Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s career stood in the very center of Russian musical life of the second half of the nineteenth century. His first career was in the Russian navy, but he soon garnered success in music. Known primarily for his fifteen operas, he was instrumental in the rising importance of that genre in Russia. In addition to his fame and influence as a composer, he was also head of the conservatory in St. Petersburg–today, his statue dominates the little park directly across the street from the conservatory and the famed Mariinsky Theatre. In the West, of course, we know him primarily for Russian Easter Overture and the tone poem, Scheherazade. His ability as an orchestrator and teacher of orchestration is one of his many legacies–Igor Stravinsky was one of his students. In fact, much of the marvelous musical atmosphere that audiences adore in Stravinsky’s early ballets, the Rite of Spring, Firebird, and Petrouchka, lead directly back to Rimsky-Korsakov and the orchestral style of his operas. And it is of no small interest that there are sections in Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Daphnis et Cloé that seem lifted right out of Scheherazade. A fascination with the exotic, and with non-Western subject matter was a prime characteristic of Romanticism, and Russian music of the late nineteenth century is exemplary of this predilection.
Scheherazade, completed in 1888, was inspired by the well-known story, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. 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. 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 Scheherazade. The four movements–following their titles, which Rimsky-Korsakov later withdrew—allude to four stories of Scheherazade, the sultana. 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.
The first movement, “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” opens with a bold stentorian motive, which one may be tempted naturally to associate with “The Sea,” nevertheless Rimsky-Korsakov himself indicated that it depicts the bloodthirsty sultan. But soft woodwind chords—redolent of Mendelssohn–introduce the narrator in the form of the rhapsodic solo violin. The latter will be a guide throughout all four movements. The opening motive, the material in the “narrative” solo violin, and just a couple of other ideas, are all that the composer needs to weave out this little “tone poem” of the sea, whether a rough one or a serene one. The sultan, the sea, the ship, and Sinbad–its all there in the rhapsody.
Our friend the narrative violin introduces the second movement, “The Story of the Kalendar Prince.” The latter is one of three wandering mystics or dervishes, who lead a tough life. Basically, they’re beggars, blind in one eye. 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. The oboe and harp soon take it up, followed by a variety of imaginative treatments, interspersed by fragments of the “sultana” violin solo, given to other instruments. But, a vigorous interruption by the second trombone, and then the first, initiates the dance of the “whirling dervishes” (members of the Muslim Sufi cult with their characteristic long conical garb) that constitutes the rest of the movement. And, as before, it’s all built on familiar motives, skillfully transformed.
The third movement, “The Young Prince and Princess,” is built around a lyrical, warm, gently swaying tune, decorated with some swirling solo woodwind roulades. The composer’s 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. The more active middle section is dancelike, and cleverly based upon a rhythmic, spritely inversion of the previous “love” theme. Chattering woodwinds and light, crisp percussion carry it along—Russian “Orientalism” at its best. After a brief return to the opening theme, the solo oboe takes a crack at being the “narrator,” 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.
The fourth movement has a lengthy, descriptive title, “Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman.” That’s a lot, and frankly it’s 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. 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 “frenetic.” And frenetic it is, with a deluge of notes, driven by the winds, tonguing furiously. 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. Finally, the brass intones the stern motive that opened the suite, signaling the tale’s conclusion. The last word is given to the musing of the narrating solo violin, with the violoncellos and the basses ominously, softly intoning the “Scheherazade” theme.
–Wm. E. Runyan
© 2025 William E. Runyan