JĀZEPS VĪTOLS AT THE ST. PETERSBURG CONSERVATORY (BASED ON MATERIAL FROM THE ST. PETERSBURG ARCHIVES)

Abstract

Latvian composer Jāzeps Vītols spent 38 years (1880–1918) at Russia’s first music academy. For six of those years, he was a student, but for the remaining 32 – a teacher: initially lecturer, later professor. The documents that are stored in the St. Petersburg archives – the Central State Historical Archive (CGIA), the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), the Russian National Library Manuscript Division (ORRNB), the St. Petersburg Conservatory Musical Science Library Manuscript Division (NIOR NMB SPBGK) – offer the ability to supplement the portrait of Jāzeps Vītols with little known or forgotten facts, to reveal his rich artistic personality and comment on the complex twists in his life. There we can find characterisations of Vītols by N. Rimsky-Korsakov, written in the pages of the student’s personal evaluation in 1884, as well as the dramatic episode from the Petrograd Conservatory Artistic Council meeting minutes from August 14, 1918, and many other sources. Of particular scientific interest is Jāzeps Vītols’ review, commissioned by N. Rimsky-Korsakov for his magazine Muzykalʹnyj sovremennik (Musical Contemporary) regarding Arnold Schönberg’s Harmonielehre (1911). In addition to the reconstruction of new details about Vītols’ life and the conservatory environment, the publication also includes a chronicle of events honouring Vītols that took place at the St. Petersburg/Leningrad Conservatory during Vītols’ life, as well as after his death, including the public opening ceremony of a memorial plaque in his honour in October 2011.