St Petersburg полностью

I remember a venerated Soviet musicologist’s heartrending tale about the persecution and attacks on his book, published in 1948, which mentioned—rather cursorily—the influence of Mozart on Glinka’s compositions. The howl of outrage was unanimous, asserting Glinka to be absolutely original and free of all possible Western influences. The poor musicologist was punished for his heresy; his work was not published (nor was he paid) for many years.

Instead countless publications asserted that Glinka’s operas “laid the foundation for the period of primacy of Russian music in the development of the musical culture of the entire world.” One such book, published in 1951, contained quite a surrealistic image: “Glinka amongst us sings the glory of the indestructible might of our Soviet Fatherland.”9

A result of such co-optation, using Glinka as propaganda for the Stalinist regime, was the alienation of Russia’s intellectual youth from his music. In the Leningrad of the 1960s, we virtually rediscovered for ourselves Glinka’s indisputably “Petersburgian” works (in terms of their beauty and purity of line and the nobility of their emotions), thanks to our “underground” idol, Stravinsky. I remember the impression the passages from the Russian edition of Stravinsky’s Chroniques de ma vie made on us. Published in 1963, Stravinsky raved about Glinka’s artistry as “a perfect monument of musical art” and his orchestration, “so intelligent… so distinguished and delicate.”10

Soviet hagiographies presented Glinka as a knight without fear or reproach, antimonarchist, a virtual Decembrist who worked from morning till night creating what was peculiarly called “Russian national realistic music.” The real Glinka, who appeared on the pages of his contemporaries’ memoirs—small, pale, unkempt, a famous Petersburg drunkard with a glass of champagne always in his hand—seemed a curious, unorthodox creature.

In his posthumously published Notes, Glinka described in greatest detail the real and imaginary ills that beset him—headaches, toothaches, neck aches, bad nerves, stomachaches, liver aches, and so on, with the names and characteristics of all the doctors who attended him and the effectiveness of all the medications they prescribed, including the decoction (“rob antisyphilitique”) called “eau de M-r Pollin,” which Glinka had to stop taking because it caused “unbearable migraines.”11 With the same thoroughness he listed his numerous paramours: Russian, Polish, German, French, Italian, and Spanish women, usually “pretty and slender” but sometimes “pretty and plump.”

Glinka mentions music in his Notes mostly in passing, as befits a spoiled Russian nobleman and dilettante composer. Where did this hypochondriac, this babied and capricious, egotistical and indolent nobleman who always felt ill find the strength to produce his great work? After A Life for the Tsar, Glinka composed another grand opera—Ruslan and Lyudmila—based on the Pushkin tale, charming in its abundance of bel canto melody and lush orchestration. He also wrote a succession of popular symphonic works, numerous compositions for the piano and other instruments, and eighty marvelous art songs; Glinka particularly valued this genre for its spontaneity and accessibility.

Glinka loved performing his own songs, among which there are numerous masterpieces, playing the piano around two in the morning at parties in Kukolnik’s unruly house, where the composer spent all his time. The other guests were all talented people but they were far from Glinka’s stature. They understood this and surrounded the composer with sincere adoration. Glinka found refuge here from his failing marriage to a woman who berated him for wasting too much money on music paper.

In the 1970s, Leo Arnshtam, a friend of Shostakovich’s youth and a filmmaker commissioned by Stalin personally in 1946 to make a biographical film on Glinka, told me the spicy details of Glinka’s closed divorce documents, giggling over the fact that his wife was accused not only of adultery but also of bigamy.

Completely frazzled, Glinka decided in 1840 to escape from Petersburg to Paris, where he composed a special work for his last fling at Kukolnik’s, his only vocal cycle, of twelve songs, called Farewell to Petersburg. The faithful Kukolnik produced words to accompany Glinka’s luscious melodies.