Testimony

I've always protested harshly against this point of view and I strove for the reverse. I always wanted music to be an active force. That is the Russian tradition.

There is another notable phenomenon that is characteristic of Russia. It is so notable that I would like to dwell on it, it needs to be detailed to make it more understandable. In one of Rimsky-Korsakov's letters I found words to which I have returned many times. They make one think. The words are: "Many things have aged and faded before our eyes and much that seems obsolete I think will eventually seem fresh and strong and eternal, if anything can be."

I'm delighted once more by the soundness and wisdom of that man.

Of course we all, while still of sound mind, have our doubts about eternity. I'll be frank: I don't have much faith in eternity.

Once so-called eternal needles for Primus stoves were advertised, 1 59

and Ilf said, "What do I need eternal needles for? I have no intention of living forever, and even if I did, will the Primus stoves exist forever?

That would be very sad." That was how our famous humorist expressed himself on eternity, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Was Rimsky-Korsakov thinking about his music when he spoke of eternity? But why should his music have eternal life? Or any music, for that matter? Those for whom the music is written, the ones who are born with it-those people don't plan on living forever. How dreary to picture generation after generation living to the same music!

What I want to say is that what may remain "fresh and strong"

may not be music at all, and not even creativity, but some other, more unexpected and prosaic thing, such as attentiveness toward people, toward their humdrum lives, filled with unpleasant and unexpected events, toward their petty affairs and cares, and toward their general lack of security. People have invented many curious things: the microscope, Gillette razor blades, photography, and so on and so forth, but they still haven't invented a way of making everyone's life tolerable.

Naturally, solving world problems by creating oratorios, ballets, and operettas is a noble undertaking. Of course, you address yourself to the lovers of these lofty genres, but you must also respond to the feelings of other, say, more average, people. And these people may be occupied with something quite different from the construction of the Volga-Don Canal and the re-creation of that momentous event via cantatas, oratorios, ballets, and such. Those miserable characters, so to speak, are concerned with a leaky toilet that the janitor won't fix, or the fact that their son passed the entrance exams but won't be accepted because he's the wrong nationality for the institute he wants to enter, and similar problems, not very exalted and therefore not appropriate for oratorios and ballets. Perhaps Rimsky-Korsakov's "freshness and strength"

would lie in attention to these problems of average people in certain circumstances.

They'll say that this is all talk and that there's too much talk, and that the little action there is becomes silly. But I feel that the history of Russian music is on my side. Take Borodin, for instance, whose music I rate very highly taken as a whole, even though I don't always agree with the ideology behind it. But we're not talking about ideology now, and Borodin was highly gifted as a composer. Any Western composer 1 60

with such a gift would sit around and dash off symphony after symphony and opera upon opera, and live a life of ease.

But Borodin? Stories about him paint a picture that seems fantastic to an outsider, but is completely normal and customary for us. All right, everyone knows that besides music, Borodin was also a chemist and that Borodin made a name for himself in the field of catalysts and precipitates with his discoveries. I've met chemists who insisted that they are truly valuable discoveries. (However, one chemist told me it was all nonsense and that he would trade all Borodin's scientific discoveries for a second set of Polovetsian Dances. And then I had the thought that perhaps it was good that Borodin was interested in chemistry and didn't write a second set.) But besides chemistry, there was also the women's movement. We don't have feminism in Russia now, we simply have energetic women.

They work and earn money, with which they buy groceries, and then cook dinner for their husbands, and then do the dishes, and also bring up the children. So we have individual energetic women but no feminist movement. But if feminism did exist, a monument would certainly be erected to Borodin. I remember that in my early years, feminists and suffragettes treated the opposite sex with disdain, but in this case they would be willing to spend money for a monument. After all, we have a monument for Pavlov's dog, which served humanity-that is, was butchered in the name of humanity. Borodin would get one of those monuments too, because he plunged headlong into women's education and spent more and more time as he grew older on philanthropy, primarily for women's causes. And these causes butchered him as a composer.

Reminiscences of friends paint an educational picture. Borodin's apartment looked like a railway station. Women and girls came to him at any time of day, dragging him away from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Borodin would get up-without finishing his meal-and go off to take care of all their requests and complaints. A too familiar picture.

It was impossible to find him at home or at his laboratory. Borodin was always out at some meeting on women's rights. He dragged himself from one meeting to another, discussing women's problems which could probably have been taken care of by a lesser composer than Borodin. To tell the truth, a man without any musical education could 1 61

have successfully understood the pressing women's issues. (Why was it that the musical ladies, who adored Borodin's music, were the ones who dragged him into this business? Why is it always like that?

Whom and what do these ladies love most: music, charitable causes, or themselves?)

Borodin's apartment was a madhouse. I'm not exaggerating, this is not a poetic simile, so popular in our times, as in "Our communal apartment is a madhouse." No, Borodin's place was a madhouse without similes or metaphors. He always had a bunch of relatives living with him, or just poor people, or visitors who took sick and eventhere were cases-went mad. Borodin fussed over them, treated them, took them to hospitals, and then visited them there.

That's how a Russian composer lives and works. Borodin wrote in snatches. Naturally, there was someone sleeping in every room, on every couch, and on the floors. He didn't want to disturb them with the piano. Rimsky-Korsakov would visit Borodin and ask, "Have you written anything?" Borodin would reply, "I have." And it would tum out to be another letter in defense of women's rights. And the same jokes came up with the orchestration of Prince Igor. "Did you transpose that section?" "Yes. From the piano to the desk." And then people wonder why Russian composers write so little.

In the long run, Igor is as much Borodin's as it is Rimsky-Korsakov's and Glazunov's. The other two tried not to stress the fact, saying that Glazunov wrote down this section "from memory," and that one too. The overture was written "from memory" and the entire third act.

But when he was in his cups, and Glazunov got drunk very rapidly and became defenseless then, he would admit that it wasn't "from memory" -he simply wrote for Borodin. This says many good things about Glazunov, whose behavior I am going to talk about. It doesn't happen often that a man composes excellent music for another composer and doesn't advertise it (to talk while drinking doesn't count).

It's usually the other way around-a man steals an idea or even a considerable piece of music from another composer and passes it off as his own.

Glazunov is a marvelous example of a purely Russian phenomenon: as a composer he can honestly and fairly hold a position in the history of Russian music that is not simply outstanding but unique, and not 1 62

because of his compositions. Do we love Glazunov now for his music?

Have his symphonies remained "fresh and strong,'' as Rimsky-Korsakov put it, or his quartets?

I recently listened-for the umpteenth time-to Suite from the Middle Ages. It has nothing to do with the Middle Ages; they would have scorned· it. I think the masters were stronger then, even though I like this suite more than many of Glazunov's other works. And I suppose I value his Eighth Symphony more than the others, particularly the slow movement. The others make rather flabby music. Boring, actually. When I listen to his symphonies, I grow bored. I keep thinking, Let's have the recapitulation-oh, no, it's still the development.

Glazunov had a lot of trouble with finales, he did not create enough energy or tension. In fact, this characterizes almost all his compositions. I think that a decisive factor in this problem was a misfortunein his youth Glazunov contracted a venereal disease. He picked it up from some ballerina in the Imperial Maryinsky Theater. He was awfully unlucky with that ballerina. He fell into a deep depression, they say, and went to Aachen for a cure. That was the famous German resort where all the syphilitics went. He wrote tragic letters from Aachen. They say that his tragic suffering is reflected in the Fourth Quartet. I know the Fourth, naturally, but I don't hear anything like that in it. In general, I like the Fifth Quartet much more, if it comes to that, even without the venereal suffering. Oh yes, I forgot, I also like parts of Raymonda.

Besides his music, Glazunov's private life was also affected by that incident. He never did marry and lived with his mother. Glazunov was well over fifty when his mother would still say to the laundry, "Do a good job on the child's underwear, now." And Glazunov was famous throughout Russia, the "Russian Brahms," the director of the best Russian conservatory. And he was good-looking, strong and massive, at least until the lean years of the Revolution.

Here's another popular story that circulated in my years at the Conservatory. Glazunov was planning to go out and called a hackney cab.

His mother expressed her fears about whether the horse was docile enough, whether . it would bolt, and she didn't want him to go. They say that even good-natured Glazunov lost his temper and asked,

"Mother, do you plan to put a guardrail on the coach?"

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But all these stories didn't keep us from feeling the greatest respect for Glazunov. Even adulation. It's only now that his compositions seem dull, but then they were heard in all our classes, at every student recital, and particularly at the examinations, which Glazunov invariably attended. And I don't think it was to suck up to Glazunov, either.

You didn't have to tell Glazunov he was a marvelous composer to flatter him. You had to tell him he was a marvelous conductor. They played his works because they were convenient and effective, for instance, the Piano Variations in D, the Sonata in B Minor, and the Concerto in F Minor. The singers adored Glazunov's romances, and Nina's romance from Lermontov's Masquerade was something of a war-horse. It's popular today, we often hear it. I'm not very fond of it.

Everyone knows how Glazunov began. When his First Symphony was performed, it was a great success, and they called for the composer. The audience was stunned when the composer came out in a gymnasium uniform. Glazunov was seventeen. That's a record in Russian music. I didn't beat it, even though I began early enough.

Incidentally, the same rumors circulated about us both: to wit, "such a young man" couldn't have written such a symphony. They said that his wealthy parents had paid someone for Glazunov's symphony. And they said that mine was a collective effort. But no, we wrote them ourselves. I was even more independent. Balakirev reorchestrated pages of Glazunov's First Symphony. Glazunov put up with it, didn't dare contradict him, and later even def ended Balakirev. And Glazunov wanted to fix up my First. Of course, he wasn't talking about pages, as far as I remember there were just a few unpleasant harmonies, as Glazunov thought, and he insisted that I change them, even suggesting his own variations.

I made one change at first, in the introduction, after the first phrases of the muted trumpet. I didn't want to hurt the old man's feelings, but then I thought, Wait a minute, this is my music, and not Glazunov's. Why should I feel ill at ease? There's a lot I don't like in his music, but I don't suggest he change it to suit me. And I reinstated the original before the first performance. Glazunov was very angry, but it was too late. So I wasn't as malleable as Glazunov had been in his day. Of course, he was two whole years younger at the time.

After his brilliant debut, Glazunov had a rosy and completely de-1 64

served future ahead of him. He lived well and peacefully. Not like me.

He never had to worry about money, while that care always hung over my head. The wealthy Mitrofan Beliayev,* as you know, considered Glazunov the new musical messiah, and published whatever Glazunov wrote. He published quickly and paid generously.· Patrons are always more generous than the state, at least so it seems to me. So Glazunov could devote himself exclusively to his music and particularly to his emotions, since; as I've told you, he had good reason to emote.

He lived that way, quietly and peacefully, as none of us ever has.

Glazunov was totally indifferent to the social upheavals of the period, he saw the world only through music, not only his own but other music as well. He was a huge musical ear.

Mikhail Gnessint and I were speaking of Glazunov once and Gnessin made a perceptive remark about the man he knew so well; he said Glazunov's basic emotion was delight in an exquisitely arranged universe. I've never experienced that delight.

Of course, Glazunov had many childish traits-his subordination to his mother, the revered Elena Pavlovna, when hundreds of people were subordinate to him, and that voice as quiet as a roach's, and that huge fish tank in his apartment. (Glazunov liked to feed his fish.} And his childish love of conducting. I think he always thought of the orchestra as a large shiny toy. But you can't play games with an orchestra. I tried a few times and gave it up. Why bother?

A miracle happened with Glazunov, one that can only happen in Russia. An edifying and mysterious evolution. This enormous elderly child gradually-gradually, not abruptly-became a public figure of immense significance. Glazunov began changing the moment he became director of the Petersburg Conservatory and eventually he turned into another person altogether.

This was a Glazunov who was simultaneously the old man and the new. The old Glazunov we knew from stories. But as I've said, there was no sharp, sudden change in his personality, so even in our times it

•Mitrofan Petrovich Beliayev (1836-1903), a millionaire merchant who devoted himself to disseminating Russian music. He used his money to establish a professionally run concert organization and a music publishing house.

tMikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (1883-1957), composer, professor at the Leningrad Conservatory, one of the eminent representatives of twentieth-century Jewish music. Gnessin's behavior during the "antiformalist campaign" is an outstanding example of steadfastness and firmness of conviction.

·

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was often possible to see and hear the old Glazunov. And yet he was also the new Glazunov-a figure of epochal public resonance, a historic figure without exaggeration.

In our own time Glazunov was a living legend. In the twenty or more years that he headed the Petersburg, later the Leningrad, Conservatory, thousands of students graduated, and I'm certain that it would be hard to name even one who wasn't indebted to Glazunov in some way.

I realize that this is hard to believe now, but it is really so. There is no false sentimentality in my recollections. I despise sentimentality, can't bear it, and I'm not reminiscing so that sensitive ladies can bring their scented hankies to their eyes. I'm remembering so that the truth will be recorded, the truth that I saw and remembered, so that the phenomena of our cultural life that I witnessed will not be forgotten.

Glazunov was one of these phenomena.

He used to be a squire, and he became a man blessed for his good deeds by every working musician in the country. He composed when he really wanted to, for his own pleasure, without giving a thought to

"ideological content." And he sacrificed everything for the Conservatory-his time, his serenity, and finally, his creativity. Glazunov was always busy. He told friends who wanted to see him that he could only be seen in their dreams. And it was so. They say that he was extremely passive in his youth. Of course, Glazunov didn't become assertive in my day either, but he did develop the necessary firmness-and not only toward his subordinates or students.

The firmness of a boss toward his underling is worthless. It only outrages me, this notorious firmness. Glazunov became firm and calm in his dealings with big shots, and that's quite a feat.

Gnessin told me that before the Revolution, Prime Minister Stolypin sent an inquiry to the Conservatory: How many Jewish students were there? And Gnessin, a Jew, elatedly gave me Glazunov's reply.

Delivered with quiet satisfaction, it was "We don't keep count."

And these were the years of pogroms, when Jews were considered rabble-rousers and had strictly curtailed rights. They weren't permitted into institutions of higher learning. An independent and even challenging answer like that could have created problems for Glazunov. But he wasn't afraid. Anti-Semitism was organically alien to 1 66

him. He followed the tradition of Rimsky-Korsakov in that sense, for Korsakov couldn't abide it either. He pointed with revulsion at Balakirev, who became rabid with the filthy trait in his old age. There's no need to bring up Mussorgsky here. It's a complex situation. But in

"Korsakov's school" there was no room for anti-Semitism.

Here's another typical incident. An anniversary concert in Glazunov's honor was held in Moscow in 1922. He went, and after the gala, Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar of Education, gave a speech. He announced that the government had decided to give Glazunov living conditions that would facilitate his creativity and be commensurate with his achievements. What would any other man have done in the guest of honor's place? He would have thanked him. The times were hard and lean. Glazunov, who had once been a substantial and handsome man, had lost a catastrophic amount of weight. His old clothes sagged on him as though he were a hanger. His face was haggard and drawn. We knew that he didn't even have music paper on which to write down his ideas. But Glazunov manifested an absolutely amazing sense of his own dignity. And honor. He said that he needed absolutely nothing and asked not to be put in circumstances that differed from those of other citizens. But if the government had turned its attention to musical life, Glazunov said, well then, let it rest on the Conservatory, which was freezing. There was no firewood, nothing with which to heat the place. It caused a minor scandal, but at least the Conservatory received firewood.

I'm not painting a picture of an angel. That's not like me at all.

There was much in Glazunov that I found laughable and incomprehensible. I'm not all that fond of his music, but I want to stress that man does not live by music alone. Even if it is the music by which you should be living-your own compositions. And I want to reiterate the following circumstance: Glazunov did not take on public roles because he lacked the gift for composing, or the technique. He was talented and a master of the art.

It is only nowadays that the people who want to attend meetings, make decisions, and command are the ones who are doing badly with their own work. And these bums, finally getting their administrative posts, use all their power to stifle talented music and bury it, while promoting their own worthless works.

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It was just the reverse with Glazunov, he wasn't seeking profit for himself. He gave away his salary as director and professor to needy students. No one will ever be able to tally the number of his famous letters of recommendation. They gave people work, bread, sometimes saved lives.

I want what I am remembering now to be taken very seriously, for I am talking about a complex psychological and ethical problem which not many bother to think about. In such letters Glazunov did write what he really thought about the person quite often and praised the person with justification. But even more frequently-much more sohe helped people out of compassion. Many turned to him for help, often total strangers. They were in need and were oppressed by life, and he quickly took on the cares of each victim. Glazunov listened to their pleas by the hour, tried to understand their situation. And he did more than sign letters of request, he went to the big shots to plead their cases. Glazunov felt that no real harm would come to great and holy Art if some singer without a voice, the mother of children and without a husband, was given a job in the chorus of an operetta company.

Every Jewish musician knew that Glazunov would make the rounds to get him permission to live in Petersburg. Glazunov never asked the poor violinist to play for him, he felt firmly that everyone had the right to live wherever he pleased and art would not suffer as a result.

Glazunov didn't get on a soapbox or pretend to feel holy righteous wrath about this. He didn't demonstrate his high principles when it came to small and pathetic people. He saved this for more important people and more important incidents. In the long run, all things in life can be separated into the important and the unimportant. You must be principled when it comes to the important things and not when it comes to the unimportant. That may be the key to living.

Glazunov was sometimes childish, and sometimes he was very wise.

He taught me a lot. I've thought about it a great deal and perhaps all of life goes toward finding out what is important in it and what isn't.

It's tragic, but it's so.

I don't remember where I read an ancient prayer that goes, "Lord, grant me the strength to change what can be changed. Lord, grant me the strength to bear what can't be changed. And Lord, grant me the wisdom to know the difference."

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Sometimes I love that prayer and sometimes I hate it. Life is ending for me and I have neither the strength nor the wisdom.

It's easy to ask for this and that, but you don't get it, even though you knock and bow as much as you can. You can't have it and that's that. You might get a medal or an order, or a pretty diploma. Recently I got a degree in America, in Evanston. I asked the dean what privileges or rights the diploma gave me. He gave me a witty answer: the diploma and twenty-five cents will buy me a ride on the bus.

I like honorary degrees, they're quite decorative and they look good on the wall. They're made of fine paper. I've noticed a curious thing: the smaller the country, the better the paper and the bigger the diploma. Sometimes, when I look at them all, I think that I've been given my allotment of wisdom. But that happens rarely. It happens when I finish a work, and then I feel that all the problems are solved and that I've answered all the questions-in music, naturally. But even that's a great deal. And now let people hear the music, and then they'll see what they have to do and how to separate the important from the unimportant.

But most often I think about the fact that none of this has helpedwith or without the prayers. What I really want is a peaceful life, and a happy one. I remember old man Glazunov, that big, wise child. He spent his entire life thinking that he could separate the important from the unimportant. And he thought that the universe was created rationally. But at the end of his life, I think he began doubting it. Glazunov sincerely believed that the work to which he had devoted all his strength-Russian musical culture, the Conservatory-was doomed.

That was his tragedy.

All values were confused, criteria obliterated. Glazunov ended up in Paris, where he was respected, but not, I think, much loved. He continued composing, not really knowing for whom and for what he was writing. I can't imagine anything more horrible than that. That's the end. But Glazunov was wrong. He had been given the wisdom and he had correctly separated the important from the unimportant, and his work turned out to be "fresh and strong."

When I was young, I enjoyed laughing at Glazunov-it was easy.

At fifteen I was much more mature than Glazunov, a revered old man.

The future belonged to me, not him. Everything that changed was 1 69

changing in my favor, not his. Music was changing, tastes were changing. All Glazunov could do was grumble offendedly.

But now I see how complicated it all really was. Now I suspect that there was eternal conflict in Glazunov's soul, a story typical of the Russian intelligentsia, of all of us. Glazunov was always tormented by the awareness of the injustice of his personal well-being. He was visited by many people who had been treated unfairly by life and, he tried to help them; in turn even more came to him. But he couldn't help them all. He wasn't a miracle worker after all, none of us is, and that is a source of constant torment. Glazunov was also pestered by an enormous number of composers, who sent their work to him from all over Russia.

When they just send you music, it's not so bad, I know that from my own experience. You can glance through a score rather quickly, particularly if you see right off that it's hopeless. Of course, if you want to experience the music fully, you must sight-read it in the amount of time that it would take to perform, that's the only way to derive real satisfaction from reading it. But that's a method to be used only with good music. It's torture to "listen" with your eyes to bad music. You just glance through it. But what do you do when a talentless composer comes and plays his music from beginning to end?

The very worst is when the composer is neither a charlatan nor a scoundrel, but a diligent person with little talent. In those cases you listen and think, What can I possibly say to him? The music is written conscientiously, the composer did everything that he could, it's just that he can do very little. You might say he can do almost nothing. He was taught to write notes grammatically at the Conservatory, and that is all he can do. Yet such composers are often quite nice and often quite needy.

Well, what do you do with them ? Tell the nice man that he's written a woeful work? Why, he won't even understand what's so wrong with his beloved child. After all, everything seems in order. It's pointless to try to explain, and if you do explain-a long, stubborn, and dull venture-and he does understand, then what? This person still can't do any better, you can't jump over your forehead, as they say.

And so in those cases I tell my visitor, Well, it can be like that, why not?

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I feel that Glazunov chose the right behavior for these situations. He praised such works moderately and quietly, looking at the music with thought. Sometimes he used his gold pencil on the second or fifteenth page to add a sharp or flat or make some other piddling change. "In general, this is all right, it's good; but here, perhaps, the shift from triple to quadruple time isn't very good . . . . " So that the composer wouldn't think that Glazunov didn't pay enough attention to the work.

Another form of musical torture through which Glazunov suffered was the obligatory attendance at recitals. This was almost a job for him. It is a torture that I understand very well, because I've been subjected to it more than once myself.

And this isn't as clear-cut as it might seem at first glance. The easiest response to all this is "poor fellow." If you look at it, Glazunov was a poor fell ow, swamped with tons of sheet music, dragged to thousands of concerts. But there were times when I would have sworn that he liked it. I've caught myself liking it, strangely enough. A composer telephones and asks you to listen to his work and give your opinion.

Well, you agree, cursing silently. And you think, why does this man exist, you think Sasha Cherny's thoughts about the pockmarked girl:

"Why didn't she marry? Why-may a pole ram her between the shoulder blades-didn't she fall under a trolley on the way over here?"

And then the composer calls back and says that he can't make the appointment because he has to go to Tashkent or his uncle is sick. And you honestly feel sorry that the planned run-through won't take place.

After all, I like listening to music. That's not the same as simply liking music. Naturally, it's silly for me to say that I love music, that goes without saying. And I love all music-from Bach to Offenbach. But I love only good music, that is, what I consider good at any given time.

But I like listening to any music, including bad music.

It's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations.

When I listen to orchestral music, I transcribe it for piano in my mind. I listen, while my fingers try it out to see if it fits the hand. And when I listen to piano music, mentally I run it through in an orchestral version. It's a disease, but a pleasant one. It's like scratching when you itch.

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I'm spending time discussing the Russian composer-eccentrics deliberately. "The fairy tale is a lie, but it does contain a clue," as they sing in Rimsky-Korsakov's Golden Cockerel. It might seem that these eccentrics lived the wrong way, not like everyone else, and spent all their time on all the wrong things instead of composing. But they pref erred to take this strange path. They may have lost, but art won. It became cleaner, purer, more moral-not in the hypocrite's sense of moral. A sensitive person will understand what I mean. You can be a syphilitic and still be a moral person. You can be an alcoholic. A clean bill of health from a hospital doesn't prove that a healthy man stands before us.

Many of today's composers can show a bill of health proving that they don't have VD, but they are rotten from within. Their souls stink. That's why I fight for the "fresh and strong" that Rimsky-Korsakov wrote about. I miss that feeling very much. If I were to bring up the "composer's morality" at a composers' meeting, I would be laughed at. They've forgotten what it is.

For instance, I'm astounded at how widespread plagiarism has become in our music. Where did this infection, this vileness, come from?

I'm not talking about imitation or unconscious borrowings. One of my colleagues says that there is no music that consists of just itself, that is, music is not distilled water and it can't be stylistically crystal clear and pure. Every piece of music resembles other music in some way.

But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the most ruthless, blatant copying, and we have more than enough scandals with that.

One woman, a member of the Composers' Union, simply took symphonies by American composers and copied them down, from first note to last, without any changes. And when she was caught-quite accidentally-she insisted that she was playing a joke. Some joke. I think that they had even planned on publishing these works, so appropriate for our socialistic art. In any case, the lady had been paid for them.

And this nonentity was teaching composition at the Moscow Conservatory. I can imagine what she could have taught her students. It might have been a good idea: "Musical Plagiarism, Professor So-and-so, lab work Mondays and Thursdays."

I know people will say that's not a typical case. But I think it is.

There was nothing accidental about this shameless theft except the fact 1 72

that she was caught. The accident was that one erudite composer among our colleagues recognized William Schuman,s work when our brazen lady showed her "composition,, at the Composers, Union. He even happened to have the music at home. Now, thafs not typical at all. An accident, you might say. Because most of our composers aren,t willing to clutter their minds; at first it wasn,t allowed and then when it was, it seemed like too much trouble. People were too lazy. Ifs easier to dismiss music as the rotten product of the decadent West.

rm talking about contemporary Western music now. But unfortunately, their knowledge of classical Western music is very sketchy too.

I keep running into people who have heard of Mahler and Bruckner but who have never actually looked at a score, not once. And they know only a few popular melodies from Wagner. Not only Wagner; they have . only a vague idea of Schumann and Brahms too (except for the symphonies).

Naturally, you can,t really quiz a colleague in private conversation, it,s impolite and you might hurt his feelings. But I was chairman of the State Examination Commission in the Composition Division of the Moscow Conservatory. And as you know, student composers from the Conservatory become members of the Composers, Union upon graduation. They all have an impressive baggage of work-symphonies, operas-but they don,t know music. Not only do they not know Western music, they don,t know their own native music. And that is the result of another process. They vilified and hid Western music, lowered grades on exams for too much familiarity with it, and they shoved Russian music down the students, throats and said stupid things about it, like Russian music developing independently, on its own, related to nothing. You know, like "Russia is the homeland of elephants.,,*

As a result, the history of Russian music as taught by our institutions of higher learning has taken on an exceptionally ridiculous aspect, and the students, aversion to it is understandable, but not excusable. After all, pamphlets and lectures are one thing, but the real

*A reference to a nationalistic campaign, unfurled soon after the war, to fight "kowtowing before foreigners." Like all totalitarian campaigns, it took on grotesque dimensions. Children were taught in school that all important inventions had been made in R.ussia fint; that R.ussian writers, composers, and artists had never borrowed anything from the West; French bread was renamed "city" bread. Inevitably, all these official claims gave rise to many jokes, like the one Shostakovich quotes. ·

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music is another. The usual dichotomy between word and deed. And it's a shame that the students don't understand the dichotomy, and that they feel that being illiterate is a form of opposition. I've spoken with mature people who were proud of not knowing or liking Glinka.

This general musical illiteracy is naturally one of the factors that have helped plagiarism flourish; but obviously it's not the only one.

There are so many reasons. Greed, for one, but also the certainty that no one will catch you. They're not afraid of being caught and shamed.

Entire tragedies unfold in whispers, lives are ruined. I had a friend who once confessed while drunk that he earned his living ghost-writing songs for a very popular composer. He told me which one.

"Our people love those songs, don't they?" he said with a wry smile.

"They're all about heroic deeds, courage, nobility, and other marvelous things." He told me how they did it-a lovely picture straight out of Dostoevsky. The two "co-composers" met in a toilet. One handed over the money, the other the sheet music for the latest song about nobility. Then the conspirators flushed, for authenticity.

This was the lofty and poetic setting for the birth of another valuable work that was to elevate the moral level of the people.

I said to my friend, "I'll throw the bastard out of the union." (I was secretary of the Composers' Unfon of the R.S.F.S.R. then.) He sobered up and replied, "Just try. I'll say that you're slandering him."

"Why?" I asked. "You just told me about him yourself." And he replied, "I'll deny it, I'll say you're lying. I'll lose income because of you.

He pays me well, and on time. I have to dun the others. This one lets me live, and thanks to him for that. I'll turn you into a slanderer-.just try saying anything. You'll be a slanderer, everyone will call you a liar."

And I said nothing, I let it go. Why? I still don't know for sure. I shouldn't have, I know. I never seem to follow up on anything. I suppose I was afraid of being branded a liar. I hate hearing things like that about myself. I want to be an honest man in all respects.

Citizens, a new era has begun in musical history, new and unheard of. Now we are no longer dealing with simple plagiarism. In plagiarism the thief fears being caught. But now the person who knows the truth is the one who lives in fear. Because he faces a smoothly running operation, a large machine at work, and he, the fool, wants to stick his hand in it. Obviously, it will be chopped off.

1 74

I backed off, but I should have seen it through. I should have got rid of him. But then my friend would have lost his job. Of course, his job was perverse and he should have done something more worthwhile.

But I felt sorry for him.

Perhaps l just washed my hands of it. There's· no point in getting involved with plagiarists and scoundrels when they're in power. The whole world can shout that a man is a scoundrel and a bastard, and he'll just go on living and thriving. And not twitch a hair on his mustache, if he has one.

Take the astonishing rise of Mukhtar Ashrafi, famous composer, and not only in his native Uzbekistan. He is the recipient of two Stalin Prizes, is a People's Artist of the U.S.S.R., and a professor. He even has the Order

.

of Lenin. The reason l know . his title and awards so well is that I handled his case. He turned out to be a shameless plagiarist and thief. I was chairman of the commission that smoked him out.

We dug around in shit, "analyzing" his music, hearing depositions from witnesses. We had Ashrafi up against the wall. It was exhausting work-and in vain, as it turned out. At first we seemed to have got some results. He was expelled from the Composers' Union. But recently I was thumbing through a magazine, I don't remember which, and I saw a familiar name. Ashrafi was giving an interview. He was in power again, sharing his creative plans, which were quite extensive.

How can you keep from washing your hands of it, from saying to hell with it?

I think the greatest danger for a composer is a loss of faith. Music, and art in general, cannot be cynical. Music can be bitter and despairing, but not cynical. And in this country, they like to confuse cynicism with despair. If music is tragic, they say it's cynical. I've been accused of cynicism more than once, and incidentally, not only by government bureaucrats. The Igors and Borises of our country's musicologists added their two cents' worth too. But despair and cynicism are different, just as ennui and cynicism are different. When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.

It's the smug little music that is often cynical. Quiet and calm it is, for the composer doesn't give a damn about anything. It's just drivel and not art. And it's all around us. It saddens me to talk about it, because cynicism is not characteristic of Russian music. We have never had the tradition. I don't want to be full of hot air and bore everyone 1 75

with calls to good citizenship; I want to discover the causes of cynicism. In looking for the causes of many interesting phenomena, one must tum, I feel, to the Revolution, because the Revolution brought a turnabout in the consciousness of a significant number of people, a radical turnabout. I'm speaking now of the so-called cultural stratum.

The living conditions of this stratum changed sharply and the unexpected change caught many smack between the eyes. People w�re unprepared. They were professionally involved in literature and art. It was their work, their market, and suddenly everything in the market changed.

I'll never forget one incident that Zoshchenko told me about. It had made a strong impression on Zoshchenko and he often ref erred to it.

He used to know a poet in Petersburg by the name of Tinyakov, a fair, even talented, poet. Tinyakov wrote rather recherche poetry about betrayals, roses, and tears. He was a handsome man, a dandy.

Zoshchenko met him again after the Revolution and Tinyakov gave him a copy of his latest book. There was nothing about love, flowers, and other lofty objects. They were talented poems, Zoshchenko f cit they were works of genius, and he was a severe critic-Anna Akhmatova gave him her prose to read with trepidation. Tinyakov's new poems dealt with the poet's hunger-that was the central theme. The poet announced firmly that "I will perform any vile act for food."

It was a direct, honest statement, which didn't remain only as words. Everyone knows that a poet's words often diverge from his deeds. Tinyakov became one of the rare exceptions. The poet, who was not yet old and still handsome then, began begging. He stood on a heavily traveled comer in Leningrad, with a sign that said "Poet"

around his neck and a hat on his head. He didn't ask, he demanded, and the frightened passers-by gave him money. Tinyakov earned a lot that way. He bragged to Zoshchenko that he was making much more than he had before, because people liked giving money to poets. After a hard day's work, Tinyakov headed for an expensive restaurant, where he ate and drank and greeted the dawn, whereupon he returned to his post.

Tinyakov became a happy man, he no longer had to pretend. He said what he thought and did what he said. He had become a predator and he wasn't ashamed.

176

Tinyakov is an extreme example, but not an exceptional one. Many thought as he did; it's just that other cultural figures didn't say it out loud. And their behavior didn't look as outrageous. Tinyakov promised in his poems to "lick his enemy's heels" for some food. Many cultural figures could have repeated Tinyakov's proud cry, · but they preferred to keep silent and licked heels in silence.

The psychology of my contemporary intelligent had changed utterly.

Fate made him fight for his existence, and he fought for it with all the fury of a former intelligent. He no longer cared who was to be glorified and who vilified. These trifles no longer mattered. The important thing was to eat, to tear off as sweet a hunk of life as possible while you're still alive. Calling this cynical is not enough-this is the psychology of a criminal. I was surrounded by many Tinyakovs; some were talented, others weren't. But they w:orked together. They were working to make our era cynical and they succeeded.

177

I REALLY love Chekhov, he's one of my favorite writers. I read and reread not only his stories and plays, but his notes and letters. Of course, I'm no literary historian and I can't give a proper assessment of the work of the great Russian writer, who I feel has not been thoroughly studied and certainly not always correctly understood. But if I were suddenly expected to write a dissertation on an author, I would choose Chekhov, that's how close an affinity I feel for him. Reading him, I sometimes recognize myself; I feel that anyone in Chekhov's place would react exactly as he did in confronting life.

Chekhov's entire life is a model of purity and modesty-and not a modesty for show, but an inner modesty. That's probably why I'm not a fan of certain memorial editions that can only be described as a spoonful of pitch in a barrel of honey. In particular, I'm quite sorry that the correspondence between Anton Pavlovich and his wife was ever published; it's so intimate that most of it should not be seen in print. I'm saying this with respect for the strictness with which the writer approached his work. He did not publish his works until he 1 78

brought them to the level that he considered at least decent.

On the other hand, when you read Chekhov's letters you gain a better understanding of his fiction; therefore I am ambivalent on the question. Sometimes I feel that Chekhov would not . have liked to see his letters in print, but at other times I think that he would not have been upset by it. Perhaps I'm prejudiced because I feel so possessive of what Chekhov has written, including his letters.

It was Chekhov who said that you must write simply, write about how Pyotr Semyonovich married Maria lvanovna; and he added,

"That's all." Chekhov also said that Russia is a land of greedy and lazy people who eat and drink prodigious amounts and like to sleep during the day and snore while they sleep. People marry in Russia to keep order in the house, and take mistresses for social prestige. Russians have the mentality of a dog-when they're beaten, they whimper softly and hide in the corner, and when they're scratched behind the ear, they roll over.

Chekhov didn't like talks on lofty topics, they nauseated him. A friend came to him once and said, "Anton Pavlovich, what can I do?

Reflection is destroying me!" Chekhov replied, "Drink less vodka." I remembered his answer and used it often. When Zoshchenko and I used to meet at Zamyatin's house, he kept telling me about his reflections, giving a detailed account of why he was depressed and confiding his complicated plans for overcoming his reflectiveness. And I would say, "Just drink less vodka."

Zoshchenko also kept pestering me, wanting to rid me of my melancholy, saying, "Why are you so glum? Let me explain it to you, and you'll immediately feel better." To which I replied rudely, "Why don't we play some poker instead?"

I was a mentally healthy person, quite skeptical actually, with a healthy skepticism, but Zoshchenko kept on with his refrain: "Melancholy is characteristic of youth. Don't be melancholy." He kept exhorting me to look inward to chase away my melancholy, and so on. He didn't take offense when I cut him short, and he wasn't off ended by my persistent mental health.

Zoshchenko reminded me of Chekhov except for one thing. Even though he had been so many things-a shoemaker and a policeman (I wrote "March ofthe Soviet Police" in his honor)-he missed medi-1 79

cine. But Chekhov was a doctor and that's why he despised medicine in all forms. He used to say, "What does it mean to heal according to the laws of science? We have the laws, but not the science." But Zoshchenko, on the other hand, had great respect for medical science. A mistake. Doctors are sure that all diseases come from colds. Chekhov said that too.

I'm delighted that Chekhov was a man free from hypocrisy .. For instance, he wrote without embarrassment that when it came to girls, he was a pro. And in another letter, he describes how he and a professor from Kharkov decided to get drunk. They drank and drank and then gave up. Nothing happened and they awoke in the morning fit as fiddles. Chekhov could drink an entire bottle of champagne and then some cognac and not get drunk.

I read Chekhov greedily, because I know that I'm about to find some important thoughts on the beginning and the end. I remember that once I accidentally came across Chekhov's thoughts on how the Russian man only lives a real life until he's thirty. We rush when we're young, we think that everything is ahead, we hurry, pouncing on everything. We fill our soul with whatever comes our way,. But after thirty our soul is filled with gray rubbish. That's amazingly true.

And Chekhov had sensible thoughts about the end. He thought that immortality, life after death in any form, was all nonsense, because it was superstition. He said we had to think clearly and daringly. Chekhov wasn't afraid of death. "As I was alone in life, so will I lie alone in the grave."

Now, Gogol died from a fear of death. I first heard about that from Zoshchenko. I checked it later, and it really was so. Gogol did not resist death, in fact he did everything he could to hasten it. The people around him noticed it and many reminiscences of Gogol mention it.

Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all. I sometimes think that there is no deeper feeling. The irony lies in the fact that under the influence of that fear people create poetry, prose, and music; that is, they try to strengthen their ties with the living and increase their influence on them.

These unpleasant thoughts did not bypass me. I tried to convince myself that I shouldn't fear death. In that sense, I followed Zoshchenko's ideas, I tried to find help in them, but they seemed rather naive to me. How can you not fear death? Death is not considered an appro-1 80

priate theme for Soviet art and writing about death is tantamount to wiping your nose on your sleeve in company. That's where titles like An Optimistic Tragedy come from. Even though that's nonsense-a tragedy is a tragedy and optimism has nothing to do with it.

But I always thought that I was not alone in ·my thinking about death and that other people were concerned with it too, despite the fact that they live in a socialist society in which even tragedies receive the epithet "optimistic." I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question, and as it seems to me, they're not particularly optimistic works. The most important of them, I feel, is the Fourteenth Symphony; I have special feelings for it.

I think that work on these compositions had a positive effect, and I fear death less now; or rather, I'm used to the idea of an inevitable end and treat it as such. After all, it's the law of nature and no one has ever eluded it. I'm all for a rational approach toward death. We should think more about it and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it.

I don't feel that writing and thinking about death are symptomatic of illness and I don't think that writing about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner they'd make fewer foolish mistakes. Somehow it's considered improper for young people to write about death. Why? When you ponder and write about death, you make some gains. First, you have time to think through things that are related to death and you lose the panicky fear. And second, you try to make fewer mistakes. That's why I'm not very concerned about what they'll say about the Fourteenth, even though I heard more attacks on the Fourteenth than on any of my other symphonies.

People might say, how can that be? What about Lady Macbeth?

And the Eighth Symphony? And so many other works? I don't think I have any compositions that weren't criticized, but that was a different sort of criticism. Here the criticism came from people who claimed to be my friends. That's another matter entirely, that kind of criticism hurts.

They read this idea in the Fourteenth Symphony: "Death is allpowerful." They wanted the finale to be comforting, to say that death 1 8 1

is only the beginning. But it's not a beginning, it's the real end, there will be nothing afterward, nothing.

I feel that you must look truth right in the eyes. Often composers haven't had the courage for that, even the greatest ones, like Tchaikovsky or Verdi. Just think of The Queen of Spades. Gherman dies and then comes music which was described by the old cynic Asafiev as "the image of a loving Liza hovering over the corpse." What is that? The corpse is just that, and Liza has nothing to do with it. It doesn't matter to the corpse whose image hovers over it.

Tchaikovsky gave in to the seduction of solace-you know, the best of everything in this best of all possible worlds. Something will hover over your corpse too. Liza's image or some banners. This was a cowardly act on Tchaikovsky's part.

And Verdi did exactly the same thing in Otello. Richard Strauss entitled one of his tone poems Death and Transfiguration. Even Mussorgsky, certainly a just and courageous man, was afraid to look truth in the face. After Boris's death in Boris Godunov, the music moves to such a major key that you can't be any more major.

To deny death and its power is useless. Deny it or not, you'll die anyway. But understanding that is not tantamount to bowing to death.

I don't make a cult of death, l don't praise it. Mussorgsky didn't sing the praises of death either. Death in his song cycles looks horrible, and most important, it comes before it should.

It's stupid to protest death as such, but you can and must protest violent death. It's bad when people die before their time from disease or poverty, but it's worse when a man is killed by another man. I thought about all this when I orchestrated Songs and Dances of Death, and these thoughts also found reflection in the Fourteenth Symphony.

I don't protest against death in it, I protest against those butchers who execute people.

That's why I chose Apollinaire's "The Zaporozhian Cossacks' Answer to the Turkish Sultan" for my Fourteenth. Everyone immediately thinks of Repin's famous painting* and smiles happily. But my music

*This painting by Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1 930), which depicts a picturesque group of Zaporozhian Cossacks writing an insulting letter to Sultan Mahmud IV, is an "icon" of contemporary Russian mass culture. It is interesting to observe ·how Apollinaire (a French poet of Polish extraction) took his departure point from Repin's painting (as researchers suppose) and created his poem, which in tum inspired Shostakovich (a Russian composer of Polish extraction).

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I n 1949 under pressure from Stalin, Shostako ich came to New York to attend the Cultural and Scientific Con ference for World Peace. He had very unplea ant memorie of the trip, especially the aggressi eness of American reporter .

From the left: the political head of the So iet delegation, the writer Alexander Fadeyev; Norman Mailer· Shostakovich ; Arthur Miller: Dr. William Olaf Stapledon of England.

(Wide World.)

December 1 5 , 1949 : Shostakovich

and his wife Nina in a box at the

Leningrad Philharmonic at the first

performance of his oratorio Song of

the Forests. Twenty-three years earlier,

the triumphant premiere of the

nineteen-year-old composer's First

Symphony had taken place here.

The conductor's wife, Mme.

M ravinsk y, is at the right.

With his mother, Sofiya Vasilyevna,

in 195 1 . She died four years later, saying:

"I have discharged my not-so-eas

duties as a mother."

In the dressing room of his son,

Maxim, a conductor, after a

concert. Maxim remembered

his father's words: ''An artist on

stage is a soldier in combat. No

matter how hard it is, you can't

retreat." Moscow, 1965.

Paul Robeson with Jewish

actor Solomon Mikhoels

in Moscow. Mikhoels,

killed on Stalin's orders in

1948, was an active defender

of Shostakovich's music.

Jr_.,J

vvri.,.,

1111.,, .

£ li'1'1"1'' ·;i .. �n·• ·n i;:n

c-:"·. ·i:c�,., .'li

Title page of a collection of songs in

Yiddish, published in Moscow in 1970,

and edited and introduced by Shostako ich.

The introduction reflected

his delight in Jewish folk music.

Shostakovich

accom panying a performance

of his vocal

cycle From

Jewish Folk

Poetry.

Leningrad ,

1956.

Shostako ich at work: he did not

need any special conditions to

compose music. E en noise did not

distract him.

With his third

wife, I rina.

( H is second

marriage was

unhappy and

short-lived.)

Listening to folk

musicians in the

Kirghiz Republic in

1963. To the left of

Shostakovich is the

composer Vano

Muradeli, whose claim

to fame in Russian

music is that in 1948 he

was branded with

Shostakovich as a

formalist.

I n 1 959, the first isit to Moscow of

the New York Philharmonic, under

Leonard Bernstein. Shostakovich

preferred Bernstein to all other

American conductors. (Wide World.)

Aaron Copland presented a Certificate of Honorar

Membership from the American Academy and I nstitute of Arts and Letters of the United States to Shostako ich at Tchaikovsky H all in Moscow in 1960. Shostako ich treated such diplomas ironically but hung them neatly on his walls.

With Solomon Volkov.

·

Leningrad, 1 965 .

T H I RT E E N T H

SYM PHONY

JIJI � COllHCTA liACA, XOPA liACOB

H CHM.oHH'IECKOro OPKECTPA

FOi: IASS SOLO. BA.SS CHQWS

A 0 SYMPHONY OllCHUTIA

C._ E EITY•�H•O

... ._ ,, rCVTllMIUKO

After work on this book had begun,

OAPTHTVPA.

I C O l l

Shostakovich gave Volkov the score of his

Thirteenth Symphony ("Babi Yar") with the

inscription: "To dear Solomon Moiseyevich

Volkov with my very best wishes. D.

Shostakovich. 3 V 1972. Repino."

COl[!�v".�� c����.�!MTOP

Moc:&N lt11 ""--

At a rehearsal of the opera The

Nose, revived in the Soviet Union

after a forty-four-year hiatus: an

exchange of opinions. From the

right: Shostakovich, conductor

of the production Gennady

Rozhdestvensky, Solomon

Volkov. The inscription reads :

"To Solomon Volkov a s a

memento of The N ose-Gennad y

Rozhdestvensky. 16 10 7 5 . "

At a performance of

his last quartet.

Leningrad, 1974.

At his dacha near Moscow

with his grandson.

Shostakovich

reading one

of his

many official

speeches. On

the left, then

Minister of

Culture of the

Soviet Union

Ekaterina

Furtseva.

Funeral of Shostakovich, August 1 4 , 1975, at o odevich Cemetery in Moscow. Aram K hachaturian is ki ing the decea ed's hand ; next to him is his wife, Nina Khachaturian. On the far left i Sho takovich's widow I rina; on the right, his son , Maxim, embracing his i ter, Galya, and his son . Solomon Volko is een between them.

bears little resemblance to Repin's painting. If I had Apollinaire's talent, I would address Stalin with a poem like that. I did it with music.

Stalin is gone, but there are more than enough tyrants around. Another poem by Apollinaire also became part of the Fourteenth-"In the Sante Prison." I was thinking about prison cells, horrible holes, where people are buried alive, waiting for someone to come for them, listening to every sound. That's terrifying, you can go mad with fear.

Many people couldn't stand the pressure and lost their minds. I know about that.

Awaiting execution is a theme that has tormented me all my life.

Many pages of my music are devoted to it. Sometimes I wanted to explain that fact to the performers, I thought that they would have a greater understanding of the work's meaning. But then I thought better of it. You can't explain anything to a bad performer and a talented person should sense it himself. Yet in recent years I've become convinced that the word is more effective than music. Unfortunately, it's so. When I combine music with words, it becomes harder to misinterpret my intent.

I discovered to my astonishment that the man who considers himself its greatest interpreter does not understand my music. * He says that I wanted to write exultant finales for my Fifth and Seventh Symphonies but I couldn't manage it. It never occurred to this man that Lnever thought about any exultant finales, for what exultation could there be?

I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing," and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."

What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that. Fadeyev* heard it, and he wrote in his diary, for his personal use, that the finale of the Fifth is irreparable tragedy. He must have felt it with his Russian alcoholic soul.

*Yevgeny Mravinsky.

tAiexander Alexandrovich Fadeyev (1901-1956), an author set up by Stalin as head of the Writers' Union. He signed .many sanctions for the arrest of writers (as did the heads of the other

"creative" unions to their members). After a shift in internal Soviet politics, he committed suicide.

1 83

People who came to the premiere of the Fifth in the best of moods wept. And it's ridiculous to speak of a triumphal finale in the Seventh.

There's even less basis for that, but nevertheless, the interpretation does appear.

Words are some protection against absolute idiocy, any fool will understand when there are words. There's no total guarantee, but a text does make the music more accessible. The premiere of the Seventh is proof of that. I began writing it having been deeply moved by the Psalms of David; the symphony deals with more than that, but the Psalms were the impetus. I began writing. David has some marvelous words on blood, that God takes revenge for blood, He doesn't forget the cries of victims, and so on. When I think of the Psalms, I become agitated.

And if the Psalms were read before every performance of the Seventh, there might be fewer stupid things written about it. That's not a pleasant thought, but it's probably true. Listeners don't understand notes completely, but words make it easier.

This was confirmed at the final rehearsal of the Fourteenth. Even the fool Pavel lvanovich Apostolov* understood what the symphony was about. During the war, Comrade Apostolov commanded a division, and after the war he commanded us, the composers. Everyone knew that you couldn't get through to that blockhead with anything, but Apollinaire was stronger. And Comrade Apostolov, right there at the rehearsal, dropped dead. I feel very guilty, I had no intention of killing him off, even though he was certainly not a harmless man. He rode in on a white horse and did away with all music.

It was after Apostolov's death that I was stunned by two facts. Fact number one: Comrade Apostolov {what a name!) had in his youth taken vocal music courses named after Stravinsky. Poor Stravinsky. It's like Ilf's joke: Ivanov decided to visit the king, who, hearing about it, abdicated. Fact number two: Comrade Apostolov was also a composer, the author of ten funeral epitaph pieces, including "Stars on the Obelisks," "A Minute of Silence," and "Heroes Are Immortal." And there was his life.

Death is simple, after all. It's as Zemlyanika says in Gogol: If a person is to die, he'll die anyway, and if he's going to survive, he'll

•Pavel lvanovich Apostolov (1 905-July 1 9, 1969), colonel, leader of the Party organization of the Moscow Composers' Union.

1 84

survive anyway. When you realize that, you see many things more simply and answer many questions more simply.

Now, I'm often asked why I do this and that and say this and that, or why I sign such-and-such articles. I answer different people differently, because different people deserve different answers. For instance, Yevtushenko once asked me a question of that kind, and I remembered it. I consider Yevtushenko a talented man. We did quite a lot of work together and perhaps we'll work together once again. I wrote my Thirteenth Symphony to his poetry, and another work, the symphonic poem The Execution of Stepan Razin. At one time Yevtushenko's poetry excited me more than it does now. But that's not the point. Y evtushenko is a worker, and I think he's worked hard. He had the right to ask me the question. And I answered as best I could.

Yevtushenko did a great deal for the people, for the reading public.

His books had huge printings, all the Soviet copies must add up to millions, maybe more. Many of his very important poems were printed in the newspapers: for example, "Stalin's Heirs" in Pravda, "Babi Yar" in Literaturnaya gaze ta, and they publish in the millions. I feel Yevtushenko's poems such as those mentioned are honest and truthful.

It would do anyone good to read them, and I must point out this important circumstance. These important, truthful poems were available to almost everyone in the country. You could buy a book or a newspaper with Yevtushenko's poetry, or you could go to the library or any reading room and request the newspaper or magazine with a poem.

It's important that you could do this peacefully, legally, without looking around, without fear.

People aren't used to reading poetry. They listen to the radio, read the papers, but not poetry, not often. Here you had poetry in the paper, and naturally you'll read it, especially if the poems are truthful.

Such things have a powerful effect on the people. It's important that the work can be reread, savored, and thought over, and that it can be done in a quiet, normal atmosphere, and that you don't hear it over the radio, you read it with your own eyes.

You can't even hear well on the radio and the time might not be convenient, too early in the morning or too late at night.* You can't

*A reference to Western radio broadcasts in Russian, which-according to some sources-are regularly heard by a quaner of the urban population of the Soviet Union. These broadcasts are the main source of news for the intelligentsia of Moscow and Leningrad. Early morning or late night are best for good reception; there is less interference then.

1 85

think well then. You can't rush through an encounter with a work of art, it won't root itself in your soul then or have a real effect. Otherwise why was the work created? To tickle the artist's ego? Satisfy his own pride? To make him a bright figure on a dark background?

No, that I don't understand; if a work isn't created for your people, then for whom? As they say, love us when we're dirty, anyone will love us when we're clean-and even that is a moot point. But when I think about the people, all of them . . . But why all of them? You don't have to, just picture the lives of two or three real people, just two or three. Naturally, not politicians or artists but true workers, hardworking, honest people. There are hundreds of occupations that people never think about, a guard, for instance, or a train conductor, or a roofer.

So take a person like that. Do you think his biography will be so pure and clean? I doubt it. And does this person deserve scorn because of it? I doubt that too. He is the potential reader, listener, and viewer of every art form, great and not so great. These people should neither be turned into icons nor despised.

One man cannot teach or change all the other people in the world, no one has succeeded at that, even Jesus Christ couldn't say that He did. No one's made that world. record, especially not in our troubled and rather nervous times. Experiments in saving all mankind at one fell swoop seem awfully dubious now.

But in my not so very long life I've come across sick people who were convinced that they were called to set mankind on the right path, and if not mankind in its entirety, at least, then, their own countrymen. I don't know, maybe I was lucky, because I personally saw two saviors of the world. Two such personages. These were, as they say, patented saviors; I also saw some five candidates for the job. Maybe four. I'm estimating now, and I can't remember exactly. I'll make a more accurate count another time.

All right, let's leave the candidates aside. The patented saviors had a lot in common. You couldn't contradict either and both were quick to vilify you in rather uncontrolled language if they were out of sorts.

And most important, both had total contempt for the very people they were planning to save.

It's an astounding trait, this contempt. How can it be? Why, 0

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great gardeners, wise teachers of all sciences, leaders and luminaries?

All right, so you despi$e the ordinary people who have nothing special about them, who are dirty rather than clean. But then why declare yourselves prophets and saviors? That's very surprising.

Oh, yes, I forgot another trait common to these above-mentioned but not named leaders, their false religiosity. I know many will be surprised by that. All right, they'll say, one of the saviors, it goes without saying, called himself a religious man on every street corner and rebuked everyone else for lacking faith.* But what about the other one?

The other one was an atheist, wasn't he?

I hope that it's clear that the other one is Stalin. And it's true he was considered a Marxist, a Communist, and so forth, and was the head of an atheistic state and put the squeeze on servitors of the cults.

But these are all externals. Who could seriously maintain now that Stalin had some idea of a general order of things? Or that he had some ideology? Stalin never had any ideology or convictions or ideas or principles. Stalin always held whatever opinions made it easier for him to tyrannize others, to keep them in fear and guilt. Today the teacher and leader may say one thing, tomorrow something else. He never cared what he said, as long as he held on to his power.

The most striking example is Stalin's relationship with Hitler. Stalin didn't care what Hitler's ideology was. He made friends with Hitler as soon as he decided that Hitler could help him keep and even expand his holdings. Tyrants and executioners have no ideology, they only have a fanatical lust for power. Yet it's that fanaticism that confuses people, for some reason. Stalin saw the church as a political enemy; a powerful rival, and that's the only reason he tried to do away with it. Of course, it would be hard to call Stalin a religious man, simply because he didn't believe in anything or anyone. But aren't there quite a few people just like him-believing in nothing, cruel, powermad-who proclaim themselves to be deeply religious?

And Stalin could definitely be called superstitious. There are different kinds of superstitions, I know people who are afraid of black cats and the number thirteen, others fear Mondays, and so on. But there are superstitions that are connected to religion and I know people who have those too. Such a person thinks that he is a believer when what

*A reference to the writer Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918).

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he really is is superstitious. I personally don't care. It's rather funny, though sometimes quite sad.

For instance, I was saddened by Yudina. She was a marvelous musician, but we never became close friends, it wasn't possible. Yudina was a decent person, a kind one, but her kindness was hysterical, she was a religious hysteric. It's embarrassing to talk about, but it's true.

Yudina dropped to her knees or kissed hands at the least provocation.

We studied together with Nikolayev and sometimes it was very embarrassing. Nikolayev would make a remark and she would fall to her knees. I didn't like her clothes either, those monastic robes. She was a pianist, not a nun. Why walk around in a habit? It seemed immodest to me.

Yudina was always telling me, "You're far from God, you must be closer to God." Nevertheless, she behaved rather strangely. Take this story, for instance. Von Karajan came to Moscow, it was a siege, tickets were impossible to obtain. Police, mounted and on foot, surrounded the entrance. Yudina sat down in front of the theater and spread out her skirts. Naturally, a policeman came over to her. "You're disturbing the peace, citizeness, what's the problem?" And Yudina said, "I'm not getting up until I get into the concert."

Can a religious person behave that way? I was told that Yudina began reciting Pasternak's poetry from the stage at a concert in Leningrad. Of course, there was a scandal. And the upshot was that she was banned from performing in Leningrad. Now, why all the grandstanding? Was she a professional reader? No, she was an extraordinary pianist, and she should have gone on playing the pianoforte. Bringing happiness and solace to people.

I once ran into her in a cemetery, bowing to the ground. She said to me, "You're far from God, you must be closer to God." I waved her off and went on. Is that true faith? It's just superstition with a tangential connection to religion.

Stalin's superstition also touched on religion. This is apparent from many facts that are known to me and I'll tell a few. I know, for example, that Stalin had a predilection for people from the clergy. I think the reason is clear. Our teacher and leader had been a seminarian, and I think it's worth mentioning. He entered a religious school as a child, graduated, and went on to study in a Russian Orthodox seminary. Of 1 88

course, Stalin's Brief Biography* states that what they studied primarily in this seminary was Marxism. But I'll permit myself to doubt it. It was probably a seminary like any other.

And therefore, in his youth, when impressions are strongest, Stalin had all the religious stuff beaten into his head by his ignorant teachers.

And the future teacher and leader of these teachers was afraid of them and respected them, as a student should, and Stalin carried this fear and respect for the clergy throughout his life.

Stalin deeply admired Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky, a marvelous literary critic, a man who truly appreciated art and who created the best magazine of the twenties, Krasnaya Nov'. The most interesting works of literature that appeared were published in Krasnaya Nov'. It was the Novy Mir of those times, but probably more vivid and exciting. Zoshchenko was published in Krasnaya Nov', for example.

Voronsky came from the clergy, his father was a priest. Stalin always took him along when he went to the theater, and particularly to the opera. He would call Voronsky and say, "Let's go to Boris Godunov. " Stalin tried to listen to what Voronsky had to say.

Voronsky was a Trotskyite, but that didn't bother Stalin. The semi

. narian respected the priest's son. But Voronsky didn't want to submit to Stalin, so Stalin had him exiled to Lipetsk, and then called him back to Moscow-an unheard-of occurrence.

"Well, now do you see that you can build socialism in one country?

You see that I've built socialism in Russia ?" Stalin said to Voronsky.

All he had to do was nod his head and he would have been Stalin's adviser once more, but Voronsky replied thus: "Yes, I see that you've built socialism for yourself in the Kremlin." Stalin ordered, "Take him back."

Stalin tried a few more times to save. Voronsky, but nothing worked.

Voronsky was very ill in a prison hospital. Stalin came to see him, to convince him to repent before death. "Go to hell, priest," Voronsky rasped with his last few ounces of strength. Voronsky meant that he

•A Brief Biography of I. V. Stalin was one of the two bedside books of every Soviet citizen in the postwar period (the other was A Brief Course in Party History). It is known that Stalin wrote such phrases into his own biography as "with a genius for perspicacity Comrade Stalin guessed the enemy's plans and thwarted them" and "the guiding power of the Party and the state was Comrade Stalin." These two books were quoted and referred to at every appropriate and inappropriate occasion.

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refused to confess before Stalin, and he died in prison, unbroken. A man like that can probably be respected.

But sometimes I think that perhaps it would have been better if Voronsky had agreed with Stalin then about socialism. After all, the point was academic, Stalin just needed him to agree with him. It didn't change socialism in Russia in any way. And what if the leader and teacher had gone on listening to Voronsky's opinions, particularly in music? The life of many of us would have been quite different.

On the other hand, nothing can be predicted with any confidence in these matters. The leader and teacher had the psychology of an Oriental satrap: If I want to, I'll punish, if I don't, I'll show mercy-with an extra added dollop of madness.

As for music, he naturally didn't understand a damn thing about it, but did respect euphony, again as a result of his seminary training.

Stalin was irritated by "muddle instead of music," and he was skeptical toward noneuphonious music like mine. And of course, the leader and teacher was a great lover of ensembles, for example, the Red Army Chorus. This is where our musical tastes diverge completely.

I want to remind you of Stalin's attitude toward fathers of the church. My good friend Yevgeny Shvarts told me this story. Everyone knows that you can't appear on radio if your text hasn't been passed by the censor. Not one, but almost ten censors, each of whom signs. If the papers aren't signed, no one will let you near a microphone. Who knows what you might say to the whole country?

And then it was decided that the Metropolitan of Moscow* should give a talk on radio. I think it had something to do with the struggle for peace. The Metropolitan was to speak to the faithful, a sermon calling on them tojoin the struggle. This interested the Great Gardener. The Metropolitan arrived at the radio station and walked straight up to the microphone. They grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him away. "Your Eminence, where's the text of the speech?" The Metropolitan was taken aback. "What speech?" They began explaining that they meant the . . . well, not the speech, but the whatever-you-callit . . . . In other words, if the Metropolitan was planning to speak now, where was the approved and signed text?

The Metropolitan, they say, took umbrage and stated that he never

*One of the highest ranks in the Russian Orthodox Church.

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read his sermons from a piece of paper. This was a scandal; what to do? They asked the Metropolitan to wait a bit and rushed to eall the bosses, but no one wanted the responsibility, only Stalin could resolve problems like this. And Stalin decided: let the Metropolitan say whatever he wanted, and they allowed the Metropolitan at the microphone.

Funny? It's sad.

And what about the Leningrad Ivan Susanin? You know that Glinka's opera is called A Life for the Tsar, and I believe that it's performed abroad under that name. It's a totally monarchistic work and before the Revolution A Life played at the Maryinsky Theater on

"tsar's days."

In the thirties, with the help of a miserable poet and great scoundrel, Sergei Gorodetsky, • the text of Glinka's opera was edited. (Stravinsky wrote two pleasant songs to poems by Gorodetsky. He says that Gorodetsky was a faithful friend of his wife's. Perhaps.) When with Gorodetsky's help A Life for the Tsar was changed to Ivan Susanin, they started editing the music. The opera was produced almost simultaneously in Moscow and Leningrad. In Moscow they threw out the prayer ensemble in the epilogue, but the musical director of the Leningrad production, stubborn Ari Pazovsky, ref used. He insisted on keeping the prayer. Zhdanov was informed. You would think that all Zhdanov had to do was order them to take out the prayer. But he knew about Stalin's weakness, about his superstition. Zhdanov decided to let Stalin make the decision.

And the leader and teacher ordered, "Let them pray, the opera won't lose any of its patriotism." And so in Pazovsky's production they prayed, yet I don't think Pazovsky was baptized or anything.

Sometimes I have the feeling that Gogol wrote these stories. They seem funny but actually they're horrifying. Will they pray or not in the opera? Will the Metropolitan read his sermon from a paper or not? The leader, puffing on his pipe, decided these vital government problems. "Stalin thinks for us," as the popular poem went. He walked around his office at night and "pondered," mostly about such nonsense.

•Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky (1 884-1967), a famous poet before the Revolution, who later wrote "ideologically correct" opera libretti and slavish poems "for occasions." Nadezhda Mandelstam once noted that there is one moral to be drawn from Gorodetsky's story: one should not let oneself be frightened to the point of losing one's human face.

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Yes, I'll say it again: Stalin was a morbidly superstitious man. All the unforgiven fathers of their countries and saviors of humanity suffer from it, it's an inevitable trait, and that's why they have a certain respect for and fear of yurodiuye. Some people think that the yurodiuye who dared to tell the whole truth to tsars are a thing of the past. A part of literature, Boris Godunov and so on. "Pray for me, blessed one"-Mussorgsky is marvelous in that scene, he proves what a great operatic dramatist he is. He discards all effects for the sake of dramatic veracity, and it's so effective that it brings tears to the audience's eyes.

But the yurodiuye aren't gone, and tyrants fear them as before.

There are examples of it in our day.

Of course, Stalin was half mad. But there's nothing odd about that, there are lots of crazy rulers, we've had our share in Russia-Ivan the Terrible and Paul I. Nero was probably mad, and they say one of the Georges in Britain was crazy. So the fact itself should elicit no surprise.

What is amazing is this: Ivan the Terrible died in his bed, a fully empowered monarch. He had had some trouble, opposition, Prince Kurbsky and so on. But Ivan with the help of Malyuta Skuratov took care of his opponents. The next madman had a harder time. As you know, Paul I was killed; they were tired of him. That seemed like progress, enlightened people could believe in the progress of history, and Russian history specifically. It seemed that the future would go well, and that the next mad Russian leader could simply be invited to check into a sanatorium, relax from his work, and take a cure.

, But nothing came of the rosy hopes of educated people. True, there was some small opposition to Nicholas I, but the most mad, most cruel of tyrants ruled without any opposition. Whether Stalin died in his bed or under it I don't know, but I do know that he caused more harm than all the abnormal kings and tsars of the past put together. And no one ever dared hint that Stalin was crazy.

They say that Vladimir Bekhterev, a prominent psychiatrist and a good friend of our family friend Dr. Grekov, a surgeon, dared to pronounce Stalin mad. Bekhterev was about seventy then, and he was world-famous. He was called to the Kremlin, he carefully probed Stalin's mental condition. He died soon afterward, and Grekov was certain that Bekhterev had been poisoned.

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But that's just another horrible joke from the series on insane asylums and their inhabitants. The madman poisons his physician. Why?

A wise man answered thus: "The point is that some madmen are allowed to start their own crazy kingdoms and others aren't." That's all.

In his final years, Stalin seemed more and more like a madman, and I think his superstitiousness grew. The leader and teacher sat locked up, in one of his many dachas, amusing himself in bizarre ways. They say he cut out pictures and photos from old magazines and newspapers, glued them onto paper, and hung them on the walls.

One of my friends (a musicologist, by the way) had the "luck" to live next door to one of Stalin's bodyguards. The man didn't crack right away, at first he denied it, but then they got drunk together and talked. The work paid well and, in the eyes of the bodyguard, was highly respectable and responsible. With his many co-workers, he patrolled Stalin's dacha outside Moscow. In winter on skis, in summer on bicycles. They circled the dacha without stopping, all day and all night, without a break. The guard complained that he got dizzy. The leader and teacher almost never went outside the dacha grounds, and when he did come outside he behaved like a real paranoiac. According to the guard, he kept looking around, checking, peering. The bodyguard was in awe. "He's looking for enemies. One look and he sees all," he explained delightedly over a bottle of vodka to my friend.

Stalin didn't let anyone in to see him for days at a time. He listened to the radio a lot. Once Stalin called the Radio Committee, where the administration was, and asked if they had a record of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23, which had been heard on the radio the day before.

"Played by Yudina," he added. They told Stalin that of course they had. Actually, there was no record, the concert had been live. But they were afraid to say no to Stalin, no one ever knew what the consequences might be. A human life meant nothing to him. All you could do was agree, submit, be a yes man, a yes man · to a madman.

Stalin demanded that they send the record with Yudina's performance of the Mozart to his dacha. The committee panicked, but they had to do something. They called in Yudina and an orchestra and recorded that night. Everyone was shaking with fright, except for Yudina, naturally. But she was a special case, that one, the ocean was only knee-deep for her.

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Yudina later told me that they had to send the conductor home, he was so scared he couldn't think. They called another conductor, who trembled and got everything mixed up, confusing the orchestra. Only a third conductor was in any shape to finish the recording.

I think this is a unique event in the history of recording-I mean changing conductors three times in one night. Anyway, the record was ready by morning. They made one single copy and sent it to Stalin.

Now, that was a record record. A record in yesing.

Soon after, Yudina received an envelope with twenty thousand rubles. She was told it came on the express orders of Stalin. Then she wrote him a letter. I know about this letter from her, and I know that the story seems improbable; Yudina had many quirks, but I can say this-she never lied. I'm certain that her story is true. Yudina wrote something like this in her letter: "I thank you, Iosif Vissarionovich, for your aid. I will pray for you day and night and ask the Lord to forgive your great sins before the people and the country. The Lord is merciful and He'll forgive you. I gave the money to the church that I attend."

And Yudina sent this suicidal letter to Stalin. He read it and didn't say a word, they expected at least a twitch of the eyebrow. Naturally, the order to arrest Yudina was prepared and the slightest grimace would have been enough to wipe away the last traces of her. But Stalin was silent and set the letter aside in silence. The anticipated movement of the eyebrows didn't come.

Nothing happened to Yudina. They say that her recording of the Mozart was on the record player when the leader and teacher was found dead in his dacha. It was the last thing he had listened to.

I'm telling this story with a specific aim, which I'm not hiding. I'm not a militant atheist, and I feel people can believe as they wish. But just because a person has a particular set of superstitions doesn't prove anything good about him. Just because a person is religious, say, he doesn't automatically become a better person.

Stalin was superstitious, that's all. Tyrants and yurodivye are the same in all eras. Read Shakespeare and Pushkin, read Gogol and Chekhov. Listen to Mussorgsky.

I recall that Yudina kept trying to read to me from the New Testament. I listened with interest and without any particular trepidation.

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She read the New Testament to me and I read Chekhov to her: "Resolving everything through Bible texts is as arbitrary as dividing convicts into five groups." Chekhov went on to say, Why five and not ten groups? Why the Bible and not the Koran? And no fans of the Bible have ever been able to argue convincingly against Chekhov's healthy reasoning. Then why proselytize? Why all that pathos ?

No, I have nothing to say to ambitious men, and I refuse to accept any comments from them on my behavior. All these luminaries were willing to get along with me on one condition: to wit, that I join their ranks, and join without a murmur, without a single thought. But I have my own opinion of what's right and wrong and I don't have to.

discuss my opinion with just anyone. I often hear just such demands and I often feel like saying, "And who are you?" But I control myself, because you can't ask everyone anyway, it would take too much time and they wouldn't understand.

But I would like to clear this up once and for all. I maintain that I can only have a serious conversation, a substantial one, so to speak, with a workingman. That is, with a man who has worked hard in his life and accomplished much. I won't bother with these citizens who flit about, whether they're curly-haired or bald, bearded or clean-shaven, who are without any specific profession and have a prosecutor's ambition.

And it's important to remember that there's work and there's work, and not every job gives a man the right to take on a prosecutor's role.

For instance, if you've spent your entire life developing and perfecting the hydrogen bomb, you probably shouldn't be proud of the fact.* I would say that you would have a rather dirty work record. Rather dirty. And it's not too logical with such a record to strive to be a prosecutor, because you can kill one person with a cudgel but with a hydrogen bomb you can kill millions.

Participation in this astounding progress in the work of killing should frighten off decent people from the lectures of the participant.

But as we see, it doesn't, and as we see, it even gives the lectures an additional popularity and piquancy. Which proves once more that things are not healthy in our criteria for nobility and decency. Things

•A reference to aCademician Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov (b. 1921).

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are not right in that area. To put it bluntly, it's an insane asylum.

I refuse to speak seriously with lunatics, I refuse to talk to them about myself or others, I ref use to discuss questions about my proper or improper behavior.

I write music, it's performed. It can be heard, and whoever wants to hear it will. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not worth talking to.

I am horrified by people who think the commentaries to a symphony are more important than the symphony. What counts with them is a large number of brave words-and the music itself can be pathetic and woebegone. This is real perversion. I don't need brave words on music and I don't think anyone does. We need brave music. I don't mean brave in the sense that there will be charts instead of notes, I mean brave because it is truthful. Music in which the composer expresses his thoughts truthfully, and does it in such a way that the.

greatest possible number of decent citizens in his country and other countries will recognize and accept that music, thereby understanding his country and people. That is the meaning of composing music, as I see it.

There's no point in talking to the deaf, and I'm addressing only those who can hear and it's only with them that I plan to converse, only with those people for whom music is more important than words.

They say that music is comprehensible without translation. I want to believe in that, but for now I see that music needs many accompanying words to make it understood in another country. I'm asked many stupid questions when I go abroad. That is one of the reasons why I don't like to go, perhaps the main reason.

Any obnoxious pest can say whatever comes into his head and ask you about anything. He didn't even know your name yesterday, the idiot, but today, since he has to earn a living, he manages to pronounce it. He has no idea of what you do-and he doesn't care. Of course, journalists aren't the only people in a country, but show me what newspapers you're reading and I'll tell you what's in your brain.

The typical Western journalist is an uneducated, obnoxious, and profoundly cynical person. He needs to make money and he doesn't 1 96

give a damn about the rest. Every one of these pushy guys wants me to answer his stupid questions "daringly" and these gentlemen take offense when they don't hear what they want. Why do I have to answer?

Who are they? Why do I have to risk my life? And risk it to satisfy the shallow curiosity of a man who doesn't give a damn about me! He didn't know anything about me yesterday and he'll forget my name by tomorrow. What right does he have to expect my frankness and my trust? I don't know anything about him, but I don't pester him with questions, do I ? Even though he could answer my questions without endangering his hide.

It's all upsetting and insulting. The worst part is that these perversions have become commonplace, and no one stops to think how crazy it is. I'm judged on the basis of what I said or didn't say to Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. Isn't that ridiculous? Newspaper articles should serve as means of judging Messrs. Smith and Jones! I have my music, and quite a bit of music it is, and let people judge me by my music. I have no intention of providing commentaries to it and I have no intention of telling how, where, and under what circumstances I was drenched by the "sweaty wave of inspiration."* Let poets confide such reminiscences to a trusting public; it's all lies anyway, and I'm not a poet.

I don't like talking about inspiration in general, it's got a suspicious ring. As I recall, I spoke of inspiration only once, and I was forced to do it. I was talking to Stalin. I was trying to explain how the process of composing music unfolds, with what speed. I could see that Stalin didn't understand, so I had to steer the conversation to inspiration.

"You see," I said, "it's inspiration, of course. How fast you write depends on inspiration." And so on. I blamed it on inspiration. The only time it's not shameful to speak of inspiration is when you need to toss words around. The rest of the time it's best not to mention it at all.

And I have no intention of doing a measure-by-measure analysis of my scores either. That's certainly not very interesting in Stravinsky's memoirs. So what if I inform you that in my Eighth Symphony, in the fourth movement, in the fourth variation, in measures four through six, the theme is harmonized with seven descending minor triads?

Who cares? Is it necessary to prove that you're erudite in the area of

*One of the ironic catch phrases of contemporary R.ussian life, borrowed from Df and Petrov's The Golden Calf.

·

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your own work? Stravinsky's example doesn't convince me. He should have left the analysis of his works to musicologists. I would have pref erred Stravinsky to tell more about the people he met and about his childhood.

Stravinsky describes his childhood well; as I said, I think those are the best pages of his memoirs. Usually it's revolting to read, "I was born into a musical family, Father played on a comb and Mother always whistled a tune." And so on and so forth. It's dreary.

Stravinsky was adept at answering journalists' questions-like a Cossack doing trick riding or chopping vines. But first of all, he didn't tell the truth. What he said was much too striking, and the truth is never that fascinating. (Sollertinsky once said that there is no rhyme for pravda [truth] in Russian. I don't know if that's so, but it's true that truth and advertising have little in common.) And second, Stravinsky and I are very different people. I found it difficult to talk to him.

We were from different planets.

I still recall with horror my first trip to the U.S.A.* I wouldn't have gone at all if it hadn't been for intense pressure from administrative figures of all ranks and colors, from Stalin down. People sometimes say that it must have been an interesting trip, look at the way I'm smiling in the photographs. That was the smile of a condemned man. I felt like a dead man. I answered all the idiotic questions in a daze, and thought, When I get back it's over for me.

Stalin liked leading Americans by the nose that way. He would show them a man-here he is, alive and well-and then kill him.

Well, why say lead by the nose? That's too strongly put. He only fooled those who wanted to be fooled. The Americans don't give a damn about us, and in order to live and sleep soundly, they'll believe anything.

Just then, in 1 949, the Jewish poet ltsik Fefer was arrested on Stalin's orders. Paul Robeson was in Moscow and in the midst of all the banquets and balls, he remembered that he had a friend called Itsik.