View source for Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova

{{Short description|Russian pianist and composer}}
[[Image:Nadezhda Purgold.jpg|thumb|right|180px|Nadezhda Nikolayevna Rimskaya-Korsakova]]
'''Nadezhda Nikolayevna Rimskaya-Korsakova''' ({{lang-rus|Надежда Николаевна Римская-Корсакова|p=nɐˈdʲeʐdə nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvnə ˈrʲimskəjə ˈkorsəkəvə|a=Ru-Nadezhda Nikolayevna Rimskaya-Korsakova.ogg|links=y}}; {{née|'''Purgold'''}}; {{OldStyleDate|October 19|1848|October 31}}{{spaced ndash}}May 24, 1919) was a Russian pianist and composer as well as the wife of composer [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]]. She was also the mother of Russian [[musicologist]] [[Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov]].
==Life==
===Early years===
Born Nadezhda Nikolayevna Purgold in [[St. Petersburg]], she was the youngest of three daughters and the great-granddaughter of the 18th century jurist Johann Purgold. She started playing the piano at age nine, continuing her piano studies at the [[St. Petersburg Conservatory]] with Anton Gerke.<ref name="brownm391">Brown, Malcolm Hamrick, ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel, ''The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers'' (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), p. 391.</ref> She also studied [[music theory]] at the conservatory with [[Nikolai Zaremba]] and, later, composition and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov but did not graduate.<ref name="brownm391"/> During the 1860s and 1870s, she played piano at musical soirees at the home of [[Alexander Dargomyzhsky]], becoming friends with Dargomyzhsky, [[Modest Mussorgsky]] and [[Alexander Borodin]].<ref name="rimskypxxxix">Rimsky-Korsakov, Preface xxxix.</ref> Mussorgsky, who was fond of both Nadezhda and her sister Alexandra and would become close to both,<ref>Brown, David, ''The Master Musicians: Mussorgsky, His Life and Works'' (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 195.</ref> called Nadezhda "our darling orchestra." She also played at gatherings in her home works of [[Mily Balakirev]] and of other members of "[[The Five (composers)|The Five]]."<ref name="brownm391"/>
Among the works she played with the ''kuchka'' were Mussorgsky's operas ''[[Zhenitba (opera)|Zhenitba]]'' (''Marriage'')<ref>Brown, ''Mussorgsky'', 109.</ref> and ''[[Boris Godunov (opera)|Boris Godunov]]'', plus [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]]'s ''[[The Maid of Pskov]]''.<ref>Brown, ''Mussorgsky'', pp. 206–207.</ref>
===Marriage===
[[File:Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in his youth.webp|upright|thumb|[[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]] in his youth]]
She met Rimsky-Korsakov at Dargomyzhsky's home in the spring of 1868. Not long after their first meeting he wrote a song which he dedicated to her. He also started visiting her frequently, both at the Purgold home in St. Petersburg and at the family's summer residence in [[Lyesnov]].<ref>Rimsky-Korsakov, 96.</ref> She found in him an abundance of warmth and gentleness.<ref>Diary entry for September 10, 1870, as quoted in Orlova, Alexandra, ''Mussorgsky's Works and Days: a Biography in Documents'' (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1983), 202–03.</ref> He proposed to her in December 1871,<ref>Rimsky-Korsakov, 125.</ref> and they married in July 1872.<ref name="abraham28">Abraham, Gerald, ed. Stankey Sadie, ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 20 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. 16, 28–29.</ref> Mussorgsky was Rimsky-Korsakov's best man.<ref>Brown, David, ''Mussorgsky'', 213.</ref> The Rimsky-Korsakovs would eventually have seven children. Nadezhda was to become a musical as well as domestic partner with her husband, much as [[Clara Schumann]] had been with her own husband [[Robert Schumann|Robert]].<ref name="abraham28"/> Beautiful, capable, strong-willed and far better trained musically than her husband at the time they married,<ref name="abraham28"/> she proved a good and most demanding critic of his work; her influence over him in musical matters was strong enough for Balakirev and [[Vladimir Stasov|Stasov]] to wonder sometimes whether she was leading him astray from their musical preferences.<ref name="mfw21401">Frovola-Walker, ''New Grove (2001)'', 21:401.</ref> Although she gradually gave up composition after her marriage, she had a considerable influence on the creation of his first three operas.<ref name="neff423">Neff, 423.</ref> She travelled with her husband, attended rehearsals and proofread and arranged compositions by him and others.<ref name="neff423"/> Years later, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote: "The overture [from ''[[The Maid of Pskov]]''], from the first note to the last one, belongs to a no-good girl whom I love very, very much."<ref>{{cite web |title=Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov |url=https://www.culture.ru/persons/8302/nikolai-rimskii-korsakov |website=culture.ru |publisher=[[Ministry of Culture (Russia)]] |access-date=14 January 2021 |language=ru}}</ref>
Her enthusiasm for [[Nikolai Gogol]]'s work became reflected in both her husband's compositions and those of his friends.<ref name="calvocoresssi360">Calvocoresssi, M.D. and Gerald Abraham, ''Masters of Russian Music'' (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1944), 360.</ref> On the day of their betrothal, she and Rimsky-Korsakov read Gogol's short story "[[May Night, or the Drowned Maiden|May Night]]" together. Afterwards, she told him that he should write an opera based on it.<ref name="calvocoresssi360"/> A week or two later she wrote him, ''I've been reading yet another of Gogol's stories today, "[[The Fair at Sorochyntsi (short story)|The Fair at Sorochyntsi]]." This is good, too, and would even be suitable for an opera, but not for ''you''; in any case, it's not like 'May Night.' As for ''that'', it's so stuck in my head that nothing will drive it out.''<ref name="calvocoresssi360"/> Either she or her sister Alexandra then suggested "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" to Mussorgsky.<ref name="calvocoresssi360"/> He did not act on it at the time, but a couple of years later, he reconsidered.<ref name="calvocoresssi360"/>
Nadezhda was also very prominent in the Rimsky-Korsakovs' social life,<ref name="rimskypxxxix"/> active in gatherings at the Rimsky-Korsakov household as both accompanist and performer.<ref>Rimsky-Korsakov, 147.</ref> At one of these soirees, [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky]] played the finale of his [[Symphony No. 2 (Tchaikovsky)|''Little Russian'' Symphony]].<ref name="brownd255">Brown, David, ''Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840–1874'' (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978), 255</ref> After hearing it, she begged the composer in tears to let her arrange it for piano duet.<ref name="brownd255"/> However, illness intervened and Tchaikovsky made the arrangement himself.<ref>Brown, ''Tchaikovsky: The Early Years'', 256</ref>
===Outspokenness===
[[File:Stravinsky rimsky-korsakov.jpg|thumb|[[Igor Stravinsky]] (left) with Rimsky-Korsakov and his daughter Nadezhda, her future husband [[Maximilian Steinberg]], and Stravinsky's first wife [[Yekaterina Stravinsky|Yekaterina]], 1908]]
Like her husband in his later years, Nadezhda's musical tastes became less progressive; she rated her son-in-law [[Maximilian Steinberg]] a greater composer than [[Igor Stravinsky]]. She could also be noticeably tactless about such matters. Stravinsky later wrote about one such incident that occurred at Rimsky-Korsakov's funeral:
{{cquote|I will remember Rimsky in his coffin as long as memory is. He looked so very beautiful I could not help crying. His widow, seeing me, came up to me and said: 'Why so unhappy? We still have [[Alexander Glazunov|Glazunov]].' It was the cruelest remark I have ever heard and I have never hated again as I did in that moment.<ref>White, 13.</ref>}}
This was not the only time she was not afraid to speak her mind. In matters regarding her husband she was fiercely loyal. When [[Anton Rubinstein]] reassumed the directorship of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1887 and started replacing Russian professors with foreign ones, Stasov was outraged at the thought of Rimsky-Korsakov kowtowing to "the Great Ruler." Stasov told Balakirev that he had written to Rimsky-Korsakov "that their relations with the Conservatory and Rubinstein is [[Unitarianism]] (and, on the part of [[Cesar Cui|Cui]], unadulterated [[apostasy]])...."<ref>Balakirev and Stasov, ''Perepiska'', 2:105.</ref>
When Stasov's letter arrived, Rimsky-Korsakov was hard at work completing Borodin's opera ''Prince Igor''. Nadezhda took it upon herself to answer Stasov:
{{cquote|All your leonine fulminations are inappropriate and even comical... You ought to study the facts before you write about them. What right do you have in suspecting my husband of base acts, apostasy, and the devil only knows what else? To that person who has been telling you slanderous things about him, you write and tell him off. And I hope that Nikolai Andreyevich does not need anyone's advice in order to act in all circumstances of life in a noble and honorable fashion; for this he has sufficient nobility and intellect of his own.<ref>Orlova, Alexandra and V.N. Rimsky-Korsakov.</ref>}}
Upon Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908, Nadezhda became the executrix of his literary and musical estates.<ref name="rimskypxxxix"/> This included the considerable job of editing and publishing his posthumous literary and musical works.<ref name="rimskypxxxix"/> These included his autobiography, ''My Musical Life'', collections of articles and notes on music plus a part of his correspondence with friends.<ref name="rimskypxxxix"/> She spent the rest of her life preserving his legacy,<ref name="rimskypxxxix"/> among other things, protesting [[Sergei Diaghilev]]'s use of music from ''[[Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov)|Scheherazade]]'' and ''[[The Golden Cockerel]]'' for ballets.<ref>Rimsky-Korsakov, 320&nbsp;ft.</ref> She died of [[smallpox]] in St. Petersburg (by then renamed Petrograd) at age 70.<ref name="rimskypxxxix"/> After her death, her son [[Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov|Andrei]] continued her efforts, writing a multi-volume study of his father's life and work.
==Music==
===Arrangements===
Dargomyzhsky taught Rimskaya-Korsakova how to reduce orchestral scores,<ref name="brownm391"/> a task for which she was especially talented and adept and which she would put to good use. Her transcriptions (for piano four-hands) include works by Dargomyzhsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]], [[Alexander Borodin|Borodin]] and [[Alexander Glazunov|Glazunov]].<ref name="brownm391"/> She also arranged the vocal scores for Rimsky-Korsakov's ''[[The Maid of Pskov]]'' and ''[[The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga]]'',<ref name="brownm391"/> along with Borodin's ''[[Prince Igor]]'' in conjunction with Glazunov and her husband.<ref>Rimsky-Korsakov, 290.</ref>
===Original works===
Autograph manuscripts survive of a symphonic tableau after Gogol, "The Bewitched Place" (''Zakoldovannoye mesto''), an opera ''Midsummer Night'' in piano-vocal score, piano pieces and songs.<ref name="neff423">Neff, 423.</ref> She completed "The Bewitched Place" a week or two before her marriage, orchestrating it the following year.<ref name="calvocoresssi360"/> She stopped composing after her marriage to Rimsky-Korsakov.<ref name="brownm391"/> This may have been partly from unfavorable comparison of her works to her husband's, but likely also due to family responsibilities.<ref name="brownm391"/>
==Bibliography==
She published two recollections of Dargomyzhsky, wrote a memoir of Mussorgsky and edited her husband's autobiography, ''My Musical Life''.<ref name="brownm391"/>
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
==Sources==
*Abraham, Gerald, ed. Stankey Sadie, ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 20 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1980). {{ISBN|0-333-23111-2}}.
*Brown, David, ''The Master Musicians: Mussorgsky, His Life and Works'' (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). {{ISBN|0-19-816587-0}}.
*Brown, David, ''Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840–1874'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978). {{Listed Invalid ISBN|0-393-07535-2}}.
*Brown, Malcolm Hamrick, ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel, ''The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers'' (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995). {{ISBN|0-393-03487-9}}.
*Calvocoressi, M.D. and Gerald Abraham, ''Masters of Russian Music'' (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1944). ISBN n/a.
*Orlova, Alexandra, ''Mussorgsky's Works and Days: a Biography in Documents'' (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1983).
*Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, ''Letoppis Moyey Muzykalnoy Zhizni'' (St. Petersburg, 1909), published in English as ''My Musical Life'' (New York: Knopf, 1925, 3rd ed. 1942). ISBN n/a.
*ed. Stankey Sadie, ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition'', 29 vols. (London: Macmillan, 2001). {{ISBN|1-56159-239-0}}.
*Frovola-Walker, Marina, "Rimsky Korsakov. Russian family of Musicians. (1) Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov."
*Neff, Lyle, "Rimsky Korsakov. Russian family of musicians. (2) Nadezda Rimskaya-Korsakova."
==External links==
* [http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Nadezhda_Rimskaya-Korsakova Tchaikovsky Research]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rimskaya-Korsakova, Nadezhda}}
[[Category:1848 births]]
[[Category:1919 deaths]]
[[Category:Russian classical pianists]]
[[Category:Russian women classical composers]]
[[Category:Russian classical composers]]
[[Category:Deaths from smallpox]]
[[Category:Musicians from Saint Petersburg]]
[[Category:Saint Petersburg Conservatory alumni]]
[[Category:People from the Russian Empire of German descent]]
[[Category:19th-century classical pianists]]
[[Category:19th-century women musicians from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:20th-century Russian women musicians]]
[[Category:Russian women classical pianists]]
[[Category:19th-century women pianists]]
[[Category:20th-century women pianists]]
[[Category:Composers from the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]]
[[Category:Rimsky-Korsakov family|Nadezhda]]