You might get the impression that there was nothing to be learned from Glazunov. You would be mistaken. He was an excellent pedagogue, but first one had to learn how to learn from him. I think I mastered that art, I learned the secret. And so I have every right to call Glazunov one of my teachers. In order to really study with Glazunov you had to meet with him as often as possible, catch him wherever possible-at concerts, at people's houses, and naturally, at the Conservatory.
First and foremost, at the Conservatory, for Glazunov spent almost all his free time there. This is hard to believe now, but he was present at every single Conservatory examination, without exception. He even 59
went to the exams of the percussionists, and often Glazunov was the only outsider there.
What did I learn from Glazunov? Many things, many essential things. Of course, I could have learned more from him, but I was only a boy, diligent and hard-working but still a boy. There's much that I regret now.
Glazunov's erudition in music history was outstanding for those days. He knew, as few others did, the wonderful music of the great contrapuntalists of the Flemish and Italian schools. It's only nowadays that everyone is so smart and no one doubts the genius and viability of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music. But in those days, let's be frank, the picture was completely different, that music was hidden beneath seven seals. Even Rimsky-Korsakov felt that music began with Mozart, and Haydn was dubious; Bach was considered a boring composer. What, then, of the pre-Bach period? For my comrades it was nothing but a desert.
Glazunov delighted in Josquin des Pres, Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, and Gabrieli, and willy-nilly, I began to find delight in them too, even though at first I thought their music difficult and boring. It was also very interesting to listen to how Glazunov evaluated this music, for he never limited himself to general delight, he truly knew and loved these composers. And it seemed to us that he could always distinguish between the general "style of the era" and the individual composer's insights, the truly marvelous examples of musical genius.
For today all the old music is praised indiscriminately. Before, they didn't know any old composers and forgot them all. Now they've remembered them all and praise them all. They write "the forgotten ancient composer" -perhaps he's a justly forgotten ancient composer who should never have been remembered?
It's terrifying to think how much terrible contemporary music will someday fall into the category of "ancient." And excerpts from Ivan Dzerzhinsky's opera The Quiet Don (based on the forgotten novel by Nobel Prize-winner Sholokhov-a fact too embarrassing to be remembered!} will be performed with the subtitle "once forgotten." It would be better if they played only the things that didn't become forgotten, I think that would be more logical. Let them spare the innocent listen-60
ers. Actually, it's the listeners' own fault; people shouldn't try to pass themselves off as experts. It's always the snobs who fall for the bait first.
But when Glazunov talked about ancient music, there wasn't a whiff of snobbery. He never resorted to generalities, he evaluated this music as he did any other, with full responsibility for his words and with complete seriousness, which spread to those around him. And so we learned to imbue seemingly simple labels with exact meaning.
For instance, if Glazunov called a composer a "master," we remembered it for life, because there was a great deal of mental effort behind that brief description. We were witnesses to that effort and to the_ best of our ability we tried to do the same ourselves, that is, to come to the same conclusions as Glazunov, to recreate his mental processes.
When Glazunov said after listening to, say, a Schumann symphony,
"technically not irreproachable," we also understood what was meant, we didn't need any long explanations.
This was a period of verbosity, an ocean of words. They depreciated before your eyes. Glazunov reestablished the value of the simple word.
It turned out that when a professional, a master, spoke about music simply, without fancy words and curlicues, it made a powerful impression, much more powerful than the flood of pseudo-musical eloquence of Igor Glebov, in the real world Boris Asafiev.
This was a good education for me because it was then that I began to appreciate the power of a brief word about music, the power of a simple, uncomplicated, but expressive opinion, and the importance of such an opinion for professionals in a prof essjonal milieu. As I recall, Glazunov made the word "worthless" very expressive.
It became quite popular in the Conservatory, thanks to Glazunov, where previously, in imitation of Rimsky-Korsakov, professors said
"not very pleasing" about poor compositions. In Glazunov's day they used the more concise and simple "worthless." And the appellation wasn't reserved for music; the weather might be worthless, or an evening spent visiting, or even a pair of new shoes that pinched.
Glazunov spent all his time thinking about music and therefore, when he spoke about it, you remembered for life. Take Scriabin, for instance. My attitude toward him was greatly influenced by one of 61
Glazunov's favorite thoughts: that Scriabin used the same methods in writing his symphonies that he did in his piano miniatures. This is a very fair assessment of Scriabin's symphonies. Glazunov also suggested that Scriabin had religious and erotic fixations, with which I agree completely.
I remember quite a few musieal opinions that Glazunov gave on a variety of subjects, such as: "The finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is like the cathedral of Cologne." Honestly, to this day I can't think of a better description of that amazing music.
Many other comments that Glazunov carelessly tossed off have been usefuclass="underline" for instance, on "excesses" in orchestration, an important issue on which one must have one's own opinion and be firm. Glazunov was the first to convince me that a composer must make the performers submit to his will and not the other way around. If the composer doesn't need a triple or quadruple complement of brass instruments for his artistic vision, that's one thing. But if he starts thinking about practical matters, economic considerations, that's bad. The composer must orchestrate in the way he conceived his work and not simplify his orchestration to please the performers, Glazunov used to say. And for instance, I still feel that Stravinsky was mistaken in doing new orchestral editions of Firebird and Petrouchka, because these reflected financial, economic, and practical considerations.
Glazunov insisted that composing ballets was beneficial because it developed your technique. Later I learned that he was right about that, as well.
Glazunov gave me a good piece of advice once regarding the symphonic scherzo as part of a symphony. He felt that the main object of the scherzo was to interest the listener and everything must serve that goal-melody, rhythm, and texture. Everything must be attractive in the scherzo, and most important, unexpected. That was good advice and I told my own students something like it.
Naturally, there was much with which I disagreed then and disagree now. Glazunov once said in my presence that music was written by the composer for himself and, as he put it, "a few others." I am categorically opposed to that statement. And I couldn't possibly agree with him in his attacks against the "recherche cacophonists," which is what he called the new Western composers, beginning with Debussy.