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 girclass="underline"
"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. ·