It is the marvelous originality of
his art. He is one of the most completely and nobly original among
composers, one of the great inventors of form. The music of Moussorgsky
is almost completely treasure-trove. It is not the development of any
one thing, the continuation of a line, the logical outcome of the labors
of others, as the works of so many even of the greatest musicians are.
It is a thing that seems to have fallen to earth out of the arcana of
forms like some meteorite. At the very moment of Wagner's triumph and of
the full maturity of Liszt and Brahms, Moussorgsky composed as though he
had been born into a world in which there was no musical tradition, a
world where, indeed, no fine musical literature, and only a few
folk-songs and orthodox liturgical chants and Greek-Catholic scales
existed. Toward musical theory he seems to have been completely
indifferent. Only one rule he recognized, and that was, "Art is a means
of speech between man and man, and not an end." He was self-taught, and
actually invented an art of music with each step of composition. And
what he produced, though it was not great in bulk, was novel with a
newness that is one of the miracles of music. Scarcely a phrase in his
operas and songs moves in a conventional or unoriginal curve.
Pages:
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75