ed his impressions skilfully and vividly, with an almost
virtuosic sense of his material. If he could not paint the spring in
music, he could at least embroider the score of "Sniegourochka"
delightfully with birdcalls and all manner of vernal fancies. If he
could not recreate the spirit of peasant art, he could at least, as in
"Le Coq d'or," imitate it so tastefully that, listening to the music, we
seem to have before us one of the pictures beloved by the Russian
folk--a picture with bright and joyous dabs of color, with clumsy but
gleeful depictions of battles and cavalcades and festivities and
banqueting tables loaded with fruits, meats and flagons. It is indeed
curious, and not a little pathetic, to observe how keen
Rimsky-Korsakoff's intelligence ever was. The satirization of the
demoniacal women of "Parsifal" and "Salome" in the figure and motifs of
the Princess of Samarcand is deliciously light and witty. Indeed, not
only "Le Coq d'or," but most of his work reveals his dry, real sense of
humor. And how often does he not point the direction in which Russian
music has subsequently advanced! His latter style, with its mottled
chromatic and Oriental modes, its curious and bewildering intervals, is
the veritable link between the music of the older Russian group to which
he, roughly, belongs and that of the younger, newer men, of Strawinsky
in particular. Indeed, the works of Strawinsky reveal incessantly how
much the master taught the pupil.

But if they reveal Rimsky's keenness, they reveal his limitations as
well. They bring into sharpest relief the difference between poetic and
superficial expressiveness. For Strawinsky has in many instances
successfully handled materials which Rimsky not quite satisfactorily
employed. The former's early works, in particular "L'Oiseau de feu," and
the first act of the opera "Le Rossignol," related to Rimsky's in style
as they are, have yet a faery and wonder and flittergold that the master
never succeeded in attaining. The music of "L'Oiseau de feu" is really a
fantastic dream-bird. "Petrouchka" has a brilliance and vivacity and
madness that makes Rimsky's scenes from popular life, his utilizations
of vulgar tunes and dances scarcely comparable to it. Nowhere in any of
Rimsky's reconstructions of ethnological dances and rites, neither in
"Mlada" nor in "Sniegourochka," is there anything at all comparable to
the naked power manifest in "Le Sacre du printemps." But it is
particularly