More than the loveliest, the gleefullest, of picture-books the music is
not. One must not go to Rimsky-Korsakoff for works of another character.
For, at heart, he ignored the larger sort of speech, and was content to
have his music picturesque and colorful. The childish, absurd Tsar in
"Le Coq d'or," who desires only to lie abed all day, eat delicate food,
and listen to the fairy tales of his nurse, is, after all, something of
a portrait of the composer. For all its gay and opulent exterior, its
pricking orchestral timbres, his work is curiously objective and
crystallized, as though the need that brought it forth had been small
and readily satisfied. None of Rimsky's scores is really lyrical, deeply
moving. The music of "Tsar Saltan," for instance, for all its evocations
of magical cities and wonder-towers and faery splendor, impresses one as
little more than theatrical scenery of a high decorativeness. It sets us
lolling in a sort of orchestra-stall, wakes in us the mood in which we
applaud amiably the dexterity of the stage-decorator. How quickly the
aerial tapestry woven by the orchestra of "Le Coq d'or" wears thin! How
quickly the subtle browns and saffrons and vermilions fade! How pretty
and tame beside that of Borodin, beside that of the "Persian Dances" of
Moussorgsky, beside that of Balakirew, even Rimsky's Orientalism
appears! None of his music communicates an experience really high,
really poetic.
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