Alexander Kastalsky: His Life and Music by Svetlana s> Zvereva Stuart Campbell (review)

Abstract

338 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 NZSJ is published annually. Judging from the present volume and its predecessors, the journal well deserves its place on the shelves of serious libraries. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies DEREK BROWER University College London Zvereva, Svetlana.Alexander Kastalsky: His LifeandMusic.Translatedby Stuart Campbell. Ashgate, Aldershotand Burlington,VT, 2003. xxii + 323 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Glossary. Musical extracts.Index. ?47.50. ALEKSANDR KASTAL'SKII (I856-I 926) was one of the pioneers of the study of Russian church music and, indeed, a prominent though not outstanding composer of it, aswell as of some less memorable secularworks.Almost all his life he was closely associatedwith the Moscow Synodal School. Togetherwith his colleague and loyal friend Stepan Smolenskii (I848-I909), who also figuresvery extensively in this book, Kastal'skiiresurrectedand transformed his country'ssacredmusic, at a time of extremelyrapidculturaldevelopment. His researchto some extent laid the groundworkfor severalfarbetter known pieces of music, such as Rakhmaninov'sAllNightVigil(I 9 I5) and Stravinskii's Svadebka (LesNoces,I923), to name but two. Svetlana Zvereva'swide-ranging study follows her well received Russian monograph (Aleksandr Kastal'skii. Idei, tvorchestvo, sud'ba,Moscow, I999), but is not simply a translation, since it incorporates considerable new research, and includes an annotated index of names, a bibliography, and a list of Kastal'skii'spublished writings about music (to complement the list of his publishedcompositions).Music examples are also a welcome new feature, and the glossaryof termswill undoubtedlybe useful to anglophone readers accustomed to a quite differentset of words for describingthe variousaspectsof church music. Svetlana Zvereva combines erudition with a very readable, sometimes conversational style, inspired perhaps by the witty, informal letters of her subjectwhich are widely quoted. The headings of the book's twenty chapters (some of which are slightly annotated here for the purpose of information) range from the totally straightforward to the whimsical: 'The Kastalsky Family'; 'The Origins of Reform' [of the Synodal School]; 'In Search of a 'Russian Style' [in the pre-nationalist period]; 'The Nation - A Powerful Force'[in the i88os]; "'Moscow will come into its own!"'; 'HistoryStretching Back into the Past'; 'Smolensky's Reforms' [of the Synodal School where 'adults and children alike were coarse, ignorant and lazy; fights and foul language were the norm', p. 46]; '"New Antiquity"' [Smolenskii's realism about Kastal'skii's'very modest talent', p. 65]; 'Kastalsky'sDiscovery' [his fame greatly boosted by a visit of Konstantin Pobedonostev to the School, p. 63]; 'At the Crossroads' [the Synodal School threatened]; 'The Moscow School of Ethnographers'[the musical influence of folk songs on church and othermusic];'HistoricalReconstructions'[Kastal'skii'squasi-operaticworks]; 'All-Night Vigil' [Kastal'skii's rather cliched attempts at writing one]; A Conservatoire for Sacred Music' [the best years of the Synodal School, REVIEWS 339 I9 I0- I917]; 'At the Height of his Fame' [Kastal'skii as Director of the School in these years]; 'Musical "Plays"; [unperformedfolktheatricalspectaclesand Kastal'skii'sunfulfilledcinematographictalent, p. I56]; "'Requiem for Fallen Brothers"' [in World War I]; 'The Late Sacred Choral Music' [only ten sacred pieces written in the years before the I917 Revolution]; 'The End of the Synodal School's History'; and "'Wretched Old Age has set in"' [work, particularlyon folksong, after the Revolution, and unfinishedprojects]. The Epilogue is devoted to the friendship between Kastal'skii and the brilliant musicologist BorisAstaf'ev (pseud. Igor'Glebov, I884-1949) who was one of the few people to fully appreciate Kastal'skii'sworth in both parts of his life which the author refers to as 'divided into two mutually exclusive parts' (p. 222). To an extent this monograph is the history of the Synodal School and, beyond it, of one majorbranch of Russian church music, both as a subjectfor palaeographical research and as material to be mined for what Kastal'skii termed restavratsiia. It is a storylittle known in the West, despite the growth of interest in Orthodox church music, personified in this country by John Tavener (b. I944), for instance. The twenty-one examples are clearlyprinted (byRussian Music Publishing in Moscow), with the wordsprinted in Russianwith the music, and in English translationat the bottom of the page. Their numeration, however is eccentric and non-consecutive, beginning with Ex.g.i. Other aspects of the...