A photograph of Rimsky-Korsakov in 1863
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
as a young naval officer in 1864

In the youngest member of the Balakirev circle, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), Turgenev recognised great talent and promise very early on. In fact, until he got to know the operas of Musorgsky in 1874 and Borodin's Bogatyrskaya Symphony three years later, Rimsky-Korsakov was the only composer belonging to the "Mighty Handful" for whom Turgenev felt any sympathy, as is reflected in this letter to Stasov in 1872:

"Of all the 'young' Russian musicians only two have positive talent: Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. As for all the others—not as persons, of course, since they are all wonderful people—but as artists they should all be put into a sack and thrown into the sea!" [1]

It is worth noting, though, that Turgenev's high opinion of Rimsky-Korsakov was based on an acquaintance with but a very small number of works by the young composer. When Pauline Viardot was briefly living in London (where she had moved from Baden together with her family and Turgenev shortly after the onset of the Franco-Prussian War), she received a copy of some of Rimsky-Korsakov's early songs, and in a letter of 31 December 1870 to his friend Pavel Annenkov, Turgenev commented on the favourable impression which these had made:

"Madame Viardot finds Rimsky-Korsakov's romances splendid, and that they show unquestionable talent—a talent which is, moreover, quite original, even though there is still a certain affectedness on account of his youth" [2]

Two months later, in February 1871, at a musical soirée in Saint Petersburg Turgenev heard Balakirev play some excerpts from the piano arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic tableau Sadko (1867), based on the well-known bylina (Russian folk poem) about the Novgorod merchant and gousli (psaltery) player Sadko who, after winning a bet with his fellow citizens, manages to convince them to fit out some ships for a voyage to faraway lands. In the course of his adventures Sadko descends to the bottom of the sea and plays for the court of the King of the Ocean, but he eventually returns home safely, laden with treasure. This is what Turgenev, who greatly appreciated Russian folklore, said about Rimsky-Korsakov's music in a letter to Pauline Viardot:

A brooch made in Palekh, showing a gousli player
A young gousli player. Lacquered brooch made in
Palekh by the artist Aleksei Vatagin (1881-1947)
"Balakirev played rather poorly some excerpts from an orchestral fantasia by Rimsky-Korsakov [Sadko] (remember those graceful romances by him which you were sent?) To me it seemed that in this fantasia on a rather bizarre Russian fairy-tale subject there really was plenty of phantasy and imagination!" [3]

Unfortunately, it is not clear which parts of the symphonic tableau Sadko Turgenev heard at that soireé, but it is very likely that they included those passages which describe the rolling of the ocean and Sadko's descent to the bottom of the sea, and which in 1895-96, when working on the opera of the same name, Rimsky-Korsakov re-used in their entirety for the corresponding scenes in the opera. The effective evocation of the shifting and swelling of the ocean in these passages (their general theme is entitled "The ocean; the dark blue sea" Listen to «The ocean; the dark blue sea»!) clearly owes a lot to the impressions which the young composer accumulated during his three-year voyage around the world on the clipper Almaz (1862-65). It was precisely his youthful impressions of such wonders of nature as the Amazonian rainforests and the Niagara Falls that nourished his pantheistic outlook on the world, of which there are echoes in many of his operas—for example, in his most popular one, The Snow Maiden (1881) [4].

Had Turgenev lived to see the opera Sadko on the stage (it was premièred in 1897), he would probably have liked it even more than the symphonic tableau. Such a number in the opera as the famous Song of the Indian Merchant ("Countless are the diamonds in the rocky caves..." Listen to the Indian Merchant's Song!) cannot but have appealed to him, especially bearing in mind that in his mysterious story, The Song of Triumphant Love (1881), set in sixteenth-century Italy, he had portrayed the ardent figure of Muzzio, who returns from his travels in the Orient with a strange Indian violin on which he also plays an enthralling song! Among the older generation it was not just Turgenev who saw great promise in Rimsky-Korsakov on the basis of the symphonic tableau Sadko. After hearing a concert performance of the latter—rather than just arranged for piano as in Turgenev's case—Prince Vladimir Odoevsky (1804-69), a friend of Glinka's and a fine music critic, noted in his diary:

"Korsakov's Sadko is a wonderful piece of music, full of imagination, and originally scored. If Korsakov doesn't rest on his laurels, then he will develop into a huge talent" [5]
«Ivan the Terrible» (1871) Statue by Mark Antokolsky
Ivan the Terrible (1871), a statue by
Mark Antokolsky (1843-1902)

As pointed out above, Turgenev was unfortunately familiar with only very few of Rimsky-Korsakov's works. For example, it seems that he never had the opportunity to hear the symphonic suite Antar (1868), which with its oriental colouring anticipates to some extent the more famous Scheherazade suite of 1888. He also evidently didn't get to hear Rimsky-Korsakov's first opera, The Maid of Pskov (first staged in 1873), which the composer worked on when he was sharing a flat with Musorgsky and the latter was himself working on Boris Godunov. The subject of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera would certainly have interested Turgenev (At the centre of The Maid of Pskov is the paternal love of Ivan the Terrible for his illegitimate daughter Olga, which unexpectedly softens the Tsar's cruel heart and induces him to spare the great city of Pskov. This transformation in him is associated with the beautiful theme of Olga, the third theme in the overture Listen to the overture of «The Maid of Pskov»!). After all, he had gone into raptures over the statue of Ivan the Terrible completed in 1871 by the young sculptor Mark Antokolsky (1843-1902)—one of the few occasions on which he and Stasov were in agreement about a work of art—and in a letter to Pauline Viardot he had written enthusiastically:

"Antokolsky has made a statue of Ivan the Terrible, seated and carelessly dressed, with a Bible on his knees, sunk in grim and menacing thoughts. I consider this statue to be a masterpiece of historical and psychological understanding, and from the technical point of view it is also crafted splendidly" [6]

Rimsky-Korsakov turned to the reign of Ivan the Terrible not only in the The Maid of Pskov, but also in his later and much more lyrical opera The Tsar's Bride (1899), in which the tragic figure of the Tsar appears once again, though this time devoid of any compassionate feelings.

The Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1900
The Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1900.
Since 1944 it bears the name of Rimsky-Korsakov

It is legitimate to ask how Turgenev, despite being acquainted with so few of Rimsky-Korsakov's works (and, moreover, with only the earliest ones, since he did not live to witness the later, more productive phases of Rimsky's development as an artist), could assert with such conviction in 1872 that only he and Tchaikovsky had real "positive talent". The answer to this question almost certainly has to do with the fact that Turgenev was aware (probably through Stasov) of how in the summer of 1871 the director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory had offered Rimsky-Korsakov a post as professor of composition and instrumentation. The latter had agreed, seeing in this the only chance to be through and done with his service in the Navy (which he didn't particularly like, having been compelled to enter it largely by the pressure of family tradition). In this way he became the first and only member of the "Mighty Handful" to work for an institution which Cui and Stasov had often ridiculed as a bulwark of stuffy "Germanic" classicism. Turgenev must have been gladdened by the fact that a talented young composer who belonged to the "new Russian school" had recognised the value of systematic pedagogical work, instead of relying on instinct and remaining a self-taught 'amateur' (which is how Turgenev could not help seeing the other members of the Balakirev circle). In this respect, it is worth quoting what Potugin—that character of Turgenev's who caused so much offence to patriotic readers—emphasizes at the end of Smoke (1867):

"Every time that you have to set to work, ask yourself whether you are serving civilisation in the exact and strict sense of the word; whether you are implementing one of its ideas and your work is of that pedagogic, European character which is the only one that is useful and fruitful in Russia at the present time. If it is so, then you can confidently go ahead: you are on the right track and your work will be beneficial!" (Ch. XXV)

Rimsky-Korsakov would have had every right to answer Potugin's question in the affirmative. Moreover, he took up his professorship with the utmost modesty, not imagining, like the impostor Khlestakov in Gogol's comedy The Inspector General, that he was in any way entitled to the post. On the contrary, he was acutely conscious of the gaps in his musical education, and if at first he did have to adopt some dissimilation, he nevertheless made profitable use of his situation to acquire the skills that he lacked, as he confessed in his memoirs:

"Having undertaken myself to guide the studies of the Conservatory's pupils, I had to pretend that I knew everything I was supposed to, that I was familiar with everything covered in the exercises they were set. I had to extricate myself from any difficult questions with general remarks, in which I was helped by personal taste, my aptitude for musical form, my understanding of orchestral colour and a certain general experience thanks to my practice as a composer; and at the same time I had to be quick to pick up all this knowledge I lacked from my pupils [...] I was fortunate that none of my pupils at first could imagine that I knew nothing, and that by the time they could start to see through me, I had already managed to learn a fair deal [...] So, having joined the Conservatory undeservedly as a professor, I soon became one of its best students, and perhaps the very best one, in view of the amount and value of the knowledge which it imparted to me" [7]
Rimsky-Korsakov in an 1898 portrait by Valentin Serorv
Rimsky-Korsakov in an 1898 portrait
by Valentin Serov (1865-1911)

Rimsky-Korsakov dedicated the greater part of the 1870s to studying the works of Bach, Händel, and Palestrina, as well as setting himself exercises in the composition of fugues and canons. All this, of course, awoke misgivings among his friends in the "Mighty Handful", some of whom effectively accused him of having betrayed their principle of composing freely and inspiredly, without any 'academic' constraints. Tchaikovsky, in contrast, although he too was concerned that such intensive theoretical studies could undermine Rimsky-Korsakov's creative talent, sent him a letter full of encouragement and admiration:

"I quite simply bow down before your noble modesty as an artist and your remarkably strong character. All these endless counterpoints which you have written, these sixty fugues and those many other musical intricacies which you have been studying—all this is such an outstanding feat for someone who already eight years ago composed something like Sadko, that I would like to shout it from the roof-tops to the whole world..." [8]

Such a conscientious attitude to one's profession on the part of both these composers was exactly in keeping with what Turgenev himself demanded of every artist—namely, that one should study incessantly and try to improve oneself always. Thus, in 1873, he replied to a young girl who had written to him asking if she had the necessary qualities to become a writer:

"Literature, no less than any other art, requires a thorough grounding and persistent work—and its technique is no less complicated than that of painting or music, even though it is not as striking to the eye" [9]

—and already in his novel Smoke he had had Potugin admonish the Russian "rough diamonds", or "home-grown geniuses", as follows:

"For God's sake, do not encourage the idea in Russia that it is possible to achieve anything without study! No, even if you're a Solomon, you have to learn starting from the basics!" (Ch. XIV)

It is therefore understandable that, apart from his genuine appreciation of their music, Turgenev as early as 1872 could single out Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov as the young Russian composers who seemed most promising to him—they were both teachers at the conservatories of Moscow and Saint Petersburg respectively, and this was further proof of their professionalism. Unlike Tchaikovsky, though, Rimsky-Korsakov taught at his city's conservatory right up to the last year of his life, and thus came to educate several new generations of Russian composers. Furthermore, by virtue of his role as assistant to Balakirev when the latter was appointed, in 1882, director of the Imperial Chapel Choir, he was able to make great improvements to the teaching system there as well. Rimsky-Korsakov's sense of professional duty also manifested itself in the way that after Musorgsky's death he took upon himself all the hard work required to orchestrate his late friend's unfinished opera, Khovanschina. He and his most gifted student, Aleksandr Glazunov (1865-1936), performed a similar labour of love in completing the opera Prince Igor after Borodin's death. As Evgeniya Gordeyeva has rightly observed,

"One dreads to think that had it not been for Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian music might have ended up without such operas as Khovanschina and Prince Igor. With the selfless devotion of a true friend and civic-minded artist, he heroically took on this huge work [...] It should also be said that Rimsky-Korsakov carried out this work completely for free, without receiving a single kopeck from the music publishers or from the theatre" [10]

Notes:

  1. Letter to Vladimir Stasov, 15/27 March 1872. See: I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 28 vols (Leningrad, 1961-68), Pis'ma, ix, p. 245 [back]

  2. Letter to Pavel Annenkov, 19/31 December 1870. See: I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 28 vols (Leningrad, 1961-68), Pis'ma, viii, p. 321 [back]

  3. Letter to Pauline Viardot, 24 February/8 March 1871. See: I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 28 vols (Leningrad, 1961-68), Pis'ma, ix, 28. In the original French: "...Balakireff a assez mal joué quelques fragments d'une fantasie à orchestre de Rimsky-Korsakoff (vous vous rappelez, on vous a envoyé quelques jolies romances de lui); cette fantasie sur un sujet de légende russe [Sadko], assez bizarre, m'a semblé en effet en avoir de la fantaisie" [back]

  4. See: I. F. Kunin, Nikolai Andreevich Rimskii-Korsakov (Moscow, 1983), p. 18-19 [back]

  5. Quoted in: I. F. Kunin, Nikolai Andreevich Rimskii-Korsakov (Moscow, 1983), p. 23-24 [back]

  6. Letter to Pauline Viardot, 14/26 February 1871. See: I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 28 vols (Leningrad, 1961-68), Pis'ma, ix, 19 (with some cuts). The full text of the letter was published in: H. Granjard and A. Zviguilsky (eds), Lettres inédites de Tourguénev à Pauline Viardot et à sa famille (Lausanne, 1972), p. 170-71, and has been incorporated into the second Academy edition of Turgenev's Complete Works: I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 30 vols (Moscow, 1978-), Pis'ma, xi (1999), p. 25. In the original French: "Il a fait une statue d'Ivan le Terrible — assis, négligement vêtu, une Bible sur les genoux, plongé dans une rêverie terrible et sinistre. Je trouve cette statue tout bonnement un chef-d'œuvre de compréhension historique et psychologique — et d'une magnifique exécution" [back]

  7. Quoted in: E. M. Gordeeva, Kompozitory "Moguchei kuchki" (Moscow, 1985), p. 104 [back]

  8. Letter from Tchaikovsky to Rimsky-Korsakov, 10/22 September 1875. Quoted in: E. M. Gordeeva, Kompozitory "Moguchei kuchki" (Moscow, 1985), p. 149 [back]

  9. Letter to Varvara Tsurikova, 7/19 May 1873. See: I. S. Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, 28 vols (Leningrad, 1961-68), Pis'ma, x, p. 101 [back]

  10. E. M. Gordeeva, Kompozitory "Moguchei kuchki" (Moscow, 1985), p. 270 [back]