Oriented on making people closer

A fascinating one and a half hour immersion in the world of modern music was a lecture by People's Artist of Turkmenistan Danatar Khydyrov, held at the Turkmen National Conservatory named after Maya Kuliyeva. The master's meeting with the students took place within the framework of the "Year of Contemporary Music" - a new art project organized by the teachers of the Department of Composition and Instrument Studies on the initiative of the Rector of the Conservatory.

The composer's meeting with the audience took place in a warm, almost homely atmosphere. Not only students of the conservatory came, but also all those who are interested in music in general. This time the conversation was about the emergence of new musical trends and features of modern composing technique.

Danatar Bayramovich spoke with enthusiasm about such composers as Gubaidulina, Tormis, Kalnynsh... He examined in turn the periods of emergence of each type of modern music. There were also such topics in his lectures that today's musicians and researchers unfairly rarely address. For example, more than a dozen compositions were created specifically for the instrument with the intriguing name A.N.S., the inventor of which is the Soviet engineer Yevgeny Murzin. This is one of the world's first forefathers of modern musical synthesizers, and the name of this device stands for Alexander Nikolayevich Skryabin.

An entire era of musical culture is associated with this instrument, which, unlike others, even has a full name. The excitement around "Alexander Nikolayevich" was no joke. Composers, who came to the attention of a new instrument, amused themselves with it, like children who received a new toy. Compositions for A.N.S. began to appear. solo, in combination with acoustic, orchestral, folk and electronic instruments, as well as in combination with voice, in various genres and styles. Then it seemed to everyone that this was a breakthrough, something new, modern and trendy. In general, A.N.S. made a lot of noise. Schnittke, Denisov, Gubaidulina, Artemiev used this instrument in their creative work...

Further, in the course of the lecture, Danatar Bayramovich spoke about the blind composer and conductor Oleg Buloshkin, who is the author of many outstanding works written in modern composing technique. For student composers, who often lament about the pains of creativity and the difficulties of the life of a musician, the story of a composer with physical disabilities, who, despite his disability, not only composed music, but also achieved recognition, became a verbal “slap on the back of the head”, an incentive to work and powerful motivation.

Danatar Khydyrov demonstrated a recording of the play by the composer Buloshkin for A.N.S. "Sacrament", included in the collection of recordings of the gramophone record "Musical Offering", released in 1971 by the Melodiya company. The music of this work evokes a feeling of something unearthly, alien. The listener literally "goosebumps" from it, it seems that a little more and from all the cracks and corners something will start to crawl out and get closer and closer.

Then Khydyrov in his lecture turned to the work of famous Estonian composer Veljo Tormis "The Spell of Iron". This is a cantata for soloists, a mixed choir "a capella", accompanied by a percussion instrument, which, according to the composer's idea, was supposed to be a real shaman's tambourine. But a shaman's tambourine is a rare thing in our world. Therefore, in each musical group, this issue is resolved in its own way. Most often, the tambourine is replaced by some instrument from the percussion family. This work is inspired by the plot of the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kallevala", and depicts the ritual of the spell of the ancient sorcerers and shamans, who believed that in this way they could gain power over the tools they created and give them magical properties.

The rock symphony of Latvian composer Imants Kalnins, which was discussed further, is a synthesis or dialogue of two musical trends. If earlier it was believed that such polar species as rock and academic music cannot be combined because of their “difference”, just as the waters of the oceans do not mix due to different directions of currents, then in the second half of the 20th century a revolution took place in the “ecosystem” of music. This is how the rock symphony came about.

From the rock symphony, Danatar Bayramovich moved on to the work of his respected mentor, famous composer Konstantin Batashov. He talked about the Chamber Concerto for 9 instruments in memory of I.F. Stravinsky, which consists of five pieces of different genres: toccata, pastorale, fugue, intermezzo, toccata. Despite the fact that these genres were popular in the era of Bach and Handel, modern “fillers” such as minimalism, atonality, and sonoristics were used as musical filling. The composition of the concerto is built on the principle of symmetry. The extreme parts of the concerto are written in the same genre and express approximately the same mood. The central part of the fugue, it also contains the climax and a kind of axis that divides the work into two equal halves.

Looking ahead, I will say that most often all these ideas about the composer's search for some kind of symmetry or geometry are the result of the work of music researchers. The specificity of their work is such that, wishing to discover something new and unusual in the works of composers, they often attribute interesting musical formulas to the authors of compositions, associate beautiful legends and myths with them. They also try to give definitions to all phenomena and events in the work of a particular master, strive to systematize them, streamline and sort them out. But the composer himself, most often, had nothing of the kind in mind. He was just trying to convey his mood or emotion in music. There is even such a joke in the composer's environment: "We must create, and then let the researchers study, search, find and hang tags."

The meeting with Danatar Khydyrov ended with watching the cartoon "Mowgli". Yes, exactly. To be more precise - not by viewing, but by listening. It is believed that the creative style of Sofia Gubaidulina - the author of the music for this cartoon - is very clearly manifested here. We can say that the music for "Mowgli" is the "Children's Encyclopedia of Contemporary Music". The composer uses here various methods of modern composition writing technique. But remembering that this is still a work for children, Gubaidulina strove to write in a musical language accessible and understandable to a children's audience. This is evidenced by the elements of sound representation (this is when the cries of animals, their movements, character are depicted with the help of instruments - for example, in scenes of fights, or when a peacock opens its tail with a fan ...).

At the end of the meeting, the audience did not let go of the composer Danatar Khydyrov. They asked questions, wondered where they could get the recordings and scores of the works demonstrated during the meeting, and also asked the eminent master to organize more meetings dedicated to the topic of contemporary music. So, to be continued...

Aina SHIROVA

Photo: orient.tm