IT is difficult to fix the exact moment at which the little “rift within the lute” became audible in the harmony of Balakirev’s circle. In 1872 Balakirev himself was in full opposition on many points with the policy of the I. R. M. S. and was maintaining his series of concerts in connection with the Free School in avowed rivalry with the senior institution. His programmes were highly interesting and their tendency progressive, but the public was indifferent, and his pecuniary losses heavy. In the autumn of that year he organised a concert at Nijny-Novgorod in which he appeared as a pianist, hoping that for once a prophet might not only find honour but substantial support in his own country. He was doomed to disappointment; the room was empty and Balakirev used to allude to this unfortunate event as “my Sedan.” He returned to St. Petersburg in low spirits and began to hold aloof from his former friends and pupils. Eventually—so it is said—he took a clerkship in the railway service. At this period of his life he began to be preoccupied with those mystical ideas which absorbed him more or less until the end of his days.

After a time he returned to the musical life, and in the letters of Borodin and in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Chronicle” we get glimpses of the old ardent propagandist “Mily Alexe’ich.” From 1867 to 1869 he was Director of the Imperial Chapel. But a few years later he again separated from his circle and this time he shut himself off definitely from society, emerging only on rare occasions to play at some charity concert, or visit the house of one of the few friends with whom he was still in sympathy. It was during these years that I first met him at the Stassovs’ house. So few strangers ever came in contact with Mily Balakirev that I may be excused for giving my own personal impressions of this remarkable man.

From the moment when I first began to study Russian music, Balakirev’s personality and genius exercised a great fascination for me. He was the spark from whence proceeded not only a musical conflagration but the warmth of my own poor enthusiasm. Naturally I was anxious to meet this attractive, yet self-isolated personality. It was an early summer’s evening in St. Petersburg in 1901, and the excuses for the gathering were a birthday in the Stassov family, and the presence of an English enthusiast for Russian music. Balakirev was expected about 9 p.m. Stassov left the grand piano open like a trap set for a shy bird. He seemed to think that it would ensnare Mily Alexe’ich as the limed twig ensnares the bullfinch. The ruse was successful. After greeting us all round, Balakirev gravitated almost immediately to the piano. “I’m going to play three sonatas,” he announced without further ceremony, “Beethoven’s Appassionata, Chopin’s B minor, and Schumann No. 3, in G minor.” Then he began to play.

Balakirev was rather short. I do not know his pedigree, but he did not belong to the tall, fair type of Great Russia. There was to my mind a touch of the oriental about him: Tatar, perhaps, not Jewish. His figure was thickset, but his face was worn and thin, and his complexion brownish; his air somewhat weary and nervous. He looked like a man who strained his mental energies almost to breaking point; but his eyes—I do not remember their colour—were extraordinarily magnetic, full of fire and sympathy, the eyes of the seer and the bard. As he sat at the piano he recalled for a moment my last remembrance of Hans von BÜlow. Something, too, in his style of playing confirmed this impression. He was not a master of sensational technique like Paderewski or Rosenthal. His execution was irreproachable, but one did not think of his virtuosity in hearing him play for the first time; nor did he, as I expected, carry me away on a whirlwind of fiery emotion. A nature so ardent could not be a cold executant, but he had neither the emotional force nor the poetry of expression which were the leading characteristics of Rubinstein’s art. What struck me most in Balakirev, and reminded me of BÜlow, was the intelligence, the sympathy, and the authority of his interpretations. He observed, analysed, and set the work in a lucid atmosphere. He might have adopted Stendhal’s formula: “Voir clair dans ce qui est.” It would be wrong, however, to think of Balakirev as a dry pedagogue. If he was a professor, he was an enlightened one—a sympathetic and inspired interpreter who knew how to reconstruct in imagination the period and personality of a composer instead of substituting his own.

Having finished his rather arduous but self-imposed programme, we were all afraid that he might disappear as quietly as he came. An inspiration on my part to address him some remarks, in extremely ungrammatical Russian, on the subject of his songs and their wonderful, independent accompaniments, sent him back to the piano, where he continued to converse with me, illustrating his words with examples of unusual rhythms employed in his songs, and gliding half unconsciously into some of his own and other people’s compositions. He could not be persuaded to play me “Islamey,” the Oriental Fantasia beloved of Liszt, but I remember one delicate and graceful valse which he had recently written. By this time the samovar was bubbling on the table and the room was filled with the perfume of tea and lemon. Happily Balakirev showed no signs of departure. He took his place at the table and talked with all his old passion of music in general, but chiefly of the master who had dominated the renaissance of Russian music—Michael Ivanovich Glinka.

Russians love to prolong their hospitality until far into the night. But in May the nights in St. Petersburg are white and spectral. At midnight the world is steeped in a strange light, neither twilight nor dawn, but something like the ghost of the departed day haunting the night that has slain it. Instead of dreams one’s mind is filled with fantastic ideas. As I drove home through the streets, as light as in the daytime, I imagined that Balakirev was a wizard who had carried me back to the past—to the stirring period of the ’sixties so full of faith and generous hopes—so strong was the conviction that I had been actually taking part in the struggles and triumphs of the new Russian school.[35]

After this I never entirely lost sight of Balakirev. We corresponded from time to time and he was always anxious to hear the fate of his music in this country. Unfortunately I could seldom reassure him on this point, for his works have never roused much enthusiasm in the British public. He died on Sunday, May 29th, 1910. I had not long arrived in Petersburg when I heard that he was suffering from a severe chill with serious complications. Every day I hoped to hear that he was on the road to recovery and able to see me. But on the 16th I received from him a few pencilled lines—probably the last he ever wrote—in which he spoke of his great weakness and said the doctor still forbade him to see his friends. From that time until his death, he saw no one but Dimitri Vassileivich, Stassov’s surviving brother, and his devoted friend and pupil Liapounov. He died, as he had lived for many years, alone, except for his faithful old housekeeper. He departed a true and faithful son of the Orthodox Church. In spite of his having spent nearly twenty years of his life in pietistic retirement, the news of his death reawakened the interest of his compatriots. From the time of his passing away until his funeral his modest bachelor apartments could hardly contain the stream of people of all ages and classes who wished to take part in the short services held twice a day in the death chamber of the master. He was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Cemetery, not far from the graves of Dargomijsky, Glinka and Stassov.

The true reason for the loosening of the bonds between Balakirev and his former pupils cannot be ascribed to differences in their religious opinions. It was rather the inevitable result of the growth of artistic individuality. Balakirev could not realise this, and was disenchanted by the gradual neglect of his co-operative ideal. Borodin took a broad and sensible view of the matter in writing to one of the sisters Karmalina in 1876:—“It is clear that there are no rivalries or personal differences between us; this would be impossible on account of the respect we have for each other. It is thus in every branch of human activity; in proportion to its development, individuality triumphs over the schools, over the heritage that men have gathered from their masters. A hen’s eggs are all alike; the chickens differ somewhat, and in time cease to resemble each other at all. One hatches out a dark-plumed truculent cock, another a white and peaceful hen. It is the same with us. We have all derived from the circle in which we lived the common characteristics of genus and species; but each of us, like an adult cock or hen, bears his own character and individuality. If, on this account, we are thought to have separated from Balakirev, fortunately it is not the case. We are as fond of him as ever, and spare no pains to keep up the same relations as before. As to us, we continue to interest ourselves in each other’s musical works. If we are not always pleased it is quite natural, for tastes differ, and even in the same person vary with age. It could not be otherwise.”

The situation was no doubt rendered more difficult by Balakirev’s unaccommodating attitude. “With his despotic character,” says Rimsky-Korsakov, “he demanded that every work should be modelled precisely according to his instructions, with the result that a large part of a composition often belonged to him rather than to its author. We obeyed him without question, for his personality was irresistible.” It was inevitable that, as time went on and the members of “the mighty band” found themselves less in need of guidance in their works than of practical assistance in bringing them before the public, Balakirev’s circle should have become Belaiev’s circle, and that the MÆcenas publisher and concert-giver should by degrees have acquired a preponderating influence in the nationalist school. This change took place during the ’eighties.

Mitrofane Petrovich Belaiev, born February 10th, 1836, was a wealthy timber merchant, with a sincere love of music. He was an exception to the type of the Russian commercial man of his day, having studied the violin and piano in his youth and found time amid the demands of a large business to occupy his leisure with chamber music. My recollections of Belaiev recall a brusque, energetic and somewhat choleric personality of the “rough diamond” type; a passionate, but rather indiscriminate, enthusiast, and an autocrat. Wishing to give some practical support to the cause of national music, he founded a publishing house in Leipzig in 1885 where he brought out a great number of works by the members of the then new school, including a fine edition of Borodin’s Prince Igor. He also founded the Russian Symphony Concerts, the programmes of which were drawn exclusively from the works of native composers. In 1889 he organised the Russian Concerts given with success at the Paris Exhibition; and started the “Quartet Evenings” in St. Petersburg in 1891. Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazounov and Liadov wrote a string quartet in his honour, on the notes B-la-f. Belaiev died in 1904, but the Leipzig house still continues its work under its original manager, Herr Scheffer.

Undoubtedly Belaiev exercised a powerful influence on the destinies of Russian music. Whether he was better fitted to be the central point of its activities at a certain stage of its development than Balakirev is a question which happily I am not called upon to decide. Money and business capacity are useful, perhaps indispensable, adjuncts to artistic progress in the present day, but they can never wholly take the place of enthusiasm and unstinted devotion. “Les choses de l’Âme n’ont pas de prix,” says Renan; nevertheless there is a good deal of bidding done for them in this commercial age. It is easy to understand the bitterness of heart with which the other-worldly and unconformable Balakirev saw the members of his school passing one by one into “the circle of Belaiev.” He had steered the ship of their fortunes through the storms and shoals that beset its early ventures; but another was to guide it into the haven of prosperity and renown. Rimsky-Korsakov, in his “Chronicle of my Musical Life,” makes his recantation of old ideals and enthusiasms in the following terms: “Balakirev’s circle was revolutionary; Belaiev’s progressive. Balakirev’s disciples numbered five; Belaiev’s circle was more numerous, and continued to grow in numbers. All the five musicians who constituted the older school were eventually acknowledged as leading representatives of Russian music; the later circle was made up of more varied elements; some of its representatives were men of great creative gifts, others were less talented, and a few were not even composers, but conductors, like DÜtsh, or executants like Lavrov. Balakirev’s circle consisted of musicians who were weak—almost amateurish—on the technical side, who forced their way to the front by the sheer force of their creative gifts; a force which sometimes replaced technical knowledge, and sometimes—as was frequently the case with Moussorgsky—did not suffice to cover their deficiences in this respect. Belaiev’s circle, on the contrary, was made up of musicians who were well equipped and thoroughly educated. Balakirev’s pupils did not interest themselves in any music prior to Beethoven’s time; Belaiev’s followers not only honoured their musical fathers, but their remoter ancestors, reaching back to Palestrina.... The relations of the earlier circle to its chief were those of pupils to their teacher; Belaiev was rather our centre than our head.... He was a MÆcenas, but not an aristocrat MÆcenas, who throws away money on art to please his own caprices and in reality does nothing to serve its interests. In what he did he stood on firm and honourable ground. He organised his concerts and publishing business without the smallest consideration for his personal profit. On the contrary, he sacrificed large sums of money, while concealing himself as far as possible from the public eye.... We were drawn to Belaiev by his personality, his devotion to art, and his wealth; not for its own sake but as the means to an end, applied to lofty and irreproachable aims, which made him the central attraction of a new musical circle which had only a few hereditary ties with the original ‘invincible band.’”

This is no doubt a sincere statement of the relations between Belaiev and the modern Russian school, and it is only fair to quote this tribute to his memory. At the same time, when the history of Russian music comes to be written later in the century, both sides of the question will have to be taken into consideration. My own views on some of the disadvantages of the patronage system I have already expressed in the “Edinburgh Review” for July 1912, and I venture to repeat them here:

“He who pays the piper will, directly or indirectly, call the tune. If he be a MÆcenas of wide culture and liberal tastes he will perhaps call a variety of tunes; if, on the other hand, he be a home-keeping millionaire with a narrowly patriotic outlook he will call only for tunes that awaken a familiar echo in his heart. So an edict—maybe an unspoken one—goes forth that a composer who expects his patronage must always write in the ‘native idiom’; which is equivalent to laying down the law that a painter’s pictures will be disqualified for exhibition if he uses more colours on his palette than those which appear in his country’s flag. Something of this kind occurred in the ultra-national school of music in Russia, and was realised by some of its most fervent supporters as time went on. It is not difficult to trace signs of fatigue and perfunctoriness in the later works of its representatives. At times the burden of nationality seems to hang heavy on their shoulders; the perpetual burning of incense to one ideal dulled the alertness of their artistic sensibilities. Less grew out of that splendid outburst of patriotic feeling in the ’sixties than those who hailed its first manifestations had reason to anticipate. Its bases were probably too narrowly exclusive to support an edifice of truly imposing dimensions. Gradually the inevitable has happened. The younger men threw off the restrictions of the folk-song school, and sought new ideas from the French symbolists, or the realism of Richard Strauss. There is very little native idiom, although there are still distinctive features of the national style, in the work of such latter day composers as Scriabin, Tcherepnin and Medtner. The physiognomy of Russian music is changing day by day, and although it is full of interest, one would welcome a development on larger and more independent lines.”

In 1867 Nicholas Lodyjensky joined the circle. He was a young amateur gifted with a purely lyrical tendency, who played the piano remarkably well and improvised fluently. He composed a number of detached pieces and put together some fragments of a symphony and an opera, on the subject of “The False Dimitrius.” Rimsky-Korsakov says his music showed a grace and beauty of expression which attracted the attention of the nationalist group, especially the music for the Wedding Scene of Dimitrius and Marina, and a setting for solo and chorus of Lermontov’s “Roussalka” (The Water Sprite). But Lodyjensky, like Goussakovsky, was a typical dilettante; almost inspired, but unable to concentrate on the completion of any important work. After a time he dropped out of the circle, probably because he had to earn his living in some other way, and the strain of a dual vocation discouraged all but the very strongest musical spirits.[36]

A musician of greater reputation who was partly attached to the nationalists was Anatol Liadov, whose work does not include any operatic composition.

Whatever the changes in the constitution of the nationalist party, Vladimir Stassov remained its faithful adherent through all vicissitudes. Some account of this interesting personality will not be out of place in a history of Russian opera. Vladimir Vassilievich Stassov, who may be called the godfather of Russian music—he stood sponsor for so many compositions of all kinds—was born in St. Petersburg, January 14th, 1825. He originally intended to follow his father’s profession and become an architect. But eventually he was educated at the School of Jurisprudence and afterwards went abroad for a time. He studied art in many centres, but chiefly in Italy, and wrote a few articles during his travels. He returned to St. Petersburg, having acquired a command of many languages and laid the foundation of his wide critical knowledge. For a time he frequented the Imperial Public Library, St. Petersburg, where his industry and enthusiasm attracted the notice of the Director, Baron Korf, who invited him to become his temporary assistant. Subsequently Stassov entered the service of the Library and became head of the department of Fine Arts. This, at least, was his title, although at the time when I knew him his jurisdiction seemed to have no defined limits. A man of wide culture, of strong convictions and fearless utterance, he was a power in his day. Physically he had a fine appearance, being a typical Russian of the old school. The students at the Library used to call him the Bogatyr,[37] or with more irreverence the “Father,” for he might have sat as an ideal model for the conventional representations of the First Person of the Trinity. Stassov’s views on art were always on the large side; but they were sometimes extreme and paradoxical. In polemics his methods were fierce, but not ungenerous. He was a kind of Slavonic Dr. Samuel Johnson, and there were times when one might as well have tried to argue calmly with the Car of Juggernaut. Those who were timid, inarticulate, or physically incapable of sustaining a long discussion, would creep away from his too-vigorous presence feeling baffled and hurt, and nursing a secret resentment. This was unfortunate, for Stassov loved and respected a relentless opponent, and only those who held their own to the bitter end enjoyed the fine experience of a reconciliation with him. And how helpful, considerate and generous he was in dispensing from his rich stores of knowledge, or his modest stores of worldly possessions, there must be many to testify; for his private room at the Public Library was the highway of those in search of counsel or assistance of any kind. He had a remarkable faculty for imparting to others a passion for work, a most beneficial power in the days when dilettantism was one of the worst banes of Russian society. In his home, too, he clung to the old national ideal of hospitality for all who needed it, and no questions asked. With all his rugged strength of character he had moments of childlike vanity when he loved to appear before his admiring guests attired in the embroidered scarlet shirt, wide velveteen knickers and high boots which make up the holiday costume of the Russian peasant; or dressed like a boyard of old. With all this, he was absolutely free from the snobbishness which is sometimes an unpleasant feature of the Russian chinovnik, or official. Naturally many stories were related of Vladimir Stassov, but I have only space for two short anecdotes here. The first illustrates the Russian weakness for hot, and often futile, discussion; the second, Stassov’s enthusiasm for art and indifference to social conventions.

Once he had been arguing with Tourgeniev, whose cosmopolitan and rather supercilious attitude towards the art of young Russia infuriated the champion of nationalism. At last Tourgeniev, wearied perhaps with what he called “this chewing of dried grass,” and suffering acutely from rheumatic gout, showed signs of yielding to Stassov’s onslaughts. “There,” cried the latter triumphantly, “now I see you agree with me!” This acted like the dart planted in the hide of the weary or reluctant bull. Tourgeniev sprang from his chair and shuffled on his bandaged feet to the window, exclaiming: “Agree with you indeed! If I felt I was beginning to think like you, I should fling open the window (here he suited the action to the word) and scream to the passers-by, ‘Take me to a lunatic asylum! I agree with Stassov!!’”

On another occasion “Vladimir Vassilich” returned late one evening from his country cottage at Pargolovo, without troubling to change the national dress which he usually wore there. This costume was looked upon with disfavour in the capital, as savouring of a too-advanced liberalism and sympathy with the people. On arriving home, his family reminded him that Rubinstein was playing that night at a concert of the I. R. M. S. and that by the time he had changed he would be almost too late to hear him. “I cannot miss Rubinstein,” said Vladimir Vassilich, “I must go as I am.” In vain his family expostulated, assuring him that “an exalted personage” and the whole Court would be there, and consequently he must put on more correct attire. “I will not miss Rubinstein,” was all the answer they got for their pains. And Stassov duly appeared in the Salle de la Noblesse in a red shirt with an embroidery of cocks and hens down the front. He was forgiven such breaches of etiquette for the sake of his true nobility and loyalty of heart.

Such was the doughty champion of the nationalists through good and evil fortune. His writings on musical questions form only a small part of his literary output, the result of over sixty years of indefatigable industry; for he was an authority on painting, architecture and design. Like Nestor, the faithful chronicler of mediÆval Russia, he worked early and late. He did great service to native art by carefully collecting at the Imperial Public Library all the original manuscript scores of the Russian composers, their correspondence, and every document that might afterwards serve historians of the movement. He was the first to write an important monograph on Glinka, and this, together with his book on Borodin, his exhaustive articles on Dargomijsky and Moussorgsky, and his general surveys of musical progress in Russia, are indispensable sources of first-hand information for those who would study the question of Russian music À fonds.[38] As a critic, time has proved that, in spite of his ardent crusade on behalf of modernism and nationality, his judgments were usually sound; as an historian he was painstaking and accurate; as regards his appreciation of contemporary art, he showed a remarkable flair for latent talent, and sensed originality even when deeply overlaid by crudity of thought and imperfect workmanship. He was apparently the first to perceive the true genius and power concealed under the foppishness and dilettantism of Moussorgsky’s early manhood. He considered that neither Balakirev, Cui, nor Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated the composer of Boris Godounov at his full value. He upheld him against all contemptuous and adverse criticism, and the ultimate triumph of Moussorgsky’s works was one of the articles in his artistic creed.