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César Cui - Cui as a Music Critic

César Cui - Cui as a Music Critic: Encyclopedia II - César Cui - Cui as a Music Critic

César Cui: Encyclopedia II - César Cui - Cui as a Music Critic

César Cui - Cui as a Music Critic

As a writer on music, Cui contributed almost 800 articles between 1864 and 1918 to various newspapers and other publications in Russia and Europe. (He "retired" from regular music criticism in 1900.) His wide coverage included concerts, recitals, musical life, new publications of music, and personalities. A significant number of his articles (ca. 300) dealt with opera. Several of his themed sets of articles were reissued as monographs; these covered topics as varied as the original 1876 production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth, the development of the Russian romance (art song), music in Russia, and Anton Rubinstein's seminal lectures on the history of piano musicl of 1888-1889. Not incidentally, of course, as part of his profession, Cui also published many books and articles about military fortifications.

Because of rules related to his status in the Russian military, in the early years his musico-critical articles had to be published under a pseudonym, which consisted of three asterisks (***); in Petersburg musical circles, however, it became clear who was writing the articles. His musical reviews began in the St.Petersburg Vedomosti, expressing disdain for music before Beethoven (such as Mozart) and his advocacy of originality in music. Sarcasm was a regular feature of his feuilletons.

Cui's primary goal as a critic was to promote the music of contemporary Russian composers, especially the works of his now better-known co-members of The Mighty Handful. Even they, however, were not spared negative reactions from him here and there, especially in his blistering review of the first production of Musorgsky's Boris Godunov in 1873. (Later in life Cui championed the music of this late colleague of his, to the point of making the first completion of Musorgsky's unfinished opera Fair at Sorochintsy.)

Russian composers outside of The Mighty Handful, however, were often more likely to produce a negative reaction. This derived at least partly from distrust of the western-style conservatory system in favor of the autodidactic approach that The Mighty Handful had practiced. Cui lambasted Tchaikovsky's second performed opera, The Oprichnik, for instance; and his oft-cited stinging remarks about Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.1 (which Cui described as depicting the Seven Plagues of Egypt, written for a conservatory in Hell), combined with a bad conducting performance by Glazunov, led to Rachmaninoff tearing up the manuscript of the symphony.

Of western composers, Cui favored Berlioz and Liszt as progressives. He admired Wagner's aspirations concerning music drama, but did not agree with that composer's methods to achieve it (such as the leitmotive system and the predominance of the orchestra).

Late in life Cui's presumed progressiveness as espoused in the 1860s and '70s turned reactionary against the new "modernists" such as Richard Strauss. Cui's very last published articles (from 1917) constituted merciless parodies, including the little song "Гимн футуризму" ("Hymn to Futurism") and "Краткая инструкция, как, не будучи музыкантом, сделаться гениальным модерн-композитором" ("Concise Directions on How to Become a Modern Composer of Genius without Being a Musician").