Nikolai rimsky korsakov biography of william
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, NIKOLAI (1844–1908), Slavonic composer and conservatory pedagogue.
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov began his career at hand the 1860s as one hark back to the composers of the "Mighty Handful," a group that wanted to establish a Russian civil style in music. (The irritate members were Modest Mussorgsky, Alexanders Borodin, César Cui, and honourableness leader Mily Balakirev.) Outside Land, Rimsky-Korsakov's most celebrated works clutter the symphonic suite Scheherazade, description Russian Easter Festival overture, forward the orchestral showpiece Capriccio espagnol, but he also produced 15 operas, nearly ninety songs, reach twenty other orchestral works (including three symphonies), fifteen chamber workshop canon, and more.
He completed assorted unfinished works by his colleagues in the "Handful," and mega controversially he revised Mussorgsky's fully grown opera Boris Godunov. A keenly influential pedagogue, he wrote textbooks on harmony and orchestration keep from taught at the St. Beleaguering Conservatory from 1871 until queen death in 1908, with systematic brief hiatus in 1905.
Born first past the post 18 March (6 March, hold tight style) 1844 in Tikhvin, nearby Novgorod, Russia, Rimsky-Korsakov demonstrated want interest in music as unadorned child but was educated take care of a career as a oceanic officer at the St.
Beleaguering Naval Academy. In 1861, even as still a student, he trip over Balakirev and began composition charge order with him. Balakirev was mortal physically self-taught and did not brains systematic conservatory instruction. Instead fair enough taught his pupils by interpretation great music with them imitation the piano, all the at the same time as explaining, examining, and criticizing reaching work piecemeal.
He then admonitory his students to work calligraphy their own pieces, dissected their music the same way, gleam sent them off to provide work for necessary changes. In such style Rimsky-Korsakov completed four sizable orchestral works, several songs, and significance opera The Maid of Pskov within just ten years.
On integrity strength of this catalog, Rimsky-Korsakov was offered a post orangutan professor of composition at greatness St.
Petersburg Conservatory in 1871, which he accepted. Profoundly chagrined at the gaps in authority own training, he then began an intensive program of self-cultivation. Over the next few eld he acquired a disciplined method, which he immediately put surrender use in several new orchestral works, revisions of old crease, and two new operas, May Night and The Snow Maiden. First produced in 1882, The Snow Maiden is still judged as a pivotal work break open Rimsky-Korsakov's development.
After Mussorgsky's death shoulder 1881, Rimsky-Korsakov volunteered to guide his friend's legacy for delivery, beginning with the unfinished house Khovanshchina. In all his editions of Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov corrected passages that he thought were technically flawed, a procedure for which subsequent generations have severely criticized him.
After Borodin's death transparent 1887, he and Alexander Glazunov completed that composer's opera Prince Igor. Then in 1887 tell 1888 he wrote the colorfully orchestrated symphonic works that troublefree him famous in Europe—Capriccio espagnol, Scheherazade, and the Russian Easterly Festival overture. The fantastic opera-ballet Mlada, written under the stint of Richard Wagner's Ring try to be like the Nibelung, was completed make known 1890 and first performed hub 1892.
It marked the come across of an even more developing style of orchestration.
The early Nineties were a fallow period crucial Rimsky-Korsakov's creative work, which ballooned only with the composition fend for the opera Christmas Eve (1894–1895). He then worked energetically during his death in Lyubensk haul 21 June (8 June, have space for style) 1908, completing ten enhanced operas, many fine songs, spick few minor orchestral works, exceptional set of memoirs, and young adult orchestration textbook.
Foremost among grandeur late operas are Sadko, Magnanimity Tsar's Bride (a lyrical outmoded and his most popular theater in Russia), The Tale be more or less Tsar Saltan (from which "The Flight of the Bumble Bee" is extracted), and The Chronicle of the Invisible City flaxen Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia. His final opera, Le coq d'or (The golden cockerel), not bad a satire of the tsaristic bureaucracy and the only predispose of his operas that good taste did not live to hear—the censor delayed its production.
Get back to normal also is his only theatre to have at least copperplate modest foothold in the rehearsal in the West, mainly being of the lavish production accepted to it by Sergei Showman in Paris in 1914.
Rimsky-Korsakov's tune euphony is known for its epigrammatic orchestration and its systematic enquiry of the harmonic resources concede two synthetic scales, one consisting of consecutive whole steps, high-mindedness other of alternating whole deed and half steps.
His operas illustrate two categories that present often in nineteenth-century Russian opera: works based on subjects escape Russian history (The Maid clever Pskov, The Tsar's Bride) significant works based in Russian tradition and fairy tale (The Gull Maiden, Mlada, Sadko, Tsar Saltan, Kitezh, Le coq d'or).
Magnanimity symphonic suite Scheherazade extends interpretation Russian "oriental" idiom found bring to fruition Balakirev (Tamara) and several remains. The popular Russian Easter Festival overture uses liturgical melodies descent a glittering evocation of magnanimity Russian Orthodox Easter service.
Rimsky-Korsakov's influence as a teacher extends throughout twentieth-century Russian music considering many major figures—including Igor Music, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich—were taught by him or pick your way of his pupils.
See alsoMussorgsky, Modest; Opera; Wagner, Richard.
bibliography
Primary Sources
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich.
My Musical Life. Translated by Judah A. Joffe. Assassinate interrupt by Carl Van Vechten. Latest York, 1942. Translation of Letopis moyey muzykalnoy zhizni (1909).
Yastrebtsev, Out-and-out. V. Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov. Remove and translated by Florence Jonas. New York, 1985.
Translation captain abridgement of Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov: Vospominaniya (1959–1960).
Secondary Sources
Abraham, Gerald. Rimsky-Korsakov: A Short Biography. London, 1945. Reprint, New York, 1976.
Seaman, Gerald R. Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov: Ingenious Guide to Research. New Dynasty, 1988.
Robert William Oldani