Rebecca Mitchell's study has two main themes: the central role that, she claims, was accorded to music in the twilight years of tsarist Russia, and the search for a Russian Orpheus who would save society from the ills of modernity besetting Russia. Her “Nietzsche's orphans” were a disparate group of troubled souls: writers, artists, musicians (three of them renowned composers), journalists and music critics, all influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy and the special place of music in it. They were “orphaned,” however, by their inability to accept all of his teachings, notably his amorality, and by their resistance against the continuing hegemony of German philosophy and music over Russian culture. Mitchell sees them as a distinct “aesthetic community,” with a shared language “replete with terminology such as ‘Dionysian,’ ‘Apollonian,’ ‘symbol,’ ‘leitmotif,’ ‘religious art,’ sobornost΄, ‘unity,’ ‘mysticism,’ ‘life-creation,’ ‘Orphic’ and ‘messianic’” (10).
Within this community there was little agreement on the form that Russia's musical (and therefore existential) salvation should take and the search for a Russian Orpheus in Mitchell's account resembles less a group endeavor than a beauty contest conducted by competing acolytes to prove the merits of their respective heroes and often to denigrate their rivals. This is clearly revealed in her discussion of the three principal candidates: Aleksandr Skriabin, Nikolai Medtner, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Only Skriabin, however, was fully involved in the creation of his own mythology; both Medtner and Rachmaninoff had mythology woven around them, Medtner principally by his elder brother, Emilii, and Rachmaninoff by his adoring audiences and by the young writer Marietta Shaginian. Nonetheless, Mitchell believes that there was indeed a “sense of common cause” which was a “defining characteristic of Nietzsche's orphans” (14).
The book is straightforwardly organized, opening with an introduction to the personalities and issues discussed. Next, she examines the “musical metaphysics” derived from Arthur Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but developed by a wide range of writers to reflect the special nature of Russian society and history and music's task to heal the conflicts and divisions crippling Russia. Mitchell then focuses on the three candidates for the role of Orpheus, though Nikolai Medtner shares a chapter with his overweening brother and the chapter on Rachmaninoff is justly subtitled “The Unwilling Orpheus.” Here I think Mitchell has taken his self-professed pessimism, for which the “orphans constantly assailed him,” too uncritically. In providing a few short illustrations of each composer's works, she necessarily emphasizes a particular facet of their musical imagination; in the case of Rachmaninoff, The Isle of the Dead and his use of the Dies Irae motif. For all his public persona as a pessimist, Rachmaninoff was also the composer of some of the most exhilarating music for orchestra and solo piano ever written. When Leonid Sabaneev heard only the “tragic helplessness of man” (156), he evidently had not listened to the second symphony, composed two years before The Isle. Like many composers at all times (though certainly not Skriabin), Rachmaninoff seems to have revealed himself only in his music, refusing to engage in the discussions of music and metaphysics indulged by his contemporaries and admirers.
Mitchell makes some pertinent comments on gender in this metaphysical world, noting that the clichés of female passivity and male creativity were rampantly displayed. In some cases, misogyny and antisemitism (à la Otto Weininger) were closely interrelated, as is revealed in her discussion of Emilii Medtner (121, 128–29). She also notes that women were scarce in the print media, though enthusiastic participants in the performance and promotion of new music and in the informal discussion of it.
She ends with a chapter on the impact of war and revolution on the “orphans” and a moving epilogue, noting their fate after 1917. Many emigrated, while others made a successful accommodation with the Soviet regime. Others perished in the Gulag.
I have some doubts about her claim that music performed a crucial role in the spiritual life of late tsarist Russia, essential for the future of the Russian nation. Her study shows that while this was true of the metaphysical circles themselves, for the wider educated public music remained predominantly an entertainment, as elsewhere in western culture. Similarly, her focus on the introverted world of the musical metaphysicians leaves the reader with the misleading impression that except for Richard Wagner and his contested influence, the Russian musical world was largely insulated from the music of western Europe and North America.
The book is extensively documented, with an immense range of published and archival materials quoted, and some elegantly presented music illustrations. After all the dense prose, it must have been a relief to return to the music itself, with no need for commentary.
