The general, engineer, the largest scientist in Russia in fortification, and at the same time, the famous Russian composer Caesar Cui was a romantic musician with an amazing culture of feeling and poetics, the finest lyrics. In addition, he is the most active promoter of the work of friends from The Mighty Handful. All spheres of activity were given to Caesar Cui, everywhere he achieved significant successes - both in musical science, and in military.
Heritage
The creativity of Caesar Cui is very diverse and extensive. Fourteen operas came out from under his pen, including four for children, hundreds of melodic romances, choral, orchestral works, ensembles and many compositions for piano. Musical criticism has enriched enormously - Caesar Cui has authored more than seven hundred articles.
In musical schools there was no such instrument for which his works would not be shifted, and a rare student during the first seven to eight years of study never came across his music. And those who were lucky enough to join his magical harmonies, let through soulful melody through themselves, will never forget Caesar Antonovich Cui.
Childhood
Caesar Cui's biography was the same as that of any boy in his circle. He was born in Lithuania, in Vilna. Father - a native of France, came with Napoleon and remained in Russia, taught at the gymnasium. The future composer grew up in an atmosphere of high culture of communication, around him there were always smart people, interesting conversations and, of course, music. The family was friendly, and young Caesar Antonovich Cui received the first piano lessons from his older sister. The giftedness of the boy was noticed, and further lessons continued with private teachers.
At the age of fourteen, he began to compose music: mazurkas, nocturnes, romances, songs, and even an overture was one. These works, still quite naive as a child, were vividly interested in one of the piano teachers. His teacher at that time was the famous Stanislav Monyushko, a wonderful Polish composer. The talent was again noted. Moreover, not only the teacher, but Caesar Cui received a colleague and senior friend at that moment. A brief biography also details this period, it is so significant.
Monyushko
Monyushko began to give the young musician free lessons in counterpoint, composition, and music theory. They studied for less than a year, but this time brought great benefit to the future works of Caesar Cui. Each biographer thoroughly lingers on this period. Monyushko is a great artist, a bright and broad-minded person, you can’t get past such close communication between two wonderful creators.
One can imagine these regrets and sorrows when I had to leave all the usual way, my beloved gymnasium, and most importantly - a creative friendship with Stanislav Monyushko, because I was going to move to St. Petersburg and study, nothing touching notes. The biography of Caesar Antonovich Cui as if from a new page has begun. He enrolled in military studies at the Main Engineering School, where he had to temporarily forget about music.
On two fronts
But the pupils were not deprived of musical impressions, they visited the opera every week, all kinds of concerts, which gave rich food in order to form a composer and critic. In 1856, acquaintances with the best representatives of the music school of Russia began. The first was Milii Alekseevich Balakirev, a little later Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky and Alexander Nikolaevich Serov.
At this moment, admission to the Nikolaev Military Engineering Academy in a short biography of Caesar Cui was already noted, and his work, it would seem, could not be found there. The load is very high. But time was found. The composer devoted more and more strength to music. But he graduated from the Academy more than successfully, and therefore was left for excellent studies by a topography teacher.
Hard way
The activities conducted by Caesar Antonovich Cui during these years can be briefly called super-saturated. Firstly, this is a pedagogical work, and secondly, scientific, requiring tremendous effort and work. The latter, by the way, did not end until the very end of life. A rare servant at that time could go all the way from the very first step to the colonel in twenty years.
He loved to deal with children, and therefore spent a lot of time in the lower grades of the school, educating future military engineers. And he was not only amazed, but often indignant at the authorities that he managed to combine all this with composing music and writing critical musical articles. Moreover, all this he did with almost the same success. And he managed to make publications in the Engineering Journal, so sensible that in a short time he became one of the most prominent specialists in fortification in the country, a professor at the academy and a major general.
Gunner
Interesting facts: Caesar Antonovich Cui wrote a lot of textbooks on fortification, which almost all officers of the Russian army learned. And at the same time, in all the high-society drawing rooms, his romances from the third opus were performed, his operas were staged in home performances (The Prisoner of the Caucasus, The Son of the Mandarin), where the author accompanied himself or four hands with Balakirev.
And in the sixties of the century before last at the Mariinsky Theater, his opera William Ratcliffe, based on the poem by Heinrich Heine, was fantastic, uncertain, passionate. The translation by Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheev was wonderful. For Cui, this work was like a scientific study in his main specialty in the laboratory. And this opera was highly praised by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky. But the work of Musorgsky Cui was far from always able to appreciate, and underestimated Tchaikovsky. Also an interesting fact.
Romantic
The composer uses the romantic strings of his soul not only when choosing a plot, but here he also applies the features of orchestration and harmonic finds. First of all, his music is notable for its extraordinary beauty, for which Cui even today is often called "our Russian Mendelssohn". Recitatives of operas - and those in color are extremely diverse, melodically expressive. This is where the development of melodic recitation characteristic of the further development of Russian music comes from.
According to critics, the first Caesar Cui's operas lack the general breadth of thematism, all the details are very finely finished, hence some kaleidoscopicity that is unusually difficult to combine into a single whole, since all the material in each layer is unusually beautiful and self-sufficient.
Operas and romances
In 1976, the Mariinsky Theater again gathered opera lovers: Caesar Cui introduced his new work - the opera Angelo, based on the drama of Victor Hugo. Here, the composer shows himself as a mature artist with a stronger talent and significantly increased technical skill. The music turned out to be inspirational and passionate, the characters are convex, bright, strong, immediately memorable. Cui built the dramaturgy skillfully, increasing the tension of the action from stage to stage, and artistic means were used organically. All the same, the audience was captivated by expression-rich recitatives.
Still, Caesar Cui is not a master of large canvases, but in miniature he has very few equal. He, like no one, managed to embody the deepest and most exalted feelings in small romances and songs, it was here that he achieved the greatest harmony and harmony. These are various vocal cycles and separate romances. Especially good are the cycles of eighteen poems by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, twenty-one poems by Nekrasov, twenty-five poems by Pushkin, four Mickiewicz sonnets, twenty poems by Rishpen, thirteen musical pictures, "Aeolian harps". The most famous romance was the "Burned Letter" to the poems of Pushkin.
Friendship for life
Significant works were the work of Caesar Cui in instrumental genres. The wonderful piano suite "In Argento" is dedicated to the Belgian countess, a fan of his work, a translator and director of his operas. She once wrote to the composer herself asking for materials about Russian music. Cui eagerly responded, and their long-term and wonderful friendship began.
This woman was an amazing one, one of the most aristocratic family names in the world, versatile, educated, intelligent, and generous. She, as it is now customary to express herself, noted in her friends List and Saint-Saens, Gounod and Anton Rubinstein, as well as many writers, poets, artists - the best people of her time. She studied with one of the most famous pianists in Europe - Sigismund Talberg, and therefore played the piano wonderfully. For nine years, Cui and the Countess corresponded, and more than three thousand letters survived from those times. During this time, Mercy-Argento and perfectly learned the Russian language. Translated into French all the operas not only of Cui, but also of other representatives of The Mighty Handful, two operas of Rimsky-Korsakov and a huge number of romances by Russian composers.
Music criticism
The composer never left this activity, there were many, they are all diverse. Many of Cui’s articles have been published in newspapers. He responded to almost all concerts and absolutely all new opera performances that took place in St. Petersburg. This is a whole chronicle with a detailed analysis of the work of both foreign and Russian composers, the skill of performers. In the foreign press, Russian music began to be promoted with the light hand of Cui. In Paris, his book “Music in Russia” was published, which was translated by his girlfriend, a Belgian countess, and the world was able to get acquainted with the great work of Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka.
The musical taste of the outstanding critic was gradually honed, and over the years he ceased to be the mouthpiece of the ideas of the Balakirev circle, began to look wider, hear more, and therefore his judgments became softer when friends and some personal sympathies ceased to put pressure on them. The life of this composer was so full that it could be divided into several people, and it would be quite difficult for each of them to withstand such a strain. Moreover, his activities have never been divided into periods. He always did everything at the same time. Exceptional performance, outstanding talent, multi-faceted personality.
The final
In short, the life of the composer Cui was interesting and, most importantly, very long. He was happy in marriage, having lived more than forty years with Malvina Bamberg, a student of Dargomyzhsky. The very first opus is dedicated to her - the four-handed scherzo for piano. She left her husband in 1899, and Caesar also knew a very respectable old age - until 1918 his activities did not stop.
Just like the composer Borodin, Cui was much more famous and loved in the scientific community, and not at all in the music. He made a truly huge contribution to the development of fortification, and therefore recognition was widespread. Now, of course, these of his works have lost relevance, and music is not close to everyone. And therefore they recall Caesar Cui mainly for his activities in the most famous music circles.