Realism as Preached and Practiced the Russian Opera Dialogue

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Realism as Preached and Practiced: The Russian Opera DialogueAuthor(s): Richard TaruskinSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Jul., 1970), pp. 431-454Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/741247 .

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REALISM AS PREACHEDAND PRACTICED:THE RUSSIAN OPERA DIALOGUEBy RICHARD TARUSKIN

N 1878 there appeared in the Parisian publication Revue et GazetteMusicale an article, soon to become a book entitled La Musique enRussie, by Cesar Cui, the least talented and characteristic member butone of the most vocal and dogmatic mouthpieces of that group of Rus-sian composers known as the moguchaya kuchka, the "Mighty Five." 1The work consisted in part of an extended apologia for the ideals andmethods of the "New Russian School," one of the earliest such to bewritten for foreign consumption. One of the major tenets, set forth initalics, states that "Vocal music must be in perfect agreement with thesense of the words." 2 Needless to say, no more hackneyed a truism couldbe unearthed from the utterances of composers and their public defend-ers through the centuries: Monteverdi, Gluck, Wagner come immedi-ately to mind. Yet elsewhere we may read of the Russian school's anti-pathy toward Wagner, their patronizing attitude toward Gluck, and, weassume, since we do not find any mention of him, their ignorance ofMonteverdi. Clearly we have a case of independent formulation of thewell-worn slogan. If we examine the trend of thought that led up to it,we become aware of an aesthetic outlook that is peculiarly Russian, andwhich casts light on various extreme and, on the face of it, aberrativemanifestations of Russian musical art in the latter part of the 19thcentury.

1 The English appellation is a hybrid, combining the Russian moguchaya kuchka,or "mighty little bunch" (which term was originally coined by V. V. Stasov in anarticle of 1867, but was mainly used sardonically by the group's enemies, whose ap-propriation of it caused Stasov no end of regret), referring actually to the wholeNew Russian School - whose adherents and fellow-travelers numbered far morethan five - and the equally popular Russian pyatero, which means simply The Five,and meant specifically Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Musorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.

2 Cesar Cui, La Musique en Russie (Paris, 1880), p. 74. All translations fromFrench and Russian sources are mine.431


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432 The Musical QuarterlyLet us hear from Cui again. He follows the assertion quoted abovewith these precepts:

The text servesnot exclusivelyo facilitatevocalgymnastics;f suchwere its object,a text could be chosenat randomandjoinedto no matterwhat music. Sincetextsvary,sinceeach has its particularmeaning, t is absolutelynecessaryhat the musi-cal part be intelligentlyadapted to it. Each phraseof the text must have itsequivalent in a correct musical declamation. It is from the sense of the text thatthe musical phrase must emerge, the tones being intended to complete the effect ofthe word.Psychologicaleelingcan often be expressedwithmoredepthand powerin musicthan ever by words. One of the chief properties f musicis that of de-picting n vital and expressive olorsthe movements f the spirit,of the emotions,of communicating irectlyand fully with the most profoundsensibilitiesof thehumanheart;language,on the otherhand, createsfor it a definitemeaning,de-fines n some fashionall its aspirations.3

Here we have something more concrete. Music, in this view, is arepresentational art. It must not only be appropriate to the words, butmust express them directly, must "depict the movements of the emo-tions." What music lacks in precision, compared with language, it morethan makes up for in directness and force. The ideal representation ofa soul-state requires an alliance of words and music, the one providingthe context and focus, the other the impact. The mechanics of this rep-resentational process, taken for granted by Cui, is the peculiarly Russiancontribution, and of the greatest interest here. Cui's assertions are a re-flection of one of the dominant aesthetic trends of 19th-century Russia,namely, Realism.Russian Realism was a philosophy of art hatched in the minds of agroup of journalists and litterateurs in Russia who are often referred toas "Westernizers" (zapadniki), including such figures as Alexander Her-zen, Vissarion Belinsky, and Dmitri Pisarev. Notwithstanding their col-lective appellation, Realism was a direct reaction against a dominantWestern aesthetic theory of the time. The Hegelian philosophy of art,whose greatest exponent in the field of music was Hanslick, was anidealist, neo-Platonist aesthetic which held that art was an abstraction ofthe general from the particular, of the idea from its manifestations innature. The beautiful is the "complete correspondence, complete identityof the idea and the image," or, put another way, beauty, attainable onlyby art, is the "perfect manifestation of the idea in a single object," thatis, the artwork. Thus, true beauty does not exist in objective reality,

3Ibid., pp. 74-75.


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Russian Realism as Preached and Practiced 433only in the imagination which transcends it. It is an absolute, an abstractprinciple, the instrument of whose realization is the artist.The Realists, intellectually nourished on Positivism and scientific em-piricism, totally rejected these concepts. Accepting the objectively verifi-able as the only true reality, they asserted that "Reality is not only moreanimated, but is also more perfect than imagination. The images of theimagination are only pale and nearly always unsuccessful imitations ofreality." 4 If the imagination is delimited by sensory impressions, it followsthat beauty is not an absolute, since we cannot experience the absolutein objective reality. Furthermore, standards of beauty change. Beauty istransient, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of music:"Works of music perish with the instruments for which they were com-posed. The entire music of antiquity is dead to us because of the changein the system of musical notation.... The beauty of old works of musicwanes with the improvement of orchestration." 5 What then is beauty?"Beauty is life .... Beautiful is that being in which we see life as it shouldbe according to our conceptions; beautiful is the object which expresseslife, or reminds us of life." 6

This maxim contains two major seeds for the development of RussianRealist aesthetics. First, that art is mimetic in function - it strives toreproduce that which we find beautiful in objective reality. Corollary tothis is the all-important dogma that "Nature and life stand higher thanart," thatThe phenomena of reality are gold ingots without a hallmark: for this reasonalone many refuse to take them, being unable to distinguish them from pieces ofcopper. A work of art is a bank note which has little intrinsic value, but thenominal value of which is guaranteed by the whole of society, and it is thereforeprized by everybody, although only a few are aware that its value is due to thefact that it representsa piece of gold.7Second, in the words "life as it should be according to our conceptions"is contained the idea that art differs from nature in that it is premedi-tated and selective. It not only reproduces life but comments on it, ex-plains it. "In such a case, the artist becomes a thinker, and works of art,while remaining in the sphere of art, acquire a scientific significance....

4 Nikolai GavrilovichChernyshevsky,"The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality"("Esteticheskiyeotnosheniya iskusstva k deistvitel'nosti") in Selected PhilosophicalEssays (Moscow, 1953), p. 381.5Ibid., p. 333.I Ibid., p. 287.7Ibid., p. 362.


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434 The Musical QuarterlyLet art not be ashamed to admit that its aim is to compensate man incase of absence of opportunity to enjoy the full aesthetic pleasure af-forded by reality by, as far as possible, reproducing this precious reality,and by explaining it for the benefit of man." 8 Thus, and this is charac-teristic of the Realists, art shares its aims with the natural sciences if itis to be of value, and one of art's major attributes is social significance.(While this point is somewhat beyond the scope of this study, it isworthwhile to ponder it for its implications in light of Russian aestheticdevelopments in our own century.)The Realist aestheticians arrived at a position completely and dia-metrically opposed to the Idealist view of art: "A reproduction must asfar as possible preserve the essence of the thing reproduced; therefore, awork of art must contain as little of the abstract as possible; everythingin it must be, as far as possible, expressed concretely in living scenes andin individual images." ' It will be seen that the Realist conception ofbeauty, taken to mean the subject matter of art, is far more inclusivethan in the Romantic-Idealist view: "Usually it is said that the content ofart is beauty; but this restricts the sphere of art too much . . The sim-plest way to solve this riddle would be to say that the sphere of art is notlimited only to beauty and its so-called elements, but embraces every-thing in reality (in nature and in life) that is of interest to man, not as ascholar, but as an ordinary man." 1The seminal work from which the foregoing quotations are taken,Nicholai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky's Aesthetic Relations of Art to Real-ity, was written as a master's essay at the University of St. Petersburgand published in 1855. It remains the most extensive and uncompromis-ing application of Realist principles to the nonliterary arts and exertedan enormous influence in its time on many Russian writers on art, mostnotably on Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov. Either directly or through Stasov,its ideas penetrated the consciousness of many of the composers of theSt. Petersburg school. But how can these ideas be fully applied to music,which we believe to be the art of abstraction par excellence? To whatextent can music be considered a representation of objective reality on a

8 Ibid., p. 379.9 Ibid., p. 371.Olbid., pp. 369-70. Musorgsky put it more colorfully in a letter he wrote toV. V. Stasov in 1872: "The artificial representation of beauty alone, in the materialsense of the word, is coarse childishness, the babyhood of art. The subtlest aspects ofhuman nature,.., .the intensive exploration of these uncharted regions and their con-quest - there you have the true calling of the artist." Quoted in Tamara Livanova,Stasov i russkaya klassicheskaya opera (Moscow, 1956), p. 222.


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435

Nicholai GavrilovichChernyshevskyin the early 1860s.


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436 The Musical Quarterlypar with painting or literature? One of the most original and charac-teristic passages in Chernyshevsky's work deals with precisely this prob-lem. Music, in its origins, he argues, is not an art at all, but is itself anatural phenomenon. "It is strange.., .that nobody has drawn attentionto the fact that singing, being, in essence, an expression of joy or sorrow,does not by any means spring from our striving for beauty. Is it to beexpected that a person under the overwhelming influence of emotion willthink about attaining charm and grace, will concern himself with form?Emotion and form are opposites." nThis explains why music is such a powerful emotional stimulus, evenin its artistic manifestations. Music springs spontaneously from the emo-tions, and therefore constantly recalls them. It is almost superfluous topoint out the significance of the last sentence with regard to the NewRussian School's notoriously disdainful attitude toward compositionaltraining and technique which they all professed early in their careers,and which remained unchanged throughout the life of Musorgsky, atleast. Realism was a singularly attractive doctrine to the autodidact.Clearly, technique and form are the instruments of idealization and ab-straction. The freer we can keep our music from rational formal pro-cedures, the closer we shall get to the emotional wellsprings of the originalarticle which, as composers, we are copying. For art music, or "artificialsinging" in Chernyshevsky's terminology, bears the same relationship tofolk music, or "natural singing," as a copy bears to the original.Natural singing as the expression of emotion, although a product of nature andnot of art, which consciously concerns itself with beauty, nonetheless possessesgreat beauty; that is why a person is prompted by the desire to sing deliberately,to imitate natural singing. In what relation does this artificial singing stand tonatural singing? It is more deliberate, calculated, embellished with everything withwhich human genius can embellish it. What comparison can there be between anaria of an Italian opera and the simple, pale, monotonous melody of a folk song!But all the training n harmony,all the artistryof development, ll the wealthofembellishment f a brilliantaria, all the flexibilityand incomparable ichnessofthe voice of the one who singsit cannotmakeup for the absenceof the sincereemotion hatpermeateshe pale melodyof a folksongandthe ordinary, ntrainedvoice of the one who singsit not froma desireto pose and displayhis voice andart,butfromtheneedto expresshis feelings.12

Chernyshevsky even goes so far as to say that "in essence,... themusic of [a] composer who wrote... under the overwhelming influence11 Chernyshevsky, op. cit., p. 346.12Ibid, p. 347.


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RussianRealismas Preachedand Practiced 437of involuntaryemotionwill be a workof nature (of life) in general,andnot of art," except from the "technicalaspect." 3 Nor is inspiration, nits usualsense,to be confusedwith such "involuntary motion."Inspira-tion bearsthe same relationto emotionthat imaginationbearsto reality:a "paleand nearlyalwaysunsuccessfulmitation."To sum up: "Instrumentalmusic is," to Chernyshevsky,"imitationof singing,its accompanimentor substitute;and singingas a workof artis only an imitation of and substitutefor singing as a work of nature.After this, we have a right to say that in music, art is only a feeble re-production of the phenomena of life, which are independent of ourstrivings or art."14The New RussianSchooltook its cue, at its outset,fromthesewords,seekingto modifytheirstrivings:not for art,but directly or emotionandthe "truth" which transcendsartistry.Vocal music written to such aprescriptionmust be formally uncomplicated and flexible, achievingcoherence not through any rationally mposed logic or developmentbutby an immediate, spontaneouslyempathic emotional reaction by thecomposerto dramatictexts and situations.As Musorgsky,while he wasworkingon Marriage,wrote in a letter to Rimsky-Korsakov July 30,1868): "Whateverspeech I hear, no matter who is speaking (nor whathe says), my mind is alreadyworkingto find the musicalstatementforsuch speech." 5 The harmoniceccentricities(some call them crudities)of much of Musorgsky'swork and the late work of Dargomyzhsky imi-larly arise from the empirical,intuitive approachto compositionwhichis crucialto the thoroughgoingRealistoutlook.In purelymusical-historicalerms,RussianRealistoperais a reactionagainst Italian opera, then dominant in Russia. The latter seemed theheight of Idealism (or to call it by a more contemporaryRussianterm,formalism) to the musiciansof the Kuchka. If we returnnow to Cui'smanifesto,which was our startingpoint, we shall perceivea great dealof added significancein its pronouncements, n light of the RussianRealist aesthetic.The newRussianchool s strivingmusicallyo projecthe characterndtypeofthedramatisersonaen theboldest ossibleelief, o modeleachphrase f a roleto an individualndnot a generalpattern, ndlastly, o portray ruthfullyhehistoricalpochof thedrama, ndto depict helocalcolor,hedescriptives well

is Ibid.14Ibid., p. 348.15Jay Leyda and Sergei Bertensson,The MusorgskyReader (New York, 1947),p. 113.


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438 The Musical Quarterlyas the picturesque spectsof the action,in its poetic as well as exact sense.6xThis passage, while being on one level of interpretation a protest againstthe stylization and conventionality of structure and setting in Italianopera, also bears comparison, on a more philosophical plane, withChernyshevsky's critique of Hegel: "The expression: 'beauty is theperfect manifestation of the idea in a single object' is not a definition ofbeauty at all. But it has a truthful side, viz., that 'beauty' lies in an indi-vidual living object and not in an abstract idea." 17To let Cui summarize his views: "The Russian school understandsall the falsity of these immutable, stereotyped forms. It is convinced thatthe musical development of an opera demands a complete independenceof forms, and is governed only by the text and the dramatic situation." 8In other words, full-blown lyric or symphonic forms are to be avoidedin opera, where they impede the action and the ever-changing and vari-egated play of dialogue. An important desideratum of the New RussianSchool theater is that the criteria of the lyric stage approach as far aspossible those of the spoken theater. This, of course, is a revolutionarysuggestion, affecting every aspect of operatic composition.Needless to say, Cui has argued himself into a rather extreme posi-tion, an idealistic one, if the term be permitted, that has little relation-ship to the actual stage works forming the major repertoire of the Rus-sian opera, and even less resemblance to his own operas, which, by andlarge, are pale reflections of French and Italian models. But the Russianschool, in common with so many musical reformers, was far more in-clined to preach its doctrines than to practice them. Cui seemed to sensethe extremity of his position, for he was at pains to add the comicallycontradictory pronunciamento that "Dramatic music must always havean intrinsic worth, as absolute music, independent of the text."'19Granted the intimate alliance of text and music Cui advocates, this canonly represent his desire to have the cake he just finished eating.

However, the extreme Realist doctrine did spawn a handful of curi-ous works for the stage, which did indeed strive to achieve the goals laiddown in the foregoing discussion. These works were by no means typicalof Russian operatic production, nor even of their own composers' totaloutput. But in them we may see the radical principles of reform applied

16 Cui, op cit., p. 77.17Chernyshevsky, op. cit., p. 285.18 Cui, op. cit., p. 76.o19bid., p. 73.


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Russian Realism as Preached and Practiced 439to actual music in a very austere and uncompromising fashion; thus thesepieces may serve as a touchstone by which to measure the total oeuvreof the St. Petersburg circle against their original high ideals.The critical opera upon which we shall focus is The Stone Guest byAlexander Dargomyzhsky (1813-1869), which was left uncompleted atthe author's death, and following the old Russian custom, was revisedand orchestrated by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Its immediate successorswere The Marriage by Modeste Musorgsky, composed in 1868 to a prosetext by Gogol and similarly unfinished, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozartand Salieri, a much later work, written in 1897. In these pieces, espe-cially the first two, we can observe the attempt to create a music dramaalong Realist lines, where the music would not lead the artistic criteriaof the work away from the dramatic and towards the lyric, but wouldfunction as an intensifier of spoken drama, as an instrument of "dra-matic truth."

"Truth" was the great watchword of the Realists, who, in ascribingto music, as to its sister arts, a predominantly mimetic role, saw as itshighest goal the "truthful" reproduction of nature and life, from themodel to the imitation, or in their terms, from content to manner. Inthe case of vocal music, the models are, first and foremost, the emotionsembodied in the text, which as objective psychological phenomena wereto be rendered objectively and accurately. There was no question, con-trary to the popular supposition, that the composer was to express him-self. He was to portray with the greatest possible fidelity those soul-statescalled for by his text, or in the case of instrumental music, by his pro-gram, and his success or failure in this regard could be objectivelymeasured by a critic. This incipient Affektenlehre was the basis for agreat deal of Realist criticism and constitutes its most dated aspect. Withwhat amazement we read today the treatment of even instrumentalworks along these lines. An excellent case in point is Balakirev's critiqueof Chaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, a work which Balakirev himself hadsuggested to the composer, and to which he evidently felt a certain pro-prietary right.But one thing I will say against this theme: there is little inner spiritual love, butonly physical, passionate torment with even a hint of the Italian. Romeo andJuliet are certainly not Persian lovers, but European. I do not know whether youunderstand what I mean. I always feel I lack the gift of words when I enter intomusical criticism and so try to some degree to clarify by example. I cite the firsttheme I come across in which, in my opinion, the love is more deeply felt: thesecond theme in Schumann's overture, The Bride of Messina. The theme has its


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440 The Musical Quarterlydefects sicklytowards he end and a bit sentimental but the basicfeelingofwhich it is full is true.[Letter o Chaikovsky, ecember13, 1869.] 0

The second natural model for vocal music, and the one which wetoday are more inclined to recognize as such, is the rhythm, inflection,and contour of the spoken language. Musorgsky was most sensitive tothis requirement. In a letter he wrote while at work on Marriage (toLudmila Shestakova, July 30, 1868), he said:This is what I would like: my stage people should speak like living people; butbesides this, their character and power of intonation, supported by the orchestra,which forms the musical pattern of their speech, must achieve their aim directly,that is, my music must be artartistic reproduction of human speech in all its finestshades. That is, the sounds of human speech, as the external manifestations ofthought and feeling must, without exaggeration or violence, become true, accuratemusic, but (read: which means) artistic, highly artistic.... In Marriage I amcrossing the Rubicon. This is living prose in music. The scorn of musician-poetsfor common human speech, stripped of all heroic robes, will not be found here;instead there is reverence toward the language of mankind; this is a reproductionof simplehumanspeech.21

A new function of the composer in the context of music drama sug-gests itself here. The man who furnishes the music bears more resem-blance to an actor in spoken drama than he does to the composer oflyric drama. His role is to perform the lines in the spirit of the playrather than to use them as a pretext for spinning a tune. Musorgsky wasaware of his role in Marriage. "The success of Gogol's speech depends onthe actor, on his true intonation. I want to give Gogol his place and theactor his also; in other words, I want to speak musically as the charac-ters of Gogol would wish to speak, and in such a way that no one couldsay it in any other way." ' That the composer was doing an actor's jobis acknowledged also by Cui, in his discussion of Dargomyzhsky's TheStone Guest: "The power of declamation is so real that even the singerleast gifted with intelligence and musical expression can seem to be anartist of great talent by merely rendering with the Aecessary care andaccuracy the vocal line traced by Dargomyzhsky, observing faithfully themeter, tempo and rhythm." 23If there is to be no distinction made between the criteria of lyric andspoken drama, if the composer has deliberately abdicated the time-hon-

20 Sam Morgenstern, ed., Composers on Music (New York, 1955), p 236.21 Leyda and Bertensson, op. cit., pp. 111-112.22Ibid.2 Cui, op. cit., p. 103.


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Russian Realism as Preached and Practiced 441ored supremacy of music over words, of musical timing, that is, psycho-logical time, over dramatic timing, that is, chronometric time, and hasassumed a role more like that of a performer of drama than a creator ofit, what kind of texts will now be suitable for opera? Surely, the tradi-tional operatic libretto with its stylization of action and dialogue, its arti-ficial soliloquies (read: arias) and allowances for such egregiously un-"Realistic" devices as choruses and ballets, must go by the board, andthe composer must seek elsewhere. The solution is an obvious one. Allthree operas under consideration here are verbatim settings of pre-exist-ing stage plays which were written without the slightest premonition of,or allowance for, musical usages. Of course, granted the premises ofRealist opera, such a text is the most suitable, for the criteria of a goodopera will now be the same as those of a good play, and hence a goodplay provides the best text to a good opera, without the slightest modifi-cation being either necessary or desirable. A libretto which in any wayattempted deliberately to provide a dramma per musica would haveflown in the face of the requirements of Realist opera. As Cui puts it:WasDargomyzhskyightto accepthis text from Pushkinn its full extentwithoutchanging one passage or leaving out a single word; would it not have been betterif the work were revised from a musical point of view? If, in choosing a subject,the composer's aim had been to write an opera cast more or less in the ordinarymold, the type long familiar to the public, surely then Dargomyzhskywould havehad to begin by revising Pushkin's text from top to bottom, so as to fashion ariasand duos and add choruses (of monks, of villagers, nobles, etc.), compose somekind of divertissement, and many other things. But from the moment that he sethimself the task of realizing in full sincerity that ideal of which we dream, un-attempted until now, of a true music drama, a terrain on which music and poetryclaim equal rights, with such a lofty ambition, to touch Pushkin's work would bereprehensible, because amongst the masterpieces of Russian literature, one won'tfind any more able to exalt the inspiration of a musician sensitive to poetry.u

The Stone Guest and Mozart and Salieri are both set to malen'kiyetragedii, or "little tragedies" by Pushkin, a set of four miniature playswritten in 1830. No more extreme or tendentious choice could havebeen made, for Pushkin's plays are deliberate essays in dramatic com-pression and economy, almost as far from the expansive romantic the-ater in conception as the new Russian music drama wanted to be fromconventional opera. The Stone Guest, which happens to be the longestof them, has only 550 lines, and Mozart and Salieri, the shortest, a mere240. Written in Shakespearean blank verse, and dealing with themes of

24Ibid., pp. 102-103.


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Russian Realism as Preached and Practiced 443high drama, they contrast sharply with Marriage, a prose play writtenin 1833 by Gogol, a comedy of manners in the laconic and comicallynaturalistic idiom typical of the author.The Stone Guest was the first of the operas to be conceived. Dargo-myzhsky began work on it in 1866, after a moderately long and not-too-distinguished career as a composer of operas and songs. His early stageworks, Esmerelda (1839) and The Triumph of Bacchus (1847), were,as their very titles suggest, pallid and conventional Romantic fare, "slightand often trivial - in the style of Halhvy and Meyerbeer," as the com-poser himself later testified. His long friendship with Glinka eventuallyfired him with enthusiasm for national music, and his one completedoperatic endeavor in this direction, Rusalka (1855), gained him a cer-tain succes d'estime. In the words of Stravinsky, "Dargomyzhsky, a tal-ent less forceful, less original [than Glinka], but of the finest sort, showssimilar tastes. His charming opera Rusalka, his delightful romanzas andsongs mingle the Russian popular melos and the prevailing Italianismwith the most carefree and charming ease." 25But life was not all carefree and charming for the composer. Dis-couraged at his lack of public success, he became rather embittered. Ina letter to L. I. Karmalina (July 17, 1866) we read: "You ask aboutfuture operas of mine: actually, I did think of writing some opera oranother a long time ago, when music was still an art. But today it hasbecome a craft. One must pose, accept subjects from the tsar, seek a bril-liant production, write about oneself in the papers. I feel I could neveraccustom myself to this -- and so I gave it up..." 28Sour grapes have a way of fermenting, though, and before long Dargo-myzhsky was writing "mediocrity seeks out melodies which flatter theear. I do not chase such. I want music strictly to express the word. Iwant truth." 27 And so, after a lifetime of mediocre chasing, Dargomy-zhsky turned to Pushkin's Stone Guest. "By the way, I have not entirelyyet parted with the muse. I am amusing myself with Pushkin's DonJuan. I am trying something unprecedented: I am writing music to thescenes of "The Stone Guest" - just as they are, not changing a singleword. Of course, nobody will ever listen to it. But for me it's not turningout badly...." "8 Dargomyzhsky, then, was aware that he was doing

25 Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music (New York, 1947), p. 97.26 A. S. Ogolevetz, ed., Materialy i dokumenty po istorii russkoy realisticheskoy

muzykal'noy estetiki (Moscow, 1956), I, 535.27 Morgenstern, op. cit., p. 173.28 Ogolevetz, loc. cit.


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444 The Musical Quarterlysomething extremely esoteric, and regarded his work simply as a privateexperiment, a sort of protest against the operatic conventions he couldnever master.Not only was his own circle of young admirers pleased, but his workon The Stone Guest attracted to Dargomyzhsky the interest and enthu-siasm of marty progressive Russian musicians who had previously re-garded him rather patronizingly. His opera-in-progress seemed to an-swer to the demands of the Realist aestheticians, although there is littleevidence that Dargomyzhsky himself was directly influenced by themin his plan. At any rate, his work was seized upon by the New RussianSchool and especially by Stasov, who hailed it as a masterpiece and"prophetic," and attached to it far greater importance than the com-poser himself seemed to feel it had, at least at the outset.The story of the opera is familiar to anyone who knows Mozart'sDon Giovanni. In fact, Da Ponte's libretto was one of Pushkin's sourcesin composing his dramatic poem. But the plot is stripped to its essentials,and several changes are made. The most conspicuous is that the Com-mendatore (Don Carlos in Pushkin's version) is not Donna Anna'sfather, but her husband. And Don Juan's graveyard seduction is moremorally repulsive than anything Da Ponte was to offer. Instead of askingthe Commendatore to share his repast, as Da Ponte had it, Pushkin'sDon Juan merely invites the statue to stand sentry at the door of thebedchamber while the Don makes love to the statue's widow. Inciden-tally, the duel in which Don Juan kills Don Carlos has nothing to dowith Donna Anna's honor. It takes place before Don Juan had everseen the Commendatore's wife. Don Carlos challenges Don Juan to aduel to avenge the death of his brother, whom the busy cavalier hadslain sometime previously.For the rest, Pushkin dispenses almost entirely with the anecdotalrichness and local color digressions which give charm to Da Ponte'slibretto. The action proceeds along a direct path, with no dispensiblescenes. Soliloquy, too, is kept to a minimum. All the action is carried bydialogue. The music which Dargomyzhsky furnished for this highly eco-nomical set of dramatic scenes is appropriately austere. It takes the formof a continuous, one might almost say unrelieved, quasi recitative, con-stantly hovering on the brink of arioso. Monotony is to some extentallayed by a very fluid tonal scheme and a rather constantly high degreeof chromaticism in the vocal lines which seems to increase with emo-tional intensity as does the size of intervals. Passionate utterances areset to frequent sevenths, cool ones are mainly conjunct. Tonal centers


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Russian Realism as Preached and Practiced 445shift and succeed one another with a speed and arbitrariness that makestalk of modulation, in the usual sense of the word, useless. The tonalityis, with only short respites, continually ambiguous even at the longrange. While it is too much to say, as Russian critics often have (ratherboastfully), that the harmonic vocabulary of The Stone Guest "defiesanalysis," it is true that conventional harmonic analysis can shed littlelight on Dargomyzhsky's procedures. The object of analysis should be touncover a ground plan, a rationale by which a composer's procedurescan be seen as logical. Such a view would be a Procrustean bed for TheStone Guest, since Dargomyzhsky's procedures are plainly intuitive andempirical, and not "rational" in any way. They result from the com-poser's constant empathic reaction to his text, and without the text themusic would assuredly lose its coherence, for Dargomyzhsky, in keepingwith Realist aesthetics, is endeavoring to avoid all formal gestures whichcan be described as purely musical in character. Remember that Cher-nyshevsky asserted emotion and form to be opposites. We may no longerbelieve this -the 20th century no longer looks upon reason as emotion'sdire enemy, certainly not in the area of opera. But Dargomyzhsky did,and it is in that spirit that his work must be approached. In fact, noother approach was considered admissible by the New Russian School.Cui went so far as to assert that "If Mozart had lived in our time, it isprobable that his opera would have resembled The Stone Guest morethan Don Giovanni of 1789" 2 - a line of reasoning that has oftenbeen used to cover all manner of artistic license and transgression.And Stasov went even further. Comparing Mozart's opera to Dargo-myzhsky's, in a letter to his brother Nikolai (September 4, 1873) hewrote: "Don Giovanni is simply an amusing and entertaining child'sbabble (added to the fact that most of the time it is boring beyond belief)in comparison to Dargomyzhsky's creation of genius. This antiquatedItalianism, insipid and faded (like Granny's chintzy old dressing gown)- how insufferable it is today!" 30

Dargomyzhsky was highly conscious of taking a giant step in thedirection he fancied was forward when he wrote this opera. The diffi-culty of the task, in the light of his past experience as a composer wasexpressed by him thus: "For every single phrase I had to devise a newmusical idea, whereas the usual method consisted in the working out ofa few themes." But with unaccustomed zeal he labored mightily on it,despite the fact that his health was failing, and the last pages of his

GCui, op. cit., p. 109.30 Yuri Kremlev, Russkaya mysel' o muzyke, II (Moscow, 1958), p. 141.


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RussianRealism s PreachedndPracticed 447itspresence y beingmore han an eternalbackdrop.t will haveto, inCui'swords"completeheeffectof theword." f, as Cuisaid,"Psycho-logicalfeelingcan often be expressedwith moredepthand powerinmusicthan everby words,"henthe musicmust be givena chancetobreatheandexist o someextent n itsownexpressivemilieu.In Act II,scene2, Pushkinhas one of his owncharacters, aura, ingtwo songs,accompanyingerselfon a guitar.Pushkin t thesepoints,merelyndi-cated"shesings,"without urnishing text. Dargomyzhskyooktheseopportunitieso insert conventional omanceswith a vaguelyexotic,Spanish lavor,achieved n the secondof themby a quotationof thesame Spanishdance tune popularizedearlierby Glinka in his Jota Ara-gonesa. They give the scene a more conventionalcast than the others,approaching he traditionalalterationof recitativeand aria. This exter-nalizationof formgivesa shape to the scene, albeitdecidedlyoff-balancefrom a traditionalpoint of view, which in turn gives the musical con-tribution a life of its own, which it usuallydoes not possess,and which,in all fairness,we must note that it usuallydoes not aspireto. It comesas welcomerelief,which was Pushkin's ntent, if not Dargomyzhsky's.

But there is other evidence that Dargomyzhskydid to some extentseek out opportunities o hang a purelymusical structureon Pushkin'slines, flying in the face of the intentionsStasov and the other Realistsascribedto him. For example in Act III, scene 3, Pushkingives theseseductivelines to Don Juan (who, in Dargomyzhsky'setting, is a lyrictenor):Is it, thena signof madnesso desireone'send,DonnaAnna?If I werea madman, wouldwish o remainamong heliving,I wouldnurture opeof touching ourheartwithtender ove.If I werea madman, wouldspendmynightsatyourbalcony,troubling our leepwithserenades; wouldnot hidemyself;onthecontrary, would ryto benoticedbyyou everywhere.If I werea madman, wouldnotsuffernsilence.[TowhichDonnaAnnaretorts, Youcallthissilence?"]

Dargomyzhsky gives these lines, with their repeated phrase, a con-ventional ballad structure, with refrain. Don Juan is not supposed to besinging, but speaking rather urgently. Having him utter these lines in aform standardized by "artificial singing," in the Chernyshevskian sense,is a highly un-Realistic touch. In their tendentious praise of The StoneGuest Stasov and his confreres overlook this point, even going so far asto praise this quasi aria for its musical-emotional "truth."


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448 The MusicalQuarterlyThe orchestra,oo,oftenfunctionsas a "formalizing"gent.The sameorchestralmusicis often usedto begin and end a scene,thus giving it, tosome extent, an externalmusicalform. The scene at Laura'sapartmentopens with a snatch from one of her Spanish romances.Also, themeshave a way of recurringsignificantly n Dargomyzhsky's rchestra,al-most like leitmotifs.This last word inevitably conjuresup Wagner,and what Dargomy-zhskyattemptedin The Stone Guest sounds on the surfacevery muchlike Wagner'soperatic "reforms," o much so that Hugo Riemann, inhis Musik-Lexiconof 1882 could refer to Dargomyzhskyas an "unsuc-

cessful imitator of Richard Wagner, who, unfortunately,went evenfurther than he." This judgment,which infuriatedStasov,is, in point offact, erroneous.The similaritiesbetween Dargomyzhsky's nd Wagner'sintentions, while real, are more coincidental than Riemann thought.Dargomyzhsky'sacquaintancewith Wagner was very limited, and hisreaction to him decidedlynegative. Russia'sleading Wagnerite,Alex-ander Nikolaevich Serov, had lent Dargomyzhsky he score of Tann-hiiuserin 1856. Dargomyzhskywrote to him, "he indicatesa new andclever path; but in his unnatural singing and his spicy, although inplaces very interesting,harmonizations,a certainpainfulnesscan be ob-served.Will und kannnicht! Truthis truth,butyouneed taste aswell!" 3"Of course,the foregoingwas written a good many yearsbeforeTheStone Guest. But Dargomyzhskynever indicated,either in lettersor inprint, any change of mind about Wagner,and it must be remembered,by 1869, the year of Dargomyzhsky'sdeath, Wagner'smost advancedoperas were still unperformedin Russia. Even to Serov, Wagner re-mained always the Wagner of Lohengrin and Tannhiiuser,and theWagnerwhose "unsuccessful mitator"Dargomyzhskys adjudgedto bewas certainlythe Wagner of the Ring.Then again, Dargomyzhskyalways remained true to the idea ofopera as the singers' province, as did the whole Russianschool. Theirconvictionthat the essential ocusshould be on the characters s in con-tradiction to Wagner's emphasison the orchestra.The kind of sym-phonism present n Wagner'smatureoperasis alien to their ideal, whichis more simple - a continuousaccompaniedrecitative. In Cui's 1878articlein the Parispress,the chargeof Wagnerianisms anticipatedandcountered on these grounds.The use of the leitmotifis also criticized asinflexible and naive. No, logic comes, and can only come, from thewords. Any attempt to introduce logic of the Wagnerian symphonic-32Stasov,"Dvadtzatpyat' let russkovo skusstva"n edition cited above, II, 534.


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RussianRealismas PreachedandPracticed 449leitmotiftype into the music runs counterto the Realist view of musicas the purely intuitive, empathic, emotional stream-of-consciousnesswhich is its highest calling, and is most faithful to the natural model.Dargomyzhsky's bjectionthat Wagner'svocal line is "unnatural" s ahighlycharacteristicRealistobservation, elatedobviously o Chernyshev-sky's doctrines.Wagner's"unnaturalness" s an unnaturalnessborn ofreason. When Stasov,in his articleTwenty-fiveYearsof RussianArt of1881-1882, finally came to grips with the Wagnerianview of Dargo-myzhsky,he sought to lay it to rest preciselyon this point. Wagner, toStasov,is less an artistthan an inventor,a thinker,an imaginer.Dargo-myzhsky,on the otherhand, was "an artistfromhead to toe.., .creatingwith his inspirationand his nerves."Wagner,in spite of his reforms,stilladheresto superannuatedoperaticconventionsand forms.In his operaswe still find ballets, processionsand other varietiesof "spectacle"(re-member,we are still dealingwith Lohengrinand Tannhiiuser).Dargo-myzhsky,on the contrary,thinksonly of dramatictruth and rejectsall"theatricalrubbish."Then comes an objectionwhich seems fashionedout of whole cloth, for the specific purposeof sacrificing he straw-manWagner at Dargomyzhsky'saltar. Wagner is "little gifted, extremelyartificial,and completelydevoid of aptitudefor recitative and declama-tion,"while Dargomyzhsky ossesses"themost flamingand burning gift,immediate, charmed, and charming; an artist full of dramatismandpathos,but also humor and comedy, alwaysfull of truth and naturalness,and, alongwith that, gifted more than anybodyelsespecifically or reci-tative and declamation." 3For all these reasons, Wagner is still an "idealist,"not a realist,whereasDargomyzhskys the very archetypeof realism n music. In an-other important synoptic work, his Art in the Nineteenth Century of1901, Stasov strengthenshis characterization f Wagner as Idealist byciting his choices of subject,now includingthe maturemusic dramasaswell, which in their preoccupationwith gods and heroes are far fromthe Realist conceptionof human drama. Wagner'ssymbolismand mys-tique are unnaturaland decadent,his plots ridiculous.To any person who has not lost simple and healthy ideas, who is unspoiled bypseudopatriotism and metaphysics... the Wagnerian aversion to nature, living re-ality, simplicity and truth of thought, [his] mindless service to all manner of high-flown dealism,unrealities, ndimprobabilities,his]boundlessdevotion o all kindsof delirium, hallucination, any and all affectation and monstrous exaggeration, caninspire only astonishment and antipathy. What sort of feelings, what thoughts

33 bid.


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450

Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov.A portraitby Ilya YefimovichRepin.


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Russian Realism as Preached and Practiced 451could arise from Wagner's... endless absurdities?His] fish-women,whom faunsdrag from the water in nets, [his] Lohengrins, enouncing heir beloved womenforeverbecause hey dare to ask: What is yourlineage,hero,and what is it like;... [his]Tannhiusers,makingpilgrimageso the Pope in Rome, to ask forgivenessfor overly long visits with Venus in the mountains; his] Wotans,putting theirdaughtersnto enchanted leep forever underan oak tree, amid an enclosureoffire,[his]regiments f gods, crossingbridges n mid-air rom one castleto another;the senseless ecretsof the absurdmedievalGrail and a hundredmore such stu-pidities- what can all this inspire,if not indignationand scorn?And for theinstallation f suchnonsense, uchmonstrosities f thoughton the stage,are we totakeWagneras a greatreformer f opera,the creatorof unprecedented, nheard-of truthandprofundity?'

We could hardly hope to find a better illustration of a Positivist viewof Wagner. Wagner's greatest deficiency lies in the fact that his crea-tions do not answer to common sense, to the objectively verifiable evi-dence of our senses. That is what makes Wagner an idealist. Stasov iswilling to grant Wagner a high place as a German symphonist, but ofcourse that has nothing to do with opera: "Wagner's nature did notcontain even one of the elements which comprise the operatic com-poser. He hadn't the slightest feeling for life and reality, he did notpossess any understanding of character, human nature, or types of hu-man personalities or features; he hadn't any comprehension of the hu-man soul, its vicissitudes, movements and impulses...."35In short, Wagner does not portray individuals, but only what Stasovcalls "algebraic symbols." In its demands for life, for individuality andfor a faithful representation of reality, both physical and spiritual, thisevaluation of Wagner might have been penned by Chernyshevsky him-self. Significantly, the one Wagner opera which Stasov is willing to rec-ognize as one of the "greatest operas on earth" is, of course, DieMeistersinger, a simple bourgeois comedy, where for once Wagner isdealing with human beings and human situations.Stasov's conclusion, as far as Wagner's relation to Dargomyzhsky isconcerned, was that "the operas of Wagner contain few fertile seeds forthe future, they are too limited and untalented. The Stone Guest, on theother hand, is a work of genius, the cornerstone of the coming era ofmusical drama. All its forms are set forth there in profound perfection." 36History, of course, has mnadea mockery of that prediction, but Stasovwas all his life convinced that, as he put it in a letter to his brother

34Stasov, Izbranniye sochineniya, III, 699.35Ibid., p. 703.36"Dvadtzat pyat' let...," edition cited, II, 534-535.


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452 The Musical QuarterlyDmitri (July 29, 1870), "Zukunftsmusik is not Wagner, but Dargo-myzhsky and Musorgsky." 37

Needless to say, the features of Dargomyzhsky's work which alliedhim with Wagner were not those that endeared The Stone Guest to theNew Russian School. Stasov, a master of polemical writing, takes theoffensive against the opera's critics: "One mustn't go to hear The StoneGuest with previous operatic criteria, with previous routine operaticideas in mind: one mustn't address oneself with them to such a work,which... opens up a new era in music - an era of realistic opera, ap-proaching life and literature, rid of conventions of expression to anextent that approaches any contemporary drama or comedy." 38 In fact,to criticize The Stone Guest on any grounds is merely a confession ofincompetence to comprehend the new art. But if we accept Stasov's lastwords, so full of Realist dogma, at face value, we may still ask, if anopera must conform to the standards of a "contemporary drama orcomedy," and if our text is already a fully viable contemporary drama,wherein lies the music's indispensible contribution?Of course, dissident voices were raised in Russia at the time of TheStone Guest's posthumous premiere. The conservative critic HermanLaroche (1845-1904), the great apostle of artistic chastity and dire en-emy of practically the whole of 19th-century music, did not rate Wagnerabove The Stone Guest as many did - he did not think enough ofWagner to rate him above anybody. But he did make it plain that Dar-gomyzhsky and Wagner were traveling the same misguided path:"Dargomyzhsky has addressed himself to his task more responsibly andconscientiously than Wagner, he is far purer than the latter as an artist,he has not the Wagnerian sensuality which masquerades as lofty roman-ticism, he is far freer in his music from the commonplace and in hisdeclamation more careful and more successful. But for all that, TheStone Guest is infinitely less musical than any opera of Wagner... ." 3And by 1878, when Cui wrote his Musique en Russie, the ideals ofthe Russian school itself had somewhat mellowed. The Stone Guest wasstill an untouchable masterpiece, but its veneration was no longer astendentious as before, and it was no longer held up as a model of theonly possible path open to future operatic composition. This is

in keeping37Vladimir Karenin (pseydonym for Varvara Komarova-Stasova), Vladimir Sta-sov (Leningrad, 1927), p. 395.38 Stasov, "Avtograf A. S. Dargomyzhskovo.. . ," edition cited, I, 218.39 Quoted by Scasov, "Tormozy novovo russkovo iskusstva" (1885), edition cited,

II, 680.


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RussianRealismas Preachedand Practiced 453with the general trend of thought among the Mighty Five. As theygained experienceas composers, heir views became more practicalandat the same time more traditional.Their dilettante idealism and pug-nacious theorizingwere sublimatedinto a more "professional" ttitudethat began to make a rapprochementwith age-old Westernconceptsofmusical aesthetics.Only Stasov,who was not a composerat all, was ableto remain true all his life to the ideals of the sixties,when the Balakirevcirclewas a unified"mightybunch."He believed that The Stone Guestwas in fact the parentwork of all succeedingRussianopera, and man-aged to delude himself into seeing all the subsequentdevelopmentofRussian music in its light, complacentlyblind to the changingattitudesof those aroundhim.

Cui, on the otherhand,wrotein 1878:It shouldnot be supposedthat the new Russianschool claims to hold up theworkof Dargomyzhsky, hatever heiradmiration or it, as the only possible ype,as an ideal,fromwhich it would be unwiseto depart.As a generalrule, it is better to avoid such texts by great poets, seductivethoughtheir intrinsicbeautyrendersthem in the eyes of the musician,becausethey are not made for music.Moreover,one must take care to avoid as much aspossible philosophicalexcursionsas well as the familiarlanguageof vernacularspeech. A truly lyric text, lending itself favorably o the developmentof vocalmelody s, in sum,thatwhichshouldbe soughtaboveall in a libretto.40This, it will be seen, is a complete volte-face from the Stasovian extremeRealist position. It is doubtful that Cui himself recognized it as such, asthe passage sits incongruously among paragraphs expressing the orthodoxdogma of the Russian school.

The relative poverty of The Stone Guest's music qua music is simi-larly obliquely recognized by Cui in another passage:The music of The Stone Guestis so intimatelyboundto the words,it followsthem so closely,that, consideredalone, withoutwords, t loses half its merit andoccasionallybecomesincomprehensible. herefore, n order justly to appreciatethis admirablework,knowledgeof the Russian anguage s indispensible, nd thisconstitutes a serious obstacle to the spread of The Stone Guest in Europe.4'And, perhaps unknowingly, Cui pulls the rug out from under The StoneGuest by suggesting that Dargomyzhsky's very fidelity to Realist pro-cedures is in part responsible for The Stone Guest's weaknesses.

40Cui, op. cit., p. 108.41Ibid., p. 109.


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454 The MusicalQuarterlyIf, musicallyspeaking, he grandscene in the third act between Don Juan andDonnaAnna is inferior n somerespects o the episodesdescribedabove,one mustlook for explanationonly in the accidentsof the text, which, in its truth of lan-guage, containsnumerouspassageswhere the listenermight find a deficiencyofpoetry: this is no cause for surprise, ince Pushkinhad not writtenhis poem withthelyricstage n mind."But is not "truthof language"rather than "poetry"preciselywhat weought to be after?Thus, The Stone Guest's purported primary asset has become aliability,to the extent thatRimsky-Korsakovould exclaimwith irritationin 1898, "Enoughof The Stone Guest! Music, too is needed!"" So itwould seem that, Stasovnotwithstanding,he seedsof he futuredid notresidein plays-set-to-music,r opera dialogul, as the genre came to beknown. The experimentwas not entirelywithoutfruit, however,for TheStone Guest did directly inspire Marriage, which in turn preparedMusorgsky o cope with the problemsof his chef d'oeuvre,BorisGodu-nov. And Borisdid exert a modicumof influenceupon succeedinggen-erations.Wereit not for Boris,theremight have been no Pelle'as,which,it will be remembered,s also an operadialogu6.And a curious, f prob-ably coincidental imilarityof expressiveambiencecan be notedbetweenMarriageand yet another20th-centuryoperadialogue,Wozzeck.But RussianRealist opera was, in the final analysis,a flash in thepan. Let us give the last word to Chaikovsky, he composerof Russia'slargestbodyof enduringworksfor the stage.His diaryfor July 23, 1888,containsthis entry:Dargomyzhsky roteThe Stone Guestnear the end of his life, fully believing hathe was demolishingold foundationsand was buildingon their ruinssomethingnew, colossal.A pitiabledelusion! saw him in this last periodof his life and inview of his sufferings he had heartdisease) it was not, of course,the time forarguing.Butif anythings morehatefulandfalse thanthisunsuccessfulttempttointroduceruth nto a branchof artwhereeverythings basedon pseudoand wheretruth n the usual senseof the wordis not demandedat all - I do not knowit."

42Ibid., p. 107.43Andrei N. Rimsky-Korsakov,N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov,zhizn' i tvorchestvo(Moscow, 1933).4 Leydaand Bertensson,op. cit., p. 105, note.

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Realism as Preached and Practiced the Russian Opera Dialogue