Chapter 43

CHAPTER XIX

NATIONAL SCHOOLS—RUSSIAN,

BOHEMIAN AND SCANDINAVIAN

Before beginning an account of Tchaikowsky, the most noted
though not necessarily the greatest of the Russian composers,
a few words may be said concerning nationalism in music, the
chief representatives of which are the Russians, the Bohemians,
the Scandinavians and the Hungarians. Of these, however, the
present-day Russian School is the most active and contributes
constantly new factors to musical evolution. This grafting of
forms of expression derived from the outlying nations on to the
parent-stock of music—which for some three hundred years had
been in the exclusive control of Italy, Germany and France—
has been a stimulating factor in the development of the last
half-century. For the idiom of music was becoming somewhat
stereotyped, and it has been noticeably revitalized by the incor-
poration of certain “exotic” traits, of which there run through
all national music these three: (1) the use, in their folk-songs,
of other forms of scale and mode than are habitual with our-
selves; (2) the preference given to the minor mode and the free
commingling of major and minor; (3) the great rhythmic vari-
ety and especially the use of groups foreign to our musical sense,
such as measures of 5 and 7 beats, and the intentional placing of
the accent on parts of the measure which with us are ordinarily
unaccented. Every country has its folk-songs—the product of