Satire, Empire and Chromaticism in Dargomyzhsky’s Orchestral Fantasias

Abstract In 1863, Alexander Dargomyzhsky hatched plans for a gallery of humorous fantasias that would depict nationalities residing on the western border of the Russian Empire, including Baltic Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Finns. On the one hand, this gallery of satirical portraits was an effective way of capturing the attention of domestic audiences, since the western borderlands were at the forefront of Russian popular attention in the wake of the Polish uprising. On the other hand, Dargomyzhsky repeatedly reiterated his intention that the fantasias should function as a means of achieving international recognition, and a year later he actually set off on a promotional tour across Europe. Together, the imperial implications of the three resulting fantasias, Dargomyzhsky’s attempts to market them abroad and the compositional inventiveness of the final fantasia, the Chukhon Fantasy, locate Dargomyzhsky’s orchestral oeuvre as a crucial node in the convoluted aesthetic and cultural negotiations of Russian nineteenth-century music.