Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

(Born in Tithing, Russia in 1844; died in Lubes, Russia in 1908)

Scheherazade, Op. 351.

1. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship

2. The Story of the Kalendar Prince

3. The Young Prince and the Young Princess

4. Festival in Baghdad; the Sea; the Ship Goes to Pieces on a Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior (Shipwreck); Conclusion

As Russia sought to define its own national character in its arts and literature in the 19th Century, Orientalism (or musical influences from Eastern cultures), figured prominently. But this should not be too much a surprise. Russia’s vast expanses had long straddled both the Western and Eastern worlds. Indeed, from 1480 onwards, The Journey Beyond Three Seas, a marvelous adventure story of travels in the East written by the Russian explorer Afanasy Nikitin, became the archetype of the classic Russian fairytale. Thus, when Russian, like so many other European countries, began to search for its uniqueness, a hearty soulfulness of the East ran in its consciousness. As for national music, the Nationalist composers, known as the Mighty Fistful –Balakirev (the leader), Rimsky-Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Borodin –took their roles with devoted seriousness, and sometimes consciously and sometimes not, their Russian music contained Eastern influences. Those influences were many –whole tone and pentatonic scales, unpredictable rhythms, lengthy melismas (wandering melodies), accelerating tempi, irregular phrasing, repeated notes, and lots of exotic-sounding intervals.

Rimsky-Korsakov composed two Orientalist works, the first being his Symphony No. 2, “Antar,” in 1868, based on an Arabian hero-folktale. Two decades later, in 1888, he wrote Scheherazade, based on the extraordinary collection of Islamic stories, One Thousand Nights and a Night (otherwise known as the Arabian Nights) – that colossal compilation of Middle Eastern and South Asian folktales from the Islamic Golden Age (7th-13th C.). Both works, but especially Scheherazade, are steeped in the Oriental musical characteristics listed above. But whether a listener can identify readily any Oriental influences in Scheherazade or not, the magical charm of Rimsky-Korsakov’s creativity speaks in its own magic language, and it is undeniably one of the most wonderfully loved works in Western literature.

One of Scheherazade’s most ingenious aspects is how Rimsky-Korsakov fashioned it into a hybrid between a Classical symphony and a set of symphonic sketches–each of the typical four symphonic movements is used as the structure for a separate sketch, or story. Each movement has a subtitle to guide our imaginations, and those subtitles are unmistakably inspired by the Arabian Nights.

The Arabian Nights is a masterful collection of stories upon stories, told by multiple authors who tell their own tales, and sometimes others’ tales, all revolving around one “frame story,” or anchoring narrative with the narrator. (The Canterbury Tales is a similar collection.) In the Arabian Nights, the frame story revolves around King Shahryar of roughly the 7th Century. When he learns that not only has his brother’s wife been unfaithful (and subsequently executed), but also his own wife disloyal, he executes her and swears a deadly oath:

(All quoted excerpts are from Sir Richard Burrton’s classic 1850 translation of Arabian Nights)

“…King Shahryar took the brand in hand and, repairing to the seraglio, slew all the concubines and their Mamelukes. He also sware himself by a binding oath that whatever wife he married he would abate her maidenhead at night and slay her the next morning, to make sure of his honor. ‘For,’ said he, ‘there never was nor is there one chaste woman upon the face of earth…’”

After three years of bedding and beheading, the maidens in the kingdom were dwindling. At last, our heroine, Scheherazade, comes to the fore volunteering to be wedded by the King – and she has a crafty plan. Each night she tells the King a story that leads to the beginning of another story, at which point she abruptly stops, with the promise that she will continue the next night if only the King will spare her life another day. Bewitched with curiosity, the King agrees, and thereby Scheherazade buys for herself 1,001 nights of life.

Rimsky-Korsakov begins his musical narrative with ominous brass chords representing Shahryar’s oath, a musical device that, in its longer notes, descends a whole tone scale. After a sweet, chordal woodwind reprieve introducing the fair Scheherazade, the heroine speaks. Here, Rimsky-Korsakov uses the violin, which is often regarded as the instrument closest to the human voice, and we hear an exotically wandering, melismatic strain over gorgeous harp strums –and the stories begin. Soon we are a-sail on the green sea on Sinbad’s first voyage, and the tale begins to deepen with drama. The musical beckoning is irresistible. The exotic flavor of the tunes are fairy-tale-like, and delivered with Rimsky-Korsakov’s uncanny mastery of using bits of the first two themes, Shahryar’s scale, and Scheherazade’s melisma, to propel the musical action. Notice also how Scheherazade’s theme is taken up by many different instruments, almost like a relay, similar to the construct of the tale-telling in the Arabian Nights –where narrators begin to tell other people’s tales as their own. The effect is a truly engrossing musical narrative.

The whole piece is, too, a kind of orchestral concerto, where Rimsky-Korsakov highlights virtuosity for many of the instruments, with the violin as the most virtuosic. Naturally, then, a bit of a violin cadenza is appropriate. This happens at the beginning of The Kalendar Prince (the second movement), and it also serves to allow Scheherazade to seductively win herself another night of life. Soon, open intervals drone out in the lower strings as the bassoon begins its humble tune-tale. That tune relays into the oboe, and soon the upper strings, as the tale gathers dramatic momentum. In this movement, more coloristic effects begin appearing, including the use of percussion, which creates exquisite palettes. More Eastern influences invade the music as well –repeated notes, constantly changing rhythms, and especially the strumming of the strings while the clarinet, and later other instruments, create their own fluttering melismas. The Kalendar’s tale also involves some martial activity, where Rimsky-Korsakov gives us march-like music, reflecting this part:

“…But hardly had we sat down ere we heard the tom-toming of the kettledrum and tantara of trumpets and clash of cymbals, and the rattling of war men’s lances, and the clamors of assailants and the clanking of bits and the neighing of steeds, while the world was canopied with dense dust and sand clouds raised by the horses’ hoofs…”

Alas, there are few good tales without love and romance, and the third movement is such:

“…where [there] was a damsel like a pearl of great price, whose favor banished from my heart grief and cark and care, and whose soft speech healed the soul in despair and captivated the wise and ware. Her figure measured five feet in height, her breasts were firm and upright, her cheek a very garden of delight, her color lively bright, her face gleamed like dawn through curly tresses which gloomed like night, and above the snows of her bosom glittered teeth of a pearly white.”

Here, the colors that Rimsky-Korsakov conjures are splendid, and of particular note is the way he scores the percussion instruments to sound as musically integral and, almost, as pitched as the tuned instruments.

The finale is as robust and exciting as they come, with virtuosic writing, changing meters and tempi, and repetitions that drive the drama to exhilarating climaxes.

“…when suddenly a violent squall of wind arose and smote the ship, which rose out of the water and settled upon a great reef, the haunt of sea monsters, where it broke up and fell asunder into planks, and all and everything on board were plunged into the sea.”

With the ship smashed, and Sinbad adrift, the music and the narrative close back in on the heroine Scheherazade, who finishes the tale with alluring gentleness:

“O King of the Age, these are thy children, and I crave that thou release me from the doom of death, as a dole to these infants. For [if] thou kill me, they will become motherless and will find none among women to rear them as they should be reared. When the King heard this, he wept, and straining the boys to his bosom, said: ‘By Allah, O Scheherazade, I pardoned thee before the coming of these children, for that I found thee chaste, pure, ingenuous, and pious! Allah bless thee and thy father and thy mother and thy root and thy branch! I take the Almighty to witness against me that I exempt thee from aught that can harm thee.’”

Musically speaking, as Scheherazade sings highly in the harmonics on the violin, Shahryar’s theme of pardon is muted and wooed, and the woodwind chords from the piece’s opening return to end the symphonic sketch in hope, smiling beauty, and quietude.

© Max Derrickson