Mlada (1872): Scenes from a Collaborative Opera-Ballet by César Cui, Modest Musorgskii, Nikolai Rimskii-Korsakov, and Aleksandr Borodin ed. by Albrecht Gaub (review)

Collaborative musical works (that is, works jointly written by multiple composers) occupy an interesting niche in musical history, one comprised of far more unfinished works and failures than successes. Ever since Anonymous 4 singled out Léonin and Pérotin, the single-composer work has been the norm in "classical" music history, and Western culture strongly prioritizes traits such as individualism, coherence, and personal style—traits difficult to achieve in multicomposer works. Works composed by committee may also be more prone to logistical problems barring their completion, performance, and publication, problems ranging from conflicting schedules to ideological or aesthetic disagreements between collaborators. But even when failed or fragmentary, collaborative works are almost always uniquely informative, providing new insights into the composers' relationships, collaborative approaches, and working methods. The 1872 unfinished opera-ballet Mlada, a collaboration involving most of the Russian moguchaya kuchka (Mighty Handful, or Mighty Five), amply demonstrates the importance of this category.

For well over a century, Mlada's score and libretto consisted of a jumble of manuscripts and fragmentary publications, scattered throughout various Russian and Western European archives, and completely inaccessible to most scholars and performers. The musicologist Albrecht Gaub has painstakingly traced the work's genesis and progress, and has finally presented everything that has survived of this work in a new score. This score serves as a companion to his book Die Kollektive Ballett-Oper "Mlada": Ein Werk von Kjui, Musorgskij, Rimskij-Korsakov, Borodin und Minkus (Studia Slavica Musicologica, Bd. 12 [Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 1998]).

The 1872 Mlada is, as a whole, completely unperformable. Large chunks of its music and libretto were lost or never written, and while a few of the extant sections were published as isolated numbers, most were later incorporated into works such as Mussorgsky's Soro-chintsy Fair, Borodin's Prince Igor, or Rimsky-Korsakov's later solo opera-ballet on the Mlada subject matter. Musically, this score hardly constitutes an untouched gold mine, yet it is a valuable acquisition for any dedicated academic music library. Through his curation and presentation of this work, such as it is, Gaub offers a fascinating window into the creative and interpersonal interactions of the collaborators Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Cui, just at the time when the members of the moguchaya kuchka began to work in different directions. Here we have a further glimpse into the ideas and philosophies of Stepan Gedeonov, polymath and director of the St. Petersburg imperial theaters, who commissioned the work and developed its concept. And we also find essential background information for anyone interested in either the aforementioned Sorochintsy Fair or Prince Igor, or of course either of the two subsequent completed works titled Mlada: Ludwig Minkus's 1879 ballet and Rimsky-Korsakov's 1891 opera-ballet. In addition, the work's status as a type of Russian anti-Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk may also interest students of Wagner, pan-Slavic nationalism, and general nineteenth-century aesthetics.

In 1872, St. Petersburg's musical scene was rapidly evolving. Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky had died in 1869, and Aleksandr Serov in 1871. Balakirev had for the time being left composition (and the country) following a mental breakdown. In something of an affront to the rest of the notoriously anticonservatory kuchka, Rimsky-Korsakov had recently accepted a teaching post at the decade-old St. Petersburg conservatory. Mussorgsky had finished revising Boris Godunov, which was finally accepted for performance. Cui and Borodin were largely focusing on their nonmusical careers. Borodin had...