One of Rimsky-Korsakov’s main achievements was the creation of a highly influential school of composition, of which three of the most popular composers of the twentieth century are members: Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. The music of each composer is so individual, their aesthetic and political views developed in such different directions, that one easily forgets all three have common roots.
Stravinsky and Prokofiev were the master’s students, and his favorite student and son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg, taught composition to Shostakovich. Thus, Stravinsky and Prokofiev can be considered Rimsky-Korsakov’s composing children and Shostakovich his grandson. However, this common lineage is mentioned at best only in individual biographies of the respective composer; they are never examined as the products of one system of teaching, with a shared background of beginning rules.
The very concept of a Petersburg school of composition, unlike that of the Second Viennese School, did not become part of the aesthetic lexicon of the twentieth century, even though the music of the former is performed much more frequently than that of the latter (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton von Webern). And it is unlikely that this trend in popularity is going to flag in the near future.
The Petersburg school of composition has been neglected for both aesthetic and political reasons that, as so often happens, are tightly intertwined. The aesthetics and music of the Second (or New) Viennese School (named after the “First” Viennese School of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) filled the European cultural vacuum after World War II. Hitler had persecuted modernism, and therefore its triumph in the fifties was perceived not only as an aesthetic victory but as a matter of political justice. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern not only personified the break with Nazi ideology with their highly individualistic, innovative works, but at the same time they reestablished the authority and leadership of German-Austrian music. Those composers were deservedly promoted in postwar Germany and Austria, then practically elevated to the canon. In Europe and America this canonization was accepted with sympathy and understanding and by some with hearty approval. Innumerable books, studies, theoretical conferences, and seminars were the process by which members of the Second Viennese School were fixed in positions of influence among music professionals.
In contrast, no one was interested in glorifying the achievements of the Petersburg school. The very word “Petersburg” has been missing from the map for over three quarters of the twentieth century. In the Soviet Union, one preferred not to recall the former glory of the city. In addition, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich at various times were considered ideological enemies by the Soviet government, with many of their works banned from performance. The first Soviet biography of Stravinsky appeared only in 1964; as recently as 1960 he was still called “a political and ideological renegade” who had lost “all ties with the spiritual culture of his people.” Clearly, in such conditions, there could be no talk of propagandizing the Petersburg school of composition, even though it included the leading names of Russian music.
At the source of this school was Mikhail Glinka. By the middle of the nineteenth century Glinka had moved Russian national music forward with a mighty shove, as Pushkin had done several decades earlier with literature. The good fortune of the new Russian culture was that its founders turned out to be such harmonious and protean creators. Both managed in their works to be simultaneously profound and light, complex and simple, tragic and playful, refined and folklike. Never again in Russian culture would an artist achieve a comparable balance.
Both Glinka and Pushkin were, like Janus, simultaneously Westernizers and nationalists. That is why their work could be claimed as models by representatives of opposite camps. People in Russia inevitably returned to Glinka and Pushkin again and again. No matter how strong the clashes, the basic tradition that the two titans represented remained a common inheritance. Thus, Glinka remained a model both for Tchaikovsky and for the Mighty Five, even though aesthetically they held hostile positions. Tchaikovsky was impressed by the Western tendencies in Glinka’s music. The members of the Mighty Five, Mussorgsky in particular, elevated Glinka’s nationalism.
