us concluding with an unmistakable effect of unity.

[Music]

The subject of Russian music[315] is too vast for any adequate
treatment within the limits of a single book, but there are several
other composers in addition to Tchaikowsky of such individuality and
remarkable achievement as to warrant some notice. These men,
Balakireff, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakoff and Moussorgsky, have done for
the free expression of the Russian temperament in music what Pushkin,
Gogol and Dostoyevsky represent in literature. "To understand fully
the tendencies of Neo-Russian music, and above all to sympathize with
the spirit in which this music is written, the incredible history of
Holy Russia, the history of its rulers and people--the mad caprices
and horrid deeds of the Romanoffs, who, in centuries gone by,
surpassed in restless melancholy and atrocity the insane Caesars, and
were more to be pitied, as well as detested, than Tiberius or
Nero--the nature of the landscape, the waste of steppes, the
dreariness of winter, and the loneliness of summer--the barbaric
extravagance of aristocratic life--the red tape, extortion, and
cruelty of officers--the sublime patience of the common people--the
devotion of the enduring, starving multitude to the Tsar--all this
should be as familiar as a twice-told tale. There should also be a
knowledge of Russian literature, from the passion of Pushkin and the
irony of Gogol, to Turgenieff's tales of life among the serfs, and the
novels of Tolstoi, in which mysticism and realism are strangely
blended. Inasmuch as Neo-Russian music is founded upon the folk-songs
of that country, one should know first of all the conditions that made
such songs possible, and one should breathe the atmosphere in which
musicians who have used such songs have worked."[316]

[Footnote 315: The most authoritative work in English is the _History
of Russian Music_ by Montagu-Nathan; in French there are the Essays
_Musiques de Russie_ by Bruneau.]

[Footnote 316: Quoted from the chapter on Russian music in _Famous
Composers and Their Works_ (2d series).]

The first real leader after the wholesome beginnings made by Glinka
(with his operas, _A Life for the Czar_ and _Ludmilla_) was Balakireff
(1837-1910) who finding his country almost entirely under the dominion
of Italian and German music, proclaimed the doctrine that Russia, with
its wealth of folk-songs and its undoubted emotional power should
create its own music. Like many of th