(detail)]]
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov () ( – ) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as
The Five. He was a master of
orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—
Capriccio Espagnol, the
Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite
Scheherazade—are considered staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas.
Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects.
Rimsky-Korsakov believed, as did fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, in developing a nationalistic style of classical music. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. His techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.
For much of his life, Rimsky-Korsakov combined his composition and teaching with a career in the Russian military—at first as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, then as the civilian Inspector of Naval Bands. He wrote that he developed a passion for the ocean in childhood from reading books and hearing of his older brother's exploits in the navy. This love of the sea might have influenced him to write two of his best-known orchestral works, the musical tableau Sadko (not his later opera of the same name) and Scheherazade. Through his service as Inspector of Naval Bands, Rimsky-Korsakov expanded his knowledge of wind and brass playing, which enhanced his abilities in orchestration. He passed this knowledge to his students, and also posthumously through a textbook on orchestration that was completed by his son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg.
Rimsky-Korsakov left a considerable body of original Russian nationalist compositions. He prepared works by The Five for performance, which brought them into the active classical repertoire (although there is controversy over his editing of the works of Modest Mussorgsky), and shaped a generation of younger composers and musicians during his decades as an educator. Rimsky-Korsakov is therefore considered "the main architect" of what the classical music public considers the Russian style of composition.
Life
Early years
Rimsky-Korsakov was born in
Tikhvin, east of
Saint Petersburg, into an aristocratic family with a long line of military and naval service—his older brother
Voin, 22 years his senior, became a well-known navigator and explorer.
Rimsky-Korsakov later recalled that his mother played the piano a little, and his father could play a few songs on the piano by ear. It is said that Rimsky-Korsakov inherited his mother's tendency to play too slowly. Beginning at six, he took piano lessons from various local teachers and showed a talent for aural skills, but he showed a lack of interest, playing, as he later wrote, "badly, carelessly, ... poor at keeping time".
Although he started composing by age 10, Rimsky-Korsakov preferred literature over music. This love, and prompting from Voin, encouraged the 12-year-old to join the Imperial Russian Navy. These lessons were sanctioned by Voin, who now served as director of the school, Ulikh perceived that he had serious musical talent, and recommended another teacher, Feodor A. Kanille (Théodore Canillé). Beginning in the autumn of 1859, Rimsky-Korsakov took lessons in piano and composition from Kanille, whom he later credited as the inspiration for devoting his life to musical composition. Through Kanille, he was exposed to a great deal of new music, including Mikhail Glinka and Robert Schumann. Despite Rimsky-Korsakov's now liking his music lessons, Voin cancelled them when Rimsky-Korsakov was 17, as he felt they no longer served a practical need. In November 1861, Kanille introduced the 18-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov to Mily Balakirev. Balakirev in turn introduced him to César Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky; all three of these men were already known as composers, despite only being in their 20s. Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote, "With what delight I listened to real business discussions [Rimsky-Korsakov's emphasis] of instrumentation, part writing, etc! And besides, how much talking there was about current musical matters! All at once I had been plunged into a new world, unknown to me, formerly only heard of in the society of my dilettante friends. That was truly a strong impression".
in 1863. Rimsky-Korsakov served as a midshipman on this ship, and later wrote about this cruise.]]
Balakirev encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov to compose and taught him the rudiments when he was not at sea. When he showed Balakirev the beginning of a symphony in E-flat minor that he had written, Balakirev insisted he continue working on it despite his lack of formal musical training. By the time Rimsky-Korsakov sailed on a two-year-and-eight-month cruise aboard the clipper Almaz in late 1862, he had completed and orchestrated three movements of the symphony. He composed the slow movement during a stop in England, and mailed the score to Balakirev before going back to sea. At first, his work on the symphony kept Rimsky-Korsakov occupied during his cruise.
Mentored by Balakirev; time with The Five
Once back in Saint Petersburg in May 1865, Rimsky-Korsakov's onshore duties consisted of a couple of hours of clerical duty each day, He wrote that contact with Balakirev in September 1865 encouraged him "to get accustomed to music and later to plunge into it". At Balakirev's suggestion, he wrote a trio to the scherzo of the E-flat minor symphony, which it had lacked up to that point, and reorchestrated the entire symphony. Its first performance came in December of that year under Balakirev's direction in Saint Petersburg. A second performance followed in March 1866 under the direction of Konstantin Lyadov (father of composer
Anatoly Lyadov).
encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov to continue composing.]]
Rimsky-Korsakov recalled that "Balakirev had no difficulty in getting along with me. At his suggestion I most readily rewrote the symphonic movements composed by me and brought them to completion with the help of his advice and improvisations". Though Rimsky-Korsakov later found Balakirev's influence stifling, and broke free from it, this did not stop him in his memoirs from extolling the older composer's talents as a critic and improviser. He spent an increasing amount of time with Mussorgsky. Mendelssohn was not thought of highly, Mozart and Haydn "were considered out of date and naïve", and J.S. Bach merely mathematical and unfeeling.
Professorship, marriage, inspector of bands
In 1871, the 27-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov became Professor of Practical Composition and Instrumentation (orchestration) at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory,
, where Rimsky-Korsakov taught from 1871 to 1906]]
Rimsky-Korsakov explained in his memoirs that Mikhaíl Azanchevsky had taken over that year as director of the Conservatory, had offered to pay generously for Rimsky-Korsakov's services. Biographer Mikhail Zetlin suggests that Azanchevsky's motives might have been twofold. First, Rimsky-Korsakov was the member of the Five least criticized by its opponents, and inviting him to teach at the Conservatory may have been considered a safe way to show that all serious musicians were welcome there. Second, the offer may have been calculated to expose him to an academic climate in which he would write in a more conservative, Western-based style. Balakirev had opposed academic training in music with tremendous vigor, but encouraged him to accept the post to convince others to join the nationalist musical cause.
Rimsky-Korsakov's reputation at this time was as a master of orchestration, based on Sadko and Antar. However, he had written these works mainly by intuition. Aware of his technical shortcomings, Rimsky-Korsakov consulted Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with whom he and the others in The Five had been in occasional contact. Tchaikovsky, unlike The Five, had received academic training in composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, and was serving as Professor of Music Theory at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky advised him to study.
Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that while teaching at the Conservatory he soon became "possibly its very best pupil [Rimsky-Korsakov's emphasis], judging by the quantity and value of the information it gave me!" To prepare himself, and to stay at least one step ahead of his students, he took a three-year sabbatical from composing original works, and assiduously studied at home while he lectured at the Conservatory. He taught himself from textbooks, and followed a strict regimen of composing contrapuntal exercises, fugues, chorales and a cappella choruses. which encouraged him to settle down and to start a family. They married in July 1872, with Mussorgsky serving as best man.
Nadezhda became a musical as well as domestic partner with her husband, much as Clara Schumann had been with her own husband Robert.—she had attended the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in the mid-1860s, studying piano with Anton Gerke (one of whose private students was Mussorgsky) and music theory with Nikolai Zaremba, who also taught Tchaikovsky. Nadezhda proved a fine and most demanding critic of her husband's work; her influence over him in musical matters was strong enough for Balakirev and Stasov to wonder whether she was leading him astray from their musical preferences. Musicologist Lyle Neff wrote that while Nadezhda gave up her own compositional career when she married Rimsky-Korsakov, she "had a considerable influence on the creation of [Rimsky-Korsakov's] first three operas. She travelled with her husband, attended rehearsals and arranged compositions by him and others" As Inspector, he visited naval bands throughout Russia, supervised the bandmasters and their appointments, reviewed the bands' repertoire, and inspected the quality of their instruments. He wrote a study program for a complement of music students who held navy fellowships at the Conservatory, and acted as an intermediary between the Conservatory and the navy. The post of Band Inspector came with a promotion to Collegiate Assessor, a civilian rank. "I parted with delight with both my military status and my officer's uniform", he later wrote. "Henceforth I was a musician officially and incontestably." These studies prompted him to write a textbook on orchestration. He used the privileges of rank to exercise and expand upon his knowledge. He discussed arrangements of musical works for military band with bandmasters, encouraged and reviewed their efforts, held concerts at which he could hear these pieces, and orchestrated original works, and works by other composers, for military bands.
In March 1884, an Imperial Order abolished the navy office of Inspector of Bands, and Rimsky-Korsakov was relieved of his duties. which allowed him to study Russian Orthodox church music. He also taught classes at the Chapel, and wrote his textbook on harmony for use there and at the Conservatory. After he strove "to crowd in as much counterpoint as possible" into his Third Symphony, he wrote chamber works adhering strictly to classical models, including a string sextet, a string quartet in F minor and a quintet for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano. About the quartet and the symphony, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, that they "were filled with a host of clever things but ... [were] imbued with a dryly pedantic character".
According to Rimsky-Korsakov, the other members of The Five showed little enthusiasm for the symphony, and less still for the quartet. He later wrote that "they began, indeed, to look down upon me as one on the downward path". He wrote that Tchaikovsky continued to support him morally, telling him that he fully applauded what Rimsky-Korsakov was doing and admired both his artistic modesty and his strength of character. Privately, Tchaikovsky confided to Nadezhda von Meck, "Apparently [Rimsky-Korsakov] is now passing through this crisis, and how it will end will be difficult to predict. Either a great master will come out of him, or he will finally become bogged down in contrapuntal tricks".
Two projects helped Rimsky-Korsakov focus on less academic music-making. The first was the creation of two folk song collections in 1874. Rimsky-Korsakov transcribed 40 Russian songs for voice and piano from performances by folk singer Tvorty Filippov, This collection was followed by a second containing 100 songs, supplied by friends and servants, or taken from rare and out-of-print collections. Rimsky-Korsakov later credited this work as a great influence on him as a composer; it also supplied a vast amount of musical material from which he could draw for future projects, either by direct quotation or as models for composing fakeloric passages. No similar project had been attempted before in Russian music,
In the summer of 1877, Rimsky-Korsakov thought increasingly about the short story May Night by Nikolai Gogol. The story had long been a favorite of his, and his wife Nadezhda had encouraged him to write an opera based on it from the day of their betrothal, when they had read it together. While musical ideas for such a work predated 1877, now they came with greater persistence. By winter May Night took an increasing amount of his attention; in February 1878 he started writing in earnest, and he finished the opera by early November. He wrote the opera in a folk-like melodic idiom, and scored it in a transparent manner much in the style of Glinka. from time to time he suffered from creative paralysis between 1881 and 1888. Belyayev was one of a growing coterie of Russian nouveau-riche industrialists who became patrons of the arts in mid- to late-19th century Russia; their number included railway magnate Savva Mamontov and textile manufacturer Pavel Tretyakov. Belyayev, Mamontov and Tretyakov "wanted to contribute conspicuously to public life". They had worked their way into wealth, and being Slavophilic in their national outlook believed in the greater glory of Russia. This preference paralleled a general upsurge in nationalism and Russophilia that became prevalent in mainstream Russian art and society.
By the winter of 1883 Rimsky-Korsakov had become a regular visitor to the weekly "quartet Fridays" ("Les Vendredis") held at Belyayev's home in Saint Petersburg. Belyayev, who had already taken a keen interest in the musical future of the teenage Alexander Glazunov, rented a hall and hired an orchestra in 1884 to play Glazunov's First Symphony plus an orchestral suite Glazunov had just composed. This concert and a rehearsal the previous year gave Rimsky-Korsakov the idea of offering concerts featuring Russian compositions, a prospect to which Belyayev was amenable. The Russian Symphony Concerts were inaugurated during the 1886–87 season, with Rimsky-Korsakov sharing conducting duties with Anatoly Lyadov. He finished his revision of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and conducted it at the opening concert. The concerts also coaxed him out of his creative drought; he wrote Scheherazade, Capriccio Espagnol and the Russian Easter Overture specifically for them.
Rimsky-Korsakov was asked for advice and guidance not just on the Russian Symphony Concerts, but on other projects through which Belyayev aided Russian composers. "By force of matters purely musical I turned out to be the head of the Belyayev circle", he wrote. "As the head Belyayev, too, considered me, consulting me about everything and referring everyone to me as chief". In 1884 Belyayev set up an annual Glinka prize, and in 1885 he founded his own music publishing firm, through which he published works by Borodin, Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov at his own expense. To select which composers to assist with money, publication or performances from the many who now appealed for help, Belyayev set up an advisory council made up of Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. They would look through the compositions and appeals submitted and suggest which composers were deserving of patronage and public attention.
The group of composers who now congregated with Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov became known as the Belyayev circle, named after their financial benefactor. These composers were nationalistic in their musical outlook, as The Five before them had been. Like The Five, they believed in a uniquely Russian style of classical music that utilized folk music and exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements, as exemplified by the music of Balakirev, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Unlike The Five, these composers also believed in the necessity of an academic, Western-based background in composition—which Rimsky-Korsakov had instilled in his years at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Compared to the "revolutionary" composers in Balakirev's circle, Rimsky-Korsakov found those in the Belyayev circle to be "progressive ... attaching as it did great importance to technical perfection, but ... also broke new paths, though more securely, even if less speedily ..."
Increased contact with Tchaikovsky
In November 1887, Tchaikovsky arrived in Saint Petersburg in time to hear several of the Russian Symphony Concerts. One of them included the first complete performance of his
First Symphony, subtitled
Winter Daydreams, in its final version. Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky corresponded considerably before the visit and spent a lot of time together, along with Glazunov and Lyadov. Though Tchaikovsky had been a regular visitor to the Rimsky-Korsakov home since 1876, this was the beginning of closer relations between the pair. Within a couple of years, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, Tchaikovsky's visits became more frequent.
During these visits and especially in public, Rimsky-Korsakov wore a mask of geniality. Privately, he found the situation emotionally complex, and confessed his fears to his friend, the Moscow critic Semyon Kruglikov. Memories persisted of the tension between Tchaikovsky and The Five over the differences in their musical philosophies—tension acute enough for Tchaikovsky's brother Modest to liken their relations at that time to "those between two friendly neighboring states ... cautiously prepared to meet on common ground, but jealously guarding their separate interests". Rimsky-Korsakov observed, not without annoyance, how Tchaikovsky became increasingly popular among Rimsky-Korsakov's followers. This personal jealousy was compounded by a professional one, as Tchaikovsky's music became increasingly popular among the composers of the Belyayev circle, and remained on the whole more famous than his own. Even so, when Tchaikovsky attended Rimsky-Korsakov's nameday party in May 1893, Rimsky-Korsakov asked Tchaikovsky personally if he would conduct four concerts of the Russian Musical Society in Saint Petersburg the following season. After hesitation, Tchaikovsky agreed. While his sudden death in late 1893 prevented him from fulfilling this commitment in its entirety, the list of works he had planned to conduct included Rimsky-Korsakov's Third Symphony.
Later years
In March 1889, Angelo Neumann's traveling "
Richard Wagner Theater" visited Saint Petersburg, giving four cycles of
Der Ring des Nibelungen there under the direction of
Karl Muck. he was astonished with Wagner's mastery of orchestration. He attended the rehearsals with Glazunov, and followed the score. After hearing these performances, Rimsky-Korsakov devoted himself almost exclusively to composing operas for the rest of his creative life. Wagner's use of the orchestra influenced Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, beginning with the arrangement of the
polonaise from Mussorgsky's
Boris Godunov that he made for concert use in 1889.
In 1892 Rimsky-Korsakov suffered a second creative drought, led to a medical diagnosis of neurasthenia. After making third versions of the musical tableau Sadko and the opera The Maid of Pskov, he closed his musical account with the past; he had left none of his major works before May Night in their original form.
In 1905, demonstrations took place at Saint Petersburg Conservatory as part of the 1905 Revolution; these, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, were triggered by similar disturbances at Saint Petersburg State University, in which students demanded political reforms and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Russia. "I was chosen a member of the committee for adjusting differences with agitated pupils", he recalled; however, almost as soon as the committee had been formed, "[a]ll sorts of measures were recommended to expel the ringleaders, to quarter the police in the Conservatory, to close the Conservatory entirely". he wrote that he felt someone had to protect the rights of the students to demonstrate, especially as disputes and wrangling between students and authorities were becoming increasingly violent. Just before the dismissal was enacted, Rimsky-Korsakov received a letter from one of the members of the school directorate, suggesting that he take up the directorship in the interest of calming student unrest. "Probably the member of the Directorate held a minority opinion, but signed the resolution nevertheless," he wrote. "I sent a negative reply."
Not long after Rimsky-Korsakov's dismissal, a student production of his opera Kaschei the Immortal was followed not with the scheduled concert but with a political demonstration, Due in part to widespread press coverage of these events, an immediate wave of outrage to the ban arose throughout Russia and abroad; liberals and intellectuals deluged the composer's residence with letters of sympathy, and even peasants who had not heard a note of Rimsky-Korsakov's music sent small monetary donations. Eventually, over 300 students walked out of the Conservatory in solidarity with Rimsky-Korsakov. The political controversy continued with his opera The Golden Cockerel.
In April 1907, Rimsky-Korsakov conducted a pair of concerts in Paris, hosted by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, which featured music of the Russian nationalist school. The concerts were hugely successful in popularizing Russian classical music of this kind in Europe, Rimsky-Korsakov's in particular. He died in Lyubensk in 1908, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg, next to Borodin, Glinka, Mussorgsky and Stasov. These revisions range from minor changes of tempo, phrasing and instrumental detail to wholesale transposition and complete recomposition.
Rimsky-Korsakov was open about the influences in his music, telling Vasily Yastrebtsev, "Study Liszt and Balakirev more closely, and you'll see that a great deal in me is not mine". Nevertheless, while he took Glinka and Liszt as models, his use of whole tone and octatonic scales do demonstrate his originality. He developed both these compositional devices for the "fantastic" sections of his operas, which depicted magical or supernatural characters and events. The whole tone and octatonic scales were both considered adventurous in the Western classical tradition, and Rimsky-Korsakov's use of them made his harmonies seem radical. Conversely, his care about how or when in a composition he used these scales made him seem conservative compared with later composers like Igor Stravinsky, though they were often building on Rimsky-Korsakov's work.
Operas
Musicologist Gerald Abraham wrote that while Rimsky-Korsakov is best known in the West for his orchestral works, his operas are more complex; they offer a wider variety of orchestral effects than in his instrumental works, as well as fine vocal writing. Of this range Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in 1902, "In every new work of mine I am trying to do something that is new for me. On the one hand, I am pushed on by the thought that in this way, [my music] will retain freshness and interest, but at the same time I am prompted by my pride to think that many facets, devices, moods and styles, if not all, should be with my reach." Toward this end he devised a dual musical language—diatonic and lyrical music much like Russian folk music for the "real" human characters and chromatic, artificial music for the "unreal" or "fantastic" magical beings.
Excerpts and suites from Rimsky-Korsakov's operas have proved as popular in the West as the purely orchestral works. The best-known of these excerpts is probably "The Flight of the Bumblebee" from The Tale of Tsar Saltan, which has often been heard by itself in orchestral programs, and in countless arrangements and transcriptions, most famously in a piano version made by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Other selections familiar to listeners in the West are "Dance of the Tumblers" from The Snow Maiden, "Procession of the Nobles" from Mlada, and "Song of the Indian Guest" (or, less accurately, "Song of India") from Sadko, as well as suites from The Golden Cockerel and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya. The orchestral works show the dual influence of Balakirev and Liszt—Balakirev in the use of the whole tone scale and musical orientalism; Liszt likewise for harmonic adventurousness, as well as the programmatic nature of his music. Another exercise in orientalism is the symphonic poem Night on Mount Triglav, a symphonic rearrangement of Act III of the opera Mlada.
Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral works are especially celebrated for their imaginative use of instrumental forces. Though this is true even of early works such as Sadko and Antar, their sparer textures pale compared to the luxuriance of the more popular works of the 1880s.
Smaller-scale works
Rimsky-Korsakov composed dozens of
art songs, arrangements of folk songs,
chamber and
piano music, and a body of choral works, both secular and for
Russian Orthodox Church service. The latter include settings of portions of the
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (despite his staunch
atheism).
Students
In his decades at the Conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov taught composers who later found fame, including
Alexander Glazunov,
Alexander Spendiaryan,
Sergei Prokofiev,
Igor Stravinsky,
Ottorino Respighi,
Witold Maliszewski,
Mykola Lysenko,
Artur Kapp, and
Konstanty Gorski. Other students included the
music critic and
musicologist Alexander Ossovsky, and the composer
Lazare Saminsky.
Rimsky-Korsakov felt talented students needed little formal dictated instruction. His teaching method included distinct steps: show the students everything needed in harmony and counterpoint; direct them in understanding the forms of composition; give them a year or two of systematic study in the development of technique, exercises in free composition and orchestration; instill a good knowledge of the piano. Once these were properly completed, studies would be over. He carried this attitude into his conservatory classes. Conductor Nikolai Malko remembered that Rimsky-Korsakov began the first class of the term by saying, "I will speak, and you will listen. Then I will speak less, and you will start to work. And finally I will not speak at all, and you will work."
Editing the work of The Five
Rimsky-Korsakov's editing of works by The Five are significant. It was a practical extension of the collaborative atmosphere of The Five during the 1860s and 1870s, when they heard each other's compositions in progress and worked on them together, and was an effort to save works that would otherwise either have languished unheard or become lost entirely. This work included the completion of
Alexander Borodin's opera
Prince Igor, which Rimsky-Korsakov undertook with the help of Glazunov after Borodin's death, This was exactly what Rimsky-Korsakov stated in his memoirs. However, both Maes and
Richard Taruskin cite an analysis of Borodin's manuscripts by musicologist Pavel Lamm, which showed that Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov discarded nearly 20 percent of Borodin's score. According to Maes, the result is more a collaborative effort by all three composers than a true representation of Borodin's intent. Lamm stated that because of the extremely chaotic state of Borodin's manuscripts, a modern alternative to Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov's edition would be extremely difficult to complete. Because of this, Rimsky-Korsakov has been accused of pedantry in "correcting", among other things, matters of harmony. Rimsky-Korsakov may have foreseen questions over his efforts when he wrote,
If Mussorgsky's compositions are destined to live unfaded for fifty years after their author's death (when all his works will become the property of any and every publisher), such an archeologically accurate edition will always be possible, as the manuscripts went to the Public Library on leaving me. For the present, though, there was need of an edition for performances, for practical artistic purposes, for making his colossal talent known, and not for the mere studying of his personality and artistic sins.
Maes stated that time proved Rimsky-Korsakov correct when it came to posterity's re-evaluation of Mussorgsky's work. Mussorgsky's musical style, once considered unpolished, is now admired for its originality. While Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangement of Night on Bald Mountain is still the version generally performed, Rimsky-Korsakov's other revisions, like his version of Boris Godunov, have been replaced by Mussorgsky's original.
Folklore and pantheism
Rimsky-Korsakov may have saved the most personal side of his creativity for his approach to Russian folklore. After composing
May Night, however, Rimsky-Korsakov was increasingly drawn to "
calendar songs", which were written for specific ritual occasions. He wrote that he "was captivated by the poetic side of the cult of sun-worship, and sought its survivals and echoes in both the tunes and the words of the songs. The pictures of the ancient pagan period and spirit loomed before me, as it then seemed, with great clarity, luring me on with the charm of antiquity. These occupations subsequently had a great influence in the direction of my own activity as a composer". where he made extensive use of seasonal calendar songs and
khorovodi (ceremonial dances) in the folk tradition.
Publications
Rimsky-Korsakov's autobiography and his books on harmony and orchestration have been translated into English and published. Two books he started in 1892 but left unfinished were a comprehensive text on Russian music and a manuscript, now lost, on an unknown subject.
My Musical Life. [Летопись моей музыкальной жизни – literally, Chronicle of My Musical Life.] Trans. from the 5th rev. Russian ed. by Judah A. Joffe; ed. with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. London: Ernst Eulenburg Ltd, 1974.
Practical Manual of Harmony. [Практический учебник гармонии.] First published, in Russian, in 1885. First English edition published by Carl Fischer in 1930, trans. from the 12th Russian ed. by Joseph Achron. Current English ed. by Nicholas Hopkins, New York, New York: C. Fischer, 2005.
Principles of Orchestration. [Основы оркестровки.] Begun in 1873 and completed posthumously by Maximilian Steinberg in 1912, first published, in Russian, in 1922 ed. by Maximilian Steinberg. English trans. by Edward Agate; New York: Dover Publications, 1964 ("unabridged and corrected republication of the work first published by Edition russe de musique in 1922").
Footnotes
Notes
References
In English:
In Russian:
External links
;Films
;Scores
;Other
Category:1844 births
Category:1908 deaths
Category:People from Tikhvin
Category:Russian composers
Category:Romantic composers
Category:Opera composers
Category:Russian atheists
Category:Academics of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory
Category:Former Eastern Orthodox Christians
Category:The Five
