Russian Musical Society

• 1. Introduction

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  The Russian Musical Society was the first music school in Russia open to the general public. Before its founding in 1859, if you wanted formal music training in Russia, you either belonged to an aristocratic household or paid for private instruction. Classical concerts were performed almost entirely by foreign musicians, most of them German. Native-born Russian performers and composers were a rarity, not a norm. Two people set out to change that: the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, a German-born aunt of Tsar Alexander II, and the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein, one of the only Russian musicians of his day with a genuine international reputation. What did it take to build a music culture almost from scratch? And what happened to the institution they created when Russia itself was torn apart?

• 2. A Society Born in Europe

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  A decade before they founded anything, Elena Pavlovna and Anton Rubinstein were traveling together through Europe. What they observed there planted an idea: Russia needed a permanent institution dedicated to the study and performance of music. Rubinstein was well placed to make that case. His career as a concert pianist had taken him far beyond Russian borders, and his standing as a composer gave him credibility that few native musicians could claim at the time. The Grand Duchess brought something equally essential to the partnership: access. She was the niece of the tsar, and she used that connection to secure Imperial approval for the venture. She also served as the society's provider and driving force, not merely a patron whose name decorated the letterhead. Rubinstein supplied the musical leadership. Together they launched the Russian Musical Society in 1859, with the explicit aim of raising the standard of music across the country and spreading musical education to a public that had largely been shut out of it.

• 3. Opening the Concert Hall

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  In November 1859, Rubinstein took the stage at the society's inaugural concert and played one of his own piano concertos. What followed over the next several years amounted to an accelerated education for Russian audiences. By the mid-1860s, the RMS had performed all of the symphonies, piano concertos and overtures of Ludwig van Beethoven. Audiences also heard oratorios by George Frideric Handel, cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck, and works by Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Russian music was part of the program as well; operas by Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky and Rubinstein himself appeared on the schedule. The concerts alone represented a significant opening of musical life, but the RMS would prove even more consequential for what it taught than for what it performed.

• 4. Classes at the Palace

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  Music classes offered by the RMS were open to all students, and they were held at the Grand Duchess's own home, the Mikhailovsky Palace. What made these classes remarkable was not just their location but who walked through the door to attend them. Bureaucrats, merchants, tradesmen and university students enrolled alongside many young women who could not afford private lessons. The diversity of the student body was striking by the standards of the day, when formal music instruction had been confined to aristocratic homes and exclusive private schools. The classes grew quickly in popularity, and their reach eventually expanded into something more formal: professorial-level education in music. A parallel institution, the Free Music School, also took shape during this period, with an emphasis on choral singing. Both became popular, and together they began to shift what it meant to pursue music seriously in Russia.

• 5. Moscow and the Conservatories

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  In 1860, Nikolai Rubinstein and Prince Nikolai Petrovitch Troubetzkoy founded a Moscow branch of the RMS, setting up shop initially in Rubinstein's own house. The branch grew quickly enough to outgrow that space, and they moved into larger quarters. Troubetzkoy served as chairman of the RMS for seventeen years. The Moscow operation was not simply an outpost of the original; it became a foundation for something larger. In September 1862, the St. Petersburg Conservatory opened under the direction of Anton Rubinstein, formally succeeding the RMS's work in that city. Then in September 1866, Nikolai Rubinstein and Troubetzkoy founded the Moscow Conservatory, which carried forward the Moscow branch's legacy. Both conservatories were the RMS's formal institutional heirs, built on the groundwork of the classes, concerts and administrative structure that had grown up since 1859.

• 6. Revolution and Return

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  The Russian Revolution of 1917 disbanded the RMS in the same year the old order collapsed. Nearly seven decades later, in 1987, a successor body called the All-Russian Musical Society was established, intended to carry forward the traditions and cultural legacy of the original. On the 18th of February 2010, at the Fifth convention of the All-Russian Music Society, the organization voted to rename itself back to the Russian Music Society. The modern RMS functions as a public agency with characteristics of a creative union, bringing together thousands of people involved in musical and choreographic culture across Russia and its constituent nations, at both professional and amateur levels. The society has chapters in every Russian region and organizes concerts, folklore holidays, master classes, music festivals and competitions. It also helps Russian soloists and ensembles take part in international festivals and concert tours, extending outward some of the same ambition that sent Elena Pavlovna and Anton Rubinstein across Europe more than a century and a half ago.