Reminiscences of friends paint an educational picture. Borodin's apartment looked like a railway station. Women and girls came to him at any time of day, dragging him away from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Borodin would get up-without finishing his meal-and go off to take care of all their requests and complaints. A too familiar picture.
It was impossible to find him at home or at his laboratory. Borodin was always out at some meeting on women's rights. He dragged himself from one meeting to another, discussing women's problems which could probably have been taken care of by a lesser composer than Borodin. To tell the truth, a man without any musical education could 1 61
have successfully understood the pressing women's issues. (Why was it that the musical ladies, who adored Borodin's music, were the ones who dragged him into this business? Why is it always like that?
Whom and what do these ladies love most: music, charitable causes, or themselves?)
Borodin's apartment was a madhouse. I'm not exaggerating, this is not a poetic simile, so popular in our times, as in "Our communal apartment is a madhouse." No, Borodin's place was a madhouse without similes or metaphors. He always had a bunch of relatives living with him, or just poor people, or visitors who took sick and eventhere were cases-went mad. Borodin fussed over them, treated them, took them to hospitals, and then visited them there.
That's how a Russian composer lives and works. Borodin wrote in snatches. Naturally, there was someone sleeping in every room, on every couch, and on the floors. He didn't want to disturb them with the piano. Rimsky-Korsakov would visit Borodin and ask, "Have you written anything?" Borodin would reply, "I have." And it would tum out to be another letter in defense of women's rights. And the same jokes came up with the orchestration of Prince Igor. "Did you transpose that section?" "Yes. From the piano to the desk." And then people wonder why Russian composers write so little.
In the long run, Igor is as much Borodin's as it is Rimsky-Korsakov's and Glazunov's. The other two tried not to stress the fact, saying that Glazunov wrote down this section "from memory," and that one too. The overture was written "from memory" and the entire third act.
But when he was in his cups, and Glazunov got drunk very rapidly and became defenseless then, he would admit that it wasn't "from memory" -he simply wrote for Borodin. This says many good things about Glazunov, whose behavior I am going to talk about. It doesn't happen often that a man composes excellent music for another composer and doesn't advertise it (to talk while drinking doesn't count).
It's usually the other way around-a man steals an idea or even a considerable piece of music from another composer and passes it off as his own.
Glazunov is a marvelous example of a purely Russian phenomenon: as a composer he can honestly and fairly hold a position in the history of Russian music that is not simply outstanding but unique, and not 1 62
because of his compositions. Do we love Glazunov now for his music?
Have his symphonies remained "fresh and strong,'' as Rimsky-Korsakov put it, or his quartets?
I recently listened-for the umpteenth time-to Suite from the Middle Ages. It has nothing to do with the Middle Ages; they would have scorned· it. I think the masters were stronger then, even though I like this suite more than many of Glazunov's other works. And I suppose I value his Eighth Symphony more than the others, particularly the slow movement. The others make rather flabby music. Boring, actually. When I listen to his symphonies, I grow bored. I keep thinking, Let's have the recapitulation-oh, no, it's still the development.
Glazunov had a lot of trouble with finales, he did not create enough energy or tension. In fact, this characterizes almost all his compositions. I think that a decisive factor in this problem was a misfortunein his youth Glazunov contracted a venereal disease. He picked it up from some ballerina in the Imperial Maryinsky Theater. He was awfully unlucky with that ballerina. He fell into a deep depression, they say, and went to Aachen for a cure. That was the famous German resort where all the syphilitics went. He wrote tragic letters from Aachen. They say that his tragic suffering is reflected in the Fourth Quartet. I know the Fourth, naturally, but I don't hear anything like that in it. In general, I like the Fifth Quartet much more, if it comes to that, even without the venereal suffering. Oh yes, I forgot, I also like parts of Raymonda.
Besides his music, Glazunov's private life was also affected by that incident. He never did marry and lived with his mother. Glazunov was well over fifty when his mother would still say to the laundry, "Do a good job on the child's underwear, now." And Glazunov was famous throughout Russia, the "Russian Brahms," the director of the best Russian conservatory. And he was good-looking, strong and massive, at least until the lean years of the Revolution.
Here's another popular story that circulated in my years at the Conservatory. Glazunov was planning to go out and called a hackney cab.
His mother expressed her fears about whether the horse was docile enough, whether . it would bolt, and she didn't want him to go. They say that even good-natured Glazunov lost his temper and asked,
"Mother, do you plan to put a guardrail on the coach?"
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But all these stories didn't keep us from feeling the greatest respect for Glazunov. Even adulation. It's only now that his compositions seem dull, but then they were heard in all our classes, at every student recital, and particularly at the examinations, which Glazunov invariably attended. And I don't think it was to suck up to Glazunov, either.
You didn't have to tell Glazunov he was a marvelous composer to flatter him. You had to tell him he was a marvelous conductor. They played his works because they were convenient and effective, for instance, the Piano Variations in D, the Sonata in B Minor, and the Concerto in F Minor. The singers adored Glazunov's romances, and Nina's romance from Lermontov's Masquerade was something of a war-horse. It's popular today, we often hear it. I'm not very fond of it.
Everyone knows how Glazunov began. When his First Symphony was performed, it was a great success, and they called for the composer. The audience was stunned when the composer came out in a gymnasium uniform. Glazunov was seventeen. That's a record in Russian music. I didn't beat it, even though I began early enough.
Incidentally, the same rumors circulated about us both: to wit, "such a young man" couldn't have written such a symphony. They said that his wealthy parents had paid someone for Glazunov's symphony. And they said that mine was a collective effort. But no, we wrote them ourselves. I was even more independent. Balakirev reorchestrated pages of Glazunov's First Symphony. Glazunov put up with it, didn't dare contradict him, and later even def ended Balakirev. And Glazunov wanted to fix up my First. Of course, he wasn't talking about pages, as far as I remember there were just a few unpleasant harmonies, as Glazunov thought, and he insisted that I change them, even suggesting his own variations.