Legend This work was inspired by an
Arabian tale by
Sennkovsky, suggested to Rimsky-Korsakov by
Modest Mussorgsky and
César Cui. Antar, an enemy of all mankind, has become a recluse in the desert. He saves a
gazelle from a large bird. Weary from fighting the bird, he falls asleep exhausted. He dreams he is in the palace of the Queen of
Palmyra. The queen, the fairy Gul-Nazar, was the gazelle Antar saved from the bird. As a reward, she permits Antar to fulfill three of life's greatest joys — vengeance, power and love. He accepts these gifts with gratitude, then makes a request himself. He asks the queen to take his life if these pleasures become tiresome. He then falls in love with the queen. After some time, however, he becomes weary of his passion. The queen takes him in her arms, kissing him with such ferocity that his life ebbs away. This legend as a whole is incorporated in the opening movement; the other three depict each of the three joys. As
Hector Berlioz did in his
Symphonie fantastique, Rimsky-Korsakov employs an
idée fixe or motto theme in various guises through all four movements to depict Antar. This theme is played by the
violas in the introduction to the opening movement. Later in the same movement,
flutes and
horns play another important theme, this time depicting the queen.
Composition history When initially sketching
Antar, Rimsky-Korsakov called it his Second Symphony, allowing it to be published as such. When he revised the work years later, he renamed it a symphonic suite. Adding to the confusion was his calling his
C major Symphony his Third instead of his Second. Granted, he wrote the Third Symphony in 1874, before he may have changed his mind about
Antar. (The first revision of
Antar was in 1875.) However, he never changed this numbering even after redesignating
Antar a suite, and he continued calling the C major Symphony his Third in his autobiography,
My Musical Life. In fact Rimsky-Korsakov designated another work his Second Symphony in
My Musical Life. This is a Symphony in
B minor, which he started in 1867. He mentions B minor as a favorite key of
Mily Balakirev's, and that he wanted to use a
scherzo in
5/4 time and in the key of
E-flat major. He adds that the opening of the first movement and some of its characteristics would have resembled
Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony. He showed his work-in-progress to Balakirev. Balakirev did not approve of how Rimsky-Korsakov had written the exposition of his themes but did not give concrete suggestions or solutions on how to proceed. As a result, Rimsky-Korsakov lost interest in the project: "I repeat I was disappointed in my musical offspring and soon abandoned or postponed indefinitely the idea of writing a second symphony." He started
Antar after abandoning the B minor Symphony, finishing the first and fourth movements that winter. Rimsky-Korsakov explained both the change of
Antar from symphony to suite and his adamant stance on doing so: The term Suite was then unfamiliar [in 1868] to
our circle in general, nor was it in vogue in the musical literature of western Europe. Still, I was wrong in calling
Antar a symphony. My
Antar was a poem, suite, fairy-tale, story, or anything you like, but not a symphony. Its structure in four separate movements was all that made it approach a symphony. Elaborating on this point, he cites Berlioz's
Harold en Italie and
Symphonie fantastique as being symphonies as well as
program music, due to the symphonic development of their themes and
sonata form of their opening movements.
Antar, in contrast, "is a free musical delineation of the consecutive episodes of the story." While the "Antar" theme links these episodes, the piece "has no thematic development whatsoever—only variations and paraphrases." The composer was happy with ''Antar's'' form when he revised the score years later. He was also pleased overall with the orchestration of
Antar, which he described as being "full of colour and fancy", mentioning especially his use of
flutes,
clarinets and
harp in their lower registers. He scored the initial appearance of the "Antar" theme to
violas to please Mussorgsky since he was especially fond of the instrument. He mentions several works whose influence made themselves felt in scoring
Antar. These include
Ruslan and Lyudmila,
Liszt's
symphonic poems,
Balakirev's
Czech Overture and
Wagner's
Faust Overture.
Versions Because of Rimsky-Korsakov's continued revisions on
Antar and difficulty with the publisher
Bessel, textual complications are both rife and hopelessly confusing. Adding to the confusion are misstatements on two of the published scores. There are actually four published versions of
Antar: •
The first version of the score in 1868. • : This version was not printed in the composer's lifetime; it was published in 1949. This edition also contains the earliest version of the second movement, very different in material and in the key of
B minor. This movement was removed and another substituted before the first performance. •
A revised and reorchestrated version in 1875. • :Still called a symphony by Rimsky-Korsakov, this version was published by Bessel in 1880. It is considered by some more dramatically focused than the 1897 version. •
A second revised version in 1897. • :This is thought to be marginally the most cogent version, containing the composer's final thoughts on this work. Here Rimsky-Korsakov changed the work's designation to "symphonic suite". Bessel did not publish this version until 1913, under the supervision of the composer's son-in-law
Maximilian Steinberg. Confusingly, this version is marked "Passed by censor. Spb.4 November 1903." This date actually belongs to the 1903 version. •
A 1903 re-working of the 1875 version. • :This is a compromise version made after Bessel refused during the composer's lifetime to scrap the engraving plates from the 1875 version or to make new ones for the 1897 version. It includes only what "suggestions" from the 1897 version could be incorporated onto the existing 1875 plates. This version was confusingly labeled "symphonic suite (Second Symphony)." It was also falsely described on Eulenberg and Breitkopf miniature scores as "Nouvelle rédaction (1897)." We are left with three main versions of
Antar; the second exists in two slightly different forms. Minor changes between the three main versions (1868, 1875 and 1897) include tempo markings, dynamic nuances and modifications of scoring. Major changes include cuts and insertion of passages, wholesale
transposition and complete recomposition of passages, along with reorchestration and amended harmony or melody. ==Influences==