Scheherazade
- The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
- The Kalendar Prince
- The Young Prince and the Young Princess
- Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman
Publisher: Public Domain
KSO performed: 2013, 1994
In the wake of Glinka came a generation of Russian composers who redefined what Russian music was. The most revolutionary of them was the group of five composers led by Mily Balakirev, who became known as “the Mighty Handful”, or simply, “the Five”. In the 1860s this group of mostly amateur composers - Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Borodin and Cui - developed a new aesthetic which celebrated the distinctive sounds of Russian folk-music and rejected what they saw as the overly Western European influenced teaching prevalent in the Conservatoires. Of the “Five”, Rimsky-Korsakov was probably the most accomplished. He was the only one other than Balakirev himself who made a living as a composer.
In 1871 he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Given the group’s hostility to the musical establishment, this naturally caused some fiction. By this stage however the group had largely drifted apart. Musorgsky died that year from alcoholism, while Cui developed a career as a critic and Borodin concentrated on his main career as a research chemist, working intermittently on an opera, Prince Igor, that remained incomplete at his death.
In
the 1870s and 80s Rimsky-Korsakov’s music evolved from the experimental
style he had cultivated in the 1860s. His approach to orchestration
especially developed from a sparse style to an extraordinary lush and
rich one, full of exotic effects, which would prove hugely influential
to the next generation, including his greatest pupil Stravinsky. Two
particular foreign influences were Liszt's symphonic poems, and the
orchestral music of Berlioz. From Liszt he learned a more adventurous
harmony, and from Berlioz he took a much more adventurous approach to
the orchestra. Berlioz’s innovative approach to orchestration was a
revelation to many Russian composers of the period, and his Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes became
required reading. The flow of ideas between Russia and France would
become more and more important through the latter part of the century.
The culmination of this cross-fertilisation was the establishment of the
Ballets Russes in Paris, whose first season in 1910 featured as its
main attraction a ballet danced to Rimsky-Korsakv's orchestral suite Scheherazade.
Scheherazade
represents the height of this period of Rimsky-Korsakov’s output. It
was completed in summer 1888 and first performed in November that year.
It is a tour de force of orchestral writing, so much so that when
Rimsky-Korsakov came to write his own manual of orchestration, many of
the examples he included were taken from it.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s
own programme note for the first performance is remarkable for its
refusal to be drawn into the specifics of the suite’s programme: “The
Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed
to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But
the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with
fascinating tales, told seriatim [i.e. with the conclusion held back
until the next night], for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan,
consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his
wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely.
“Many
wondrous things were related to the Sultan Schariar by the Sultana
Scheherazade. For her tales she took verses from the poets and words
from the songs of the people, and intermixed the former with the
latter.”
He did not intend to portray specific tales, but rather an impression of the variety of folk stories to be found in the 1001 Nights. In his memoirs, he recalls that his conception of Scheherazade
was "an orchestral suite in four movements, closely knit by the
community of its themes and motives, yet representing, as it were, a
kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images and designs of Oriental character."
It was his former pupil; and colleague Anatoly Lyadov who suggested the
titles for each of the movements. Rimsky-Korsakov at first acquiesced
with these suggestions and even allowed them to be printed in the score,
but later had them removed. “I meant these hints to direct but
slightly the listener's fancy on the path which my own fancy had
traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the
will and mood of the individual listener," hecrecalled. "All I had
desired was that the listener, if he liked my piece as symphonic music,
should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental
narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders.” Certain
aspects of the music do nevertheless seem to represent particular ideas
clearly: the terse opening theme seems to embody the sultan, while the
solo violin that follows and recurs throughout the piece stands for
Scheherazade herself.
Whether
the opening movement really does represent “the Sea and Sinbad’s Ship”
is therefore a matter for the imagination of the listener, although
there is a salt-flecked taste to it entirely in keeping with a composer
whose younger years had been spent in the Russian Navy. Likewise, the
Tale of the Kalendar Prince (a fakir who turns out to be a nobleman in
disguise). The third movement meanwhile certainly has the feel of a
romantic scene, even if it cannot really be tied too tightly to the Tale
of Prince Kamar al-Zanna and Princess Budur (“created so much alike
that they might be taken for twins”).
Lyadov’s proposed programme falls apart completely in the final movement, and conflates elements of several tales. Ironically, this perhaps reflects best Rimsky-Korsakov’s intention that Scheherazade be taken as a kaleidoscope of implied stories rather than any specific representation. One very clear influence on this movement is Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor; Borodin had died only a year before and Rimsky had worked on completing and orchestrating his friend’s unfinished opera prior to composing Scheherazade. What is clear by the end is that Scheherazade’s story-telling has saved her: in the closing moments we hear the sultan’s theme calmed by the solo violin.
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