The Mentor: Russian Music, Vol. 4, Num. 18, Serial No. 118, November 1, 1916

Henry Finck

Henry T. Finck

The Mentor: Russian Music, Vol. 4, Num. 18, Serial No. 118, November 1, 1916

Several Natural Questions

Q. – How big is Russia, and what is its population?

A. – The area of Russia exceeds 8,660,000 square miles, or one-sixth of the whole land surface of the earth. Its population is over 150,000,000 – or at least it was so before the war.

Q. – How many famous Russian composers are there?

A. – Less than a dozen.

Q. – How old is Russian music?

A. – Less than 150 years. Catherine the Great (1761-1796) was one of the first to encourage national music in Russia. Before her time the music performed in Russia was imported, and was largely Italian. Catherine caused productions of music by Russian composers. She supplied the libretto for one opera.

Q. – What is the origin of Russian music?

A. – Both the music and literature of Russia had a common origin – popular inspiration. The form and spirit of the music and literature were drawn from the legends and primitive songs of the people.

Q. – When did music in Russia become, in a real sense, national?

A. – Not until the first part of the nineteenth century. Composers had been trying for fifty years to establish a national movement in music, but it was not until the advent of Glinka and his opera, “A Life for the Czar,” in 1836, that the Russian school of music can be said to have been inaugurated.

Q. – Why were music and literature so late in coming to this great nation?

A. – On account of physical and human conditions. Russia is and has been a vast and absolute monarchy, consisting of millions of people held in subjection and ignorance, and with only a few great centers of civilization. Petrograd has been for years a city of brilliant cultivation, but in contrast to that there are countless towns, villages, and farms in which dwell millions of poor and ignorant people. It is only within the last century that Russia has wakened to a national consciousness and begun to shake off the grim, feudal conditions of the Middle Ages. In this new era the voice of music is first heard as a national expression.

RUSSIAN MUSIC

Michal Ivanovich Glinka

ONE

Michal Ivanovich Glinka at an early age showed that he possessed two characteristics that were to have a very important bearing on his whole life – an extremely nervous disposition and a lively aptitude for music. His grandmother, who was responsible for his early upbringing and who was an invalid herself, encouraged the first; while his father stimulated in the boy the second. Glinka, mollycoddled from childhood, never wholly succeeded in throwing off an inherited brooding tendency; but he became a wonderful composer and musician.

Glinka was born on June 2, 1803, at Novospassky, a little village in Russia. His father was a retired army officer and not particularly well off, but his mother’s brother was fairly wealthy, and often when the Glinkas had an entertainment this brother lent them a small private band which he kept up. It was to this early association with music of the best class that young Glinka owed the development of his taste.

He spent his earliest years at home, but when he was thirteen he went to a boarding school in Petrograd, where he remained for five years, carefully studying music. It was in 1822, when he was only seventeen, that he composed his first music – one of his five waltzes for the piano. During these school years he paid attention to the other branches of education also, learning Latin, French, German, English and Persian, and working hard at the study of geography and zoölogy.

Glinka had a nervous breakdown in 1823, and he made a tour of the Caucasus, taking a cure in the waters there. On his return home he worked hard at his music, although as he had not then decided to devote his life to a musical career, his studies were somewhat intermittent. He went to Petrograd and took a positio