Nikolay Aleksandrovich Lvov (; May 4, 1753 – December 21, 1803) was a Russian artist of the Age of Enlightenment. Lvov, an amateur of noble lineage, was a polymathBohlman, p. 45. who contributed to geology, history, graphic arts and poetry, but is known primarily as an architect and ethnographer, compiler of the first significant collection of Russian folk songs (the Lvov-Prach collection).
Lvov's architecture represented the second, "strict" generation of neoclassicism stylistically close to Giacomo Quarenghi.Shuisky, p. 128. Lvov worked in Saint Petersburg but his best works survived in the countryside, especially his native Tver Governorate. He redesigned the external appearance of Peter and Paul Fortress and created an unprecedented Trinity Church combining a Roman rotunda with one-of-a-kind pyramidal bell tower. He adapted rammed earth technology to the environment of Northern Russia and used it in his extant Priory Palace in Gatchina; Lvov's construction school, established in 1797, trained over 800 craftsmen. He managed geological surveys and published a treatise on the coals from Donets Basin and Moscow Basin. He experimented with coal pyrolysis, proposed new uses for coal tar and sulphur, and wrote a reference book on heating and ventilation.
Lvov designed the badges of the Order of St. Vladimir and the Order of St. Anna, translated works by Anacreon, Palladio, Petrarch, Sappho and the Saga of King Harald into Russian language, wrote libretto for opera and vaudeville, researched Russian chronicles and published one of the first versions of the bylina of Dobrynya Nikitich. In 1783, he became one of the first 36 members of the Russian Academy.
In 1931, Vladislav Khodasevich called Lvov "an intelligent and subtle connoisseur of everything ... who was not destined to do anything remarkable."Khodasevich, pp. 86. Later researchers appreciated Lvov's contribution: Richard Taruskin considered Lvov's collection of folk songs "the greatest and most culturally significant of Russian folk collections", Philip Bohlman credited discovery of Russian folk art "all from the actions of a single individual, Lvov",Bohlman, p. 44. William Craft Brumfield called Lvov "one of the greatest neoclassical architects produced in the reign of Catherine the Great... neoclassical aesthetics at its purest".Brumfield, p. 181.
Early years
Nikolay Lvov was born in an impoverished country estate from Torzhok.Glinka, Lappo-Danilevsky Sources published before 2001 state date of birth March 4, 1751; in 2001, Galina Dmitrieva published newly found church records showing that Lvov was actually born May 4, 1753.
In line with tradition, his parents "enrolled" Nikolay into Preobrazhensky Lifeguard regiment in 1759. Ten years later, Nikolay arrived in Saint Petersburg and joined the regiment. In 1770–1771, he attended training courses at Izmaylovsky Regiment; these courses were the only instance of formal education in his life. Until 1775, Lvov, along with his military service that became a mere formality, was also employed by the Collegium of Foreign Affairs as a diplomatic courier and extensively travelled to German principalities and Denmark. In July 1775, Lvov resigned both military and civil service in the rank of captain and returned to his parents' estate, but one year later returned to diplomatic service. This time, he travelled to London, Madrid, Paris and the Netherlands; in Paris, Lvov indulged in frequent theatre going and made good acquaintance with poet Ivan Khemnitser and the Bakunin family.
Back in Saint Petersburg, Lvov created a private theatre based in the Bakunin house and played lead parts in plays by Jean-François Regnard, Antonio Sacchini and, probably, Yakov Knyazhnin. He led otherwise a modest lifestyle of a salaried clerk, living at his friends' houses, and could not afford renting his own until May 1779, when his pay was raised to 700 roubles per annum.
Around 1778 or 1779, Lvov developed relationship with Maria Dyakova (her sister Alexandra was engaged to Vasily Kapnist). Maria's father, an influential statesman, distrusted Lvov at first sight and ruled out any marriage proposals. She and Lvov were secretly married in a church in Saint Petersburg on November 8, 1780.Glinka, Lappo-Danilevsky. Other sources date the secret marriage to 1779. Maria still lived in her parents' house for three more years. By 1783, Lvov's social standing improved to the point where the father reluctantly approved the marriage; only then the secret ceremony of 1780 became public. The affair between Lvov and Maria Dyakova became a subject of romance novel fiction (the most recent paperback was issued in 2008).
In April 1781, Lvov was appointed secretary to the Russian Embassy in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony, but "her majesty's will" retained him at Saint Petersburg court. Instead of Dresden, he left for Warsaw and Vienna on government business and managed to carve out time for a personal tour of Italy (Livorno, Pisa, Florence, Bologna and Venice).Lvov, Italian diary, dates arrival in Livorno July 7, departure from Venice July 17. During his tour in Italy, he met with several influential people associated with the Russian court, including Count Demetrio Mocenigo in Pisa. In May 1783, Lvov transferred from Foreign Affairs to the Directorate of Post Offices, where he served under Alexander Bezborodko until 1797. Most of his achievements in arts and sciences took place alongside government service and clearly took precedence over it, so Lvov's career was not as rapid as that of Gavrila Derzhavin.
Poetry and politics Contrary to neoclassical mainstream of his age,Taruskin, p. 4. Lvov as a poet belonged to emerging sentimentalismMoser, p. 110. and pioneered exploration of "spontaneous, great-hearted sincerity in the Russian peasant" that defined yet unexplored national character. He belonged to a close-knit ring of fellow poets; its key members, Lvov, Derzhavin and Vasily Kapnist, were bonded by their marriages to three Dyakova sisters.Moser, p. 111.Ritsarev, p. 199. Kapnist married Alexandra Dyakova in 1781; Derzhavin married Yekaterina Dyakova in 1795, his second marriage. Lvov, Kapnist and Ivan Khemnitser shaped the poetic self-determination of their elder and better-known friend DerzhavinMoser, p. 86. whose literary career started in 1779.Khodasevich, p. 88. The group also included painters (Dmitry Levitzky, Vladimir Borovikovsky), musicians (Yevstigney Fomin and probably Dmitry Bortniansky), engravers and publishers; Marina Ritsarev called the Lvov ring "another Russian Academy, albeit an informal one".
Lvov, "a matchless connoisseur for his age" provided "artists of the high culture with worthy models for emulation." Lvov's own verses contain one of the first literary imitations of a folk song, set to the metre of traditional wedding chants later known as Koltsov's metre, a precursor of one of the commonest poetic genres in 19th-century Russian poetryTaruskin, p. 6. and a testimony to an emerging new status of folk art and the very concept of a nation. He composed one of the first literary stories about Dobrynya Nikitich; unlike his contemporary James Macpherson, he never attempted to disguise it as a true folk bylina.
Politically, Lvov was an "active royalist"Ritsarev, p. 206. faithful to Catherine and later Paul I, at the same time he was also loyal to his fraternity; he secured a diplomatic appointment to Khemnitzer,Khodasevich, p. 120. and tried to prevent the 1790 trial of Alexander Radishchev. Lvov as a mature man parted with his affection to Western culture and became "sort of a slavophile avant la lettre."Boele, p. 60. He was the first to discover poetic qualities of Russian winter, previously overlooked or denied, and to turn it into a stylistic device.Boele, p. 63. For him, winter became a manly nationalistic symbol of what makes Russians different from their Western and Southern neighbors. In the end, Lvov produced "perhaps the most articulate early image of the exuberant Russian soul, and the most explicitly contemptuous of the West"Greenfield, p. 257. predating nationalist writing by Nikolai Gogol.
Ethnography
Lvov collaborated with composer Yevstigney Fomin, "by far and away the ablest native-born Russian composer of his period"Taruskin, p. 7. on a folk singspiel The Coachmen (, 1787), "the highest at which Russian opera before Glinka ever aimed"Taruskin, p. 12. and "astonishingly faithful to those of genuine oral polyphony." The Coachmen was written in 1786 as a one-time event to mark Catherine's visit to Tambov (a new town managed by Lvov's buddy Derzhavin)Ritsarev, p. 201. and contained the first instance of A Birch Stood in the Field () recorded and performed professionally. The song was later used by Mily Balakirev in the Overture on Russian Themes and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the finale of his Fourth Symphony.
Lvov's ethnographic activities were marked by a distinct form of nationalism of his age, "idealization and flattery of the folk";Ritsarev, p. 202. Lvov himself wrote that one of his objectives was to impress "present-day philosophers" in patriotic virtues of the Russians.Ritsarev, p. 202, cites Lvov's preface to the LPC, translated into English by Margarita Mazo He created the Russian name for a folk song (народная песня), adopting Herder's concept of Volkslieder. Lvov's preface to his collection of folk poems published in 1790 contains the first professional description of Russian polyphonic folk singing, a knowledge later forgotten and resurrected in the 1870s.Taruskin, p. 13.
The book, containing one hundred songs, Collection of Russian Folk Songs with Their TunesEnglish rendition as in Taruskin, p. 16. (Собрание народных русских песен с их голосами) was published at the expense of Her Majesty's CabinetRitsarev, p. 206. Ritsarev noted that engraving sheet music in Lvov's age was prohibitively expensive. and was reissued in 1806 adding 53 new songs;Taruskin, p. 16.Russian editions followed in 1815, 1896, 1955; the 1815 edition was reprinted in the United States in 1987 - Taruskin, p. 16. vulgar or "antisocial" songs were excluded. The book was co-authored by Ivan Prach (or Jan Prač)For a discussion of Prach's obscure identity see Taruskin, p. 17; Ritsarev, p. 201. who transcribed sheet music, and is thus known in the English world as Lvov-Prach collection, shortly LPC.Taruskin, p. 17.
One of the songs from the LPC, Glory to the Sun, has been used by Ludwig van Beethoven in the Second Razumovsky Quartet, by Modest Mussorgsky in Boris Godunov and by other composers.Emerson, Oldani p. 41. Verses of yet another song were previously published by Alexander Sumarokov; its LPC version remained a staple of household music throughout the 19th century and was adopted by Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Borodin and Fernando Sor although later critics branded it "fake folk".Taruskin, p. 20. Margarita Mazo, on the contrary, wrote that LPC material is closer to modern understanding of folk music than scientific, surgical transcriptions of the end of the 19th century, and that the creativity of Lvov and Pratsch "influenced the folk tradition itself"As cited in Taruskin, p. 24. through numerous songbooks that circulated all over Russia.Taruskin, p. 24.
Architecture
A list of Lvov's architectural works compiled by Tatarinov contains 87 buildings and country estates,Tatarinov, pp. 372-393 some unconditionally attested through archive evidence, others attributed with different degrees of confidence.See Cracraft, Rowland p. 68 for a discussion of typical attribution problems in 18th-century Russian architecture. The first work on this list, interiors of the house for Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg, the bride of Paul I, was commissioned by Catherine in the summer of 1776.Tatarinov, pp. 372-373. However, absolute majority of Lvov's works were built for private clients: Bezborodko, Derzhavin, Olenin (Utkina Dacha), Kochubey, the Vorontsov and Vyazemsky families in the 1780s.