work, its
tenebrous gulfs and musical vertigoes are true indices of his morbid
pathology. He was of a pious nature, as was Dostoievsky; but he might
have subscribed to the truth of Remy de Gourmont's epigram: "Religion
est l'hopital de l'amour." Love, however, does not play a major role
in his life or art, yet it permeates both, in a sultry, sensual
manner.

Boris Godounow was successfully produced January 24, 1874, at the St.
Petersburg Opera with a satisfactory cast. At once its native power
was felt and its appalling longueurs, technical crudities and minor
shortcomings were recognised as the inevitable slag in the profusion
of rich ore. A Russian opera, more Russian than Glinka! It was the
"high noon," as Nietzsche would say, of the composer--the latter part
of whose career was clouded by a morose pessimism and disease. There
is much ugly music, but it is always characteristic. Despite the
ecclesiastical modes and rare harmonic progressions the score is
Muscovite, not Oriental--the latter element is a stumbling-block in
the development of so many Russian composers. The melancholy is
Russian, the tunes are Russian, and the inn-scene, apart from the
difference of historical periods, is as Russian as Gogol. No opera
ever penned is less "literary," less "operatic," or more national than
this one.

Rimsky-Korsakof, who died only a few years ago, was the junior of
Moussorgsky (born 1844), and proved during the latter's lifetime, and
after his death, an unshaken friendship. The pair dwelt together for
some time and criticised each other's work. If Balakirev laid the
foundation of Moussorgsky's musical education (in composition, not
piano-playing) Rimsky-Korsakof completed it; as far as he could. The
musical gift of the latter was more lyrical than any of his fellow
students' at Balakirev's. Without having a novel "message," he
developed as a master-painter in orchestration. He belongs in the
category of composers who are more prolific in the coining of images
than the creation of ideas. He "played the sedulous ape" to Berlioz
and it was natural, with his fanciful imagination and full-blooded
temperament, that his themes are clothed in shining orchestration,
that his formal sense would work to happier ends within the elastic
form of the Liszt symphonic poem. He wrote symphonies and a
"symphoniette" on Russian themes, but his genius is best displayed in
freer forms. His third symphony, redolent of Haydn, with a delightful