Taras Bulba (rhapsody)
Encyclopedia
Taras Bulba is a rhapsody for orchestra by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček
. It was composed in 1918 and belongs to the most powerful of Janáček's scores. It is based on the novel
by Gogol
.
The first version of the work was finished on 2 July, 1915, but Janáček later revised it and made substantial changes. The second (almost complete) version was finished on 29 March, 1918. Taras Bulba was premiered at the concert in the National Theatre
in Brno
on 9 October, 1921, conducted by František Neumann. The composition was dedicated to "our army, the armed protector of our nation". It was published by Hudební matice in 1924, in piano duet arrangement made by Břetislav Bakala
. In 1927 the full score was published with further changes.
Janáček described the piece as a "rhapsody
" and chose three episodes from Gogol's story to portray in this picturesque programmatic work.
, 2 flute
s, 2 oboe
s, english horn, 2 clarinet
s (1st doubling E-flat clarinet), 2 bassoon
s, contrabassoon
, 4 horns, 3 trumpet
s, 3 trombone
s, tuba
, timpani
, snare drum
, suspended cymbal
(played with snare drum sticks), triangle
, bell
s, harp
, organ
and string
s.
The first movement, The Death of Andrei, focuses on the Cossack
Taras Bulba's younger son, who falls in love with the daughter of a Polish general. The opening is a passionate episode between the lovers with solos by English horn, violin, and oboe. Throughout there are occasional hints of darkness, and eventually the music grows more turbulent, showing a battle between the two armies: angry trombone barks, tolling bells, and triumphant trumpet calls. Andrei fights on the side of the Poles, but when his father nears him in the battle, he realizes his treachery, and lowers his head to be killed by Taras Bulba himself. In the end, there is a brief reminiscence of the love music.
The second movement, The Death of Ostap, focuses on Taras Bulba's older son, who is overcome with grief by Andrei's death and is captured by the Poles during the battle, and hauled off to Warsaw for torture and execution. Taras Bulba sneaks into Warsaw in disguise, and at the moment of Ostap's death, he forgets where he is and calls out to his son. Much of the music is taken up with a kind of inexorable, limping march. In the end there is a wild Mazurka as the Poles dance in triumph. Taras Bulba is personified by dark trombone statements, and Ostap's last anguished cry is played by high clarinet. (There are clear parallels to two earlier orchestral execution scenes: in Berlioz
's Symphonie fantastique
and Richard Strauss
's Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.)
In the final movement, The Prophecy and Death of Taras Bulba, the Cossacks fight madly throughout Poland to avenge Ostap. Taras Bulba is eventually captured in a battle on the Dnieper River, but before he is burned to death by the Polish army, he issues a defiant prophecy: "Do you think that there is anything in the world that a Cossack fears? Wait; the time will come when you shall learn what the orthodox Russian faith is! Already the people sense it far and near. A Tsar shall arise from Russian soil, and there shall not be a power in the world which shall not submit to him!" The opening music is filled with battle music and war-cries by Taras Bulba--the trombones again--until a quiet passage depicting his capture. The prophecy itself is a stirring passage for brass and organ, culminating in the ringing of bells and a triumphant epilogue.
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
. It was composed in 1918 and belongs to the most powerful of Janáček's scores. It is based on the novel
Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba is a romanticized historical novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
by Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
.
The first version of the work was finished on 2 July, 1915, but Janáček later revised it and made substantial changes. The second (almost complete) version was finished on 29 March, 1918. Taras Bulba was premiered at the concert in the National Theatre
National Theatre (Brno)
The National Theatre in Brno is the major theatre house in Brno. It was established in 1884 by model of the National Theatre in Prague.Nowadays it consists of three stages:...
in Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...
on 9 October, 1921, conducted by František Neumann. The composition was dedicated to "our army, the armed protector of our nation". It was published by Hudební matice in 1924, in piano duet arrangement made by Břetislav Bakala
Bretislav Bakala
Břetislav Bakala was a Czech conductor, pianist, and composer.Bakala was born at Fryšták, Moravia. He studied conducting at the Brno Conservatory with František Neumann, composition with Leoš Janáček at the organ school. In 1922 he continued his studies at the Master school at the Conservatory...
. In 1927 the full score was published with further changes.
Janáček described the piece as a "rhapsody
Rhapsody (music)
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations...
" and chose three episodes from Gogol's story to portray in this picturesque programmatic work.
Instrumentation
The music is scored for piccoloPiccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, 2 flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
s, 2 oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s, english horn, 2 clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s (1st doubling E-flat clarinet), 2 bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
s, contrabassoon
Contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
, 4 horns, 3 trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, 3 trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
, timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, snare drum
Snare drum
The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
, suspended cymbal
Suspended cymbal
right|thumb|Classical suspended cymbalA suspended cymbal is any single cymbal played with a stick or beater rather than struck against another cymbal. A common abbreviation used is sus. cym., or sus. cymb. .-History:...
(played with snare drum sticks), triangle
Triangle (instrument)
The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals like beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve...
, bell
Tubular bell
Tubular bells are musical instruments in the percussion family. Each bell is a metal tube, 30–38 mm in diameter, tuned by altering its length. Its standard range is from C4-F5, though many professional instruments reach G5 . Tubular bells are often replaced by studio chimes, which are a smaller...
s, harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
, organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
and string
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
s.
Movements
The music is in three movements:- 1. The Death of Andrei
- 2. The Death of Ostap
- 3. The Prophecy and Death of Taras Bulba
The first movement, The Death of Andrei, focuses on the Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
Taras Bulba's younger son, who falls in love with the daughter of a Polish general. The opening is a passionate episode between the lovers with solos by English horn, violin, and oboe. Throughout there are occasional hints of darkness, and eventually the music grows more turbulent, showing a battle between the two armies: angry trombone barks, tolling bells, and triumphant trumpet calls. Andrei fights on the side of the Poles, but when his father nears him in the battle, he realizes his treachery, and lowers his head to be killed by Taras Bulba himself. In the end, there is a brief reminiscence of the love music.
The second movement, The Death of Ostap, focuses on Taras Bulba's older son, who is overcome with grief by Andrei's death and is captured by the Poles during the battle, and hauled off to Warsaw for torture and execution. Taras Bulba sneaks into Warsaw in disguise, and at the moment of Ostap's death, he forgets where he is and calls out to his son. Much of the music is taken up with a kind of inexorable, limping march. In the end there is a wild Mazurka as the Poles dance in triumph. Taras Bulba is personified by dark trombone statements, and Ostap's last anguished cry is played by high clarinet. (There are clear parallels to two earlier orchestral execution scenes: in Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Symphonie fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un Artiste...en cinq parties , Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences...
and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.)
In the final movement, The Prophecy and Death of Taras Bulba, the Cossacks fight madly throughout Poland to avenge Ostap. Taras Bulba is eventually captured in a battle on the Dnieper River, but before he is burned to death by the Polish army, he issues a defiant prophecy: "Do you think that there is anything in the world that a Cossack fears? Wait; the time will come when you shall learn what the orthodox Russian faith is! Already the people sense it far and near. A Tsar shall arise from Russian soil, and there shall not be a power in the world which shall not submit to him!" The opening music is filled with battle music and war-cries by Taras Bulba--the trombones again--until a quiet passage depicting his capture. The prophecy itself is a stirring passage for brass and organ, culminating in the ringing of bells and a triumphant epilogue.