stating that the pair of sketches shown in Example 12.39, which he reproduced to accompany his review of Forte’s study of the ballet, is in fact “the earliest known notation for The Rite.” '** Craft remarked that these sketches “contain the motto chord of the entire work,” meaning the chord from the Divination ostinato (Ex. 12.384), which is the sum of the first two chords of the treble part in Example 12.39a. This chord is indeed the most famous harmony in The Rite.'*° But since it never recurs, it cannot properly be called a motto. But now look at the first measure of Example 12.39b. The lower staff has a Rite chord, and the upper staff has the inversion. With the bottom notes of the configurations standing a minor third apart, it will be easily seen that, like the similarly constructed chord preceding the Glorification (Ex. 12.33b), this chord is entirely referable to the octatonic scale given for comparison at the end of Example 12.39b. This is the chord, then, that truly qualifies for the distinction of being the “motto chord of the entire work”—or rather, the sum of two motto chords in mirror reflection. The second chord in the lower staff of the second measure in Example 12.39b is also a Rite chord, expressed in compound inversion (cf. Ex. 12.31¢), and— as the reader’s practiced eye will have caught by now—all the triads in the second

measure (on F and on A-flat in the right hand, on D in the left) are referable to

144. Robert Craft, Review of Forte’s Harmonic Organization, Mustcal Quarterly 64 (1978): eas. According to Stravinsky, it was the first notation he made for The Rite; and indeed, it appears on the first page of the facsimile sketchbook (though this is proof of nothing, since one cannot tell when the material unrepresented in the sketchbook—viz., the Introduction to Part I—was composed). Assuming that it was the first, the following anecdote, related by Yastrebtsev in a curious article entitled “On Delusions of the Ear” (“O slukhovikh zabluzhdeniyakh,” RMG 16, nos. 22-23 [20 May—6 June 1909], col. 551), is relevant to the creative history of The Rite of Spring:

On 7 August of the same year (1899), when I was at Rimsky-Korsakov’s [summer place] in Vechasha, Nikolai Andreyevich, striking on the piano the dominant ninth of B-flat major and the E-major chord of the sixth at the same time, i.e., a harmony like this:

asked me whether I thought such a combination of pitches could exist in music, and whether it was beautiful. Or was it something out of R. Strauss? I agreed with the latter [alternative], whereupon Nikolai Andreyevich remarked, ‘But nonetheless I will acquaint you with this har-

FUSION [947]

another octatonic collection. Such, then, were Stravinsky’s “very special relations.” Just how special, of course, one can appreciate only within the relevant cultural context. Every one of the practices and devices we have been tracing have a common objective: namely, to express the harmonic content of the fantastic/chromatic genus of Russian music in terms of melodic configurations endemic to the folk-

loric/diatonic genus. This interpenetration gave the latter genus an unexpected new lease on life precisely when it seemed most moribund to advanced musical minds in Russia. By means of this unprecedented fusion The Rite miraculously transcended the time-honored dualism, meanwhile, in good dialectical fashion, fundamentally transforming both its members. For just as many of the folk melodies in the score are distorted and hidden—absorbed into the musical texture so thoroughly that without the evidence of the sketchbook their presence could only be “felt,” never proved—so, too, the octatonic basis of much of the harmony is quite effectively masked (as in a number of the foregoing examples) by diatonic parallel doublings or additives, or else by partitions that emphasize diatonically intersecting constituents, or yet again by the concurrent deployment, as in the Dance of the Earth, of other symmetrical modes—all of which has until recently led to the prevailing assumption (eagerly abetted by Stravinsky) that an arbitrarily inspirational polytonalism had been his sole guide in constructing the harmonic idiom of his great neoprimitivist ballet. Whence this rage to cover tracks? But of course it is fundamental: the impulse to transform subject matter into style lay from the outset at the very heart of the neo-

mony today, only there (in my romance, “The Poet,” on words by Pushkin) it will be cunningly prepared and resolved, and therefore you will surely like it.’ And so it came about:

SS

(en (, 2s J

Transpose the chord Rimsky played to Yastrebtsev down a semitone, and, but for minor adjustments, the Auguries ostinato chord is the result:

>> anRite-chord! ee eee

Not only would Stravinsky have certainly read Yastrebtsev’s article; it is also very likely that Rimsky tried out his little parlor trick in his presence, probably more than once. Having noticed the octatonic frame of the rogue harmony, might Stravinsky not have been impudently saving it—sans preparation and sans resolution—for a rainy day?

[948] 12 * THE GREAT FUSION

nationalist enterprise. Stravinsky was now carrying that transformation much further than anything dreamt of by the Belyayevtsi or the Miriskusniki, into “those

| basic matters of form, thematic content, harmony, polyphony, and sonority that are of lively current interest,” to recall Karatigin’s essay “Young Russian Composers,” in which the author of Fireworks and the Scherzo fantastique had received such mediocre marks. Elements that had played gaudily on the surface of Stravinsky’s music as recently as Petrushka were now ruthlessly submerged to work their influence at the deepest strata of structure and style. The deeper they went—the more

they thus, as it were, receded from view—the more pervasive and determinant their influence became. One can easily separate the “folk-derived” from the “original” elements in Petrushka. This is no longer possible in The Rite.

However firmly rooted in the precepts and traditions of neonationalism, though, Stravinsky’s maximalistic advances in The Rite left the dreamy pastoral vi-

sions of Roerich and the rest far behind. Instead, they curiously paralleled advances that were being made in painting by members of a school known, almost too neatly for comfort, as “neoprimitivist.” Two artists in particular stand out as kindred spirits to the author of The Rite of Spring: Mikhail Laryonov and his wife, Nataliya Goncharova, both born in 1881 and hence the composer’s practically exact contemporaries. Like the Stravinsky of The Rite and beyond, the neoprimitives shared the ideals and the cultural allegiances of neonationalism but went much further toward an abstract realization. In Laryonov especially one can trace the progressive absorption of motifs from folk art, the /ubok first and foremost, to the point where nothing of the subject remained visible, but the stylistic influence— the color sense, the perspective, the painterly surface—was absolutely pervasive. '*° The works of Laryonov and Goncharova “not only reach back 1n their brilliant color and formal motifs to the revival of folk art by the Abramtsevo artists, but forward to the Futurist movement in painting, of which they were the pioneers.”!*7 The words used to describe the neoprimitive paintings exhibited at the epochal “Knave of Diamonds” show of 1912—“brilliant sated color, intense surface patterning based on folk motifs, and a radical simplification of form”!**®—also describe the exactly contemporaneous Rite of Spring to perfection. '*? These traits, certainly, were uppermost in Stravinsky’s mind—along with the

146. See Bowlt, Russtan Art, 98ff. 147. Gray, Russian Experiment in Art, 56. 148. Ibid., 123.

149. We shall be returning in later chapters to Laryonov and Goncharova, since they were among Stravinsky’s closest friends during his Swiss and Parisian years, and among the very few with whom he used the familiar mode of address (P&D:603). He dedicated the Berceuses du chat to them. They designed the productions of some of his most characteristic “neoprimitivist” work: Laryonov did Batka in 1922, and Svadebka the next year was Goncharova’s. The latter collaboration, in fact, had been in the works since 1915. Yet there is no known evidence of contact between Stravinsky and these future friends until they had all left Russia for good (that is, until 1914). That they were unacquainted in their native

FUSION [949]

maximalist harmonic and rhythmic approach for which The Rite remains famous and ever new—when he exclaimed in a letter to Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov (7 March 1912): “It seems that twenty years, not two, have passed since The Firebird.”!°° He had carried to an extreme Tugenhold’s memorable dictum that “the folk, formerly

the object of the artist’s pity, [has become] increasingly the source of artistic style.”!°! The Rite of Spring, famous for its total lack of pity, indeed of all “psychol-

ogy,” was a quantum leap along that path, a path that led eventually to the hardnosed esthetic modernism of the “neoclassical” period.!°? For this change to have taken place, for the desired level of abstraction to have been achieved, it was necessary that the sources, both musical and ethnological, be “cachées,” not displayed proudly as had been done in the Russian music of an earlier time. The result was that The Rite of Spring brought some of the finest fruits of the Russian Silver Age—the World of Art, neonationalism, Scythianism—into the international current of Western music and, in so doing, utterly transcended the movements and sources from which it had sprung. The work achieved a cultural universality within the world of postromantic modernism that ultimately rendered its subject superfluous. As Roerich himself was moved to insist, “We cannot consider ‘Sacre’ as Russian, nor even Slavic—it is more ancient and pan-human.”!>4 This was Stravinsky’s achievement, not Roerich’s, and it is his score, minus choreography and decor, that has become an indispensable pillar of the tradition it at first appeared to subvert.

country seems altogether likely, in fact, since Laryonov and Goncharova lived and exhibited in Moscow,

not St. Petersburg. But Diaghilev, who shuttled back and forth between the two capitals, knew Laryonov as early as 1906 (Haskell, Dtaghileff; 269) and may have provided a link. 150. [StrSM:467. 151. Tugenhold, “Russkiy sezon’ v Parizhe,” 21.

152. How incredibly obtuse were those Soviet critics who used to chide Stravinsky for his “lack of sympathy” for the Chosen One. Take, for example, Yarustovsky: “We never find any reflection of interest in individual personalities, even toward the few soloists that emerge out of the collectively portrayed dramatis personae—toward the tragic[!] fate of the Chosen One or the epic figure of the Oldestand-Wisest. . . . The death of the Chosen One, this young creature, leaves the composer unmoved, and he does not make it his aim to have the spectator or hearer empathize or become moved on account of her fate” (“I. Stravinskiy: eskiznaya tetrad’ (1911-1913 gg.): nekotoriye nablyudentya i razmishlentya,” in

IStrSM:203). The Bolshoy Theater produced The Rite in the early 1970s, at the height of the brief Stravinskian “thaw.” In Yuriy Grigorovich’s choreography, a young Soviet man leaps out of the corps de ballet and saves the Chosen One at the end of the Sacrificial Dance, meanwhile plunging a dagger into the idol of Yarilo. 153. Roerich, “‘Sacre,’” in Realm of Light, 188. The more perceptive reviewers of the original production immediately noticed an unproductive tension between the “Slavic” and the “pan-human” aspects of the ballet. After praising the “cubist icon-painting” (skonopisniy kubizm) of Nijinsky’s archaistically angular choreography, “unfolding before us ‘to the pipes of a Slavonic Pan,” Sergey Volkonsky went on to complain that “the hieratic quality of the dancing was somewhat diluted by the ethnography

of Roerich’s costumes—one had too great a sense of ‘guberntya’ behind all this Slavonic prehistory” (Otklikt teatra [Petrograd: Sirius, 1914], 49). Indeed, it must have been precisely this wariness of ethnographic accuracy as potential limiter of The Rste’s full significance that to a large extent impelled Stravinsky’s later disavowals of the work’s ethnographic content.

[9so] 12 * THE GREAT FUSION

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST?’, UPROSHCHENITE That apparent subversion had only partly to do with the high dissonance level and crashing orchestration that were so widely deplored by the ballet’s early critics

(and so widely imitated by every composer within earshot). In far more fundamental and insidious ways than these, Stravinsky’s ballet merited the Scythian label. For it already answered the as yet only half-articulate call of its time for the “great sacrifice” of kul’tura on the altar of sttkbtya. Like the art of the neoprimitives, his contemporaries, Stravinsky’s was an art of radical formal simplification; and it was very much a matter for debate whether his achievement—to recall the IvanovGershenzon corner-to-corner dispute—was an uproshchentye, a breakthrough to the simplicity of a higher truth, or merely an oproshchentye, the reductive renunciation

barbarian.

of all refinement of thought and feeling in favor of the crude simplicity of the The kultura that The Rite so roundly rejected was that of the German sym-

phonic tradition, which, by the time of Chaikovsky and Glazunov—to say nothing of The Ftrebird—had invaded the precincts even of ballet, as earlier it had conquered opera at the hands of Wagner. When in later years Stravinsky would halfdismiss and half-apologize for The Firebird with the remark that in it he still observed the principles of the music drama, it was not only the representational use of leitmotifs he had in mind, but also the conventional narrative form one achieved through such devices of thematic unity and development. This technique of construction was carried to an extreme in Stravinsky’s first ballet, wherein thematic unity was veritably fetishized through the extremely skillful, but also exceedingly obvious, derivation of all the “fantastic” music from a pair of thirds and its Rimskian sequential extensions. When in 1920 Stravinsky declared to an interviewer that The Rite was “une oeuvre architectonique et non anecdotique,” he was—how ingenuously one cannot tell—creating a false dichotomy. The Firebird had been both architectonique and anecdotique. The Rite was neither. Therein lay its glory, and its threat. It became less and less architectonic as work progressed. Given the evidence of the sketchbook, Stravinsky’s antisymphonic intentions cannot be mistaken. In its

initial conception, the central action of Part I, conflated from the writings of Herodotus and Nestor the Chronicler, had been set forth in a quartet of dances: Gadantya, Khorovodi, Igra v goroda (with Idut-vedut in counterpoint), and Igra umikantya. These break down further into two thematically linked pairs. The main theme of the Khorovodi (fig. [50] in the published score) had been impressively pre-

figured, according to the original plan, at the end of the Gadaniya ([28]+ 4). Drafts for the two statements of the theme faced each other in the sketchbook (pp. 6 and 7). Similarly, the two Igri ( goroda and umikantya) were constructed out

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST’, UPROSHCHENIYE [951]

of a sizable fund of shared material. The passage at fig. [43] in the umikantya (first notated on p. 31 of the sketchbook) 1s a rhythmic transformation of the main theme of the goroda ([57] +2; first sketched on p. 12), as may be seen in Example 12.40. Another unifying idea was the timpani figure, first sketched on page 20 as part of goroda (where it may still be heard starting at fig. [57]), and reappearing on page 29 of the sketchbook as part of the umikantya (cf. the published score at [38], etc.). This is shown in Example 12.41. These close correspondences testify to Stravinsky’s having initially forged the goroda and the umikantya as a unit corresponding to the

passage by Nestor about the customs of the “Radimichi, Vyatichi, and Severi.” But when he transferred the [gra umikantya to its present position, between the Gadantya and the Khorovodi, every one of these meticulous relationships was obscured. The correspondence between goroda and umikaniya was severed by the removal of the latter, and the one between the Gadantya and the Khorovodi was sev-

ered by the intrusion of a foreign element between them.'** (The transfer also shows, of course, how little the scenario’s ethnographic base constrained the composer as he strove to give the work its optimal artistic form—a courageous and instructive ordering of priorities!) The relationship shown in Example 12.40, the subtlest of them, was virtually obliterated by the change in the order of the dances, since the complex transformation now preceded the simple initial statements of the theme by some dozen pages in the final score. Even musicians who know The Rite by heart are often surprised to have the relationship pointed out to them, whereas in the sketchbook the last notation of the goroda theme precedes the umikantya transformation by three pages, and the relationship fairly leaps to the eye. The second half of the ballet is virtually devoid of thematic recurrences, save

for a single one that is clearly a “reminiscence” motivated by the action. The two-trumpet “zagovor (charm) music first heard in the fourth bar after [54] (it was originally to have been the curtain music for Part IT) returns at the third bar after [133] in the Ritual Action, as the Elders encircle the entranced maiden in

154. That the Khorovodi were to have preceded the segue out of the “Gadantya” in the original conception of the scenario, with the thematic relationship between them thus emphasized, is corroborated by the fact that, according to the sketchbook, the two dances were to have gone at roughly the same tempo. (Stravinsky to Roerich [6 March 1912) : “All the temp? [in Part I] are furious [beshenniye}.”) The “Gadantya” is marked d= 56 (J= 112) in the 1913 four-hands score. In the sketchbook (p. 9), the Khorovodi are marked d= 108, with the preliminary “incantation” set at J=144. In the published score, it is the incantation that is marked J= 108, and the Khorovodi have been slowed down to a stately d= 80. This must have been in order to set the dances off from the Abduction (J= 132), on one side, and the “Cities” (¢=168), on the other. It is very much worth noting, though, that in Stravinsky’s first recording of the ballet (1928), he took the Khorovedi at the speed marked in the sketchbook. It is of course difficult to

decide whether it was because he still felt it as the right tempo, or because he had to rush to accommodate the time available on a 78 r.p.m. side; but if the tempo reflected his preference rather than a compromise, it ties in neatly with a story Marie Rambert has related ( Quicksilver, 59) of how Stravinsky came to a rehearsal of the women’s corps, “blazed up, pushed aside the fat German pianist, nicknamed

‘Kolossal’ by Diaghilev, and proceeded to play twice as fast as we had been doing it, and twice as fast as we could possibly dance.” The tempo marking in the published score may have been the result of a compromise with Niyinsky.

[9s2] 12 * THE GREAT FUSION

eer A ee EXAMPLE 12.40

a. Sketchbook, p. 12 (goroda)

SS 8 —ee| i —eee ee8 KO gt ee | | | —_} 9 | ——

wr: a na I __ | a 4

~P YP FF rr oF Pee |

b. Sketchbook, p. 24 (refinement of the same, basis for finished score)

Sf ——— ——_ 8 _—e——__ + —_|_ —_ | _} _»_ 74

ro 4 Oe EO a Oh EE ED

eo ——— ——— ——— en ae |__| 3h! SE as a ae

| a ee dd dud d.2

c. Sketchbook, p. 31 (wmikantya)

SSI CE ere See eRe: pe

eS an EXAMPLE 12.4I

a. Sketchbook, p. 20 (goroda)

DG 0ed ee 2es Ee oe 22 CO a Si

ee eeeeeeee Op tee b. Sketchbook, p. 29 (umikaniya)

f capemens memeeneen caennen SS sxntesamoe eoninasnan |

#* Tuba e timp. ~~ lS TPesPT ee —-————— OY ee COs CY eee Sees GO Ge

Oooo Eo ee EET FRE CEE

preparation for her Sacrificial Dance.'®* Clearly, Stravinsky was now prepared to sacrifice without qualms the thematic/motivic consistency he had prized so highly in The Firebtrd—in the interests, though, of what? In the interests of projecting highly individualized static blocks in striking juxtapositions. It is something that might be said of Petrushka, too, but in the earlier ballet there had been a couple of mitigating factors. That ballet, after all, was nothing if not anecdotique. The blocks, moreover, were juxtaposed at short range and in rather standard patterns—rondo in the first tableau (up to the Magician’s appearance), variations in the last. There are still vestiges of received formats in The Rite, to be sure: da capo (Spring Khorovods, Glorification), rondo (Sacrificial Dance), and so on. But more often, formal procedures are stripped down to what is most basic—that is, “elemental” (strkityniy): extension through repetition, alternation, and—above all—sheer inertial accumulation.

In Russia, as we shall see in the next chapter, friend and foe alike reacted strongly to what was termed the “immobility” (nepodvizhnost’) of Stravinsky’s music. '°° Though his work seemed to strike at the root of all musical kultura, it was nonetheless profoundly rooted in Russian traditions of all kinds—and not only folk traditions, though the relationship between Stravinsky’s ostinati and the endless reiterations of naigrisht, khorovods, bilini, and calendar songs is selfevident.'°” A special subgenre of gimmicky nineteenth-century Russian orchestral

a

155. It comes, incidentally, as no small surprise to learn from the sketchbook that this charm motif, which always appears in the ballet as a syncopated duet of two fairly conjunct lines, was conceived originally (Sketchbook, 41) as a one-voice leaping melody:

Sketchbook, p. 41

In later sketches it was refined, thus:

Sketchbook, p. 62

In the ballet the first sketchbook version was reinstated and registrally divided: , 2 Trumpets

The Rite, 3 after [84] , [86] , etc.

156. E.g., A. S. Ilyashenko, “O ‘Vesne svyashchennoy’ I. Stravinskogo,” RMG 21, no. 6 (9 February

aa his something that can be fully appreciated only in performance (or on a recording), since as a rule printed anthologies of such songs give only model stanzas. The wedding-band “Timon’ya” nat-

[954] 12 © THE GREAT FUSION

music had been based on these folk ostinato genres. The piece that established the type had been Glinka’s Kamarinskaya (1848), in which the endless reiterations are

made the pretext for virtuoso exercises in harmonization and orchestration. A more recent example was Glazunov’s “Finnish Fantasy,” op. 88 (1909), in which a Kalevala recitation formula was adopted as the immutable “given” for subjection to what in the anglophone literature has become known as the “changing background” technique. But these were not Stravinsky’s precedents. The genre they belonged to was an essentially frivolous one: just recall how quickly it had degenerated into the fun and games of the Belyayevets “Chopsticks” paraphrases. More serious works in the genre tended to spurn the implications of the folk prototype, defeating the nepodvizhnost’ of the model by investing the changing backgrounds with some semblance of conventional “symphonic” form. In works like Balakirev’s First Overture on Russian Themes (1858) or the Finale of Chaikovsky’s Second Symphony (so often, and so wrongly, touted as his “most fully Russian work”),'>* the use of folk ostinati is only one element among many—a decorative surface feature, unrelated to the real structural principles of the music, which are entirely “Western,” that is, Germanic. Stravinsky was the first Russian composer to take the structural principle of Russian folk ostinati seriously for art music, and the result was received by

the Russian musical establishment, who knew better than the French what this composer was about, as the most blatant sort of oproshchentye. Nevertheless, Stravinsky’s antisymphonic agenda had distinguished antecedents. In an 1868 letter to Rimsky-Korsakov, already quoted in part (see Chapter 2, n. 114.), Musorgsky had insisted that the German symphonic style was no more accessible to Russians than German cuisine, since German logic was alien (he said)

to the Russian mind. Despite three generations of conservatory training, by Stravinsky’s day the situation had not really changed. For all the technical “Gebrauchs-formulas” of the St. Petersburg school, Russian composers (as Musorgsky had so keenly observed) still started with their conclusions and only reasoned

ex post facto—that is, if strings of sequences count as reasoning. It 1s what was christened drobnost’—the quality of being a sum-of-parts—in evaluating Stravinsky’s earliest compositions and their models, and it was something Russian composers who aspired to real mastery of German techniques found themselves per-

grish has been mentioned (n. 133 above). Also directly relevant to an understanding of The Rite’s structure is a virtually endless recording of a vesnyanka called “Oy vir, vir kolodez” by a well-known and muchrecorded Smolensk peasant singer named Agrafena Glinkina (the same one who furnished to Tatyana Popova the tune given above in Ex. 12.11¢), included 1n the disk anthology “Poyut narodniye ispolniteli” (Melodiya D-24901, band 1). Glinkina’s rendition may be compared with the model stanza given by Popova in Osnovi russkoy narodnoy muziki (Moscow: Muzika, 1977), 34; or in Taruskin, “Russian Folk Melodies,” 533. The tune fits the modal prototype of Stravinsky’s Ritual Action theme, described above, to perfection. 158. New Grove Dictionary, s.v. “Tchaikovsky” (18:611).

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST’, UPROSHCHENIYE [955]

petually battling and bewailing. Thus Chaitkovsky: “All my life I have been much troubled by my inability to grasp and manipulate form in music. I fought hard against this defect and can say with pride that I achieved some progress, but I shall end my days without ever having written anything that is perfect in form. What I write has always a mountain of padding: an experienced eye can detect the thread in my seams and I can do nothing about it.”!>? In our consideration of drobnost’ several chapters back, it was suggested that the quality was a defect only from a certain ideological standpoint. Chaikovsky, alumnus of the first Russian conservatory’s first graduating class and proud of the fact, was hopelessly enthralled by the Germanic ideology. He equated perfection in form with mastery of “forms” and of the techniques of transition (that is, “padding”) required to achieve shapeliness and a sense of direction. Stravinsky, motivated by his neonationalist convictions and much bolstered by his close friendship with the representatives of the most anti-boche faction in French music, was at last going off the defensive vis-a-vis the Teutonic standard, which he now took great pleasure in attacking. He expressed himself forcefully on these points in a letter to his mother—of all dubious recipients!—written at the very height of his work on The Rite: Musechka! Today we received your letter, in which you write, among other things, that you do not agree with my negative attitude toward the activity of Glazunov and the other pillars of academicism. Truly I do deny them. ... As far as academicism as a negative phenomenon 1s concerned, I find that I can do no better than to shout constantly at the top of my voice that it is a necessary evil, given, or rather sent down, from above, so that the good shall shine forth the more distinctly. But submit to it or see something precious in it I will not.!©

He was getting rid of cultured “padding” sans regret. From now on he would revel in the drobnost’ that, according to Musorgsky, came naturally to a Russian composer, and he would turn it into a high esthetic principle. Guided by this principle, he made determined efforts—efforts that may be traced in the Rite sketchbook in engrossing detail—to scotch the symphonic, the developmental, the transitional, wherever they might chance to raise their heads. Thus was born the famous “Method,” whose progress was traced by Edward Cone in his classic article of 1962 and whose origins, according to Cone, were to be found precisely in The Rite.!© Henceforth Stravinsky’s music would no longer

159. Letter to the Grand Duke Konstantin, 3 October 1888; quoted in Gerald Abraham, ed., The Music of Tchaikovsky (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 26. 160. Letter of 16/29 March 1912; 1n [StrSM:507-8. 161. Edward T. Cone, “Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method,” in Perspectives on Schoenberg and

Stravinsky, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 156-64.

[956] 12 * THE GREAT FUSION

meet the normative criteria traditionally deemed essential to coherent musical discourse. There would be no harmonic progresston, no thematic or motivic development, no smoothly executed transitions. His would be a music not of process but of state, deriving its coherence and its momentum from the calculated interplay of “immobile” uniformities and abrupt discontinuities. The only process that remained would be that of accumulation, The Rite’s governing principle par excellence. The ballet as a whole is structured on it, each of its two parts beginning quietly and slowly and building to a concluding frenzy. On more local levels, too, accumulation is potent: prime movers in The Rite are the mounting tension caused by the expectation of imminent change after prolonged unmodified activity and the sonic crescendo resulting from the gradual piling-up of individually unaffected elements. In all other ways state, not process, would be the norm. A chord that in RimskyKorsakov could justify its existence only by “cunning preparation and resolution,” by the processes of its becoming and its proceeding, could now simply de. A motif that could justify its myriad repetitions in Chaikovsky or Glazunov by the cleverly shifting harmonic and coloristic environments the composer was able to devise for it now simply added its voice to the chorus of similarly static ingredients. To an extent previously unthinkable in “cultured” music, chord and motif were hypostatized, turned into stone, timbrally and registrally so fixed that even transposition— let alone transformation or transition—were inconceivable.

Examples can be adduced from the individual dances in The Rite practically at random. The Dance of the Earth, already closely examined from other perspectives, may be taken as a paradigm of “sonic accumulation.” The whole piece is a crescendo brought about by the seriatim addition to the texture of highly individualized separate ostinati, each of them derived 1n its own way from the source melodies discovered in the sketchbook, each contrasting boldly with all the others in its modal affinities, each rigidly and immutably maintained from its point of entry

to the end. The dance exemplifies maximalistic simplification in another way, too, if we compare it with an earlier Stravinsky composition such as the Fireworks, op. 4. The discussion of that piece in Chapter 5 took note of the subtle and ingenious ways in which Stravinsky played the octatonic off against the diatonic and the whole-tone, of how the collections interacted and interpenetrated, and of the recondite harmo-

nies to which these elaborate strategies gave rise. In the Dance of the Earth, the same collections coexist in their separate strata without interacting, producing harmonies—“polyharmonies”—much more radical than those in Fireworks, but at the same time much simpler in conception and far less artful as to the technical means by which they are generated. Uproshchentye or oproshcheniye?

The Glorification of the Chosen One presents an ideal model of “hypostatization.” The opening 5/8 measure constitutes the “theme” in the outer sections of the

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST’, UPROSHCHENIYE [957]

dance. Each of its twenty subsequent appearances 1s identical to the first. What is not uniform is grouping—that is, the number of identical repetitions that make up each successive statement of the theme (anywhere from one to four)—and also the number of eighth-note beats that elapse between the statements (anywhere from two to thirty-eight). These intervening beats are “marked” by a vamp consisting of static repetitions of Rite chords. The number of these beats being unpredictable, each return to the theme is perceived as a disjuncture, a disruption of an “immobile uniformity.” Momentum is maintained by exploiting this interplay of utter fixity and its opposite, utter mutability. But even the mutable element is mutable only with respect to its temporal unfolding; in terms of pitch and harmony it is just as hypostatized as the theme. The listener is involved, as it were, in a guessing game: When will vamp give way to theme? How many reiterations will a given statement of the theme contain? The middle section of the dance (figs. [111]—[117]), distinguished from the surrounding sections in the 1913 four-hands reduction by a key signature of five flats, shifts over to another set of hypostatized elements. Three new static ideas, radically differentiated in instrumentation, are intercut. As before, the only variable elements are temporal, “quantitative.” But whatever is variable gets varied to the hilt! Stravinsky’s rhythmic innovations in The Rite, hardly less conspicuous than his harmonic ones, are, if anything, even more of a twentieth-century legend. Yet no less conspicuously were these innovations the product of Russian traditions and a response to the Russian cultural atmosphere at the moment of The Rite’s creation. “Rhythm,” wrote Blok in his study of charms and spells, “is what hypnotizes, inspires, compels.” And, quoting Anichkov, he added, “In rhythm is rooted that invincible and elemental force of man that makes him the most mighty and powerful of all the animals.”!©? The force of rhythm is the elemental force, the “Scythian” force of stikbiya that Stravinsky was not alone in attempting to unleash. Not alone in the attempt, but all alone in the realization: for the better part of a century now his ballet has been hypnotizing, inspiring, and compelling all who have come in contact with it. The rhythmic novelties in The Rite are of two distinct types. One 1s the hypnotic type: the “immobile” ostinato, sometimes quite literally hypnotic, as when the Elders charm the Chosen One to perform her dance of death. That is what their Ritual Action is all about, and that is why, except for a brief middle section (figs. (135 ]—[138]) the beat-rhythm of this dance is the most rigid and relentless, and the most undifferentiated as to stress, of any number in the ballet save what eventually became known as the “Dances of the Painted Girls” (Plyaski shchegolikh: the French “Danses des adolescentes” hardly does the title justice) in the Spring Auguries,

162. Blok, “Poéziya zagovorov,” in Sobrantye sochinenty v shestt tomakh 5:47.

[958] 12 * THE GREAT FUSION

where the nepodvizhnost’ of the ostinato chords is after all somewhat compromised by the famous syncopated accents. !©?

The other 1s the “invincible and elemental” kind, and it was truly an innovation—for Western art music, that is; in Russian folklore it had been a fixture from time immemorial. This ts the rhythm of irregularly spaced downbeats, requiring a correspondingly variable metric barring in the notation. There had been such a thing in Russian art music before Stravinsky, and even in Stravinsky’s own earlier music. But in The Rete Stravinsky took the device to unprecedented heights, both in terms of the complexity of the patterns involved and in terms of the violence with which he articulated the variable metric stresses. To demonstrate that the device has its precedents in Russian folk song it will suffice to recall a couple of examples already given in other contexts. The wedding song “Zvon kolokol v Yevlasheve selye? (Ex. 12.11¢) was originally transcribed by

Rimsky-Korsakov from the singing of Borodin’s maid. “I struggled till late at night trying to reproduce [the] song,” Rimsky reported in his memoirs. “Rhythmically it was unusually freakish, though it flowed naturally from the mouth of. . . Dunyasha Vinogradova, a native of one of the governments along the Volga.”!©* In the end, the meter shifts he adopted have a decidedly Stravinskian appearance, as a glance at Stravinsky’s Appeal to the Ancestors will confirm (Ex. 12.424, from the sketchbook). Rumsky’s barrings and Stravinsky’s are equally arbitrary. Rimsky was clearly trying to get the tonic accents to fall on downbeats, but was thrown by the long melisma on -kol. One can easily imagine Stravinsky consolidating the two successive 4/8 bars in Rimsky’s transcription into a single 8/8, perhaps with a characteristic dotted bar in the middle. For his part, Stravinsky was never satisfied with the barring of his Appeal. The bassoons here representing “five old men,” as the composer told Robert Craft one day, he must have thought of the bars as marking the tonic accents of their “speech.”!©° Nevertheless, he seems to have taken pains from the first to conceal one of the recurrences of the initial 7/4 group (bracketed in Example 12.424). Both in the 1913 score (published in that year for piano four-hands and in 1921 for orchestra) and in a 1929 revision, Stravinsky broke the long measures down as Rimsky had done (see Ex. 12.42b—c). “The smaller bars proved

163. It is often claimed that the accented chords at [13] and analogous spots are not syncopated because the rhythmic background is too undifferentiated to establish a metrical regularity against which syncopation could be perceived. But to make this argument is to forget that the four-note ostinato pattern that defines the metrical unit at [14] had been prefigured in the passage between [12] and [13], so

that when the repeated chords come, the ear has been conditioned to construe the measure just as Stravinsky has barred it. 164. My Musical Life, 16s. 165. D&D:228.

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST’, UPROSHCHENIYE [959]

EXAMPLE 12.42 “Appeal to the Forefathers of Humankind” (“Evocation des ancétres”), fig. (pedal tone omitted) a. Sketchbook, p. 74

Ci e_ es se la LO ee ———. cf. m. | ——-_,,

Pet 2am ‘na Se 1 — 7_—_ ee _ a ne re oo

2 — = — SO —

a = rE 2s rr? re — |—__ —— b. 1913 score (as per four-hand arrangement)

A a eS a -

1S2— 5 mam SSeS aE — PySS rr —Se yy SS ore =SS ‘ae Oe y__1SS 3 SS‘mae SSeeSS

7 - eee, ee eee eee eee eee eee ees

2 eee ee ee ee eee eee ee eee ee - eee

Cc. 1926 revision (published 1929)

35 > —1 = a i rer _—: ye m= re er yg) “AE - Deeee See ee eeee . eeeee e e ee s e eeeee e e eeeee eeeeee ee

=—pereE == nn cf. Ex. 12.42a, m. 1 _

more manageable for both conductor and orchestra, and they greatly simplified the scansion of the music,” he wrote in 1960.'© This result is accomplished straightforwardly enough in the 1913 score. The 1929 revision can hardly be said to have simplified the scansion, though. Stravinsky’s new enjambement (the 3/2 bar) may have been motivated by a wish to give more emphasis to the high E-flat, but it conceals yet another recurrence of the initial 7/4 group. What is variable gets varied indeed; endlessly varied, with no chance of a definitive formulation. '©” A more familiar situation, both as regards folk music and as regards Stravinsky, is illustrated by the dilima melody cited in Example 12.5a. The melodic recurrence is what determines the placement of the bar. With only two easily accounted-for exceptions, the measures all begin alike but are variously extended. Compare the Mystic Circles, where pairs of measures are related in precisely this way (Ex. 12.43). Particularly fascinating and innovative is the way the two rhythmic/metric situations—the “passive” ostinato and the active shifting stress—are often vertically aligned, creating one of Stravinsky’s most original textures and one that over the next decade would become a veritable trademark. The melody in Example 12.43 is accompanied in the lower strings by an ostinato of an unvarying four-eighths

duration, which shifts in and out of phase with the variable downbeats of the main tune. Neither textural element is in syncopation with respect to the other, nor can either be said to dominate. Fixity and mutability here coexist in concurrent, independent strata. Another instance 1s the middle section of the Glorification. Beneath a variable-downbeat pattern in the violins and violas pizzicati, the lower strings, lower winds, and percussion play a rigid figure of (once again) four-eighths duration. Again the parts go in and out of phase, neither possessing what could be called the defining or dominant rhythm against which the other could be construed as syncopated (Ex. 12.44). Even this device of Stravinsky’s is congruent with the practices of folk performers, particularly those who accompany themselves on strumming or striking instruments like the balalaika or (recall Kolosov) the gusli: their accompaniment patterns rarely change to accommodate the shifting stresses and melodic variations of the tune, leading at times to virtual “polymeter.” The most radical form of the variable-downbeat technique is one in which the shifting meters are coordinated on the “subtactile” level—that is, by an equalized value that is less than the duration of a felt beat, or tactus.!©® There was no direct

166. E&D:168/147.

167. For a detailed and stimulating, if ultimately inconclusive, discussion of the barring of the Appeal to the Ancestors and its vicissitudes, see Van den Toorn, Stravinsky and “The Rite,” 44-51. 168. For a useful discussion of “tactus,” not in the restricted context of late-medieval or Renaissance music theory but in general terms as the “perceptually prominent level of metrical structure,” see Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983),

7iff. The most cogent general discussion of Stravinskian metrics in print is chapter 3 (“Stravinsky Rebarred”) in Van den Toorn, Stravinsky and “The Rite.”

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST’, UPROSHCHENIYE [961]

EXAMPLE 12.43 The Rite, fig. [91], violin I ——=—=_--—~—~—S—__ —=——___t—“—eNONSCNS

_—______ sr? I LF, 3-————

i=aae

L_—____2 + 2—___J Lod BU EXAMPLE 12.44 “Glorification,” figs. [114 ]-[915], violin and cello parts only

; ViolinI (5) (6) Violin II (5) (6)

EE Ss Se RE GE ee t ainsi ee Pee ee Ee precedent for this technique in earlier Russian art music; Stravinsky “discovered” it on page 31 of his sketchbook—the passage (already quoted and discussed) in which the main theme of the Game of “Cities” is transformed for the Abduction

(Ex. 12.40c). It was a momentous discovery, one that ultimately paved the way for the ragtime parodies of the late Swiss years and, from there, the “Bachianisms” of the Sonate and the Concerto for Piano, all based on the rapidly shifting, “subtactile” eighth-note pulse used for the first time as a rhythmic coordinator in the

Abduction sketch. The Abduction having been transferred back, as we know, to a position much earlier in the score than that to which it was assigned in the original scenario (still observed in the sketchbook), the device in question makes a deceptively early appearance in the ballet. It is the only such appearance in the first tableau. In Part IT it is very conspicuous, reaching its apogee, in terms both of complexity and of fractionated counting value (sixteenths rather than eighths) in the vertiginous Sacrificial Dance—the dance “which I could play,” as Stravinsky tells us in

a memoir, “but did not, at first, know how to write.”!©? One can believe this. There was no precedent for rhythms like these in any written tradition save the recent tradition of “scientific” folk song collecting. Also reaching its apogee in the Sacrificial Dance was the technique of hypostatization—extreme fixity of musical “objects’—examined most closely above in 169. E&D:161—62/141.

[962] 12 * THE GREAT FUSION

connection with the Glorification. More than in any earlier number, the metric processes in the Sacrificial Dance are “mosaic,” concretized in specific, discrete, and above all minuscule musical “tesserae,” the variations in the ostensible “metric” patterns actually reflecting permutations of the order in which these tiny fixed elements are juxtaposed. This is drobnost’ raised to the highest power: a wholly new constructive princi-

ple, not merely a rhythmic innovation. Its influence on receptive musicians (Varese, to pick an obvious example) was far more profound than that of The Rite’s more superficially arresting maximalisms on the likes of Prokofiev (the Scythtan

Suite) or the “Futurists” of the early Soviet period with their Raids (Deshevov), their Dnepr Dams (Meytus) or their Foundries (Mosolov). The literalness of the analogy with tesserae (or “cells,” as they are customarily called now, after Messiaen and Boulez) is breathtakingly disclosed in the sketchbook, when Stravinsky suddenly takes to representing his fixed musical objects with letters, arranging and rearranging them at will (Fig. 12.15).

In the Sacrificial Dance, the primary articulation of the irregularly spaced downbeats is accomplished not by varying durations (as it is in the Appeal to the Ancestors; see Ex. 12.42) or by recurring melodic configurations (as in the Glorification)—though these elements remain present—but in a far more elemental,

stikhiyniy fashion: by violent stresses in the bass instruments and percussion. , There can be no mistaking these tumultuous downbeats, and the barring follows them rigorously.!”° Stravinsky had achieved the oxymoronic impossible: nonperi-

| odic meter.

i But without periodicity there can be no sense of arrival. And without a sense of arrival, there can be no sense of an ending. Once set in motion, the typical Stravin-

sky dance is an inertial entity that, as Irina Vershinina observes, “can only be stopped, interrupted, broken off by outside interference.”’”' In most cases it is the next dance that does the interrupting. The endings of the two tableaux, however, were a problem. As we have seen, Stravinsky solved the problem of an ending with characteristically brilliant simplicity at the conclusion of Part I. Yet the sudden jarring halt that “interferes” with the Dance of the Earth would hardly have worked again at the end of the second 170. In the version of 1913, anyway (observe the left hand of the secondo in the four-hands arrangement). In the 1922 revision, as a result of breaking the 5/16 measures down into 2’s and 3’s (cf. the similar

modifications in the Evocation), Stravinsky created a few anomalies (e.g., the measure at fig. [148]). There are many more of these in the 1943 revision, Stravinsky having apparently decided that the conductor’s job needed easing, even if it meant the loss of that very clarity in the “scansion of the music” he had previously sought to preserve. Moreover, the last dance is the one section of The Rite in which the “other” type of rhythm—immobile regularity—is altogether suppressed, routed (as it were) by the dynamic shifting stress. “Without the convenience of a basso ostinato,” Van den Toorn shrewdly observes, all sense of “periodicity [is] lost to the modification and reshuffling of the metrically fixed elements” (Stravinsky and “The Rite,” 96). 171. Vershinina, Ranntye baleti Stravinskogo, 180.

DROBNOST’, NEPODVIZHNOST’, UPROSHCHENIYE [963]

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