Renewal of the domestic Symphonism of the 1960s in the works of young Leningrad composers

Serov Yurii Eduardovich PhD in Art History Lecturer and master of the student symphony orchestra at St.Petersburg music school named after M.P. Mussorgsky 191028, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, ul. Mokhovaya, 36 serov@nflowers.ru Other publications by this author

The period of musical renewal of the 1960s considered by us turned out to be extremely saturated with the most complex and multi-vector problems: ideological, general aesthetic, musical and stylistic. Young composers had to be determined on a personal level (the daily solution of the "question "to be or not to be"" ^{[1, p. 102]}), common challenges could no longer lead to creative formation, to progress, to success. The choice of the stylistic path, according to A. Schnittke, also became a moral choice: "to the right, to the left or in the middle <...> an internal struggle not only between heterogeneous concepts (for example, between sincerity and form), but also between genuine concepts and their werewolves (for example, between sincerity and talkativeness, form and scheme). This struggle requires courage; victories and defeats are not always visible to others — the latter see in the artistic result only what won, and may not guess what could have won, but died" ^{[1, p. 102]}. The artistic result became the most important incentive for the composers of the "sixties", for the sake of it, many of them went through the thorny path of radically expanding the range of images and expressive means, mastering modern techniques and methods. In the musical society, new rigid creative principles were born, a kind of belief in the need for a broad renewal in the profession, in the inevitability of a complex but interesting process. For the sake of all this, it was possible to undergo certain material hardships and endure years of exhausting waiting for the opportunity to be performed in public.  For young composers, the 1960s turned out to be, according to the apt expression of E. Dolinskaya, a period of intense "absorption of the sound aura of the twentieth century" ^{[2, p. 28]}. At the same time, synthesizing tendencies, moments of technological "gathering", apprenticeship (in the broadest sense of the word) contributed to the crystallization of the composers' own style, helped to make linguistic selection, determine the means of expression, establish themselves in the circle of artistic images. 

The epoch of the turning point dictated a new reality, required fresh artistic thinking, generated diverse creative ideas. The panorama of Russian music was quite colorful, much in art appeared and disappeared very rapidly, stylistic pluralism, lost at the dawn of Soviet power, returned to the music scene. It was necessary to find yourself in this world, to understand "who are you with, masters of culture?"^[1]. The extreme polarization of the left and academic currents, which became an everyday reality, brought to the fore (regardless of stylistic orientation) the individual artistic contribution of each composer to the common cause of the development of symphonism. And in the Soviet symphonism itself, not only the processes of renewal were revealed, but also the echoes of the natural global crisis of the genre, about which in those years for the first time there was an opportunity to think and even speak publicly.

It was no longer possible to express thoughts in the old way, the world had changed, the person and his environment had changed. The complication of the symphonic language seemed to be a natural consequence of these historical processes. Sophisticated rhythms, tart dissonance, atonality, timbre variety, new instruments and techniques of playing on them have entered the composer's everyday life. In the struggle with the meter, rhythm won more and more often, a long melody gave way to a brief intonation cell, homophony — polyphony, a traditional, centuries—tested form - a variety of compositional solutions. Serious technological equipment has become the most important creative component for the entire galaxy of the "sixties". The use of the innovations of orchestral writing and the sound capabilities of various instruments was similar to a competition: who will make it more original, more interesting, more precise, more refined. Knowledge, intelligence, evolutionism, depth and breadth of view on the composer's profession entailed a different level of the symphonic concept, a conversation about the eternal, about the place of a person thinking and feeling in the complex modern world. As for the advanced Western "technologies", they were interpreted by young Soviet authors with varying degrees of orthodoxy. The period of their development turned out to be quite short — by the end of the 1960s there was a departure from avant-garde techniques and methods, first of all, from total dodecaphony and serial writing, radical sonoristics (mastering all kinds of noises, new ways of sound production), electronic music ^[2], ideas of timbre composition, spatiality^[3]. Questions of interpretation of certain technical innovations touched upon the very essence of creativity, its core, the problem of the depth of artistic solutions.  Technological "orthodoxy" turned out to be inherent in few composers — for other musicians, new methods have become only an important part of professional "universities". At the same time, some individual elements of avant-garde techniques have become quite firmly embedded in the music of Soviet composers and have "taken root" for decades (aleatorics, pointillism, sonoristics, microchromatics, rhythmic progressions, micropolyphony, lax dodecaphony and seriality).   

Conceptual symphonism, working with full—fledged orchestral compositions, creating large, large-scale works - all these traditions of the "old" school turned out to be in demand in the works of Leningrad "sixties". Radical Moscow authors (first of all, E. Denisov and S. Gubaidulina) worked on their stylistic and linguistic innovations mainly in small forms, both in terms of the composition of performers and the sound time. In Leningrad in the 1960s, leading young composers - S. Slonimsky, B. Tishchenko, Y. Falik, G. Banshchikov, A. Petrov, V. Uspensky, V. Tsytovich, L. Prigozhin, V. Basner — created major symphonic and musical-stage works.

Leningraders turned out to be more "conservative" in their technological solutions and were influenced by a variety of factors: a certain distance from the center of new information, a pronounced commitment to the "teacher —student" line, and, oddly enough, much less persistent opposition from older composers (any avant-garde art, as you know, arises as an alternative structures like the opposition) than in Moscow, where the "top" of the Union consisted of "classics" of Soviet music (in Leningrad, A. Petrov was the chairman). But perhaps the most significant was still the special position (creative and personal) in the Leningrad world of D. Shostakovich. L. Gakkel spoke succinctly about this .: "Shostakovich was bequeathed to Leningrad — even those who did not feel a connection with our great master understood this; and to go the "way of Shostakovich" ... how, for how long; to preserve his precepts — what is needed for this today and is it possible to decide your composer's fate in Leningrad outside the influence of Shostakovich's aura?  Every spring brings us back to these questions, all the more burning because our composer generations are more united than anywhere else, and the Shostakovich-Yevlakhov school is a mother's womb for many of them" ^{[3, pp. 6-7]}.

Here is another thought of the St. Petersburg music scientist and researcher L. Gakkel, expressed in a work dedicated to the twenty—fifth anniversary of the Leningrad Musical Spring festival, a landmark for the city's culture: "The Leningrad composer environment is solid and cohesive, here, like nowhere else, the teacher-student relationship is close, and the level of craft (let's say more respectfully: professionalism) high and relatively smooth. The first four festivals are the 60s, the glorious 60s! Everything is all over again; eyes are opening wide, and the composer's ear seems to have never had such an absorbing ability before: thanks to it, we found ourselves facing the phenomenon of the "new folklore wave" and conducted a meaningful dialogue with the musical West. The young masters gave their brightest things, which happen exactly at the beginning and never again, gave compositions-symbols" ^{[3, p. 5]}. Let's highlight the word "meaningful" in relation to the dialogue with the European avant—garde (the lack of recklessness, balanced approaches to the advanced achievements of other schools are a distinctive feature of the Leningrad "sixties"), note the importance of transferring skills from teacher to student and add that among the "compositions-symbols" played at the first "Springs" were "A Word about Igor's Regiment" by L. Prigozhin, S. Slonimsky's Concert-Buff, B. Tishchenko's Third Symphony, "Russian Notebook" by V. Gavrilin.

In the article devoted to the work of E. Denisov, A. Schnittke reflects on the modern Russian musical art: "There is an intensive expansion of the "dictionary" of Soviet music. The means of dodecaphony, aleatorics, sonoristics are individually refracted in the works of such composers as Karaev, Babajanyan, Peiko, B. Tchaikovsky, Salmanov, Gabichvadze, Basner, Gershkovich, Shchedrin, Eshpai, Nikolaev, Grabovsky, Gubaidulina, Karetnikov, Ryaets, Greenblat, Pyart, Petrov, Prigozhin and many others. All of them were "seduced" — and, as we see, all remained themselves. Obviously, no technique changes the essence of music: it's still not the means that decide the matter, but the ideas. The art of music is much more resilient in the face of new trends than its nannies can imagine. And today, more than ever, the composer needs courage and independence from prejudices, both taken with him from home and stuck on the road" ^{[4, p. 123]}. Schnittke does not mention S. Slonimsky^[4], but the idea expressed in the article has the most direct relation to the Leningrad author.

Slonimsky is one of those who worked tirelessly to expand the "dictionary" of Soviet music, being subjected to quite serious criticism, even attacks for this, and some of his compositions of various kinds and levels of power tried to ban them from performance. In the above list, Schnittke should rightfully be put in the first place. Slonimsky was not only "seduced" by new technical possibilities, but, being freedom-loving and greedy for controversy, relying on a brilliant education in various fields of knowledge and a bright musical talent, with the ardor of a discoverer of new lands and a pioneer, he led, promoted "new music" in his musicological works, lectures, classes with students, concert programs. In the 1960s, the composer was one of the first in the country to use aleatorics, dodecaphony, quaternaries and clusters, non-traditional methods of notation, elements of polystylistics and instrumental theater. From a young age, Slonimsky was deeply interested in Russian folklore (its archaic forms) and in his early work fancifully combined it with the novelties of Western avant-garde methods of composition. In the Leningrad composer environment, thus, he took the most advanced, innovative positions.

Let's focus on Slonimsky's orchestral composition, in which his search for a new symphonic language was most clearly manifested, in which he plunged into a variety of instrumental techniques with pleasure — Concerto-buff (1964) ^[5]. A full—fledged dodecaphony, a strict triple fugue reaching up to fourteen voices, a cheerful improvisation in a jazz manner, the essence is a comic opera theater of the XIII century, which unexpectedly appeared in the black-and-white Leningrad landscape of the 1960s: "Elegant contrast of themes and timbres, comedic rapidity of changing unexpected situations, theatrical fuss, hype, confusion of a generous family in limited time "space" (the whole concert is twelve minutes long) — they create one of the most cheerful and bright compositions of the composer" ^{[5, p. 96]}.

Cheerfulness, mild irony, cheerful laughter, complete absence of gloomy moods are quite a rare phenomenon in Soviet music. In the Concert-buff Slonimsky deliberately pushes the barriers of exaggerated seriousness: "Our humor is often black humor. This is, so to speak, overcoming a dull attitude to tragic reality and a tragicomic farce. On the other hand, a joke enlivens both human speech and human life. There are a lot of gradations of humor — from a good-natured joke to a poisonous, evil mockery. Yes, it especially blossomed in the works of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich. <...> To a lesser extent, oddly enough, this is inherent in the second avant-garde. Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen somehow don't have many humorous compositions, they are so very serious" ^{[6, p. 9]}.

The concert did not develop quickly and at first was conceived as an instrumental toccata, as the author reported in a letter to E. Denisov: "I also started making a toccata for a chamber orchestra, I want to break the strings into 14 separate parts and make "imitations" with all transpositions, permutations, etc., and even introduce wind instruments for 1 part each" ^{[7, p. 26]}. Slonimsky sets himself complex technical tasks, the work was conceived as a set of new rules, as an example of a diverse synthesis of fresh language finds and achievements of masters of previous eras obtained by his searching intellect: "I'm pushing my damn Buff Concert with might and main, as if for a laugh, filled with the most learned duodecimal vertical-horizontal serial counterpoint and the same triple (by the number of episodes) canon. Thank God, I'm getting to the aleatoric section (final)" ^{[7, p. 29]}.

As a result of hard work, a genre hybrid appeared, in which style comparisons fruitfully "work" to solve an interesting artistic problem. Any voice can join the counterpoint (following the principles of new thinking), whether it is an element of academic music or mass culture ^[6]. Rigid antitheses and elegant allusions peacefully coexist, filling the musical fabric with bizarre, sometimes grotesque instrumental fragments. In a comedy performance, each orchestral timbre becomes an actor, strictly preserving its individuality throughout the composition, and such attention to instrumental paint must also be recognized as Slonimsky's serious contribution to the struggle for the renewal of symphonic thinking.

The oratorio "The Word about Igor's Regiment" by L. Prigozhin also opens new paths of symphonism. The composer seems to be "squeezing" the orchestra, moving from group sound to extremely individualized voice. In line with the timbre revolution of the twentieth century, he declares the figurative equality of all beautiful and ugly, noise and melodic, notated and notated instruments and timbres. Prigozhin managed to put his tools at the service of an artistic goal, each time limiting himself only to the absolutely necessary means. According to Slonimsky, the oratorio "is an outstanding Russian musical and literary work of the second half of the twentieth century" ^{[8, p. 65]}. And it's hard not to agree with this. Prigozhin's artistic world is based on the traditions of Russian music (Glinka, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev), but at the same time, he turned out to have a keen sense of modernity. Conformism was alien to him, he carefully protected himself from eclecticism, triviality, from everything generally accepted — these are all the most important qualities of the Leningrad school of composition.

The creative path leading up to the creation of an oratorio on ancient Russian texts turned out to be long and thorny. In 1962, Prigozhin, being the author of two symphonies, an oratorio and a cantata, a ballet, and a number of other works, visited the Warsaw Autumn Festival, where he first heard Stravinsky's "Wedding", music by Lutoslavsky, Penderetsky, Nono, Xenakis. The impressions turned out to be complex and contradictory, and the festival meetings themselves intensified the creative crisis that had been going on since the late 1950s. The new compositional techniques encountered in Warsaw, unexpected sound effects and methods of sound production, fresh techniques of vocalization of the text and principles of form construction were not reflected in Prigozhin's own work at first^[7]. The creation of the "Word" opened an original stylistic, innovative period in the composer's music.

There is a lot unusual in the "Word about Igor's Regiment". Prigozhin himself translated the texts from the Old Slavonic language, taking the original as a basis and doing a colossal literary work of a truly scientific scope. The oratorio is written on the original text of the Old Russian manuscript, and the equirithmic translation fully preserves not only the rhythm, but also the entire poetic system of the "Word". Prigozhin did not quote ancient tunes in his oratorio, and did not even approach the quote anywhere, but found the most correct stylistic solution of vocal intonation, relying on the principles characteristic of the monodic culture of ancient Russian music^[8]. The main thing is that the old Russian texts appeared in an acutely modern musical sound, turning the ideas about the archaic, about the relationship of cultures of various epochs, about the very principles of composing music for literary texts. The timbral revolution proclaimed by Prigozhin in The Word anticipated many subsequent achievements in this field.

The score is made very transparently, concisely, even sparingly. The author abandoned the string group, leaving the human voices to sing everything that should be sung, and the instrumental ensemble (flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, piano and three percussion groups) to create a sound portrait of the era, "dark" and harsh medieval Russia. There are no duplicating parts in the ensemble, the role of each timbre is extremely large, the composer extracts extremely diverse, individual, absolutely unique sounds from the selected composition. The composition of the choir is also unusual: violas and basses. Prigozhin, selecting only low female and male voices, replaces the chordal polyphony with monody, unison, evoking associations with the ancient Russian singing art.

In "The Word about Igor's Regiment", the composer applied a new pitch system — the so-called principle of free complementarity. This idea is close to dodecaphony, but it does not repeat it exactly and assumes that the disposal of all twelve tones of the chromatic set is not limited by strict rules. Prigozhin also discovered improvisation in given mobile structures ("squares"), a technique akin to aleatorics, when the improvisation of each instrument, strictly outlined by pitch and time frames, gathers into an unusual background sonority. All these tools from the arsenal of music of the twentieth century, of course, have long been mastered by Western and many Soviet composers, but Prigozhin began to use them for the first time, deciding to throw all the fresh modern techniques to reveal the mighty potential of the ancient Russian cultural monument.

The subject matter of the oratorio is curious and modern. Along with traditional leittems, defined by character and easily recognizable, which appear in different parts of the work and are associated with specific images-symbols, the composer uses timbre and rhythmic themes. The specific features of such themes are that a certain timbre retains its role, its thematic meaning, semantics, despite the fact that the specific melodic pattern and rhythm change. In other cases, the rhythmic pattern retains its thematic significance, despite the change in timbre and melodic line. Such revolutionary innovations for Prigozhin speak of an unusually deep refraction of the principles of avant-garde conquests in the oratorio.

Traditions and rather radical innovation are organically combined in Y. Falik's symphonic work. In relation to compositional structures, to thematism, to the orchestra, we can distinguish two main lines in the composer's symphonism: the "Prokofiev line" and the "Stravinsky line" (of course, we are not talking about borrowings or influences that could be directly detected: Falik is always original in musical material). In a sense, we are dealing with an alternative, a dispute, rather than following in the wake of what is already known. Falik relies on the norms of traditions, updating them with individual refraction in the spirit of the Leningrad school of composition. E. Ruchevskaya gave a succinct description of Falik's symphonic creativity, defining the peculiar "waterlines" of his stylistics and compositional language: "The lower one runs along the border of "serious" music (maybe even academic). Falik does not write music intended for everyday life (songs, dances), does not write pop music, does not write in any varieties of pop art and even jazz <...> The upper limit lies within the norms of the classics of the twentieth century (Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, to a lesser extent — Shostakovich, to a greater extent — Prokofiev). That is, in Falik's music there is no technique of the second half of the twentieth century — aleatorics, minimalism, total seriality, electronic music <...> But it is sometimes close to dodecaphony in its classical form. In terms of content, Falik is alien to extreme forms of expressionist exaltation and emotions in their hyperbolized form. ^{[10, p. 213]}.

What is Falik's innovation, if he inherits, first of all, the "classical"^[9] traditions of his century? The brilliant concerto for orchestra by Y. Falik based on the legends of Til Ulenspiegel (1967) is in the center of our attention. Let's try to make out in the above-mentioned perspective his orchestral piece about a medieval Flemish tramp, a rogue and a buffoon. The work was conceived as a ballet performance (the plot is highly theatrical!). Many young composers showed interest in the choreographic genre in those years, and the reason seems to be a certain "progressiveness" of ballet, its versatility, an unusual and fresh balance between form and its artistic embodiment. Ballet began to be seen "as an expressive action in the world of human feelings and experiences, as a very special artistic space in which plastic images inspired by music reign supreme" ^{[11, p. 87]}. In the second half of the 1960s, in collaboration with the young choreographer G. Alexidze, Falik composed three works intended for ballet productions: the Concerto for wind and percussion "Buffoons" (1966), the ballet "Til Ulenspiegel" (1967) and the choreographic tragedy "Oresteia" (1968). The production of "Thiel" did not take place ^[10], but the polygenre, so inherent in Falik's symphonic work, helped the composition to enter a wide concert road ^[11].

The first concerto for orchestra is not just a bright composition, but written with elements of instrumental luxury. The gameness, excitement, competitiveness, and even risk inherent in Falik's works are all present in the score of "Til". Let's take advantage of A. Klimovitsky's brilliant and witty characterization given to another symphonic brainchild of the composer: "The intricacy, the refinement of musical thought to panache and, at the same time, the paradoxical manner of presentation" ^{[12, p. 170]}. Panache, intricacy, refinement, paradoxical, catchiness are the continuation of Falik's human qualities: an educated intellectual, a wit who understands a lot about life, a master in the classical meaning of the word (a brilliant composer, conductor, cellist, pianist, writer). His music absorbs all the possibilities of time and, at the same time, is firmly based on the classical conquests of world musical culture. 

The textural and timbre organization of the Concert score is so detailed and embossed that it inspires an original artistic series, is an independent value. The orchestral fabric is torn and tattered in the first part, which characterizes the main character ("Til")^[12], but radically changes in the love scene ("Nele"), which is similar to the classical ballet adagio. The rigid ostinate rhythms of the second movement ("They don't joke with the Inquisition"), growing into a monstrous cadence of a powerful percussion group, contrast with the finale ("Till at the stake"), in which the flaring flames are clearly audible, the texture is again unpredictably "disassembled" into its component parts. The orchestral matter is completely subordinated to the play, theatrical beginning, it is akin to the scenery telling about what is going to happen on stage now. But we distinguish even more impressive findings of the author in the field of instrumental timbre. The role of wind instruments is great. The score is filled with their expanded solos and cadences, unusual combinations, stable timbre thematism. According to A. Stratievsky, "the timbre in Falik's music is not just a specific (even the most expressive) attire of thematism or texture: timbre is sometimes able to replace thematism itself: sometimes who plays, in what register, in what way it turns out to be more important than what is being played" ^{[13, p. 37]}. E. Ruchevskaya echoes him: "Concreteness of timbre thinking, as a kind of initial impulse, is one of the main, fundamental features of the composer's creative process and an essential feature of his music in general" ^{[14, p. 25]}.

Free concertation in the spirit of Baroque art, vivid theatricality, a playful beginning, a relief presentation of musical images and characters, a literary plot revealed exclusively by instrumental means — these are the main features of Falikov's "Til". At the head of everything is the timbre and orchestral texture. The music is very modern in language (it is clear why Soviet ballet theaters did not want to get involved with it), but the actual issues of tonality, atonality, fret complications or dodecaphony are not worth it at all: the composer is free in his choice and throws everything that is necessary into the furnace of symphonic development, never crossing the line separating artistic expediency from dogmatism. It's not for nothing that we mentioned the "furnace" as a catalyst for musical energy. At the conclusion of our brief review, we will cite another excellent judgment of the researcher of ballet music Yu. Falik: "The author combines the fractional-episodic structure of the parts of the work, following without interruption, with end-to-end themes that broadcast live, plastic energy, creates three-dimensional paintings with the help of inventive textural and timbre transformations. When listening to this work, R. Shchedrin's statement that a ballet orchestra should be several degrees hotter than an opera one is involuntarily recalled" ^{[11, p. 93]}.

V. Gavrilin did not prove himself in the field of pure symphonism, but it is necessary to say a few words about this wonderful Leningrad author in our review. It is difficult to overestimate his contribution to the modern development of the folklore line in academic music. An artist of great and extraordinarily original talent, he composed disappointingly little, limiting his composing to the field of pop songs, music for theatrical productions and remaking for orchestra his popular pieces for piano in four hands. A significant part of his major works listed in the catalogues is a hoax^[13] — they existed only at the level of creative intent and were never embodied on music paper. The exceptions are his piercing oratorio "War Letters" (1976) and the grandiose symphony-action "Chimes" (1982) for soloists, choir, oboe and percussion group. These compositions were born from music for theatrical productions ^[14], are based on folklore materials and have become vivid examples of multi-genre. They continued (at a new stage of development) the main artistic lines in Gavrilin's work. The composer saturated the orchestral fabric of the "War Letters" with a variety of sonorous effects, and added numerous folk and percussion instruments to the symphonic score. In "Chimes", the genuine symphonic "orchestration" of the choral material, numerous colorful and witty details of the "decoration" of this large-scale work are striking.

In a letter to E. Denisov in November 1965, S. Slonimsky jealously ironically: "Our tastes have turned sour again. The favorite of the Union and the conservatory is the passive Sviridovets Gavrilin" ^{[7, p. 50]}. It was the time of the stunning appearance of Gavrilin's "Russian Notebook" on the Soviet music scene. Everything about her was unusual, fresh and sincere. The vocal cycle, which was significant in scale and filled with drama, overturned ideas about the attitude to folklore, to singing, to the role of the piano in accompaniment. The main thing is the depth and brightness of the created image: it seems incredible that a very young author could tell the story of a simple village girl so deeply and excitingly, so boldly mix a mischievous ditty and tragic, touchingly melodious and exuberantly dancing, so deeply express the suffering of separation from a loved one and the pain of loss. Gavrilin gives an accurate musical and sound embodiment to various and very strong human emotions and feelings, finding each time a fresh technical solution to the author's idea. There is absolutely no element of falsehood, imitation, artificiality, contrivance in the cycle.

The compositional and rhythmic organization of musical folklore was important to Gavrilin, it was a necessary tool for creating an artistic image. In the introductory article to the publication of the "Russian Notebook", the author pointed out that "there are no folklore quotations (folk melodies) in it" ^{[16, p. 2]}. However, I. Demidova, in her informative article on folklore sources of the vocal cycle, refutes such a statement: "A comparative study of the literary text of the "Russian Notebook" with the materials of the folklore archive of V. A. Gavrilin allowed to correct this statement of the composer. The analysis showed that in a number of cases, direct folklore sources of the "Russian Notebook" thematism are established, and methods of working with it extend in a wide range of solutions — from "verbatim" quoting to more free creative processing of data" ^{[17, p. 114]}. The impetus for the creation of the work was precisely folklore sources — the transcripts of collectors sent to Gavrilin and the author's own notes. I. Demidova sums up his painstaking work in the composer's archives with an important thought: "These finds, on the one hand, indicate Gavrilin's deep penetration into the folk song tradition and the composer's ability to organically refract folklore materials in his own work, and on the other hand, the author's desire to enrich his composition as much as possible with elements of folklore language, thereby making it is accessible for understanding by a wide audience of listeners ^{[17, p. 137]}. 

The language of the "Russian Notebook", compositional techniques are still perceived as very modern, innovative, advanced (I would like to say "avant—garde", but Valery Alexandrovich would hardly approve of such a formulation). Unexpected and tart harmonies, sharp modulations, polyrhythmy and polymetry, sophisticated sound production techniques, colorful pedals, detailed polyphonic elaboration, extreme variety of texture, acoustic logic and genre freedom are impressive. Gavrilin, quite a bit, but tried himself in the dodecaphone technique, there is both sonoristics and aleatorics in his music. M. Bialik accurately noticed the freshness and novelty of his compositional speech: "He transformed the established intonation formulas so much that it became difficult to recognize them in bold and complex sound constructions" ^{[15, p. 250]}.

In 1964, almost simultaneously with the "Russian Notebook", another remarkable composition appeared in the vein and spirit of the "new folklore wave"^[15] — "Kursk Songs" by Georgy Sviridov. Both cycles — so different in mood, in the composition of performers, in style — tell about the bitter maiden's share, about the long-suffering beauty of a Russian woman. Sviridov used authentic folk tunes of his small homeland, Gavrilin composed folklore texts collected during his conservatory trips in Leningrad and Vologda regions, his native Vologda: the melodic language of the "Russian Notebook" is absolutely original, as the characteristic features of folk genres are also original. The naturalness and organicity of Gavrilin's appeal to the folklore source are both impressive and make you think about the very type of implementation of folk tradition in music.

Sharp-sighted Shostakovich (when did he have time to get acquainted with new works?) eight years after the appearance of the "Russian Notebook", he complained about the lack of new significant major works by Gavrilin: "Valery Gavrilin has a great talent. But, to my chagrin, he pays little attention to the large form. The desire for wide canvases, of course, should not become an end in itself. And then it often happens like this: you meet a young composer, he is barely twenty, and there are four operas and two symphonies in his portfolio… But still, in a large form, there are more opportunities to fully reveal something important, significant. I admire both Gavrilin's "German Notebook" and "Russian Notebook", but it seems to me that with his talent we have the right to expect larger-scale works from this author" ^{[18, p. 303]}. In his diaries of recent years, Gavrilin ^[19] polemizes a lot with Shostakovich, probably trying to "justify" himself to himself for his reckless admiration for him in his youth ^[16]. Especially goes to the author of the "Leningrad" Symphony for the above statement about his lack of major works. Gavrilin rejects the significance of the symphony as the highest standard in the composer's world and puts the human voice on a pedestal.

So, all the basic principles of composing music and orchestral writing have undergone a radical renewal in the symphonism of the "Sixties". The authors boldly used modern avant-garde techniques, simultaneously inventing their various modifications, extremely complicated the rhythmic and ladoharmonic essence of their works, revolutionized the attitude to instrumental timbre, to orchestral texture. It seems that the style palette has never been so multicolored, and intelligence has not influenced the artistic thinking of Soviet composers so much. The form of symphonic works itself underwent reform: the renewal of the language of the early 1960s coincided with a certain crisis of the genre, young musicians were looking for their own way out of it.

The structures of the symphony orchestra were subject to serious reform in the direction of a huge sounding theater filled with individual instrumental solutions and unique timbres. The usual schemes no longer worked, or rather, did not give the desired result. The traditional hierarchy that had developed in symphonic music, in the score, as an exponent of hierarchical reality, had to give way to a new order, new means of notation, new rhythmic structures, new harmony and texture. In the domestic symphonism of the 1960s (and this turned out to be the most important trend of the time, protective in its essence), two powerful artistic forces fought equally: centrifugal and centripetal. The orchestra was still the most important source of numerous spiritual achievements. His inexhaustible possibilities attracted young authors, and his countless sound combinations, multiplied by fresh composing methods, made it possible to achieve outstanding creative results.     

^[1] The catch phrase of M. Gorky, the title of his detailed polemical article-a response to American correspondents (1932).

^[2] E. Artemyev became one of the few serious and permanent adherents of electronic music in Russian culture.

^[3] One of the most striking examples is Stockhausen's "Groups" for three identical orchestras sitting in three different corners of the hall. Musical material performed by orchestras is repeated with a time shift. The sound thus "floats" from corner to corner with varying degrees of intensity.

^[4] A. Schnittke looked closely enough at the work of S. Slonimsky. In a number of his articles, he shows a deep knowledge of his works.

^[5] This work is all the more dear to the author of the study, because its premiere back in 1966 (and then the recording on the record) was made by a very young conductor at that time, Eduard Serov, in collaboration with the orchestra of the Leningrad Philharmonic.

^[6] The concert-buff marked the beginning of a series of compositions by Slonimsky, in which he tried to combine academic music with the diverse sound background surrounding him. These are his Concerto for Symphony orchestra, three electric guitars and solo instruments (1973) or "Festive Music" for Symphony orchestra, balalaika and Spoons (1975).

^[7] The "breakthrough" came only in 1966: on March 23, the first part of his bright and original oratorio "The Word about Igor's Regiment" — "The Campaign" was performed in the hall of the Leningrad Chapel.

^[8] According to E. Ruchevskaya, in the melody of the "Word" this inner kinship is manifested in the characteristic second movement, the singing of the supporting sounds, in asymmetric free syntactic constructions, fret variability ^{[9, p. 51]}

^[9] E. Ruchevskaya refers the music of Schoenberg and Berg to the classical traditions of the last century. In the 1960s, many would have disagreed with this statement.

^[10] G. Alexidze tried to interest various Soviet theaters in ballet, but Falik's "modern" music scared everyone away. And this is another serious argument in favor of the innovative essence of the composer's symphonism. 

^[11] E. Ruchevskaya considers the Concerto for Orchestra by Y. Falik a symphony: "Both in scale and structure (a four—part cycle) is a symphony" ^{[10, p. 220]}

^[12] The four parts of the concert go on without a break, flowing freely into one another without visible seams, and this is also a very modern technique: the form is free, but clearly outlined by the storyline. 

^[13] M. Bialik, who maintained warm relations with V. Gavrilin, reports about this in an interesting and rather detailed article in memory of the composer ^[15].

^[14] "War Letters" is based on the music for V. Tendryakov's play "Three Bags of Weed Wheat", and "Perezvonov" is based on V. Shukshin's "Stepan Razin".

^[15] In Russian musicology, the "new folklore wave" is considered to be a bold combination of authentic folk art, which the "sixties" composers studied on folklore trips around the country, and advanced avant-garde composition techniques actively developed by young authors. It seems to us that the concise and masterfully executed "Kursk Songs", deeply rooted in folk melody, equally far from avant-garde innovation, and from the typical Soviet style of a large "realistic" oratorio, unusually fresh in language, extremely sincere, are just an important milestone on the way to the formation of a new attitude to folklore, towards the implementation of folk in academic music.

^[16] V. Gavrilin: "In the late 50s, my generation was fond of Shostakovich. His music came crashing down on our young heads like a raging waterfall. They listened, played, chased after every record, even tried to walk like him, many got glasses, although it was previously considered ugly. And if the gait and glasses were still given with some difficulty, then our own music — those who had the audacity to compose it without any effort — turned out to be "Shostakovich per se". That is, in its pure form. With such dizziness, it was hard not to notice anything other than the creativity of this genius. And we didn't try. We were drawn to him as to salvation, without the fear and doubts inherent in maturity, we flew into the light" ^{[20, p. 209]}.