Music, poets and Russians: revelations of the composer Sviridov

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Composer Georgy Sviridov kept a diary from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s. In it he is a representative of the so-called. "Russian party" in the USSR - mainly wrote about music, but there were lines about literature, observations of Soviet life. So, Sviridov hated Mayakovsky and Akhmatova, considering their work arrogant and alien to the Russian, and they themselves were opportunists.

He smashes Meyerhold for the destruction of the Russian theater (the successors of his work are Efros and Lyubimov). The composer Shostakovich is a schematic for him. There is almost nothing Russian in the USSR, Sviridov sighs.

Georgy Sviridov lived a long life - he was born in 1915 and died in 1998, i.e. at a conscious age he found the 1920s, in his youth - the 1930s, and then - all the other stages of the life of the USSR and new Russia. Sviridov, as a composer and pianist, received the maximum from the Soviet government: many awards (Stalin and State Prizes, Hero of Socialist Labor, People's Artist of the USSR), a large apartment and a dacha, decent royalties (for example, he writes that in the 1970s 6-8 thousand rubles of royalties for six months - except for a large regular salary - were common practice). But with such a favorable attitude of the authorities towards him, Sviridov remained a "quiet dissident", but not in the liberal, but in the patriotic, Russian-national sense. He disliked Jews, was indignant at the inattention of the intelligentsia to the church, and "groveling" before the West. Sviridov kept a diary for more than thirty years; it was published in 2017 by the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house under the title Music as Destiny. We present some of his recordings about Russian music and culture.

1981 year

The entire Mayakovsky (all almost 14 volumes!) Is an invented poet. Invented love, invented Revolution, invented rhymes, invented by Himself, fake to the end, to the limit. Not invented only the wild anger that burst into him, poured out on everyone. At first, on the rich and well-fed (but with analysis !!! by no means all !!), and at the end of life on the poor (working people), who seemed to him faceless, insignificant, on new officials (but also, not all !!!) … Himself - was the bearer of evil and bowed only before another great evil out of profit, out of a desire to satisfy his excessively inflated vanity. This vanity was the main driving force behind him.

A deceitful, double-minded person, with a completely cold heart, who loved only flattery, which everyone around him generously lavished. And he gradually became a slave of people who lavished this abundant, often false (and sometimes from the heart) flattery on him.

In the post-war period, especially since the second half of the 1950s, with the emergence of latent (and later openly) bourgeois tendencies, the type of a business person, a dexterous businessman, disdainful, well-versed in the circumstances of life (new to this kind of people), who knows how to find the key to action in these new circumstances.

This type (in essence - Chichikov) is very widespread. Appeared: composers-Chichikovs (there are a lot of them), singers-Chichikovs, conductors-Chichikovs (there are a lot of them) and others. Trade became foreign exchange, international. They began to trade on a large scale, right up to Christ-selling. Small-scale burnouts and kulaks gave way to businessmen of the international type. And all these are people with talent.

There is art - as the voice of the soul, as the confession of the soul. This was the Russian tradition. In the 19th century, and perhaps even earlier, from Europe came (and especially spread) the idea of art as entertainment for the rich, for the well-fed, art as an industry, art as commerce. Art is like pleasure, like comfort. Art is an attribute of comfort.

Anti-music, like any anti-culture, appears (recently) right there (next to) the true culture. She, as it were, sets off this latter, being to a large extent a parody of it, the opposite of it. This was, for example, the bourgeois-decadent Meyerhold theater, which arose and opposed in all its tendencies the fundamental path of our culture, if we mean by it: Pushkin, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky, Blok, Rachmaninov, Nesterov.

After the October coup, Meyerhold, who had changed several spiritual beliefs until then: from a Jew turned to a Catholic, from a Catholic Karl Franz Casimir to an Orthodox with the ambiguous name Vsevolod, from an Orthodox (such a person had to join the force) into a party member who immediately took office manager of all the theaters of the RSFSR, an honorary Red Army soldier of the internal security forces, the leader of the Theater October.

Under the leadership of this figure, an attempt was made to destroy the Russian Theater, which did not quite succeed during the life of its initiator, but is now being successfully completed by his followers such as: Efremov, Efros, Pokrovsky. Temirkanova and others.

Is it possible to revive the Russian theater? Why not? There is, for example, in France the French Comedy Theater, the Moliere Theater. Along with him there are countless (emerging and dying) small bourgeois theaters, sometimes very interesting. But these are usually theaters of one director, one or two actors, and sometimes an ensemble.

But this is not a national theater, the French Comedy theater, the Moliere theater, which embodies the spirit of France for the whole world.

Despite the greatness of the French musical genius, and in the opera expressed with amazing power and originality, it is enough to mention Wiese, Gounod, Debussy, Carmen, Faust, Pelléas and Melisande, the French do not have their own Moliere in the opera. The operatic style of the French theater is somewhat variegated and not so, perhaps, integral.

The Russian opera is a different matter. This is a monolith.

Without any exaggeration, we can say that here Russia said one of its most cherished, secret words in world culture, in the life of the world spirit.

Rachmaninov is the heir to the culture of the Russian opera, the heir to Kitezh and the successor of this line, the deepest and most significant in Russian musical art.

The Russian opera of the 19th century is a mountain range, a mountain range, the great peaks of which to this day remain inaccessible, and moving away from us in time, they become more and more inaccessible.

"Ivan Susanin", "Prince Igor". "Boris", "Khovanshchina" and "Kitezh" - this series belongs to the greatest creations of world art, I would say, the world spirit. Right there, next to this grandiose and deeply original epic, there are amazing examples of romantic opera: "The Mermaid", "Eugene Onegin", "The Lama of Spades", "Cherevichki", "The Tsar's Bride", "The Golden Cockerel". "The Night Before Christmas", "Sorochinskaya Fair", lyrical and dramatic (like "The Queen of Spades" or "Onegin"), fabulous, comic, historical … What a wealth, what a beauty and variety!

This is a myth about Russia, a sublime, majestic and tragic myth. This is what the war is being fought against. This is what gets spat on, hushed up, gets dirty. Russia appears in this myth as a people possessed by the great and noblest idea of brotherhood and universal love, loyalty and self-sacrifice. This is what the fight is being waged against, this is what these spiritual, evil, well-trained creative eunuchs hate.

You don't have to be a specially cultured person to understand the difference between "Boris Godunov", "Khovanshchina" and "The Gambler" or "Katerina Izmailova".

In the end: "Where a special education is required to understand a work of art, art ends there." So said one talented "leftist" critic of the pre-revolutionary years (N. Punin).

Mayakovsky's poems, just like the poetry of Akhmatova and other "chosen" (they themselves chose) poets, breathe a fierce class hatred for the common people, which, in Mandelstamp's work, turns into hatred of everything Russian. Hence their organic hatred for Yesenin, for every popular genius, at one time: for Lomonosov, Koltsov, Mendeleev, Gorky.

This phenomenon is typical to this day, although today's chosen ones are of a somewhat different social, spiritual and national origin in their origin. The exceptions among them were Gorodetsky and Pasternak. The first - according to the aristocracy of its origin, the second - according to the conscious (movement) principle of the baptized neophyte, for whom L. Tolstoy was an example.

It is necessary to recall the popular prints of peasants in agitation and ironic verses of the great proletarian poet, such as "The Scheme of Laughter" and much more. In contrast to the arrogant irony in relation to the Russians, to everything Russian ("Take out those who are huddled under the Gospel of the Tolstoy by the thin leg, on the stones with a beard!" and irritated pride. This is the mechanism of his glory, life and death itself - fake, decorated. The reason for the indifference of the people to the immensely, painfully ambitious (filled with this) poetry of Mayakovsky, Akhmatova and others is the alienation of the people's consciousness, living in "peace", in general, similar individualistic categories. In religion, the personal, the individual was revealed only in death for their convictions, for their faith, and this penetrated deeply into the people.

Not a single composer in history has been implanted in the way that Shostakovich was implanted during his lifetime. All the power of state propaganda was aimed at declaring this composer the greatest musician of all times and peoples. I must say that the musical environment willingly supported this legend. He was, in the full sense of the word, a state composer who responded to all important events in public and political life not only with his countless articles, but also with endless compositions: from symphonies, oratorios to dances, songs, songs, etc. And, despite this planting by the state and "square-nest" method, he never became a folk artist either in his handicrafts or in his musical and philosophical concepts, although, with all that, a lot of good will remain from him. and sometimes wonderful music. But nationality, in the sense in which it was understood by Glinka, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, is something else. Some kind of special (higher, m. B.) Form of art.

1986 year

The peasant stratum has long served as the intonation support of music. His disappearance has deprived our music of intonation support. Russian people now sing and dance to someone else's tune. Curiosity! God, how the state protects hippies, "punks" - God forbid to touch them! Meanwhile, the word "punks" in translation means "fallen", "scum". The popular magazine "Ogonyok" has become a public defender, a guardian of this urban "dud", in the midst of which all impurity flourishes. But it turns out that this is not "evil", it is - purity and chastity. It is important that young people do not think about the serious issues of life: what to do next, why do I exist, who rules us?

June 1, 1987

The thirties are sharply divided into peculiar periods.

1929-33. A turbulent time, the flourishing of the activities of LEF, RAPM and RAPP, collectivization, excesses, "dizziness with success", five-year plan, factories, Dneproges, accelerated graduation from school, work at a factory (practice), the elimination of illiteracy (work in the countryside, from which I was released, my mother took out a doctor's certificate and took it to school, secretly from me). Classes at a music school, awakened a huge interest in music. I wrote out notes by cash on delivery; I remember the purchase of the blind clavier "Boris Godunov" (published by V. Bessel), I remember - struck by the chords, unexpected harmonies. The solution is to devote yourself to music. Trips to Leningrad - 1932- a completely new world, immense like an ocean.

Difficult, hungry years 1932-33-34. A new movement in spiritual life: the liquidation of the RAPM, the creation of the Writers' Union, the huge and beneficial role of Gorky. (But there was no - Yesenin, Klyuev. Akhmatova, Zamyatin, Bulgakov, Platonov.)

Further years 1934-35-36. Nesterov's exhibition, the absolute lack of attention (in society) to Malevich (his "squares" hung in the Russian Museum, it was called Suprematism). The main idea is Humanism, then Proletarian Humanism. Music - "Lady Macbeth" (was a success on a huge advertisement), Prokofiev was not so interesting, seemed "salon", later - the bright "Romeo and Juliet", this was a big opposition. Sollertinsky scolded: dry, there is no romanticism, love outburst and passions (a la Tchaikovsky, meaning "Italian capriccio"), no crowd, "picturesque rags" (his words), without which there was no stereotype of Italy. It was of little interest to me, I was full of awakening youthful passions, I absorbed a lot of music, my early hobby for Shostakovich's music: opera, piano concert, preludes for piano (turn to the "classical").

Cinema - a lot that was later boasted, including "Chapaev".

The rise of life in art. "Peter I" by Tolstoy (it seems!). A congress of writers, noisy, foreigners, who then seemed like people from another planet.

1934-35 Leningrad, Kirov, courts, certification, etc.

[Since 1936, a completely new, death of Gorky.] This I did not understand then, living alone in a hostel, all carried away by the struggle for existence (I lived hungry, terribly) and the absorption of music, mainly classical.

1935 "Pushkin Romances" - changed my life. Acquaintance with Ivan Dzerzhinsky - I loved his early songs (2 cycles), "Spring Suite" - very bright, young (for the piano), the beginning of "Quiet Don". How fresh it was, it seemed fresh Shostakovich, in which there was something intonationally dead (and remained until the end).

2nd half of the 30s - it got worse and worse. The movement of Soviet symphony, new academicism, the triumph of "form". I had to learn. Passion for modern music: Stravinsky, Hindemith, Berg (according to the clavier "Wozzeck" and "Lulu", I liked the first), Ksenek, so-so, Rieti, I liked it. Everything Jewish is in vogue.

"King Lear" Mikhoels, all the cinematography, "Jolly Fellows", Dunaevsky was awarded the order, admitted to the Union and appointed its chairman. Until then, the Union was headed by Boris Fingert, Vlad. Efim. Yokhelson, Bor. Samoilovich Kesselman, Lev Moiseevich Kruts, Tatiana (?) Yakovl. Svirina (last name by her husband, the most terrible woman), there was also a typist Polina Egintova, her husband was later the secretary of the Muzfond - a giant swindler (millions of cases), was exposed by a young investigator from Kharkov, caught red-handed, received 25 years in the camps. The total number of members of the Union was over 40 people! There were 20-25 Russians, I think.

"The blossoming" of the nightmarish Utesov, from all the street loudspeakers thundered: "Pour a glass. Rose, I'm happy, because at the table today - you and me! Well, where else will you find in the world, Rose, such children as our sons? !!!"

Famous writers of the early 30s: Babel, Kataev, Olesha, Nikulin, Bagritsky, Tynyanov, Kozakov, Kaverin, Fedin, Ilf and Petrov, Zoshchenko. A. Tolstoy - was the most respectable, wrote a lot.

The elite also included cinematographers, all the same. Mayakovsky was declared "the best, most talented poet of our era." Yesenin is still firmly banned. The chess player Lasker came to the USSR for a short time. It was presented as a world event, as well as the successes of Botvinnik, the Soviet champion. A new generation of poets was maturing: Kulchitsky and Kogan - "Only the Soviet nation will be and only the Soviet race people!" Why is this better than the Germans?

It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The atmosphere in Shostakovich's class was unbearable. Everywhere "pearl" is the same - in literature, poetry, cinema, theater, and most importantly: newspapers, magazines, radio - all mass propaganda, including TASS, local broadcasting - everything is in the hands of the same people. The word "Russian" was completely banned, as in the 1920s."Russia" - the word itself was an anachronism, and it was not safe to use it in conversation.

All the pre-war, harsh, dark years, endless trials, trials, arrests. I lived very lonely, friends, in the true sense of the word, did not have, there were friends of a drinking, "drinking" type. Acquaintance with Shostakovich, to whom I treated with great reverence and was proud of his benevolent (so, at least, it seemed to me) attitude towards me. I liked the young music of Ivan Dzerzhinsky. There was a wonderful freshness in her. Music without "symphony" (without development), "without drama", as my fellow student O. Yevlakhov said (in a tone of condemnation). To me, just, it seemed fresh. Unfortunately, after the first and great success (with "Quiet Don"), Dzerzhinsky was already trying to please, "to be in tune." Virgin Soil Upturned was much weaker: everyday life, without special poetry, then things went very badly. Household opera, alas, quickly exhausted itself.

"Symphony" and the official song (Dunaevsky's time) became state art. Khrennikov's "Into the Tempest" - it was already just gone, but "Semyon Kotko", written at a different level of talent, experience and taste, was also fake, genre insignificant, except for this bitingly written scene with fire, madness and other attributes of the opera naturalism.

Studying in [Shostakovich's] class at the Conservatory and the environment in it became difficult to bear. By that time - 1940 - I was completely confused, did not know what to do, what to write (and for a long time I could not come to my senses). The mass style of that time struck me as simply awful. To follow the luminaries - Stravinsky, whom I had studied well by that time (I also knew his last works: “Persephone”, Symphony of Psalms, ballet “Playing cards”), I could not, it was alien.

Shostakovich's symphonies - 5th, 6th - had a huge resonance, although many were wrying their mouths: both old and young. I remember that some students, for example SR Musselius, an honest man, called these symphonies Miasma No. 1 and Miasma No. 2. However, speaking about it without malice, but only ironically. Before the war itself, Shostakovich's music emerged: two symphonies (5, 6), quartet No. 1, quintet. It was very impressive, ripe, its highest point was already visible ahead - the 8th symphony, after which the business gradually began to decline, but still there was no competitor for it. In the kind of music that reigned then, I think, it was impossible to compete with him. New ideas have not yet matured, have not emerged. Yes, and it was tricky to identify them. After all, the war was fought under the banner of the struggle against the national (albeit in its ugly form).