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Today's
songs are vulgar "Dmitry
Shostakovich" Home | Back to contents | Power of music index
Considerable anxiety is caused by the state of our song music. One cannot help recalling the great importance Lenin attached to song music. Speaking of the necessity of "impelling forward art as a propaganda weapon, it was the song that he mainly had in mind. Even in the most trying years of the Civil War, Lenin was deeply concerned about the kind of music that was popular among the youth. What does youth do with its leisure time? What songs does it love?" Lenin asked. These questions posed forty years ago are even more important in our own time, one of the reasons being that the working youth today enjoys longer hours of leisure. There are glorious traditions behind our song music. The important achievements of our composer~ in this field of music are well known and it is hardly necessary to speak of them. Recently, too, some fine songs have been written. I might mention Ballad of a Soldier (V. Soloviev-Sedoi), The Party is Our Helmsman, The Alarm of Buchentvald, When Soldiers Sing (Y. Milyutin), Remember! (K. Molchanov), The Last Hour Strikes (D. Kabalevsky), Cuba (A. Ostrovsky), Song of Anxious Youth and The Geologists (A. Pakhmutova), Komsomol Song (A. Babayev), Freedom Wind and We Communists (S. Tulikov), Hearken Party Dear (A. Novikov), Song of Youth (A. Kholminov), Song about Lenin (F. Maslov), Konisomots of the Twenties (0. Feltsman). However, the general tone of writing song music is today considerably lower than it was in the thirties and forties. I should like to mention the songs written in honor of Yuri Gagarin's flight into outer space as examples of an insufficiently deep and serious approach to the theme. Unfortunately, we still have occasion to become convinced of the corrupting influence of songs, of songs which give rise to moods of dejection and melancholy and of songs spoiling public taste. It is worth noting that among the most successful song music in recent years was the heroic patriotic marching song. Flowever, what is most evident in song music today is a definite leaning in the direction of cheap sentimentality and maudlin melancholy. Wherein lies the roots of this leaning? It seems to me that the neglect of taste ~d the haste which certain composers allow in their work are responsible for this. In the lyric and variety genre it is the sugary song that prevails. In these songs abundant use is made of the shoddy stereotypes of the drawing-room romance. It is all the more deplorable to see such songs produced by composers of talent and professional mastery. Muradeli, for example, has written several pieces which are a definite concession to poor taste. Among them is his doleful waltz Till We Meet Again, The Cranes, a Romance and The Ballad of Musa Falil. There is a whole series of so-called youth songs which imitate the worst Western models, with their puerile melodies, trite rhythms and vulgar general tone. Very often the doleful, gushy intonations, in the typical style of Philistine lyrics, are a flagrant contradiction of the words. Many of the shock workers of Communist labor teams have won the right to put their personal label on their product. Such products do not go through the quality inspection department. It would be a good idea for the composer who signs his work to feel the same responsibility for it as the shock worker in a Communist labor team. I shall venture to say that one of the reasons why shoddy stereotypes have gained a strong foothold in our song music is the low standard of taste among the "consumers," that is variety and concert organizations, publishers, performers and sometimes film people commissioning music for their pictures. Considerable harm results from incorrect distribution of commissions. Thus, if one and the same composer is simultaneously commissioned to write the music for four films (there are such instances!) one can hardly expect him to show a truly creative approach to his task. There are cases when a young composer on beginning to work for films produces fresh, unadulterated and original music. But after a few years go by, and he has, so to say, learned the ropes," we are shocked to find the same composer producing the usual tripe which is no credit either to his talent or his professional abilities. It is particularly disappointing when such trashy stuff comes from the pen of highly gifted composers. A composer must have his principles and be steadfast about them. The easy way is never the way to true success in art. I cannot help repeating this when I recall some of the recent works by Siberian composers. Even such talented song writers as Valentin Levashev and Andrei Novikov, extremely well versed in folk song lore and having done fine work in the arrangement of folk songs, lapse into stereo types as soon as they take the beaten path of the "lyric" song. Gone are the individuality of the language of harmony, the wealth of rhythm, the free undertone and plasticity of form! The rendering grows drab and the form imprisoned in a monotonous alteration of standard couplets. This to me seems to spell great danger. Song music must first of all rid itself of hackneyed, pseudo-lyrical subjects, of the melancholy or saccharine effussions of the love song and to broaden its range of themes. I consider the guild division of composers into song writers, symphonists, etc., incorrect. Each composer should be proficient in every field of musical composition. He can, of course, concentrate his main attention on that medium of expression which is most suited to his gift, but he must be trained for composing music in any genre. Our light, variety and dance music is frightfully clogged with tasteless and even vulgar pieces, which is a great hindrance to the progress of aesthetic education among the masses. Unfortunately, our composers' passivity in this field has helped to open our doors to a flood of cheap, imported music. One of the possibilities of reinvigorating light variety and dance music lies undoubtedly in our composers' drawing more boldly on the folk dance genres, rhythms and melodic intonations. The most important problem facing us in music today is the creation of a modern national style. But the notion of Russian music is sometimes interpreted by us in a narrow and technical way. Now and then under the guise of Russian music we get variations of far from the best samples of old popular songs or of opera music of the second half of the 19th century. The same old intonations, borrowed from a limited and hardly important field of Russian musical lore, are recapitulated over and over again. Such a "Russe" style is too feeble and antiquated to express the grandness of our time. It has long been recognized that a national style in art is never something stagnant and unchangeable. And in the course of centuries the national mould of Russian music has been undergoing constant development along with the way of living of the whole Russian nation. Let us recall Glinka and Dargomizhsky, who broke away from the traditional style of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century and had wrought a veritable revolution in Russian music. Let us recall, too, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov who had not merely continued the work begun by Glinka but had enriched music by an enormous wealth of new intonations, harmony, rhythms and instrumental colorings. Russian musical style of the 20th century is inconceivable without the important new elements introduced into it by the creative genius of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff and, on the other hand, by the vigor of the working class revolutionary songs which came to birth during the period of the Revolution of 1905. In our own time an example of the fruitful renewal of the Russian national style in music was demonstrated by Prokofiev. Russian music is indebted to this bold initiative for having become enriched by a whole world of modern intonations, new tonal features, orchestral effects, and by the impetuosity and sweeping energy of new rhythms. G. Svfridov, too, made a valuable contribution to the development of the national style. The intonational pattern of his symphonic poem In Memory of Sergei Yesenin and Oratorio Pathetique (to the words of Miaskovsky) are both original and steeped in the Russian national tradition. A number of splendid songs by V. Zakharov, V. Soloviev-Sedoi, I. Dunayevsky, A. Novikov and several other well-known composers are living examples of innovation and artistic renewal of the Russian musical style. We must lend a sensitive ear to the interesting process taking place in life and in the musical expression of the people, study new popular songs, as well as the living speech and colloquial intonations of the people. To develop the national style in music means to tirelessly forge ahead, to contribute to music the force of one's creative initiative, one's personality, vision of the world and inventiveness. There is nothing static about a national style. It constitutes a complex, multifarious process of development. Symphonies, opera, ballet, oratorios, chamber and variety music are a splendid confirmation of the fruitfulness of the principles of national culture. Modern national style in music presupposes a profound and unerring sense of the folk music idiom, and at the same time a poignant rendering of new imagery and intonations born of the new reality. Its development is inconceivable without a thorough study and assimilation of folklore. We have much interesting material and records of folklore collected in our country. Yet a considerable part of these collections lies idle on the shelves of musical libraries and in archives, and is not being made use of by the composer in his work. We must publish as many music books of contemporary folk songs as possible. Young composers must become acquainted with them while still studying. Of still greater benefit to beginners will be direct acquaintance with folk music-trips round the country, independent transcriptions of songs. It seems to me that it is is high time to include such trips and the study of collections of contemporary folklore in the curricula of our conservatories. It is extremely important to encourage the transcription and popularization of contemporary folk songs. Many new works are often performed no more than once - at composers' plenums or reviews. They are rarely performed a second time. This holds good even for the works of our major composers, which often vanish from the repertoire immediately after they are premiered. For example, do we often hear Miaskovsky's symphonies played, let alone the works of less famous composers? Yet there are many pieces of music today deserving of the widest popularization. And they will never gain a wide public if their scores lie idle for years in libraries. Of the pressing problems of today in the field of the promotion of musical culture, I must once again mention the many tasks in the mass musical education of children and adolescents which need to be solved. The solution of problems of elementary aesthetic education is a matter of great public concern for it is part and parcel of one of our major political tasks - that of attaining a high level of culture and education. It is not incidental that the new law adopted by the Soviet government on the reorganization of the system of public education and strengthening the school's links with life should make special mention of the importance of aesthetic education in our schools. Therein is the acknowledgment of the indisputable fact that musical art is an integral part of the general culture and education of the people. We know full well that an unprecedented bloom is assured in the field of art. But in visualizing these wonderful prospects we must not forget that, with the growth of the cultural, spiritual and aesthetic level of the masses, more and more strict demands as regards its ideas and artistic standards will be made on our art. And already we are confronted with the question: what music produced today will live and pass this great test? Undoubtedly it is only works invested with powerful emotional impact, lofty Romanticism, and having a high moral and noble message, that will appeal to the soul of the man of the future. Music Journal, Mar 1962.
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