Anton Rubinstein, Alexander Serov, and Vladimir Stasov: The struggle for a national musical identity in nineteenth-century Russia.(Report)

Publication: Germano-Slavica

Publication Date: 01-JAN-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 University of Waterloo - Dept. of Germanic and Slavic Language Literature

Introduction

When compared to its tumultuous twentieth-century existence, nineteenth-century Russia seems somewhat docile. In the twentieth, the words Russia and revolution seemed to go hand in hand; some say it is simply the Russians' nature. The roots of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, however, a revolution carried out by Russians over what was perceived to be a corrupt Western-European influenced monarchy, clearly lie in the nineteenth century. In fact, many of the problems concerning national identity that Russia faces today can be traced back to that time.

The doctrine that came to represent the struggle for national identity in nineteenth-century Russia was realism. Though as a notion it was born in the West, realism took firm hold in Russia as a medium through which Russian artists could express a style that they considered to be uniquely their own, in contrast to more popular Western-European styles. Interestingly, some commentators hold that realism in music is impossible. Carl Dahlhaus writes:

In the nineteenth century it was generally held that music was "of its nature" romantic. Composers like Ferruccio Busoni, Arnold Schoenberg and Kurt Weill ... all held the opinion that music is a fundamentally unrealistic art, and that therefore the concept of musical realism represents an error either in the thing so designated or in the judgment formed of it. (Realism 10)

The nineteenth-century Russian realists would have emphatically disagreed with this notion: they believed music to be the perfect venue for realist doctrine. Even Carl Dahlhaus realized the distinct relationship between music and realism for Russia in quoting Dargomizhsky: "It was Dargomizhsky ... who formulated the credo of Russian realism embraced so wholeheartedly by Mussorgsky: 'I want the note to express the word, I want the truth,' he wrote in a letter in 1857, evidently inspired by Nikolai Chernyshevsky" (Realism 73).

Whereas nationalism in most parts of Western Europe manifested itself in political and economic change, nationalism in Slavic Russia manifested itself in cultural institutions. Hans Kohn writes, "[A]mong the Slavic peoples, nationalism found its expression predominantly in the cultural field" (Kohn 4). Thus artists, not political figures, acted as the main instigators of nationalism in Russia. The realists, weaned on positivism and scientific empiricism, completely rejected Hegelian idealism and its notion that true beauty does not exist in objective reality. For them true beauty was reality. The realists' doctrines, which lasted well into the twentieth century in the form of Socialist Realism, were in a sense a lashing out at what was considered the dominant western aesthetic of the time.

By mid-century two clear camps emerged in the debate on Russian nationalism in music: the westerners (philosophically idealist) and the realists. The westerners were more cosmopolitan in thought and the realists were fervently nationalistic. Of the three figures central to my discussion, Anton Rubinstein is usually counted among the westerners; Vladimir Stasov is usually counted among the nationalists; and Alexander Serov, who died much earlier than the other two, is often thought of as being outside the fray, usually expressing nationalist views, yet often turning to the West for inspiration in his own compositional activity. In this paper I take issue with these well-established beliefs concerning Rubinstein, Stasov, and Serov. I will show how all three, to a certain extent, can be related to both camps in the oft-heated debate on nationalism in nineteenth-century musical Russia.

Nineteenth-Century Russian Music and Music Institutions

Mikhail Glinka (1804-57) is generally acknowledged as the founding father of Russian national music (sometimes Alexander Dargomizhsky [1813-69] is mentioned in the same breath). Glinka's opera A Life for the Czar (1836)--in Russia known by the name of its main character, Ivan Susanin--is considered the first true Russian opera. In present-day Russia Glinka is revered as one of the greatest composers of all time, and Anton Rubinstein placed him above Mozart and Haydn, alongside Beethoven and Chopin (A Conversation 3). Significantly, Glinka himself realized the significance of Western Europe for his own music. In a letter to his mother he wrote:

Art, this joy given to me by heaven, perishes here [in Russia] from the murderous indifference to everything that is beautiful. Had I not spent several years abroad, I would not have written A Life for the Czar. Now I am completely convinced that Ruslan can only be completed in Germany or France. (Cited in Olkhovsky 56)

Here Glinka, in a sense, admits the supremacy of Western-European music over Russian, indicative of the fact that the roots of Russian music essentially lie in its Western-European counterparts. Notably, this "father of Russian music," as he was called by the Russian nationalists, was clearly a product of Western-European tradition, a fact that Russian realist composers found hard to accept. Nevertheless, the Kuchka composers were happy to call Glinka--such a crucial figure in the history of Russian music--one of their own, once all was said and done. (1)

With regard to music-education institutions, Russia was quite a small entity: Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the early part of the nineteenth century, such institutions, along with musical societies, became quite common in these two cities. In his "Musical Societies in St. Petersburg," Modest Rezvoy (1807-53) speaks of the lack of concerts during the season, and the starting of societies: "In order to avoid this deficiency [in the number of concerts given in any particular season], societies for lovers of music have been formed repeatedly in St. Petersburg" (Campbell 41). (2) Most of the societies mentioned by Rezvoy are amateur in nature. Although there was much music in mid-nineteenth-century Russia, truly substantive societies and institutions were few. With them, however, arose the awareness of the necessity for a state-sponsored concrete institution dedicated wholly to musical training, that is, a conservatory of...

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