"Ah, how wonderful," isn't enough. For a professional that's self-indulgence. Our work has always been manual, moreover-no machines, no technology can help. That is, if you work honestly, without any chicanery. You can always tape something and then let others arrange and orchestrate it for you. I know one such "talented" man* who behaves in just this ugly manner-he's lazy, I suppose. The Kirov put on an entire ballet written that way. In fact, things turned out quite mysteriously there; they wouldn't let the composer into the hall during rehearsal. The ushers at the Kirov tore the persistent "talented" composer's jacket when he insisted. The ushers are excellent bouncers; it's an official theater.
The funniest part was that the ballet was based on "the best, the most talented" Mayakovsky's The Bedbug. {The choreography by Yakobson, t however, was good.) The Bedbug on stage at the former Maryinsky Theater is grotesque enough to suit even Mussorgsky.
Look how far it crawled, as they say. That bedbug didn't pass anyone by, including me.
Of course, composing by tape recorder is a special taste, like licking rubber boots, and I not only eschew such perversion, I don't even like composing at the piano. Now I really can't, even if I wanted to. I'm training my left hand to write, in case I lose ability in my right. That's gymnastics for the dying.
But composing at the piano was always a secondary way for me.
That's for the deaf and those who have a poor sense of the orchestra, who need some small aural support for their work. Yet there are
"great masters" who keep a staff of secretaries to orchestrate their epochal opuses.* I never could understand that way of increasing "productivity."
• A reference to Leningrad composer Oleg Karavaichuk.
tLeonid Veniaminovich Yakobson (1 904-1974), avant-garde choreographer, one or the producers 0£ Shostakovich's ballet The Golden Age.
*A reference to Sergei Prokofiev.
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As a rule, I hear the score and write it down in ink, finished copywithout rough drafts or studies-and I'm not saying this to brag. In the final analysis, everyone composes as best suits him, but I've always seriously warned my students against picking out tunes on the piano. I had a near-fatal case of this disease, improviser's itch, in childhood.
Mussorgsky is a tragic example of the dangers of piano composing.
Very tragic-while he plinked away, so much great music was never written down! Of the many works about which only stories remain, I am most tormented by the opera Biron. What a piece of Russian history! It has villainy and a foreign martinet. He showed parts of it to friends, he did. They tried to talk him into writing it down, but he replied stubbornly, "I've got it firmly in my head." What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
People · will say, What's this fellow doing teaching Mussorgsky?
That's all we need, someone to teach the classics. But for me Mussorgsky is not a classic (incidentally, he wrote a marvelous musical lampoon, "The Classic," directed against critics; the subtitle reads:
"Apropos the Musical Scribblings of Famintsyn") but a living man.
Trite, but true. I would probably share several of my critical comments with Mussorgsky without fear of being laughed at. And I would not talk down, like the generals of the Mighty Five (I mean, above all, Cui,* a thoroughly average and self-reliant composer), or up, like Mussorgsky's boozy pals from the Maly Yaroslavets tavern, but as one professional to another. If I didn't feel that way about Mussorgsky, I wouldn't have taken on the orchestration of his works.
Doing the instrumentation of Boris was like a poultice for a wound.
The . times were difficult and mean, unbelievably mean and hard.
There was the agreement with our "sworn friend," t Europe was crumbling, and you know our hopes were dependent on Europe. Every day brought more bad news, and I felt so much pain, I was so lonely and afraid, that I wanted to distract myself somehow, to spend some
*Cesar Antonovich Cui (1 835-191 8), composer, general (military engineer), music critic, and member of the famous group of composers (Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin) called the "Mighty Five," or the "Mighty Bunch." The name, once used by critic Vladimir Stasov and entrenched in history, unites composers differing widely in tastes, temperaments, and levels or talent. Generally speaking, the common ideal of the Mighty Five might be termed ''musical realism ...
tThe "sworn friend" was what wags called Nazi Germany, which signed a treaty of nonaggression with Stalin in August 1939, and in September of the same year a treaty of friendship.
Any criticism or Hitler was strictly forbidden at the time and the word "fascism" disappeared from use. Instead the papers made daily attacks on England and France.
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time with a musically like-minded man, tete-a-tCte.
The Sixth Symphony was finished and I knew for sure what the next one would be about, so I sat down with the complete composer's piano reduction of Boris, published by Lamm (it included the St. Basil's and Kromy scenes). I put it on the desk and there it lay, for I didn't disturb it too often. After all, I do know the music rather well, in fact, quite well.
I should mention Lamm's role and work in the field. Whenever he acted alone, without Asafiev, his work was substantial and beautiful, you might say solid, in the St. Petersburg academic manner. But as soon as Asafiev involved himself, all kinds of unthinkable deviltry and nonsense crept in-for example, the so-called composer's score of Boris, published jointly by Asafiev and Lamm in the late twenties. I can suggest-with a strong sense of probability-that Asafiev's motivating impulse was for royalties for Boris. The old ring of the scorned metal.
They slapped together the staging too, which was really shameful.
They turned a good idea-restoring the authentic Boris-into God knows what, some sort of self-serving enterprise with Marxist underpinnings. In order to put Rimsky-Korsakov's edition out of commission, our iconoclasts accused it of all the mortal "ideological" sins. And Glazunov, who came to Korsakov's defense-partly out of principle and partly out of conviction-was smeared in print by Asafiev, who used phrases like "shark of imperialism" or "the last imperialistic toady," I don't remember exactly which. But insults were used and Glazunov's feelings were badly hurt. I think it was the last straw-he was a patient man but this was too much. Soon after, Glazunov went
"for a rest" in the West.
I was forced to consider this history while I was orchestrating Boris.
I was entering into direct conflict with Asafiev and I think I later felt the repercussions. That's what Mussorgsky's music is like-it's always alive, too alive (if such a quality can ever be excessive)-and that means that an argument with citizens grabbing each other by the lapels is not far behind. Meyerhold told me that in his day and I've finally come . to believe it.
Nothing compares with the feeling you get orchestrating a revered composer. I think it's the ideal method for studying a work, and I would recommend that all young composers make their own versions 230
