Slavic Harmony and Disharmony

A Czech Abroad

• Bedřich Smetana (1824–84)– first important nationalist composer of Czech

lands– 1856: emigrated to Göteborg, Sweden– influence and contact with Liszt• Symphonic poems

– Richard III (1858)– Walensteins Lager (1859)– Macbeth (1859)

Bedřich Smetana

• Return to Prague in 1862• Braniboři v Čechách (The Brandenburgers in

Bohemia, 1862–63)• Má vlast (1872–1879)• Českost (“Czechness”)

Má vlast(My Fatherland)

• Cycle of six symphonic poems [Anthology 2-55]– Vyšehrad (The Castle on High, 1872–74)– Vltava (The Vltava River, 1874)– Šárka (1875)– From Bohemian Fields and Groves (1875)– Tábor (1878) – Blaík (1879)

The Fate of a Tune:From Folk Song to Anthem

• Vltava– main theme based on Swedish folk tune– tune has been readapted for other uses

Competing Reputations at Homeand Abroad

• Libuše and Má vlast– honored at home

• The Bartered Bride (1866)– popular abroad

Slavic Disharmony

• Russian music– group centering around Miliy

Alexeyevich Balakirev (1837–1910)• supported progressive aesthetic

– Anton Rubinstein (1829–94)• represented the purportedly

conservative faction

Slavic Disharmony

• Vladimir Stasov (1824–1906)– “the New Russian School”– moguchaya kuchka “Mighty Five” or “Mighty

Handful”• Balakirev• César Cui (1835–1918)• Alexander Borodin (1833–87)• Modest Musorgsky (1839–81)• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)

Kuchka Music

• Balakirev, Overture on Russian Themes (1857–58)

• Balakirev, Sbornik russkikh narodnikh pesen (Anthology of Russian Folk Songs) (1866)– 40 arrangements of Russian folk songs– unique harmonizations

Modest Mussorgsky’s Realism

• Mussorgsky– Boris Godunov• realism• mimesis (“imitation of nature”)• set conversational prose

Art and Autocracy

• Russian autocratic state• Pushkin’s Boris Godunov (1825)– banned by censors until 1866

The Coronation Scene in Boris Godunov

• [Anthology 2-56]• Prologue, choral procession• Russian folk song• “Solemn peal of bells”• Static chord progression

Revising Boris Godunov

• Completed in 1869• Revised version in 1874• Reorchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1896,

revised in 1908

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky(1840–1893)

• Part of the first graduating class of the St. Petersburg Conservatory (1866)

• Ballet– Swan Lake (1875–76)– The Sleeping Beauty (1889)– The Nutcracker (1892)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky(1840–1893)

• Opera– Eugene Onegin (1879) [Anthology 2-57]• based on a work by Pushkin• melodic sixths• bïtovoy romans (“household romances”)

Russian Symphonies

• Balakirev circle– Borodin, Second Symphony (1869–76)

• St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories– Tchaikovsky, 6 symphonies and the Manfred

Symphony

Russian Symphonies

• Fourth Symphony [Anthology 2-58]– suite of character pieces– Autobiography in Music?