Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
"Orchestration is part of the very soul of a work."
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Those close to him ⏳🌊
- MentorMily Balakirev
He set the seventeen-year-old cadet to writing a symphony and led him onto the path of music, but their relationship soured in the 1890s.
- FriendshipModest Mussorgsky
A friend who shared a room and a piano with him and stood as best man at his wedding; after Mussorgsky's death, Rimsky-Korsakov completed and polished his unfinished works.
- FamilyNadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova (Purgold)
His wife, a pianist, who arranged her husband's music, was the first to hear and critique it, and after his death helped publish his memoirs.
- PupilAlexander Glazunov
He became a private pupil at fourteen and joined in completing the unfinished works of Mussorgsky and Borodin; in 1905 he left the conservatory alongside his teacher, later returning as its director.
- PatronageMitrofan Belyayev
A timber merchant turned publisher, he supported him and other young Russian composers through the Russian Symphony Concerts and his publishing house.
- PupilIgor Stravinsky
A university friend of his son, he was often at the house and became his private pupil, and when his teacher died he dedicated 「Funeral Song」 to him.
I. The bells of Tikhvin · 1844–1856 (age 0–12)
(Tikhvin) He was born in March 1844 in Tikhvin, a small town in the Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire (today Russia). His father, Andrei Petrovich, was a noble official who had served as vice-governor of the Volhynia Governorate. He had been dismissed for treating the Poles too leniently and had retired to his home town. By the time his son was born, he was already well past sixty. (Family) His mother, Sofya Vasilyevna, was the daughter of a landowner and a serf woman. His brother Voin, twenty-two years his senior, was a naval officer who would one day become director of the Naval Academy. An uncle, too, was an admiral. In such a family, the second son's path to the sea was all but settled. (Folk song) Music was part of daily life. His father would play songs he had learned by ear at the piano, without a score. From about the age of six, Nikolai took piano lessons from local teachers. The bells of the Tikhvin monastery, Orthodox chant, and the folk songs sung by servants and peasants seeped into his ear early. Still, he had no thought of becoming a musician. Reading the letters and tales of voyages his brother sent from distant seas, he longed for the sea. (Departure) In 1856, the twelve-year-old boy left for St. Petersburg to enter the Naval Academy. Church bells, folk songs, and the endlessly heaving sea would surface again and again in his later operas and orchestral works. All of that material was rooted in a childhood spent in this small town.
II. A composer in uniform · 1856–1865 (age 12–21)
(Opera) Discipline at the academy was strict. Yet on weekends, piano lessons and the opera house awaited him. Listening to Glinka's 「Ruslan and Lyudmila」 and 「A Life for the Tsar」, he was for the first time deeply captivated by music. Fyodor Kanille, who taught him piano from 1859, introduced him to the basics of harmony and composition and took the boy's sketches seriously. (Balakirev) At the end of 1861, Kanille brought him to Mily Balakirev. César Cui and Modest Mussorgsky were regular visitors at that house. Balakirev looked over the seventeen-year-old cadet's sketches and promptly told him to write a symphony. He did not put him through any systematic study of theory. Instead, he guided him by reading through scores with him and revising them together. (Voyage) In 1862 his father died. Graduating from the academy that same year, he boarded the clipper Almaz and sailed for some two and a half years. The ship called at Gravesend in England, at New York and Baltimore in an America in the midst of the Civil War, at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and in the Mediterranean. While at Gravesend he wrote the slow movement of his symphony. But the longer the voyage went on, the further music receded. His memoirs record that, amid an officer's life, his thoughts of music withered away. (Debut) When he returned home in 1865, Balakirev took hold of him again. That December, his Symphony No. 1 was premiered at a Free Music School concert under Balakirev's baton. The composer who stepped onstage to acknowledge the applause was a young officer in naval uniform, and the audience was astonished at the sight. Cui called the piece "the first Russian symphony." Since Anton Rubinstein had written a symphony first, this was an exaggeration, but the phrase carried all the pride of the young nationalist musicians.
III. The Mighty Handful · 1865–1873 (age 21–29)
(The Handful) In 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov dubbed the composers gathered around Balakirev the "Mighty Handful." They were Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, the chemist Alexander Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Of the five, only Balakirev made music his profession. In the winter of 1867–68, Hector Berlioz came to St. Petersburg to conduct. The young officer took careful note of the old master's orchestration. (Legend) Around this time he turned to the sea and to legend. In 1867 he wrote the orchestral piece 「Sadko」, based on a Novgorod legend, and in 1868 「Antar」, drawn from an Arabian heroic tale. Pyotr Tchaikovsky, then writing criticism in Moscow, reviewed 「Sadko」 favorably. At Dargomyzhsky's house, 「The Stone Guest」 was taking shape scene by scene. In that circle he learned a way of writing song that follows the natural inflections of speech. (Roommates) From the autumn of 1871 into the following year, he shared a room with Mussorgsky. There was only one piano, so Mussorgsky used it until noon, and in the afternoons, when Mussorgsky went off to his government office, it was his turn. In that room he wrote his first opera, 「The Maid of Pskov」, while Mussorgsky revised 「Boris Godunov」. In the summer of 1872 he married the pianist Nadezhda Purgold. Mussorgsky was his best man. Nadezhda arranged her husband's works for piano and was always the first to scrutinize his scores with a critical eye. (Professor) In 1871, at twenty-seven, he became professor of composition·orchestration at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Yet in his memoirs he confessed that at the time he could not even properly harmonize a single chorale and had never once worked a counterpoint exercise. That candid shame made him the man of the years that followed.
The first piece in which the naval officer, newly joined to the Mighty Handful, wove the sea and Russian legend together. Tchaikovsky praised it, and 30 years later it was reborn as an opera of the same name.
- In the introduction, the low strings repeat the same figure endlessly. This repetition paints a quietly heaving sea.
- Midway through, as a feast unfolds in the Sea King's palace, we hear the harp and the strings plucked with the fingers (pizzicato). They imitate the gusli, the Russian stringed instrument that Sadko plays.
- The dance quickens with Sadko's playing, and the sea itself begins to seethe. Listen as the brass and percussion pile up layer upon layer.
- The moment Sadko snaps the strings of his gusli, the dance stops short. The music returns to the calm sea of the opening. This abrupt turn is the ending of the story the composer attached to the piece.
IV. A late-blooming student · 1873–1884 (age 29–40)
(Inspector) In 1873 he resigned his commission. The Navy Ministry created a new civilian post for him, "Inspector of Naval Bands." Holding it until 1884, he learned the fingerings and ranges of the wind instruments firsthand. With his conservatory salary and this stipend he supported his growing family. In 1873 his first son, Mikhail, was born. He was followed by a daughter, Sofia; Andrei, who would become a musicologist; Vladimir, who would become a violinist; and a daughter, Nadezhda. (Fugue) He was a professor studying one step ahead of his students. Poring over textbooks of harmony and counterpoint, he wrote out dozens of fugues over a single summer. Hearing of this grueling self-education, Tchaikovsky sent him a letter full of respect. Balakirev and Mussorgsky, by contrast, were hurt that he was turning into an "academic." Indeed, several works from this period were faulted as dry. (Folk song) In 1874 he succeeded Balakirev at the head of the Free Music School. He collected 100 Russian folk songs and published them as a book, and with Balakirev he edited the scores of Glinka's operas. The folk songs and techniques he had amassed came into flower in 「May Night」 (1879), after Gogol, and 「The Snow Maiden」 (1881), after Ostrovsky. 「The Snow Maiden」 was written in high summer at a country house in Stelyovo, and he cherished it all his life. (Posthumous works) In March 1881 Mussorgsky died. He gathered up the manuscripts his friend had left behind, completed 「Khovanshchina」, and orchestrated it. Alexander Glazunov, who had become his private pupil at fourteen, helped at his side. From 1883 he assisted Balakirev at the Court Chapel choir. In 1882–83 he wrote a piano concerto in the single-movement form Liszt favored. After Liszt died in 1886, he published the piece and dedicated it to his memory.
The fruit of the years when he was collecting folk songs and teaching himself counterpoint. It sets a single Russian folk song in Lisztian single-movement form, and it is dedicated to Liszt's memory.
- The short folk melody the orchestra plays at the outset is the sole theme of the entire piece. It returns again and again in new shapes, now fast, now slow, now majestic. This is the thematic transformation Liszt so loved.
- The moment the piano enters, it storms across the keyboard. In this passage, which recalls a brilliant solo section (cadenza), Liszt's shadow looms large.
- In the slow middle section, the same folk song turns into a lyrical song. It is a pleasure to listen for the moment you recognize it as the same theme as the melody before.
- At around 15 minutes in all, it is short. That is why it counts as a hidden gem of the repertoire, rarely heard in concert.
V. The summer of Scheherazade · 1884–1889 (age 40–45)
(Belyayev) The timber merchant Mitrofan Belyayev, captivated by Glazunov's talent, began publishing the scores of Russian composers. He went on to found the "Russian Symphony Concerts" as well. Rimsky-Korsakov became their conductor and also advised Belyayev on which young composers to support. Belyayev's publishing house paid its composers generous fees. The chamber music evenings held at his home every Friday became the meeting place of St. Petersburg's musicians. (Borodin) In February 1887 Borodin collapsed and died at a masked ball. Once again he took charge of a friend's unfinished manuscripts and, with Glazunov, completed 「Prince Igor」. Glazunov wrote out the overture from memory, as Borodin had once played it for him at the piano. 「Prince Igor」 was premiered in 1890. (Color) While he was finishing other men's works, his own orchestral writing reached its peak. He wrote 「Capriccio espagnol」 in 1887, and in the summer of 1888 「Scheherazade」 and the 「Russian Easter Festival Overture」 in quick succession. At the first rehearsal of 「Capriccio espagnol」, the players broke into applause as soon as the first section ended. He wrote the names of all sixty-seven players into the score and dedicated the piece to them. (Faith) The 「Russian Easter Festival Overture」 is built on melodies from the Orthodox chant book. Yet he was not a man of churchly faith. In his memoirs he wrote that he had wanted to capture in it both the solemnity of Scripture and the pagan joy of Easter morning. (Wagner) In 1889 Angelo Neumann's touring company staged Richard Wagner's complete 「The Ring of the Nibelung」 in St. Petersburg. He followed the company even to its rehearsals and was deeply impressed by Wagner's orchestration. From then on, the orchestral writing in his operas grew markedly richer.
At the first rehearsal the players applauded, and the composer wrote out all sixty-seven of their names and dedicated the work to them. A piece in which the orchestra itself is the hero.
- Five sections follow one another without a break. In the first, "Alborada" (morning song), a solo clarinet leads a lively dance. When the same music returns in the third section, a solo violin takes over the role.
- In the second section, a set of variations (a form that repeats the same melody, changing it little by little), the horns sing the melody softly.
- In the fourth section, "Scene and Gypsy Song," the snare drum lays down a fine tremolo. Over it, brass, violin, flute, clarinet, and harp take turns showing off their skill in solo passages (cadenzas). This is the crowning moment of the piece.
- In the final "Fandango asturiano," castanets drive the rhythm. The Alborada melody of the first section returns, and the piece races breathlessly to its close.
He wrote it in the summer of the year he was completing his friends' unfinished works. A composer who had served in the navy and knew the sea painted the sea and the storyteller of “The Thousand and One Nights” in orchestral color.
- The piece opens with a menacing theme sounded by the low brass and strings as a single mass. This is the cruel King Shahryar. Soon after, over harp chords, a solo violin sings a slender melody, and this is the storyteller Scheherazade.
- He first gave the movements the titles "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship," "The Kalendar Prince," "The Young Prince and the Young Princess," and "Festival at Baghdad," but later struck them out. Though it is program music that tells a story, he wanted to leave it to the listener's imagination.
- In the 3rd movement, the strings sing tenderly while clarinet and flute add ornaments in grace notes. It is the passage most often heard as a love story.
- At the end of the 4th movement, the sea of the 1st movement surges in over the festival music. The gong (tam-tam) sounds at the moment the ship strikes a cliff and breaks apart. The piece fades away on the high, transparent tones the solo violin draws by lightly touching the string (harmonics).
- The solo violin part is famous as a test of the orchestra's leader (concertmaster). Scheherazade's character sounds different in every performance.
A composer who held no church faith built this piece from Orthodox chant. Just as his memoirs describe, it holds both solemnity and the joy of a pagan festival.
- The melody the woodwinds sing quietly in the introduction is the Orthodox chant 'Let God arise.' It is taken from the Orthodox chant book, the “Obikhod.”
- Between the phrases of the introduction, a solo violin and a solo cello break in with short solo passages (cadenzas), roaming freely as if improvised. They create an atmosphere like flickering candlelight.
- The trombone solo in the middle is said to depict a priest intoning the Gospel. Listen for its quality of singing as if speaking (recitative).
- At the close, bells, glockenspiel (steel chimes) and harp layer together to ring out the bells of Easter morning. It is as if one can hear, folded into them, his childhood spent listening to the bells of the Tikhvin monastery.
VI. Silence and return · 1890–1904 (age 46–60)
(Loss) The early 1890s brought loss upon loss. In 1890 his mother and his infant son Slavchik died, and in 1893 his young daughter Maria succumbed to illness. He suffered from a crushing pressure in his head and from deep depression. All but abandoning composition, he read philosophy and aesthetics and tried to write on the aesthetics of music. His long relationship with Balakirev also soured around this time, and in 1894 he left the Court Chapel. (Tchaikovsky) In 1893 Tchaikovsky died. The two men had grown close in the late 1880s, often keeping company in the Belyayev circle. Because Tchaikovsky had already made Gogol's “Christmas Eve” into an opera, he had left the story alone. In 1894–95, after Tchaikovsky was gone, he wrote an opera on it. And so the long silence was broken. (Moscow) The Imperial Theaters turned their backs on his opera “Sadko.” Instead, the private opera company led by the Moscow railway magnate Savva Mamontov gave its premiere in early 1898. The bass Fyodor Chaliapin and the soprano Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel sang his music. He wrote Marfa, the heroine of “The Tsar's Bride,” for Zabela's voice. “Mozart and Salieri,” set to Pushkin's play, was also premiered by this company, with Chaliapin as Salieri. (Pupils) In 1896 he brought out his revised edition of “Boris Godunov.” Because he smoothed its rough harmonies and orchestration, “Boris” reached the world's stages. Yet criticism followed that he had blunted the original's sharp edges. Around 1900, Ottorino Respighi, then living in the city as a violist, studied orchestration with him. From about 1902, his son's university friend Igor Stravinsky began to frequent his home. “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (1900) and “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh” (1905) were also written in this period.
A small opera he wrote in partnership with the Mamontov company after breaking his silence. In homage to Dargomyzhsky he set Pushkin's lines to music almost word for word, and Chaliapin sang Salieri.
- Almost the entire work proceeds in recitative, singing the lines as if speaking them. It is a method he had learned in his youth from Dargomyzhsky's “The Stone Guest,” in which the inflections of speech become the melody itself.
- In Salieri's monologue at the opening of Scene 1, the collapse of a lifetime's hard-won pride into envy is painted over the dark timbre of the low strings.
- In Scene 1, a blind street fiddler clumsily scrapes out an aria by Mozart. Mozart is delighted; Salieri is enraged. The contrast between the two men is vivid.
- At the end of Scene 2, Mozart, having drunk from the poisoned cup, plays his “Requiem,” and here an actual melody of Mozart's is quoted. If you know the original, it is all the more chilling.
During his second flowering on the Moscow stage, he chose three scenes from his opera on Pushkin's fairy tale and wove them into this piece. Each movement is headed by lines of Pushkin's verse.
- All three movements open with a trumpet fanfare. It carries over the herald's call that sounded in the opera each time the curtain rose.
- In the second movement, the slandered tsaritsa and her baby are sealed in a barrel and set adrift on the sea. In the heaving strings and forlorn woodwinds one hears a sea quite unlike that of “Scheherazade.”
- The third movement, 'The Three Wonders,' brings on in turn a squirrel that sings folk songs as it cracks nuts, thirty-three knights rising from the sea, and the Swan Princess. Follow the contrast between the light high-register instruments and the weighty brass.
- The famous “Flight of the Bumblebee” is not part of this suite. It is the music from Act 3 of the same opera in which the prince turns into a bumblebee and flies off, and it became famous when played on its own.
VII. The Golden Cockerel · 1905–1908 (age 61–64)
(1905) After 'Bloody Sunday' in January 1905, the conservatory's students went on strike as well. He took the students' side and published an open letter in the newspapers criticizing the conservatory's administration. That March, the board of the Russian Musical Society dismissed him. On the night the students performed his opera “Kashchey the Deathless,” the hall seethed like a political rally. For a time the police banned performances of his works. Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov left the conservatory in protest. When the conservatory won autonomy at the end of that year and Glazunov became its director, he too returned to teaching. (Paris) In the spring of 1907 he was invited to conduct at the concerts of Russian music that Sergei Diaghilev presented in Paris. These concerts, which opened Parisian ears to Russian music, became a stepping stone on the road that later led to the Ballets Russes. (Censorship) His last opera, “The Golden Cockerel” (1907), is a satire borrowed from Pushkin's fairy tale. Its lazy, foolish king and incompetent army called to mind the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. The censors demanded that lines be cut, but he refused to compromise. In the end the work was never staged in his lifetime. (The end) He finished his memoirs in 1906. In June 1908, as his attacks of angina grew more frequent, he died at his Lyubensk estate near Luga at the age of sixty-four. Shortly before, his daughter Nadezhda had married his pupil Maximilian Steinberg. Stravinsky wrote a “Funeral Song” in honor of his teacher, premiered early the following year. “The Golden Cockerel” received its premiere in Moscow in the autumn of 1909. His orchestration textbook was edited by his son-in-law Steinberg and published in 1913.
Lesser-known stories
(New York) In the autumn of 1863, the Almaz, carrying the cadet Rimsky-Korsakov, sailed into New York Harbor as part of a Russian squadron. With the Civil War at its height, Northerners took the visit as a sign of Russian support for the Union government and welcomed it. In his memoirs the episode passes briefly, as a scene from a voyage that had nothing to do with music, and so music history seldom takes it up. (Color) He associated each key with a particular color: D major, for instance, was a sunlit yellow, and E major a deep blue. According to Rachmaninoff's recollection, he discussed the colors of keys with Scriabin in Paris in 1907, and the two men's colors only partly overlapped. Rimsky-Korsakov himself, however, is said to have regarded this less as something he actually saw than as an association. (Yastrebtsev) That his everyday conversation survives in such detail is thanks to his admirer Vasily Yastrebtsev. From the late 1880s until the composer's death, Yastrebtsev meticulously recorded their conversations. The record was published in Russian only in the Soviet era, and in English only in an abridged version. As a result, it is rarely quoted outside the Russian-speaking world. (Funeral Song) After its 1909 premiere, the score of the “Funeral Song” Stravinsky dedicated to his teacher vanished in the chaos of revolution. Stravinsky himself recalled it as the best of his works before “The Firebird,” yet he could not remember how it went. In 2015 the orchestral parts were found during a reorganization of the St. Petersburg Conservatory library, and the following year it was performed again at the Mariinsky Theatre for the first time in more than a century.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Orchestration
(Meaning) Gwanhyeonak (管絃樂, 'pipe-and-string music') means music in which gwan (管), the pipes, that is, wind instruments sounded by blowing, join with hyeon (絃), the strings, that is, instruments that are bowed or plucked. Gwanhyeonakbeop ('the method of pipe-and-string music') is the art of handling those instruments. In the West it is called orchestration. (In music) It is the craft of deciding which instrument to entrust a melody to, which instruments to double, and how loudly to let them sound. The very same melody sounds light on the flute and weighty on the trombone. It is like the way the same picture feels entirely different depending on whether you color it with pencils or with paint. Rimsky-Korsakov was a master who wrote the textbook in this field. (Elsewhere) In computing, orchestration refers to coordinating many servers and programs so that they run automatically in step with one another.
Counterpoint
(Meaning) Daewibeop (對位法) means 'the law of positions (位) set facing (對) one another,' note against note. Its Latin name, punctus contra punctum, likewise means 'point against point,' that is, note against note. (In music) It is the craft of weaving two or more different melodies so that they flow at the same time, each singing its own song, yet blend well when heard together. When the sopranos and basses of a choir sing different tunes and still sound like a single piece of music, that is counterpoint at work. Picture two people in a group jump-rope game, each jumping to a different rhythm without ever catching the rope. (Elsewhere) In literary and film criticism, the technique of setting different stories or moods side by side in contrast is called contrapuntal.
Fugue
(Meaning) Fugue comes from the Latin fuga, meaning flight. The name comes from the way one voice sets off ahead singing the subject while another follows as if in pursuit. (In music) It is a strict form in which several voices take up a single short subject in turn and build it up, and it is called the flower of counterpoint. Its opening resembles a round, in which those who come later sing the same song a little behind. In a fugue, however, the following voice sings at a different pitch, and the subject then fragments and overlaps, developing far more intricately. This is exactly what Rimsky-Korsakov, a late starter, mastered by writing dozens of them. (Elsewhere) In psychiatry, a fugue (dunju, 'flight on foot') is a state in which a person forgets who they are, leaves home and wanders.
Program music
(Meaning) Pyoje (標題) means a title or label affixed to the outside. Pyojeeumak ('label music') is music that carries a 'story tag,' such as a title or a plot. (In music) It is instrumental music that seeks to paint in sound a story, a picture or a landscape from outside the music. Music that, by contrast, offers only the structure of its sounds, without a title, is called absolute music. It is like listening only to the background music of a game, with no dialogue and no screen, and guessing whether the scene is a battle or a village. “Scheherazade” is counted among the classic examples of program music even though the composer removed its movement titles.
Cadenza
(Meaning) Cadenza is an Italian word from the Latin cadere, 'to fall.' The name arose from the spot just before a piece falls to its close (cadence), where the soloist would display their skill alone. (In music) It is a passage in which a single solo instrument plays freely and brilliantly while the orchestra stops or accompanies very softly. Originally the soloist improvised it, but later composers more and more often wrote it out in the score. It is like the part of a group performance where members step forward one by one to show off their individual skills. In “Capriccio espagnol,” several instruments take turns with such solos. (Elsewhere) The English cadence, from the same root, refers in cycling to the number of pedal revolutions per minute.
Suite
(Meaning) Moeumgok ('gathered pieces') is, just as it says, a piece made by gathering several pieces together. The Western name suite means in French 'that which follows, that which continues.' (In music) It is a form that binds together several short pieces of different character to be played in sequence. In the Baroque era, it gathered various dances; in the nineteenth century, it was common to choose the best scenes from an opera or ballet and arrange them as an orchestral work. It is like a highlight reel collecting only the best scenes when you cannot watch a whole long drama. The suite from “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” is just such a case. (Elsewhere) A hotel suite is the same word, meaning a set of connected rooms, such as a bedroom and a sitting room.
Recitative
(Meaning) Recitative comes from the Italian recitare, 'to recite.' It means singing as if speaking. (In music) In opera, it is a way of singing that delivers the lines by following the inflection and pace of speech rather than unfolding a beautiful melody. It is used mainly in scenes that move the story forward, and it pairs with the aria, which dwells at length on emotion. Think of the scenes in a musical where an actor explains the situation in something between speech and song. “Mozart and Salieri” is written almost entirely in this manner.
Harmonics
(Meaning) The English word harmonics means baeeum (倍音, 'multiplied tones'). Whenever a note is sounded, higher tones vibrating two and three times as fast mingle with it; these are called baeeum. (In music) On a string instrument, if you bow while merely grazing the string with a fingertip at certain points instead of pressing it down, only these overtones ring out, giving a high, transparent sound like a whistle. The bell-like tone you get by lightly touching a guitar string above the twelfth fret and plucking it works on the same principle. In Scheherazade, the solo violin plays the final note with this sound. (Elsewhere) In electrical engineering and physics the word is rendered as gojopa ('high-pitched wave'), referring to vibrations that occur at integer multiples of the fundamental frequency.