Mily Balakirev (1837 – 1910): Islamey
If Mikhail Glinka was the Father of Russian Music, then Mily Balakirev was surely its Great Prophet. Fiercely driven and utterly uncompromising, he combined the zeal of a biblical missionary with an almost fanatical love of his native land. In his youth, he would near single-handedly shape a generation of composers destined to become some of the biggest names in Russian classical music.
At the same time, Balakirev’s glittering career would ultimately promise more than it delivered. Underneath the charisma lurked a surprisingly brittle man, prone to crippling depressions and existential crises. And although brilliant at directing other people’s work, he was oddly inept at doing the same with his own, often taking decades to complete a single work. Many of his best ideas or concepts would be adopted by his famous pupils – namely the likes of César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin – and often end up accredited to them instead.
It seems somehow apt that the proud, patriotic Balakirev should have been descended from ancient Russian nobility. Born in the city of Nizhny Novgorod in central Russia, his ancestry could be traced back to Ivan Vasilievich Balakirev, a noble warlord who had led the Russian army in early 16th century. His own immediate family was somewhat less glamorous however – his father, Alexey Konstantinovich Balakirev, was as a minor government minister and had very likely never seen a battlefield, never mind wielded an arquebus in anger.
Young Mily was educated firstly at a local gymnasium and then at the Nizhny Novgorod Noble Institute of Alexander II. From the very beginning he would manifest the soundest musical instincts. “I have only a very vague recollection of my musical development in the period of my infancy”, he wrote decades later. “As far as I can remember, from the age of eight, I seldom left my piano, endeavoring to play any music which I heard… I recall very well having had, from my infancy, a very well-developed sense of sound, for when I visited the house of my uncle, Vassily Yasherov, I reckoned that his piano was tuned a tone lower than ours.”
Although he had started to learn the piano from the age of four, Mily’s musical education really took off in his teens when he came to the attention of a wealthy local author and musicologist, Alexander Ulybyshev. Impressed by the boy’s talent, the latter not only set the youngster up with a distinguished piano teacher named Karl Eisrach – who in turn introduced him to the music of Frédéric Chopin and Mikhail Glinka – but also allowed him regular use of his private orchestra. Thus by the age of 14, Balakirev was already conducting performances of Mozart’s Requiem as well as some of Beethoven’s symphonies, a formative experience which surely helped him become a master of orchestration in his own music.
From 1853 to 1855 Balakirev studied mathematics at the University of Kazan, mostly to placate his parents who were anxious about his future career. But he continued pursue his musical interests in his spare time. By now he had developed a particular interest in Mikhail Glinka, having already paid homage to the great man in two of his earliest orchestral works – the Grande Fantasie on Russian Folk Songs for piano and orchestra (1852) and more directly, his piano fantasy, Reminiscences from Glinka’s “A Life for the Tsar” (1855). This precocious burst of composition from the still teenage Balakirev would culminate in his First Piano Concerto, which he completed in 1856.
Shortly after leaving Kazan, Ulybyshev took Balakirev to St Petersburg in order to meet Glinka, after which Balakirev declared that he had found his life’s calling. Like many, he admired the way Glinka had married Russian folk song into a more formal symphonic framework, and he wanted to build on that. Accounts vary as to how Glinka reacted in turn to the young man. He was certainly impressed by him – even as he considered his technique backwards. Glinka would also pass on to Balakirev several Spanish themes in his possession, an act of generosity that Balakirev would repeat on numerous occasions to his own protégés. Balakirev later used one of Glinka’s themes in his orchestral Overture on a Spanish March Theme, written a year or so later.
But the idea that Glinka regarded Balakirev as a kind of successor in waiting is perhaps more fanciful. For one thing, Glinka was still relatively young and in good health and had no plans to retire, or indeed die, anytime soon (his sudden death from a chill two years later would come as a complete shock to everyone). What is true is that after Glinka’s death, Balakirev quickly cast himself in the role of heir apparent. For the next fifteen years he would barely deviate from his mission of spreading the good news among a talented but comparatively unschooled bunch of young musicians.
Despite working initially as a teacher and piano virtuoso in the late 1850s (including sometimes performing in front of the Tsar), Balakirev would network smartly and was soon attracting a like-minded set of friends with his magnetic, forceful personality. These included the influential music critics Alexander Serov and Vladimir Stasov, who would do much to promote Balakirev’s opinions and views over the next decade.
At the same time, Balakirev the fast-emerging pedagogue, gradually gathered around himself the four young composers with whom he would become so closely associated: a military engineer named César Cui, two soldiers, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and a chemist by the name of Alexander Borodin. None were typical music students – all had budding careers in other non-arts professions. But their rough, relatively “uneducated” talents were exactly what Balakirev was looking for, perhaps because he saw himself in that mould too.
As for his pupils, they all looked up to him, as the one true professional musician among them. But they were also drawn in by his charismatic personality. “We were completely bewitched by his talents, his authority, his magnetism,” Rimsky-Korsakov admitted later.
The inspiring, guru-like Balakirev would in time completely disregard traditional academic training, believing that it dulled the creative senses. As Rimsky put it, “Balakirev, who had never had any systematic course in harmony and counterpoint and had not even superficially applied himself to them, evidently thought such studies quite unnecessary.” He was much more the “learn by doing” type, decreeing that practical problems should be tackled on the job as and when they arose.
Rather than cram his students with theoretical rules, Balakirev opted to solve technical issues by rifling through the scores of other composers and finding the “solution” that way. In this, he was aided by his own unerring instincts. “He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once”, according to Rimsky. Used judicially, it was an innovative approach that offered a breath of fresh air to traditional academic training. It was only when Balakirev became more rigid about critiquing his students’ work – insisting that they use only his own corrections – that he would attract a certain resistance.
Through his own painstaking efforts, Balakirev also provided his young protégés with the ethnomusical material he regarded as crucial to their movement. Long before the First Folk Revival at the end of the century, Balakirev would tramp through corners of the Caucasus in southern Russia, wandering up and down the River Volga, and then later exploring parts of Georgia and even Iran in search of native folk-song. He would go from village to village, noting down melodies that the local residents would sing to him.
In this way, Balakirev would collect many of the non-western sounding melodies (which used more in the way of Oriental intervals and scales) that would find their way not just into some of his best scores (such as Tamara), but also into the scores of his acolytes, particularly Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. Eventually he would publish an extensive volume of Russian folk songs, including the famous Song of the Volga Boatmen.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Balakirev’s idiosyncratic “school” of composition was emerging at a time when a typical musical education in Russia remained strikingly backwards. No music academies existed in the country before 1859 and, more amazingly still, there were almost no Russian language harmony books. But then, as the saying goes, you wait ages for one music conservatory and then three come along at once. In 1859, the Moscow Conservatory was founded, followed by one in St Petersburg in 1862. In the same year of the latter, Balakirev would help open an independent Free Music School.
The St Petersburg Conservatory, then run by Russia’s most successful composer (and piano virtuoso), Anton Rubinstein, would quickly become Balakirev’s personal bête noire. Balakirev made no secret of his distaste for Rubinstein’s conservative tastes and partiality for German music. But while he could legitimately question the musical values of his nemesis, he was on far less justifiable grounds when his attacks became personal and nasty, calling into question both Rubinstein’s German and Jewish ancestry.
Eventually, to counteract the charges from Rubinstein and co that Balakirev and his four disciples were little more than a bunch of inspired amateurs, Balakirev co-founded the Free Music School in St Petersburg (under the patronage of the Grand Prince, heir to the throne), as a direct challenge to the conservatory. Unlike its expensive rival, the Free School provided, as its name suggests, musical education without charge, as well as a much more Russo-centric approach. It also doubled as a concert venue, offering innovative, avant-garde feeling programmes, including works by the the likes of Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky, as well as earlyish compositions from the Mighty Five.
One highpoint of Balakirev’s early career was taking over the directorship of the Russian Music Society in 1867 (from Rubinstein). One of his first acts was to coax the ageing Hector Berlioz out of retirement for one last job – to come to Russia and conduct several concerts for the society in the winter of 1868. But Balakirev’s progressive views eventually became too much for many (along with his abrasive personality) and he was sacked from the role in 1869 after numerous complaints about his overly “radical” programmes.
Despite his many achievements in service to his country’s music, one thing that Balakirev badly struggled with during his peak years was an inability to finish his own compositions. At times his rate of progress would have made even the most seasoned procrastinator feel better about themselves. His first symphony took him thirty-three years to complete, while he would spend no less than forty-nine years, on and off, on his Second Piano Concerto. Even then he failed to finish the work and it had to be completed by fellow composer, Sergei Lyapunov, after Balakirev’s death.
At the height of his career, Balakirev tended to be most successful with finishing shorter pieces, where it seemed he had less scope to agonize and overthink things. And one of those shorter works is his virtuosic piano piece, Islamey, probably the piece for which he is most famous today. Although something of a crowd-pleaser, it does condense much into its frenetic eight and a half minutes, not least with its two contrasting folk-themes (one from the Caucasus which is quick and filled with rapid repeated notes, the other a slow love song from the Crimea) that make up the piece. It has sometimes been described as the most difficult piano piece ever written and only became a staple in the repertoire thanks to the heroic efforts of virtuosos like Anton Rubinstein and Franz Liszt. Few others could play it – even Balakirev, a brilliant pianist on his day, struggled to do it justice.
Thankfully for struggling pianists, the work was eventually orchestrated in the early twentieth century, firstly by Alfred Casella and then by Sergei Lyapunov. Rather than dilute the energy of the original, the orchestral versions enhance the shape and colours of the music, in a manner sometimes beyond the more brittle powers of the piano.
In all, Islamey would come from a period when Balakirev was still at the height of his powers. Sadly, not long after, he would start to go downhill, with his mental health in particular worrying his friends. He began to take odd, seemingly uncharacteristic decisions, and his once ultra-rational mind became anxiously superstitious. He started to accept regular life-advice from a soothsayer.
At the same time, he became increasingly proscriptive about what was allowed and not allowed in his student’s works. The likes of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov grumbled that he was trying to write their music for them and started to distance themselves from the maestro.
Observing Balakirev’s gradual collapse from close-up, César Cui felt that his teacher simply lacked an ability to get along with other people, as well as an ability to compromise. It was these qualities that Cui felt prevented his old teacher from fulfilling his true potential:
I am of the opinion that he could have achieved much more than he did achieve. At one time he had all music in his hands. He could have been at the head of the Conservatoire and also at the head of the Imperial Opera. He conducted the symphony concerts and made much of the Free School of Music. The musical powers-that-be were ready to patronize him. But Mily Alexeyevich found it difficult to get on with people. He was a man of independent nature, not a good mixer, perhaps rather disobliging. He was not in the habit of paying compliments. Balakirev undertook much, but, thanks to his disposition, soon had to give up.
Overwork, along with a series of professional and personal reverses, finally drove Balakirev to a major breakdown in 1871. After that he would completely withdraw from all musical activities for several years. The friends who were still able to visit him found him utterly changed, withdrawn and almost unable to hold a conversation. Even when he started to recover, he went off to work as a railway clerk for a while. It was as if his fevered brain needed an extended vacation from all the things that had so fired him up in his youth.
And even when Balakirev did gradually return to his old life, he was never quite the same again and perhaps didn’t want to be. Having once been a political progressive, free thinker and atheist, he would re-emerge as a deep-seated conservative and slightly fanatical Christian, while his fervent nationalism carried increasing overtones of xenophobia and anti-Semitism.
Rimsky-Korsakov always blamed Balakirev’s soothsayer for the transformation: “Balakirev, who did not believe in God, became a believer in the Devil. The Devil brought it about that subsequently he came to believe in God too… The soothsaying cast a terror upon him”. Having thrown himself into one of the strictest sects of the Russian Orthodox church, Balakirev’s newfound piety would drive his friends mad, many of whom felt he had turned into an insufferable bigot. Over time, Balakirev would sadly find ways to fall out with almost all of them. His acerbic nature even meant he went without a publisher for over a decade, after being dropped by the highly exasperated firm of Jurgenson and then treated like damaged goods by everyone else.
Yet Balakirev was nothing if not a fighter, and even if no longer the inspirational figure of the 1860s, his later career would make a decent recovery. In the 1880s he was re-appointed director to the Free Music School, while he also spent a decade as director to the Imperial Court Kapella. He was twice offered high positions at the Moscow Conservatory, and both times declined, declaring he did not have the theoretical knowledge required. And although his later compositions did not really develop on the innovations of his youth, he still enjoyed a surge of overseas popularity in later life, as most of Europe still regarded him as the leader of the Mighty Five.
His later completed works are also worth listening to – particularly his two symphonies (completed in 1897 and 1908 respectively) and a late but surprisingly substantial Second Piano Sonata (1905). Perhaps best of all was his oriental tone poem, Tamara (1882) containing material that would directly influence Rimsky-Korsakov’s much more famous Scheherazade from five years later.
Rimsky’s debt to the earlier work perhaps typified Balakirev’s career. Even if he was not always the most amenable or likeable of men, he remained an instinctive gift-giver. Few composers have ever given so freely of themselves to their fellow artists and to their country.
His legacy would ultimately extend far beyond the Mighty Five, with his vibrant orchestration, native folksong and colourful orientalism leaving a formative mark on twentieth century masters such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. Russian classical music still owes a huge debt to its prophet extraordinaire, Mily Balakirev.