M. Balakirev. Autograph letter signed, with an autograph quotation from the incidental music for "King Lear", 1903

Mily Balakirev

Attractive autograph letter signed ("Mily Balakirev"), in Russian, to the writer and critic Rosa Newmarch, ABOUT THE INCIDENTAL MUSIC FOR KING LEAR, WITH A 4-LINE AUTOGRAPH MUSICAL QUOTATION

describing his work reorchestrating the entr'acte to Acts 2 and 3, making the four-hand arrangement for piano duet and his present preoccupation with the entr'acte to Act 4, which must depict the sick Lear, overwhelmed with grief beside Cordelia's lifeless body, explaining that this music is based on an old English tune, ILLUSTRATING IT WITH A 24-BAR MUSICAL QUOTATION, MARKED FOR COR ANGLAIS, and hoping that she agrees that the minor-key ending 'gives it the convincing character of an ancient English melody [trans.]'; in the letter Balakirev further describes how his plans to work on his compositions at his summer house have been severely curtailed by the weather this year, though he has managed nevertheless to write his Waltz no.6, the Rêverie and the Phantasiestück [all for piano], and expresses the hope that his work on the entr'actes for King Lear is now finished, since the rest of the music will not present him with any further difficulties

4 pages, 8vo (18 x 11.5cm), the autograph musical quotation written on four single-system hand-drawn staves, St. Petersburg, 19 September (2 October, new style) 1903, two small tears (one with paper loss) to the first leaf, apparently without loss of text, light creasing along folds

RARE. Autograph music by Balakirev is exceptionally rare at auction.

Balakirev's overture and incidental music to Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear - first version 1858-1861, revised 1902-1905 - form one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Russian music. The old English tune which is the basis of the prelude to Act 4 is first stated unaccompanied by the cor anglais and then, as Gerald Abraham notes, 'treated as the theme of a set of "changing background" variations, more or less anticipating Delius's method in "Brigg Fair"...' The melody itself may have been supplied to Balakirev by the Russian critic Vladimir Stassov, when the idea of composing music to Lear first occurred to the composer. In using a folk melody as the basis of an instrumental piece Balakirev was doing something no English composer would do until some 40 years later.

LITERATURE:

Gerald Abraham, On Russian Music (2013/R), passim