20. Letter of 10 June 1863, in MLN, 70; MR, 54.
21. LMMZ, 13; MML, 17.
22. LMMZ, 25; MML, 29.
23. LMMZ, 18; MML, 22.
24. LMMZ, 21; MML, 25.
25. LMMZ, 18; MML, 23.
26. Letter of 13 April 1863, quoted in TDM, 105; MDW, 106.
27. LMMZ, 20, MML, 24.
28. MR, 46.
29. Letter to Stasov, 11 October 1862, in BSP1, 191–2.
30. Balakirev started writing them down only in 1906, and even then failed to complete the task before his death in 1910. The completion is by his pupil Sergey Lyapunov. See Garden, Balakirev, 254.
31. See Dianin, Borodin (1963), 41, note 2.
32. But one has to be cautious. The sonata was completed from Borodin’s sketches and drafts by the Soviet composer Mikhail Goldstein, who had form as a counterfeiter of “old” music. In the late forties he had invented a “Symphony no. 21” allegedly composed in 1810 by a (real) Ukrainian by the name of Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. The Borodin material is said to be complete in sketch form, but I have not myself seen it.
CHAPTER 9 Wagner and His Acolyte
1. MBO, 48.
2. Letter of 22 April 1863, in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 57.
3. MBO, 47–8.
4. Letter to Balakirev, 31 March 1862, in MLN, 61; MR, 40–43. Musorgsky’s emphases.
5. For more details on Musorgsky’s stay at Volok, including his piano-teaching of Natalya’s children (one of whom was later a prominent revolutionary and associate of Karl Marx), see Obraztsova, “Faktï k biografii Musorgskogo”; also Novikov, U istokov velikoy muzïki, 158–61.
6. By far the best source of information on Wagner’s Russian visit and reception is Bartlett, Wagner and Russia.
7. Letter of 5 May 1863, in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 58; Cui’s emphases. He does not mention that Wagner achieved his successes facing the orchestra, a novelty for conductors in Russia at the time. See Bartlett, Wagner and Russia, 1. One wonders whether Stravinsky was remembering this opinion of Cui’s, whom he knew, when he remarked that Britten was “a vonnnderrful … accompanist.” See Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: The Second Exile (New York: Knopf, 2006), 620, note 7.
8. See his letter to Balakirev of 26 February 1863, inviting him to come round and “listen to what I’ve sketched about Richard”; Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 56.
9. Letter of 17 May 1863, in BSP1, 206.
10. “Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka,” Russkiy vestnik, nos. 20, 21, 22, 24 (October—December 1857), reprinted in SSM1, 175–351.
11. Quoted in ODR, 16. Taruskin’s account of the dispute is detailed and authoritative.
12. “Muchenitsa nashego vremeni,” Russkiy vestnik (April 1859), reprinted in SSM1, 389–98.
13. “Nasha muzïka za posledniye 25 let,” in SSMIII, 163.
14. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 241–2.
15. Letter of 3 May 1858, in BSP1, 57.
16. Letter of 16 January 1860, in BSP1, 100–101.
17. Letter of 10 June 1863, in MLN, 64; MR, 48.
18. Letter of 17 May 1863 to Balakirev, in BSP1, 202.
19. ODR, 36. Taruskin’s brilliant chapters on Serov in this volume are almost the only English-language source that does the composer justice. But see also Gerald Abraham, “The Operas of Serov,” in Westrup, Essays Presented to Egon Wellesz, 171–83. According to Abraham (quoting the composer’s Russian biographer, V. S. Baskin), Serov also completed an operetta, La Meunière de Marly, in 1845, but this too has vanished apart from the overture, which was supposedly published, and “some valse-couplets,” which Nikolay Findeisen reproduces in his life of Serov.
20. Serov, “Podlinnaya avtobiographicheskaya zapiska A. N. Serova,” in Serov Izbrannïye stat’i, 69.
21. “Spontini i ego muzïka,” in ibid., 371.
22. Ibid., 373.
23. ODR, 46–7.
24. Letter to Varvara Yefimovna Zhukova, quoted in ODR, 72, 69. Taruskin, a shade simplistically, blames Stasov’s relentless polemics after Serov’s death for the subsequent neglect of his work.
25. “Spontini i ego muzïka,” 380.
26. Letter of 10 June 1863 to Balakirev, in MLN, 64–70; MR, 48–55. The final two sentences are a marginal note in the original.
27. Letter of 17 May 1863, in BSP1, 203.
28. Letter of 3 June 1863, in BSP1, 208–12.
29. Letter of 22 June 1863, in MLN, 71–2; MR, 56.
30. Ibid.
31. Two years earlier, Balakirev had considered Saul as a possible subject for an opera. See his letter of 14 February 1861 to Stasov, in BSP1, 124.
32. A suggestion made by David Brown; see D. Brown, Musorgsky, 46.
33. Musorgsky seems always to have intended to orchestrate the song, since the manuscript of the original version already contains indications for scoring.
34. See ODR, 66–7, for more on this.
CHAPTER 10 An African Priestess and a Scottish Bride
1. This idea is Nancy Basmajian’s; M. H. Brown, Musorgsky in Memoriam, 43–4.
2. Boris Schwarz has identified the tune as an eighteenth-century Hasidic niggun. See “Musorgsky’s Interest in Judaica,” ibid., 89–92.
3. See D. Brown, Musorgsky, 35–6.
4. Gerald Abraham, “The Mediterranean Element in Boris Godunov,” in Abraham, Slavonic and Romantic Music, 188–194.
5. Letter of 10 June 1863, MLN, 69; MR, 53.
6. LLMZ, 59; MML, 64.
7. Quoted in Orlova, Musorgsky Remembered, 4–5.
8. Cf. chapter 2, note 6.
9. ODR, 341–403.
10. Cui, “Pervïye kompozitorskiye shagi,” quoted in ODR, 359.
11. ODR, 420, note 40.
12. Letter of 28 October 1869, in Kremlev and Lyapunova, Miliy Alekseyevich, Balakirev, 140–1.
13. Sanktpeterburgskiye vedomosti, 26 January 1865; English translation in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 145–51.
14. Quoted in ODR, 395.
15. Letter to Semyon Kruglikov, quoted in Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 33.
16. Letter of 20 July 1864, in Gusin (ed.), Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 498; MDW, 118.
CHAPTER 11 Home Is the Sailor
1. MBO, 71.
2. Ibid., 73.
3. MML, 41–2. The tune is very freely adapted.
4. “Pervïy kontsert v pol’zu besplatnoy muzïkal’noy shkolï,” in Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 66–71. Cui himself was probably also in uniform.
5. Dianin, Borodin (1960), 63; Borodin (1963), 44.
6. LMMZ, 53; MML, 57–8.
7. Undated letter from the period 1864–7. See PB1, 62.
8. ODR, 105–6. Taruskin’s entire chapter on Rogneda (78–140) is a unique mine of information on this fascinating episode in the history of Russian music in the 1860s.
9. Letter of 30 March 1865, in BSP1, 240–1. Several excerpts from Rogneda had been performed in concert during 1864, including the “Dance of the Skomorokhi.”
10. Letter of 15 July 1867 to Rimsky-Korsakov, in MLN, 92–3; MR, 96–7.
11. 9 November 1865, quoted in ODR, 94.
12. LMMZ, 64; MML, 69–70.
13. MML, 116–7.
14. Letter of 15 July 1867.
15. Information on The Bogatyrs is in Dianin, Borodin (1963), 47–53, and in ODR, 121–4 and 450–90, with Taruskin’s usual generous music examples.
16. ODR, 262. The author is not named.
17. Ibid.
18. LMMZ, 66; MML, 72.
19. Serov, Izbrannïye stat’i, vol. 1, 102.
20. Letter of 30 January 1866, in BSP1, 245.
21. Letter to Balakirev, 17 May 1866, in BSP1, 245–6.
22. Letter of 30 January 1866.
23. Letter of 9 April 1868 to Lyubov Karmalina, quoted in ODR, 263.
24. Letter of 27 July–15 August 1863 to Balakirev, in BSP1, 219–20.
25. Letter of 29 May 1865, in BSP1, 243.
CHAPTER 12 Life Studies
1. Chernïshevsky, Selected Philosophical Essays, 346.
2. Pleshcheyev’s “Ah, why do your eyes gaze at me at times so seriously” (“Akh, zachem tvoy glazki”) and Heine’s “Ich wollt’ meine Schmerzen ergössen.”
3. MBO, 74.
4. Letter of 11 August 1858 to Balakirev, in BSP1, 78.
5. Ibid. Cui’s intended was in fact called Malvina (Bamberg), and they did not split up.
6. Letter of 20 April 1866, in MR, 66–7.
7. Liszt had completed his final revision of Totentanz the previous year.
8. Rimsky-Korsakov even recalled that the original version of Musorgsky’s work was, like Liszt’s, for piano and orchestra. But there is no piano at all in the score as completed in 1867, and no other evidence that a solo part was intended. See MML, 73.
9. Letter of 5 July 1867, in MR, 85–8.
10. Letter of 18 August 1870, in MLN, 118–9; MR, 152.
11. Richard Hoops, “Musorgsky and the Populist Age,” in M. H. Brown, Musorgsky in Memoriam, 278. A more sophisticated study is Igor Glebov (Boris Asafyev), “Muzïkal’no-esteticheskiye vozzreniya Musorgskogo,” in Keldïsh and Yakovlev, M. P. Musorgskiy, 33–56.
12. “The Idea of Art,” in Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, 168.
13. Hoops, “Musorgsky and the Populist Age,” in M. H. Brown, Musorgsky in Memorium, 283.
14. Ibid., 280.
15. Letter of 16/28 June 1866 from Prague, in Kremlev and Lyapunova, Miliy Alekseyevich Balakirev, 79.
16. Letter of 28 December 1866/9 January 1867, quoted in Garden, Balakirev, 72–3.
17. Letter of 11/23 January 1867, in ibid., 73.
18. Clapham, Smetana, 34–5.
19. 30 January 1867, in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye pis’ma, 501–2.
20. Letter of 10/22 February 1867, in BSP1, 247–50.
21. Letter of 6/18 February, quoted in Garden, Balakirev, 75.
22. Letter of 10/22 February.
23. Ibid.
24. Knight, The Empire on Display, 1.
25. “Slavyanskiy Kontsert g-na Balakireva,” in SSMII, 110–12. The Russian for “mighty heap” appears in the genitive case as moguchey kuchki. For some reason the commonest English translation has always been “mighty handful.” It perhaps also needs stressing that Stasov originally applied the term to a group of composers that included Glinka and Dargomïzhsky, but not Borodin, Cui, or Musorgsky.
CHAPTER 13 Symphonic Pictures and an Abstract
1. Turgenev, Smoke, 117–8.
2. Petrova and Fridlyand, I. S. Turgenev, 102. Stasov had sat down after the interval in the row behind Turgenev, who seems to have made these remarks over his shoulder during the performance of the King Lear Overture.
3. Letter of 5/17–6/18 March 1867, in Granjard, Quelques lettres d’Ivan Tourgénev, 138 (original in French).
4. “Kontsert besplatnoy shkolï,” in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 88–93.
5. Ibid, 91.
6. In his memoirs, Rimsky-Korsakov claims that the B-minor allegro was composed only as far as the development section, but was then abandoned in the face of criticism by Balakirev and others. See MML, 85. Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, the editor of the original Russian edition of the memoirs, cites a letter to Borodin as evidence that the allegro was in fact completed, but subsequently destroyed. The E-flat scherzo was used in the Third Symphony.
7. MML, 65–6.
8. Garden, Balakirev, 54–5.
9. PB1, 89, and 343, note 3.
10. Quoted in D. Lloyd-Jones, preface to the Eulenburg miniature score.
11. LMMZ, 61; MML, 66.
12. Letter of 17 June 1879, in Diannin, Borodin (1960), 216.
13. Letter of 24 September 1867, in MLN, 93–5; MR, 98–100.
14. Letter of 12 July 1867 to Vladimir Nikolsky, in MLN, 89; MR, 90.
15. LMMZ, 218; MML, 249.
16. Letter of 24 September.
17. Letter of 12 July 1867. Shashni are naughty pranks of any variety, but at a witches’ sabbath it seems fair to assume they were not simply pulling each other’s hair.
18. “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.” Pensées, IV, 277.
19. Letter of 5 July 1867, in MLN, 86–7; MR, 85–7.
20. Letter of 10 July 1867, in RKP, 291–2; MR, 91.
21. Letter of 15 July 1867, in MLN, 90; MR, 94.
22. Letter of 10 July 1867, in MR, 91–3.
23. Letter of 15 July 1867, in MR, 95–6.
24. Letter of 8 October 1867, in RKP, 302; MR, 102.
25. Letter of 10 July.
26. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 266–9. Taruskin’s is the most detailed exegesis of Liszt’s technical infuence on the kuchka.
27. LMMZ, 73; MML, 78–9.
28. Ibid., 79–80. The passage is incomplete in the first Russian edition.
CHAPTER 14 A French Guest and a Stone One
1. See Taylor, Anton Rubinstein, 118–22, and Ridenour, Nationalism, Modernism and Personal Rivalry, 145 et seq., for these and other details.
2. Letter of summer 1867, quoted in Ridenour, op. cit., 145.
3. MML, 81.
4. LMMZ, 74; MML, 82.
5. Quoted in Cairns, Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness, 763.
6. Ibid.
7. “Chetvyortïy i pyatïy kontsertï Russkogo Muzïkal’nogo Obshchestva. Gektor Berlioz,” in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 118–26.
8. Lyapunov, quoted in Garden, Balakirev, 82.
9. “Sed’moy kontsert Russkogo Muzïkal’nogo Obshchestva,” in Gusin, Ts. A. Cui: Izbrannïye stat’i, 126–8.
10. Muzïka i teatr, no. 15 (1867), quoted in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 186–90.
11. Quoted in Ridenour, Nationalism, Modernism and Personal Rivalry.
12. Letter of 3 June 1874, in Zviguilsky, Ivan Tourgénev: Nouvelle Corréspondance inédite, 211–12.
13. LMMZ, 68; MML, 74.
14. Letter of 26 April 1868, Stasov to Balakirev, in BSPI, 254.
15. Letter of 24 January 1868, quoted in TDM, 148, MDW, 160.
16. Letter of 9 April 1868, quoted in ODR, 263.
17. LMMZ, 80; MML, 86.
18. Letter of 26 January 1867, in MR, 78.
19. MBO, 82.
20. LMMZ, 80; MML, 87.
21. MBO, 81.
22. Lang, Music in Western Civilization, 947; partially quoted in ODR, 267.
CHAPTER 15 A Child and an Aborted Wedding
1. Gordeyeva, M. P. Musorgsky, 96. Musorgsky’s explanation of his colorful nose may well have been for the ladies.
2. MR, 154.
3. MR, 155.
4. Ibid.
5. Gordeyeva, M. P. Musorgsky, 97.
6. Ibid., 109–15.
7. According to Novikov, “With Nyanya” was inspired by a brief visit to Musorgsky’s old family estate at Karevo in late March 1868. See Novikov, U istikov velikoy muzïki, 141–2.
8. The Russian genitive singular ending -ogo is invariably pronounced -ovo, and in this instance it seems helpful to indicate the sound rather than the spelling.
9. Letter of 2 January 1873, in MR, 203–4.
10. P. Lamm, preface to Zhenit’ba, in Musorgsky, Complete Works, vol. 23 (New York: Edwin F. Kalmus, n.d.). What their opinion was at this stage is not known.
11. Letter of 3 July 1868, in MLN, 98; MR, 109.
12. Letter of 30 July 1868, in MLN, 100; MR, 111–2. Musorgsky’s emphases. The word “but” in the final phrase was triple-underlined by Musorgsky and asterisked to a footnote (the phrase bracketed here: “which means”).
13. Letters of 30 July to Shestakova, in MLN, 101; MR, 111; and of 15 August to Cui, in MLN, 105; MR, 118.
14. Letter of 15 August 1868, in MLN, 106; MR, 119.
15. Letter of 3 July 1868, in MLN, 97–8; MR, 108.
16. Musorgsky, Avtobiograficheskaya zapiska (June 1880), in MLN, 270.
17. ODR, 314.
18. Letter of 15 August 1868 to Cui, in MLN, 105; MR, 118.
19. Letter of 30 July 1868, in MLN, 100; MR, 111.
20. Letter of 15 August 1868, in MLN, 102–3; MR, 122.
21. Two separate manuscripts survive, of which the later shows many changes of detail, especially to the accompaniment. See Ye. Antipova, “Dva varianta Zhenit’bï,” Sovetskaya Muzïka 28, no. 3 (March 1964), 77–85, for a detailed discussion with music examples. Antipova asserts that the revisions were undertaken “partly on the advice of Dargomïzhsky and Cui.” But she cites no evidence. Musorgsky told Cui, in his letter of 3 July 1868 from Shilovo (misdated by Antipova to 3 June) that, as he was composing without a piano, he would “put everything in order” back in St. Petersburg. He also mentions some changes made at Dargomïzhsky’s and Cui’s suggestion. But these can only have applied to the first scene, whereas the revisions in the later manuscript cover the entire act. Probably the full revision was made in late August and early September as a result of Musorgsky’s own physical experience of the music at the piano. See MR, 108.
22. The first books of War and Peace were serialized in 1865–6, but the remaining books (including the Karatayev sections) only came out when the novel was published complete in 1869.
23. Gordeyeva, M. P. Musorgsky, 39.
24. MBO, 92.
25. Letter of 1901 to A. M. Kerzin, quoted in ODR, 325.
26. LMMZ, 91; MML, 100.
27. Letter of 25 September 1868, in PB1, 108–9.
28. LMMZ, 92; MML, 100.
29. Letter of 2 January 1873, in MLN, 144; MR, 203–4. 1871 was the year of the revised version of Boris Godunov.
CHAPTER 16 Outsiders
1. Osip Senkovsky, “Antar: An oriental tale,” in Korovin, 229–50.
2. LMMZ, 82; MML, 90.
3. LMMZ, 83; MML, 90–1.
4. D. Brown, Tchaikovsky: A Biographical and Critical Study, vol. 1 (London: Gollancz, 1978), 124–5.
5. LMMZ, 69; MML, 75.
6. At this particular moment, however, he was composing an opera on Ostrovsky’s play Son na Volge (Dream on the Volga), which would end up as The Voyevoda. Tchaikovsky destroyed the score, but it was reconstructed from surviving parts and published in the collected edition of his works. His next operatic venture, Undina (after La Motte-Fouqué), never got beyond fragments. But Tchaikovsky soon got over this early infection of kuchkism.
Musorgsky and His Circle: A Russian Musical Adventure Page 58