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- War and the musical world: how our composers reflected the theme of the Great Patriotic War
War and the musical world: how our composers reflected the theme of the Great Patriotic War
How did the composers respond to the events of the Great Patriotic War and what image of this heroic and tragic time has developed in academic music? On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Victory, Izvestia recalls the writings devoted to the struggle of the Soviet people against the fascist invaders - from the 1940s to the present day.
Get up, Russian people
Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that all Soviet composers who lived in the middle of the 20th century responded to the events of the Great Patriotic War. Most of them had more than one work on this topic, but a whole series. Moreover, some of the opuses that appeared (or began) before 1941 turned out to be brilliant predictions of the coming catastrophe.
The most striking example is Sergei Prokofiev's music for the film "Alexander Nevsky" by Sergei Eisenstein, created in 1938. It was already clear at that time that a confrontation with Hitler was inevitable, and the very proposal to make a film about the legendary Russian prince's struggle with the German invaders (the crusaders of the Livonian Order), which came from the very top, was explained by the desire to rally the people and cause an upsurge of patriotism.
Stills from Sergei Eisenstein's film "Alexander Nevsky"
Despite the custom-made origin, it turned out to be a masterpiece. But it was soon withdrawn from the rental — after the signing of the non-aggression pact, it seemed wrong to the country's leadership to focus on the topic of the war between Russians and Germans. And in 1941, the film was returned to the screens — and it fully fulfilled its social function. Prokofiev's wonderful chorus "Get up, Russian people" was perceived as a call for a popular struggle against the invaders. In turn, the middle section of this issue ("Big in Russia, no enemy in Russia") It carried a life-affirming meaning and inspired faith in victory.
Back in 1939, Prokofiev made the cantata "Alexander Nevsky" out of film music — and it began its independent life, becoming one of the most important works of the era, incredibly relevant precisely during the Second World War.
The theme of the invasion from Dmitry Shostakovich's famous Seventh ("Leningrad") Symphony can also be considered a premonition. The composer began composing it before the war, but after June 1941, this episode took on a new meaning and became the most vivid image of a cruel, destructive, inexorable force. The main stage of work on the composition occurred already during the war years, and this was perhaps the most acute and immediate reaction of the genius to the unfolding events. And although the opus was completed in the winter of 1941, during the most difficult and disastrous stage of the Great Patriotic War, when the fascist forces were rapidly advancing, there was unconditional, absolute faith in complete victory in the finale.
Soviet conductor Karl Ilyich Eliasberg (right) and the Leningrad Radio Committee Grand Symphony Orchestra during a rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, created by him in the besieged city. The Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. To replenish the orchestra's strength, the musicians were recalled from military units.
The symphony was first performed in the spring of 1942 in Kuibyshev (Samara), where Shostakovich was evacuated, and then in besieged Leningrad, which was incredibly important for the city itself, became a kind of symbol of its defiance, but also made a huge impression in the world. Soon, the triumphant march of the score began on foreign stages, bringing money, and most importantly, universal sympathy for the Soviet state.
"This is the theme of my symphony, not the battle"
Much less resonant was another orchestral opus, created simultaneously with Leningrad, but completed even earlier, in November 1941, the 22nd Symphony by Nikolai Myaskovsky. It was originally subtitled "About the Patriotic War of 1941," but it was removed after the premiere. Indeed, such a name does not reflect a much more complex content. Born back in the 19th century and gravitating towards philosophical utterance, Myaskovsky moved away from direct programming (that is, such a presentation of the material when the music clearly depicts certain events) in the direction of greater generalization, lyricism, subjectivity. The composer wrote:
"For some reason, everyone believes that such a war should be responded to with guns and drums, meanwhile, in my opinion, this is a grandiose and tragic social phenomenon, and of course, this side affects me much more than the possibility of depicting some private exploits. I wrote the symphony the way a person who feels the deepest tragedy of what is happening and believes in the ultimate victory of the truth of his people could write. That's the theme of my symphony, not the battle."
Soviet composer Nikolai Myaskovsky
Alas, both the public and the country's leadership did not fully appreciate his approach. She didn't have much success, and she didn't win any awards. Metaphors and artistic reflection seemed ill-timed.
But let's return to Myaskovsky's closest friend, Prokofiev. He writes several works about the Great Patriotic War at once: "Seven Mass Songs for Voice and Piano and a March," the Symphonic Suite "1941," and even "Ode to the End of the War." But he reaches real creative heights in the Fifth Symphony. Perhaps, after Shostakovich's Seventh, this is the main symphony about the war. It was written already in 1944, when the Soviet army was triumphantly liberating Europe. And the overall spirit of this work is much brighter than that of Leningradskaya, although there are also dramatic moments and tragedy here. Both compositions end with a victorious finale, however, what Shostakovich sounds like the result of a hard struggle, Prokofiev's is filled with lightness, pure joy and optimism. Everyone appreciated it, including the main music lover of the country, awarding the composer the Stalin Prize of the first degree.
Reproduction of the manuscript of the seventh symphony by composer Dmitry Shostakovich
By the way, Shostakovich has not one, but three symphonies written during the war years. However, both the Eighth and Ninth are completely different in artistic structure and form than the Seventh. In them, the author avoids the obvious drama "from darkness to light, through struggle to victory": in the Eighth there is a lot of tragedy that never culminates in a poster victory, in the Ninth there is carefree fun (the composer called it "a sigh of relief after a gloomy hard time with hope for the future"). But, of course, they could not oust the "Leningrad" one from the heart of the people.
"We need one victory"
The war, losses and heroism of the Soviet people will remain one of the important themes for Russian composers for many years to come. Gradually, new perspectives on the tragedy of the Second World War are emerging in academic music. An early work by Alfred Schnittke, the oratorio Nagasaki (1959), written on texts by Russian and Japanese poets and dedicated, as the name suggests, to the atomic bombing of Japan, is significant.
Composer Alfred Schnittke
Interestingly, Schnittke's composition, which at that time was graduating from the conservatory, appeared a year earlier than Krzysztof Penderecki's incredibly famous and important opus on the same topic for the history of world music: "Lament for the Victims of Hiroshima." Despite all the differences in genre, drama, and the musical material itself, both things are extremely expressive, becoming a cry of pain and a nightmare. But what was well received in Warsaw turned out to be not at court in Moscow. The Nagasaki oratorio was broadcast on the radio for Japan for the only time, after which it was not performed until the 21st century as a too "formalistic" score, a departure from the traditions of realism.
Having already entered graduate school, Schnittke created another opus directly related to the theme of the Second World War: this is the cantata "Songs of War and Peace". And here it is interesting that almost all the material in the cycle is based on authentic folklore melos. Thus, the composer tried to look at the events of 1941-1945 through the eyes of ordinary people. Unlike Nagasaki, the essay was well received, although the author disliked it, considering it not yet completely individual.
Ironically, this experience (orchestral processing of other people's melodies) was reflected years later in Schnittke's most famous work about the war, the march "We Need One Victory" from the film "Belorussky Railway Station". The fact is that when creating it, Alfred Garrievich also used a different motive — it was written by Bulat Okudzhava. Although Schnittke's contribution was enormous, the instrumentation and development here are no less important than the melodic "grain" itself, he insisted that Okudzhava be considered the author.
Poet and writer, composer, bard Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava
However, this is exactly the case when an author's work eventually became popular — it is so widely known and loved by the simplest viewers. It can be said that Schnittke returned to the people the debt he had assumed in Songs of War and Peace.
Memory and the present
In the second half of the 20th century, there were many different kinds of music about the Great Patriotic War — talented and mediocre, sincere and opportunistic, eternal and passing. And it must be admitted that the innovative composers of the Schnittke generation and younger avoided this topic, fearing, on the one hand, accusations of adaptability (after all, this is a sure way to get some benefits from the state), and on the other, strict control over style and ideological interpretation. If you write "incorrectly", you will be accused of formalism, or even worse, distortion of the memory of the dead, lack of respect for the heroism of their ancestors.
In the era of stagnation, and even more so during perestroika, this topic became not only "unfashionable" (in this context, it is almost a blasphemous epithet), but rather alien. The musical youth was interested in something else. Or maybe I just wanted to abstract from the tragedy of the fathers (then the grandfathers), to talk about what worries here and now. The situation began to change already in the 21st century, when it became possible to understand the war as a historical phenomenon and without any restrictions in terms of style and concept.
One of the best examples was Alexey Siumak's Requiem, created in 2010 and performed at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater to mark the 65th anniversary of the Victory. The texts of the Catholic funeral mass were combined in it with documentary evidence of the war and artistic monologues, for example, the story of a boy who ended up in a concentration camp. Moreover, they were recited by representatives of the main warring countries — Britain was represented by Jeremy Irons, Germany by Hannah Shigula, the USSR by Oleg Tabakov, and so on. And the result was an understanding of the Second World War as a universal catastrophe, a wound for all mankind.
But the real surge in the interest of young authors in the Soviet feat occurred already in our decade. Suffice it to say that a number of applications related to the theme of the Great Patriotic War were submitted to the largest symphonic music competition "Score" last year. And this trend is clearly not going to decline. In past events, which millennials and zoomers only know about from a history textbook (not even from their next of kin), we see parallels with current worries. Composers are no exception. It remains to be seen when and how the world events of today will be comprehended in modern academic music.
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