Russia (Symphonic poem) Studyscore - Mili Alexjewisch Balakirev
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Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev
(b. Nizhny-Novgorod 2 January 1837 – d. St. Petersburg, 29 May 1910)
Russia
Symphonic poem (1863-1907)
Preface
For all the differences in their musical design, Balakirev's single-movement orchestral works (overtures and symphonic poems) have one thing in common: an astonishingly long gestation lasting several decades. The present work, the symphonic poem Russia, is no exception, but unlike the others it exists in three conflicting printed versions from different publishers.
In 1862 Balakirev and Gavriil Lomakin formed the Free Music School in St. Petersburg, a school at which anyone could receive – free of charge – a solid, nationally-minded, non-academic music education that deliberately departed from the western bias of the Conservatory. Balakirev, who came from simple circumstances and was forced to acquire his musical skills in self-instruction during his youth, enjoyed a high reputation for his qualities as a teacher. He also functioned as a sort of mentor to the so-called "Mighty Handful," a group of five composers that included, besides himself, his comparatively inexperienced "pupils" and age-mates Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Cui. While Lomakin, the school's director, mainly took charge of the choral work, his "assistant" Balakirev, then nearly twenty six years old, was formally responsible for the orchestra. The work enflamed his imagination, and Balakirev, inspired by the successful performance of an overture based on three Russian folk songs that he had written as early as 1857, resolved in 1863 to compose a companion piece.
This new piece, too, was based on three folk-song motifs that Balakirev himself had gathered in a collection. The composition was completed in late 1863 and orchestrated in January 1864. Given the title Second Overture on Three Russian Themes and dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov, it was premièred on 6 April 1864 during a concert at the Free Music School.
In 1869 Balakirev set about revising the work for the first time. His reason for doing so was the possibility of its publication, which duly took place that same year when the work was issued in print by the St. Petersburg publisher Johansen. The new title, 1000 Let ("One-Thousand Years"), referred to the millennial celebrations of founding of Russia in 1862. Though this version found little resonance, it was the first major orchestral work by Balakirev to appear in print.
Beginning in 1869 the circumstances of Balakirev's life underwent a radical change. Several factors were responsible for this. First, his comrades-in-arms, having outgrown their role as "pupils," had distanced themselves from their former mentor and increasingly considered his advice to be patronizing. Further, the Free Music School began to suffer financial difficulties, not least of all owing to Balakirev's clumsiness in dealing diplomatically with his fellow human beings, particularly the school's patrons. Finally, Balakirev's father died in 1869, and he found himself entrusted with the care of his younger sisters. Unequal to these responsibilities, he plunged into a deep personal crisis, abandoned all his musical positions, and completely lost interest in composing. He took on miscellaneous short-term employment (e.g. with the Warsaw Railway) and escaped to a rigidly orthodox religious sect.
After granting himself a roughly five-year "break" from the world of music, Balakirev surprisingly returned. By 1876 he again had composition students, and in 1881 he even became the director of "his" music school. His former comrades-in-arms, whom he had spurned years before, lent him a helping hand out of respect, and perhaps out of pity.
Once again Balakirev began to compose, preferring to return to pieces he had abandoned or to others he had completed but left unpublished. As part of this activity, he prepared a second revision of the overture (1882-84), which, despite that fact that it had already appeared in print, was not particularly popular. It was only in 1887 that a second publisher could be found in the form of the St. Petersburg house of Bessel. The new score was issued in 1889-90, followed by a second impression from Bessel in 1894. The title now read Russia: a Symphonic Poem, and the score was given a preface by Balakirev on the work's genesis: "The inauguration, at Novgorod, of the monument erected as a memorial of Russia's 1000th anniversary, in 1862, was the occasion of the composition of the present symphonic poem Russia, which in the first edition bore the title 1000 Years. The work is based on three motifs borrowed from my collection of Russian folk songs. In it I have attempted to express the three principal elements in our history: paganism, the period of princes and popular government that gave birth to the Cossack institutions, and the Muscovite Empire. The contest between these elements, that ended with the fatal blow struck against Russian national and religious tendencies by the reforms of Peter I, supplied the subject of this instrumental drama. In publishing a second edition, I found it necessary to remodel the orchestration and to emendate some passages."
According to all surviving sources, it is highly likely that this programmatic description did not arise until much later after the work was already finished. Neither the original title of the overture nor the composer's correspondence lends credence to this programmatic account, nor are Balakirev's remarks necessarily helpful for understanding the music.
In 1899 Balakirev met his "ideal" music publisher, Julius Heinrich Zimmermann of Leipzig, who from that moment on published not only his further works but issued a slightly altered new edition of Russia in score, parts, and a re-duction for piano four-hands by S. Lyapunov. This form met with greater acceptance, and it is this "definitive version" that served as the basis of the work's publication by the Russian State Publishing House in 1966.
A comparison of the three versions reveals that Balakirev's revisions were primarily limited to changes in the accompaniment parts and the orchestration, while the compositional fabric was left largely untouched. The three folk-song motifs are developed fully in keeping with precepts of sonata-allegro form: the first theme serves as a slow introduction, and the two others, slightly more buoyant, complement each other as the principal and secondary themes. A sharp contrast arises from Balakirev's use of distant keys (B-flat minor vs. D major). All three themes are artfully combined and manipulated in the classical manner in the development section. Here the orchestration, after being refined from one version to the next, achieves an impressive transparency, for despite the large orchestra the inner parts are never drowned out. Even experienced listeners will require several hearings to detect all the work's subtleties. In this sense, the present study score is intended to provide welcome assistance.
Translation: Bradford Robinson
For performance materials please contact Zimmermann, Frankfurt. Reprint of a copy from the Musikabteilung der Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken, Leipzig.
Score No., 1097
Edition, Repertoire Explorer
Genre, Orchestra
Pages, 80
Size, 160 x 240 mm
Printing, Reprint
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Componist(en):
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Uitgavenummer:
1097
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934168
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