My page about Russia is incomplete, but it is under construction. I have named it the “Art and Music of Russia,” but we have also discussed, briefly, the history of Russia. Posts on the history of Russia will be listed separately. I also wrote posts on Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes. For the time being, I am not separating these posts from the “Music of Russia.” Igor Stravinsky, Sergey Prokoviev and other composers wrote the music for the ballets. Diaghilev’s ballets were produced by a team, including artists, one of whom was Pablo Picasso. The musician featured below is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, one of “The Five” who wrote operas and music based on folktales.
I believe that Vladimir Putin started the war in Ukraine almost single-handedly. However, many Russians support him, and soldiers obey orders. I suspect he is opposed by countries that formerly comprised the USSR. Sadly, a 96-year-old Holocaust survivor was killed in Kharkiv,
So, we will have a page on Russia. Although most of the posts recorded on that page are about artists and composers, one cannot avoid referring to Russian history.
Not so long ago, we explored the music of Russia. Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was the leader of The Five. The Five were composers who attempted to write music that was distinctly Russian. Mussorgsky had befriended architect and artist Viktor Hartmann who died of an aneurysm when he was 39. It was a shock for Mussorgsky. According to critic Vladimir Stasov, Viktor Hartmann gave two pictures to Mussorgsky, one of which was a sketch of the “Great Gate of Kiev.” The two pictures inspired Modest Mussorgsky, who composed Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite of ten pieces for the piano divided by promenades and written in 1874. The tenth and final piece of the suite is based on Hartmann’s the “Great Gate of Kiev.” (Kiev is Kyiv)
Pictures at an Exhibition is Modest Mussorgsky’s most famous composition. We seldom hear the piano suite because it must be performed by a virtuoso pianist. Remember that the ringing of bells is a characteristic of the music of Russia and Ukraine.
Vladimir Stasov’s portrait by Ilya Repin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Saint Petersburg governor at the Kremlin (Image: SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
Hartmann’s Kyiv is now being destroyed by Vladimir Putin; I cannot believe what I am seeing. This is madness on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and if I could close the sky over Ukraine, I would. Vladimir Putin is the architect of this massacre. The flying zone is an open gate because Ukraine is not a member of NATO, which, ironically, gives Putin the freedom to destroy a country. As for the United States, it is burying Manifest Destiny.
It could be that Putin remembers times that will never return. Russia was once so large that it was called “toutes les Russies,” all the Russias.
At what cost will Ukraine survive this insane invasion?
The Cycle Don Juan belongs to the world. Wikipedia’s entry on Molière’s Dom Juan contains lists. In other words, there are several narratives, plays, poems, music, films, etc. featuring Don Juan, including Mozart’s Don Giovanni, an opera. But Don Juan, the lady-killer and murderer, was created by Spanish baroque dramatist Tirso de Molina (24 March 1579 – 12 March 1648), a monk in the Mercedarian (from mercy) order. On his return from a mission in Santo Domingo (1616-1618), Tirso resided in the Mercedarian monastery in Madrid.
According to Hérodote.net (please scroll down to a text and a video), Molina had read in the Chronique de Séville, that Don Juan, the murderer of Governor Ulloa, whose daughter he seduced, was led to hell by a live statue of the Governor, le commandeur. The body of the governor had been laid to rest in the burial ground of a Franciscan convent. In Dom Juan, a play by Molière, the rake suffers the same fate as Governor Ulloa’s Don Juan. In Molière’s Dom Juan, la statue du Commandeur, invites Dom Juan to dinner, takes his hand, which Dom Juan offers, and leads him to a fiery abyss (toutmolière.notice).
The myth or legend may precede Tirso de Molina’s play, but former lady-killers would belong to an oral tradition. In the learned (written) tradition, the first Don Juan is the protagonist of Tirso de Molina’s The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest. The play was first performed in 1625 (toutmolière.notice).
Mozart’s Don Giovanni (K 257) (1787), written on a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, and Molière’s Dom Juan (1665) are the most famous versions of the Don Juan legend, but the legend may have different components. For instance, I mentioned, in an earlier post, that Molière’s Dom Juan contains little eroticism, in which it differs from Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan, whose lady-killer is driven by his sexual appetite. Moreover, in Molière’s play, the commandeur is killed before the curtain rises and Dom Juan has tired of Done Elvire, his wife, who left a convent, l’obstacle sacré d’un couvent (I. i, p. 3) (the sacred obstacle of a nunnery [I. 1, p. 80]), to marry Dom Juan.
At this point, I will mention Don Juan Tenorio, a play written in 1844, by José Zorrillia. In Zorrillia’s play, Doña Inés de Ulloa has died and a statue of her has been erected. She comes to life again, as do various statues of commandeurs, and leads Dom Juan to heaven. Don Juan Tenorio has a happy ending. Doña Inés has been in purgatory atoning for Don Juan’s murdered victims: Don Luis, Doña Ana’s fiancé, and Don Gonzalo, Doña Ana’s father.
Don Juan Tenorio differs substantially from Molière’s and Mozart’s. But it remains that all versions of Don Juan, including Don Juan Tenorio, are variations on a theme by Tirso the Molina.
The Stone Guest (Pushkin’s), Don Juan and Doña Ana by Ilya Repin, 1885 (Wikiart.org)
Two Traditions
Romantic
farcical
Don Juan Tenorio can be described as a romanticized Don Juan.The Don Juan cycle can be broken into traditions, such as the farcical and the Romantic. The Romantic Don Juan reaches beyond the limits of the human condition. This Don Juan has intimations of immortality, etc. Lord Byron‘s Don Juan is a Romantic Don Juan. (See Don Juan [Lord Byron].)
Molière’s Dom Juan is enigmatic, but it can considered farcical. He is an inferior character who dares believe that all women are entitled to the brief attention he will bestow. Sganarelle tells Dom Gusman (Leporello in Don Giovanni), that Dom Juan is an “épouseur à toutes mains.” He has married so many women that it would take Sganarelle all day to name them:
… dame, demoiselle, bourgeoise, paysanne, il ne trouve rien de trop chaud, ni de trop froid pour lui; et si je te disais le nom de toutes celles qu’il a épousées en divers lieux, ce serait un chapitre à durer jusques au soir. Sganarelle à Don Gusman (I. i, p. 3) [A lady, gentlewoman, citizen’s daughter, countrywoman; he thinks nothing too hot or too cold for him; and if I were to tell you the names of all those whom he has married in different places, I would not have finished until night.] Sganarelle to Don Guzman (I. 1, p. 80)
In Leporello’s catalog there would be mille e tre.[1]
Alexander Pushkin also wrote a Romantic Don Juan, His Stone Guest is a poetic dramabased on Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It was part of his “little tragedies.” Pushkin did not mean it for the stage. However, Alexander Dargomyzhsky wrote an opera entitled The Stone Guest, based on Pushkin’s Stone Guest. Although the opera was left unfinished, it is/was Dargomyzhsky‘s most famous work. It was finished by César Cui and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, two of the Five composers.
However, Molière’s Dom Juan is also the bombastic and a rather étourdi, scatterbrained, character. Dom Juan does not allow Sganarelle, Molière’s role, to reprimand him. He and God can settle issues between one another, which is fine material for a farce. God will not use a needle to deflate Dom Juan, but the Commandeur he has killed will come to life and push him into hell.
Va, va, c’est une affaire entre le Ciel et moi, et nous la démêlerons bien ensemble, sans que tu t’en mettes en peine. Dom Juan to Sganarelle(I. ii, pp. 7-8) [That’s enough. It’s an issue between Heaven and me, and we get along just fine without you bothering yourself about it.] Dom Juan to Sganarelle (I. 2, p. 68)
Conclusion
Molière’s Dom Juan was written quickly and was condemned after 15 performances. It is a famous Don Juan, yet part of a cycle of seducers created by Tirso de Molina (1625). Tirso, who wrote approximately 300 plays, some of which were licentious, was at times reprimanded. In fact, he was sent briefly to Salamanca. His Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, the first Don Juan, was written in the country where casuistry, a form of jurisprudence on moral issues,was developed. Casuistry could justify many sins.
We now turn to Molière Dom Juan which features Sganarelle, our last Sganarelle, Molière’s masque.
[1]In Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni, the list of the mille e tre conquests of the hero, as sung by Leporello, beginning Madamina, il catologo è questo, Delle belle ch’amo ilpadron mio, produces a great and admirable effect. (Henri van Laun, The Dramatic Works of Molière, vol. 2, p. 81, footnote 5).
The 19th century was the century of nationalism. The Brothers Grimm went from German-language land to German-language land to collect folklore, which they believe would help reveal distinct German roots. Germany had yet to unify and become the German Empire.
As for The Five, our Slavic composers, they attempted to express Eastern Russia. Music in Russia had been westernized since Peter the Great. The Five did not turn their back fully on classical harmony and counterpoint, but they started using whole-tone scales leading Western composers to create new scales.
The Programme
However, the “programme” remained to be established. In the 19th century, several composers favoured “programmatic” music. Music had to tell a story. Despite his early death, in a duel, poet Alexandre Pushkin (1799-1837), wrote poems that were Russian fairy tales, whatever their origin. A nation acculturates folktales.
“In turn, all of them borrowed from the ancient Copts legend first translated by the French Arabist Pierre Vattier in 1666 using the 1584 manuscript from the collection of Cardinal Mazarin.”
Ivan Bilibin had studied at the Anton Abže Art School in Munich and had been influenced by Art Nouveau and Japanese prints. But he also studied under Ilya Repin. However, he became interested in folklore. It was a magnet. He graduated from the Anton Abže Art School after publication of his illustrations of Russian fairy tales. He was associated with Mir iskusstva, an association and a magazine. Bilibin fled Russia, during the October Revolution in 1917. In 1925, he settled in Paris where he worked for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and decorated private mansions and Orthodox churches. But he was homesick. After decorating the Soviet Embassy, in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia. He died of starvation during the Siege of Leningrad, in the land whose fairy tales he had illustrated.
Ivan Bilibin‘s 1909 stage set design for Act 2: The Tsardom of Tsar Dadon, Town Square (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As for Ivan Bilibin‘s delightful illustrations of Pushkin’s fairly, they are yet another lovely and universally enjoyable expression of a ‘distinct’ Russia.
The Five may have been looked upon as lesser musicians by members of the musical establishment in Russia. For instance, Mily Balakirev did refuse appointments because he had little formal training. I spent the most important years of my life in academic establishments and have seen colleagues finding fault with other colleagues. So, the Russian Five may been ridiculed.
However, I would like to point out that Mikhail Glinka (1 June 1804 – 15 February 1857) respected Mily Balakirev (2 January 1837 – 29 May 1910), the leader of The Five, and that Tchaikovsky applauded Balakirev.
The Five took their lead from him Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, who could be called the father of classical music in Russia. Moreover, Mily Balakirev befriended Glinka and they composed music together. When Glinka and Balakirev’s patron, Alexander Ulybyshev (Oulibicheff) (1794-1858) died, Balakirev lost support that was vital to him.
In other words, The Five did not oppose classical music. Their wish was to give Russian classical music its Slavic character. As we have seen, Rimsky-Korsakov sent Tchaikovsky ten fugues he had composed, which Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) examined and found “impeccable.” (See RELATED ARTICLE.)
As for Tchaikovsky himself, let us read:
“Tchaikovsky’s training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy.”
(See Tchaikovsky, Wiki2.org.)
I should also note that in 1867, after hearing a concert given by Slavic composers, critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article entitled Mr. Balakirev’s Slavic Concert. Composers included Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Mily Balakirev, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The concert was performed for visiting Slav delegations at the “All-Russian Etnographical Exhibition” in Moscow.
God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today’s concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians.
Vladimir Stasov’s article was consecration for The Five and Slavic composer Alexander Dargomyzhsky. Their work now belonged to an all-Russian effort to express Russia’s distinct and distinguishable Slavic roots.
Similarly, the great Glinka, associated with Romanticism, recognized The Five. He and Balakirev composed The Lark.
It could be said that The Five were a baudelaireianfrisson nouveau: a new shudder. But were it not for The Five and Tchaikovsky, would classical music have inherited its internationally-acclaimed Russian répertoire?
Glinka drawn in the 1840s, portrait by Yanenko (Wiki2.org.)
This post was to contain a discussion of the three gentlemen portrayed below, but I divided my subject matter, so that we would first be acquainted with changes brought about by The Five. How did they express an Eastern Russia? There had to be technical departures from traditional harmony and counterpoint.
It also seemed important to feature the music composed by Mily Balakirev, the rather troubled leader of The Five. Balakirev had a fine piano teacher in Karl Eisrach. Through Eisrach, he found a patron in count Alexander Ulybyshev, Alexandre Oulibicheff FR, and a kind predecessor in Mikhail Glinka. But Bakakirev was not born to a well-to-do family and, at times, he lacked tack. When the opportunity arose to work as a director of the Russian Musical Society (RMS), replacing Anton Rubinstein, his expressed preference for modern composers alienated Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, the conservative patron of the RMS. He was dismissed.
It would seem, however, that the greatest disservice Balakirev did to himself was to refuse formal instruction in harmony and counterpoint. It could be that tuition fees were unaffordable, but even less affordable was his disdain for such disciplines. He would turn down possible appointments because he had not studied theory: harmony and counterpoint, yet say that formal instruction was unnecessary. Truth be told, he knew harmony and counterpoint, but could not, for instance, put little numbers identifying chords. (See the example in Wiki2.org.’s entry on Figured Bass.)
An example of figured bass in context. Taken from Beschränkt, ihr Weisen, by J. S. Bach (BWV 443) (Wiki2.org.)
At any rate, when Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov started purchasing paintings from contemporary artists, he also called for portraits of eminent contemporaries. Ilya Repin heard the request and included the Slavic composers, The Five, several portraits of authors, Tolstoy in particular, and various prominent figures in the world of visual arts, music, literature, or culture in general. Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov is the founder of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which he donated to the Russian nation in 1892.
I wanted to discuss the three gentleman featured at the centre of Ilya Repin’s Slavic Composers. The next post features Mikhail Glinka, a predecessor and collaborator to Mily Balakirev. In the middle, smoking a cigar, is Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky. Vladimir Odoyevsky was an aficionado of Gothic fiction, a music critic, and more. He published The Living Corpse, in 1844.
Portrait of (left to right) Balakirev, Vladimir Odoyevskyand Mikhail Glinkaby Ilya Repin. The painting is somewhat anachronistic – Balakirev is depicted as a man approaching middle age, with a full beard; however, Glinka died in 1857, when Balakirev was only 20 years old. (Balakirev, Wiki2.org.)
The C major heptatonic (7) scale consists of two identical tetrachords (4) c-d-e-f and g-a-b-c. A tone separates c & d, but e & f are placed next to one another on a keyboard. They are a semitone. C major has no sharps ♯ or flats ♭. On a keyboard, it is played entirely on the seven white keys. The second tetrachord, g-a-b-c-, is the beginning of the following scale in one sharp ♯. The scale following C major is G major (f ♯ ). It starts on the dominant (5th degree) of C major. These scales contain sharps (♯).
The F major scale has a key signature: b♭. The next scale following the F major scale begins on the fourth note (the subdominant) b♭. Both tetrachords (4 notes) are identical. The scale following B♭ major begins on e♭. It is E♭ major or E-flat major. Its key signature has three flats ♭ (b♭, e♭, a♭).
Each major key has a relative minor key located a tone and a half lower than its relative major key. Students play the A harmonic minor scale, but there are a natural A minor scale and a melodic A minor scale.
The Keyboard: 12 keys
A keyboard has seven (7) white keys and five (5) black keys: 7 + 5 = 12. A scale may begin on all twelve keys. J. S. Bach composed The Well-Tempered Clavier, 48 Preludes and Fugues. (See Chromatic scale, Wiki2.org.)
Whole-Tone Scales
The Five did not hesitate to use different scales, such as whole-tone scales and other scales. The did so systematically. Whole-tone scales consist of full-steps (tones rather than semitones). European and Russian composers started to experiment with new scales. Whole tones had been used in Western music, but not systematically. To know changes made by The Five, see their Wiki2.org entry.
New scales do not necessarily yield better compositions. I have often run back to Tomás Luis de Victoria.
Balakirev’s Islamey & Ouverture on 3 Russian Themes
Mily Balakirev’s Islamey, an Oriental Fantasy is western music with departures that give pieces Slavic flavour. It is a very difficult to play. To make it simpler, or more difficult, one may use and ossia, an alternative rewriting. The word ossia (ou soit; or else) is associated with Balakirev’s Islamey.
However, consummate virtuoso pianists, such as Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886) and Vladimir Horowitz (1903 – 1989) could play such pieces without encountering difficulties. We will listen to Horowitz’s interpretation.
Love to everyone 💕
I apologize for the delay. It’s bronchitis. I cannot speak.
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.
Viktor Alexandrovich Hartmann (5 May 1834, St Petersburg – 4 August 1873, Kireyevo near Moscow) was a Russian architect and painter who lived during a period in European and Russian history when nationalism flourished. The quest for a national identity included a search for a national esthetics that had been expressed in some Golden Age, and would again be expressed in music, art, design, and other art forms. Hartmann’s plan was for a city gate in Kiev is an attempt to capture an inherently Russian and Ukrainian esthetics.
The Search for a National Identity
For instance, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, in what would become a unified Germany, the brothers Grimm scoured the German-language states collecting its German-language folklore and planting the seeds of what would become a discipline: ethnology. But Russia was an exceptional case in that the country stretched thousands of kilometers. Esthetically and otherwise, it was therefore rooted in more than one culture.
Viktor Hartmann was therefore associated with the Abramtsevo Colony. The Abramtsevo Colony had been purchased in 1870 by Savva Mamontov, a patron of the arts who promoted a Russian Revival. Abramtsevo was the hub of revivalism.
Viktor Hartman’s foremost contribution to the Russian Revival was his Plan for the Gates to Kiev (Ukraine), a design rooted in what he perceived as inherently Russian (and Ukrainan).
Hartmann was Mussorgsky’s closest friend, but the two were forever separated when Viktor Hartmann died from an aneurysm at the early age of 39. An exhibition of Hartmann’s paintings was organized which inspired Modest Mussorgsky‘s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), a suite for the piano that painted musically and therefore constitutes a union of music and painting suggesting synesthesia. It is c the piano, as it was composed by Mussorgsky. However, French composer Maurice Ravel transformed the work for piano into an orchestral work of music. To hear it, please click on the following link: Mussorgsky/Ravel and enjoy yourselves. In this post, Mussorgsky’s piano suite is played by Sviatoslav Richter. By the way, listen for the sound of bells.
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[i] This portrait was painted in 1881, a short time before Mussorgsky’s death from alcoholism. Mussorgsky’s wealthy family was impoverished when serfdom was abolished in 1861. He joined a group advocating extreme behaviour.
composer: Modest Mussorgsky (21 March 1839 – 28 March 1881)
pianist: Sviatoslav Richter (20 March 1915 – 1 August 1997)
![Raimundo Madrazo, MarÃa Guerrero in the role of Doña Inés, who has just found a love letter from Don Juan, hidden in the pages of a book.[1]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Raimundo_de_Madrazo._Retrato_de_Mar%C3%ADa_Guerrero_en_Do%C3%B1a_In%C3%A9s._1891.jpg/640px-Raimundo_de_Madrazo._Retrato_de_Mar%C3%ADa_Guerrero_en_Do%C3%B1a_In%C3%A9s._1891.jpg)
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