Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreevich

Born in the city of Tikhvin, Novgorod province, in the noble family of the Rimsky-Korsakovs , known for its traditions of service in the navy. The family house was located on the banks of the Tikhvinka River, opposite the Theotokos Assumption Monastery . The composer's father, Andrei Petrovich Rimsky-Korsakov (1784-1862), served for some time as the Novgorod vice-governor, and then as the Volyn civil governor; mother, Sofya Vasilievna, was the daughter of a serf peasant woman and a wealthy landowner Vasily Fedorovich Skaryatin (brother of Y. F. Skaryatin ). In his memoirs about his mother, the composer noted: “She was educated, according to the then concepts, good. She was fluent in French, knew how to play the piano, and in her youth she learned everything that relied on the young lady’s share in a rich family of Alexander’s time ” ^[5] . A strong influence on the future composer was made by his older brother, Voin Andreyevich , naval officer and future rear admiral.

The house in which the composer was born.

At the age of 6, his home schooling began, including playing the piano, but in comparison with books, the music made less impression on him: of the latter, he liked church music, as well as Russian folk songs. At age 11, he began composing his first musical works ^[6] .

In 1856, his father gave the dreamed of traveling Nicholas to the Naval Cadet Corps . In 1858, the future composer got a real passion for music: he got acquainted with the operas of Rossini , von Weber , but he was especially struck by the “ Robert the Devil ” by Giacomo Meyerbeer and the works of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka - “ Life for the Tsar ”, “ Ruslan and Lyudmila ”. Then there was an interest in Beethoven’s music (he was admired by the “ Pastoral Symphony ” by the composer), Mozart and Mendelssohn . “I was a 16-year-old child who passionately loved music and played it,” he recalled later. Feeling the need to get a more serious musical education, in the autumn of 1859 Nikolai began to take lessons from the pianist F. A. Canilla ^[7] .

In 1862, his father died, and the Rimsky-Korsakov family moved to St. Petersburg. In the same year, thanks to Fyodor Kanilla, Nikolai met with the composer Miliy Balakirev and became a member of his circle, which had a decisive influence on the formation of his personality and aesthetic views. At that time, the Balakirev circle, which later became known as the " Mighty Handful ", in addition to its head Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov himself, included Ts. A. Kui and MP P. Mussorgsky . Balakirev supervised the work of younger colleagues and not only prompted the right composer solutions for the compositions they created, but also helped with instrumentation .

Under the influence and guidance of Miliy Alekseevich, the first major work of Rimsky-Korsakov, the First Symphony, was begun. According to the composer himself, the sketches of the beginning of the symphony existed back in the years of his training with Canille, however, serious work on the composition began only in 1861-1862 - and “by May 1862, the first part, the scherzo and the final of the symphony were composed by me and somehow orchestrated. "

That same spring, Nikolai graduated with honors from the Naval Corps and was accepted to the naval service. From 1862 to 1865 he served on the Almaz clipper, which participated in an expedition to the shores of North America , due to which he visited a number of countries - England, Norway, Poland, France, Italy, Spain, the USA, Brazil. The service on the clipper did not leave time for music, so the only composition that appeared from the composer's pen during this period was the second part of the First Symphony, Andante , written at the end of 1862 , after which Rimsky-Korsakov postponed his writing for a while. Impressions of marine life later embodied in the "sea landscapes", which the composer was able to capture in his works through orchestral colors.

After returning from a trip, Rimsky-Korsakov again enters the society of members of the Balakirev circle, he meets his new member - a chemist and aspiring composer A.P. Borodin , with the idol of the circle A.S. Dargomyzhsky , with Glinka's sister L. I. Shestakova and with P.I. Tchaikovsky .

At the insistence of Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov again took up his symphony: he composed the missing trios for the scherzo and completely reordered the work. This score (known as the first edition of the symphony) was first performed in 1865 under the direction of Balakirev, a constant performer of all of Rimsky-Korsakov's early symphonic scores. Turning under the influence of Balakirev to Slavic folk melodies, Rimsky-Korsakov adhered to the national color in music, which in the future will characterize most of his work. The musical language found here was then successfully developed in such compositions as Overture on Three Russian Themes (first edition - 1866 ) and Serbian Fantasy (1867).

The stage work of the composer was the musical painting “ Sadko ” ( 1867 , later her music will be partially used in the opera of the same name ), the earliest of Rimsky-Korsakov’s programmatic compositions. Here he performed as a continuation of the traditions of European programmatic symphony - above all, Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt , whose work greatly influenced the composer; in the future, most of the works of Rimsky-Korsakov will also be associated with a specific literary program.

In "Sadko" Rimsky-Korsakov, who would later be called a "storyteller," first came into contact with the world of fairy tales; here he first uses the symmetrical harmony he invented, the so-called “Rimsky-Korsakov scale”, which he later applied to characterize the fantasy world in his musical works. Also, for the first time, the composer tried to portray the sea with the help of orchestral paints (he later did this repeatedly in such compositions as the Suite “ Scheherazade ”, the cantata prelude “From Homer”, the operas “Sadko” and “ The Tale of Tsar Saltan ”).

The program-fairy-tale beginning was further developed in the Antar symphony suite, on which the composer began working in 1868 as the Second Symphony, inspired by the plot of the oriental tale by Osip Senkovsky . The composition premiered in 1869 at a concert of the Russian Musical Society .

In the late 1860s, Rimsky-Korsakov worked on instrumentation of other people's works: he helped Caesar Cui with the orchestra of the opera William Ratcliffe and, according to the will of the deceased Dargomyzhsky, ends the score of his opera Stone Guest . Turning to the opera genre, which later became the leading one in his work, in 1872 he ends the opera based on Lev Mei 's drama Pskovityanka . In the summer of the same year, he marries pianist Nadezhda Purgold .

In the 1870s, the boundaries of Rimsky-Korsakov's musical activity expanded: starting in 1871 , he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory , where he taught classes in practical composition, instrumentation and orchestration; from 1873 to 1884 he was an inspector of brass bands of the Maritime Department, from 1874 to 1881 - director of the Free Music School . Beginning in 1874 , the composer began conducting - first symphony concerts, and then opera performances.

In the mid 1870s. Rimsky-Korsakov worked on improving his compositional technique. It was during this period that he discovered serious flaws in his musical education and began to study the disciplines taught at the conservatory himself. The Third Symphony (C major, op. 32) was the result of the improvement of composer technique. In the 1880s, the composer created such symphonic compositions as the Scheherazade orchestral suite, the Spanish Capriccio , and the Bright Holiday overture.

Beginning in 1882, Rimsky-Korsakov headed the Belyaev circle , in 1883-1894 he was also an assistant manager of the Court Singing Chapel . In the years 1886-1900, the permanent conductor of the Russian Symphony Concerts . In 1906 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music .

In the early 1890s there was a slight decline in the composer's creative activity: during this period he studied philosophy, wrote articles, and also revised and edited some of his previous works. Then his work took on an exceptional intensity: one after another, from the composer's pen, the operas The Night Before Christmas ( 1895 ), Sadko ( 1896 ), Mozart and Salieri ( 1897 ), the prologue to the opera Pskovityanka and The Tsar’s Bride ”(based on the drama of Leo May , 1898 ).

During the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, Rimsky-Korsakov came out with active support for the demands of striking students and openly condemned the actions of the administration of the St. Petersburg Conservatory: he quit and returned to the conservatory only after granting her partial autonomous rights and a change of leadership. In 1907, a member of the Committee for the Organization of Historical Russian Concerts in Paris, took part in them as a conductor and composer.

He died on June 8 [21], 1908 from a myocardial infarction in Lubensk , in his country estate, where the memorial museum complex of the composer is now located, combining two reconstructed estates - a house in Lubensk and the neighboring estate of Vechash , where the composer lived until 1907. He was buried in St. Petersburg at the Novodevichy Cemetery ^[8] . In the 1930s, the burial was transferred to the Necropolis of Artists of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra .

Rimsky-Korsakov was the creator of the composer school, ^[9] among his students about two hundred composers, conductors, musicologists, including Fedor Akimenko , Nikolai Amani , Anton Arensky , Nikolai Artsybushev , Meliton Balanchivadze , Semyon Barmotin , Felix Blumenfeld , Julia Weisberg , Yaz Vitol , Alexander Glazunov , Mikhail Gnesin , Alexander Grechaninov , Makar Ekmalyan , Vasily Zolotaryov , Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov , Andrey Kazbiryuk , Nikolay Lysenko , Anatoly Lyadov , Vitold Malishevsky , Nikolay Malko , Emil Mlynarsky , Nikolay Myaskovsky , A Lexander Ossovsky , Sergei Prokofiev , Ottorino Respighi , Nikolai Sokolov , Alexander Spendiarov , Igor Stravinsky , Alexander Taneyev , Nikolai Cherepnin , Maximilian Steinberg ^[10] .

The pedagogical and enlightening work of Rimsky-Korsakov was admired by P. I. Tchaikovsky, who wrote in his letter to him: “But you did not want to be satisfied with only composer activity. You have become a music teacher, and the whole phalanx of young Russian musicians, growing under your leadership, of course, conveys the results of your work to future generations ” ^[11] .

I.F. Stravinsky spoke of his teacher’s pedagogical activity in this way: “There is one big advantage in my musical education - I studied with Rimsky-Korsakov. He was an absolutely wonderful teacher, extremely attentive and thorough, wise and witty. Making a remark, he dressed him in such a form that it was almost impossible to forget him. Rimsky-Korsakov’s disciples will remember one detail forever - he never praised. A student who expected an approving pat on the shoulder would be disappointed in Rimsky-Korsakov. On the contrary, he could be ruthlessly harsh in his criticism ” ^[12] .

Rimsky-Korsakov was married on June 30, 1872 in the Pargolov church with pianist Nadezhda Purgold (1848-1919). They had sons Mikhail (1873-1951), Andrey (1878-1940), Vladimir (1882-1970), Svyatoslav (1889-1890), daughters Sophia (1875-1943), Nadezhda (1884-1971), Maria (1888 -1893).

• Лето 1856 года — квартира П. Н. Головина в доме О. П. Зубовой ( Миллионная улица , д. 6);
• 1867 — сентябрь 1871 года — доходный дом Аренс (7-я линия Васильевского острова, д. 4);
• сентябрь 1871—1872 — доходный дом Зарембы (Пантелеймоновская улица, ныне улица Пестеля , д. 11, кв. 9);
• 1872 — осень 1873 года — дом Морозовых ( Шпалерная улица , д. 4);
• осень 1873—1883 — доходный дом Кононова ( Фурштатская улица , д. 33, кв. 9);
• 1883—1889 ( Владимирский проспект , д. 18, кв. 5);
• 1889 — 19 сентября 1893 года — дом Капеллы (набережная реки Мойки , д. 20);
• 19 сентября 1893 — 21 июня 1908 года — дворовый флигель доходного дома М. А. Лавровой ( Загородный проспект , д. 28, кв. 39), ныне Мемориальный музей-квартира Н. А. Римского-Корсакова

• 1950 — « Мусоргский »
• 1953 — « Римский-Корсаков »