Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Third Textbook in Alexander Ossovsky’s Notes: Concerning the History of the Formation of the St. Petersburg School of Music Theory
Abstract
The article presents a document from the personal archive of Doctor of the Arts History, Professor, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation Valery Vassilyevich Smirnov (1937–2023) — the notebook of outstanding Russian musicologist Alexander Vyacheslavovich Ossovsky. It summarizes notes of Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov’s lectures on the theory of counterpoint, which Ossovsky attended at the St. Petersburg Conservatory from January to November 1897. The materials of the notebook, bearing the inscription Zapiski po chteniyam N. A. Rimskogo-Korsakova o kontrapunkte [Notes on Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov’s Lectures on Counterpoint], contain a sequential summary of the subjects of the course and detailed recommendations for fulfilling written assignments on the studied themes. However, they comprise merely a fragment of the counterpoint course, which was a special theoretical discipline. Ossovsky’s previously unknown autograph can be examined not merely as a notes of Rimsky- Korsakov’s lectures, but also as a “sketch” for his unrealized textbook on counterpoint; information on Rimsky-Korsakov’s planned textbook is present in Vassily Vassilyevich Yastrebtsev’s and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov’s memoirs. The realization of such an intention in connection with the published works on harmony and the bases of orchestration would make it possible for us to compile an exhaustive theoretical compendium for the course on free composition the founder of the St. Petersburg school for composition taught at the Conservatory during the course of several decades.
Keywords: Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Vyacheslavovich Ossovsky, the St. Petersburg Conservatory, theoretical school, textbook on counterpointFull Text:
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.56620/RM.2024.4.110-118
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