Rachmaninoff's season is the fact
that it has not only brought him into prominence amongst us, but that it
has brought into relief other composers through him. It has brought into
relief the entire group of Russian musicians to which he belongs. It has
evaluated the pretensions of the two conflicting schools of Russian
music nicely. The school of which M. Rachmaninoff is perhaps the chief
living representative, and which was represented at various times by
Rubinstein and Tchaikowsky and Arensky, is usually dubbed "universal"
by its partisans. It is supposed to have its traditions in general
European music, and to be a continuation of the art of the romanticists,
in particular of the art of Chopin and Schumann. But for the men of the
opposing faction, the men who accepted only the Russian folk-song as
their touchstone, and sought in their work to find a modern equivalent
for it, the music of this school was alien and sophisticated, as
sophisticated as the pseudo-French culture of the Petrograd
drawing-rooms. For them, the music of Tchaikowsky, even, was the result
of the manipulation of themes of Slavic color according to formulas
abstracted from classical music. Without regard, however, for any
question of musical theory; apart from all question of the value for us
of the science of the classical masters, one finds oneself of this
opinion.
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