Alexander Serov and the Birth of the Russian Modern

Paul Du Quenoy

Description

When did Russia become “modern?” Historians of Russia – including even many Russian historians – have long tried to identify Russia’s “modern” moment. While most scholars have looked to economic or ideological transitions, noted historian and critic Paul du Quenoy approaches the problem through culture, and specifically the performing arts, as told through the prism of one of its leading nineteenth-century practitioners, the composer and critic Alexander Serov. Born in 1820, Serov grew to adulthood under the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855). Long disparaged as a dark and reactionary period of Russia’s past, it instead offered many educational, cultural, and professional opportunities that conventional histories have failed to appreciate. Educated in law and tutored in music, Serov rose to become Russia’s first significant music critic and a noted composer whose three operas won him fame and gestured toward the creation of a national style. Although his renown was fleeting after his untimely death in 1871, his life and observations provide a vital eyewitness account to a Russia poised to embrace a fresh and fully modern identity. In a volume prepared to mark the 150th anniversary of Serov’s death, du Quenoy’s pastiche of Russian life offers one of the best approaches to Russia’s imperial past and its legacies today.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Musique
• Music of Russia
• Criticism
• Russia
• Musicology
• History of Europe
• Cultural Studies
• History
• Music
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Academica Press
• Date de parution: 22 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781680537574
• Langue: English

Extrait

Alexander Serov and the Birth of the Russian Modern
Paul du Quenoy
Academica Press
Washington~London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: du Quenoy, Paul (author)
Title: Alexander serov and the birth of the Russian modern | Paul du Quenoy
Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2022. | Includes references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022949443 | ISBN 9781680537550 (hardcover) | 9781680537567 (paperback) | 9781680537574 (e-book)
Copyright 2022 Paul du Quenoy
In Memory of Grégoire Serov (1930-2022)
Contents Acknowledgments Note Introduction The Most Famous Composer You Have Never Heard Of Chapter I The Youth, 1820-1840 Chapter II The Bureaucrat, 1840-1850 Chapter III The Critic: 1850-1860 Chapter IV The Composer, 1860-1871 Chapter V The Legacy, 1871- Bibliography Index
List of Illustrations
1. Sergei Zarianko, At the Imperial Law School (1840).
2. The Imperial Law School building.
3. The young official: Serov in 1846.
4. Lifelong patron, Prince Peter von Oldenburg.
5. Youthful friend, adulthood foe: Vladimir Vladimirovich Stasov (portrait by Ilya Repin).
6. Inspiration: Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka.
7. Score of Serov’s first opera, Judith.
8. Fedor Chaliapin as Holofernes in Judith.
9. Mikhail Sariotti as Grand Prince Vladimir in Serov’s second opera, Rogneda.
10. Chaliapin as Eremka in Serov’s third opera, The Power of the Fiend.
11. Valentina Serova ( née Bergman).
12. Serov later in life.
13. Illustration of Serov’s death.
14. Son of Serov: the painter Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov.
15. Serov’s grave in the Tikhvin Cemetery, Alexander Nevsky Lavra, St. Petersburg.
16. Memorial bust of Serov, Hotel Serov, Simferopol.
17. Great-Grandson, Grégoire Serof, 1930-2022.
Acknowledgments
This book arose from an unexpected encounter in Beirut, Lebanon, in January 2009. A few months earlier I had arrived to take up a professorship in Modern European History, a field broad enough to include my academic specialization in Imperial Russia. Returning from Christmas travels, I found a note informing me that a Mr. Serov had called and would like to speak with me. I returned the call and found myself in conversation with Grigorii Aleksandrovich Serov (or Grégoire Serof), one of the few remaining members of Beirut’s community of White Russian émigrés. Grégoire’s parents had fled the chaos of revolutionary Russia and ended up in the French mandate of Greater Syria, where his father found employment as a maritime engineer. Grégoire himself had been born there in 1930, completed studies at Lebanon’s Academy of Fine Arts, and had a career as an architect, urban planner, teacher, and artist. Apart from two visits to Russia after 1991 and several years in France during Lebanon’s brutal civil war, he had lived his entire life in the larger Franco-Arab society that surrounded the Russian emigration in the Middle East.
In our first conversation, Grégoire revealed that his grandfather was the famous artist Valentin Serov (1865-1911), an avatar of Russia’s Silver Age whose legacy included a large corpus of portraiture, numerous paintings in the impressionist style, and, toward the end of his short life, creative works in more abstract and expressionist veins. I had long known and admired Serov’s paintings, which occupy prominent rooms in St. Petersburg’s Russian Museum and Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery. The painter had even made a cameo appearance in my first book, on the performing arts in Imperial Russia, in which I noted his resignation from the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in response to the events of “Bloody Sunday,” the massacre the touched off Russia’s Revolution of 1905.
I knew far less about the painter’s father, Alexander Nikolaevich Serov, who is the subject of this book. Unusually for the family relationships of “great men,” it is Valentin Serov, the son, who is more famous and Alexander, his father, who is more obscure. The purpose of this book is to uncover the life of Alexander Serov, and my thanks must go to Grégoire, who died at age 91 on May 23, 2022, and his widow Florence for their inspiration and friendship and for the research materials they kindly gave me.
I owe additional thanks to the staff of the Library of Congress’s Performing Arts Reading Room and to the Performing Arts division of the New York Public Library, which proficiently supplied many of the research materials I have utilized. Walter (Vladimir Vladimirovich) Zvonchenko at the Library of Congress was not only helpful and but also very cheerful as I went about my work on a subject of touching personal interest to him. More Washington and New York friends than I can mention extended their generous hospitality during my stays for research and other things. The Cosmos Club always offered a warm welcome during frequent stays there. In Beirut I an indebted to the staff of the American University of Beirut’s Jafet Memorial Library. Its document delivery service admirably rose to the challenge of tracking down even the most obscure Russian-language requests from repositories all over the world, usually delivering them to my e-mail inbox within a matter of days. AUB’s Civilization Studies Program extended a welcome invitation to present the book in its faculty lecture series. AUB’s Departments of History and Archaeology and Fine Arts and Art History provided additional support, often unwittingly given their many limitations. My superb colleague, loyal friend, and former classmate Sean Foley took time from an exceptionally busy travel schedule to read the entire manuscript.
In our relentlessly globalizing world, it only makes sense that the book’s first edition was completed in Japan, where in Fall 2015 I held a visiting fellowship at Hokkaido University’s Slavic-Eurasian Research Center. The Center’s staff, especially Professor Norihiro Naganawa, showed great enthusiasm for my arrival and provided more excellent research facilities, including, to my surprise and delight, access to some last-minute sources that I could not obtain elsewhere. The SRC also graciously hosted a research presentation focused on elements of Chapter IV. Indeed, my colleagues in Japan showed vastly more interest than those in Beirut, whose ultimate fate I pity.
My greatest debt of gratitude, however, goes to my wife Irina, who oversaw our incredibly complicated home and social lives with remarkable grace while I labored to produce what follows and managed an unanticipated career change that delivered us from Lebanon to Florida – the true promised land – at just the right moment, when Lebanon fell into a cataclysm of crises from which it seems unlikely ever to recover. She also read the entire manuscript with a keen editorial eye. And in addition to that, she gave us our greatest joy in the birth of our son Charles, who made his appearance as I was in the final stages of research. He has delighted us ever since. As I put the final touches on this revised edition, prepared to mark the sesquicentennial of Serov’s death, I am grateful that he will grow up on these shores.
Palm Beach , December 12 , 2022
Note
Russia followed the “old style” Julian calendar until February 1918. In the decades of the nineteenth century studied here, that calendar lagged twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar in use in the West. Almost all dates in this book follow the old system, with the new system reserved, where indicated, for dates pertinent to events in Western Europe.
For most proper names, I have employed a modified transliteration system based on the one used by the Library of Congress. I have reverted to common English-language usage for the names of Russia’s rulers, for names of international celebrity (hence “Tchaikovsky” instead of “Chaikovskii,” “Chaliapin” instead of “Shaliapin,” et al.), and for the immediate subject of this book, Alexander Serov.
All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. In the interest of accessibility, I have made an effort to provide citations for published English translations of primary source material (letters, articles, etc.) alongside the original Russian citations.
Introduction The Most Famous Composer You Have Never Heard Of
“Ma position , c’est l ’ opposition ,” Alexander Nikolaevich Serov (1820-1871) defiantly declared to his sister and close confidante Sofiia in November 1859. 1 Nearly forty years old at the time he wrote those combative words, no one in Russia’s small but vibrant arts community would have disagreed. Thoroughly schooled in music from childhood, Serov’s ambition to become a famous composer had faced enormous challenges. Without serious institutional structures of musical education, the art of composition in Russia remained a gentleman’s affair, an eccentric pursuit for noble amateurs with the means and leisure to indulge in it. Some, like the foundational national composer Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) and Serov’s near contemporary Aleksandr Dargomyzhskii (1813-1869), managed to acquire elements of formal musical education in Europe. But they were unusual exceptions in a Russian musical world still dominated by enterprising foreigners, talented serfs, and fellow nobles who contented themselves with musicmaking in a handful of private salons and sparse public performance spaces only accessible to a circumscribed elite.
Serov’s birth into an ennobled bureaucratic family of high professional standing but meager means placed him outside of this small and amorphous community. Yet drive, passion, and opportunity brought the young man close enough to learn its manners and mores, imbibe its tastes and fads, meet almost everyone in its cast of characters, and, eventually, even take part in its work, if usually in a difficult and obstreperous way.
Earlier in life, Serov’s ambitious father, a senior official in the Ministry of Finance, arranged for him to enter the inaugural class of the newly founded Imperial School of Jurisprudence. He intended for young Alexander to acquire the elit