The ideas espoused by the Association of Proletarian Art were
spreading, like bushfire, across the country. All cultural high points
were held by APA members who decided exactly what kind of literature, painting
and music the new country really needed. All these symphonies, sonatas,
operas and things like that were absolutely alien to the working class
and, therefore, should be eliminated. Small wonder that the Big Hall of
the Moscow Conservatory, the best concert venue of the city, was turned
into a movie theater, and in Leningrad, a variety theater had its sights
squarely on the city Philharmonic's absolutely one-of-a-kind concert hall.
We need music that would be consonant with revolutionary reality,
with the ideology of the proletariat" stated one of the slogans which
were so popular in the early 1930s.
"Compositions permeated with pessimism, must be chased out
from our music as inconsistent with the proletarian mentality!" raged
another.
Here is one more. It says: "Young Communists! You've got
to learn to write your own songs!"
Dmitry Shostakovich still hurting from the thrashing he suffered
at the hands of the Russian Association of Proletarian Composers for his
Golden Age ballet, came up with the ideologically more correct ballet,
The Bolt, which, just like The Golden Age before it, was a musical indictment
of the non-Soviet man.
Choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov urged actors to join in the struggle
against the enemies of the industrialization, to show the working class,
to act out real-life situations happening on the shop floor and at workers'
clubs. Discarding the classical dance forms of old, he was looking out
for new numbers involving dozens and even hundreds of dancers using elements
of acrobatics and martial arts.
And still, the new ballet was equally assailed by the APA critics
who accused the authors of formalism, lack of ideological principles, vulgarity
and bourgeois decadence. "The Bolt is the last warning..." fumed
critic Mikhail Yankovsky.
The Bolt premiered on April 8 and on June 28 it was already taken
off stage once and for all.
The paper pushing bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture displayed
absolutely amazing intuition when it came to stamping out everything that
smacked of genuine art, and clearing the way for all kind of miserable
potboilers...
In 1931, Shostakovich tried his hand in music-hall writing the
score for the Presumed Dead show, which was the brainchild of the fast-rising
star of Soviet pop music, Leonid Utyosov. Members of his Thea-Jazz orchestra,
good musicians all and good actors too, were to act out a military exercise
with an imaginary enemy, imaginary battles, an imaginary bombardment of
Leningrad and, of course, imaginary casualties.
It was as if the authors were rehearsing the war which broke
out exactly ten years later and caused so much suffering to the heroic
people of Leningrad!
Just a few days into that real war of 1941, the sheet music of
the Presumed Dead was destroyed during a Nazi barrage and only 50 years
later, the British composer Gerald MacBernie finally managed to reconstruct
the score from the surviving rough copies and handwritten notes made by
the composer...
Back in 1931, the hugely popular play was once again the victim
of a scanthing criticism by those politically aware watchdogs of ideological
purity...
In France, Sergei Prokofyev, was seriously alarmed by the bubbling
activities of the Association of Proletarian Art which was lashing out
angrily against his work...
'Prokofyev is now fully in the service of the foreign bourgeoisie
and his decadent creations are rubbish to the ear. You've got to be very
dumb and overeducated to find anything attractive in this kind of music"
raged one Soviet critic.
Reading reviews like this certainly did nothing to fuel the composer's
nostalgia for his native country, all the less so now that Prokofyev had
many friends in Europe and often played host to singer Fyodor Chaliapin,
comedian Charlie Chaplin, violinist Jaques Tibauld and other luminaries.
In 1931 pianist Paul Witgenstein, who had lost his right arm
during World War One, commissioned Prokofyev to write a concerto for the
left hand and orchestra. Inspired, Prokofyev immediately got down to work
but, unfortunately, failed to impress his client. "I do appreciate
the concerto You have written for me", Paul Witgenstein wrote, "but
I didn't understand a single note and I won't play this..."
Prokofyev was desperate... According to the contract he had signed
with the pianist, Witgenstein secured the right to be the first to play
the concerto. Which meant that it might take years before someone could
finally play it... Only in the Fifties did the Fourth Piano Concerto finally
see daylight, first in Berlin and then in Leningrad and Moscow.
In that same year of 1931, Paul Witgenstein commissioned the
job to two other European greats, Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel, but
none of them managed to make him happy either...
Back in Russia, the Association of Proletarian Art was out looking
for new victims. One such victim was composer Alexander Mosolov. A handsome
winner, he was hounded down to a state of complete desperation. One day
he wrote the following letter to Josef Stalin himself:
"I, composer Alexander Mosolov, am asking You to clarify
my status in this country. For three years my music has neither been published
nor played and the music publishers in Moscow are getting increasingly
scared of my very name and turning down all my requests. Am I really such
a diehard class enemy? I can no longer stand all this badgering and I ask
You to either bring the Association of Proletarian Art to their senses
and let me do my job, or allow me leave the country."
Mosolov was advised to busy himself with Central Asian folk music
and, on its basis, to write a "Turkestan Oratorio About Stalin".
The composer failed to deliver it and in 1937 they arrested him for allegedly
being an "enemy of the people".
In 1931 a young tenor, Sergei Lemeshev, joined the company of
the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow. A village boy who had always dreamed about
a singing career, Lemeshev had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and
spent several years working in the Urals. In a matter of just a few years,
he shot to stardom with a following so unprecedentedly large that his fans
formed a whole party of "Lemeshev admirers". Not a single day
passed by without Lemeshev's sweet and a bit sad voice serenading radio
listeners all across the country...
Also in 1931 the biggest Soviet tour operators, HOTEL, that was
bringing foreign tourists into this country, commissioned the jazz pianist
Alexander Tsvassman and his orchestra to play as Moscow's best restaurants.
The restaurants' managers were ecstatic watching rich foreigners sitting
up late, enjoying the music and ordering more dishes as the night wore
on ...
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
