Vladimir Stasov on The Basic Principles Of The New Russian Musical School
Vladimir Stasov (1824-1906) was one of nineteenth-century Russia's leading critics. Appointed head of the art department of the St. Petersburg Public Library in 1872, he used his prominence in capital circles to lobby for the importance (and excellence) of Russian national music and art. Stasov is particularly known as the great champion of Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857), whom he regarded as the progenitor of a uniquely Russian school of classical music that incorporated folk themes. In the text excerpted below, Stasov outlines what he sees as the populist principles laid down by Glinka and links them to a new generation of composers, the so-called "Big Five" (M. A. Balakirev, M. P. Mussorgskii, N. A. Rimskii-Korsakov, A. P. Borodin, and T. S. Kui).
1. What does Stasov say are the characteristics of the Russian musical school?
2. What makes Russian music (in his view) both different from and better than classical music elsewhere in Europe?
3. Why does Stasov champion Glinka?
4. Has history's verdict been the same as Stasov's? Who is better known today, Beethoven and Schubert or Balakirev and Kui? Why?
Glinka thought he was creating only Russian opera. He was mistaken. He created the whole of Russian music, an entire Russian musical school, and a whole new system. Over the next fifty years, our music and our school have grown and developed in wonderful, original beauty, talented and strong. For a long time they received no recognition. They were regarded with scorn and condescension. As Dargomyzhskii (1) wrote in 1860, "How many 'first-rate experts' do we have who question the possibility of the existence of a Russian school, not only in song, but even in composition! Meanwhile, obviously it has made its own way. It is already too late to suppress it. Its existence has already been written into the annals of Art." Yes, the Russian school has existed since the time of Glinka, with original features that distinguish it from other European schools.
What forces have created the special peculiarities of our school? What elements have given it its unique direction and its original character?
One such force and element is, above all, the absence of prejudice and blind faith. Beginning with Glinka, the Russian musical school has been distinguished by complete independence of thought and opinion with regard to music created earlier. It accepts no universally- recognized authorities. It wants to verify everything for itself, to convince itself of everything. Only then does it agree to recognize the greatness of a composer and the significance of what has been created. Such independence of thought is rarely encountered even now among European musicians, and it was still more uncommon fifty years ago. Only a few musicians (e.g. Schumann) dared to express their own personal criticism of universally recognized and adored celebrities. Most Western musicians, however, believed blindly in all authorities and shared all the tastes and prejudices of the crowd. The new Russian musicians, on the other hand, are terribly "disrespectful." They do not want to believe in any tradition, until they have set their own standards as to what is significant ....
Beginning with Glinka, all the best Russian musicians have had very little faith in school learning. In general they have not regarded it with the servile and superstitious esteem it is still viewed with in many parts of Europe. It is ridiculous to deny science or learning, irrespective of the field (including music). However only the new Russian musicians, not having behind them the historical tradition inherited from past centuries of the long chain of scholastic periods in Europe. boldly face up to science. They respect it and make use of its blessings, but without exaggeration and obsequiousness. They deny the need for its dull and pedantic excesses. They deny its gymnastics, to which so much importance is attributed by thousands of Europeans, and refuse to believe that it is necessary to vegetate submissively for years over its pompous mystery.
....
Later, the successors and comrades of Dargomyzhskii did not waste long years in vain, as do the Germans. They learned the grammar of music very quickly and simply. like any other grammar; but this did not prevent them from learning it well and thoroughly. Such an attitude to "imaginary wisdom" (so much revered by musical schools) has saved the new Russian school from pedantic and routine compositions (which are altogether absent from it). This is one of the important features distinguishing it from earlier European schools.
Another outstanding feature of our new school is its urge for nationalism. This began even with Glinka and has continued uninterruptedly up to the present time. Such an urge can be found in no other European school. Historical and cultural conditions elsewhere were such that the folk song -- the spontaneous expression of unsophisticated folk musicality -- has almost wholly and long since vanished among the majority of civilized peoples. Who in the 19th century knows and listens to French, German, Italian, and English folk songs? They existed, of course, and once upon a time they were in vogue. Since then the leveling scythe of pan-European culture, so hostile to ordinary native elements, has fallen on them. Now we need the efforts of musical archeologists or curious travelers to find fragments of old folk songs, in remote provincial corners
In our fatherland, things are completely different. The folk song is still heard everywhere. Every peasant, carpenter, stonemason, yard-keeper, coachman, old woman, laundress and cook, nurse and wet-nurse brings it along to St. Petersburg, to Moscow, and to any city in his or her native land. You can hear it from one end of the year to the other. It surrounds you always and everywhere. As was the case thousands of years ago, no Russian (male or female) can work without singing a vast array of songs. The Russian soldier goes into battle with a folk song on his lips. It is an integral part of every one of us, and no archeological investigation is needed to understand and love it. From the first days of his life, therefore, every Russian who is born with a creative musical soul grows up amid musical elements that are deeply nationalistic.
It so happens, moreover, that nearly all the most outstanding Russian musicians were born, not in the capitals, but deep inside Russia, in provincial cities or on their fathers' estates. There Glinka, Dargomyzhskii, Mussorgskii, Balakirev, Rimskii-Korsakov, and so on spent their early years. Others for much of their youth lived in the provinces, outside the city, in close and frequent contact with folk songs and folk singing. Their first and most fundamental musical influences were national. If for a long time we had no artistically developed folk music, the blame must be placed solely on the unfavorable conditions of Russian life in the 18th and 19th centuries, when all that came from the people was trampled under foot in the mud. Nevertheless, nationalism in music was so akin to all, was such a basic necessity for all, that even in Catherine's century (the age of court wigs and powder), one of our musicians after another tried to introduce national melodies into his bad operas (operas that were copies of the bad European operas of that time). The same was true later, even with Verstovskii. National elements appeared here in a very unfortunate light, but all the same they were present. They testified to demands which existed among no other peoples.
But no sooner had times changed a little, no sooner had people begun to talk about life and literature, about national character, than once again sympathy for it flared up. Talented people emerged at once, people who sought to create music in those Russian national forms that were nearest and dearest to them. No doubt European composers (at least the strongest and most talented among them) could have followed the same road as ours did, beginning with Glinka. However such a road no longer existed for them. This is indicated very clearly by the eagerness with which they have always grasped at every expression of national music, even when it was foreign, even for a single grain of it. Remember, for instance, how Beethoven more than once attempted to appropriate for himself the themes of Russian folk songs; Franz Schubert, the Slovakian; Liszt, the Hungarian. And yet, they created neither Russian, nor Slovakian, nor Hungarian music. Music is not solely a matter of themes. If it is to be national, if it is to represent the national spirit and soul, it must be addressed to the very root of the people's life ....
....
Russian composers confronted different conditions. To begin with, they were not outsiders. They were "native" to the world that gave rise to Russian and Slavic melodies. Therefore they have mastery of it, enabling them to present in all truth and strength their coloring, mentality, and character. What Glinka has accomplished is universally known and universally recognized. He blazed a new trail, creating a national opera in forms that exist nowhere else in Europe. The successors of Glinka have followed suit, supported by his brilliant example and initiative.
Source: Unattributed translation of an article in Vestnik Evropy, 1882-1883. From V. V. Stasov, Sobr. soch., vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1894), pp. 645-646, 648, 649, 649-651, 651-652, 653. These passages were included in Khrestomatiia po istorii SSSR, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1952) pp. 802-806. Revised (syntax clarification, repunctuation, etc.) by Jon Bone.