United States or Panama ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There has been no composer, not Brahms in his German forest, nor Rameau amid the poplars of his silver France, not Borodin on his steppes, nor Moussorgsky in his snow-covered fields under the threatening skies, whose music gives back the colors and forms and odors of his native land more persistently.
And it is as though, piercing further into the bosom of the eternal mother, Asia, his eye had rested finally upon a single spot, a single nucleus; that it had watched that nucleus increase into a tribe; had watched that tribe commence its westward march, wandering, spawning, pushing ever westward, battling and groping, advancing slowly, patiently, steadily into power and manhood, until it had come into possession of the wildest and fairest land of eastern Europe, until it had joined with other stocks and swelled into a vast nation, a gigantic empire; and that then, in that moment of fulfilment, Borodin had turned in prophetic ecstasy upon modern Russia and bade it ring its bells and sound its chants, bade it push onward with its old faith and vigor, since the Slavonic grandeur and glory were assured.
And some men there were, Moussorgsky and Borodin, who were quick enough of imagination to become the instruments of their folk and respond to its need. And so, when we would hear Russian speech, we go to them as we go to Dostoievsky and to Tolstoy. It is in "Boris" and "Prince Igor" as richly as it is in any work. But the men of the other school did not hear the appeal.
Alexander Porfirievitch Borodin was born in Petrograd November 12th, 1834, and died there February 27th, 1887. Nikolai Andreyevitch Rimsky-Korsakoff was born March 6th, 1844, at Tikhvin, in the government of Novgorod, Russia. His father was a civil governor and landed proprietor. He began to study the pianoforte at the age of six.
Borodin in particular came upon the Russian people at a moment when, like a tribe that has quit its fields in search of better pasturage, and has wandered far and found itself in barren and difficult and almost impassable ground, it was bewildered and despondent, and felt itself lost and like to perish in the wilderness.
How quickly the aërial tapestry woven by the orchestra of "Le Coq d'or" wears thin! How quickly the subtle browns and saffrons and vermilions fade! How pretty and tame beside that of Borodin, beside that of the "Persian Dances" of Moussorgsky, beside that of Balakirew, even Rimsky's Orientalism appears! None of his music communicates an experience really high, really poetic.
And there is much besides that Ravel and Debussy have in common. They have each been profoundly influenced by Russian music, "Daphnis et Chloé" showing the influence of Borodin, "Pelléas et Mélisande" that of Moussorgsky. Both have made wide discoveries in the field of harmony. Both have felt the power of outlying and exotic modes. Both have been profoundly impressed by the artistic currents of the Paris about them. Both, like so many other French musicians, have been kindled by the bright colors of Spain, Ravel in his orchestral Rhapsody, in his one-act opera "L'Heure espagnol" and in the piano-piece in the collection "Miroirs" entitled "Alborada del Graciozo," Debussy in "Ibéria" and in some of his preludes. Indeed, a parallelism exists throughout their respective works. Debussy writes "Homage
They are finely various and depart almost entirely from the one-two, one-two, the one-two-three, one-two-three that makes monotonous so much of Chopin. At moments, the tones of the piano march with some of the now festive, now majestic, now solemn, movement of the orchestral processionals of a Moussorgsky and a Borodin.
His workmanship continually reminds one that Borodin was unable to devote himself entirely to composition; that he could come to his writing table only at intervals, only in hours of recreation; and that the government of the Tsar left him to support himself by instructing in chemistry in the College of Medicine and Surgery in Moscow, and kept him always something of an amateur.
So, too, the temperaments and sensibilities of the others. They had but to touch these emblems and reliques and rhythms to become self-conscious. It must have been in particular the old warrior, the chivalric, perhaps even the Tartar imprint in the emblems of the Russian past that liberated Borodin. For he is the old Tartar, the old savage boyar, of modern music.
Word Of The Day