Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova
Encyclopedia
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
. She was also the mother of Russian musicologist Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov
Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov
Andrey Nikolayevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian musicologist and son of the great Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Though growing up in a musical family he was encouraged in musical pursuits, playing cello in the family string quartet, he did not pursue music as a career until late in...
.
Early years
Born Nadezhda Nikolayevna Purgold in St. Petersburg, she was the youngest of three daughters. She started playing the piano at age nine, continuing her piano studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Anton Gerke. She also studied music theoryMusic theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
at the conservatory with Nikolai Zaremba
Nikolai Zaremba
Nikolai Ivanovich Zaremba was a Russian musical theorist and composer.Zaremba was born in the province of Vitebsk in 1821. He was one of the original professors at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when it was founded in 1862. In 1867, he succeeded Anton Rubinstein as the director of the...
and, later, composition and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov but did not graduate. During the 1860s and '70s she played piano at musical soirees at the home of Alexander Dargomyzhsky
Alexander Dargomyzhsky
Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky was a 19th century Russian composer. He bridged the gap in Russian opera composition between Mikhail Glinka and the later generation of The Five and Tchaikovsky....
, becoming friends with Dargomyzhsky, Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
and Alexander Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
. Mussorgsky, who was fond of both Nadezhda and her sister Alexandra and would become close to both, called Nadezhda "our darling orchestra." She also played at gatherings in her home works of Mily Balakirev
Mily Balakirev
Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev ,Russia was still using old style dates in the 19th century, and information sources used in the article sometimes report dates as old style rather than new style. Dates in the article are taken verbatim from the source and therefore are in the same style as the source...
and of other members of "The Five
The Five
The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie , refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin...
." Among the works she played with the kuchka were Mussorgsky's operas Zhenitba
Zhenitba (opera)
Zhenitba is an unfinished opera begun in 1868 by Modest Mussorgsky to his own libretto based on Nikolai Gogol's comedy Marriage. This 1842 play is a satire of courtship and cowardice, which centres around a young woman, Agafya, who is wooed by four bachelors, each with his own...
(Marriage) and Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (opera)
Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
, plus Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
's The Maid of Pskov
The Maid of Pskov
The Maid of Pskov , is an opera in three acts and six scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the drama of the same name by Lev Mei. The story concerns the Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his efforts to subject the cities of Pskov and Novgorod to his...
.
Marriage
She met Rimsky-Korsakov at Dargomyzhsky's home in the spring of 1868. Not long after their first meeting he wrote a song which he dedicated to her. He also started visiting her frequently, both at the Purgold home in St. Petersburg and at the family's summer residence in Lyesnov. She found in him an abundance of warmth and gentleness He proposed to her in December 1871, and they married in July 1872. Mussorgsky was Rimsky-Korsakov's best man. The Rimsky-Korsakovs would eventually have seven children. Nadezhda was to become a musical as well as domestic partner with her husband, much as Clara SchumannClara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...
had been with her own husband Robert
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
. Beautiful, capable, strong-willed and far better trained musically than her husband at the time they married, she proved a good and most demanding critic of his work; her influence over him in musical matters was strong enough for Balakirev and Stasov to wonder sometimes whether she was leading him astray from their musical preferences. Although she gradually gave up composition after her marriage, she had a considerable influence on the creation of her first three operas. She travelled with her husband, attended rehearsals and proofread and arranged compositions by him and others.
Her enthusiasm for Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
's work became reflected in both her husband's compositions and those of his friends. On the day of their betrothal, she and Rimsky-Korsakov read Gogol's short story "May Night" together. Afterwards, she told him that he should write an opera based on it. A week or two later she wrote him, I've been reading yet another of Gogol's stories today, "The Fair at Sorochyntsi." This is good, too, and would even be suitable for an opera, but not for you; in any case, it's not like 'May Night.' As for that, it's so stuck in my head that nothing will drive it out. Either she or her sister Alexandra then suggested "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" to Mussorgsky. He did not act on it at the time, but a couple of years later, he reconsidered.
Nadezhda was also very prominent in the Rimsky-Korsakovs' social life, active in gatherings at the Rimsky-Korsakov household as both accompanist and performer. At one of these soirees, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
played the finale of his Little Russian Symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Tchaikovsky)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed his Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 in 1872. One of Tchaikovsky's very joyous compositions, it was successful upon its premiere; it also won the favor of the group of nationalistic Russian composers known as "The Five", led by Mily Balakirev...
. After hearing it, she begged the composer in tears to let her arrange it for piano duet. Unfortunately, illness intervened and Tchaikovsky made the arrangement himself.
Outspokenness
Like her husband in his later years, Nadezhda's musical tastes became less progressive; she rated her son-in-law Maximilian SteinbergMaximilian Steinberg
Maximilian Osseyevich Steinberg was a Russian composer of classical music born in what is now Lithuania.-Life:...
a greater composer than Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
. She could also be noticeably tactless about such matters. Stravinsky later wrote about one such incident that occurred at Rimsky-Korsakov's funeral:
This was not the only time she was not afraid to speak her mind. In matters regarding her husband she was fiercely loyal. When Anton Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...
reassumed the directorship of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1887 and started replacing Russian professors with foreign ones, Vladimir Stasov was outraged at the thought of Rimsky-Korsakov kowtowing to "the Great Ruler." Stasov told Balakirev that he had written to Rimsky-Korsakov "that their relations with the Conservatory and Rubinstein is Unitarianism
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
(and, on the part of Cui
César Cui
César Antonovich Cui was a Russian of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications; his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music, in that he was a composer and music critic; in this sideline he is known as a...
, unadulterated apostasy
Apostasy
Apostasy , 'a defection or revolt', from ἀπό, apo, 'away, apart', στάσις, stasis, 'stand, 'standing') is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy is known as an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday...
)...."
When Stasov's letter arrived, Rimsky-Korsakov was hard at work completing Borodin's opera Prince Igor. Nadezhda took it upon herself to answer Stasov:
Upon Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908, Nadezhda became the executrix of his literary and musical estates. This included the considerable job of editing and publishing his posthumous literary and musical works. These included his autobiography, My Musical Life, collections of articles and notes on music plus a part of his correspondence with friends. She spent the rest of her life preserving his legacy, among other things, protesting Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...
's use of music from Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
and The Golden Cockerel
The Golden Cockerel
The Golden Cockerel is an opera in three acts, with short prologue and even shorter epilogue, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Its libretto, by Vladimir Belsky, derives from Alexander Pushkin's 1834 poem The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, which in turn is based on two chapters of Tales of the Alhambra by...
for ballets. She died of smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
in St. Petersburg (by then renamed Petrograd) at age 70. After her death, her son Andrei
Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov
Andrey Nikolayevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian musicologist and son of the great Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Though growing up in a musical family he was encouraged in musical pursuits, playing cello in the family string quartet, he did not pursue music as a career until late in...
continued her efforts, writing a multi-volume study of his father's life and work.
Arrangements
Dargomyzhsky taught Rimskaya-Korsakova how to reduce orchestral scores, a task for which she was especially talented and adept and which she would put to good use. Her transcriptions (for piano four-hands) include works by Dargomyzhsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
, Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
and Glazunov
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...
. She also arranged the vocal scores for Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov
The Maid of Pskov
The Maid of Pskov , is an opera in three acts and six scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the drama of the same name by Lev Mei. The story concerns the Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his efforts to subject the cities of Pskov and Novgorod to his...
and The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga
The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga
The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga is an opera in one act by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the libretto, which he based on the drama by Lev Alexandrovich Mey. The opera was composed in 1898 from material omitted from Rimsky-Korsakov's first opera, The Maid of Pskov .The work was first...
, along with Borodin's Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
in conjunction with Glazunov and her husband.
Original works
Autograph manuscripts survive of a symphonic tableau after Gogol, "The Bewitched Place" (Zakoldovannoye mesto), an opera Midsummer Night in piano-vocal score, piano pieces and songs. She completed "The Bewitched Place" a week or two before her marriage, orchestrating it the following year. She stopped composing after her marriage to Rimsky-Korsakov. This may have been partly from unfavorable comparison of her works to her husband's, but likely also due to family responsibilities.Sources
- Abraham, Gerald, ed. Stankey Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols. (London: MacMillian, 1980). ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
- Brown, David, The Master Musicians: Mussorgsky, His Life and Works (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). ISBN 0-19-816586-0.
- Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840-1874 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978). ISBN 0-393-07535-2.
- Brown, Malcolm Hamrick, ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel, The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995). ISBN 0-393-03487-9.
- Calvocoressi, M.D. and Gerald Abraham, Masters of Russian Music (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1944). ISBN n/a.
- Orlova, Alexandra, Mussorgsky's Works and Days: a Biography in Documents (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1983).
- Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, Letoppis Moyey Muzykalnoy Zhizni (St. Petersburg, 1909), published in English as My Musical Life (New York: Knopf, 1925, 3rd ed. 1942). ISBN n/a.
- ed. Stankey Sadie, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 29 vols. (London: MacMillian, 2001). ISBN 1-56159-239-0.
- Frovola-Walker, Marina, "Rimsky Korsakov. Russian family of Musicians. (1) Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov."
- Neff, Lyle, "Rimsky Korsakov. Russian family of musicians. (2) Nadezda Rimskaya-Korsakova."
External links
- Tchaikovsky Research : Nadezhda Rimskaia-Korsakova at www.tchaikovsky-research.org