The art songs of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka

Abstract

This document seeks to help musicians revisit the traditional narratives surrounding Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka through the exploration of his art songs. Glinka wrote a total of 79 art songs, composed between the years 1824 and 1856. Detailed song entries for each piece are included in an attempt to rectify the language divide and make songs accessible to non-Russian speakers. Art song entries include musical, historical, and textual information for all of Glinka’s published songs, and are ordered first by language, and then by year in which the pieces were composed. Each entry lists the song’s poet, key, tempo, time signature, length, level of difficulty for both pianist and singer, composition date, composition location, tessitura, language of text, a musical/pedagogical summary, and a textual summary of the piece.

While individual song entries make up the bulk of my research, a concise history of Russia’s musical development leading up to Glinka’s era is included to demonstrate the rich cultural heritage Glinka drew upon to create his “authentic Russian” sound. This pre-Glinka history section is followed by an overview of the composer’s life, as well as a chapter that re-examines Glinka’s impact on Russian literature. The final chapter presents an overview of the songs as a whole: the languages Glinka set, musical styles he imitated, the average vocal ranges of his pieces, compositional tendencies seen in his piano accompaniments and vocal lines, where he wrote the majority of his songs, and what textual topics he selected.