Buzzing Through the Hive with Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee
The Backstory
Flight of the Bumblebee
I'm Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and I'd like to tell you the backstory of my Flight of the Bumblebee. You'll find out how a short interlude, written in 1900 for a scene in my opera where a prince is magically turned into an insect, grew into a piece that players still use to show off their speed. If you like, my fellow composers and I can also teach you, here on this site, to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, and you can test yourself in the Trainer whenever you feel ready.
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A Birthday Present for a Poet
I composed The Tale of Tsar Saltan in 1899 and 1900 so that it would arrive around the hundredth anniversary of Pushkin's birth. Pushkin had written the original poem in 1831, and it is a proper fairy tale, with magic, a long journey and a prince who has to be clever. Vladimir Belsky turned it into the libretto, which is the text the singers sing on stage. So the bee you hear began as a poet's idea, became a librettist's scene, and only then landed on my desk.Not a Honeybee, Thank You
The Russian title is Полёт шмеля, or Polyot shmelya, and the word shmel means bumblebee. People sometimes say honeybee, but that's the wrong insect, and the bee in question is really the prince himself in disguise. A bumblebee is the rounder, fuzzier cousin, and I think it suits a prince who has been handed wings without any flying lessons. What I wanted in the orchestra was the way such an insect darts about, with sudden turns you can't predict.A Bridge Between Two Scenes
In the opera the piece sits in Act 3, between the first and second scenes. The singers are silent at that point and the orchestra carries the whole story by itself. The prince has to get to his father, and the audience is taken along on that journey without a single word being sung. That is why the piece is so busy, because the flight is the only thing that happens while it plays.Opening Night in Moscow
The opera, bee included, was first staged on 3 November 1900 at the Solodovnikov Theatre in Moscow. Russia was still using an older calendar then, so the same evening was officially 21 October, which makes birthdays and anniversaries rather confusing. Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov conducted that first performance. Mikhail Vrubel designed the scenery, so the audience had a lot to look at while the orchestra buzzed.The Professor Behind the Bee
I was born in 1844 in Tikhvin, and by the time I wrote this piece I had been a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory since 1871. I had also lived with angina since about 1890, so I knew what it was to be short of breath. That makes it a little funny that my most famous page is one that asks the players to hardly stop for air. Still, I wrote it calmly at my desk, and the hurry is only in the notes.Born in an Opera House
I never meant this piece to be a standalone showpiece for the concert hall. It was written as an interlude inside an opera, and it only became a concert favourite later on. You will sometimes see the opera listed as Op. 57, but that number belongs to a separate orchestral suite I drew from it. The bumblebee itself has no opus number of its own, which suits something so hard to pin down.Off to the Printer
Once the opera was a success, it needed to be printed so that other people could perform it. Bessel in St. Petersburg published the full score for the orchestra. A vocal score followed around 1901, which was the version singers and pianists could use to rehearse. Without those printed pages the bee would have stayed in one theater instead of flying out into the world.A Pianist Takes the Wheel
Around 1929 Rachmaninoff made a transcription of the piece for solo piano. It means one pair of hands has to do what a whole orchestra's worth of strings and winds did in my version. That is one reason the piece became a showpiece for virtuoso players, because speed like that is hard to fake. I'm flattered that a famous pianist thought my bee was worth the trouble of rewriting.The Bee Gets Around
Over the years the piece has become one of the best-known pieces of classical music, largely through popular culture. The swing-band trumpeter Harry James recorded a famous version, though sources disagree on whether that was in 1940 or 1941. A 2021 study of Spotify found more than 1,000 recordings of it, which is a lot of bees for one short interlude. I never imagined that a few minutes written for a fairy-tale scene would be played by so many different musicians.What Happened to Me Afterwards
In 1905 the Conservatory dismissed me after I sided with protesting students. I was reinstated that same year, and in 1906 I retired. I died on 21 June 1908, only eight years after the bee first took off in Moscow. The little prince in his bumblebee form, though, is still flying, and I'm quite happy to let him carry my name along.---
Well, that's the story of how a prince, a poet and a very busy little insect came together on my desk. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Flight of the Bumblebee? I hope it gives you something new to listen for the next time those racing notes begin. There is still more to discover about Flight of the Bumblebee, from the way it later found its way into the concert hall to the pianists who have taken it on as a challenge. Rachmaninoff, for one, made a piano version of it around 1929, and that is a story in itself. If you're curious, click on the links provided and keep exploring Flight of the Bumblebee at your own pace.