The New International Encyclopædia/Dargomyzhsky, Alexander Sergeyevich

DARGOMYZHSKY, dar'go-mizh'ske. Alexander Sergeyevich (1813-69). A famous Russian composer, founder, with Glinka, of the Russian National School of Music. He was the son of a wealthy nobleman in the Government of Tula. Speechless to his sixth year, he early exhibited fondness for music, and was taught the piano at six and violin at eight; his teachers, later, were Sehoberlechner, a pupil of Hummel, in piano, and Zeibich in musical theory and singing. At Saint Petersburg in 1833 he met Glinka, who lent Dargomyzhsky his copy of Dehn's lectures on musical theory, which "he studied through in five months." Orchestration and composition he learned practically by assisting Glinka in the production of his Life of the Czar and by organizing various aquatic serenades on the Neva River, with private orchestras. He had by this time acquired a reputation as a song-writer, pianist, and quartet-violinist, and he decided to embrace music as a career. Later, in 1843, he gave up his governmental clerkship. He selected Hugo's Lucrezin Borgia for an opera, but, on the advice of Zhukovsky (q.v.), abandoned it in favor of Esmeralda, based on the Hunchback of Notre Dame. In 1839 the finished opera was translated into Russian, but was produced only in 1847, at Moscow, with a poor cast. In 1840 he began a cantata. The Triumph of Bacchus, but owing to the delays of Esmeralda he stopped work on it, and only finished it in 1848, as an opera-ballel, first produced in 1808. In 1844-45 he traveled, meeting Halévy and also Fétis, who made him known to western Europe. The delays of his opera deadened his inspiration,' but his persona! success in 1853, at a charitable concert, encouraged him, and in 1855 the opera Rusalka (The Mermaid) was ready. Its production at Saint Petersburg (1850) left much to be desired, and the public received it coldly; the Halevy-Meyerbeer style of Esmeralda gave way to powerful dramatic recitatives, pronounced characterization, especially in comic scenes, and a strong national element. Only ten years later, the opera, when revived, achieved an unheard-of success. During this decade Dargomyzhsky became more and more retired. He spent his "time giving vocal instruction to gifted anuileurs, and, in a measure, trained a new generation of singers. He wrote three orchestral works: Kaachok (Cossack dance); Finnish Fantaisie, and Baba-Yaya, and while in Brussels (1804-65) won high praise with the Kuzachok and the overture to Rusalku. His songs (he wrote about 100 in all) of this period are among the greatest of the world's Lieder. Among all composers he was perhaps the greatest master of recitative, and now he "wanted the sound to exactly express the word." Among the members of the Young Russian School he found the moral support he so sadly needed, and in 1868 he undertook to embody his new theories by setting to nuisic Pushkin's dramatic sketch The Stone Guest, a variant of the Don Juan story. Even during his final illness he worked imeeasingly and so successfully that after his death only ten and one-half line-: had to be completed by Cui. The orchestration was finished by Rirasky-Korsakoff. The work was produced in 1872, but had little success. It contains no ballet, choruses, set numbers, or ensembles. The text, without a change in one syllable, was set to 'melodic recitative,' ever-varying, fluent, expressive, like that of the fourth act of the Huguenots, or of Otello. The opera is unique in the history of dramatic music. Both his special vocal training and his theoretical views militated against Wagner's theories; his personages are always the protagonists musically, while the orchestra furnished the background, atmosphere, or dynamic part. Consult: Cui, La musique en Russie (Paris, 1880): Pougin, Essai historique sur la musique en Russie (Turin, 1897); Fetis, Biographie universelle des musiciens (Paris, 18G2).