Symphonies By Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Russian Versus Western

Russian Versus Western

Ideally, Tchaikovsky's training at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory would have thoroughly equipped him to work with European principles and forms of organizing musical material, just as immersion in those things might have helped him gain a sense of belonging to world culture. However, Tchaikovsky was still "Russian to the marrow," as he told his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, "saturating myself from earliest childhood with the inexplicable beauty of the characteristic traits of Russian folk song, so that I passionately love every manifestation of the Russian spirit." Native instincts that strong could drive him toward Russian musical principles, which in several ways worked in opposition to Western ones, and make his Russianness work as much against him as it did for him. The result was a continual struggle with Western sonata form, especially in dealing with the symphony. A major block for Tchaikovsky in this department, according to musicologist David Brown, may have been

a cardinal flaw in the Russian character: inertia.... In literature it produces the novel that proceeds as a succession of self-contained sections, even set-piece scenes....Indeed, such tableau organization is fundamental to the most Russian of operatic scenarios.... he most characteristic Russian scenario is like a strip cartoon, each scene presenting a crucial incident or stage in the plot, leaving the spectator to supply in his imagination what has happened in the gaps between these incidents.

Brown lists several factors in Russian folk music which contribute to this pattern of inertia. Melodies in Russian folk songs are self-contained, with no interaction between themes in contrasting musical keys or any clear transition from one theme to another. Instead, melodies are repeated, "using similar intervals and phrases with an almost ritual insistence," according to musicologist John Warrack. This makes many folk songs essentially a series of variations on one basic shape or pattern of a few notes. The problem with repetition is that, even with a surface level of rhythmic activity added, the melody remains static over a period of time. Beneath that surface, nothing really moves or goes anywhere; the effect of the rhythm is decorative, not organic, because no true progress has taken place.

Mikhail Glinka's Kamarinskaya, which became famous as the first orchestral work based entirely on Russian folk song, is a case in point of the limits Russian composers faced and how they attempted to work around them. Kamarinskaya is based on two themes, a slow bridal song, "Izza gor" (From beyond the mountains), and the title song, a naigrïsh. This second song is actually an instrumental dance played to an ostinato melody. This melody is repeated for as long as the dancers can move to it. Glinka begins with "Izza gor," then introduces Kamarinskaya as a contrasting theme. He uses a transition to return to the bridal song and show the contrast between the two themes. Another transition, this time using motifs from the bridal song, leads to the dance theme and the piece ends with the Kamarinskaya dance.

In a Western piece, after the first theme is introduced and harmony propels the music forward, it modulates to introduce a second theme in a contrasting musical key. The two themes then interact and the composition grows as an organic creation. Tension continues building as this thematic dialogue becomes increasingly complex. This dialogue or interchange eventually propels the piece to a climactic point of resolution. Kamarinskaya does not follow this pattern. Nor can it. The ostinato melody of the second song will not allow any motivic development without distorting the character of the piece. Glinka therefore uses the principle of repetition from folk song to allowing the musical structure to unfold. He repeats the theme 75 times, all the while varying the accompaniment—the instrumental timbres, harmonization and counterpoint—in a technique that Brown, Francis Maes and other musicologists call "changing backgrounds." By following this approach, Glinka preserves the original character of the dance and complements it with creative variations to sustain listener interest. However, because there is no thematic growth, the music remains static. It does not move forward as a Western piece of music would.

Simply adopting Germanic principles of formal musical organization was not going to solve the problem. Not only did Russian music refuse to cooperate with them but neither did the Russian creative mind. As Modest Mussorgsky phrased it, "The German, when he thinks, will first examine and explore, then make his conclusion: our brother will first make his conclusion, then amuse himself with examination and exploration." Tchaikovsky's exposure to and love of Russian folk-song, according to Cooper, "formed the background for all his other music experience, a subconscious musical atmosphere in which all other musical experiences were saturated," and Brown notes that Tchaikovsky's "natural ability to think in terms of organic symphonic procedures"—in other words, in the ability to "examine and explore, then make his conclusion"—"was certainly limited." The situation was not merely one of preoccupation with cause over effect, Brown writes, but also of an inability to connect cause with effect. "For just as it seems difficult for the Russian musical theorist to apply his active, controlled intelligence to the scrutiny of an imaginitive concept," he adds, "so it seems difficult for the Russian composer to harness his active, controlled intelligence to the unfolding of that imaginitive concept—as Bach had done so pre-eminently in the fugue, or the classical masters in the symphony."