Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (born March 6 [March 18, New Style], 1844, Tikhvin, near Novgorod, Russia—died June 8 [June 21], 1908, Lyubensk) was a Russian composer, teacher, and editor who was at his best in descriptive orchestrations suggesting a mood or a place.

Early life and naval career

Rimsky-Korsakov was the product of many influences. His father was a government official of liberal views, and his mother was well educated and could play the piano. His uncle was an admiral in the Russian navy, and his elder brother was a marine officer. From them Rimsky-Korsakov acquired his interest in music and his abiding love for the sea. When he was 12 years old the family moved to St. Petersburg, where he entered the naval academy. At age 15 he began taking piano lessons and learned the rudiments of composition. In 1861 he met the composer Mily Balakirev, a man of great musical culture, and under the older man’s guidance he began to compose a symphony.

In 1862 he graduated from the naval academy. Soon afterward he sailed on the clipper ship Almaz on a long voyage, the vessel anchoring in New York City; Baltimore, Maryland; and Washington, D.C., at the height of the American Civil War. Since Russia was politically sympathetic toward the North, the sailors were cordially welcomed there. Subsequent ports of call were Brazil (where he was promoted to the rank of midshipman), Spain, Italy, France, England, and Norway. The ship returned to its home port of Kronstadt (Kronshtadt) in May 1865. For young Rimsky-Korsakov the voyage confirmed a fascination with the sea. Aquatic scenes abound in his operas and symphonic works: the ocean in Scheherazade (1888), Sadko (1898), and The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1900), and the lake in The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia (1907).

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On his return to St. Petersburg, Rimsky-Korsakov completed the symphony begun before his voyage, and it was performed with gratifying success in St. Petersburg on December 31, 1865, when the composer was only 21 years old. His next important work was Fantasy on Serbian Themes for orchestra, first performed at a concert of Slavonic music conducted by Balakirev in St. Petersburg, on May 24, 1867. The occasion was of historic significance, for, in reviewing the concert, the critic Vladimir Stasov proudly proclaimed that henceforth Russia, too, had its own “mighty little heap” (moguchaya kuchka) of native composers. The name caught on quickly and found its way into music history books, with specific reference to Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Aleksandr Borodin, César Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky. The composers became known collectively as The Five, and their purpose was seen to be to assert the musical independence of Russia from the West. Of the five, Rimsky-Korsakov was the most learned and the most productive; he composed works in all genres, but he most excelled in the field of opera.

Teacher, conductor, and editor

So high was Rimsky-Korsakov’s reputation that in 1871, when he was still a very young man, he was engaged to teach composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In his autobiographical Chronicle of My Musical Life (1972, originally published in Russian, 1909) he frankly admitted his lack of qualifications for this important position; he himself had never taken a systematic academic course in musical theory, even though he had profited from Balakirev’s desultory instruction and by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s professional advice. Eager to complete his own musical education, he undertook in 1873 an ambitious program of study, concentrating mainly on counterpoint and the fugue. He ended his studies in 1875 by sending 10 fugues to Tchaikovsky, who declared them impeccable.

In 1873 he left the naval service and assumed charge of military bands as inspector and conductor. Although he lacked brilliance as an orchestral leader, he attained excellent results in training inexperienced instrumentalists. His first professional appearance on the podium took place in St. Petersburg on March 2, 1874, when he conducted the first performance of his Symphony No. 3. In the same year he was appointed director of the Free Music School in St. Petersburg, a post that he held until 1881. He served as conductor of concerts at the court chapel from 1883 to 1894 and was chief conductor of the Russian symphony concerts between 1886 and 1900. In 1889 he led concerts of Russian music at the Paris World Exposition, and in the spring of 1907 he conducted in Paris two Russian historic concerts in connection with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

Rimsky-Korsakov rendered an inestimable service to Russian music as the de facto editor and head of a unique publishing enterprise financed by the Russian industrialist M.P. Belyayev and dedicated exclusively to the publication of music by Russian composers. After Mussorgsky’s death, Rimsky-Korsakov edited his scores for publication, making radical changes in what he considered Mussorgsky’s awkward melodic and harmonic progressions, and he practically rewrote Mussorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina. His edited and altered version of Boris Godunov evoked sharp criticism from modernists who venerated Mussorgsky’s originality; but Rimsky-Korsakov’s intervention vouchsafed the opera’s survival. Mussorgsky’s score was later published in 1928 and had several performances in Russia and abroad, but ultimately the more effective Rimsky-Korsakov version prevailed in opera houses. Rimsky-Korsakov also edited (with the composer Aleksandr Glazunov) the posthumous works of Borodin.

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Legacy

A strict disciplinarian in artistic matters, Rimsky-Korsakov was also a severe critic of his own music. He made constant revisions of his early compositions, in which he found technical imperfections. As a result, double dates, indicating early and revised versions, frequently occur in his catalog of works. He was at his best and most typical in his descriptive works. With two exceptions (Servilia [1902] and Mozart and Salieri [1898]), the subjects of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas are taken from Russian or other Slavic fairy tales, literature, and history. These include Snow Maiden (1882), Sadko, The Tsar’s Bride (1899), The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia, and Le Coq d’or (1909). Although these operas are part of the regular repertory in Russian opera houses, they are rarely heard abroad; only Le Coq d’or enjoys occasional production in western Europe and the United States.

Of the composer’s orchestral works, the best known are Capriccio espagnol (1887), the symphonic suite Scheherazade, and Russian Easter Festival (1888) overture. “The Flight of the Bumble Bee” from The Tale of Tsar Saltan and the “Song of India” from Sadko are perennial favourites in a variety of arrangements.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s songs are distinguished by simple elegance and fine Russian prosody; his chamber music is of less importance. He also wrote a piano concerto. As a professor of composition and orchestration at the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1871 until the end of his life (with the exception of a brief period in 1905 when he was dismissed by the reactionary directorate for his defense of students on strike), he taught two generations of Russian composers, and his influence, therefore, was pervasive. Igor Stravinsky studied privately with him for several years. His Practical Manual of Harmony (1884) and Fundamentals of Orchestration (posthumous, 1913) are still used as basic musical textbooks in Russia.