Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian: Никола́й Андре́евич Ри́мский-Ко́рсаков, Nikolaj Andreevič Rimskij-Korsakov), also Nikolay, Nicolai, and Rimsky-Korsakoff, (March 6 (N.S. March 18), 1844 – June 8 (N.S. June 21) 1908) was a Russian composer, one of five Russian composers known as The Five, and was later a teacher of harmony and orchestration. He is particularly noted for a predilection for folk and fairy-tale subjects, and for his extraordinary skill in orchestration, which may have been influenced by his synesthesia. The first part of his surname, Rimsky, is due to the fact that some of his forefathers undertook a pilgrimage to Rome.^{[citation needed]}

Life

Early years

Rimsky-Korsakov was born at Tikhvin, 200 km east of St. Petersburg, into an aristocratic family. He showed musical ability from an early age. His parents did not appreciate his precocity, looking upon his music-making "as a prank."^[1] Becoming a composer was considered unsuitable for someone of his family's social station and a rejection of the traditions of his class.^[2] On his parents' insistence, he studied at the School for Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in St. Petersburg and subsequently joined the Imperial Russian Navy. It was only when he met Mily Balakirev in 1861 that he began to concentrate more seriously on music.

Balakirev encouraged him to compose and taught him when he was not at sea.^[3] He also prompted Rimsky-Korsakov to enrich himself in other areas, as well. "I heard from him, for the first time in my life, that one must read, must look after one's own education, must become acquainted with history, polite literature, and criticfism. Many thanks to him for it!"^[4] Through Balakirev he also met the other composers that would form "The Mighty Handful" (better known in English-speaking countries as "The Five"). He listened to their opinions and accepted them without question.^[5] With their encouragement, he began considering a career in music.^[6]

In 1862, Rimsky-Korsakov sailed on a three-year world cruise. He completed three movements of his First Symphony in the months before the cruise.^[7][8] He wrote the slow movement during a stop in England, then mailed the score to Balakirev by mail berore going back to sea.^[9] Upon his return to St. Petersburg in 1865. Balakirev suggested he renew work on the symphony. This Rimsky-Korsakov did, writing a trio for the Scherzo and reorchestrating the whole work.^[10]

Active composer

After his First Symphony, Rimsky-Korsakov completed the first version of his orchestral pieces Sadko (1867) and Antar (1868), plus the opera The Maid of Pskov (1872). These three are among several early works which the composer revised later in life. He also spent considerable time with Balakirev^[11] and, increasingly, with Modest Mussorgsky.^[12]

At Balakirev's, in 1868, he met Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.^[13] Because Tchaikovsky had been trained at the Western-oriented St. Petersburg Conservatory instead of by Balakirev, he "was viewed rather negligently if not haughtily by our circle.^[14] At Balakirev's request Tchaikovsky played the opening movement of his First Symphony, which had not yet been performed in concert. "[I]t proved quite to our liking; and our former opinion of him changed and gave way to a more sympathetic one, although Tchaikovsky's Conservatory training still constituted a considerable barrier between him and us."^[15] Rimsky-Korsakov would find himself more impressed a few years later, when Tchaikovsky would play the finale of his Second Symphony, the Little Russian at a January 7, 1873 gathering. In this work Tchaikovsky would come closest, in its original version, to composing along the same principles as "The Five."^[16] Nevertheless, as Tchaikovsky's brother Modest observed, relations between Tchaikovsky and The Five, including Rimsky-Korsakov, resembled "those between two friendly neighboring states ... cautiously prepared to meet on common ground, but jealously guarding their separate interests." ^[17]

In addition to his other activities, Rimsky-Korsakov also had to actively lobby the Russian censors to allow performances of The Maid of Pskov. Because of an 1837 law which prohibited depiction of the tsar in an opera, Rimsky-Korsakov was initially denied permission to have the opera performed since one of the characters was Ivan the Terrible.^[18][19] After an appeal to the grand duke Konstantin, the opera was allowed to be staged—after some amendments.^[20] This episode eased the way for Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov to be produced, though Mussorgsky also had to make changes to mollify the censors.^[21]

In the fall of 1871, he moved into his brother's former apartment, inviting Mussorgsky as a roommate. The working arrangement they agreed upon was that Mussorgsky used the piano in the mornings while Rimsky-Korsakov either copied or orchestrated something out. Mussorgsky left for his civil service job at noon. This left afternoons for Rimsky-Korsakov to use the piano. Time in the evenings was allotted by mutual agreement.^[22] They continued this arrangement until Rimsky-Korsakov's marriage in mid-1872.

On July 12, 1872 he married Nadezhda Nikolayevna Purgold (1848-1919), a pianist and composer. Mussorgsky was his best man. Nadezhda Nikolayevna Rimsky-Korsakov was to become a major musical influence on Rimsky-Korsakov, much as Clara Schumann had been on her husband Robert.

Professor

In 1871, Rimsky-Korsakov was asked to become Professor of Practical Composition and Instrumentation (orchestration) at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, as well as Professor (leader) of the Orchestra Class.^[23] Mikhaíl Azanchevsky had taken over that year as director upon the retirement of Nikolai Zaremba.^[24] He was more progressively-minded than his predecessors, a staunch believer in contemporary music on the whole and Russian contemporary music in particular.^[25]

"Evidently Azanchevsky's idea was to invite new blood in my person and thus freshen up teaching in these subjects, which had grown mouldy under Zaremba," Rimsky-Korsakov wrote.^[26] Azanchevsky had even arranged to have Rimsky-Korsakov's musical tableau Sadko performed at a recent concert of the Russian Musical Society to peak the composer's interest in a professorship and to prepare public opinion for his offering him one.^[26] Balakirev, who had formerly opposed academicism with tremendous vigor,^[27] encouraged him to assume the post, which Rimsky-Korsakov did. Balakirev thought it useful to have one of his own in the "enemy camy."^[28] If Balakirev hoped for Rimsky-Korsakov to play a subversive role, he would soon find himself mistaken.

Rimsky-Korsakov, being largely group- and self-educated within The Five rather than being conservatory-trained, was painfully aware of his technical shortcomings. "I was a dilettante and knew nothing,..." he later wrote. "Of course, to compose Antar or Sadko is more interesting than to know how to harmonize a Prostetant chorale or write four-part counterpoint, which seems to be necessary for organists alone. But it is shameful not to know such things and to learn of their existence from one's own pupils."^[29] Moreover, he had come to a creative dead-end upon completing The Maid of Pskov and realized that developing a solid musical technique was the only way he could continue composing.^[30]

In his first years of teaching, he bluffed his way through classes, giving general answerrs to questions and catching informationn from pupils as they volunteered it.^[31] "I was aided in this," he wrote, "by the fact that at first none of my pupils could imagine that I knew nothing; and by the time they had learned enough to begin to see through me, I had learned something myself!"^[31] Meanwhile, beginning in 1874, he engaged in an enormous program of technical self-improvement.^[32] With Tchaikovsky's encouragement^[33], he assiduously studied harmony and counterpoint to make up for the lack of thorough training during his years with The Five, and he became a staunch supporter of academic training.^[34]

His studies and change in attitude brought Rimsky-Korsakov the scorn of his fellow nationalists. Alexander Borodin called it "apostasy," adding, "Many are grieved at present by the fact that Korsakov has turned back, has thrown himself into a study of musical antiquity. I do not bemoan it. It is understandable...."^[35] Mussorgsky was harsher: "[T]he mighty Koocha had degenerated into soulless traitors."^[36] Rimsky-Korsakov wrote of Mussorgsky at this point, "It looked as though he suspected me of being the conservative professor, who might convict him of parallel fifths, and this was unbearable to him."^[37]

Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, fully aplauded what Rimsky was doing, writing to him in 1875, "You must know how I admire and bow down before your artistic modesty and your great strength of character.... How small, poor, self-satisfied and naïve I feel in comparison with you! I am a mere artisan in comparisan, but you will be an artist, in the fullest sense of the word...."^[38] This was in reply to a letter from Rimsky-Korsakov, who wrote that he had completed 64 fugues and various other exercises in counterpoint over the summer.^[38][33]

Tchaikovsky also saw the danger Rimsky-Korsakov risked of letting too much academia choke off his natural gift for musical fantasy and became concerned that he had overcompensated.^[33]

Rimsky-Korsakov applied his newly-aquired knowledge to chamber works in which he adhered strictly to classical models. These included s string sextet and a quintet for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano. He became paralyzed creatively several times during this period. From 1881 to 1888, his progress as a composer came to a standstill. During this period, he kept busy by editing Mussorgsky's works and completing Borodin's Prince Igor.^[39]

Inspector of bands

Even while a professor at the conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov remained in active service as a naval officer. In the spring of 1873, the navy remedied this situation. Rimsky-Korsakov was appointed to the new post of Inspector of Music Bands of the Navy Department. He was to inspect navy bands throughout Russia, supervising the bandmasters and their appointments, repertoire and quality of instruments. He would also be in charge of a complement of musician pupils who would be holders of navy fellowships at the conservatory. He was to write a study program for these students and to act as an intermediary between the navy and the conservatory.^[40]

The post came with a promotion to Collegiate Assessor. This would be a civilian rank. Rimsky-Korsakov would still be on the navy payroll and listed on the roster of the Chancellery of the Navy Department. Otherwise, he would no longer be considered under military service. "Henceforth I was a musician officially and incontestably," he wrote. "I was in ecstasy; so were my friends. Congratulations were showered on me."^[41]

His appointment encouraged him to fulfill a long-standing desire to familiarize himself with the construction and playing techique of orchestral instruments. He obtained several instruments at a time and, with the aid of fingering tables, learned how to play them. While he found he had no aptitude for brass instrtuments, he at least became acquainted with how they worked. These studies in turn prompted him to write a textbook on orchestration. He wrote, "I was eager to tell all on this score."^[42]

Rimsky-Korsakov soon realized both the enormity of writing the textbook he had in mind and the quickness with which it would become outdated with changes and refinements in instruments. He gave up work on it but considered the knowledge amassed worth the effort. He applied it to his compositions and strove to give his conservatory students "a clear conception, if not a full knowledge, of instruments of the orchestra."^[43]

He used the privileges of rank to freely exercise and expand upon his knowledge. He orchestrated for military bands and arranged a number of works by other composers.^[44] He also asked band leaders to arrange pieces he selected.^[45] He then organized and led a concert of combined navy bands at Kronstadt in October 1874.^[46] The concert's success convinced the navy to let Rimsky-Korsakov plan and direct two or three such concerts each year during his tenure as inspector.^[46] For these concerts he wrote a set of variations on a theme of Glinka for oboe, a concerto for trombone and a Konzertstück for clarinet, all with the accompaniment of wind band.^[47]

In March 1884, an Imperial Order abolished the navy office of Inspector of Bands, and Rimsky-Korsakov was relieved of his duties.^[48] "Accordingly," he wrote, "my government service was confined exclusively the Chapel—that is, the court Department."^[49] He worked under Balakirev in the Court Chapel as a deputy. This post gave him the chance to study Russian Orthodox church music. He worked there until 1894.

Free Music School

In the autumn of 1874, Rimsky-Korsakov became director of The Free Music School after the resignation of Balakirev.^[50] The school had been stagnating and nearly foundered due to Balakirev's lack of interest.^[51] Rimsky-Korsakov immediately went to work.^[52] He placed anouncements for students in newspapers and reorganized classes, teaching the advanced class himself.^[52] He also gave a concert of Handel, Haydn, Palestrina and Bach in January 1876, after just one rehearsal, to raise funds.^[53] The concert proved a success and the school's financial prognosis improved.^[54]

The happenings at the Free Music School started rousing Balakirev's interest.^[55] By the autumn of 1881, Balakirev's interference and pressure in the school's affairs had become intolerable^[56] and included dealings in secret, behind Rimsky-Korsakov's back.^[57] In addition, Rimsky-Korsakov was busy editing Mussorgsky's works and production work on his opera The Snow Maiden was looming.^[58] He therefore resigned as director. Balakirev was asked to take his place.^[58]

Private students

In 1876, Rimsky-Korsakov started receiving individuals referred by Balakirev for private lessons in music theory.^[59] Rimsky-Korsakov complained initially to Balakirev that the students he sent were without takent.^[60] Balakirev told him "that one should never give up any pupils, and should give to each the little he is capable of grasping."^[61] Balakirev's reasoning appeased Rimsky-Korsakov, "and so I was rather busy with lessons during the next ten years.^[62]

Rimsky-Korsakov's pupils came primarily from two families, the Botkins and the Glazunovs.^[63] Among them would eventually include Alexander Glazunov, known as Sasha to Rimsky-Korsakov. "Casually Balakirev once brought me the composition of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old high-school student, Sasha Glazunov," Rimsky-Korsakov remembered. "It was an orchestral score written in childish fashion. The boy's talent was indubitably clear."^[64] Balakirev introduced Sasha to Rimsky-Korsakov shortly afterwards, in December 1879. Rimsky-Korsakov taught him alongside his mother.^[65] "His musical development progressed not by the day, but literally by the hour," Rimsky-Korsakoov wrote.^[65]

Much later, Rimsky-Korsakov would also accept Igor Stravinsky as a private student.

The Belayev Circle

In 1884, Rimsky-Korsakov was invited to conduct at the Russian Symphony Concerts. These were sponsored by capitalist and music patron Mitrofan Belyayev (M. P. Belaieff). These concerts may have helped him come out of his creative drought. He wrote Sheherazade, Capriccio espagnol and the Russian Easter Overture, plus prepared his revision of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, specfically for Belayev's concerts.^[66][67]

That same year—1884—Belayev established an annual Glinka prize. The following year he started his own publisheing house in Leipzig, initally publishing music by Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin at his own expense. Young composers staarted appealing for his help. To help select from their offerings, Belayev asked Rimsky-Korsakov to serve with Glazunov and Lyadov on an advisory council.^[68]The group of composers that formed eventually becae known at the Belayev Circle.^[69]

One challenge with the Belayev Circle was that young composers who desired Beleyev's patronage had to write in a musical style approved by Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. Because of this, Rimsky-Korsakov's style became the preferred academic style—one that young composers had to follow if they hoped to have any sort of career. Those who opposed the Belayev circle did not fail to notice this bias.^[70]

Nevertheless, Rimsky-Korsakov did not consider the Belayev Circle not another kuchka as "The Five" had been under Balakirev. Compared to the "storm and stress" that typified the evolution in Russian music under "The Five," "Byelayev's circle represented the period of calm, onward march. Balakirev's circle was revolutionary; Byelayev's, on the other hand, was progressive.... it also broke new paths, though more securely, even if less speedily...."^[71]

Calling the group "progressive" may have been exaggerating. "Moderately academic" might have been more fitting.^[69] While several important musicians such as Glazunov and Lyadov belinged to it, the majority were composers whoe work was competent but derivative.^[69] These acalytes turned technnical accomplishment into an end in itself. This attitide had always characterized the St. Petersburg Conservatory.^[69] The works of many composer in the Belayev Circle showed the dead end to which this road could lead.^[72] The Belayev Circle did share one trait with "The Five." Like the kuchka, the Belayev group viewed with suspicion those compositions which did not follow its canon.^[72]

Tchaikovsky became a frequent visitor to the Belayev Circle, beginning in the winter of 1890^[73]. Glazunov and Lyadov were friendly with Tchaikovsky and charmed by him. For Rimsky-Korsakov the situation was more complex. There were memories of the old friction between Tchaikovsky and "The Five." Rimsky-Korsakov also observed, not without some annoyance, how Tchaikovsky became increasingly popular among his own followers. Compounding this personal jealousy may have been a professional one as he hoticed "a considerable cooling off ... toward the memory of the "mighty koochka" of Balakirev's period" and "a worship of Tchaikovsky and a tendency toward eclecticism grow even stronger."^[74]

Rimsky-Korsakov remained genial in public, for the most part. Privately, though, he had developed a jealous resentment of Tchaikovsky's greater fame.^[75][76] He need not have worried. The musical traditon of St. Petersburg was edging beyond Tchaikovsky and was largely outside his influence. This was taking place largely because of Rimsky-Korsakov's work at the conservatory, which eventually became known as the "school of Rimsky-Korsakov."^[77]

"But the hostility remained," Dmitri Shostakovich is quoted as saying. "[Sergei] Prokoviev said he found a mistake in the score of Tchaikovsky's First Symphony—the flute had to play a B flat. He showed it to Rimsky-Korsakov, who was gratified by this error and said, laughing into his beard, 'Yes, Pyotr Ilyich really confused things here, he did.'"^[76]

The Belayev Circle did not survive Rimsky-Korsakov's death. It disbanded, making way for musical avant-gardists such as Prokofiev and Alexander Scriabin.^[78]

Later years

In 1892 Rimsky-Korsakov suffered a second creative drought. He considered giving up composition permanently. However, the death of Tchaikovsky in late 1893 opened an opportunity for Rimsky-Korsakov to write for the Impreial Theaters. He completed an opera approximately every 18 months—a total of 11 between 1893 and 1908.^[79]

In 1905 approximately 100 conservatory students were expelled for taking part in the February Revolution. Rimsky-Korsakov sided with the students and was removed from his professorship. Several faculty members resigned in protest, including Glazunov and Lyadov. Eventually, over 300 additional students walked out of the conservatory in solidarity with Rimsky-Korsakov. By December he had been reinstated.^[80]

The political controversy continued with his opera The Golden Cockerel (Le Coq d'Or) (1906-1907). It was an opera he had not planned to write. He had intended his previous opera, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, to be his final work in this genre. The Golden Cockrell was in impromptu response to the present political climate. With its implied criticism of monarchy, Russian imperialism and the Russo-Japanese War, he knew there was little chance of the work making it past the censors. The premiere was delayed until 1909, after the composer's death. Even then, it was performed in an adapted version.^[81]

Towards the end of his life, Rimsky-Korsakov suffered from angina. He died in Lyubensk in 1908, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg. His widow Nadezhda spent the rest of her life preserving the composer's legacy.

The Rimsky-Korsakovs had seven children: Mikhail (b.1873), Sofia (b.1875), Andrei (1878-1940), Vladimir (b.1882), Nadezhda (b.1884), Margarita (1888-1893), and Slavchik (1889-1890). Andrei married the composer Yuliya Veysberg, became a musicologist and wrote a multi-volume study of his father's life and work, which included a chapter devoted to his mother, Nadezhda. The Rimsky-Korsakovs's daughter Nadezhda married the composer and teacher Maximilian Steinberg. A nephew, Georgy Mikhaylovich Rimsky-Korsakov (1901-1965), was also a composer.

Legacy

Portrait of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov by Valentin Serov (1898)

Compositions

Main article: List of compositions by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Rimsky-Korsakov was a prolific composer. Even in his leaner times, creatively speaking, he kept busy. "Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things," Shostakovich said, "but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something."^[82] Rimsky-Korsakov may have revised virtually all of his works—some, like Antar and Sadko, more than once.

Like his compatriot Cui, his greatest efforts were expended on his operas. There are fifteen operas to his credit, including Kashchey the Immortal and The Tale of Tsar Saltan. The subjects of the operas range from historical melodramas like The Tsar's Bride, to folk operas, such as May Night, to fairytales and legends like Snowmaiden. In juxtaposed depictions of real and fantastic, the operas invoke folk melodies, realistic declamation, lyrical melodies, and artificially-constructed harmonies with effective orchestral expression. Most of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas remain in the standard repertoire in Russia to this day. While the operas themselves are not well-known in the West, many selections are familiar to Western audiences. These excerpts include "The Dance of the Tumblers" from Snowmaiden, "Procession of the Nobles" from Mlada, "Song of the Indian Guest" (or, less accurately, "Song of India,") from Sadko, and "Flight of the Bumblebee" from Tsar Saltan, as well as suites from The Golden Cockerel and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya.

Rimsky-Korsakov's status in the West has long been based on his orchestral compositions. Best known among these are Capriccio espagnol, Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade. Scheherazade is often cited as a textbook example of Russian orientalism.^[83] Likewise, while Capriccio espagnol could be considered a continuation of Glinka's Spanish Fantasies pittoresques, the vibrancy of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration far outshines Glinka's effort. It also served as a model for Maurice Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole .^[84]

Smaller-scaled works incude dozens of art songs, arrangements of folk songs, some chamber and piano music, and a considerable number of choral works, both secular and for Russian Orthodox Church service, including settings of portions of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (the latter despite the fact that he was a staunch atheist^[85][86][87]).

Books

His autobiography and his books on harmony and orchestration have been translated into English and published. They provide remarkable insights into his life and work. He wrote his book on harmony after finding Tchaikovsky's book on the subject unsatisfactory.^[88]. He left his book on orchestration unfinished at his death. His son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg completed it posthumously in 1912.

Students

In his decades at the Conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov taught many composers who would later find fame, including Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Ottorino Respighi, and Artur Kapp.

Stravinsky, who studied privately with Rimsky-Korsakov before entering the conservatory, wrote about his teacher:

I worked with him in this way. He would give me some pages of the piano score of a new opera he had just finished (Pan Voyevoda), which I was to orchestrate. When I had orchestrated a section, he would show me his own instrumentation of the same passage. I had to compare them, and then he would ask me to explain why he had done it differently. Whenever I was unable to do so, it was he who explained.

Rimsky-Korsakov hiumself left a brief outline for a course of study for talented students like Stravinsky:

In fact, a talented student needs so little; it is so simple to show him everything needed in harmony and counterpoint to set him on his feet in that work, it is so simple to direct him in understanding the forms of composition, if one goes about it the right way. Just one or two years of systematic study in the development of technique, a few exercises in free composition and orchestration, assuming a good knowledge of the piano—and the studies are over.^[89]

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."^[90] Malko added that his class followed exactly this pattern. "Rimsky-Korsakov explained everything so clearly and simply that all we had to do was to do our work well."^[90]

Rimsky-Korsakov would sit at the piano in class, looking through all the exercises in counterpoint his students had brought. He played endless preludes, fugues, canons and arrangements. However, he refused to review a student's work if it were written in pencil. "I do not wish to go blind because of you," he would declare. (Dmitri Shostakovich would also insist that his composition students write their scores in ink.)^[91]

Because of Rimsky-Korsakov's fame, his classes were large. This irritated the 15-year-old Prokofiev, who wanted the master's undivided attention and had trouble breaking through the crowd. Nevertheless, he admitted that those students who knew how much they could learn from Rimsky-Korsakov got the benefit despite the crowding.^[92]

Editing "The Five"'s work

Rimsky-Korsakov's legacy goes far beyond his compositions and his teaching career. His tireless efforts in editing the works of other members of The Five are significant, if controversial. These include the completion of Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor (with Alexander Glazunov), orchestration of passages from César Cui's William Ratcliff for the first production in 1869, and the complete orchestration of Alexander Dargomyzhsky's swansong, The Stone Guest. This effort was a practical extension of the fact that Rimsky-Korsakov's early works had been under the intense scrutiny of Balakirev and that the members of The Five during the 1860s and 1870s experienced each other's compositions-in-progress and even collaborated at times.

While the effort for his colleagues is laudable, it is not without its problems for musical reception. In particular, after the death of Modest Mussorgsky in 1881, Rimsky-Korsakov took on the task of revising and completing several of Mussorgsky's pieces for publication and performance. In some cases these versions helped to spread Mussorgsky's works to the West, but Rimsky-Korsakov has been accused of pedantry for "correcting" matters of harmony, etc., in the process. Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangement of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain is the version generally performed today. However, critical opinion of Mussorgsky has changed over time so that his style, once considered unpolished, is now valued for its originality. This has caused some of Rimsky-Korsakov's other revisions, such as that of Boris Godunov, to fall out of favour and be replaced by productions more faithful to Mussorgsky's original manuscripts. Rimsky-Korsakov likely foresaw this might happen when he wrote this statement:

If Moussorgsky's compositions are destined to live unfaded for fifty years after their author's death (when all his works will became 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.

Synesthesia

Rimsky-Korsakov had synesthesia, a condition in which normally separate senses are not separate but rather are cross-wired. In the case of Rimsky-Korsakov, he perceived colors associated with major keys, as follows ^[93][94]:

Media

Bibliography

• 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, NY: 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").

Sources

• Abraham, Gerald. Rimsky-Korsakov: a Short Biography. London: Duckworth, 1945; rpt. New York : AMS Press, 1976. Later ed.: Rimsky-Korsakov. London: Duckworth, 1949.
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840-1874 (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978).
• Figes, Orlando, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002). ISBN 0-8050-5783-8 (hc.)
• Griffiths, Steven. A Critical Study of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov, 1844-1890. New York: Garland, 1989.
• Holden, Anthony, Tchaikovsky: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1995). ISBN 0-679-42006-1.
• Maes, Francis, tr. Pomerans, Arnold J. and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Brekeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
• Rimsky-Korsakov, A.N. Н.А. Римский-Корсаков: жизнь и творчество [N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov: Life and Work]. [5 vols.] Москва: Государственное музыкальное издательство, 1930.
• Richard Taruskin. "The Case for Rimsky-Korsakov," Opera News, vol. 56, nos. 16 and 17 (1991–2), pp. 12–17 and 24-29, respectively.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1995). ISBN 0-02-874052-1.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, Testimony: The memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: Harper & Row, 1979),
• Yastrebtsev, Vasily Vasilievich. Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov. Ed. and trans. by Florence Jonas. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. (Note: this is heavily abridged.)

References

External links

• Song of Scheherazade at the Internet Movie Database
• The Rimsky-Korsakov Home Page
• The Rimsky-Korsakov Home Page
• Principles of Orchestration full text with "interactive scores."
• Rimsky-Korsakov was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

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