Kamarinskaya

The whole of Russian symphonic music, Tchaikovsky once declared, is in Glinka’s Kamarinskaya, “just as the whole oak is in the acorn.” He was exaggerating, of course but, as he explained, it is “a stunningly original piece, to which all later Russian composers to the present day refer, in the most obvious fashion, as soon as they have to develop a Russian dance tune.” Actually, what Glinka demonstrated in Kamarinskaya is that you cannot develop a Russian dance tune except by repeating it, varying it a little and offsetting it with other tunes - just as Tchaikovsky was to do in his “Little Russian” Symphony nearly thirty years later.

Written in less than two weeks in 1848, Kamarinskaya is actually based on two Russian folk tunes - a wedding song and the dance traditionally known as “Kamarinskaya.” The wedding song is briefly anticipated in the opening bars, introduced in its definitive form on unison strings and repeated three times in different orchestral colours. After making its first lightly dancing entry on unaccompanied violins, “Kamarinskaya” is presented in thirteen miniature variations. The wedding song is recalled to effect a timely change of atmosphere before “Kamarinskaya” is re-introduced by a solo clarinet - this time to furnish the material for no fewer than twenty-one more variations. Although, according to his friends, Glinka never tired of improvising further variations, he wisely left Kamarinskaya as it was: one more variation (or one less) and it would be nowhere near as convincing.

1 2 70 157 216 236 265 270-7 282 284-5 293 301 304 309

1 Russian symphonic school “It’s all in Kamarinskay, just as the whole oak is in the acorn.” - Tchaikovsky

70 Glinka was to found a whole instrumental piece upong the principle of the changing background, the tune remaining intact (or almost so), while the accompaniment is constantly varied.

216 the virtuoso pursuit of unrelenting repetition

270 written between 19/9 and 1/10

eight years earlier he had attempted a piano piece on the tune but it had been a failure.

271 By chance I discovered a relationship between the wedding song “From behind the mountains, the high mountains,” which I had heard in the country, and the dance tune, Kamarinskaya, which everyone knows. And suddenly my fantasy ran high and instead of a piano piece I wrote an orchestral piece called Wedding tune and dance tune.

Opposition between two tunes outwardly dissimilar but which could be drawn into one.

1 Introduction - very bried founded on a fragment from middle of the wedding tune

2 Wedding tune stated (on strings in unison), repeated three times with different backgrounds

3 Dance tune (kamarinskaya) - 13 variations which slide seamless into

4 Wedding tune - repetition of the first one and a half variations, very brief transition leading to

5 Dance tune, twenty one further variations

wit in treatment of dance tune, beauty in treatment of wedding song

304 Tchaikovsky again: What a stunningly original piece is Kamarinskaya, from which all later russian composer to the present day (and I, of course, among them) draw, in the most obvious fashion, contrapuntal and harmonic combinations as soon as they have to develop a Russian dance tune.