Russian orchestras in the 19th Century

[Dave2002]

I have been wondering what the state of Russian orchestras was in the 19th Century. It seems to me that a considerable amount of 19th Century orchestral music from Russia has an opulence of sound which other European music of the period does not have. One possibility is that since orchestras are very flexible "instruments" that there was no difference between Russian orchestras and orchestras elsewhere, and that the sound of much 19th Century Russian music comes simply from the orchestration, which somehow Russian composers managed very differently from composers in Germany, France etc.

The other possibility is that Russia really did have some magnificent orchestras during the 19th Century, and they had a sound which composers wrote for. From what I know of Russian history, which is not a lot, I suspect that much of Russia was rather poor, yet at the top - in the courts - there was lavish expenditure. By the 19th Century in other parts of Europe, music was moving away from Royal or State patronage towards public support. Public concerts were becoming popular and made musical performances viable. Perhaps this move towards public concerts did not arrive until rather later in Russia, or even if it did come at the same time as elsewhere, there may still have been reasons why orchestras might have been more "well padded" than orchestras in other countries.

Also, in some countries ballet and opera may have been very popular, and clearly these would require orchestras. It may have been that some orchestras were in existence primarily to support opera and ballet, and that orchestral concerts were less popular, but emerged because the fairly large orchestras which were capable of playing lavish orchestral music were already in existence. The question of how orchestras, ballet and opera were funded during the 19th Century is an interesting one.

Perhaps, with no TV and radio to watch and listen to, people really did attend live events, though it is surely questionable about what proportion of each society would want to, or could afford to.

[salymap]

Very interesting post Dave. Surely opera and ballet must have required first class orchestras. Works like Coq' dor, Polovtsian Dances and many others are 50% the wonderfully orchestrated music, as well as the dancing.

Perhaps they were so well attended that revenue came from capacity audiences.

[visualnickmos]

..... people really did attend live events, though it is surely questionable about what proportion of each society would want to, or could afford to.

Yes - a very interesting post; I think given that Russia was an autocratic state where the majority of the population were illiterate and living in abject poverty, the small but all-powerful all-wealthy aristocracy were able to sustain (for a long while) a self perpetuating high life which included high art, and those who formed the 'creative community' were part of that system. Therefore, it was the aristocracy who were the only members of society who were able to enjoy the high standards of creativity that existed at that time. As we all know, the system of elitism and privilege did NOT change under communism - Russia has ALWAYS been ruled by monsters. Apologies for my digressing, but a much bigger debate has been alluded to.

[Dave2002]

Yes - a very interesting post; I think given that Russia was an autocratic state where the majority of the population were illiterate and living in abject poverty ...

Relatively I think that is true, though many other parts of Europe and also Britain would have had many poor and impoverished people in the 19th Century. Russia may not have had industrialisation so early as other countries, though that brought both benefits and problems. I suspect there was a vast gap between the aristocratic rich and cultured and the much poorer people in Russia, though it's difficult to be sure that the same "problems" were not in fact common in most other European countries. We know that at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th Century public concerts became popular in London, and in Paris there was opera, but who were the people who attended? Did they go right down to the poorest members of society, or were they in some middle ground between the super rich aristocrats and the peasants?

[Pabmusic]

... We know that at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th Century public concerts became popular in London, and in Paris there was opera, but who were the people who attended? Did they go right down to the poorest members of society, or were they in some middle ground between the super rich aristocrats and the peasants?

Certainly in London there was music for the masses - at the Vauxhall Gardens for example - and ballad operas like The Beggar's Opera were all the rage. But London was unusual precisely because there were no 'peasants' in the UK; the bigger cause of social injustice was the huge movement of people into the towns during the industrial revolution. Plenty of poverty, disease and gin, though. (Gin & bubonic?)

As for Russian orchestras, late 19th century ones must have been good enough to cope with the music (and to encourage composers to continue writing such music) but we're probably talking only of St Petersburg and possibly Moscow. I recall that the Strauss Orchestra had regular summer seasons at the Vauxhall at Pavlovsk (a railway terminus and park named after the Vauxhall Gardens) near St Petersburg. Josef Strauss suffered his fatal collapse (probably a stroke) while conducting during one of these seasons.