Fading out names: Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky
(Portrait of the composer)
Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (1881 - 1951) has achieved neither the status of a great composer nor a worldwide recognition. Being one of the first Soviet composers, he noticeably stood out among them due to his nobel upbringing, aesthetic views and sharp philosophical mindset. Furthermore, he made a huge breakthrough in the development of the genre of symphony.
First education
The Myaskovsky family was a lineage of military people. Consequently, Myaskovsky followed in the military footsteps. The main thing to say about this is that he studied the military field with excellent marks, was very fond of it and achieved great success in military engineering. One of his engineering works on construction was even brought to life.
Myaskovsky was taught to play the piano. The difference to others of his circle who also were taught this activity was that he was truly interested in playing the musical instrument and, besides, did first attempts in composing as well.
While his unit stayed in Moscow, Myaskovsky took lessons from A. M. Glier, composer and music teacher who gave privat lessons to young Prokofiev as well. But apart from necessary works in music theory Glier never saw any independent creative works written by his student. The reason was the Myaskovsky's great misfortune which had "closed" his path to the "great composers" - Myaskovsky's great modesty, lack of faith in his own strength. Myaskovsky's excuses in the style of
"well, all this is nonsense, not compositions”
left Glier in extreme perplexity put in the verbal form in a letter to his wife
"He has great talent, great prospects, but does he really compose so badly?!".
Sankt-Petersburg
In St. Petersburg, Myaskovsky decided to enter the Conservatory. Renting a small room near the train station, he used to buy and study newly published music. He also took theoretical private lessons on harmony. In terms of solfeggio, he had experience from an earlier age, when, during breaks from military studies, he went alone to the forest where, listening to birds, tried to correlate their voices with notes. Such training was not just based on the interest to enter the conservatory, but by that Myaskovsky wanted to immediately enroll in senior courses, where not harmony but complexer subjects as counterpoint and instrumentation were being studied.
However, upon admission, the St. Petersburg professorship in the person of Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov decided that such bold applicants as Myaskovsky and others similar to him should start from the very beginning and accepted them to the first level of study. So Myaskovsky landed in the middle of junior courses in A.K.Lyadov's harmony class.
Myaskovsky did not dare to report about his musical education to his military unit and kept all his music studies a secret. To do this, it was necessary to have a truly iron discipline:
The first half of the day Myaskovsky spent in the Conservatory, and the second one in the military unit, also in training. The evening was spent preparing for one educational institution, and the night was spent preparing homework for another. At 4 o'clock in the morning Myaskovsky went to bed, and literally 2-3 hours later he got up. As a result, Myaskovsky constantly walked sluggish, sleepy. To those around him who did not know his complicated life, he seemed taciturn and gloomy.
In addition, Myaskovsky has never participated in any organizations, discussions and events happening in the Conservatory. Therefore, he was more of an outcast. (It seems to me, however, that he simply did not want to get into any newspapers and reports on events, being accidentally read and visited by a member of his military unit).
Myaskovsky and Prokofiev
During his studies, Myaskovsky became close friends with Prokofiev. Of course, they were completely opposite personalities. Severe, always not satisfied with himself Myaskovsky and 10 years younger than him, optimistic and always pleased with himself Prokofiev. Their friendship was literally up to the grave (Myaskovsky died in 1951, Prokofiev in 1953).
Their friendship started when one offered another to sight read together, and, since at that time it was popular to do it in four hands, they played quite often: mostly novelties, went to concerts together, laughed at “old-dated” Glazunov, Lyadov, idolized Scriabin, not missing any slight work premiere of the latter. At some point Myaskovsky asked Prokofiev to let him play his compositions, and since then they had been constantly in correspondence, where they informed each other in detail about their creative plans, about working on compositions, consulted, criticized and quarrelled.
Formation of the composer’s style
One summer Prokofiev suggested Myaskovsky to write a symphony for the new academic year. Thus Nikolai Yakovlevich, who was 27 years old at the time, wrote his first symphony. Not only that, it was his first major work published as opus 1. While working on it, Myaskovsky came to the conclusion that the symphony was exactly the genre with which he could best express himself. Consequently, the symphony became the main genre of his work and, based on the total number of symphonies he wrote - which is 27 - to work on them became like to write the composer's diary where each page was a symphony - a reflection of events happening around, thoughts and, naturally, the mental state from all this. After all, the other genres he worked on were just additions to his symphonies.
However, the first symphony does not yet claim to be at such a level of symphonies. This was still the first attempt, although a very successful one since it already reflected those features that would become the basis of the Myaskovsky's symphonism:
Firstly, the way of dealing with the orchestra is classical, there are no innovations and timbre experiments. Even later, when Myaskovsky increased the number of performers in his compositions to a very large scale, colors and other timbre excesses would be, I would even say, "enemies" for him. The main thing for him was the thought. And the excessive colorful timbres that form the basis of music of Rimsky-Koraskov, Ravel or Debussy, only interfered with the thought’s clear and precise expression. So the orchestral timbres Myaskowsky used are all the most standard and do not attract much attention.
Secondly, it is worth noting the very history of creation: the symphony was written in a single rush, after which it underwent painful editing, as the first draft was “unnecessarily lengthy”. Myaskovsky would continue to work on his compositions for a long time, seeing in them only a burden and trying to shorten them at all cost, or thinking about how to continue some good fragments. In general, he was always dissatisfied with himself already from the first official composition. It seems, what's wrong with that? A person is looking for ways of development! But if other composers' self-criticism was the impetus for constant work, namely the search and motivation, then Myaskovsky's self-criticism was mixed with a large share of passivity, he lost all spirit of work, and in combination with his modesty, the whole creative process turned into a kind of "oblomovism" (the word based on the main character of Ivan Goncharov's novel "Oblomov"): in the sense that: the work doesn't go - well, okay. Something finally came out on the paper - well, just a piece of crap. In light of this, Prokofiev constantly liked to compare Myaskovsky with the great egotistical Wagner.
As a result, during his conservatory studies, Myaskovsky formed a circle of genres that would make up his entire work:
symphony,
piano miniatures and sonatas,
string quartets,
romances.
Piano miniatures are a genre of chamber music, that is, "for a narrow circle". The genre of the string quartet is also chamber, but of a more personal nature. The genre of romance is more than personal.
As can be seen from the genres, Myaskovsky tended to be closed, the symphony was a diary for him, and he interpreted the genre of the sonata extremely subjectively.
Passivity could not but result in his works. So pessimism is the basis of Myaskovsky's worldview. The events taking place could not but affect his nature. And philosophical conclusions did not lead to anything good. The military profession was increasingly depressing.
Myaskovsky graduated from the conservatory as quietly as he studied there, showing Glazunov two string quartets.
[to be continued]