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    musical nationalism

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    Download as pdf
    12 views10 pages

    Maes. Musical Nationalism.

    Uploaded by

    Leandro Cardoso
    musical nationalism

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf
    of 10
    Introduction Natasha’s Dance, or Musical Nationalism In book 2 of W dreams in h and Peace Tolstoy transports us to the Russia of o} ghtful account of the hunt in the copse at Otradnc inthe troika—the moor covered plain, the wintry silence broken and of the nocturnal out he jingle of the be swish of the runners, and the crunch of the snow. After the hunt, “U cle,” a congenial distant relation eR invites Nikolai and Natasha to his country house. They spend ing delicacies, vodka, and balalaika mus The two young Rostovs are entranced by k-dance xclain ing to N. and tha Natasha flun 1 shaw n rd facin { setting her ai mn : shoulders and waited. Where, how and whi his young c h aph he words. This ¢ unconsidered tur h e the of a bird ¢ song of a bird” equates with the voice of and is sre “good.” Tolstoy calls folk music naive and uncon s fo not think about how their tunes ought to si self, Nature alone can create music of any worth, simply by di work. There is therefore no such thing as musical creat well known that in his later, moralistic phase, Tolstoy rejected B s and Schumann’s music. His short story “Kreutzer Sonata,” base¢ Beethoven's violin sonata by the same name, is a poisoned tribute t sure, suggesting nothing less than that art music can unleash criminal pas sions. Tolstoy thought infinitely more of the song of the Volga boatme No wonder, then, that tears filled his eyes when he heard Chaikovsky’s First String Quartet.* That folk music springs straight from nature and that Russian music “can be breathed in with the Russian air” is a nineteenth-century idea Folk music seemed a world apart from everything that European art sic stood for. It went without saying that the two should be considered ‘undamental opposites, their difference reduced to the simple distinetis What do we think about this matter nowadays? M to take a more global view of music than was true in the 18008. uy rofound differences of opinion still prevail a ur sic and what is culturally determined, it n I i sion does not lie where it was drawn in the nine ry. F sic cannot be reduced to a natural expression of fee posi to the more formally fashioned art mus 00, A of structural thinking. It has its own rational se in point is the Rus sian protyazhnaya, a splendid fc melismatically poetry of great expressive power and lyrical intensity. The Ho hat the protyazhnaya was the type of folk song that Tolstoy ha¢ f Tolstoy's view of folk music was not original; rath listic and utilitarian vision of art presented by Ni Gavriloy Chernishevsky in his influential The Aesthetic Relations of Art to R dering of reality, But how can music satisfy that demand? Accor¢ 1 itself to be guided by natural song. ¢ Chernishevsky, by allowi shevsky equated folk song with “natural singing, Artificial singing,” by contrast, is which wells up spc taneously from the emotions, province of the prima donr > natural singing? It is more In what relation does this artifc nd to elibe culated, embellis! hing with which human genius H c lish it. What comparis here be between an ati ae igleeeal folk song! Bu spera and the simple, pale, monotonous melod ing in harmony, al the artistry of development, al the wealth of embel lishment of a brilliant area, all the flexibility and incomparable richness o ot make up for th th he voice of the one who sings it cant cere emotion that permeates the pale melody of a folk s The idea that folk music is a product of nature played an important n, and it was part of the complex of part in the rise of musical n. ideas at the root of romantic nationalism. In the German Romantic move ‘ment, the folk song was considered an expression of the “purely human. Instead of being universal, however, that expression was thought to var from one nation to the next. Folk song was considered a reflection of t Jar mystical characteristics of a people and to go back to times morial. In this scheme, the division of mankind into nations was a natural fact. Every nation was said to have its own deep-rooted identity, nal soul.” Folk music was believed to be the clearest expression of the national character, a typical feature enshrined in every nation This interpretation of the meaning of folk music became dogma for nationalistic music ideologists. A natural ou owth of this way of think ing was the idea that a nation’s music is not created but “discovered,” inasmuch as music reflecting the national character has always existed in folk song. Composers simply have the task of unveiling that charac ter, of refining it, and of raising it to a higher artistic Their main concern must be to listen carefully and to polish the rough musical voice of their people Nationalistic musical thought had a strong influence on the historical € of nine nusic. This is particularly true of the mu sic that appeared outside the dominant m : fe the d musical nations, that is, outside Germany, France, and Italy. The label “national schools, ich was gen to the peripheral musical countries, is a si 1 thi y app! cially t this histori w, which colors the ic ion of Russian composers to this ¢ c ciate the idea of national character with folklo which in turn are associated with sulting picture is highly idealized; it is based on th est of composers in folklore reflects their concern with th ‘ non man. The music taken to be the most typically Rus spontaneously associated with progressive social ideas: the bridging o ¢ enormous gulf between the elite and the broad masses Rus sian people. This basic idea is prominent not only in Soviet ac cs but also in Western music historiography In the Soviet version, nineteenth-century composers belonged to tl progressive intelligentsia, Glinka, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov we ‘urned into advocates of social and national emancipat nd Musorgs! as called a musical populist and a protorevolutionary. Even as cons tive a composer as Chaikov sd the progr f 1 Anc , I f it f ! The n nent Rus tI alist in c nd natior I the folh tury masters h dogm ssociat In the W rtificial chy this p scl t 1 nd the most blatant th aikovsky’s character had instanc poser hims ree ideol | c Musical nationalism in its pure what ¢ ork really signify? Du nder the spell of the radical populist Alexa i his | Jon exile, Herzen tried to infuse Russian youth with p awa th his journal Kolokol (The bell). His por of the tid of social unrest flooding across Russia and his slogar peopl were famous. That slogan expressed precisely what Balakirev by transcribing folk songs directly from the mouths o a hen elaborating them symphonically. In 1869 he published now with the programmatic title of 1,000 Years—a reference to the m lennium in which the Russian state had emer A sound commercial ploy? Not altogether. For, in fact, the millenary ex: istence of the state had been celebrated in 1862 (to mark the suj foundation of Novgorod in 862 by the Varangian prince Rurik). From a letter of his friend Stasov of 17 December 1868 we that B lakirev and Stasov had given the work a fresh meaning. It was no longer sin the flood of social unrest they wished to portray, but three stage sian history: the ancient, the medieval, and the moder rated on the tit with locomotives and telegraphs). In other word: ork was glorifying progress, painting an optimistic and melioristic icture of Russian history. No vestige of a ary mess In 1884, Balakirev revised the overture, and fc published th anew, now under the title of f Old si Ru sia*Rus” was a central co sphiles, who used Tl Russia bef G Russ psidered as th I, and a romantic idealization st . by liberal and progressive thinkers. N 1 riod. state, and the autonomous ican system Coss. .d, had culminated in “the fatal blow dealt a gious and nation, ns forms of P 1 Czech Slay < to depic Peter the Great killed ov Russia He had 8 right-wing reaction The example of Balakirev’s Second Overture on Russian Th make cally. Of course, i ssi ot grasp the si s s musical characteristics alone sve all in rf position and its context. The incc on of musical folk , | natically bound up with libe democratic mpact of mantic glorification of the people having a role-aff tion, In | the historiography of Russian music this distinction is toc d | Dorothea Redepenning, for instance, r a restorative nationalism but places it entirely in the generation of composers work 88 | such as Glazunov, Lyadov, and Arensky). For the on of B and Musorgsky she does not challenge the progressive picture—with the exception of Borodin’s ppes of Central A. she ec | siders the exception that proves the rule However important the role assigned to folk song by natic inspired historians of music, the national character of Russian music does not stop there. The picture of what is Russian in id filled in with other characteristics. W re has be : by the views of Vladimir Stasov, one c st powerful f the New Russian School. It was Stasov who created th ‘ Mighty Little Heap,” a nickname fo fe composers ¢ aki circle (also known as the Mighty F amely Ba n Mu: sorgsky, Cui, Borodin, and Rims ‘ cohesive gro said to have remained loyal to liberal ideals Stasov’s.Stasov’s characterization of the New Russian S. nas history; until recently it had an almost exc {on logrape ding to Stasoy, the New Russian School embod follow characteristics: the absence of preconceptions and of , mer x preference for programmat and the quest for a national charac ¢ first point in he t ction of acade nd of fixed musica Western—forms. T n nations inside the Rus ‘ : academic at the time. The last point involved he incorporation of folk music Rassian music history was marked by a simple split between a national ‘camp—as defined by th se four points—and a cosmopol p. The

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