Autobiographical Truth or a Figure of Paralipsis? The Rimsky-Korsakov Case

Abstract

The image of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov as the “national composer” was formed in Russian musical historiography through the eforts of musicologist Boris Asagev and under the inhuence of autobiographical narrative, including Korsakov’s Chronicle of My Musical Life. At the same time, the composer’s words about his work were carefully selected and censored under the ideological climate of the USSR. As a result, Rimsky-Korsakov still appears in many ways as a national musical curiosity outside the European musical tradition. Explorations in the territory of omissions and censors reveal the composer as an inquisitive (and jealous) listener of the musical ideas of others. Having a keen ear for reminiscence, Korsakov regularly incorporated what he had heard from many and very diferent European composers, including Richard Wagner, Frédéric Chopin, Gaetano Donizetti, Édouard Lalo, Johan Svendsen, and Edvard Grieg, into his music, and above all, into his operas. Rimsky-Korsakov’s self-suicient originality turns out to be a hoax. What is manifested in Korsakov’s claim for the truth about himself is the hitherto actual canon of “the composer himself.” That is, the belief in the truth of the composer’s will, intentions, words about himself and his art, and as a consequence, the chimerical equality of the composer with the author.