Music in the Nineteenth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music by Taruskin Richard

Author:Taruskin, Richard [Taruskin, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-06-24T01:00:00+00:00

EX. 9–11 Folk songs in Miliy Balakirev’s Overture on Russian Themes (1858)

But Balakirev’s piece makes use of three folk songs, not just two, and this turns out to be more than a mere quantitative difference. A glance at the two Allegro tunes reveals the reason for it: in B minor and D major respectively, they are the first and second themes in a bithematic sonata form exposition, with a conventional development section providing the pretext for an excursion to Glinka’s flat submediant, here functioning as a traditional far-out point (FOP), and for a wealth of skillful contrapuntal juxtapositions of extracted motives.

Balakirev’s Overture on Russian Themes can thus be viewed as a principled advance over Glinka’s Kamarinskaya both as regards sheer dimensions, and also as regards symphonic character and procedure. Paradoxically, though, it is also a far more conventional composition. The advance was purchased at the price of a reconciliation with the standard operating procedure of German music, as Balakirev understood it—a seeming submission to the very hegemony Balakirev had made it his business to oppose. But the contradiction was in a sense built into the terms of the bargain: only a piece that could seem respectable by Germanic standards could counter Rubinstein’s taunts. And unlike Glinka, Balakirev wanted more than just to write a piquantly impressive piece: he aimed at founding a school, and that meant establishing, observing, and handing down traditions (that is, conventions).

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