Brief biography of Dargomyzhsky. Composer Alexander Dargomyzhsky: biography, creative heritage, interesting facts

Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky is a Russian composer, one of the founders of Russian classical music.

Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky was born on February 14 (February 2, old style), 1813, in the village of Troitskoye, now the Belevsky district of the Tula region. He studied singing, playing the piano and violin. In the late 20s - early 30s of the 19th centuries, his first compositions (romances, piano pieces) were published. A decisive role in Dargomyzhsky's musical development was played by his meeting with the Russian composer, founder of Russian classical music, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (early 1835).

In 1837 - 1841 Alexander Sergeevich wrote his first opera - "Esmeralda" (based on the novel by the French romantic writer Victor Hugo "Notre Dame Cathedral", staged in 1847, in Moscow), which reflected the romantic tendencies characteristic of his early work. In the 40s. created a number of the best romances, including "I loved you", "Wedding", "Night marshmallow".

The main work of the composer is the opera "Mermaid" (based on the dramatic poem of the same name by the Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, staged in 1856, in St. Petersburg).

Since the end of the 50s, Dargomyzhsky's musical and social activities have been widely developed. In 1859 he was elected a member of the committee of the Russian Musical Society. At this time, he became close to a group of young composers, later known as. "Mighty bunch"; participated in the work of the satirical magazine "Iskra" (later "Alarm Clock").

In the 60s, Alexander Sergeevich turned to the symphonic genre and created 3 orchestral pieces based on folk themes: "Baba Yaga, or From the Volga nach Riga" (1862), "Little Russian Cossack" (1864), "Chukhonskaya Fantasy" ( 1867).

In 1864 - 1865 he made a trip abroad (for the first time he was abroad in 1844 - 1845), during which some of his works were performed in Brussels. In 1866, the composer began working on the opera The Stone Guest (based on Pushkin), setting an innovative task - to write an opera based on the full, unaltered text of a literary work. The work has not been completed. According to the author's will, the unfinished 1st picture was completed by the Russian composer Caesar Antonovich Cui, and the opera was instrumented by the composer, conductor and musical and public figure Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov (staged in 1872, in St. Petersburg).

Alexander Sergeevich, following Glinka, laid the foundations of the Russian classical music school. Developing the folk-realistic principles of Glinka's music, he enriched them with new features. The composer's work reflected the tendencies of critical realism of the 40s - 60s of the 19th century. In a number of works (opera "Mermaid", songs "Old Corporal", "Worm", "Titular Advisor") he embodied the theme of social inequality with great poignancy. The composer's lyrics are characterized by the desire for a detailed psychological analysis, for the exposure of complex spiritual contradictions. He gravitated mainly towards dramatic forms of expression. In "Mermaid", according to the composer, his task was to embody the dramatic elements of the Russian people.

Dargomyzhsky's propensity for dramatization was often manifested in his vocal lyrics as well (romances "I'm sad", "Both boring and sad", "I still love him", etc.). The main means of creating a specific individual image was for him the reproduction of the living intonations of human speech. His motto was the words: “I want the sound to directly express the word. I want the truth." This principle is most radically implemented in the opera The Stone Guest, which is based almost entirely on melodic recitative.

Realistic innovation of A.S. Dargomyzhsky, his bold presentation of the social problems of Russian reality, humanism was highly appreciated by the younger generation of composers who came to the fore in the 60s of the 19th century. Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, who was closest to Andrei Sergeevich in terms of creativity, called him a great teacher of truth in music.

Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky died on January 17 (January 5 according to the old style), 1869, in St. Petersburg.

Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky (1813-1869) together with M.I. Glinka is the founder of the Russian classical school. The historical significance of his work was very accurately formulated by Mussorgsky, who called Dargomyzhsky "a great teacher of truth in music." The tasks that Dargomyzhsky set for himself were bold, innovative, and their implementation opened up new prospects for the development of Russian music. It is no coincidence that Russian composers of the generation of the 1860s, in the first place, representatives of the Mighty Handful, highly appreciated his work.

A decisive role in the formation of Dargomyzhsky as a composer was played by his rapprochement with M. I. Glinka. He studied music theory from Glinka's notebooks. with lecture notes by Siegfried Dehn, Dargomyzhsky performed Glinka's romances in various salons and circles, before his eyes the opera "Life for the Tsar" ("Ivan Susanin") was composed, in the stage rehearsals of which he took a direct part. Dargomyzhsky perfectly mastered the creative style of his older contemporary, as evidenced by the similarity a number of essays. And yet, compared with Glinka, Dargomyzhsky's talent was of a completely different nature. It's a talent playwright and psychologist, who manifested himself mainly in the vocal and stage genres.

According to Asafiev, "Dargomyzhsky sometimes possessed the ingenious intuition of a musician-playwright, not inferior to Monteverdi and Gluck ...". Glinka is versatile, larger, more harmonious, he easily grasps whole, Dargomyzhsky immersed in details. The artist is very observant, he analytically studies the human personality, notices its special qualities, demeanor, gestures, intonations of speech.He was especially attracted by the transmission of subtle processes of inner, spiritual life, various shades of emotional states.

Dargomyzhsky became the first representative of the "natural school" in Russian music. The favorite themes of critical realism, images of the “humiliated and insulted”, related to the heroes, turned out to be close to him.N.V. Gogol and P.A. Fedotov. The psychology of the “little man”, compassion for his experiences (“Titular Advisor”), social inequality (“Mermaid”), “prose of everyday life” without embellishment - these themes first entered Russian music thanks to Dargomyzhsky.

The first attempt to embody the psychological drama of the "little people" was the opera "Esmeralda" to the finished French libretto by Victor Hugo based on the novel "Notre Dame Cathedral" (completed in 1842). Esmeralda, based on the model of a large romantic opera, demonstrated the composer's realistic aspirations, his interest in acute conflict, strong dramatic plots. In the future, the main source of such plots for Dargomyzhsky was the work of A.S. Pushkin, on the texts of which he created the operas "Mermaid" and "The Stone Guest", more than 20 romances and choirs,cantata "The Triumph of Bacchus", later converted into an opera-ballet.

The originality of Dargomyzhsky's creative manner determines original fusion of speech and musical intonations. He formulated his own creative credo in the famous aphorism:“I want the sound to directly express the word, I want the truth.” By truth, the composer understood the exact transmission of speech intonations in music.

The strength of Dargomyzhsky's musical recitation lies mainly in its striking naturalness. It is closely connected both with the original Russian chant and with the characteristic colloquial intonations. Surprisingly subtle feeling of all the features of Russian intonation , melodics Russian speech played a significant role in Dargomyzhsky's love for vocal music-making and his studies in vocal pedagogy.

The pinnacle of Dargomyzhsky's quest in the field of musical recitation was histhe last opera is The Stone Guest (based on Pushkin's little tragedy). In it, he comes to a radical reform of the operatic genre, composing music to the unchanging text of a literary source. Achieving the continuity of the musical action, he abandons the historically established operatic forms. Only two of Laura's songs have a complete, rounded shape. In the music of The Stone Guest, Dargomyzhsky managed to achieve a perfect fusion of speech intonations with expressive melodism, anticipating the opening of the opera house XX century.

The innovative principles of The Stone Guest were continued not only in the operatic recitative of M. P. Mussorgsky, but also in the work of S. Prokofiev. It is known that the great Verdi, while working on Othello, carefully studied the score of this masterpiece by Dargomyzhsky.

In the creative heritage of the composer, along with operas, chamber vocal music stands out - more than 100 works. They cover all the main genres of Russian vocal lyrics, including new varieties of romance. These are lyrical-psychological monologues (“I'm sad”, “I'm both bored and sad” to the words of Lermontov), ​​theatrical genre-everyday romances-scenes (“The Miller” to Pushkin's poems).

Dargomyzhsky's orchestral fantasies - "Bolero", "Baba Yaga", "Little Russian Cossack", "Chukhonskaya Fantasy" - together with Glinka's symphonic opuses, marked the pinnacle of the first stage of Russian symphonic music. They clearly show signs of genre-characteristic symphonism (national coloring of thematic reliance on song and dance genres, picturesqueness of images, programming).

The musical and social activity of Dargomyzhsky, which unfolded from the end of the 50s of the 19th century, was multifaceted. He took part in the work of the satirical magazine "Iskra" (and since 1864 - and the magazine "Budilnik"), was a member of the committee of the Russian Musical Society (in 1867 he became chairman of its St. Petersburg branch), participated in the development of the draft charter of the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Dargomyzhsky's last opera The Stone Guest was named by Cui alpha and omega Russian opera art, along with Glinka's Ruslan.D he advised all vocal composers to study the declamatory language of The Stone Guest "constantly and with the greatest care" as code.

Alexander Dargomyzhsky was born on February 2 (according to the new calendar, February 14), 1813. The researcher established that Alexander Dargomyzhsky was born in the village of Voskresenskoye (now Arkhangelsk) in the Tula province. His father, Sergei Nikolaevich, was the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner Alexei Petrovich Ladyzhensky, who owned an estate in the Chernsky district. Shortly after his birth, Sergei was taken in and eventually adopted by Colonel Nikolai Ivanovich Boucharov, who brought him to his estate Dargomyzhka in the Tula province. As a result, the son of A.P. Ladyzhensky became Sergey Nikolaevich Dargomyzhsky (after the name of the estate of his stepfather N.I. Boucharov). Such a change of surname was required for admission to the Noble Boarding School at Moscow University. Mother, nee Princess Maria Borisovna Kozlovskaya, sister of the famous wit Peter Kozlovsky, married against the will of her parents.

Until the age of five, the boy did not speak, his late-formed voice remained forever high and slightly hoarse, which did not prevent him, however, from subsequently touching him to tears with the expressiveness and artistry of his vocal performance. In 1817, the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Dargomyzhsky's father got a position as the head of the office in a commercial bank, and he himself began to receive a musical education. His first piano teacher was Louise Wolgeborn, then he began studying with Adrian Danilevsky. Finally, Franz Schoberlechner was Dargomyzhsky's teacher for three years. Having achieved a certain skill, Dargomyzhsky began to perform as a pianist at charity concerts and in private collections. By that time, he had already written a number of piano compositions, romances and other works, some of which were published.

In the autumn of 1827, Dargomyzhsky, following in the footsteps of his father, entered the civil service and, thanks to hard work and a conscientious attitude to business, quickly began to move up the career ladder. In the spring of 1835 he met Mikhail Glinka, with whom he played the piano four hands. Having visited the rehearsals of Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar, which was being prepared for production, Dargomyzhsky decided to write a major stage work on his own. On the advice of Vasily Zhukovsky, the composer turned to the author's work, which was very popular in Russia in the late 1830s - Hugo's Notre Dame Cathedral. Dargomyzhsky used a French libretto written by Hugo himself for Louise Bertin, whose opera Esmeralda had been staged shortly before. By 1841, Dargomyzhsky completed the orchestration and translation of the opera, for which he also took the name Esmeralda, and handed over the score to the directorate of the Imperial Theaters. The opera, written in the spirit of French composers, had been waiting for its premiere for several years, since Italian productions were much more popular with the public. Despite the good dramatic and musical decision of Esmeralda, this opera left the stage some time after the premiere and was practically never staged in the future. In his autobiography, published in the newspaper Music and Theatre, published by A. N. Serov in 1867, Dargomyzhsky wrote:
Esmeralda lay in my briefcase for eight years. These eight years of vain waiting, and in the most ebullient years of my life, laid a heavy burden on my entire artistic activity.

melancholy waltz.

experiencesDargomyzhsky about the failure of "Esmeralda" was aggravated by the growing popularity of Glinka's works. The composer begins to give singing lessons (his students were exclusively women, while he did not charge them) and writes a number of romances for voice and piano, some of which were published and became very popular. In 1843, Dargomyzhsky retired, and soon went abroad.

He meets the leading European composers of the time. Returning to Russia in 1845, the composer is fond of studying Russian musical folklore, the elements of which are clearly manifested in the romances and songs written during this period: “Darling Maiden”, “Fever”, “Melnik”, as well as in the opera “Mermaid”, which the composer began to write
in 1848."Mermaid" occupies a special place in the composer's work, written on the plot of the tragedy of the same name in the verses of A. S. Pushkin. The premiere of "Mermaid" took place in May 1856 in St. Petersburg. The largest Russian music critic of that time, Alexander Serov, responded to it with a large-scale positive review.

Fantasy "Baba Yaga". Scherzo.

In 1859Dargomyzhsky is elected to the leadership of the newly founded Russian Musical Society, he meets a group of young composers, the central figure among whom was Mily Balakirev (this group would later become the "Mighty Handful"). Dargomyzhsky plans to write a new opera. The choice of the composer stops at the third of Pushkin's "Little Tragedies" - "The Stone Guest". Work on the opera, however, is proceeding rather slowly due to the creative crisis that began at Dargomyzhsky, associated with the exit from the repertoire of the Rusalka theaters and the neglect of younger musicians. The composer again travels to Europe, where his orchestral piece "Cossack", as well as fragments from "Mermaid", are successfully performed. Approvingly speaks about the work of Dargomyzhsky Franz Liszt.

"Bolero"

Returning to Russia, inspired by the success of his works abroad, Dargomyzhsky, with renewed vigor, takes on the composition of The Stone Guest. The language he chose for this opera - built almost entirely on melodic recitatives with simple chordal accompaniment - interested the composers of The Mighty Handful. However, the appointment of Dargomyzhsky to the post of head of the Russian Musical Society and the failure of the opera The Triumph of Bacchus, which he wrote back in 1848 and had not seen the stage for almost twenty years, weakened the composer's health, and on January 5, 1869, he died, leaving the opera unfinished. According to his will, The Stone Guest was completed by Cui and orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Laura's first song from the opera "The Stone Guest"

Prince's aria from the opera "Mermaid"

Romance "I still love him, crazy"

Evgeny Nesterenko performs romances by A. Dargomyzhsky

1, Timofeev - "Ballad"

2. A.S. Pushkin - "I loved you"

3. M.Yu. Lermontov - I'm sad

Dargomyzhsky's innovation was not shared by his younger colleagues and was condescendingly considered oversights. The harmonic dictionary of the style of the late Dargomyzhsky, the individualized structure of consonances, their typical characteristic were, as on an ancient fresco recorded with later layers, “ennobled” beyond recognition by Rimsky-Korsakov’s edition, brought into line with the requirements of his taste, like Mussorgsky’s operas “Boris Godunov” and "Khovanshchina", also radically edited by Rimsky-Korsakov.

Dargomyzhsky was buried in the Necropolis of Masters of Arts at the Tikhvin Cemetery, not far from Glinka's grave.

Opera "The Stone Guest".

Dargomyzhsky created a vocal style that lies between cantilena and recitative, a special melodious or melodic recitative, elastic enough to be in constant correspondence with speech, and at the same time rich in characteristic melodic twists, spiritualizing this speech, bringing into it a new, lacking emotional element.

(2 (14) .2.1813, Troitskoye village, now the Belevsky district of the Tula region, -

5(17).1.1869, Petersburg)

Dargomyzhsky, Alexander Sergeevich - famous Russian composer. Born February 14, 1813 in the village of Dargomyzhe, Belevsky district, Tula province. He died on January 17, 1869 in St. Petersburg. His father, Sergei Nikolaevich, served in the Ministry of Finance, in a commercial bank.

Dargomyzhsky's mother, nee Princess Maria Borisovna Kozlovskaya, married against the will of her parents.

She was well educated; Her poems were published in almanacs and magazines. Some of the poems she wrote for her children, mostly of an instructive nature, were included in the collection: "A Gift to My Daughter."

One of the Dargomyzhsky brothers played the violin beautifully, participating in a chamber ensemble at home evenings; one of the sisters played the harp well and composed romances.

Until the age of five, Dargomyzhsky did not speak at all, and his late-formed voice remained forever squeaky and hoarse, which, however, did not prevent him from subsequently touching him to tears with the expressiveness and artistry of vocal performance at intimate meetings.

Education Dargomyzhsky received home, but thorough; he knew the French language and French literature very well.

Playing in the puppet theater, the boy composed small vaudeville plays for him, and at the age of six he began to learn to play the piano.

His teacher, Adrian Danilevsky, not only did not encourage his student to compose from the age of 11, but exterminated his composing experiments.

Piano learning ended with Schoberlechner, a student of Hummel. Dargomyzhsky also studied singing, with Tseibih, who informed him of information about intervals, and violin playing with P.G. Vorontsov, participating from the age of 14 in the quartet ensemble.

There was no real system in Dargomyzhsky's musical education, and he owed his theoretical knowledge mainly to himself.

His earliest compositions - rondo, variations for piano, romances to the words of Zhukovsky and Pushkin - were not found in his papers, but even during his lifetime, "Contredanse nouvelle" and "Variations" for piano were published, written: the first - in 1824, the second - in 1827 - 1828. In the 1830s, Dargomyzhsky was known in the musical circles of St. Petersburg as a "strong pianist", as well as the author of several piano pieces in a brilliant salon style and romances: "Oh, ma charmante", "The Maiden and the Rose", "I confess, uncle", "You are pretty" and others, not much different from the style of romances by Verstovsky, Alyabyev and Varlamov, with an admixture of French influence.

Acquaintance with M.I. Glinka, who handed over to Dargomyzhsky the theoretical manuscripts he had brought from Berlin from Professor Den, contributed to the expansion of his knowledge in the field of harmony and counterpoint; at the same time he began to study orchestration.

Assessing Glinka's talent, Dargomyzhsky for his first opera "Esmeralda" chose, however, the French libretto compiled by Victor Hugo from his novel "Notre Dame de Paris" and only after the end of the opera (in 1839) did he translate it into Russian.

"Esmeralda", which remains unpublished (handwritten score, clavieraustsug, Dargomyzhsky's autograph, are stored in the central music library of the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg; a lithographed copy of the 1st act was found in the notes of Dargomyzhsky) - a weak, imperfect work, which cannot be compared with "Life for the king."

But the features of Dargomyzhsky were already revealed in it: drama and a desire for expressiveness of the vocal style, under the influence of acquaintance with the works of Megul, Aubert and Cherubini. Esmeralda was staged only in 1847 in Moscow and in 1851 in St. Petersburg. “Those eight years of vain waiting and in the most ebullient years of my life laid a heavy burden on my entire artistic activity,” writes Dargomyzhsky. Until 1843, Dargomyzhsky was in the service, first in the control of the Ministry of the Court, then in the Department of the State Treasury; then he devoted himself entirely to music.

The failure with "Esmeralda" suspended Dargomyzhsky's operatic work; he took up writing romances, which, together with earlier ones, were published (30 romances) in 1844 and brought him honorable fame.

In 1844 Dargomyzhsky traveled to Germany, Paris, Brussels and Vienna. Personal acquaintance with Aubert, Meyerbeer and other European musicians influenced his further development.

He became close friends with Halevi and with Fetis, who testifies that Dargomyzhsky consulted with him regarding his compositions, including Esmeralda (Biographie universelle des musiciens, Petersburg, X, 1861). Having left as an adherent of everything French, Dargomyzhsky returned to Petersburg a much greater champion of everything Russian than before (as happened with Glinka).

Reviews of the foreign press about the performance of Dargomyzhsky's works at private collections in Vienna, Paris and Brussels contributed to a certain change in the attitude of the theater management towards Dargomyzhsky. In the 1840s he wrote a large cantata with choirs based on Pushkin's text "The Triumph of Bacchus".

It was performed at the directorate's concert at the Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg in 1846, but the author was refused permission to stage it as an opera, completed and orchestrated in 1848 (see "Autobiography"), and only much later (in 1867) it was staged in Moscow.

This opera, like the first, is weak in music and not typical of Dargomyzhsky. Disappointed by the refusal to stage Bacchus, Dargomyzhsky again closed himself in a close circle of his admirers and admirers, continuing to compose small vocal ensembles (duets, trios, quartets) and romances, then published and made popular.

At the same time, he took up teaching singing. The number of his students and especially his female students (he gave lessons for free) is enormous. L.N. Belenitsyn (by Karmalin's husband; Dargomyzhsky's most interesting letters to her have been published), M.V. Shilovskaya, Bilibina, Barteneva, Girs, Pavlova, Princess Manvelova, A.N. Purholt (by husband Molas).

The sympathy and worship of women, especially singers, always inspired and encouraged Dargomyzhsky, and he used to say half-jokingly: "If there were no singers in the world, it would not be worth being a composer." Already in 1843, Dargomyzhsky conceived a third opera, Rusalka, based on a text by Pushkin, but the composition moved extremely slowly, and even the approval of friends did not speed up the work; meanwhile, the duet of the prince and Natasha, performed by Dargomyzhsky and Karmalina, caused tears in Glinka.

A new impetus to the work of Dargomyzhsky was given by the resounding success of a grandiose concert from his compositions, arranged in St. Petersburg in the hall of the Nobility Assembly on April 9, 1853, according to the idea of ​​Prince V.F. Odoevsky and A.N. Karamzin. Taking up the "Mermaid" again, Dargomyzhsky finished it in 1855 and transferred it to 4 hands (an unpublished arrangement is kept in the Imperial Public Library). In Rusalka, Dargomyzhsky consciously cultivated the Russian musical style created by Glinka.

New in "Mermaid" is its drama, comedy (the figure of a matchmaker) and bright recitatives, in which Dargomyzhsky was ahead of Glinka. But the vocal style of "Mermaid" is far from sustained; next to truthful, expressive recitatives, there are conditional cantilenas (Italianisms), rounded arias, duets and ensembles that do not always fit in with the requirements of the drama.

The weak side of the "Mermaid" is still technically its orchestration, which cannot be compared with the richest orchestral colors of "Ruslan", and from an artistic point of view - the whole fantastic part, rather pale. The first performance of The Mermaid in 1856 (May 4) at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, with an unsatisfactory production, with old scenery, inappropriate costumes, careless performance, inappropriate cuts, conducted by K. Lyadov, who did not like Dargomyzhsky, was not successful .

The opera lasted only 26 performances until 1861, but renewed in 1865 with Platonova and Komissarzhevsky, it was a huge success and has since become a repertoire and one of the most beloved of Russian operas. In Moscow, "Mermaid" was staged for the first time in 1858. The initial failure of "Mermaid" had a depressing effect on Dargomyzhsky; according to the story of his friend, V.P. Engelhardt, he intended to burn the scores of "Esmeralda" and "Mermaid", and only the formal refusal of the directorate to give these scores to the author, supposedly for correction, saved them from destruction.

The last period of Dargomyzhsky's work, the most original and significant, can be called reformatory. Its beginning, already rooted in the recitatives of the "Mermaid", is marked by the appearance of a number of original vocal pieces, distinguished either by their comedy - or, rather, by Gogol's humor, laughter through tears ("Titular Counselor", 1859), then by drama ("Old Corporal", 1858; "Paladin", 1859), then with subtle irony ("Worm", on the text of Beranger-Kurochkin, 1858), then with a burning feeling of a rejected woman ("We parted proudly", "I don't care", 1859) and always remarkable in strength and truth of vocal expressiveness.

These vocal pieces were a new step forward in the history of Russian romance after Glinka and served as models for the vocal masterpieces of Mussorgsky, who wrote on one of them a dedication to Dargomyzhsky, "the great teacher of musical truth." The comic vein of Dargomyzhsky also manifested itself in the field of orchestral composition. His orchestral fantasies belong to the same period: "Little Russian Cossack", inspired by Glinka's "Kamarinskaya", and quite independent: "Baba Yaga, or From the Volga nach Riga" and "Chukhonskaya Fantasy".

The last two, originally conceived, are also interesting in terms of orchestral techniques, showing that Dargomyzhsky had taste and imagination in combining the colors of the orchestra. Dargomyzhsky's acquaintance in the mid-1850s with the composers of the "Balakirev circle" was beneficial for both sides.

The new vocal verse of Dargomyzhsky influenced the development of the vocal style of young composers, which especially affected the work of Cui and Mussorgsky, who met Dargomyzhsky, like Balakirev, earlier than the rest. Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin were particularly affected by Dargomyzhsky's new opera techniques, which were the practical implementation of the thesis expressed by him in a letter (1857) to Karmalina: "I want the sound to directly express the word; I want the truth." An opera composer by vocation, Dargomyzhsky, despite failures with the government administration, could not endure inaction for a long time.

In the early 1860s, he began to work on the magic-comic opera "Rogdan", but wrote only five numbers, two solo ones ("Duetino of Rogdana and Ratobor" and "Comic Song") and three choral ones (chorus of dervishes to Pushkin's words "Arise , timid", of a harsh oriental character and two women's choirs: "Quietly pour streams" and "As the luminiferous daylight appears"; all of them were first performed in concerts of the Free Music School in 1866 - 1867). Somewhat later, he conceived the opera "Mazepa", based on the plot of Pushkin's "Poltava", but, having written a duet between Orlik and Kochubey ("Again you are here, despicable person"), he stopped at it.

There was not enough determination to expend energy on a large work, the fate of which seemed unreliable. Traveling abroad, in 1864-65, contributed to the rise of his spirit and strength, as it was very successful artistically: in Brussels, Kapellmeister Hansens appreciated Dargomyzhsky's talent and contributed to the performance of his orchestral works in concerts (overture to "Mermaid" and "Cossack "), which was a huge success. But the main impetus to the extraordinary awakening of creativity was given to Dargomyzhsky by his new young comrades, whose talents he quickly appreciated. The question of opera forms then became another.

Serov was engaged in it, intending to become an opera composer and carried away by the ideas of Wagner's operatic reform. The members of the Balakirev circle were also engaged in it, especially Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, solving it on their own, based largely on the features of the new vocal style of Dargomyzhsky. Composing his "William Ratcliffe", Cui immediately introduced Dargomyzhsky to what he had written. Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov also introduced Dargomyzhsky to their new vocal compositions. Their energy was communicated to Dargomyzhsky himself; he decided to boldly embark on the path of operatic reform and began (as he put it) the swan song, setting about composing The Stone Guest with extraordinary zeal, without changing a single line of Pushkin's text and without adding a single word to it.

Did not stop creativity and Dargomyzhsky's disease (aneurysms and hernia); in the last weeks he had been writing in bed with a pencil. Young friends, gathering at the patient's, performed scene after scene of the opera as it was being created, and with their enthusiasm gave new strength to the fading composer. Within a few months the opera was almost finished; death prevented him from completing the music only for the last seventeen verses. According to Dargomyzhsky's will, he completed Cui's The Stone Guest; he also wrote the introduction to the opera, borrowing thematic material from it, and orchestrated the opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. Through the efforts of friends, The Stone Guest was staged in St. Petersburg on the Mariinsky Stage on February 16, 1872 and resumed in 1876, but it did not stay in the repertoire and is still far from appreciated.

However, the significance of The Stone Guest, which logically completes the reformist ideas of Dargomyzhsky, is beyond doubt. In The Stone Guest, Dargomyzhsky, like Wagner, seeks to achieve a synthesis of drama and music, subordinating the music to the text. The operatic forms of The Stone Guest are so flexible that the music flows continuously, without any repetitions that are not caused by the meaning of the text. This was achieved by the rejection of symmetrical forms of arias, duets and other rounded ensembles, and at the same time the rejection of a continuous cantilena, as insufficiently elastic to express rapidly changing shades of speech. But here the paths of Wagner and Dargomyzhsky diverge. Wagner transferred the center of gravity of the musical expression of the psychology of the characters to the orchestra, and his vocal parts were in the background.

Dargomyzhsky focused musical expressiveness on vocal parts, finding it more expedient for the actors themselves to speak about themselves. Opera links in the continuously flowing music of Wagner are leitmotifs, symbols of persons, objects, ideas. The operatic style of The Stone Guest is devoid of leitmotifs; nevertheless, the characteristics of the characters in Dargomyzhsky are bright and strictly sustained. Different speeches are put into their mouths, but they are the same for everyone. Denying a solid cantilena, Dargomyzhsky also rejected the ordinary, so-called "dry" recitative, which has little expressiveness and is devoid of purely musical beauty. He created a vocal style that lies between cantilena and recitative, a special melodious or melodic recitative, elastic enough to be in constant correspondence with the speech, and at the same time rich in characteristic melodic twists, spiritualizing this speech, bringing into it a new, lacking emotional element.

This vocal style, which fully corresponds to the peculiarities of the Russian language, is the merit of Dargomyzhsky. The operatic forms of The Stone Guest, caused by the properties of the libretto, the text, which did not allow for the widespread use of choirs, vocal ensembles, and independent performance of the orchestra, cannot, of course, be considered immutable models for any opera. Artistic problems allow not one, not two solutions. But the resolution of Dargomyzhsky's operatic problem is so characteristic that it will not be forgotten in the history of opera. Dargomyzhsky had not only Russian followers, but also foreign ones.

Gounod intended to write an opera on the model of The Stone Guest; Debussy in his opera "Pelléas et Mélisande" implemented the principles of Dargomyzhsky's operatic reform. - Dargomyzhsky's social and musical activity began only shortly before his death: from 1860 he was a member of the committee for the consideration of compositions submitted to competitions of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, and from 1867 he was elected director of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Society. Most of Dargomyzhsky's works were published by P. Jurgenson, Gutheil and V. Bessel. Operas and orchestral works are named above. Dargomyzhsky wrote few piano pieces (about 11), and all of them (except for the "Slavic Tarantella", composed in 1865) belong to the early period of his work.

Dargomyzhsky is especially prolific in the field of small vocal pieces for one voice (over 90); he wrote 17 more duets, 6 ensembles (for 3 and 4 voices) and "Petersburg Serenades" - choirs for different voices (12 ©). - See the letters of Dargomyzhsky ("Artist", 1894); I. Karzukhin, biography, with indexes of works and literature about Dargomyzhsky ("Artist", 1894); S. Bazurov "Dargomyzhsky" (1894); N. Findeisen "Dargomyzhsky"; L. Karmalina "Memories" ("Russian Antiquity", 1875); A. Serov, 10 articles about "Mermaid" (from a collection of critical essays); C. Cui "La musique en Russie"; V. Stasov "Our music for the last 25 years" (in collected works).

G. Timofeev

Russian Civilization

Russian composer Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky was born on February 14 (2 according to the old style) February 1813 in the village of Troitskoye, Belevsky district, Tula province. Father - Sergey Nikolaevich served as an official in the Ministry of Finance, in a commercial bank.
Mother - Maria Borisovna, nee Princess Kozlovskaya, composed plays for stage production. One of them - "Chimney sweep, or a good deed will not go unrewarded" was published in the magazine "Good-meaning". St. Petersburg writers, representatives of the "Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and Art" knew the composer's family.

In total, the family had six children: Erast, Alexander, Sophia, Lyudmila, Victor, Erminia.

Until the age of three, the Dargomyzhsky family lived at the Tverdunovo estate in Smolensk Governorate. A temporary move to the Tula province was associated with the invasion of Napoleon's army in 1812.

In 1817 the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Dargomyzhsky began to study music. His first teacher was Louise Wolgenborn. In 1821-1828, Dargomyzhsky studied with Adrian Danilevsky, who was opposed to composing music by his student. In the same period, Dargomyzhsky began to learn to play the violin together with the serf musician Vorontsov.

In 1827 Dargomyzhsky was enrolled as a clerk (without salary) in the staff of the Ministry of the Court.

From 1828 to 1831, Franz Schoberlechner became the composer's teacher. To develop vocal skills, Dargomyzhsky also works with teacher Benedikt Tseibih.

In the early period of creativity, a number of works for piano were written ("March", "Counterdance", "Melancholic Waltz", "Cossack") and some romances and songs ("The moon shines in the cemetery", "Amber Cup", "I loved you" , "Night marshmallow", "Young man and maiden", "Vertograd", "Tear", "The fire of desire burns in the blood").

The composer takes an active part in charity concerts. At the same time, he met writers Vasily Zhukovsky, Lev Pushkin (brother of the poet Alexander Pushkin), Peter Vyazemsky, Ivan Kozlov.

In 1835, Dargomyzhsky met Mikhail Glinka, using whose notebooks the composer began to study harmony, counterpoint and instrumentation.

In 1837, Dargomyzhsky began work on the opera Lucretia Borgia, based on the drama of the same name by the French writer Victor Hugo. On the advice of Glinka, this work was abandoned and the composition of a new opera, Esmeralda, also based on the plot of Hugo, began. The opera was first staged in 1847 at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

In 1844-1845, Dargomyzhsky traveled around Europe and visited Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Brussels, Paris, Vienna, where he met many famous composers and performers (Charles Berio, Henri Vieuxtan, Gaetano Donizetti).

In 1849, work began on the opera Rusalka based on the work of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere of the opera took place in 1856 at the St. Petersburg Circus Theatre.

Dargomyzhsky in this period focused on the development of a natural recitation of the melody. The composer's creative method, "intonation realism", is finally being formed. For Dargomyzhsky, the main means of creating an individual image was the reproduction of lively intonations of human speech. In the 40s and 50s of the 19th century, Dargomyzhsky wrote romances and songs ("You will soon forget me", "I'm sad", "Both boring and sad", "Fever", "Darling girl", "Oh, be quiet, Quiet, quiet, ty", "I'll light a candle", "Without mind, without mind", etc.)

Dargomyzhsky became close friends with the composer Mily Balakirev and the critic Vladimir Stasov, who founded the Mighty Handful creative association.

From 1861 to 1867, Dargomyzhsky wrote three consecutive symphonic overtures-fantasies: "Baba Yaga", "Ukrainian (Little Russian) Cossack" and "Fantasy on Finnish Themes" ("Chukhonskaya Fantasy"). During these years, the composer worked on chamber vocal works "I remember deeply", "How often I listen", "We parted proudly", "What is in my name", "I don't care". Oriental lyrics, previously represented by the romances "Vertograd" and "Eastern Romance", were replenished with the aria "Oh, the maiden rose, I am in chains." A special place in the composer's work was occupied by songs of social and domestic content "Old Corporal", "Worm", "Titular Counselor".

In 1864-1865, Dargomyzhsky's second trip abroad took place, where he visited Berlin, Leipzig, Brussels, Paris, and London. The composer's works were performed on the European stage ("Little Russian Cossack", overture to the opera "Mermaid").

In 1866, Dargomyzhsky began work on the opera The Stone Guest (based on the short tragedy of the same name by Alexander Pushkin), but did not have time to finish it. According to the author's will, Caesar Cui finished the first picture, orchestrated the opera and compiled an introduction to it by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Since 1859, Dargomyzhsky was elected to the Russian Musical Society (RMO).

Since 1867, Dargomyzhsky was a member of the directorate of the St. Petersburg branch of the RMO.

On January 17 (5 according to the old style) Alexander Dargomyzhsky died in St. Petersburg. The composer had no wife and children. He was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (Necropolis of the Masters of Arts).

The only monument in the world to Dargomyzhsky by sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov has been erected on the territory of the municipality Arsenyevsky district of the Tula region.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

1. Fyodor Chaliapin performs "Miller's Aria" from Dargomyzhsky's opera "Mermaid". Recorded 1931.

2. Fyodor Chaliapin in the scene "Aria of the Miller and the Prince" from Dargomyzhsky's opera "Mermaid". Recorded 1931.

3. Tamara Sinyavskaya performs Laura's song from Dargomyzhsky's opera The Stone Guest. Orchestra of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre. Conductor - Mark Ermler. 1977