Acclaimed for treading new ground in operatic studies of the period, Simon Morrison’s influential and now-classic text explores music and the occult during the Russian Symbolist movement. Including previously unavailable archival materials about Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, this wholly revised edition is both up to date and revelatory. Topics range from decadence to pantheism, musical devilry to narcotic-infused evocations of heaven, the influence of Wagner, and the significance of contemporaneous Russian literature. Symbolism tested boundaries and reached for extremes so as to imagine art uniting people, facilitating communion with nature, and ultimately transcending reality. Within this framework, Morrison examines four lesser-known works by canonical composers—Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Scriabin, and Sergey Prokofiev—and in this new edition also considers Alexandre Gretchaninoff’s Sister Beatrice and Alexander Kastalsky’s Klara Milich, while also making the case for reviving Vladimir Rebikov’s The Christmas Tree.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration and Dates
Introduction
1 • Decadence: Tchaikovsky at the Edge
Interlude • Symbolism’s Nutcracker
2 • Syncretism: Rimsky-Korsakov and Belsky
Interlude • Klara Milich
3 • Theurgy: Scriabin and the Impossible
Interlude • Another Church Musician Writes an Opera
4 • Mimesis: Prokofiev’s Demons
Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the author
Simon Morrison is Professor of Music and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. He is the author of Bolshoi Confidential, The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years, and Lina and Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev.
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