Who hasn’t heard of the folktale collection A Thousand and One Nights? And is there anyone who does not know about the wise storyteller who survived her struggle against evil cruelty? Sultan Shahryār, being convinced that women are deceitful and unfaithful, marries a virgin every day, then each time he has her beheaded the morning after their wedding night. After three years of this horrible barbarism, Scheherazade offers herself voluntarily to be the cruel sultan’s wife, and she asks his permission to tell him a story in the evening. At dawn, her storytelling full of mystery, magic, and adventure has not finished, and because the sultan is curious about how the story will continue, he must postpone the execution. After a period of a thousand and one nights, the beautiful girl Scheherazade not only saves her life in this way, but also manages to soften the heart of the cruel ruler entirely. The sultan finally realizes that by her wisdom, faithfulness, and love, Scheherazade has not only saved herself, but also prevented him from carrying out further acts of evil. It is the sultan’s transformation that constitutes the beautiful finale of the entire four-movement composition that the Russian composer Nikola Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in 1888, giving it the title Scheherazade, a symphonic suite for orchestra, Op. 35. The composer himself conducted the successful premiere in Saint Petersburg that same year. By then, he was already a famed and respected artist who was most strongly drawn to subject matter from folk literature and especially from fairy tales.
In real life, the difficult path Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had to follow to fulfil his dreams was like something from a fairy tale. At age 20, he enrolled at a school for naval cadets in Saint Petersburg, and after graduation he sailed around the world on the school’s clipper. In his memoirs, he wrote about the experience in detail, and after his happy return, he evaluated it as follows: “My voyage of foreign seas had ended. From that voyage, which lasted two years and eight months, I came away with many unforgettable memories of the natural beauty of faraway lands and seas and with many negative, harsh, and revolting impressions from naval service. And what is there to say about music and my desire for it?” Fortunately, a much longer section of his memoirs deals with music, and especially with his unique output as a composer.
Just like the collection of Oriental fairy tales, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s four-movement orchestral suite is full of mystery, magic, and adventure. It begins with a unison fortissimo theme depicting the cruel sultan. Next, we here a violin solo that, according to the composer, “depicts Scheherazade herself as if she were telling her wonderful tales to the terrible sultan.” Scheherazade’s theme appears at important points to join the whole narrative of the individual stories, creating a colourful kaleidoscope of fairytale characters and images of Oriental character: “The program I was guided by in composing Scheherazade consisted of separate, unconnected episodes and pictures from The Arabian Nights, scattered through all four movements of my suite: the sea and Sinbad’s ship, the fantastical narrative of the Kalandar Prince, the Prince and the Princess, the Baghdad festival and the ship dashing against the rock with the bronze rider upon it.” The composer had originally given the individual movements names based on these stories, but he removed the programmatic titles from the printed edition: “For people to go digging around in my composition to find an overly definite programme was not what I wanted.” What was much more important to him was the fact that the music portrayed “various tales of some one person (who happens to be Scheherazade).” The musical theme by which Rimsky-Korsakov depicts Sheherazade is the very embodiment of grace, soaring with natural lightness, radiating a feeling of security and love. At the same time, it makes subtle appearances throughout the work in different moods, provoking more and more curiosity. Its power appears at its fullest at the very end, bringing the peaceable transformation of the sultan’s theme. Once the sultan has finally found reconciliation with the world and with himself, it is in the comforting and tender embrace of Sheherazade.
