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The Influence of Balakirev on Tchaikovsky

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1980

Edward Garden
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Extract

In examining the relationship between Tchaikovsky and Balakirev, I shall investigate in some detail the influence upon the Moscow composer of the leader of the St Petersburg group or ‘mighty handful’ (which included, besides Balakirev himself, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov). Balakirev's group had been established before the St Petersburg Conservatoire of Music was founded by Anton Rubinstein in 1862; this, coupled with the fact that there were no textbooks on the theory of music in the Russian language, meant that Balakirev and his protégés had had no formal musical education, but had learned the technique of composition solely by studying the actual works of other composers, past and present. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, had been a student at the Conservatoire from the time of its foundation till 1865, his graduation exercise taking the form of a setting of Schiller's ‘Ode to Joy’ which was performed at the end of that year and was torn to pieces by Cui in a typically vituperative article. By the time this article had appeared early in 1866 Tchaikovsky had already moved to Moscow to take up a teaching post at the new Conservatoire there. According to Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev's group knew Tchaikovsky only as having composed a Symphony in G minor (his First) of which the two middle movements had been performed at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg in February 1867. As a product of the despised Conservatoire, they viewed Tchaikovsky askance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 107 , 1980 , pp. 86 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 N. Rimsky-Korsakov, Letopis' moei muzykal'noy zhizni, ed. E. Gordeyeva (Moscow, 1980), 66.Google Scholar

2 Ed. A. A. Orlova, ‘Perepiska s P.I. Chaikovskim’ in Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev: Vospominaniya i Pis'ma (Leningrad, 1962), 129.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 118–63.Google Scholar

4 David Brown, Tchaikovsky: A Biographical and Critical Study. Vol. 1, The Early Years (1840–1874) (London, 1978), 173.Google Scholar

5 Further evidence that Tchaikovsky was already familiar with Balakirev's methods at an early stage is to be found in his review of Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasia on Serbian Themes which had been premiered in Moscow in December 1867: The influence of Glinka and Dargomyzhsky, and imitation of Mr Balakirev's methods make themselves evident at every step.' (Tchaikovsky, Muzykal'no-kriticheskiye stati, Moscow, 1953, 27.)Google Scholar

6 Edward Garden, Tchaikovsky (London, 1973), 26.Google Scholar

7 Ed. A. A. Orlova, loc. cit. (see notes 2 and 3).Google Scholar

8 This became the second subject in the revised version in which a new first subject was introduced, while the original second subject material was retained only as passagework; as a consequence, this passage, transposed and transferred to the 1879 version, has much less point there than was originally the case, and other references to the folksong were expunged in the later version.Google Scholar

9 Garden, loc. cit., 82.Google Scholar

10 Ed. V. Yakovlev, Dni i Godi P. I. Chaikovskovo: letopis' zhiznι i tvorchestva (Moscow-Leningrad, 1940), 314.Google Scholar

11 Ed. A. A. Orlova, loc. cit., 164.Google Scholar

12 At the same time, Tchaikovsky was being urged to become more religious by Balakirev, who had taken refuge in an extreme form of Orthodox Christianity from the time of his mental depression in the 1870s.Google Scholar

13 For full details of the origin and content of the programme for the Manfred Symphony, see my Balakirev. A Critical Study of his Life and Music (London, 1967), 117–18.Google Scholar

14 Ed. V. Yakovlev, loc. cit., 449, facsimile of manuscript sketches, ibid., 515.Google Scholar