Carol Bailey Hughes, Ph.D. 1984

Advisor: Howard E. Smither

Dissertation Title: The Origin of “the First Russian Patriotic Oratorio”: Stepan Anikievich Degtiarev’s Minin I Pozharskii (1811)

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Dissertation Abstract:

The work introduces and describes an era during which a Russian serf composer and a member of the Russian petty nobility collaborated to create in 1811 “the first Russian patriotic oratorio”: Minin i Pozharskii, ili Osvobozhdeniia Moskvy (Minin and Pozharskii, or the Freeing of Moscow). Although unrecognized in Western musical literature, this oratorio constitutes apparently the earliest secular, patriotic composition cast as a traditional, Western European oratorio–a form unquestionably imported from the West and without direct parallel in native Russian choral music. Neither the talent of the composer, Stepan Anikievich Degtiarev (1766-1813) nor the skill of the librettist, Nikolai Dmitrievich Gorchakov (c. 1780-1847), nor the dramatic merits of the oratorio’s subject explains the positive impression which the 1811 premiere of Minin i Pozharskii made upon the Moscow public or the place which the composition holds in the annals of Russian music history. For this reason, the dissertation emphasizes the social atmosphere and artistic precedents which surrounded and motivated the creation of the oratorio.

Part One introduces the Russian social milieu from 1760 to 1820 and the musical genres important during that period. Particular emphasis is given to the powerful Sheremetev family which owned Stepan Degtiarev, to the institution of the krepostnoi teatr (serf theatre) and to two native Russian a cappella choral genres–the kant and the khorovoi kontsert. Part Two considers the composer Degtiarev and the librettist Gorchakov as representatives of their era. Part Three narrows the discussion to the specific subject depicted in the oratorio Minin i Pozharskii—a battle waged in 1612 by military heroes Kuz’ma Minin (d. 1616) and Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii (1578-1642)—and presents various manifestations of that theme in Russian art and literature. Part Four concentrates on the oratorio itself: the primary sources, the libretto, the instrumentation, the musical setting of the text, the response of society mirrored in contemporary reviews, and the subsequent critical writing which the oratorio inspired. The dissertation is based largely on research conducted in the Soviet Union during the academic year 1981-82.

Dr. Hughes was as an Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University.