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The great Russian composer Mikhail Glinka once said: “It is the people
who create music and we, composers, only arrange it, that’s all…” This
may be an exaggeration but we certainly can find folk themes in just about
any written music.
Russian music manuals invariably mention Glinka right on page one. The
founding father of Russian classical music, Mikhail Glinka left behind
a treasure trove of excellent music in just about every genre, some having
a very loud folk ring to it…
Opening the list of Russian symphony music is the “Kamarinskaya” fantasy
dance Glinka based on two Russian folk tunes. What we just heard was a
drawn-out wedding song and now we are segueing to a fiery Russian dance…
Pyotr Tchaikovsky once said that Russian symphony music all stems from
Mikhail Glinka’s “Kamarinskaya”, just like an “oak tree does from an acorn.”
Picking up where the first Russian classic had left off, Tchaikovsky also
made ample use of folk melodies in his music. Including his famous
Concerto No.1 whose end part is so reminiscent of a popular Russian folk
song.
And the noble and exquisite Andante Cantabile of the 1st String Quartet
was actually prompted by a stove-heater. Once, as he heated the stoves
in Tchaikovsky’s apartment, the man stared humming a simple song about
“Vanya sitting on the sofa and sipping mead...” Tchaikovsky liked the tune,
scribbled it down and arranged it to become one of his best-known melodic
masterpieces.
Folk tunes were occasionally taken up by members of the famous Mighty Five
- a team of leading St.Petersburg composers who were even more attached
to traditional Russian roots than Tchaikovsky himself.
Really, you will certainly come across a folk tune or two in almost each
of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fifteen operas. The central character of his
lyric opera serenades “A Night in May” his beloved to the melody of a popular
Ukrainian folk song. The composer even left intact the opening line of
that original song…
In his operatic satire “The Golden Cockerel”, Rimsky-Korsakov used a short
excerpt from popular ditties about Chizhik-Pyzhik to portray the stupid
and lazy Czar Dodon…
Unlike Rimsky-Korsakov, his good friend Modest Mussorgsky made only occasional
use of folk themes preferring to write his own melodies, which sounded
like folk songs. We can still find a genuine Russian folk theme in his
opera “Khovanchchina”, sung by Old Believer Marfa before she immolates
herself. At first glance, the song she sings has little to do with what
is actually happening on stage, but it does add lyricism to this strong-willed
young woman thinking back about her bitter love at an hour of trial…
With the onset of the 20th century, the Russian composers seemed to be
increasingly moving away from the principles that guided their older colleagues.
Really, you can hardly find any folk themes here, including, in the music
by Alexander Skriabin…
And, to a certain degree, by Sergei Rakhmaninov where even though you can
occasionally come across a folk-sounding theme or two, these are certainly
not what his music is really all about… There is one piece, which Rakhmaninov
based entirely on Russian folk melodies. This is the very nostalgic “Three
Russian Songs” for choir and orchestra he wrote during his forced emigration…
One of these songs Rakhmaninov heard from his good friend, the great Russian
bass singer Fyodor Chaliapin, who was absolutely second to none also where
it came to Russian folk songs. Recalling Chaliapin’s singing, Rakhmaninov
added clusters of colorful orchestral sounds to the original choir.
The orchestral palette painted in vivid colors also the old Russian folk
melodies so expertly arranged into a cantata in the 1950s by the outstanding
composer Georgy Sviridov. Sviridov crisscrossed his native Kursk region
in Central Russia recording local folk songs all so beautiful and catchy
as if overfilling with the rich juices of those fertile black soils…
“The Kursk Songs” cantata made Georgy Sviridov an instant celebrity hailed
as one of the best masterpieces of 20th century Russian music.
“The Mischievous Ditties” by Rodion Shchedrin have also found their way
into the treasury of 20th century Russian musical classics. Shchedrin wrote
them early on taking up the traditional Russian ditties theretofore all
but ignored by the mainstream composers.
A ditty is a short satiric song, which is often improvised right on the
spot. It usually consists of four-line comic verses put to simple music.
The ditties are all about the content where music always takes the back
seat to the lyrics. Rodion Shchedrin managed to build this up to a full-scale
concerto for orchestra...
It was Shchedrin’s first brush with the Russian ditties and there were
still more to come later on. And still, the concerto “Mischievous
Ditties” stands tall as probably his finest such exercise ever…
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