I eliminated my post on the Emancipation Reform of 1861. Although the Emancipation Reform of 1861 had deleterious effects on many Russians, Mussorgsky (21 March 1839 – 28 March 1881) became an alcoholic because extreme behaviour was fashionable in his days. (See Modest Mussorgsky, Wiki2.org.)
However, those who turned to the “worship of Bacchus” did not necessarily become alcoholics. Mussorgsky did, and it led to his death.
Repin‘s portrait of Mussorgsky, the eyes in particular, is one of his finest paintings.
Time flies. So I am not altogether finished a post on Sweden’s Age Liberty which began a little before Peter the Great defeated the Swedish Empire and ended in 1821 and lasted until Swedish King Gustav III‘s self-coup of 1872, which takes us to the House of Bernadotte (27 September 2018).
Borodin is exceptional. He was a doctor and scientist. Music was not his profession, but who could tell? His lyricism is a major characteristic of Borodin’s compositions and these are numerous. In the Steppes of Central Asia has an exotic flavour. It is a tone poem, one continuous and rather short piece of music.
The piece I selected does not feature bells. It therefore differs from Modest Mussorgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain, Une nuit sur le mont chauve, 🎶which is the very first piece of music I was introduced to. Among my early memories of the red brick house are my father’s late night gatherings with music lovers. Chauve means bald. We could see chauves-souris (bats) flying about.
So, we will not hear bells in Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia (Mongolia), composed in 1880. However, a wide range in volume is typical of the music of the Five, and Borodin’s.
My main source is Wiki2.org.’s entry on Borodin’s lovely piece and my own knowledge. I have studied music, every aspect, all my life.
I am or was in the process of selling my apartment or, to be more precise, my one-ninth of a small apartment building. The first person who visited made an offer I considered acceptable.
However, the co-owners of this building will not allow anyone to take a mortgage to pay for his or her ninth of the building. It has to be paid in full. My portion was bought by proxy. What a mistake!
At any rate, I have not been able to write since learning that I am unlikely to find a buyer for my property.
Bells in Russian Music
However, we have more bells in Russian music. Modest Mussorgsky was one the “Five” composers, the “mighty handful,” who wanted to give an identity to the music of Russia.
I have used Hartmann’s design in an earlier post, but in a different context and in relatively finer days for the Ukraine.
We have already seen two paintings by Isaac Levitan’s (August 30, 1860 – August 4 1900). Isaac Levitan, a Jew, was a Lithuanian-Russian artist and he created the “mood landscape,” lyrical landscape paintings. Levitan was associated with the Peredvizhniki(wanderers), a group of artists who sought more freedom than was allowed by academic art. Levitan was a friend of Nikolai Chekhov, a painter, and also befriended Nikolai’s brother, Anton Chekhov.
Nikolai had died of tuberculosis in 1889 and, as mentioned in earlier posts, Levitan spent the last year of his life at Anton Chekhov’s house, in Crimea. Levitan died of a terminal illness at the age of forty. Anton, a medical doctor, died of tubercolusis in 1894.
Despite ill-health, Levitan was extremely productive. According to Wikipedia, “Isaac Levitan‘s hugely influential art heritage consists of more than a thousand paintings, among them watercolors, pastels, graphics, and illustrations.”
The above painting reminds me of Canada where birch trees are plentiful. You probably remember from our voyageurs blogs that canoes were made of birch. If one was destroyed, voyageurs and Amerindians could build a new one quickly by helping themselves to what birch trees provided. Nails were not used in building canoes.
Isaac Ilyich Levitan (30 August 1860 – 4 August 1900: aged 40) was one of Alexei Savrasov‘s students. Savrasov introduced a “lyrical landscape” style. As for Levitan, he aimed to produce “mood landscapes.”
Levitan was born in Lithuania, now Russia. He was the son of Elyashiv Levitan, a rabbi. In 1870, the Levitan family moved to Moscow. That year, Savrasov joined the Peredvizhniki (wanderers) group of landscape painters, as would Levitan in later years. Members of the Peredvizhniki wished to free themselves from the restraints of Academic painting. They felt that the state had no business in the studios of its artists.
As a Jew, Levitan had to leave Moscow when Alexander Soloviev attempted to assassinate Csar Alexander II, in May 1879. His leaving for provincial Russia occurred a year after Levitan’s father’s death, which had left the family impoverished. Levitan’s career was not interrupted as he received a scholarship and continued to study art. However, it is somewhat ironic that so impoverished a student would become a world-famous artist and would be elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts, in 1898.
Levitan loved the “lyrical charm of the Russian landscape.” (Levitan, Wikipedia) As a gifted artist, he befriended élite members of the world of art and literature. Artists are first and foremost artists. They constitute a community where ethnicity and creed have little significance.
Artist Isaac Levitan spent his last year in Chekhov’s home in Crimea. In the early 1880s, he had provided illustrations for the magazine “Moscow,” published by the Chekhov brothers. (Levitan, Wiki2.org.)
Bells
The above painted shows in the distance “onion” steeples and is entitled The Bells. During a piano lesson devoted to Rachmaninoff’s well–known Prelude in C#minor (Op 3, No 2), my teacher asked me to tell him what I was hearing during the last few bars of the piece. I played the ending and final cadence and told him I was hearing bells. Yes, he said, bells.
“Lyrical” Landscapes & “Mood” landscapes
Savrasov’s “lyrical” landscapes and Levitan’s “mood” landscapes reflect a wish to create landscapes that unite painting and poetry. At that time in history, musicians were composing Symphonic poems. The Symphonic poem is “a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section (a movement) in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another (non-musical) source is illustrated or evoked.” (Symphonic Poem, Wikipedia.) Franz Liszt coined the term “Symphonic poem.”
Therefore, Rimsky-Korsakov’s music is not altogether European music, but it is music to which a ballet could be choreographed, as is the case with so much of the music of Tchaikovsky (May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893). Composers were then setting music to ballets based on fairy tales and other tales. Russia is the birthplace of an enormous number of tales and in the nineteenth century, both folklore and orientalism were fashionable. (See Orientalism and Japonism)
Orientalism
The Arabian Nights reached Western and Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century. They did not replace Charles Perrault‘s (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) Contes de ma mère l’Oye FR (Tales of Mother Goose) published in 1697, but enriched the répertoire of stories that could be set to music. Orientalism was not knew to Europe, east and west. The Orient helped shape the European imagination from the time of the Crusades, if not long before. For instance, Italian-language countries had been exposed to the travel accounts and tales of Marco Polo(c. 1254 – January 9, 1324), written as Il Milione.
Among early twentieth–century ballet companies, none was more popular than Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes and among the ballets he produced was Scheherazade(1910), set to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov. The ballet was choreographed by Michel Fokine and performed in 1910. Léon Bakst had designed the appropriate sets and costumes and the ballet starred Vaslav Nijinsky.
The narrative is a gem. Scheherazade (Persian transliteration Šahrzâd) was a Persian Queen and the storyteller of the One Thousand and One Nights(Scheherazade in Wikipedia). Rimsky-Korsakov’s simply loved the story of Scheherazade. It had an oriental flavour, a flavour the “Mighty Handful,” the Five, wished to impart to the music of Russia. The music of Russia could not be altogether Western European. Russia stretches all the way to the Far East. Léo Bakst produced sets and costumes that constituted a brilliant dépaysement, or change of scenery.
The Story of Scheherazade
As the story goes, King Shahryar, whose wife has been unfaithful to him, vows to marry a virgin every day and have her beheaded the next day. When he meets Scheherazade, a thousand wives have already been beheaded.
So our clever Scheherazade collects an enormous number of stories. In Sir Richard Burton‘s (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) translation of The Nights we are also told that Scheherazade “had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.” (quoted in Scheherazade, Wikipedia)
Scheherazade is therefore well prepared to entertain the King by telling him stories. Much against the will of her father, she volunteers to spend one night with the King. However, after the marriage is consumated, Scheherazade asks to be allowed to bid her sister Dinazade farewell.
Storytelling
Dinazade’s role is to ask her sister to tell the King a story. The first night Scheherazade tells her story, but does not finish it in the hope that the King will want to hear the remainder the following night. The second night, Scheherazade not only finishes her first story, but she begins to tell another story which, again, she does not finish so the King will keep her alive. This goes on and on. Never has such a tribute been paid to storytelling, the art of the raconteur. That would be one of my conclusions.
In all, Scheherazade tells the King a thousand and one stories over a thousand nights and then says that she has no more stories to tell. But all is well that ends well. King Shahryar has fallen in love with his storyteller and during the thousand nights, he has also fathered three children. In other words, he is no longer bitter and vindictive and makes Sheherazade his Queen.
So now we know how powerful good storytelling can be. The effectiveness of the good raconteur has been confirmed. Therefore, to be a successful writer, it may be useful to write a page-turner and, if at possible, give it rhythm and powerful imagery. And it may go a good idea to tell it to music and, in the case of stories based on Scheherazade, burn incense: synesthesia, summoning every sense.
I must close leaving details behind, but we have nevertheless looked at riveting storytelling and the magic of the trivialized “song and dance.” Ballet is not your ordinary “song and dance,” it is a great art form originating in Italy, France and Russia. But that is another story.
