Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Russian composer

• Born: March 18, 1844
• Birthplace: Tikhvin, Russia
• Died: June 21, 1908
• Place of death: Lyubensk, St. Petersburg District, Russia

One of the greatest and most prolific of Russian composers, Rimsky-Korsakov embodied in his music the nationalist spirit that was so important an element in late nineteenth century Russian culture. He composed fifteen operas, in addition to symphonies, concerti, chamber music, and solo pieces for piano and voice.

Early Life

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (REEM-skee kahrs-ah-KAHF) was born into a family of the Russian gentry. Although he demonstrated an early aptitude for music, family tradition required that he pursue a service career, and in 1856 he entered the Imperial Russian Navy, remaining on active duty until 1865. Somehow, however, he managed to compose. He had early made the acquaintance of Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev and, in time, sent him the manuscript of a first symphony, for which the latter arranged a public performance in December, 1865.

After 1865, Rimsky-Korsakov lived almost continuously in St. Petersburg, displaying an enviable ability to compose with an ease and rapidity that would characterize his entire career, for there was little of the artist’s angst in him. He soon became one of the group known as “the Five” or “the Mighty Handful”—the others were Balakirev, Aleksandr Borodin, César Antonovich Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky—all of whom were dedicated to the creation of a distinctly Russian musical idiom.

With the premiere of his first opera, Pskovityanka (1873; The Maid of Pskov ), Rimsky-Korsakov’s place among contemporary Russian composers was assured. Two years earlier, in 1871, he had been appointed the professor of composition and instrumentation at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, a position that he would occupy, except for a few months in 1905, for the remainder of his life. In 1874, he took over from Balakirev as director and conductor of the Free School Concerts, an arrangement that continued until 1881, and between 1886 and 1900 he was conductor of the newly established Russian Symphony concerts. By then, however, Rimsky-Korsakov had emerged as indubitably the most prolific of the Mighty Handful. He was blessed with a creative energy, a fluency of invention, and a melodic prodigality that, together with his devotion to traditional Russian folk song and folk melody, made him the embodiment of that phase of late nineteenth century Russian culture in which so many writers, artists, and musicians sought a return to a pre-Petrine Slavic heritage.

Rimsky-Korsakov experimented with most forms of musical composition, and although the bulk of his output was operatic, he wrote three symphonies, several symphonic suites, concerti for various instruments, a respectable corpus of chamber music (including three string quartets), solo pieces for the piano, choral works, and many songs. Antar (his second symphony, composed in 1868), Skazka: A Fairy Tale (1879-1880), Capriccio espagnol (1887), Scheherazade (1888), and the Russian Easter Festival Overture (1888) have remained perennial favorites. All exemplify Rimsky-Korsakov’s qualities as a composer—melodic inventiveness, strong rhythms, and brilliant orchestration.

Life’s Work

It is primarily as a composer of operas that Rimsky-Korsakov occupies his prominent place in Russian music. He completed fifteen operas, and, of these, only three have non-Russian subject matter: Mozart and Salieri , based upon Alexander Pushkin’s poem (first performed in Moscow in 1898); Servilia , based upon a Roman play by the popular contemporary dramatist Lev Mey (first performed in St. Petersburg in 1902); and Pan Voyevoda , with a Polish setting (first performed in St. Petersburg in 1904). His first opera, The Maid of Pskov, was also based upon a play by Mey. The Maid of Pskov is based upon a true episode, Ivan the Terrible’s visitation upon the city in 1569, and the czar himself is one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s most successful character roles. It was a favorite role with the famous bass Fyodor Chaliapin, and Rimsky-Korsakov thought him inimitable in it.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s second complete opera, Maskaya noch (May Night ), based upon a story by Nikolai Gogol, was well received at its premiere at the Maryinsky in 1880. Two years later, in 1882, the Maryinsky witnessed the opening of what is perhaps his best-loved opera, Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden ). Rimsky-Korsakov himself was extremely pleased with this work, in which he believed he had achieved for the first time a smooth-flowing recitative and in which the vocal writing as a whole constituted an advance upon his earlier work. The Snow Maiden was followed by Mlada (1892); Christmas Eve (1895), based upon a story by Gogol; and the magnificent, sprawling Sadko (1898), constructed from material taken from the bylini, the epic songs of medieval Russia, all three exemplifying his love of fantasy, folklore, and the fairy tale. In 1898, he returned to the subject matter of his first opera, The Maid of Pskov, and set to music Mey’s original prologue, Boyarinya Vera Sheloga . It received its premiere in Moscow later that same year.

Rimsky-Korsakov now felt himself ready to fulfill a long-standing ambition, the composition of an opera based upon the subject matter of Mey’s play Tsarskaya nevesta (The Tsar’s Bride ). For this, he seems to have intended something rather different from his earlier operas. “The style of this opera,” he declared:

was to be cantilena par excellence; the arias and soliloquies were planned for development within the limits of the dramatic situation; I had in mind vocal ensembles, genuine, finished and not at all in the form of any casual and fleeting linking of voices with others.…

The Tsar’s Bride was given its premiere in Moscow in 1899. Moscow was also the location for the opening nights of Skazka o tsare Saltane (1900; The Tale of Tsar Saltan ), based upon a poem by Pushkin, and the rarely performed Kashchey bessmertny (1902; Kashchey the Immortal ).

By then, however, Rimsky-Korsakov was absorbed in the composition of what is widely regarded as his greatest work, Skazaniye o nevidimom grade kitezhe i deve Fevroniy (1907; The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maid Fevronia ), a story linking the thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Russia, the legend of Saint Fevronia of Murom, and the pagan animism of pre-Christian Russia on which he had previously drawn for The Snow Maiden. The result was a work of profound spirituality, which has been called, not inappropriately, the Russian Parsifal. It had its premiere at the Maryinsky in 1907, while the composer was at work upon his last opera, Zolotoy petushok (1909; The Golden Cockerel ).

Among Soviet audiences, Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas (of which The Snow Maiden, Sadko, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maid Fevronia, and The Golden Cockerel may be regarded as the most original) enjoy enormous popularity. Outside the Soviet Union, they have not traveled well and are best known in the West through a series of brilliant orchestral suites (those of Mlada, Christmas Eve, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and The Golden Cockerel).

Significance

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s role in the development of Russian music was seminal, for in addition to his numerous compositions that now occupy a secure niche in the concert halls and opera houses of the Soviet Union and the world, he left his mark upon Russian music in two other ways. Because he possessed a temperament that did not feel threatened by creativity in others and because of his genuine interest in the work of fellow composers, he willingly undertook the completion of a number of important works by others left unfinished at the time of their deaths. No less significant for the future, his many years as a teacher at the St. Petersburg Conservatory meant that, for the last three decades of the nineteenth century and for the opening years of the twentieth, few young Russian instrumentalists or composers did not have firsthand exposure to him both as an instructor and as a generous, nurturing mentor.

A man of great personal integrity, a liberal, and a staunch opponent of the virulent anti-Semitism that flourished during the reigns of the last two czars, Rimsky-Korsakov found himself increasingly alienated from a regime in which reaction had replaced reform. In March, 1905, he sent a letter to the periodical Rus urging the case for the autonomy of the conservatory from the control of the Imperial Russian Musical Academy. He also sent an open letter to the director of the conservatory protesting police surveillance of the students. As a result of these actions, he was summarily dismissed from the professorship that he had held for thirty-four years. That was not the end of the matter, however, for his dismissal prompted the resignation from the faculty of, among others, Aleksandr Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov. Before the end of the year, the conservatory attained sufficient independence to elect Glazunov its new director and, shortly thereafter, Rimsky-Korsakov was reinstated.

This episode does not seem to have interfered with Rimsky-Korsakov’s habitually busy schedule. During the summer of 1905, he revised and supervised the printing of The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maid Fevronia, which had its premiere in 1907, and during 1906-1907 he worked on The Golden Cockerel. Then the censor intervened, ordering the omission of the entire introduction, the epilogue, and forty-five lines of the text. It has been suggested that the ban was motivated by the opera’s subject matter, that the misadventures of the foolish King Dodon could be interpreted as a satire on the czar’s court or his disastrous mismanagement of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, but it is more likely that it was retribution for his publicly expressed liberal sentiments. Rimsky-Korsakov never saw The Golden Cockerel staged, for he died on June 21, 1908. Its first performance was given in Moscow in October, 1909.

Bibliography

Abraham, Gerald. Essays in Russian and East European Music. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1985. The relevant essays in this collection are “Pskovityanya: The Original Version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s First Opera,” “Satire and Symbolism in The Golden Cockerel,” and “Arab Melodies in Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin.”

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Studies in Russian Music. London: William Reeves, 1935. This earlier collection of Abraham’s essays includes “Rimsky-Korsakov’s First Opera,” “Rimsky-Korsakov’s Gogol Operas,” “Snegurochka (Snow Maiden),” “Sadko,” “The Tsar’s Bride,” “Kitezh,” and “The Golden Cockerel.”

Borovsky, Victor. Chaliapin: A Critical Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. This definitive biography of the great Russian bass describes how Chaliapin interpreted the roles of Ivan the Terrible in The Maid of Pskov and Antonio Salieri in Mozart and Salieri.

Calvocoressi, Michel D., and Gerald Abraham. Masters of Russian Music. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936. The best general account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s life and work. Both scholarly and readable.

Ridenour, Robert C. Nationalism, Modernism, and Personal Rivalry in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1981. A scholarly investigation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s circle and their critics to 1873.

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich. My Musical Life. Translated by Judah A. Joffe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942. Essential reading for understanding the outlook and personality of the composer.

Seroff, Victor I. The Mighty Five: The Cradle of Russian National Music. New York: Allen, Towne, & Heath, 1948. A popular account of Rimsky-Korsakov’s circle of colleagues and friends.

Taruskin, Richard. Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860’s. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1981. An important study of the theatrical background to the theory and practice of opera as developed among the Mighty Handful.