By Alexander Gradskiy - all the things that we hear at his concerts, in films with his music on the records - we habitually refer to popular songs. But they vaudeville, and this song in our usual sense? Gradski for many years has been a long-term experiment in the song, changing the individual components of its elements, creating a new genre alloys, interesting work with a word. Analyzing many of his vocal and instrumental compositions, unwittingly come to think of the birth of a new musical form, perhaps it could be called "a poem in music," musical short stories, monologues? It uses a high, sometimes even difficult for the first listening poetry, a wide range of music, from simple guitar strumming and finishing techniques, borrowed from the sphere of modern symphonic music. And curiously, in his search of new expressive Alexander Gradsky not alone. In a way analogous to his work is a plate-suite Tukhmanov, musicals Rybnikov, electronic loops Artemiev. While each of these composers is his interest, the original way ...

Rejection of something stimulates the search. Gradski essentially grew out of beat music, from dance songs, now rejects the setting to "comfort background noise", which allegedly aims to create hits. He sickens naked entertainment, the insignificance of the lexical range, typical of many of today's "light songs." Many works Gradskiy inherent good citizenship, and journalistic. His compositions are mostly antishlyagerny principle, this should listen to music, watch its development, paying attention to the nuances and detail. Gradski - a true Knight, poetry. As a young man he wrote the verses N.Aseeva, R.Kazakovoy, N.Glazkova, R. Burns. In recent years has expanded the list of poets: Russian folk poetry, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, N.Oleynikov, N.Rubtsov, M.Gettuev, W. Shakespeare, P.Shelli, P.Beranzhe, R. Kipling ... In this case, the poetry of most of them is presented in the composer a few songs. These blocks are easy to outgrow the song in the vocal and instrumental loops. Cycle thinking, the pursuit of scale, much to the new form becomes an important element: the cycle gives grad to a deeper, more volume to develop a theme.

Some cycles of the young composer and we will guide today it.

"Russian songs"

With five of them (they were the first side of the album, released in 1981, "Melody"), we introduced you to four years ago, at number 24 in 1978. Magazine wrote at the time: "... part of the 5 th and until the last, -" Ivan Kupala. "So far - it's because the author's intention is to continue the cycle ..." Now we can admit that then decided to push the author to continue to work - grad seemed that the cycle is completed. However, some time later, he agreed that pyatichastny option makes sense of completeness, and wrote in the summer of 1979 has three parts, which became the second side of the plate.

Those last three songs continue and develop the mood, already familiar to us from the first half of the cycle, but there is also new: the dramatic conflict, tension control, the shift from personal to universal human experiences.

... Part Six - "No one in the field dorozhenka." The song, known in Russian literature; remember Turgenev's "singer"? "... Jacob sighed and began to sing ... The first sound of his voice was weak and uneven, and did not seem to come out of his chest, but brought from far away, as if by accident flew into the room ..." No one in the field dorozhenka ran, "- he sang and we all became a sweet and scary ... every sound of his voice exuded something native and immensely wide, like a familiar steppe opened before you, going into the infinite distance." Gradski singing without instrumental ensemble - soundscape accompanying voice, the sounds of nature. "Literary" is reflected in the songs unobtrusive hint at the great Russian artists: here "Lemeshevskaya" phrase, that chant "under Chaliapin" ...

... The seventh part - "Soldiers, brave lads." Like a different singer - so different coloring his voice, and internal pressure, the utterance of the text. Gradski is removing the "peselnikom." Rhythmic beat of drums, the dashing whistle flute. Each subsequent verse clearly ironically illustrated "noise", only this time from the military shumoteki: cannon volley soldier "cheers", a fragment of a military march. Music seems to be just a cheerful and dashing, but there is in it, and something sinister, satirical remember drawing Valentin Serov, made for one of the magazines in 1905, the Cossacks rush to the attack on workers' demonstrations, signature - "Soldiers, brave lads."

... Hence - the direct flow to the final Requiem, written by Russian revolutionary song "You fell a victim to the fatal struggle", a composition consisting of two sections: vocal (the song) and instrumental (epilogue).

first heavy cadence songs, marches, songs of farewell to the dead revolutionaries, the chains ringing (drums and bells). Grief, feelings of self-restraint is removed in the following verse, talking about the inevitability of the fall of tyranny, of the coming of the revolution:

A tyrant feasting in a luxurious palace,

Anxiety wine drinking,

But menacing letters long wall

Draws much hand fatal!

The singer's voice ringing in prohibitively high register, his hatred, strength, faith! This vocal episode then goes in the tool - a kind of composite of several layers of musical noise. The basis of the whole - the bass ostinato rhythm (synthesizer and drums). "Top floor" built from fragments simultaneously sounding three great classics, "The Messiah," Bach's "Requiem" by Mozart and "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky. They are heard together, as it were, in turn prosvechivaya through each other. And all of this - the last layer - terrible "noise war": explosions, diving planes roaring, gnashing automotive brakes, automatic turn. Simultaneous sounding like many radios that transmit alarm messages from hundreds of "hot spots" of land. Mozart - and wars, conflicts and crises. Human culture - and savage roar machine destruction ... This is the epilogue of the loop. The story about the personal lives, gradually turning into the story of the fate of the country, the struggle, revolution, and finally - a disturbing finale, already coming out of Russia, exempting cycle on a global level ...

Still "Russian songs" do not end this apocalyptic picture. Subside shots drones, nervous rhythms of the synthesizer. Heard a powerful landwash. Sea - a powerful, boundless, free, awesome - last used in the cycle expressive "noise." And - a charming, magical melody, beautiful from afar voice. Music of joy and hope ...

"Utopia"

At that time, while finishing work on "Russian Song", Gradskiy exciting new concept. He is invited to write music for another movie film - this time the TV movie "The heirs of Prometheus", dedicated to outstanding utopian socialists - Campanella, Thomas More, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen. What should be the songs of this movie? And what - music?

task was not easy. Yet he finds the Gradski material in the documents themselves era in democratic poetry XVIII-XIX centuries. In the work of Burns, Shelley, Beranger. Interestingly, some of the texts used by him were once revolutionary songs. For example, Shelley's poem "men of England," written in 1819, was the anthem of the revolutionaries of the first half of the XIX century - the Chartists:

British why

Conquering you yoke?

Why ordinary people

Weaves and plows for the gentlemen? ..

were many songs and lyrics Burns. Gradski uses the famous "Honest Poverty":

Someday hour strikes,

When the mind and honor

the whole earth will turn

come first!

Several songs were written on texts Gradsky French poet-democrat Beranger. "The people - my muse," - said Berenger. From the roof of his house, a child, he saw the storming of the Bastille. "Songs of Beranger full of grace, wit and subtle poetry" - wrote Goethe, and Belinsky said, "People's Poet - the one that all the people know he knows his Beranger France." Beranger heroes - people from the suburbs, the poor languishing in prisons revolutionaries, philosophers and socialists Saint-Simon and Fourier, he creates an image of Ideas - the coming revolution, which appears therefore as a beautiful young woman:

Earth from evil soul skudeya,

I sought out in dreams -

And then I look - flies idea,

all bourgeois instilling fear!

... But defeat became stronger,

dead and crowned with laurel,

again to the idea of flying the skies,

the vanquished took the banner!

It is terrible to all reactionary kings, priests, officials said. It scares the bourgeois, liberal in words, a coward and a traitor, in fact, the sentencing:

idea here is knocking:

Lock the door a minute, gentlemen!

So, a number of ballads - epic and angry, hymn and satirical. In his music Gradsky tried to convey the spirit of the old revolutionary songs, using the tradition that gave the world "La Marseillaise", "International", "Varshavyanka." In the music store "Utopia" felt oratorical tone, bouncy marching rhythms, elements of the chorale, a French street songs, combined with modern pop intonations. In the loop - seven parts. Author sings and plays keyboards, accompanied by a group of "Buffoons" and string composition orchestra of Soviet radio.

"Life itself"

It is easy to see that in recent years the music Gradskiy absolutely no so-called love lyrics. Bad song lyrics "About Love", sounding so abundantly from the stage, he has long fought off a hunt to write on this topic. However lyrical cycle on poems by the French poet Paul Eluard, a communist (translated by Maurice Vaksmahera) he has created. Poems are different - gentle, ironic, of suffering - and very personal. Not every poem fit into the size of song form, and Gradsky, as he did before, make the text of the individual fragments, managed to remove longueurs etc.

Gradsky tends to stylize the sound of French chanson, expressive tone of lyrical ballads, not without regard to the songs of Edith Piaf. The songs are short, simple and very different:. "There comes the dawn" - sad lyric, "With drooping brow ..." - tragic, "Pretend" - smiling, ironic, "clinging to the glass" - the philosophical and contemplative.

"Star fields"

A song cycle based on poems by Rubtsov. Gradski worked on music for one of the films, and the director asked him to write two songs on Rubtsov, the approach to the topic. The request was directed, of course, is made, and then Gradsky, fascinated by poetry Rubtsov, wrote five more songs. Left loop, penetrated deep love for Russia. The music felt intonation urban romance, but using a more "rural" modal speed and melismas. The three parts of this series formed vosemnadtsatiminutny song block that Gradsky constantly performs in his concerts - "green", "Road Elegy" and "Star of the fields." Poignant, slow lyrics, earnest, something which continues Esenin topic homeland hero monologue:

Already on the clock rang twelve -

and sleep enveloped my home ...

"Stadium"

Political rock opera "Stadium" was created a few years ago. Literary source libretto was the documentary novel, published in the journal "Foreign Literature". In her days, hours and minutes clocking events of the first weeks after the fascist coup in Chile: mass arrests, the fate of the Democrats, they drove into a giant concentration camp - the National Stadium in Santiago, torture, overt and covert execution. The story was followed up the tragic fate of hundreds of people, from ordinary students and workers to known progressive political activists. One such story lines - the fate of the popular Chilean singer Victor Jara young communist.

Work on the libretto lasted over two years (Gradski wrote it with the poet Margarita Pushkina), and the text was altered three times seriously. In the first case, he was almost entirely based on information from the documentary story. However, the authors feel that some little facts that require reflection and generalization. Journalistic scene skeleton was gradually transformed into a literary.

Almost simultaneously with the creation of the libretto music is born. Appeared arias, ensembles and scenes. All this was for the time being sketched, not fully decorated; Gradsky sang his opera in the rough, for all the characters at once, accompanying himself on guitar or piano. Final orchestration is only now, is based on specific artists involved writing "stadium" at a national firm Recording Studio | "Melody".

... The opera is based on a system of leitmotifs. Each character (Singer, his wife, Lucia, women, young people, the first officer, and others) have their leyttema. There are certain topics of happiness, a struggle of national grief. Several episodes are purely instrumental in nature (eg, rebellion and resistance to it transferred to the symphonic stage) ...

In opera and vocal cycles Alexander Gradskiy recent years clearly felt passionate authorial tone, hot hatred of evil, journalistic. It praises the fighters for a happy future people - progressive thinkers, revolutionaries, democrats, communists ("The Ballad of Giordano Bruno" on the verses of the national poet of the Kabardino-Balkaria Maxim Gettueva, "Spain" on the famous poem Nicholas Aseeva dedicated to Garcia Lorca, "Utopia" "Stadium"), condemning aggressive war machine of the West, the fascists and reactionaries of all stripes, compromisers - bourgeois, bourgeois, drives.

Creativity Gradskiy many faces. Many of his songs bizarre phantasy, paradoxical. He is the finest lyrics and gentle children's songs (and even a ballet " Mowgli "). Yet, if you carefully analyze all this diversity, it is clear that civil, journalistic theme in his work is more and more space.