Cui, Cesar

Preface

César Cui (Cesar Antonovich Kyui) – Petite Suite No. 3 ‚In modo populari’ in G minor, Op. 43

(b. Vilnius, 6/18 January 1835 — d. Petrograd, 13 March 1918)

(1890)

I Allegro moderato (p. 3) – Poco più animato (p. 6) – Tempo I (p. 7)
II Moderato – Meno mosso (p. 9) – Andante (p. 10) – Allegro con moto (p. 12) – Moderato (p. 14) – Moderato assai (p. 17)
III Vivace (p. 18) – Pochettino meno mosso (p. 20) – Allegretto (p. 22) – Vivace (p. 23)
IV Moderato (p. 27) – Pochettino più mosso (p. 29) – Poco meno mosso (p. 30) – Tempo I (p. 34)
V Allegretto – Pochettino meno mosso (p. 36) – Tempo I (p. 38)
VI Vivace, ma non troppo (p. 40) – Allegro moderato (p. 49)

Preface
César Cui (pronounced Kyuy) was the youngest child of a Frenchman and a Lithuanian woman. When Napoleon’s army was defeated by the Russians in 1812 and fled home, the drum major Antoine Cui stayed in Vilnius (the city from which Napoleon had organized his attack) in Lithuania, where he married Julia Gucewicz, with whom he was to have five children. He worked his way up until he acquired Russian citizenship in 1844 and the rights of hereditary nobility in 1845 (all information according to Sigrid Neef’s full-scale biography in her book ‘The Russian Five’ [Berlin 1992]). César-Venyamin, Antoine’s youngest son, showed great musical talent at an early age and deeply admired Chopin, in whose style he composed a Mazurka in G minor at the age of 14 without any instructions. The important Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819-72), who lived in Vilnius from 1840-58, was so pleased with César’s abilities that he taught him basso continuo, counterpoint and chorale composition free of charge. At the age of 15, César was sent by his father to St. Petersburg, where he studied engineering at the military academy from 1851 and graduated in 1855. (He later became a respected expert on the construction and conquest of fortifications, authoring standard textbooks on the subject and eventually being appointed general and academy professor in 1906.) …

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