A. E. KEETON

Russian music is the strangest paradox—it owes more to the music of other countries than any other school, yet no music is more thoroughly individual and unmistakable. It clothes itself after the form and fashion of its neighbours, but beneath its garb peeps out a physiognomy indubitably Sclavonic. Its utterances impress us as the most modern—yet the student who would correctly analyze many of its unique characteristics of harmony and modulation is often obliged to take a flying leap backwards over a space of centuries in order to investigate old Church modes, or Persian and Arabian scale systems, both so ancient as to be well-nigh forgotten in Western Europe.

Sixty years ago, there was no Russian school of music, properly speaking; then suddenly it sprang into being. The wonderful rapidity of its growth almost confuses one. Its exponents at once displayed the astonishing receptiveness common to their race. D'un trait, as the French would say, they appropriated the knowledge and experience which the Italian and German schools had been slowly amassing for centuries. Technique, form, counterpoint—all these they found ready made to their hand, and borrowed them unstintingly. Had they done this and no more, the onlooker might have dismissed them as clever plagairists, and probably no one would have paid them any further attention. But they had other means at their disposal. Their country contained a treasure-house of native melody and rhythm; a region albeit which few Russians had hitherto thought it worth their while to explore. It is true that, since the middle of the Seventeenth Century, tentative excursions had been made in this direction from time to time, chiefly, though, by outsiders settled in Russia, nor had any of their efforts led to very appreciable results. The man who first turned with serious intent to the pent-up musical resources of his own country was Michael Ivanovitch Glinka. He had sufficient strength of purpose to carry out his designs—he became the founder of the modern Russian school of music and the father of Russian opera.

Glinka belonged to a good if not very wealthy family, who lived upon their estate in the government of Smolensk, where he was born in 1804. From babyhood upwards he delighted his friends and relations by his aptitude not for music alone, but also for languages, literature, zoology, botany—in fact, for each and every intellectual pursuit which came in his way. The brilliance of his college course in St. Petersburg was noteworthy. He quitted it to occupy a civil post under Government, a position, however, which he soon abandoned, in order to devote himself solely to music. Like so many other men of genius, he married a woman quite incapable of comprehending his artistic aims and ambitions; to quote the words of a Russian writer, Madame Glinka, nÉe Maria Petrovna, "was only a pretty doll, who loved society and fine clothes, and had no sympathy whatever with her husband's romantic, poetic side." One is glad to state that Glinka never had to struggle with poverty. He died at Berlin in 1857.

He did for Russian music what his contemporary, Pushkin, did for Russian literature, each in his own department representing a national movement. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched a theory to trace this movement to the momentous date of 1812, when it fell to the lot of Russia to administer the first check in Napoleon's triumphant career. Ever since the reign of Peter the Great it had been the fashion to ape foreign habits, to speak foreign tongues, to import foreign music, to mimic foreign literature. But when a foreign invader, who had marched all-conquering through the rest of Europe, appeared in serious earnest at the very gates of Moscow, there was a rebound: slumbering patriotism awoke with a great shout, and, united by a common danger, all classes gathered together for the protection of their Tsar and their Kremlin. To have repulsed a Napoleon was a mighty deed, which could reveal to the Russians of what stuff they were made. It taught them to rely upon each other and be strong in themselves; and as the art of a nation is invariably the outcome of its history, so the rising generation of Russian thinkers looked inwards rather than abroad. Glinka, Pushkin, and their followers sought no foreign aid; they represent a Russian Renaissance. They were content, indeed, to abide by the forms universally adopted elsewhere, but the spirit of their art manifestation was Russian to its core. In literature, Pushkin and Gogol were never weary of delineating their compatriots in every grade of Sclavonic society, whilst Glinka took his musical inspirations from his native folk-songs and dance-rhythms—from the historic chronicles of his country or its legendary lore. In reality, the foreign influences and environment with which he came so continuously into contact served more and more to convince him that Russia in her turn had as great a mission in music as any other nation. For thirty years the idea was gradually gaining strength in his mind. "I want," he said to a friend, "to write an essentially national opera both as regards subject and music; something which no foreigner can possibly accuse of being borrowed, and which shall come home to my compatriots as a part of themselves."

His fame depends solely upon the two operas, La Vie pour le Tsar and Russlan et Ludmille. That he should have chosen to express himself especially in opera is a significant fact. The unerring instinct of his genius evidently told him that in this form, rather than in purely instrumental music, he would most truly represent that people whose musical aspirations he wished above all else to portray faithfully, and certainly in opera lay his surest way towards enlisting the sympathies of his compatriots. As before remarked, one might have imagined that opera would scarcely ally itself to his personal individuality; it seems probable, therefore, that various salient traits inherent in the Russians as a nation must have led him to the choice. First and foremost, any music which claims to proceed from the very heart of the Russian people must contain a vocal element. So universal a love of singing as exists throughout Russia is to be met with in no other country.

By this one does not mean to infer that Russian cultivated singing, either solo or choral, is in any way superior to what is heard elsewhere. The Russian peasant knows absolutely nothing about voice production, nor, maybe, is he gifted with any unusual vocal material, nevertheless, singing is closely bound up with every rural event of his cheerless existence. During the last half-century many hundreds of the native melodies sung by the Russian country people for generations past have been collected and written down by different musicians—Balakireff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Prokoudin, and Lisenko amongst others. The variety of these folk-songs is astonishing. They never become monotonous, each song having its distinctive climax, and the air always suits the words. Often the untutored singer has one melody in his rÉpertoire, but intuitively he modifies its strains according to the sentiment of his subject.

This general love of music applies as much to the noble as to the peasant. "Where there is a Sclav there is a Song," says a Sclavonic proverb, and no public ceremony or Court function is ever deemed complete in Russia without an outburst of singing to heighten its impressiveness. There is besides a marked dramatic ingredient in the Sclavonic character. The typical Russian loves acting. To discover this, it is only necessary to visit a Russian village and witness the unconscious presentments of lyric drama or of desolate tragedy set forth by the quaint rites of a country wedding or a rustic funeral. Or study a Russian legend. It at once impresses you with its wealth of dramatic situations most concisely defined. In this, the Sclavonic folktale differs radically from its Celtic neighbour. A comparison of the two types suggests that the Russian principally desires a clear statement of facts; a poetic idea which must be extracted from clouds of metaphor conveys but little significance to his mind. An innate love of song, an innate love of acting, a keen perception of dramatic unity, combined with a passionate love of colour and a strong sense of movement—here surely, without any manner of doubt, one has the basis of a well-nigh perfect school of opera. Glinka, the cultivated musician, himself a Russian, thoroughly appreciated these national qualities; indeed they were part and parcel of his birthright. He could assimilate the characteristics of his race and merge them into his own very remarkable originality. The first product of the combined motors was La Vie pour le Tsar, given at St. Petersburg in 1836. Fifty years later it had reached its 577th performance, and from all accounts it still retains an undiminished popularity.

If we dissect this opera and examine its wonderful mastery of technique and its depth of musical inspiration, it displays beauties which cannot fail to appeal to connoisseurs of every race and school. But regarded as a whole, one is inclined to doubt its ever becoming a standard work outside its native home. Its true scope and meaning can only be justly estimated by a public acquainted with Russia herself, with her people, her history and her innermost modes of thought.

Glinka attached the highest value to the folk-song, of which, as already stated, he found a treasure trove ready to his hand. Nothing, though, was further from his thoughts than to employ this material in pot-pourri style. Russians themselves are all agreed that it would be difficult to select one whole folk-song from any single work of Glinka's. It would naturally require a native of Russia with an accurate knowledge of these native tunes to tell us exactly when and where he used them. He seized their mood. In this way he developed every species of Sclavonic folk-song—Great Russian, Little Russian, Circassian, Polish, Finnish—with a passing flavour contributed by Persia, for undoubtedly Oriental music had, at some remote period, influenced its Sclavonic neighbour very strongly. Glinka may be said to have attained his end almost unconscious of his mode of procedure. Determined to compose Russian music, he pursued his idea unremittingly, but it was only towards the close of his life that he began to seriously analyze his effects, asking himself whence he had obtained them and in what essential points they exhibited their nationality. This inquiry involved him in a field of research bewildering in its magnitude, and one which his early death unfortunately prevented him from thoroughly investigating. Nor is the task by any means completed now, some forty years later, although many Russian musicians have thrown considerable light upon its varied aspects. The first step towards a folk-song analysis was the collecting of the melodies in sufficient numbers for comparison. So much being done, it flashed upon Glinka that there was an intimate connection between the Russian folk-song and the most ancient Russian Church music. That is to say, the melody and the freedom of rhythm typical of the folk-song had been evolved by the people, whilst its harmonization, in which lay one of its most striking essentialities, had been bequeathed it by the Church. From all that can be gathered concerning music in Muscovy prior to the introduction of Christianity, it seems justifiable to admit that harmony, or part singing, was already practised amongst the inhabitants, in what manner it is impossible to conjecture. At any rate, when the Church of Byzantium took root there, the Sclav was sufficiently advanced musically to imbibe a new idea. We know that the Byzantine Church modes were purely diatonic, so is the harmonization of the Russian folk-song in its most elementary and uncorrupted form. That the one produced the other is a most natural conclusion. In the oldest of the Russian national melodies Glinka discovered the most clearly defined type of the earliest Christian songs on record.

A wonderful testimony this to the indwelling religious spirit of the Russian people, who change but little and who are singularly tenacious of their customs in spite of all their ready receptiveness. In one sense the folk-song is as rude and hardy as its singer; from another point of view it is a shy, delicate emanation shrinking from all human intercourse outside its own small coterie of familiar voices. In Russia, as in every other country, it has had to be sought in the remote Steppes and far-off districts where foreign influences had never penetrated, and by a curious inverse process its harmonies, of course, transmitted orally, were the means of preserving the Byzantine Church tonality long after this "first cause" had accepted chromatic and enharmonic modulations. In the chief Russian cities and more opened-up parts of the country, the Italian, French, and later on German elements gradually formed themselves into Church as well as secular music, and only within the last sixty years have attempts been made to restore this to its pristine and, perhaps it may be added, somewhat monotonous purity. The minor key in which the Sclavonic folksong was usually couched, together with its extraordinary variety of rhythm and phrase, protected it from this monotony, the minor keys having infinitely richer resources of colour, even when strictly diatonically treated, than the major.

Sclavonic music figures so constantly upon every concert programme in these days that we are probably most of us accustomed to its vagaries of rhythm, or what may be styled irregularity of metre. This is a direct heritage from the folk-song, which Glinka and his successors have borrowed largely.

The leading musical spirits of his day were quick to accredit him a kindred genius. Berlioz welcomed him gladly, and furthered his cause by eloquent writing as well as by obtaining him a hearing in Paris. Liszt was another enthusiastic "Glinkite," and Schumann, unfailingly keen to notice new talent pursuing a new path, speedily drew attention to a Russian who was doing for the music of his country what Chopin and Moniusco had done for Poland. Rubinstein, who was still a boy when Glinka's sun was near setting, grew up with a warm admiration for the founder of his native school, and in 1855 he spent some of his ardour upon a highly laudatory article in the Wiener Zeitschrift fir Musik, placing Glinka on a par with Beethoven. Glinka thoroughly detesting anything that savoured of flattery, took the young musician soundly to task for his pains; but Rubinstein remained true to his tenets, and later on, when years had matured his judgment, we find him including the name of Glinka with that of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, as the chief germinators of modern music; whilst one of the last acts of his generous public career was a concert given in aid of a national monument to the composer of La Vie pour le Tsar. With one or two minor exceptions, successive Russian masters have followed faithfully in Glinka's footsteps. To Borodine, Dargomijsky, Seroff, Balakireff, and Rimsky-Korsakoff a full meed of nationality has been granted. To Rubinstein and TschÁikowski criticism is at present disposed to deny the quality in its most salient features. But their prolific mass of compositions has so far scarcely been sufficiently explored outside their own Russian domain for a final judgment to be hazarded. A nearer inspection of their work, indeed, together with a more accurate study of Russian art as a whole, distinctly leads to the opinion that a revolution of feeling may eventually spring up, especially on the subject of their operas. Also Rubinstein's dramatic works, now mostly dismissed by foreigners as his weakest productions, may in due course be accepted as his finest creations. From the different reasons previously deduced there can be little doubt that in opera Glinka purposely laid the corner-stone of what he earnestly believed to be a true Russian school, and a glance at contemporary musical activity shows that here Russia has every opportunity for distinguishing herself, and that with very little competition.