MUSC 436: Vocal Literature

Russian Songs

18^th Century

Grogory Nikolaevich Teplov (1711-1779)

“Great-grandfather of Russian song” (Bulich 1916). He published a volume of songs in 1750s consisting of melody, countermelody and bass. They were, in general, artless and simple; precursors to the kind of song that was popular for about 50 years: “Sentimental products of cultured dilettanti whose limited musical technique restricted them to the simplest types of textures and structure (HS 339).”

Late 18^th century composers:

Mikhaylovich Dubyansky (1760-1796) composer of romances and folksong arrangements

Józef Kozlowski (1757-1831) Polish musician working in Russia, composed settings of French, Italian, Russian texts.

A.S. Kozlyaninov (1777-1831)

Aleksey Dmitrievich (1767-1848)

Daniil Nikitich Kashin (1769-1841)

Russian artsong influenced by folksong and opera: Russian folksongs (either genuine or imitative) as part of Russian operas were arranged for domestic performances.

In 1795, songs were published for the first time as vocal line with 2 stave accompaniment. These were folksong arrangements and romances.

Romances – term first applied to Russian songs with French texts, simple, strophic structure

Russkaya pensya – imitating folksongs

Recording in the library:

Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Folksongs: “Mashenka” “The song of the Volga boatmen”

“Down the Petersky” “Nochen'ka”

Poets set by the late 18^th century composers:

Pseudo-classicism: Sumarokav, Derzhavin

Sentimentalists: Dmitriev, Neledinsky-Meletsky, Kapnist, Merzlyakov

Themes of longing, loneliness, dissatisfaction

Others: Zhukovsky (his narrative ballads set by A. A. Pleshcheev (1775-1827) inspired a new genre of

Russian song), Delvig, Pushkin

Composers of this generation were dilettanti, “lacked the ability to express” the themes of this poetry with its “fresh rhythms and meters.”

Early 19^th century composers

Crystalization of national musical style in Song and Opera: minor keys, folkmusic elements, elimination of Italianisms.

Yakovlev

Count Mikhail Vielgorsky (1788-1856)

Nikolay Alekseevich Titov (1800-1875)

“Grandfather of Russian song” (Bulich 1900) compared to Teplov

First compositions were settings of French texts modeled after French composers

Triad of Russian Song Composers

Alyabiev (1787-1851):

Worked seriously as a musician, more than just a dilettanti, as the previous composers.

“In his hands… the Russian art-song began to rise toward the artistic level of the

contemporary German Lied.”

He had variety in harmony, accompaniments, forms and topics.

Spent several years in prison and in exile

Varlamov (1801-1848): not as talented or creative as Alyabiev

Gurilev (1803-1858): not as talented or creative as Alyabiev

Mid-19^th century composers

Verstovsky (1799-1862) primarily an opera composer

“Founder of the Russian ballad.” His ballads encouraged more adventurous piano parts and more

expressive harmony

The first “Classic” song composers.

Although they were contemporary with all the above composers, their “best” songs were composed later (1830s, 40s)

Glinka (1804-1857)

Dargomizhansky (1813-1869)

Glinka

Studied in Italy 1830-1833, Berlin 1833-34

Wrote Romances with Russian and French texts, Italian arias and canzonettes throughout his life

Returned to Russia with “new resolution to write Russian music

Life for the Tsar (opera)

Wrote his best songs 1837-1840

Farewell to Petersburg (Kukolnik)

A set of several songs, wide variety of styles (folksong, operatic, theatrical, dance pieces,

barcarolle, ballad, drinking song with chorus. All songs have a common theme but this is not a song cycle.

Recording in the library: Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Aria: “Susanin's recitative and aria” from A Life for the Tsar

Aria: “Farlaf's rondo” from Russlan and Lyudmila

Dargomizhansky

Comic, dramatic songs

Peasant songs

Recording in the library: Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Aria: “The Miller's Aria” from Rusalka

Alyabiev, Varlamov, Glinka, Dargomizhansky were all singings and teachers of singing.

The New Russian School

Mighty Handful: All wrote songs with piano parts which were at least as important as the vocal lines. Very much influenced by Schumann and Liszt. Except for Mussorgsky, none were singers. Their vocal lines were “instrumental” in nature. It is rare to find “musical integration of voice and accompaniment.”

Translations of Heine were popular to them all (trans. Mikhaylov)

Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881): began as a “cultured amateur.”

Many early songs are in the old romance style.

1863-4, his creative individuality begins to shine through

1866-68, his best and best known songs, “fresh, unconventional lyricism no longer owing

anything to the romance type and far more sophisticated musically, even in the simplest

examples.”

“It was not the lyrical songs that created such landmarks in the history of Russian music, but the

realistic, half-comic, half-tragic ones written to the composer’s own words.”

Svetik Savishna, 1866

Song-cycles

Detskaya (The Nursery) (1868-70), pub. 1872

Five songs. Two more added posthumously. “Musical transcriptions of a child’s speech,

caught with extraordinary truth and total absence of adult sentiment.’

Bez solntsa (Sunless) (1874)

Poems by Golenishchev-Kutuzov

Subjective, pessimistic poems and music

Pesni I plyaski smerti (Songs and Dances of Death) (1875)

Poems by Golenishchev-Kutuzov

“Each of these songs is a grim dranatic scene… and these images evoked from

Mussorgsky some of his most masterly and subtly music: perfect fusion of verbal sense

and musical sense in the vocal line (HS 365).”

Recording in the library: Songs and dances of death by Mussorgsky (other titles as

well). London, Eng: Decca, 1998.

M1001 .S56 no.15 1998 

Sergei Aleksashkin, bass; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Georg Solti, conductor. Recorded at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, March 20-29, 1997.

Recording in the library: Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound

recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991,  2 COMPACT DISCS

Pimen's narration (Boris Godounov)

Varlaam's song (Boris Godounov)

Galitzky's songs (Prince Igor)

Boris' monologue; Clock scene; Farewell, prayer and death (Boris Godounov)

“The song of the flea”

Balakiev (1837-1910)

Like Glinka wrote in traditional forms

Cui (1835-1918)

“Polished but generally insipid art (362).”

Like Darg. “truth to the words,” arioso, declamation

Opp. 3, 5, 7, 9, 10

Late songs wide range of styles, languages, 1870s, 80s.

25 Poems by Pushkin, Op. 57

“Cui’s natural gift was for the lyrical arioso and the polished miniature (362).”

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)

Early romances with cello obbligato (1867)

Often set his own texts

Recording in the library:

Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Aria: “Khan Kontchak's aria” from Prince Igor

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsokov

Opp. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 25

Later songs: settings of Tolstoy, Maykov, Pushkin

1877-1883

1897-98

50 songs, new “vocal” approach

“The melody, following the turns of the text, poured out from me in a purely vocal form

(N. R-K, p.360). A turn away from ‘realism’ toward ‘lyricism.’

Tolstoy Songs, op. 39

Maykov trans. of modern Greek poems, op 50

Cycles: Vesney, op. 43; Poetu, op. 45; U morya, op. 46 “Disappointing,uneven.”

Recording in the library:

Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Aria: “The Varangian merchant's song” from Sadko

Nikolay Nikolaevich Lodizhensky (1843-1916): One of the most technically gifted, though almost

completely unknown.

Late 19^th poets (Art for Art’s sake)

Tolstoy, Aleksey, Maykov, Tyutchev, Fet, Polonsky

All previously named composers represent the development of Russian through the “Cultured dilettanti.” In the 1860’s, after the new Conservatoires in Petersburg and Moscow had opened, a new kind of music was heard: “Conservatoire Movement.”

Artur Rubinstein (1829-1894), head of the conservatoire.

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), first distinguished product of the conservatoires.

Both were “notably inferior to the heirs of the dilettanti as song-writers (365).”

Rubinstein: composed around 200 songs;

A “highly competent imitator of Mendelssohn or Schumann, with little personality (HS 365).”

He set German as well as Russian texts.

Recording in the library: Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound

recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Song: “Persian Love Song”

Aria: “Do not weep, child” from The Demon

Tchaikovsky: “only a small proportion of his songs shows him at his best. He possessd a gift

invaluable to a song-writer – natural lyricism – but was defective in an essential one: the sense of the

miniature (HS 365).”

· Heavy-handed, wrote “over-long” piano preludes and postludes “which make no particular point and are often rather clumsily written.”

· He was more sensitive to the general mood of a poem than to its details.

· He wrote romances all his life

· Many could be called arioso-romances

Six French songs, Op. 65 (1888)

· He did write songs out of the Russian-song tradition

16 Pesen dlya detey (16 Songs for Children) (1883) (A. N. Pleschcheev), intended to

be sung to or by children (unlike Mussorgsky’s Nursery)

· Little interest in the dramatic ballad tradition

Korol’ki (The Corals), op. 28, no. 2 “one of the finest of all Russian specimens of the

Genre (HS 368).”

Recording in library:

Sylvester, Richard D. Tchaikovsky's Complete Songs: a

Companion with Texts and Translations. Bloomington: Indiana University, 2002. Accompanying CD, various performers.

ML54.6.T24 S9 2002

Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Song: “Pilgrim's song”

Serenade; Songs by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Hahn, Debussy, Liszt, Villa-Lobos, Fauré. RCA Red Seal LSC 3082. 1969

Gérard Souzay, baritone; Dalton Baldwin, piano.

LP – M1619.S68 S4 1969

Song: “At the ball,” op. 38, no. 3

Song: “Don Juan's Serenade,” op. 38, no. 1.

Also see www.naxosmusiclibrary.com under the play list “CLS-TchaikSongs”

Composers between 1880-1917

· “One is struck by a certain sameness (368).”

· “Despite occasional influences from the contemporary Lied, the central place in Russian song was still held by the passionate or elegiac romance (368).”

· Favorite poets:

Pushkin

The Parnassians (Fet, Tyutchev, Aleksey, Tolstoy, Polonsky)

The Decadents

The Symbolists (Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Hippius, Sollogub, Bryusov, Balmant, Vyancheslav Ivanov, Bely, and Blok).

· Very high technical level

Composers who wrote songs occasionally:

Taneev, Arensky, Lyadov, Glazunov, N. N. Cherepnin, Vasilenko

Myaskovsky

Employed impressionistic harmonies in his Hippius settings, op. 4 (1910)

Rebikov

“Vocal scenes” for voice and piano, intended to be performed with a simple set usually with another actor on stage. Op. 20, no. 5

Song-composers

Grechaninov (1864-1956)

Songs were the most important part of his work. He wrote a wide range of songs:

Cultiated the concert-aria with orchestra

Na rasput’i (At the Cross-roads), op. 21 (1901) for bass

Children’s Songs, opp. 31 (1903) and 122 (1929)

Humorous songs

Four Krilov Fables, op. 33

Scottish, Belo-Russian, Tatar and Bashkir Folksong arrangements

Op. 25 (settings of Tatar and Bashkir melodies melodies)

Song cycles

Ad astra (1911), Op. 54; Influenced by Skryabin

A majority of his songs were romances.

Recording in the library: Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound

recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Song: “Twofold litany”

Rakhmaninov (1873-1943)

“Never achieved anything as exquisite as the best of Medtner’s songs (370).”

Six songs by Symbolist poets, op. 38 (1916).

His last set of songs, shows him breaking away from his “over-rich euphony

Vokaliz, op. 34, no. 14

Recording in the library:

Chaliapin, Fyodor Ivanovich, (1873-1938). Chaliapin [sound recording]. Wyastone, Leys, Monmouth: Nimbus Records, 1991.

M1505.C52 C5 1991  2 COMPACT DISCS

Aria: “Aleko's cavatina” from Aleko

Gérard Souzay, baritone; Dalton Baldwin, piano.

Serenade; Songs by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Hahn, Debussy, Liszt, Villa

Lobos, Fauré. RCA Red Seal LSC 3082. 1969

LP – M1619.S68 S4 1969

Song: “Oh stay my love,” op. 4, no. 1

Song: “When yesterday we met,” op. 26, no. 13

Dawn Upshaw sings Wolf, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Ives, and Weill. United States: Musicmasters, 1988.

Dawn Upshaw, soprano ; Margo Garrett, piano.

CD – M1619.U67 D3 1988

Song set: Six songs, op. 38

Medtner (1880-1951)

Showed much more restraint in his piano parts when setting Russian texts than German

Wordless songs

Sonata-Vokaliz

Suite-Vokaliz

The romance completely predominates the songs of Rakhmaninov and Medtner. They were

primarily composers of piano works, so their songs employ “heavily over-loaded piano parts, with

protracted epilogues, though their piano writing is far more beautiful (and far more difficult) than

Tchaikovsky’s and their epilogues are better justified (370).”

Modernists

Igor Stravinski (1882-)

Early songs (1907-1916)

Preceded Rakhmaninov by composing a wordless song, Pastorel, in 1908.

Favn I Pashushka (The Faun and the Shepherd) songs with orchestra, “show talent”

Opp. 6 and 9, debts to Debussy and Rimsky-Korsekov, “sound far fresher and more individual

when set against the backgroundof the contemporary Russian song than when considered simply on their merits (371).”

Tri stikhotvoreniya iz yaponskoy liriki (Three Japanese Lyrics) (1913), sophisticated.

Tri pesenki (iz vospominaniy yunosheskikh godov) (Three Little Songs, from memories of my

Childhood) (1913), naïve.

Pribautki (Facetiae) (1914)

Koshach’I kolibel’nie pesni (Cat’s Lullaby) (1915-16)

Tri istorii dlya detey (Three Stories for Children) (1915-16)

“He disappears from the history of Russian Song (371).”

Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Early songs are “more straight-forward, more diatonic and more euphonious than Stravinsky’s (372).”

Gadkiy utenok, op. 18 (1914): a musical setting of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Ugly Duckling

Opp. 9. 18, 23, 27 (1910-1916)

After the Russian Revolution, 1917: Many composers left Russia (now USSR), but many stayed and

accepted the new regime.

Prokofiev returned after being in exile (he composed two sets of songs while in exile, opp. 35, 36;

1920-21)

Later songs (1935-1950):

opp. 66, 79, 121: mostly Soviet poets or popular texts glorifying partisan op. 68, Children’s songs

op. 73, Pushkin (1937)

Myaskovsky (1881-1950), never emigrated. After the revolution wrote songs that praised the

Union (Stalin, Soviet Polar explorers, etc.)

Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) was opposed to modernism and the classics, all things lyrical. They wished for composers to abandon the romance entirely and turn to the “Mass Song” – unison with piano.

Central Committee of the Communist Party made a pronouncement on all literature and arts in April 1932: The Classics were to be revered, but all forms of modernism, ‘subjectivism,” or abstract ‘formalism’ were taboo.

The CCCP demanded ‘Socialist Realism’

Many composers took refuge in folksong arranging, which had always been a strong tradition.

Late 20^th century composers

Have written few songs, though most have set Pushkin:

Shostakovich

Op. 46, Pushkin settings

Khachaturyan

Kabalevsky

Shebalin

Dzerzhinsky

Khrennikov

Op. 6, Pushkin settings

Koval (1907-) former RAPM composer

Shaporin (1889-)

Op. 10 (1937) Pushkin settings

Nechaev (1895-)

Boris Asafiev (aka. Igor Glebov)

In general (though there are exceptions) songs since 1932 are “unworthy of the great tradition of Russian song (375).”