The Russian Opera. Newmarch Rosa
the lively character of the dance being very similar.
A few of the composers mentioned in the previous chapter were still working in Russia at the same time as Verstovsky. Of those whose compositions belong more particularly to the first forty years of the nineteenth century, the following are most worthy of notice:
Joseph Antonovich Kozlovsky (1757–1831), of Polish birth, began life as a soldier in Prince Potemsky’s army. The prince’s attention having been called to the young man’s musical talents, he appointed him director of his private band in St. Petersburg. Kozlovsky afterwards entered the orchestra of the Imperial Opera. He wrote music to Oserov’s tragedy Œdipus in Athens (1804); to Fingal (1805), Deborah, libretto by Shakovsky (1810), Œdipus Rex (1811), and to Kapnist’s translation of Racine’s Esther (1816).
Ludwig Maurer (1789–1878), a famous German violinist, played in the orchestra at Riga in his early days, and after touring abroad and in Russia settled in St. Petersburg about 1820, where he was appointed leader of the orchestra at the French theatre in 1835. Ten years later he returned to Germany and gave many concerts in Western Europe; but in 1851 he went back to St. Petersburg as Inspector-General of all the State theatrical orchestras. Maurer is best known by his instrumental compositions, especially his Concertos for four violins and orchestra, but he wrote music for several popular vaudevilles with Russian text, and co-operated occasionally with Verstovsky and Alabiev.
The brothers Alexis and Sergius Titov were types of the distinguished amateurs who played such an important part in the musical life of Russia during the first half of the last century. Alexis (d. 1827) was the father of that Nicholas Titov often called “the ancestor of Russian song.” He served in the Cavalry Guards and rose to the rank of Major-General. An admirable violinist, he was also a voluminous composer. Stassov gives a list of at least fourteen operas, melodramas, and other musical works for the stage, many of which were written to French words. His younger brother Sergius (b. 1770) is supposed to have supplied music to The Forced Marriage, text by Plestcheiev (1789), La Veillée des Paysans (1809), Credulity (1812), and, in co-operation with Bluhm, Christmas Festivals of Old (1813). It is probable that he had a hand in the long list of works attributed to his brother Alexis, and most of the Russian musical historians seem puzzled to decide how to apportion to each of the brothers his due share of creative activity.
A composer belonging to this period is known by name even beyond the Russian frontiers, owing to the great popularity of one of his songs, “The Nightingale.” Alexander Alexandrovich Alabiev was born at Moscow, August 4th, 1787[12] (O.S.). He entered the military service and, becoming acquainted with Verstovsky, co-operated in several of his vaudevilles. For some breach of discipline Alabiev was exiled for a time to Tobolsk. Inspired by the success of Cavos’s semi-national operas, Alabiev attempted a Russian fairy opera entitled A Moonlight Night or the Domovoï. The opera was produced in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but did not long hold a place in the repertory of either theatre. He next attempted music to scenes from Poushkin’s poem The Prisoner in the Caucasus, a naïve work in which the influence of Bellini obscures the faint national and Eastern colour which the atmosphere of the work imperatively demands. Alabiev, after his return from Siberia, settled in Moscow, where he died February 22nd, 1851 (O.S.).
CHAPTER III
MICHAEL IVANOVICH GLINKA
IN the preceding chapters I have shown how long and persistently Russian society groped its way towards an ideal expression of nationalism in music. Gifted foreigners, such as Cavos, had tried to catch some faint echo of the folk-song and reproduce it disguised in Italian accents; talented, but poorly equipped, Russian musicians had exploited the music of the people with a certain measure of success, but without sufficient conviction or genius to form the solid basis of a national school. Yet all these strivings and aspirations, these mistaken enthusiasms and immature presentiments, were not wasted. Possibly the sacrifice of many talents is needed before the manifestation of one genius can be fulfilled. When the yearning after a musical Messiah had acquired sufficient force, the right man appeared in the person of Michael Ivanovich Glinka. With his advent we reach the first great climax in the history of Russian music.
It is in accordance with the latent mysticism and the ardour smouldering under the semi-oriental indolence of the Russian temperament that so many of their great men—especially their musicians—seem to have arrived at the consciousness of their vocation through a kind of process of conversion. Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov, to mention but one or two examples, all awoke suddenly from a condition of mental sloth or frivolity to the conviction of their artistic mission; and some of them were prepared to sacrifice social position and an assured livelihood for the sake of a new, ideal career. Glinka was no exception. He, too, heard his divine call and followed it. Lounging in the theatres and concert rooms of Italy, listening to Italian singers and fancying himself “deeply moved” by Bellini’s operas, suddenly it flashed upon Glinka, a cultivated amateur, that this was not what he needed to stimulate his inspiration. This race, this art, were alien to him and could never take the place of his own people. This swift sense of remoteness, this sudden change of thought and ideal, constituted the psychological moment in the history of Russian music. Glinka’s first impulse was merely to write a better Russian opera than his predecessors; but this impulse held the germ of the whole evolution of the new Russian School as we know it to-day.
It is rather remarkable that outside the Russian language so little has been written about this germinal genius, who summed up the ardent desires of many generations and begat a great school of national music. The following details of his childhood and early youth are taken from his Autobiographical Notes and now appear for the first time in an English translation.
“I was born on June 2nd (May 20th, O.S.), 1804, in the glow of the summer dawn at the village of Novospasskoï, which belonged to my father, Ivan Nicolaevich Glinka, a retired army captain. … Shortly after my birth, my mother, Eugenia Andreievna (née Glinka), was obliged to leave my early bringing up to my grandmother who, having taken possession of me, had me transferred to her own room. Here in company with her, a foster mother, and my nurse, I spent the first three or four years of my life, rarely seeing anything of my parents. I was a child of delicate constitution and of nervous tendencies. My grandmother was in her declining years, and almost always ailing, consequently the temperature of her room in which I lived was never less than 20 Réaumur. … In spite of this, I was not allowed to take off my pelisse, and night and day I was given tea with cream and quantities of sugar in it, and also cracknels and fancy bread of all kinds. I seldom went into the fresh air, and then only in hot weather. There is no doubt that this early upbringing had a great influence on my physical development and explains my unconquerable affection for warm climates. …
“My grandmother spoilt me to an incredible degree and never denied me anything I wanted. In spite of this I was a gentle and well-behaved child, and only indulged in passing fits of peevishness—as indeed I still do when disturbed at one of my favourite occupations. One of my chief amusements was to lie flat on the floor and draw churches and trees with a bit of chalk. I was piously inclined, and church ceremonies, especially at the great festivals, filled me heart and soul with the liveliest poetic enthusiasm. Having learnt to read at a remarkably early age, I often moved my grandmother and her elderly friends to tears by reading the Scriptures aloud to them. My musical proclivities showed themselves at that time in a perfect passion for the sound of bells; I drank in these harsh sounds, and soon learnt how to imitate them rather cleverly by means of two copper bowls. When I was ill they used to give me a little hand-bell to keep me amused.
“On the death of my grandmother, my way of living underwent some changes. My mother spoilt me rather less, and tried to accustom me to