The year 1914 is still remembered as the start of of one of the biggest
bloodbaths of all time, called World War
One. A single shot fired in Sarajevo killed millions of young
and able-bodied people whose hopes and aspirations were so mercilessly
dashed by the four-year conflagration...
Just hours after the war broke out, Russia declared a general
mobilization calling up all able-bodied men, including musicians. Composer
Nikolai Myaskovsky was also drafted. They reminded him that, before entering
the Conservatory, he had already been a certified army engineer. The 33
year-old lieutenant was ordered to set up several army sapper units and
organize training courses for the enlisted men. Two months later, Myaskovsky
wound up at the Austrian front and storming the Peremyshl fortress...
In one of his letters home he wrote: "I felt no patriotic
upsurge whatsoever. All I felt was terrible desperation. How come all these
vane bigwigs are redrawing the map and forcing the ordinary people to sacrifice
their lives for the sake of their ambitions! The authorities are stoking
up the most base and chauvinistic sentiments... People are running around
like mad animals, it's so mean and stupid! Now I know that art, especially
music, is absolutely supernational. Details may vary, but the essence is
flying high above all these Germanys, Frances and Russias... To hell with
the war! How I wish it were all over now!"
Nikolai Myaskovsky spent a whole two years at the frontlines.
In 1916 he was severely contused and allowed to return home where he immediately
resumed his musical career.
The news about the war reached Sergei Rakhmaninoff when, as usual,
he was spending the summer at his Ivanovka family estate near Tambov. Shortly
after that, the world-renowned composer was drafted into the army.
"They told me I was being called up as a volunteer and should
report to an assembly they were going to have in Tambov", Rakhmaninoff
wrote his brother. "It looked like a joke! I knew I was a lousy soldier
but I still packed up and left. My folks at home started bewailing my departure.
They kept telling me I would be killed in my very first battle. I tried
to make light of it but, as I was getting closer to Tambov, my jovial disposition
started giving way to despair. We passed a number of horse-drawn columns
of draftees. They were all over the place... "Some of these people
will not live to see their families again," I thought. "My God,
who needs this war? I was so scared and filled with heavy premonitions
that Russia was not ready to fight and would end up the loser no matter
who the enemy was..."
Fortunately, the doctors never gave Rakhmaninoff a clean bill
of health finding out that the 41 year-old composer had a number of chronic
diseases. Moreover, he was already working as an Inspector of Music at
the Nobility High School for Girls, a position that exempted him from military
service. It so happened that the job which Rakhmaninoff had never taken
seriously, saved him from the frontlines and, maybe, from death itself...
The outbreak of the World War found Rakhmaninoff generous in
the disposition of his services as pianist for charitable purposes. He
worked as a performing pianist, temporarily sidelining his compositional
work. It was only years later that he finally resumed writing his Fourth
Piano Concerto which he had commenced working on before the war...
The war sparked a noisy wave of anti-German feelings in Russia.
The nationalists were going after everyone whose last name was German apparently
forgetting that the Germans started settling down in Russia back in the
17th century... There were a number of German pogroms in Moscow, St.Petersburg
and other cities...
The well known composer and pianist Nikolai Metner was ethnically
German too and, even though his family had long been assimilated into Russian
society, his German surname was increasingly becoming a source of irritation
to the public. Small wonder that he was immediately drafted. It looked
like his fate was already sealed, but the doctors were forced to exempt
the sickly musician from military service.
Rattled by the decision, the nationalists started questioning
Metner's loyalty and others were openly suggesting he might be a German
spy...
Hating to further irritate the chauvinists, Nikolai Metner canceled
most of his concerts and he even had to seek temporary residence with his
friends. Publication of new works was absolutely out of the question and
one can only guess how he managed to survive the hard times...
...Fyodor Chaliapin learned about the war at a small station
not far from Paris. There were neither trains nor cars of carriages in
sight, all having immediately been requisitioned for military purposes.
Chaliapin gave away all his belongings and walked all the way to Paris,
crossed the English Channel into Britain wherefrom he moved on to Scandinavia
and, on September 7th, 1914, he finally arrived in St.Petersburg, which
had just been renamed to Petrograd...
The first thing he did was donating money to open a field hospital.
Chaliapin kept his charity secret trying to avoid the pomp and circumstance
that would follow if the news leaked out. The journalists sniffed the truth
though and informed the authorities. The whole thing ended with an opening
ceremony attended by the city mayor.
"When they saw how good the hospital was," Chaliapin
later reminisced, "they suggested we hand it over to officers. I said
it was exactly because the hospital was so good that I wanted it to tend
to the enlisted men. I occasionally visited the patients and, talking to
them, sadly realized that these people simply don't know what they are
fighting for putting their lives on the line... They always asked me to
sing and I never said no. I usually sung Russian folk songs, including
the so-called "recruit" songs...
When the war broke out, Alexander Skryabin was already working
on a very unusual composition which he had tentatively titled Mystery.
It was a step towards the realization of the composer's passionate desire
to achieve a perfect synthesis of the arts, harmonizing music, dance, architecture
and light...
It all begins with the melody which is gradually fusing itself
with the music of light, a symphony of movement. The Temple where the Mystery
is taking place is to be built in in the Himalayas, India. It will be made
from a translucent material with columns made of ...fragrance.
"This building is going to be fluid and moving all the time,
fluid, just like music itself," Skryabin elaborated on his idea, "The
colors of sunshine and sunrise will eventually be added to this overall
symphony of light, because the Mystery will last for seven days. Time itself
will accelerate and we will be able to squeeze billions of years into these
few days of unearthly bliss..."
Along with the more traditional instruments, Skryabin was eager
to introduce in his new composition, some very unorthodox ones capable
of producing unheard-of-before sounds. He was also looking to extract bizarre
sonic effects from the choir...
Instead of singing I want to hear a whisper", he said, "A
whisper coming from a huge crowd of people ... This is going to be a very
special sensation!..."
Realizing that it could take him years to complete this larger-than-life
composition, Skryabin was working hard but only sketches for the introductory
movement, the Initial Act, had been written when death overtook him...
Skryabin feared that, if performed, the Mystery would entail
a major catastrophe, that is why he saw the start of the World War as the
opening act of his Mystery, ushering in a string of global cataclysms...
"I don't think this war will be the end of it," he
mused, "it will be followed by major social upheavals, China will
stand up tall and so will India and Africa... And I can't even imagine
what is going to happen to
Russia! In the next few years we will live thousands of years..."
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
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