NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was the full name but I am going to refer to him as Rimsky if you don’t mind. He was the youngest of The Five and best known for Scheherazade, Spanish Caprice and the Flight of the Bumble Bee. Of his life it was known that he had been a sailor and finished up a professor at St Petersburg Conservatory. His reputation was that of a brilliant natural orchestrator who had been a teacher to such great orchestrators as Stravinsky and the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. Which is not a lot to know for someone with such a long varied career.
Rimsky was a man to compare with Winston Churchill! Churchill was notorious for crossing the floor of the House of Commons, not once but twice. Rimsky switched from a Kuchkist nationalist to a conservative academic and then returned to the nationalist fold with all the academic skills so despised and denigrated by the Five.
It was round about the end of the War that I made my first encounter with Rimsky-Korsakov. It was through Paul Temple, a detective in a radio serial written by Francis Durbridge which kept our ear to the wireless set each week. But it wasn’t the skills of Paul Temple or his wife, Steve, I remember so much as the signature tune which came from the middle section of the second movement of Scheherazade. My blood (together with its warfarin additives) tingles still on hearing it. Later they changed the opening tune to Coronation Scot by Vivian Ellis which I fondly recall but not with the same spell in which Scheherazade left me. Then about the same time was a coster cockney comedian called Leon Cortez whose speciality was recounting monologues of Shakespeare plots – “there was this geezer called Macbeth” – who came out with “Lumme, its Rimsky Corsetsoff”. Well, I thought it funny at the time.
Rimsky was from an aristocratic family with military and naval connections. His brother, Voin, who was 22 years older than him, was a well-known navigator and explorer. They were not exactly a musical family. His mother managed the piano a little and his father could play a few songs by ear. From age six Rimsky took piano lessons and displayed some aural skills but showed little interest otherwise although he did start composing at 10. Still it was literature which was his preference from which he claimed to have developed a literary love for the sea without ever having seen it. Encouraged by Voin the 12-year-old Rimsky joined the Imperial Russian Navy studying at the School for Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in Saint Petersburg for the next six years. The school director was none other than his brother, Voin, who encouraged Rimsky’s musical training. This was largely from piano teachers who could perceive Rimsky’s potential. Although not keen on the discipline, he did develop a love for music itself particularly from the time he spent at the opera. When he was 15 his new teacher, Kanille, introduced Rimsky to the music of Schuman and particularly also that of Glinka which opened up for him the beginning of his interest in Russian music. When he reached 17 in 1861, Voin cancelled any further lessons. Still, Kanille continued to give his lessons to Rimsky privately every Sunday. In November of that year Kanille introduced Rimsky first to Balakirev and then in turn to César Cui and Mussorgsky. All three were in their twenties but already known as composers. Rimsky, not yet 18 and still to graduate, which he did the following year, was plunged into a new world and found himself bowled over. Balakirev, always glad to pounce upon new talent, encouraged Rimsky to compose and, though opposed to formalistic teaching, implanted his own wisdom. Rimsky started to sketch ideas for the first movement of a symphony which he showed to Balakirev. Despite Rimsky’s lack of experience or of any formal musical training Balakirev insisted that he should continue with the symphony, much as he would do also with Borodin. This was the very start of Rimsky’s entry into the world of composition. He had actually written all three movements before the year was out but 1862 was to be the year of his passing his examinations at the School of Maritime Studies. So now Mr Midshipman Rimsky-Korsakov was ready to pack up his manuscript score in his new kitbag to set sail on a voyage of discovery to last two years and eight months aboard the clipper ship, Almaz. He worked on the slow movement when docked in England and was able to post the score to Balakirev before resuming his round the world trip. At first, his work on the symphony kept Rimsky occupied during his voyage. At each port of call he would purchase scores for study as well as buying a piano to play them on board. He spent his idle hours studying Berlioz’s Treatise on Orchestration. His aspiration to carry on with composing however began to fail him after over two years at sea on a round the world circumnavigation.
It was in May 1865 that Rimsky, now aged 21, placed his feet on terra firma at St Petersburg and took up onshore duties which stretched to a couple of hours of clerical duty each day. He wrote that he felt stifled and could not concern himself with music. Then in September Balakirev suggested he should slowly get to accustom himself to music before fully plunging in; then to write a scherzo to add to the symphony. Having done that Rimsky then re-orchestrated the whole thing which then got its first performance. From suggestion by Balakirev to finish with performance had taken him three months. If that was not plunging I do not know what would have been. Their correspondence has shown that not only was Balakirev correcting Rimsky’s work but ideas for the symphony were being dictated by him and that he would correct or re-compose at the piano what Rimsky had himself written. Yet, as with Borodin, Rimsky went along with this, at least to start with. Rimsky recorded that “Balakirev had no difficulty in getting along with him. “At his suggestion I most readily rewrote the symphonic movements composed by me and brought them to completion with the help of his advice and improvisations”. Later on Rimsky found it necessary to break away from what had become a stifling influence. But he never lost his admiration for his mentor. Other compositions began to follow, an Overture on Three Russian Themes, in the wake of the overture of the same name by Guess Who? There followed a Fantasia on Serbian Themes which was the work that Rimsky contributed at the concert for the Slavonic Congress in 1867.which gave birth to the appellation of “The Mighty Handful”. These works and the original versions of Sadko and Antar, were already giving Rimsky the reputation of an orchestrator.
Sadko is said to be the first Russian symphonic poem and not to be confused with his later opera of the same name. It was written in 1867 and revised two years later. In between in 1868 came Antar. Both works are inspired by fairy tales and written in the new oriental fashion. Sadko is the more magical. Antar was originally designated as his symphony number two but later he re-labelled it as a symphonic suite as he also did later with Scheherazade. Like that work, Antar is written in four movements but, apart from that feature, Rimsky did not consider it to be symphonic. There is however a link, an idée fixe, running through the work which gives it cohesion. 1868 was the year that Berlioz made his last trip to Russia and Rimsky had hoped to gain an introduction. He wasn’t able to do so but he was there when Berlioz conducted his Symphonie Fantastique and Harold In Italy, both works containing an idée fixe in each of their movements. This inspired Rimsky to do the same with Antar. However Rimsky himself pointed out that, whilst both the Berlioz works were symphonic with their first movements written in sonata form, Antar, despite its common thread, was too loosely connected
Rimsky’s relations with the other members of the group were a much happier affair. They socialized and took on the role of panel critics to each other. He became closely friendly with Borodin and stated of him that he had always found him astonishing. In 1871, Rimsky took over Voin’s former apartment, and invited Mussorgsky to be his flatmate. Theirs was an engaging and productive arrangement, each working at different times, with Mussorgsky writing the Polish act and the Forest scene from Boris Godunov whilst Rimsky finished his first opera, the Maid of Pskov.
1871 was an important turning point in the life and career of Rimsky in several ways. Unlike the other members of the Five, whilst he continued to support its nationalist agenda, it had become clear to him that he was lacking in proper tuition. What he had learned so far was to orchestrate based on intuition and he felt desperately the need for proper instruction. Hostility to academic learning, particularly with Balakirev at the helm, had become for them an article of faith. For them the development of a Russian school could not be achieved in the conservatoire whose methodology ran counter to the natural purity of Russian music. If anything this argument was a blind to cover Balakirev’s own lack of musical tutelage. That Rimsky should consider extra mural tuition was opposed by the circle as heresy. Mikhaíl Azanchevsky had taken over that year as director of the Conservatory and was seeking new blood to widen the conservatory’s appeal. He offered to pay generously for Rimsky’s services as a tutor in orchestration whilst Rimsky was seeking a position which would for him instil the fundamental basics he lacked. Clearly it was politics at work. For the conservatives Rimsky was the least criticized member of the Five and the one to target. In inviting him to teach at the Conservatory they might hope to show that they were open and receptive to students traditional and modern
Balakirev, perhaps seeing the way the wind was blowing, now encouraged Rimsky to accept the post in the hope that he might become the cuckoo in the nest and convince his students to join the Free School. Rimsky gladly took up the conservatory offer which would pay well. This could have been written by Frederick Forsythe.
1871 would be of significance with two other momentous events. First it was the year that Balakirev had a breakdown and removing himself from the musical scene for five years and effectively from the group to which he never would return even after ending his existence as a reclusive railway ticket clerk. This development effectively freed the others to shake off the shackles in which Balakirev had wittingly or unwittingly placed them.
The other event of significance was that with the financial security from his new professorship Rimsky was able to propose to Nadezhda Purgold, with whom he had developed a close relationship over weekly gatherings of The Five which had taken place in her father’s house. They married in July 1872, with Mussorgsky as Rimsky’s best man. Nadezhda had attended the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in the mid-1860s, studying piano and now became both a musical and matrimonial partner to Rimsky much in the same way as Clara Schumann had been with Robert.
Although now ensconced as a professor at the Conservatory Rimsky’s knowledge of musical theory was rudimentary. He knew little or nothing of harmony, the names of chords or counterpoint. He therefore turned for advice to Tchaikovsky who himself was conservatory trained and had taught at the Moscow conservatory. Tchaikovsky’s advice to him was to study. This he did assiduously. To prepare himself and keep himself just one step ahead of his students, Rimsky took a three-year sabbatical from composing and studied at home between lectures at the Conservatory, teaching himself from textbooks and followed a strict regimen of composing contrapuntal exercises, fugues, chorales and a cappella choruses. Rimsky observed that whilst he was teaching at the Conservatory he reckoned that he himself had become possibly its very best pupil by the measure of the information he had gleaned. His teaching syllabus was that of the orchestra which led him to conduct for the first time. After three years he was a convinced convert in academic training and his first ventures on returning to composition were to rewrite everything he had previously produced including Sadko and Anthar. He followed this with his third symphony in which he was able to display the counterpoint he had been studying.
One should not forget that Rimsky was still an active naval officer. As such he remained always on duty. It was because of this that he wore naval uniform even when giving his lectures. The naval authorities were aware of his talents and in 1873, a year after his marriage, they created the civilian post especially for him of Inspector of Naval Bands. This allowed him to resign his commission and hang up his officer’s uniform. “Henceforth I was a musician officially and incontestably.” Professionally one might add. As Inspector, Rimsky’s duties were to visit naval bands throughout Russia and to overseer the bandmasters and review the bands’ repertoire. This led to his writing his own text book on orchestration. In 1884, over ten years later, the post of Inspector of Naval Bands was abolished. One wonders how the Russian Navy kept afloat after that.
Once Rimsky had emerged from his rigours of academic learning he encountered all kinds of difficulties. His former colleagues looked down upon him and he went through a composer’s block. He received however praise from Anton Rubinstein which was a poisonous kiss to receive. He turned to Tchaikovsky for help and moral support although Tchaikovsky secretly confessed in his letters to Madame von Meck, his long term correspondent, that he doubted if Rimsky would make it. To get himself going again Rimsky went on an exploration just as Glinka and Balakirev had previously done, that of searching out Russian folk song and producing two books of them. He was also commissioned, alongside Balakirev and Lyadov, by Glinka’s sister to edit Glinka’s orchestral works in order to preserve them. Balakirev, a control freak to the end and even beyond the grave, wanted to rewrite Glinka. Rimsky was less intrusive and it was his methods which were to prevail. He was doing for Glinka what he would ultimately do for Borodin and Mussorgsky in adding his growing professional skills to their more primitive amateurism. Later he would be frowned upon for removing the raw unschooled expression of their inspiration. Still no greater respect could there be that one man devote so much of his life to do so much for his friends.
Once having mastered the difficulties of counterpoint Rimsky’s aim seems to have been to move back to his comfort zone of Russian Easter festivals and oriental snake charming combining the subject matters with his newly acquired academic skills. In 1877 he began work on an opera, May Night, based on a short story by Gogol to be followed by The Snow maiden. Excluding Mlada, which had been a collaborative effort with other members of the Five, Rimsky wrote 13 operas. Oddly enough they are not played here in the West and we only know them from their glittering orchestral extracts.
In the 1880’s Rimsky hit fallow periods. The Five by then had begun to disintegrate as a collective entity. Mussorgsky had died in 1881 as would Borodin later in the decade. However, Balakirev had re-emerged but no longer a leader of men but as a loaner. In 1883 he was appointed to the position of director of the Imperial Chapel. He began sending pupils to Rimsky for training in musical theory and he then appointed Rimsky his deputy at the Imperial Chapel, a position Rimsky held for ten years. This gave Rimsky, a confirmed atheist, the opportunity for deeper study of liturgical music. Whatever were the schismatic differences, the wounds had healed.
At much the same time Rimsky got to know the wealthy Russian industrialist, J P Belyayev, a nouveau riche, who set out to be a patron of concerts and recitals and who would eventually set up his own publishing house. He had started off by promoting a concert for the first performance of the first symphony by the 18 year old Glazunov. He had also created a series of Friday quartet recitals, “vendredis”, which Rimsky regularly attended. Belyayev had pulled in also round and about him other self made industrialists, particularly engineers building the Russian railways, whose aim was to promote Russian music in an age of growing russification in the arts. Their wealth and power did not however qualify them to make the big artistic decisions. They needed the composers for that and the decision making was left to the triumvirate of Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky who became the effective chiefs for the promotion of Russian music. The Russian Concert Society was born and conducted by Rimsky. This immediately gave him an injection after a period of composer block. He started off with his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare (or bald) Mountain and then within one year had produced Scheherazade, his Spanish Caprice and the Russian Easter Festival Overture. These have been lastingly popular and display his natural orchestral talent. Without them there would be very little Rimsky-Korsakov in our concert halls. The chiefs decided on the award of an annual Glinka Prize chosen by the composers in charge and the recipients of which would include Rachmaninov and Lyapounov, a long time pupil of Balakirev. The composer group, known as the Belyayev Circle, grew and did much the same as had the Balakirev Circle thirty years before towards the advance of Russian music. The one big exception was that whilst the five had maligned academic training, the Belyayev Circle had on the contrary promoted it.
Rimsky and Tchaikovsky also began to move closer together. They had met again in 1887. Earlier they had been on opposing sides of the great divide and Rimsky stated that there always remained a sense of uneasiness between them with Rimsky a little jealous of Tchaikovsky’s greater popularity. Still Tchaikovsky did agree to conduct a series of concerts at the Russian Musical Society which would include the revised version of Rimsky’s Symphony No 3. It came as a shock to Rimsky in 1893 on learning that Tchaikovsky had suddenly died from cholera. It also came as a shock for Rimsky when Tchaikovsky’s body lay in an open coffin at the flat. The regulations for cholera stipulated the corpse was to be kept in a closed coffin. Here mourners were kissing Tchaikovsky’s head. This led to the perpetual mystery of the circumstances of the death. When Rimsky wrote about it later in his memoirs his remarks were censored.
At about this same time Rimsky had another blockage. He realized he was also becoming conservative in his outlook. He was aware of new developments but he did not take to them. He did not like Richard Strauss and when he heard Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in Paris he said to Diaghilev “Don’t make me listen to all these horrors or I shall end up liking them!”
Rimsky continued with his duties at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. There, there was a student revolt as part of the 1905 failed revolution to seek greater powers for the Duma. The students had no single leader and Rimsky was elected to be their respected spokesman particularly as he was a lifelong liberal. He signed letters demanding the resignation of the principal which led to 100 students being sent down and Rimsky dismissed as a professor. The students then mounted a production of Rimsky’s opera, Katschey which led to a police ban on Rimsky’s music. Such was the outrage that Glazunov and Lyadov resigned; protests build up round the country even from people who knew no music. Eventually Rimsky was reinstated and Glazunov appointed the new principal.
Rimsky, apart from his conservatoire teaching, also had private pupils who included Stravinsky. Nicolai Malko recalled Rimsky addressing his students at the beginning of the term. “I will speak, and you will listen. Then I will speak less, and you will start to work. And finally I will not speak at all, and you will work.” In April 1907, Rimsky conducted two concerts in Paris, promoted by Diaghilev, featuring music of the Russian nationalist school. These concerts were hugely successful in popularizing Russian music in the West. The following year, his opera, Sadko, was produced at the Paris Opéra and The Snow Maiden at the Opéra-Comique. We all know that it would be Stravinsky who became Diaghilev’s general in 1909 with the Firebird. Yet of all the works produced by Diaghilev his favourite was always Scheherazade. Might there have been a place for Rimsky had he lived. It is doubtful. In 1908 his time was up. He had come a long way since sailing in the wake of Magellan and Drake nearly 50 years earlier. He had been suffering from angina from the early 1890’s and now, following the loss of a son, and pole-axed by the events of 1905, he made his final bow. He was a great natural orchestrator to whom the verb “showcase” would apply long before the 2012 London Olympics turned the word into a meaningless cliché.
CESAR CUI (1835-1918) – THE HISTORY OF A MUSICAL NOBODY
This is one story I did not think I would write. Why? Well my aim, as you know, is to write about the composers’ lives, not to evaluate their music, but it helps a good deal to know something of their output. In the case of César Cui, I have to lay myself bare and confess that when I started out on this I knew absolutely zilch. My only face saver is that I have yet to meet anybody who is more familiar with Cui’s music than I. Yet how can I omit him in a study of the Five of which, Lord knows why, he was one.
Before we examine his credentials let us get down to the pronunciation of that name. First of all, it is not like Dame Edna Everage or someone out of the bush calling to his Sheila, “Coo-eeee”. The best I can manage in writing is to liken it to bird song when written in French which is “cui-cui” and which sounds to our ears as “Kwee”.
César Cui has the somewhat dubious honour of being the least known of the Five. There always has to be one. Take Les Six formed in France in the 1920’s. You will find scarcely anyone who has heard anything either by Louis Durey who could be called the César Cui of the Six. Cui was born in Vilnius, Lithuania then forming part of the Russian Empire, the youngest of five children. His father, was French and had been a lieutenant in Napoleon’s invading army of Russia in 1812. He dropped out in Lithuania on the way home and settled there. He married a local girl and they had five children. He adapted the old French family name from Queuille to Cui. Each of his four sons was named after a great military leader, César, Alexander, Napoléon – they present no problem. The other son was named Boleslav which is a bit more problematic. Boleslav was a tenth century king of Bohemia who murdered his brother, good King Wenceslas; but not on the Feast of Stephen.
The young César was born in 1835 and I can tell you was no prodigy. He had lessons to play music but not to compose. He was educated at the Gymnasium (a kind of grammar school) and in 1850 was sent to Saint Petersburg to prepare to enter the Chief Engineering School with a view to a military career. In 1855 he switched to the Military engineering academy and began his military career in 1857 as an instructor in fortifications. This would be his undoubted forte just as chemistry and medicine had been for Borodin. More of that later. Despite his achievements as a professional military academic, Cui is best known as the Unknown Soldier of The Five. His piano playing extended to works by Chopin and he had begun composing little pieces at fourteen years of age. Shortly before being sent to St. Petersburg, he managed to obtain some lessons in music theory from a Polish composer, residing in Vilnius at the time. It was at St. Petersburg that he met Balakirev, and eventually the other lads. At engineering school, he got to know one Viktor Krylov, who wrote Cui’s first few opera libretti and song texts. Like the others in the group Cui was writing his music under the tutelage of Balakirev.
His public debut as a composer took place in 1859 with the performance of his orchestral Scherzo, Op. 1, played at the Russian Musical Society with Anton Rubinstein conducting. He dedicated this to Mal’vina Rafailovna Bamberg. They had met at the home of the composer, Dargomyzhsky from whom she was taking singing lessons. César and Mal’vina married in 1856 and had two children.
As to Cui the composer, it has been said that some people have to work hard to be mediocre. Compared to Balakirev, Borodin, and Mussorgsky he was a prolific composer He completed some 14 operas, including 4 children’s operas and several one-act “adult”, I suppose, operas. Despite having as a critic panned Boris Godunov, Cui would complete Mussorgsky’s opera, Fair at Sorochinsk, but much later in 1917.
The first opera by any of the Five to be performed was Cui’s William Ratcliff in 1869 based on a translation of a tragedy by Heine. The other members of the group praised it – well they had to didn’t they, but it never got anywhere and was not revived until around 1900. The same happened with the next opera, Angelo which took all of five hours. But unless we hear these for ourselves we don’t know what we may be missing. These operas used Russian text but the general criticism is that they have no Russianness, per se, and that Cui’s style has more in common with Auber and Meyerbeer, with maybe a little dash of Gounod and Schumann. For the most part the operas are not based on Russian sources but French ones, Victor Hugo, Dumas (père) and Maupassant. One assessment which I have read which is not probably first hand is that the operas lack drama but are lyrical. Four of his operas are written for children with “Puss In Boots” being successful in Germany.
Unlike Balakirev, Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui did not write any symphonies or symphonic poems and a list of his works shows no concertos. His orchestral output seems limited to a couple of suites and an overture or two. Yet he has a large catalogue mainly of miniatures, lullabies, songs, polonaises, pieces, serenades and marches. There are choruses written at the time of the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War and he was happy despite being a Catholic himself to write liturgical music for the Russian Orthodox Church. There are three string quartets which for my part is the only conventional music I might be possibly interested to be looking for. That he doesn’t fit the normal bill does not indicate a lack of proficiency. I could name you a composer who did not write a conventionally numbered symphony, wrote many operas including children’s operas and numerous song cycles. His name is Benjamin Britten and he was a genius. So we simply cannot rush to judgment upon Cui because of the paucity of his chosen genres.
His main aim from the start was to devote himself to promoting the works of his fellow kuchkists, the other four. His own music does not appear to have matched theirs and the received wisdom is that he was just not the talented composer he aspired to be.
One cannot overlook however his activities in the field of musical criticism. He was to contribute almost 800 articles between 1864 and 1900 (and he continued on till 1918) to various newspapers and other publications in Russia and further afield. His coverage included operas, concerts, recitals, musical life, new publications of music, and personalities. As an army officer he had to write under a pseudonym, which consisted of three asterisks (***). One wonders if he ever might have needed to do a write up on Elgar’s Enigma Variations where there is a variation marked *** to indicate an anonymous friend. Anyway everybody who was anybody in St Petersburg knew who *** was without having to go to Bletchley Park to find out. He particularly expressed disdain for any music pre-Beethoven. Sarcasm was a regular aspect from his pen and he was known for his particularly vinegary and vitriolic reviews. His primary object was to promote the music of contemporary Russian composers, especially the works of his fellow members of The Five. Even they, however, were not spared from his blistering remarks now and then and Mussorgsky especially got it in the neck after the first performance of Boris Godunov in 1874. Russian composers outside of The Five, however, were more often likely to receive a viperous critique. Cui lambasted Tchaikovsky, a man of very delicate sensitivities. Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.1 received a disastrous first performance after being massacred by Glazunov who conducted and then receiving a poisoned dart from Cui which resulted in the work never being played again in Rachmaninoff’s life time. As a result, Cui had plenty of enemies of his own and one cartoon depicted him under a caption written in Latin “Hail, César Cui, we who are about to die salute you.”
Like other members of the five; Cui had a particular admiration for Liszt and Berlioz whom he regarded as progressives. Of Wagner he liked what he was trying to do but not the way he was doing it (leitmotifs). Liszt was highly complementary of Cui’s opera, William Ratcliff. Cui also had accompanied Borodin on his trips to Belgium where Cui was introduced to the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau to whom Cui seems to have dedicated a number of works whilst she was instrumental in arranging the staging of one of his operas. Then there were foreign musical institutions which conferred honours upon him including his being made a correspondent member of the Académie française and being awarded the Légion d’Honneur.
As to his music and his reputation, we know little. The general comments I had found were that his music was light, lyrical but no of no great weight or originality. The only reason for our quest of discovery is because he is the one member of the Five even if he is taken to be of no great shakes. There is a problem with that assumption. Frequently assessments of composers are built on hearsay and prejudice. The survival into posterity of a composer’s standing is treated as if derived from the Darwin theory of natural selection. Those who don’t make it can’t be any good. I disagree. Darwin clearly was unfamiliar with the principle of the concert promoter under which a composer gets selected and plugged. This creates the potboilers and the audiences. The rest become unknowns and the audiences, unlike in Beethoven’s day, don’t go in for incognitos. I cannot tell you the pleasure I have derived from unearthing the music of for instance, Ferdinand Ries, secretary and biographer of Beethoven; Georges Onslow, contemporary of Berlioz, the French Beethoven, whose quartets and quintets should be in the repertoire of every chamber group; Charlies Villiers Stanford who preceded Elgar and whose symphonies, magical as they are, have been obliterated; and Hummel, famous in his day, who is making a comeback. Just try his masses. None of these four might make the top premiership but nor should they have been condemned to the oblivion of the non-leaguers.
I did state at the outset that my first-hand knowledge of the music of Cui was zilch. I have though, whilst writing this article, now had the opportunity to listen to a very few sample extracts only from downloads which contained music by Cui. I had entertained some hopes of excavating some sixth city of Troy. Alas I have neither struck gold nor a wooden horse. From what I have heard there is not going to be any resurrection.
Nevertheless, let us not forget that Cui was, like the majority of the Five, an amateur with a principal career. He was a military man to the last. His speciality was in the field of engineering and the building of fortifications. Cui eventually ended up teaching at three of the military academies in Saint Petersburg. His students over the decades included several members of the Imperial family, including Tsar Nicolas II, the last of the Romanovs. His own study of fortifications was gained from frontline experience during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. As an expert on military fortifications, he eventually attained the status of professor in 1880 and the military rank of general in 1906. His writings on the subject of fortifications included textbooks that were widely used, in several successive editions. So let me eat my words. A nonentity he might have been as a composer, as opposed to an unknown genius. We have to listen to much more of his music to judge but there is no doubt that César Cui was at the very top of the tree in his chosen profession. In his photographs he does not look like the model of a modern major general but with his rounded lorgnettes more like one of the officers out of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. Still, how many other top generals might there have been who were also able to write a note of music, I ask. Wellington? Rommel? Montgomery? Eisenhower? Julius Caesar?
The fortresses which Cui built were not penetrated during the First World War. They held despite their having been built to face north/south and not east/west, reflecting Turkey as the perceived enemy and not Germany. It was revolution and mass desertions in the army which brought Russia down. Whatever doubts one has about his place in musical history Cui has earned a position in military history. Let’s face it, he did a somewhat better job for Russian defences than André Maginot would do for the French.
In 1916, Cui became blind, but was able to continue to compose by dictation. César Cui died on 26 March 1918 of cerebral apoplexy. Little wonder as first it was only five months after the October Revolution and just a mere three weeks following the signing of the treaty of Brest Litovsk between the newly formed Soviet Union and the Kaiser’s Germany and for Russia to exit the First World War. That would have been the nail in the coffin for General Cui.
