sandal-root. The music
comes to the listener of western birth and mind, as the Malay who
knocked among English mountains at De Quincey's door. You learn of
Sinbad, the explorer, who is nearer to us than Nansen; of the Kalandar
Prince who spent a mad evening with the porter and the three ladies of
Bagdad, and told of his incredible adventures; and Scheherazade, the
narrator, she too is merely a shape in a dream; she fades away, and
her soul dies on the high note exhaled by the wondering violin.

"The melody of this Russian is wild, melancholy, exotic; a droning
such as falls from the lips of white-bearded, turbaned, venerable men,
garrulous in the sun; and then again, there is the reckless chatter of
the babbler in the market-place, heated with unmixed wine."

The most boldly individual of all Russian composers is
Moussorgsky[321] (1831-1881). Although of intense inspiration and of
uncompromising ideals his musical education was so incomplete that his
technique was inadequate for the expression of his message. As the
French critic, Arthur Pougin well says, "His works bizarre though they
be, formless as they often are, have in them a force of expression and
a dramatic accent of which no one can deny the intensity. It would be
unjust to pretend that he spoke for the purpose of saying nothing;
unfortunately he is too often satisfied with merely stammering." As
Moussorgsky himself says: "Art is a means of talking with men; it is
not an end. Starting with the principle that human speech is subject
to musical laws, I see in music, not only the expression of sentiment
by means of sound, but especially the notation of a human language."
In fact the dominant idea of his music was to bring it into closer
relation with actual life.

[Footnote 321: For biographical information consult the volume by
Montagu-Nathan.]

"In order to understand Moussorgsky's work and his attitude towards
art, it is necessary to realise the social conditions under which he
lived. He was a true child of the sixties, of that period of moral and
intellectual ferment which followed the accession of Alexander II and
the emancipation of the serfs. Of the little group of composers then
striving to give musical expression to their newly awakened
nationality, none was so entirely carried away by the literary and
political movements of the time as Moussorgsky. Every man was asking
himself and his comrades the question posed by the most popular novel
of the day