But the false culture isn't giving up. I'm often invited to the republics for various gala performances of musical achievements, exhibits, plenums, and so on, and I often go. I act as the wedding guest and naturally. praise everything in sight, or almost everything. But I see through it all, and my hosts see that I see. And both parties pretend that everything is fine.
These musical festivals always begin with the works of famous composers-and that is all baloney,. And the opera house always has the premiere of another opera or ballet on the same theme-national uprising in the distant past. And that's all baloney too. I chuckle to myself when I see that the symphonies of various composers are written-or at the very least, orchestrated (and that's one and the same, as far as I'm concerned)-by one hand. And it's a game for me to guess who the composer really is. Most of the time I do guess, because the 221
real composer (usually from Moscow or Leningrad) will also present a work under his own name.
I easily recognize individual styles in orchestration, even if the
"style" is nothing more than good craftsmanship, and I'm almost never wrong. Sometimes I chastise myself for keeping quiet rather than talking, and not only talking but' even publishing articles on these trumped-up musical festivals. But what can I do? Can I change anything? Earlier this was a tragedy, that's true. But now it's more of a comedy, things are changing somewhat, and without my participation.
I can't do anything anyway.
The worst is behind us, and history can't be turned back. It's good that things are slowly changing. Who would listen to me? Everyoneor almost everyone-is interested in maintaining the status quo. I know for a fact that any attempt at a radical change would end badly, unsuccessfully. Several young Kazakh poets trie� to expose the myth of Dzhambul Dzhabayev, and what happened? They were all ordered to keep quiet, and soon afterward they celebrated another anniversary of the long dead Dzhambul, with all pomp and glory-meetings, dramatic speeches, and a great amount of wine and vodka at the banquets.
The call for more Gogols and Saltykov-Shchedrins was probably prompted by these stories. This is a subject for Gogol and for a future composer who will write, perhaps, a marvelous opera called Dzhambul's Nose. But not I-no, not I.
And I'm not even sorry, the subject is no longer for me. I really understand Pushkin, who gave the plots of The Inspector General and Dead Souls to Gogol because they were no longer for him. Everything in its own time.
For instance, I have an unfinished opera, The Gamblers, lying around.* I began it during the war, after the Seventh. The fact speaks for itself. I wrote a lot, almost an hour's worth of music, and the score is written down. I had decided that I wouldn't throw away a si�gle word of Gogol's. I didn't need a libretto, Gogol was the best librettist.
I set the book in front of me and began writing, turning page after page in the book. And it went well.
But when I got past ten pages, I stopped. What was I doing? First
•Jn 1978, The Gamblers was fint heard in Leningrad in a concert performance under the baton of Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
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of all, the opera was becoming unmanageable, but that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was, who would put on this opera?
The subject wasn't heroic or patriotic. Gogol was a classic, and they didn't perform his works anyway. And me, I was just dirt to them.
They would say that Shostakovich was making fun, mocking art. How could you have an opera about playing cards? And then, The Gamblers had no moral, except perhaps to show how unenlightened people used to be-all they did was play cards and try to cheat one another.
They wouldn't understand that humor was a great thing in itself and that it didn't need additional morals.
Humor is a manifestation of the divine impulse, but to whom was I going to explain that? They don't understand serious things like that in the opera houses and certainly not in the offices that run cultural affairs. So I abandoned The Gamblers. Sometimes now people suggest that I finish the opera, but I can't. I'm too old, You can't enter the same river twice, as the old saying goes.
I'm thinking about another subject for an opera now, and another writer, Chekhov. A different time and different songs. I'm definitely going to write the opera The Black Monk. I'm much more interested in The Black Monk than I am in The Gamblers. The subject has rubbed my soul full of calluses, you might say.
Chekhov was a very musical writer, but not in the sense that he wrote alliteratively, like "chuzhdy charam chemyi chyoln. "* That's bad poetry and there's nothing musical in it. Chekhov is musical in a deeper sense. He constructed his works the way musical ones are constructed. Naturally, this wasn't conscious, it's just that musical construction reflects more general laws. I am certain that Chekhov constructed The Black Monk in sonata form, that there is an introduction, an exposition with main and secondary themes, development, and so on.
One literary critic, to whom I confided my theory, even wrote a scholarly article on it, and quite naturally, got it all confused. Literary critics always get things wrong when they try to write about music, but the article was still printed in some scholarly collection. In general, literary men writing about music should follow the example of Count
*This line from •-poem by Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont is a textbook example of poor and primitive alliteration.
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Alexei Tolstoy, who wrote two major articles about my symphoniesthe Fifth and Seventh. Both articles are included in his collected works and there are few people who know that actually the articles were written for him by musicologists. They were summoned to Tolstoy's dacha and they helped him through the morass of violins and oboes and other confusing things that a count couldn't possibly fathom.
Braga's serenade, "A Maiden's Prayer," plays an important part in The Black Monk. Once upon a time it was very popular, but now the music is forgotten. I'll definitely use it in the opera. I even have a recording of it-I asked some young musicians to play it for me. When I listen to it, I can picture clearly what the opera must be like. I also think about this: What, in essence, is good music and bad music? I don't know, I can't answer definitively. Take that serenade, for instance. According to all the rules it should be bad music, but every time I listen to it, tears come to my eyes. And that music, that "Maiden's Prayer," must have affected Chekhov too, or he wouldn't have written about it as he did, with such insight. Probably there is no good or bad music, there is only music that excites you and music that leaves you indifferent. That's all.
And that, by the way, makes me sad. For example, my father liked gypsy songs and sang them, and I liked the music. But then those songs were humiliated so much, reduced to mud. They called it Nepman music,* bad taste, and so on. I remember how shocked Prokofiev was when I told him that I personally wasn't offended by gypsy music.
He used every opportunity to point out that he felt above such things.
And what was the end result? The persecution was unsuccessful and gypsy music is flourishing. The audiences are breaking down the doors, I point out, disregarding the anger of the more advanced elements of musical opinion. And here's an opposite example, Hindemith's music. It's published and recorded but there's no great interest in listening to it. Yet once his works had a great impact on me. Hindemith is a true musician, a serious one, and a rather pleasant man. I knew him slightly, he played in Leningrad as part of a quartet. He