Miaskovsky, Nicolai

Preface

Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky – Poème d’après Shelley or Alastor Op.14

(b. Novo-Georgiyevsk [now Modlin], 20 April 1881 – d. Moscow, 8 August 1950)

Preface
Composed the year after completing studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1911, where his teachers were two famed members of the late-19th to early-20th century compositional collective known as the ‘Belyayev Circle,’ namely Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatoly Lyadov, Nikolai Myaskovsky’s Op. 14 (Poème d’après Shelley, or Alastor) marked a moment of great transition. Despite being a student, he was hardly untrained at the time in the art of composition, nor unacquainted with the St. Petersburgian artistic milieu and its elite. Before 1912, Myaskovsky had written many works which foreshadowed his compositional proclivities to come. His Op. 3 (Symphony No, 1), written in 1908 became his entrance ticket to conservatory, the first of 27 symphonies, leading to his apt title, ‘father of the Soviet symphony.’ Other works like his symphonic poem, Op. 9 (Silence), Op. 10 (Sinfonietta No. 1), and his first and second piano sonatas (Op. 6 and 13), helped develop the Mayakovskian idiom. However, one of the young composer’s greatest contributions, which secured his place among the Petersburgian artistic elite, were his romances, composing many collections, the last being his Op. 72 in 1946 (Lyrical Book), only four years before his death in 1950.

From 1906 onwards, life would cease to be the same, as he had begun rigorous conservatory studies after three years of having lessons with two other ‘Belyayev Circle’ members,’ Reinhold Glière and Ivan Kryzhanovsky. The songs which emanated from 1907 to 1908, totaling 48 songs across six opuses (1, 2, 4, 5, and 7) and his relationship with four Symbolist poets (Yevgeny Baratynsky, Konstantin Balmont, Zinaida Gippius, and Vyacheslav Ivanov), demonstrated Myaskovsky’s uneasy connection with the St. Petersburg school. This discontent at the uniquely unmoving disinterest in Modernism of the school and its affiliated aesthetics, worldview, and mannerisms shown by the technically precise but unadventurous and domestically disinterested nature of the ‘Belyayevites’ had its influence on others like Tchaikovsky as well. Levon Hakobian noted, that despite Myaskovsky’s deep interest in late-Romantic movements and Modernist literature, he would later call his symphonically-oriented language ‘colorless’ (beskrasochnost’), not as a negative trait but rather as an honest description of his compositional penchant1. It is no accident that he is referred to as the ‘conscience of Russian music,’ his personal spiritual, musical, political, cultural, and social beliefs very much revolving around the pursuit of self-mastery and the grappling with the polemics of the human experience. Almost as soon as Myaskovsky got to St. Petersburg Conservatory, this philosophical dialecticism, very much continuing the path taken by composers like Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Scriabin, and Mahler, inspired him to connect with a like-minded milieu. As Gregor Tassie recalls, this expanded network of intellectuals included everyone from poets (Alexander Blok) and writers (Valery Bryusov) to playwrights (Leonid Andreyev) and composer idealogues (Anatoly Lunacharsky). In spring 1907, Mysakovsky was finally done with his mandatory military service, and beginning in the fall, having taken in copious amounts of influence, he began composing with great rapidity. From piano works (Flofion, Book 1, 2, 4: Op. 31, Yellowed Leaves: Op. 29, Reminiscences) to song (Op. 7, Madrigal: Op. 8, Three Sketches to Words), the early world of Myaskovsky is marked by smaller works. But in 1908, with the first symphony, his compositional mission was set. …

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