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Alexander Glazounov 1865–1936

Alexander Glazounov, the famous Russian composer, at the age of seventy. Born at St. Petersburg in 1865, he studied under Rimsky-Korsakov and received advice from Balakirev. His facility and skill in composition matured early, for his first Symphony (Op. 5) was performed under Balakirev in 1882, and he had written a String Quartet, a Piano Suite, and an Overture. His popular tone-poem, ‘Stenka Razine,’ was written before he was twenty. While still a young man he became known all over the musical world. He conducted his own music at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. In the next few years his ‘Stenka Razine’ was given at Berlin (it had already been given at Weimar), and his fourth Symphony was played at a London Philharmonic. He visited England in 1896, 1902, and 1907, when he was given an honorary Doctor’s degree by Cambridge University. In 1909 he became Principal of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His works, most of which were written before the war, include eight symphonies, three large ballets, and a quantity of chamber music. After the war he wrote very little music in comparison with the rapid production of his early years. He devoted himself to his official duties and gradually became a figure-head. After twelve years at the St. Petersburg school he retired to Paris, where he died. An article on Glazounov by Mr. Sabaneev will be found on p. 413.

Musical Times, May 1936

Glazounov

by Leonid Sabaneev

Through the death of A. K. Glazounov, who now becomes a historical figure, the old generation of Russian music has lost the last of its brilliant representatives.

Though he had reached the comparatively advanced age of seventy, he had essentially done with creative work long ago, the last thirty years or so of his life having added few features to the legacy he has left us. He really composed very little after his eighth and last Symphony, written in 1908. This is, perhaps, his most valuable work: in any case it reflects fully the world of his talent. His subsequent compositions were isolated and infrequent. Was this due to creative exhaustion after the intense and extraordinarily productive activity of previous years? Or must it be partly ascribed to the troublous times which began in Russia in 1905? More probably we must look to neither the one not the other, but to the simple fact that Glazounov’s creative work was thrust into the background by the force of circumstances and of purely musical happenings, and became synonymous with academicism and conservatism in the light of the combative tendencies then prevailing in the musical world. Debussy, Strauss, Scriabin, and later, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Schönberg and Hindemith, arrived onto the scene, and Glazounov’s severe and architecturally proportioned creations with their inward poise and their inevitably quieter emotional tone, were regarded as things of the past.

Glazounov outlived his style, outlived himself. He was not pliant enough to change with the times; he was too honestly convinced of the rightness of his attitude to music, and did not, and could not, make any concessions to violent and tempestuous innovation. In this respect he was more conservative than those active workers belonging to an older generation of Russian musicians – Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. The latter, who in his time manifested himself to the world as one of the Kuchka, the champions of quests and innovation, was able to absorb and creatively transform much that came into being on the borders of the 20th century. Glazounov was a product of more peaceful times: in him equilibrium reigned, his creative path always led towards perfection of form within the limits of tradition. Wagner and Liszt were essentially alien to him, he was sceptical concerning Moussorgsky, spoke condescendingly but unsympathetically of Scriabin, and had an antipathy for Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, and others. And the tradition he represented was not that of Russian music. I doubt if the creative work of any other Russian composer has so many non-Russian features. In his psychological make-up, in his ways and habits of life, he was Russian through and through, but his music was clothed entirely in European dress, and the Russian musical idiom was altogether foreign and unattractive to him. Furthermore, his musical tastes were tinged with a repugnance for anything too highly spiced or too characteristic; with his creative touch he toned down and neutralised the Russian colouration.

It is precisely this which accounts for his becoming a shadowy figure during his lifetime, and for the impoverishment apparent in his creative output after 1906-08. Very clever, very subtle, with an observant and sceptical mind, Glazounov could not but perceive the true state of affairs – the arrival of new birds bringing with them new songs, perhaps unsympathetic to him, but inevitable. He saw that it was impossible to struggle against them by continuing to create in his own way: let them sing their songs to the world; in due course they would become silent – it was only a passing phase. In Glazounov there was much of the Fabian prudence – a specifically Russian characteristic: he was not a fighter, but a sceptical onlooker. He knew that he had made his important and indispensable contribution to music: he had endowed the unorganized and very ugly element of Russian creative work with craftsmanship, had tranquillised it and given it emotional calm. He was aware, also, that his personal career had been a brilliant one; success had attended him at the age of sixteen, and did not forsake him for nearly a quarter of a century. Life had revealed itself to him in its most propitious aspect: rich, gifted, esteemed, and successful from the very beginning, he had known nothing of deprivations and the struggle for existence. And his music is of the same order – peaceful, rich, and lacking any suggestion of tragedy. Having little inclination for the dramatic, Glazounov did not care for vocal music; he did not write a single opera (in this, again, he is the antithesis of the majority of Russian composers, who have aspired to opera and drama); he sought inspiration in the epic form of the symphony and the aesthetic world of the ballet. But his symphonies, having none of the tragic significance of Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner, in spite of their colossal dimensions are more like ballet entr’actes, just as his ballets resemble fragments of symphonies.

Glazounov’s musical legacy is vast, but most of it was created before his forty-second year. It comprises eight symphonies, three big ballets, a host of symphonic poems and overtures, and much chamber and piano music. Notwithstanding its very great merits, much of it is manifestly not destined to survive: at the beginning of this century there were signs that his style was becoming obsolete. This is accounted for by the fact that, having no connection with the national melodies, he wrote music of the general European type, and his academic mastery led to the unintentional neutralising of anything in the nature of brilliance, originality, independence, and colourfulness. After the advent of the new prophets of a new and different music, full of new sonorities, and saturated with seekings if not with achievements, Glazounov’s quiet and competent mastery was bound to seem tame and insipid. Of his works the last three symphonies have proved to be the most vital; the eighth appears to be the chef d’oeuvre of his orchestral style (a style now avoided) – thick, imposingly polyphonic, having no concern with colour, but only with the general mass of the resonance. His Violin Concerto will certainly be retained in the world’s repertory, whereas oblivion had already overtaken most of his piano compositions during his lifetime.

It should be added that Glazounov was a favourite and authoritative teacher, even though the convictions of most of the next generation were antagonistic. Tcherepnin, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev must consider themselves his pupils, as well as Scriabin, whose first Symphony distinctly reflects the orchestral technique of the deceased composer.