Russian Musical Orientalism: A Postscript Author(s): Richard Taruskin Source: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Mar.

, 1994), pp. 81-84 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/823764 . Accessed: 03/07/2013 17:04
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Journal, 1, 6, 81-84 Cambridge Opera

Russian musical orientalism:A postscript

RICHARD TARUSKIN

In a little study of the orientalist trope denoting sensuality (nega) in nineteenth-century Russian opera, '"Entoiling the Falconet": Russian Musical Orientalism in Context' (this journal, 4 [1992], 253-80), I closed by observing that Chaikovsky, alone among major Russian composers of his time, seemed immune to the lure of the East, and that his only orientalising numbers were two late and insignificant items: the Arabian Dance in TheNutcracker and the Moorish physician Ibn-Hakia's ariain the one-act opera Iolanta, which shared a double bill with TheNutcracker on their joint premiere during the last year of the composer's life (18/30 December 1892). By disregardingmy own advice and looking only for ethnic verisimilitude, I failed to do the orientalist trope justice. Chaikovsky, I later realised, had made obvious and telling recourse to it, quite early in his career, in the love themes from RomeoandJuliet (1869; revised 1870, 1880), written just as the composer was getting over his infatuation with the soprano Desiree Artot, the one woman known to have aroused his sexual interest, who had disappointed him by marryingthe Spanish baritone Mariano Padilla y Ramos. The frank sensual iconicity of this music is often remarked upon. Usually it is the throbbing, panting horn centrepoint that is so recognised; but the themes evoke nega just as surely by means of the chromatic pass between the fifth and sixth degrees that was identified in 'Entoiling the Falconet' as one of the cardinal orientalist markers;and the first love theme (the one generally associated with Romeo) features, on its first appearance, the equally marked English horn timbre (see Ex. 1). Juliet responds to Romeo's advance by mirroring his descending chromatic pass with an ascending one that is then maintained as an oscillation (osculation?), while Romeo's ecstatic re-entry is prepared by reversing the pass and linking up with the striking augmented-sixth progression that had launched Chaikovsky's 'balcony scene' to begin with (see Ex. 2). At the climax, delayed until the recapitulation, Chaikovsky enhances carnalityby adding one more chromatic pass at the very zenith of intensity to introduce the last full statement from which the love music will then gradually subside (see Ex. 3). Steamier than this Russian music would not get until Scriabin discovered Tristan, a good three decades later. Having located the source of the steam, I recalled that I was not the first to do so. In a marvellously cruel letter to Chaikovsky (1/13 December 1869), Balakirev, the inspirer and the dedicatee of Chaikovsky's 'Overture-fantasia' and a connoisseur nonpareil of musical orientalism, reacted to the four main themes of the work, which Chaikovsky had sent him for inspection while composition was still in progress. Here is what he had to say about the big love theme: ... simplyenchanting. I often playit and have a greatwish to kiss you for it. It has everything; and love's sweetness,and all the rest ... [I]t appearsto me that you are lyingall nakedin nega, the bath and thatArt6t-Padilla herselfis rubbingyourtummywith hot scentedsuds.I have just

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82 156
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Ex. 1 RomeoandJuliet (1869 version), bars 156-64. one thing to say against this theme: there is little in it of inner spiritual love, only the physical, passionate torment (coloured just a wee bit Italian). Really now, Romeo and Juliet are not Persian lovers, but European.... I'll try to clarify by example. I'll cite the first theme that comes to mind in which, in my opinion, love is expressed more inwardly: the second, A-flat major, theme in Schumann's overture, TheBride of Messina.1 Indeed, Schumann's long wet noodle of a love theme, which reaches no climax, does seem as if by design to moderate the orientalism of Chaikovsky's, diluting the chromatic passes and replacing the lascivious English horn with a chaste clarinet. Balakirev's letter confirms the surmise that Chaikovsky used the orientalist trope metonymically, to conjure up not the East as such, but rather its exotic sex appeal. The little tease about Art6t is provocative indeed, precisely because it is so plausible. If, as Balakirev seems to suggest, Chaikovsky had cast himself as Romeo to Art6t's Juliet, then the theme becomes a self-portrait. And if so, then it is another instance where, in a manner oddly peculiar to the Russian orientalist strain, the eastward gaze is simultaneously a look in the mirror.

M. A. Balakirevas P. I. Chaikovskim(St Petersburg, 1912), 49-50. Sergey Lyapunov, ed., Perepiska

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Russian musical orientalism: a postscript

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Ex. 3 RomeoandJuliet, bars 366-9.

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