Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern ComposersRosenfeld, Paul
History
Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers
Rosenfeld, Paul
Composers; Music -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Music -- 20th century -- History and criticism
into modern music.
And was not this restatement of the national character Borodin's great
contribution to his age's life? For has not the most recent time of all
beheld a resurgence of the Russian spirit in the political field, an
attempted reconstitution of society in the light of the just and
fraternal and religious spirit with which this folk has ever been
endowed, and of which, in all its misery, it has ever been aware? If
there is any teacher who dominates Russian thought and Russian affairs
to-day, it is Tolstoy. And from whom did Tolstoy learn more than from
that conserver of the pristine and dominating Russian traits, the
moujik? And so men like Borodin who sought out the racial character and
reflected it in their music seem to us almost like outriders, like the
tribesmen who are sent on ahead of wandering folks to spy out the land,
to find the passes, and guide their fellows on. Their art is a summons
to individual life. 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.
And while his folk lay prone, he had arisen and mounted the encircling
ridge. And with a joyous cry, and the flaunting of a banner, he called
them to the way they had to traverse, and told them the road was found.
His work is not large in bulk. In a comparatively long life, long at
least by the side of that of a Mozart or a Moussorgsky, he succeeded in
producing only a single opera, "Prince Igor," two symphonies and the
torso of a third, a symphonic sketch, "On the Steppes," two string
quartets, and a score of songs. And many of these works are incomplete.
"Prince Igor" is a fragmentary composition, a series of not quite
satisfactorily conjoined numbers, a golden mosaic from which whole
groups of enameled bits are missing. Indeed, Borodin had not even
notated the overture when he died, and we know it thanks only to a
pupil who had heard him play it on the piano and recollected it well
enough to reconstruct it. Other of his works that are complete are
spotty, commingled dross and gold. He was a curiously uneven workman.
There appear to have been whole regions of his personality that remained
unsensitized. Part of him seems to have gone out toward a new free
Russian music; part of him seems to have been satisfied with the style
of the Italian operas in vogue in Russia during his youth. He who in the
dances from "Prince Igor" wrote some of the most pungent, supple, wild
of music could also write airs sweetly Italian and conventional. The
most free and ruddy and brave of his pages are juxtaposed with some of
the most soft and timid. In his opera a recitative of clear, passionate
accent serves to introduce a pretty cavatina; "Prince Igor's"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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