Russian Nationalism in Piano Literature

In the 1830s, a national unisonal style -marked with emphasis on category songs, family unit-dances, and especially folk rhythms- began to emerge in Russia. This coincided with same nationalistic movements in other countries such as Poland, Bohemia, and unify States. Before the 1830s, melody in Russia was influenced by Italian and french unison, mainly opera.

Musical life in the capital St. Petersburg was undoubtedly precise rich. Major works of Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart were oft performed. Indeed, the greatness of German music and Italian operas at that time encouraged Russian composers to re-create the popular style with no preservation of its national Russian traits. For this reason, Glinka is considered to be the father of Russian classical music: he brought it up to date and into the European mainstream without sacrificing its national identity. The Russlan and Ludmilla work stands for a good example of a truly national opera.

Since in that respect was no distinguished Russian Music style originally the 1830s, the nationalistic movement; two signifi guttert sources of Russian music gave basis for the nineteenth century Russian composers. Those were church music and folk music. The modal sounds of Russian church music can be easily heard in Rachmaninoffs works, the element of bells is often met (Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 2, c minor; Prelude op. 1 , c sharp minor...) as well as folk tunes.



Composers were using folk-songs to write variations on them or as a basis for their compositions (Rachmaninoff, variations on the theme of Corelli and Chopin). Great Russian composers who grew up under the music school of Glinka were Balakirev, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff. They continued the use of folk elements.

Main elements of the national tunes are short compact melodies within the repetitiousness of the specific modes. This repetitiveness makes the music very arabesque- like...

If you want to fasten a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



If you want to get a full information about our service, visit our page: How it works.