Title | Russia's gift to the world |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | Hodder and Stoughton |
Place of Creation (TGN) |
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Date | 1915 |
Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Extent | 48 pages; 22 cm. |
Original Item Location | DK32.7.M3 1915 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b8304497~S11 |
Original Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection | Socialist and Communist Pamphlets |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/scpamp |
Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://libraries.uh.edu/branches/special-collections |
Use and Reproduction | This item is in the public domain and may be used freely. |
File Name | index.cpd |
Title | Image 20 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | uhlib_1315132_019.jpg |
Transcript | 18 Russia's Gift to the World MUSIC The development of Russian music affords a close and interesting parallel to the development of Russian literature. Music and song are the natural gift of the Slavonic race. It was so in ancient times and is so now. All travellers in Russia are struck by the beauty and skill of the untaught singing heard everywhere, from the mouths of soldiers or workmen or peasants. This music is based on a natural scale and is harmonised, when sung by several voices, by a sort of popular counterpoint. The melodies of Russia have an unusual fascination. This native music was long hindered m its development by the strong ecclesiastical tradition of the Russian Church, which was rootedly conservative. When the scientific study of music was taken up in the 18th century, the influence of Italian music was dominant throughout Europe. Famous Italian composers like Paisiello, Galuppi, and Cimarosa paid long visits to Russia ; they were in great favour at the Court, and set the fashion throughout the country, so that the native music fell into neglect. It was revived in the great wave of patriotic enthusiasm a hundred years ago, and came to its own in the work of Glinka. Glinka was a contemporary of Pushkin, and their work is intimately connected, for it represents a common national development on parallel lines. His genius created a national idiom for musical expression. In his famous opera, A Life for the lsar (1836), he concentrated the native musical substance and enlarged it to a universal human appeal This movement was continued by Dar- gomyzhsky, who worked on much the same lines as Wagner, but quite independently of him. It is to Dargomyzhsky that we owe the famous sentence, I want the note to be the direct equivalent of the |