Tcherepnin, Nikolai

Preface

Nikolai Nikolaievich Tcherepnin
(b. St Petersburg, 15. May 1873 – d. Issy-les-Moulineaux, 26. June 1945)

The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, Op. 41

Preface
Nikolai Nikolaievich Tcherepnin was a Russian composer, conductor, and pedagogue whose career followed on the heels of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakov. As a young composition student of Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tcherepnin developed a flair for colorful orchestration. Later, Tcherepnin also came under the mentorship and musical influence of Anatoli Konstantinovich Liadov. Both of these elder composers favored Russian folklore, art, mythology, and fairy tales as subjects for musical inspiration. In fact, Liadov’s own artistic creed was often quoted as follows: “My ideal is to find in art what is not on earth . . . give me a fairy tale, a dragon, a mermaid, a forest sprite, give me whatever is not, and then I’m happy.”1 It is no surprise, therefore, that such fantastical elements also attracted Nikolai Tcherepnin throughout his own compositional career.

Musically, by 1904, Tcherepnin became familiar with music of Debussy and Ravel. He had begun to leave behind his Romantic Russian style; he was becoming a Russian-tinged French Impressionist – indeed, at a certain point, his friends teasingly called him “Debussy Ravelevich Tcherepnin.”2 Now turning his attention to the world of children, enchantment, and fairy tales, he enjoyed works by artists with similar interests, such as the eclectic Russian poet Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (1867-1942), and the artist Alexander Nikolaievich Benois (1870-1960), who was Tcherepnin’s wife’s uncle.3

Particularly, Tcherepnin’s interest in creating musical settings of fairy tales had surfaced after he fell under the spell of the works of Balmont. In 1905, Balmont penned 67 short poems for his four-year-old daughter Nina, published under the title Fairy Tales. The poems’ characters were fairies, butterflies, snowflakes, breezes, and other real and imaginary creatures. Tcherepnin, whose son Alexander was about the same age as Nina, was inspired to set eighteen of these Fairy Tales to music (Contes de fée: dix-huit mélodies, Op. 33). He published his first book of these Op. 33 songs in 1907, and the second book in 1912.4

Throughout these colorful fairy-tale songs, one can hear Tcherepnin freeing himself from symmetrical phrase grouping and other traditional expectations of classical and romantic music. Balmont’s fantastical words take charge. The singer reminisces, expresses wishes, and at times generates narratives in which as many as four distinct personalities must be portrayed in one song. The piano accompaniment also frequently avoids cadences, omits downbeats, and often moves forward with stringendo – all at the service of entertaining a child. Even today, Tcherepnin’s eighteen song settings of Balmont’s fairy-tale texts sound new and refreshingly entertaining.

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