Mussorgsky - Songs And Dances Of Death

Of the Russian composers that made up The Five in the 19th century, Modest Mussorgsky may have had the most natural talent of them all.  He began piano lessons with his mother at the age of six and made such rapid progress that by ten was performing for family and friends. His first composition was published when he was twelve years old.

Although his musical talent was obvious, Mussorgsky entered the Cadet School Of The Guards when he was thirteen to continue the family tradition of military service.  He continued his study of music while at the school and his natural abilities as a pianist were in large demand. When Mussorgsky was seventeen he met Borodin and struck up a friendship, and he soon met Balakirev and began to study with him. Soon after that, Mussorgsky resigned his military commission.

He learned much from Balakirev, but after a time Mussorgsky set out on his own. His family was well-off financially and Mussorgsky had no money worries until the Emancipation Of The Serfs in 1861 which caused Mussorgsky's family sufficient economic hardship that he could no longer rely on  them for support. He took a minor civil service job to help make ends meet. Due to chronic alcoholism, he composed erratically and failed to finish many compositions. His life continued its downward spiral, although he did manage to finish his masterpiece Boris Godunov and some other compositions. He lost his civil service job in 1880 and was reduced to living on the charity of friends until he died in 1881 of alcoholism at the age of 42.

Mussorgsky wrote the song cycle Songs And Dances Of  Death in 1875-1877 to poems by Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov who was distantly related to Mussorgsky. That Mussorgsky was quite taken with the poet and his works is expressed in a letter:

After Pushkin and Lermontov I have not encountered what I have in Kutuzov... Sincerity leaps from almost everything in Kutuzov, almost everywhere you scent the freshness of a fine warm morning, together with a matchless inborn technique... And how he is drawn to the people, history!

Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov

Obviously Mussorgsky was commenting on the power of Kutuzov's poetry to evoke images and feelings, in this particular case the images and feelings concerning death.

The four songs all deal with the figure of death and how death claims its victims in ways all too familiar to people in 19th century Russia. There are versions of the songs for voice and orchestra by Glazunov/ Rimsky-Korsakov and others, the latest being by Dmitri Shostakovich. But  the songs were originally written for piano and voice, with the piano doing much more than simply accompanying the singer. Singer and piano combine in some of the most powerful songs ever written. As I do not understand Russian,  I can only approximate the full effect of these songs in the original language.  But I am enough of a musician to understand some of the musical power and drama Mussorgsky put into these songs. Music itself is a language, and Mussorgsky expresses much in these songs written for the two instruments he understood very well; the piano and human voice.  I want to thank Sergy Rybin for extending his kind permission to include his translation of the Russian texts.

Lullaby -  Mussorgsky paints a picture of death claiming a sick child. The poet sets the scene, death enters and a short dialog between the child's mother and death begins. I have bracketed indications of which entity is speaking for clarification - 

[Poet] - A child is groaning...  A candle, burning out,

Dimly flickers onto surroundings.

The whole night, rocking the cradle,

A mother has not dozed away with sleep.

Early-early in the morning, carefully, on the door

Compassionate Death -- Knock!

The mother shuddered, looked back with worry...

[Death] - "Don't get frightened, my dear!

Pale morning already looks in the window...

With crying, anguishing and loving

You have tired yourself, have a little nap,

I'll sit instead of you.

You've failed to pacify the child.

I'll sing sweeter than you" --

[Mother]  - "Quiet! My child rushes and struggles,

Tormenting my soul!"

[Death]  - "Well, with me he'll soon be appeased.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby." --

[Mother]  - "The cheeks are fading, the breath in weakening...

Be quiet, I beg you!" --

[Death]  - "That's a good sign, the suffering will quieten,

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby." --

[Mother]  - "Be gone, you damned thing!

With your tenderness you'll kill my joy!" --

[Death]  - "No, a peaceful sleep I'll conjure up for the baby.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby." --

[Mother]  - "Have pity, wait at least for a moment

with finishing your awful song!" --

[Death]  - "Look, he fell asleep with my quiet singing.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby."
translation © Sergy Rybin http://www.lieder.net/

Serenade -  

Magical languor, blue night,

Trembling darkness of spring.

The sick girl takes in, with her head dropped,

The whisper of the night's silence.

Sleep does not close her shining eyes,

Life beckons towards pleasures,

Meanwhile under the window in the midnight silence

Death sings a serenade:

"In the gloom of captivity, severe and stifling,

Your youth is fading away;

A mysterious knight, with magic powers

I'll free you up.

Stand up, look at yourself: with beauty

Your translucent face is shining,

Your cheeks are rosy, with a wavy plait

Your figure is entwined, like with a cloud.

The blue radiance of your piercing eyes

Is brighter than skies and fire.  

Your breath flutters with the midday heat ...

You have seduced me.

Your hearing is captured with my serenade,

Your voice called for a knight,

The knight has come for the ultimate reward;

The hour of ecstasy has arrived. 

Your body is tender, your trembling is ravishing...

Oh, I'll suffocate you

in my strong embraces: listen to my seductive

chatter! ... be silent!... You are mine!"

translation © Sergy Rybin http://www.lieder.net/

Trepak -  

Forest and glades, no one is around.

A snow-storm is crying and groaning,

It feels as in the gloom of the night

The Evil One is burying someone;

Hush, it is so! In the darkness

Death is hugging and caressing an old man,

With the drunkard She is dancing a trepak,

While singing a song into his ear:

"Oh, my little wretched man,

Got drunk, stumbled along the road,

But the witch-blizzard has risen furiously,

And driven you from the glade into the dense forest.

Tortured with anguish and need,

Lie down, curl up and fall asleep, my dear!

I'll warm you up with snow, my darling,

And stir up a great game around you.

Shake up the bed, you blizzard-swan!

Hey, get going, start chanting, you weather

A fairytale, that could last all night,

So that the drunkard could fall asleep soundly!

Hey you, forests, skies and clouds,

Gloom, wind and fleeting snow,

Wreathe into a shroud, snowy and fluffy;

With it I'll cover our old man, like a baby...

Sleep, my little friend, happy wretch,

The summer has come and blossomed!

Above the fields the sun is laughing and sickles roam,

The song hovers around; the doves are flying about..."

translation © Sergy Rybin http://www.lieder.net/

The Field Marshal - 

The battle is thundering, the armor is shining,

Copper cannons are roaring,

The troops are running, the horses are rushing

And red rivers are flowing.

The midday is blazing -- people are fighting,

The sun is declining -- the fight is stronger,

The sunset is fading away -- but the enemies

Are still battling more fierce and hateful.

And night has fallen on the battlefield.

The armies have parted in the darkness...

Everything has fallen quiet, and in the night's mist

The groans have risen to the heavens.

Then, illuminated by moonlight,

On her battle horse,

Shining with the whiteness of her bones,

Appeared Death; and in the silence,

Taking in moans and prayers,

Full of proud satisfaction,

Like a field marshal she circled around

The place of battle,

And having ridden to the top on the hill,

looked around, stopped, smiled....

And above the battlefield

Roared her fateful voice:

"The battle is finished! I won over everyone!

You all submitted before me, soldiers! 

Life has made you quarrel, I have reconciled you!

Stand up as one for the parade, corpses!

Pass in front of me in a pompous march,

I want to count my troops;

Then deposit your bones into the earth,

It is sweet to rest from life in the ground!

Year after year will pass,

And even the memory of you will disappear.

I will not forget and loudly above you

Will hold a feast at the midnight hour!

With a heavy dance I'll trample

The raw earth, so that the realm of the grave

Your bones will never be able to leave,

So that you'll never rise from the ground! "

translation © Sergy Rybin http://www.lieder.net/

Liadov - Baba Yaga

In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is a supernatural being that takes the form of an old woman that lives deep in the forest. She lives in a hut that stands on the huge legs of a chicken. She flits about the wilderness while sitting in a mortar and moving herself with a pestle. She's not strictly an evil entity as she can give assistance as well as evil to those who seek her out.  The folklore for the figure varies according to the area. The Russian Baba Yaga folklore has inspired Russian artists as well as musicians. Two Russian composers that wrote works based on the legend were Mussorgsky, who wrote one of the pieces in his Pictures From An Exhibition called The Hut On Fowl Legs,  and the piece discussed here by Anatoly Liadov. 

Liadov came from a family of musicians, and entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1870 to study violin and piano. He was a very good pianist, but his lack of drive began early as he was expelled from Rimsky-Korsakov's class for extensive absenteeism. He managed to get back into good graces to complete his studies and began teaching at the conservatory in 1878 and taught many young composers including Modest Mussorgsky and Sergei Prokofiev. 

Liadov was well regarded as a composer in his lifetime. Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky all thought much of his technical abilities, but Liadov's output as a composer was relatively small thanks to lack of ambition and perhaps a lack of self confidence. He finished no composition of any major length, but was a master of the miniature, whether he was writing for piano or orchestra. He married into money in 1884, which meant that between that and his teaching position he was hardly in need of money, no doubt another stumbling block to his composing career. 

Baba Yaga was written between the years 1891 - 1904 and the piece shows Liadov's flair for orchestral color.  In a piece that lasts under four minutes, Liadov manages to paint a picture of Russian forests and folklore, a tone poem in miniature.

Ruggles - Sun Treader

Carl Ruggles was foul-mouthed, highly opinionated, crude, and merciless in his criticism of other composers except Charles Ives who was his friend. He was a man that spouted disrespect for Brahms, calling him a "sissy". But the worst criticism and harshest judgments were aimed at only one composer - himself. Self-critical in the extreme, he wrote and rewrote his music, only to destroy most of it. He lived to be 95 years old but left only eight published compositions, with the longest one taking about 16 minutes to play, the piece for orchestra he called Sun Treader.

Ruggles took violin lessons in early childhood, and started calling himself Carl instead of his given name Charles out of his respect for German composers, especially Wagner. He was classically trained in composition and conducting at Harvard, but maintained a hand to mouth existence most of his life by teaching, conducting, being a music reviewing, engraving, and as a painter had one-man shows of his work.

Ruggles' music sounds something like Schoenberg's as it is dissonant and atonal, but Ruggles did not practice Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Ruggles wrote dissonant free melody and what came to be called dissonant counterpoint.  With dissonance the norm, Ruggles added to the complexity by using an ever-shifting metrical pulse of complex time signatures.

His method of composing was pain-staking, tedious and he took years to compose a single work. He would sit at the piano and play a single chord over and over again, giving it the 'test of time' as he said.  His most well-known work is Sun Treader.  He began it in 1926 and it was intended for a concert in New York City, but the work was not completed until six years later. It was premiered in Paris in 1931 and was not played in The United States until 1966.

The name of the piece comes from a poem by Robert Browning titled Pauline, specifically a line from the poem, "Sun-treader—life and light be thine for ever" a line that is in praise of Shelley the poet. Such things that inspire composers are usually not meant to be taken literally. Ruggles' work has nothing to do with Shelley the poet, but it is a result of the feelings Ruggles got from the poem, a combination of grandeur, futility, anger, and who knows what else. So Sun Treader is in essence a symphonic poem in the tradition began by Liszt.

Sun Treader begins with notes hammered out by the timpani as the orchestra makes initial loud, dissonant statements that sound like chaos. The music quiets somewhat in volume and the dissonance is not as harsh but it is still there. The music ebbs and flows with sections of relative calm and sections of unsettling grittiness. The hammer blows of the timpani return throughout the piece as a sort of guidepost to help us through the music, and as a signal that the climatic end of the piece is near.

In the liner notes of Ruggles Complete Works written by Ruggles' good friend John Kirkpatrick he hears the work as a series of arcs of dissonant melody that  fall into a pattern of traditional sonata form - exposition, development, recapitulation, coda.  For anyone who wishes to explore Ruggles' music further, I recommend the reissue of the recording by the Buffalo Philharmonic and Michael Tilson-Thomas and the excellent liner notes that accompany it written by John Kirkpatrick.

Smetana - String Quartet No. 1, 'From My Life'

Bedřich Smetana was one of the first musicians to create a nationalistic style of  Czech music. His music was  closely associated with the struggle of his country for independence, and Smetana himself participated in the Prague Uprising in 1848 which was also the time of his first nationalistic compositions.

Smetana was a child prodigy on the piano and gave his first public performance at the age of six. After his brief stint as a revolutionary in 1848 he founded the Piano Institute in Prague in 1849. He contacted Liszt for advice and assistance, and the two became friends. The Institute gave regular recitals which Smetana participated in along with the students, and Liszt attended some of these recitals. By 1856 Smetana had suffered the death of three children and his wife contracted tuberculosis. His compositions were not being received very well, and the hoped-for relaxing of the political climate didn't happen, so he moved to Sweden where he taught and composed.

He eventually was coaxed by admirers to come back and he returned to Prague in 1860 and continued to compose, concentrating on helping to establish Czech nationalistic operas. He was appointed conductor of the Provisional Theater in Prague after he wrote his first two operas, one of which was his very popular opera The Bartered Bride.

Smetana was involved in controversies during his tenure as conductor, as the more conservative factions in Prague distrusted Smetana's siding with the progressive music and ideas of Wagner and Liszt. Liszt became his friend and gave Smetana advice that led to the founding of the Piano Institute in Prague. The Institute gave regular recitals which Smetana participated in along with the students, and Liszt attended some of these recitals.

After the intrigues of the opera house and the continuing politics of his enemies he was on the verge of being fired as conductor of the Provisional Theater, but due to the efforts of his backers such as Antonín Dvořák, he was reappointed as Artistic Director of the theater in 1873.  The bitter controversies were contributing factors to the illness that beset him in 1874. He became totally deaf in his right ear and advised theater management that if his health did not improve he would resign. By October he was totally deaf in both ears and resigned. Smetana concentrated on composing and in 1876 wrote his first string quartet, subtitled 'From My Life'.  As Smetana explained to a friend:

"I wanted to depict in music the course of my life…written for four instruments which, as in a small circle of friends, talk among themselves about what has oppressed me so significantly." 

The 1st String Quartet is in 4 movements with comments in italics by the composer:
I. Allegro vivo appassionato -  
"1st part - The call of fate into the life struggle. Love of art in my youth, my inclination towards romanticism in love as well as music, an inexpressible yearning for something, and a warning concerning my future misfortune.  The long insistent note in the finale owes its origin to this. It is the fateful ringing in my ears of the high-pitched tones which in 1874 announced the beginning of my deafness. I permitted myself this little joke, because it was so disastrous to me."

The first movement begins with an E minor chord, after which the violins play a steady, subdued eighth-note figure as the cello plays an extended E in the low bass. This is all in preparation for the entrance of the viola with Smetana's 'fate' motive.

The motive appears throughout the first movement and is supplemented with other themes that express Smetana's emotions towards his youth.

II. Allegro moderato à la Polka -  
"The second movement, a quasi- polka, brings to mind the joyful days of youth when I composed dance tunes and was known everywhere as a passionate lover of dancing."

III. Largo sostenuto - 
"The happiness of my first love, the girl who later became my wife.  The struggle with the unfavorable fate, the final reaching of my goal."

IV. Vivace -
"The fourth movement describes the discovery that I could treat national elements in music and my joy in following this path until it was checked by the catastrophe of the onset of my deafness, the outlook into the sad future, the tiny rays of hope of recovery, but remembering all the promise of my early career, a feeling of painful regret.”

After Smetana's joyous music of the first part of the finale, there is a sudden interruption as the tinnitus that began Smetana's descent into deafness is depicted by a high harmonic E played by the first violin while the other instruments play tense tremolos. The music becomes melancholy as the fate motive heard in the first movement comes back. The music itself slowly goes silent as the movement ends with silence, a poignant representation of Smetana's deafness.

Smetana composed for a few more years until his mind experienced a descent of its own into madness. His family nursed him as long as possible, but he  was confined to a lunatic asylum after he became violent and incoherent and died there a few months later in 1884.  There is still controversy about the cause of death, but the evidence points strongly to end - stage syphilis .

Schubert - Piano Trio No. 1 In B-flat Major

Schubert wrote two piano trios in the last year of his life, neither of which were published or heard in public until after his death. It was the first compositions in the form since his last piano trio written when he was fifteen. Any of Schubert's music played during his lifetime was usually played at a 'Schubertaide', an informal impromptu party held in the home of a wealthy friend and admirer. The first trio was heard in a private house at the engagement party of one of his friends.

By the last year of his life, Schubert's daily routine usually consisted of composing in the morning, visiting and taking long walks in the afternoon, with evenings spent with his friends, sometimes at a Schubertaide, sometimes drinking wine and singing. Schubert was as a man possessed while he was composing. His moods could run from dark and depressing to wild and fun-loving. These wide fluctuations in mood are sometimes reflected in his music, especially in the last years of his short life when he suffered with the end stages of syphilis. The 1st piano Trio is somewhat of an exception, as the music is good-natured and cheerful, at least for the most part.

Schubert's 1st Piano Trio is in 4 movements:
I. Allegro moderato - The first movement consists of two themes, each of which unwind in the lengthy exposition, and are expounded upon in the also lengthy development section that is punctuated by changes in key and mood. This is the music of Schubert's last years that seemed to many to be overly long, but music the Robert Schumann labeled as 'of heavenly length'.  The themes have a final appearance in a coda.

II. Andante un poco mosso - The cello is center-stage at the start, with the violin and piano taking up the pleasant tune. The three instruments take turns repeating and commenting on the melody with Schubert keeping everything in balance in music of seamless beauty.

III.  Scherzo - Allegro -  The piano starts things off, with the violin and cello joining in a jaunty Ländler. The trio shifts gears and becomes a simple Waltz, after which the first dance repeats.

IV. Rondo- Allegro vivace -  A rondo that also has elements of the theme and variation form .

Lachner - Symphonic Suite No. 7 In D Minor

The last major composition by Lachner was the Symphonic Suite No. 7, written in 1881. He was 79 years  old when he wrote it, and had fallen out of step with the current trends of music exemplified by Liszt and Wagner. Lachner especially recognized the value of Wagner's music, as he had given performances of it during his career as a conductor, but his aesthetic was not the same as Wagner's.  Lachner's music was considered old-fashioned by many in the late 19th century, but that doesn't diminish the quality of his music. He was a prolific composer (his opus numbers ran to 190) and remained a popular composer in his time, at least with listeners that weren't hard-core combatants in the 'War Of The Romantics', but shortly after his death in 1890 his music fell by the wayside.

The Suite No. 7 is in 4 movements:
I. Overture - The work opens with an overture in name and spirit, as the movement's themes are of a decidedly operatic nature.  It is a serious and dramatic movement balanced by contrasting lighter themes, but it never really shakes its somewhat tragic feeling. For the observant listener, the dramatic ending is a conscious or unconscious tribute to Lachner's good friend of so many years previous, Franz Schubert, as the orchestra repeats the main theme of the movement with the final statement sounding eerily similar to the triplet accompaniment of one of Schubert's most famous songs, Der Erlkönig.

II. Scherzo - A fine scherzo with a bouncing theme and a contrasting middle section.

III. Intermezzo - Finely written lyrical music, an example of Lachner's craft that was much admired by Schumann.

IV. Chaconne e Fuga - Some of the movements within Lachner's orchestral suites are romantic-era versions of the dances that made up the collections of Baroque era suites. The chaconne of this movement is an example. The origins of the chaconne can be traced back to Spain, but by the Baroque era the dance had become a type of instrumental piece where variations are played over a repeating bass. Lachner follows the short chaconne with a fugue. One of Lachner's music teachers was Simon Sechter, a teacher who lived long and taught many composers besides Lachner. Schubert took a few lessons from him before Schubert died in 1828, and Anton Bruckner was also his student.  Sechter was a task-master with his students and also himself as Sechter wrote around 5,000 fugues in his lifetime. Lachner learned his lessons well, as his skills in counterpoint are heard in this fugue .

 

Méhul - Symphony No.1 In G Minor

Étienne Méhul was a French composer at the time of the French Revolution and Napoleon. He was well-known in his time as an opera composer, and some have called him the first romantic composer. Méhul offered up his first symphony around 1809 in France. Critics were divided as to its worth, even the composer himself offered up an explanation:

"I understood all the dangers of my enterprise; I foresaw the cautious welcome that the music-lovers would give my symphonies. I plan to write new ones for next winter and shall try to write them... to accustom the public gradually to think that a Frenchman may follow Haydn and Mozart at a distance."

While audiences and critics of his time were mixed towards his symphonies, the audience and critics were impressed with Méhul's 1st Symphony in G minor when it was played by  the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn in 1838.  Robert Schumann was in the audience and was quite taken with the symphony.

The 1st Symphony is in 4 movements :
I. Allegro - The movement begins in G minor with an agitated theme that is reminiscent of Mozart's initial theme in his 40th Symphony. There is a downward movement that occupies this first theme. The theme proceeds and leads to the second theme which is of a calmer nature. The second theme features something of a reversal in feeling as well as direction as the music move upward.   The development section expounds on fragments of the initial theme. The recapitulation begins, followed by a summing up by a coda of the main theme and the music returns to its downward movement as the music ends.

II. Andante -  A set of variations, music that strolls in contrast to the proceeding dramatics of the first movement. Méhul's theme is a French Chants de Noël (Christmas Carol).

III. Menuet : Allegro moderato -  Pizzicato strings play the theme quietly. The trio is louder and has the strings play with the bow. This movement impressed Schumann considerably. After praising the symphony in general, Schumann writes:

"A remarkable feature too, was the similarity of the scherzo (to the scherzo of Beethoven's 5th Symphony), and in such a striking way that there must have been a remembrance on one side or the other; I am not able to determine on which, since I do not know the year of birth of the Méhul."

As both Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Méhul's 1st Symphony were being composed in 1808, there is no possibility that either composer heard each other's work.

IV. Final : Allegro agitato -  A final movement that again reminds Schumann of Beethoven's 5th, this time the first movement. Méhul builds the movement from a short rhythmic motive with a personalized sense of sonata form. The composer goes far afield with key changes in the development section, the symphony continues in its restless and intense manner until the final chord.