Our Notes & References

“The first music almanac in Russia” (Vereshchagin & Svod. Kat.), here in a lovely example with its first Russian fragile binding, most probably the publisher’s since we learn in the 2pp. catalogue at end that the volume was offered “in a binding” – for 2 roubles. This catalogue contains quite a few other musical publications, mostly scores, and only a minority in Russian. The volume itself contains a wealth of full-page engraved music on thicker paper.

“Exceptionally rare” (Vereshchagin): apparently no copy in the Americas, we have traced only one library copy outside of Russia (Bibliothèque de Genève); no copies traced at auction outside Russia.

Literary and cultural almanacs became popular in France in the latter half of the 18^th century, and their appearance in Russia in the 1790s is associated in particular with the writer Nikolai Karamzin. In 1795, a year before the death of Catherine the Great and a year after Karamzin began publishing literary almanacs, the enterprising German-born bookseller Johann Gerstenberg offered his own musical version of the genre.

This, the very first such publication in Russia, also counts as the first Russian illustrated almanac, by virtue of its engraved frontispiece of the Austrian composer Pleyel, along with its abundance of musical scores (Koltsova). It was followed in 1796 by a second volume, this time featuring a portrait of Mozart. Both volumes are described in Vereshchagin’s bibliography as “exceptionally rare” and “very elegantly published” for their time; and both are cited as being of “special significance” for the history of Russian music publishing (Seaman).

Of this 1796 volume we could trace also only one example outside Russia, in the Library of Congress.

The 1795 Karmannaia kniga is nothing if not eclectic. It opens with the publisher’s introduction to this “first attempt at a musical pocket book on the model of the musical almanacs or calendars published in foreign lands,” including a humble request that readers send examples of current Russian musical compositions and folk songs for publication in further such editions. It continues with a general calendar, biographies of the composers J. S. and C. P. E. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Pleyel, and a dictionary of musical terms. Next up are short articles on the latest inventions: Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica and the “euphon” of German physicist Ernst Chladni. We are then regaled with a series of musical anecdotes, including the tale of how a contrabassist once employed glissandi to great effect when surrounded by a pack of wolves. Even more curious is the next section, which comprises a game: by the use of dice and a set of tables and musical snippets (shades of the aleatory experiments of the 20^th-century avant-garde?), even the least musically-literate of readers “can devise an incalculable number of minuets.”

The almanac concludes with pianoforte arrangements of two Russian folk songs with variations by Ivan Khandoshkin and Wilhelm Palschau, followed by six songs by Fedor Dubianskii (appearing in print for the first and last time, as he drowned in the Neva River the next year). Dubianskii’s songs remained popular in Petersburg salons through the first quarter of the 19^th century. Particularly famous was his “Stonet sizyi golubochek” [“The little grey dove moans”], with lyrics by the well-known sentimentalist poet Ivan Dmitriev. (This piece is mentioned – not without irony – by Pushkin in his Little House in Kolomna.) Dubianskii’s six songs have been cited as being among the best examples of 18^th-century chamber lyricism, with a “sincerity and simplicity of tone” that paves the way for the lyrical Russian romance genre of the 19^th century (Durandina).

As a whole, the Karmannaia kniga almanac reflects the prominent role assigned to music in Catherine the Great’s project for a Russian Enlightenment. On the one hand, we have the pedagogical function (the composers’ biographies, the musical dictionary), inculcating amongst the nobility an appreciation for contemporary trends and demonstrating Russia’s membership in the European cultural mainstream. (E.g., the article on the euphon highlights its inventor’s visit to St. Petersburg just the previous spring.)

On the other hand, this volume follows the example set by Catherine in her own operatic output, promoting not only Western models but the native production of both classically-trained Russian composers and folk culture. (We note not only the musical examples that are printed here, but the inclusion of the definitions of balalaika and gusli among the clavichords and viola da gambas of the musical dictionary.) Of course, it also reflects the tastes of its time, when the baroque/classical transition era thrust forward such figures as Ignaz Pleyel, honoured here with a frontispiece but remembered today less as a composer than as the builder of Chopin’s preferred pianos.

Johann Gerstenberg (1758-1841) was one of the first music publishers in St. Petersburg. Together with the other entrepreneurs of German origin who dominated this business, he spent the 1790s in tireless activity, printing sheet music (including the first Russian edition of Mozart’s Magic Flute) and releasing a variety of periodicals (including such titles as The Saint Petersburg Musical Shop for Clavichords and Pianofortes, Dedicated to the Female Sex and to Lovers of this Instrument), a sample of which is found in Gerstenberg’s catalogue at the end of the volume.

Provenance

Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 1 April 1933, lot 101 (annotated catalogue entry (“Rarissime”), loosely inserted).

Bibliography

Bitovt 2468; Smirnov-Sok. 1411; Sopikov 5083; Svod. Kat. IV-169; Vereshchagin 374 (and 375 for the next year); Durandina, E. “265 let so dnia rozhdeniia russkogo kompozitora Fedora Dubianskogo,” https://www.nashteatr.com, 15 Feb., 2025; Hopkinson, C. Notes on Russian Music Publishers. Bath: private printing, 1959. p. 4; Koltsova, L. “‘Kartinka’ v almanakhakh i sbornikakh Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX veka,” antiqueland.ru; Seaman, G. “An Eighteenth-Century Russian Pocket-Book,” Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 60, no. 2 (Apr., 1982), pp. 262-72; V. Kirschbaum, 1898. p. 109; Volman, Russkie pechatnye noty XVIII veka. Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1957. pp. 104-5.