Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

We start with the usual Russian-to-English orthography nightmare! In Cyrillic, we're dealing with Николай Андреевич Римский-Корсаков and the usual questions that need answering are 1) do we use the patronymic (the middle name); and 2) how do we most appropriately transliterate the outer two names? If we consult the New Groves for answers, we get one possible set of answers: Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich, indicating no optionality on the patronymic and a spelling of his first name with an '-ay' ending. That hasn't changed since my 1980 edition was printed: the online version still returns the same results from the 2001 edition even now. The trouble is, that's a seriously odd result!

If we examine the man's own signature, we'd see this:

Now, that looks definitely patronymic-less to me… and it ends his first name with an “-ai”, not an “-ay” -and I'd argue that “Nikolai” is the form of his first name that most of us buying CDs of his music would be familiar with. Wikipedia catalogue him as 'Nikolai', but IMSLP catalogue him under “Nikolay” and the Encyclopedia Britannica agrees… so opinions on that matter are obviously divided, though Wikipedia, Britannica and nearly all of IMSLP's scores are patronymic-less, so that matter is less in dispute, unless you are the New Groves! Incidentally, I checked my 1940 edition of Groves and discovered him catalogued as Nicholaï Andreievich Rimsky-Korsakov, proving that matters of Russian/English orthography are matters of taste and habit and not set in stone.

Since he signed himself 'Nicolai', that seems pretty persuasive to me, whatever the likes of New Groves or Britannica say! Additionally, the use of “-ay” would tend to make you want to rhyme his first name way 'day' or 'way', whereas the “-ai” would make you want to rhyme it with “eye”… and I'm pretty certain that “Nikkol-eye” is the correct pronunciation. One final complication arises, though: his signature seems to be 'Nicolai', which is odd because the Cyrillic 'c' is how a Russian would write our letter 's', and an 's' in his first name makes no sense at all! I've no explanation for that. Everyone agrees the first name should have a hard 'k' sound, not an 's' one! Therefore, “Nikolai” is more commonly used than, say, “Nicolai”. So, summing all of that up: on this site and in my music catalogue, these factors (and the spelling on most of my CD booklets) mandates that he, finally, gets catalogued as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, with a 'k', an -ai ending and without a patronymic. Your mileage can vary, of course!

Before moving on to more important matters, I should perhaps mention that Rimsky-Korsakov wrote his own autobiography over a period of many years, and a 20MB PDF of it can be downloaded here. It's poorly written on the whole and its orthography is all over the place (it was published in 1923, so that's maybe to be expected -but even so, mention of “Chaykovski” and “Cheryepnin” (in the Preface, on page 27 of the PDF) is extremely jarring!), but it's an interesting telling of his own life-story, in any case.

He was born in 1844 in Tikhvin, a small town about 180km east of St. Petersburg. He lived there, without a break, until 1856 when he joined the College of Naval Cadets in St. Petersburg. He graduated from there in 1862. He was not allowed to resign from the service at that time, however: he was therefore required to spend two years on a naval clipper, cruising to such delightful places as Gravesend! He also took in rather more delightful places such as New York, Rio de Janeiro and various ports in the Mediterranean. By that stage, he was composing (under the influence of Balakirev and Mussorgsky): his Opus 1 (his first symphony) was published in 1865 (though he was to revise it heavily in 1884: this tendency to revise his work comes up time and again in the context of Rimsky-Korsakov, as it does similarly with the likes of Anton Bruckner. Sometimes you wish he'd just let things alone!)

In 1867, a music critic noted the coming to prominence of The Five (or 'The Mighty Handful', as the more literal translation would have it): Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. It was really a circle of Balakirev and his friends, within which Rimsky-Korsakov was particular admired as a skilful orchestrator. A particular friendship was soon struck up between Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky: they shared an appartment at one point, with Mussorgsky permitted to use the piano in the morning, Rimsky-Korsakov in the afternoon. In 1871, Rimsky-Korsakov was appointed professor of composition and orchestration at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He also began to conduct around this time: his musical life was flourishing.

Rimsky-Korsakov is, perhaps surprisingly to some, known principally an opera composer. That is perhaps surprising because we probably know him best as the orchestrator of, for example, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition or Borodin's Prince Igor. Those particular projects took up a lot of his time that he could have spent writing his own original compositions, of which there are relatively few -but principal amongst those original compositions are his fifteen operas. The first was The Maid of Pskov in 1872, subsequently revised multiple times; his last was The Golden Cockerell, in 1907. There are also three symphonies and several well-known symphony-like orchestral pieces (such as Scheherezade, Capriccio espagnol and the Russian Easter Festival Overture. New Groves says of these that They are essentially brightly coloured mosaics: the thematic ideas lack organic cohesion, though they are often striking and piquant. Of his operas, New Groves says that Rimsky-Korsakov suffered from what might seem to be a crippling disability: lack of dramatic power, in particular the capacity to create characters in sound. He could provide his characters with often lyrically beautiful music, but it hardly ever seems to frow out of a character's inner being. Thus, it can be said that rather than music-dramas, Rimsky-Korsakov created musical fairy tales with scenes. Instead of characters, he created delightful fantastic puppets …and in this field, in this particular approach, he was supremely gifted.

All of his music seeks to find a specifically Russian style, drawing heavily on folk music and exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements. As the 1890s drew on, he became increasingly conservative in matters of musical taste: he disliked Debussy, for example, as lacking any technique or imagination. Nevertheless, his own style -of bold use of primary instrumental colours over a framework of very clearly defined part-writing- was passed on to his pupils Miaskovsky, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. His general influence is even detectable in the music of the likes of Ravel, Debussy and Respighi.

His health was not good from around 1890 onwards: he was diagnosed with angina in 1890 and this slowed him down to some extent, until the stresses of the 1905 revolution more or less hastened his demise. He eventually died in 1908 and was buried in St. Petersburg, next to Borodin, Glinka and Mussorgsky.

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