Performing aspects of V. Gavrilin’s “Russian Notebook”: dramaturgy, theatricalization, peasant song, folklore genres

Shkirtil' Lyudmila Vyacheslavovna Professor of Vocal Art, St. Petersburg Mussorgsky music college 191028, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Mokhovaya str., 36, of. Mokhovaya 36 serovyuri2013@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Serov Yurii Eduardovich Doctor of Art History Associate Professor; Piano Faculty; St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov 191028, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, 36 Mokhovaya str., office 36 serov@nflowers.ru

The expression "new folklore wave" originated in Soviet musicology in the mid-1960s. A new powerful artistic direction has entered the Russian musical tradition, there has been a peculiar accumulation of outstanding compositions-samples striking with originality and brightness, new recording techniques, the authors' extremely conscientious attitude to the original materials collected in the conservatory folklore expeditions. It was the work of the young, and it made its way with enthusiasm and a fair amount of rebellion. R. Shchedrin, S. Slonimsky, E. Denisov, B. Tishchenko, V. Gavrilin are the leaders of the "new folklore wave", composers for whom folk melody and rhythm, a lively intonation environment, direct emotionality have become not only a kind of "counterweight" to sophisticated techniques, but the most important component of the author's language and even thinking, and sometimes the main one the mainstay of artistic expression ^[1].

We emphasize that the same authors addressed the "new techniques" and the "new folklore" and the reason for the composer's radicalism lies on the surface: consciously, on a rational level or intuitively came to understand the inexhaustible depth of folklore resources and the fact that much has not yet entered the "auditory memory" of composers of past centuries. The collectors of the twentieth century have seriously expanded our knowledge of folk art, and "folklore itself, in constant updating and increment with each generation, gives modifications to old formations, or even forms new ones" ^{[2, p. 78]}. The polycentric musical world of the second half of the twentieth century finally removed the "auditory shutters" from the intonation storerooms of folk art. Those who were at the forefront of the renewal of Russian music boldly updated its folklore component. New music opened up new spiritual horizons, freeing them from the dictates of time and place. The craving for a deep knowledge of folk art turned out to be consonant with the desire for general cultural values in the broadest sense of this important concept ^[1].

The appearance of V. Gavrilin's vocal cycle "Russian Notebook" in 1965 made a strong impression on both the musical community and listeners. The young graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory literally "broke into" Russian music, becoming one of the brightest and most original representatives of the "new folklore wave". Full of drama, large-scale, integral in form, original in the composer's language, the composition turned over ideas about the folklore beginning in academic music, about the vocal technique and vocal capabilities of the soloist, about the role of the piano in accompaniment, about instrumental paint, about the degree of theatricalization of the chamber vocal cycle. The synthesis of folk and modern, folklore as a conductor of the avant—garde composer's language are Gavrilin's most important answers to the challenges of the time of change, the time of renewal of Russian music.

The stylistic unity of the "Russian Notebook" is due to the author's reliance on folk sources — literary texts and musical material. At the same time, in the preface to the publication of his opus, Gavrilin indicated the following: "there are no folklore quotations (folk melodies) in it" ^[3], which is not entirely true. St. Petersburg researcher I. Demidova convincingly, using musical examples and numerous recordings from Gavrilin's personal archive, proves the folklore origin of almost all the musical material of the "Russian Notebook" ^{[4, 113-138]}, which does not beg for the merits of a very young author (as we understand, folklore in its "pure form" can occur only when solving special — educational or scientific tasks).

I. Zemtsovsky, a researcher of Russian folklore, recalled meetings with Gavrilin on conservation expeditions: "In 1965, I happened to be with him in Mussorgsky's homeland, in the Toropetsky district of the Kalinin region, where I saw how attentively he talked with singers, asked them about life, listened to speech, and immediately wrote down not only melodies, but also favorite expressions, texts, and then carefully and carefully rewrites everything cleanly into a separate music notebook. He is concerned not only about song samples, but also about the images of living people that he seeks to recreate in his work. It is not surprising that Valery gets little benefit from listening to a tape recording. In order for a song to enter his own spiritual world, he must see a person behind it, understand his life, thoughts, and the structure of speech. He must see and hear everything for himself" ^{[5, pp. 105-106]}. What has been said refers us to the key principles of Gavrilin's interpretation of folklore: to listen, to feel, to take into one's own heart ("to hear with one's heart" is the creative and human credo of the composer!), to make one's own, to transform into original sound matter, and then generously share with performers and listeners.

Gavrilin interpreted folk music in a deeply personal way, refracted it through the prism of a powerful spiritual and moral concept, outlined new ways of exploring and comprehending it, offered ambiguous interpretations and unexpected syntheses. In his own words, "the problem of folklore is very complicated <...> critics now often consider it a virtue that some materials, intonations, turns of folk music are used. It all depends on how a person thinks and what they are talking about. Any musical material is attracted depending on what the composer wants to say. You don't have to be folklore on purpose, it should be your native language. <...> it will manifest itself anywhere — with or without quotations" ^{[6, p. 267]}.

Of the most important in Gavrilin's reading of folklore is the widest panorama of genres of folk art, among which are a variety of quips and ancient lamentations, lyrical (comic, soldier, yamschitsky) peasant songs, vociferations, ditties and accordion tunes, quite modern urban tunes and even jazz motifs. It should be noted that all these numerous forms of folk music are not something that Gavrilin has settled once and for all. "Layered" by speech intonations, they are in constant development, in motion, the author works with them very flexibly, subordinating the genre evolution to the general plan of the work. According to E. Shevlyakov, "The Russian Notebook is a complex interweaving of many lines, each of which is capable of changing very significantly. And together they form a "magnetic field" with a powerful level of expression <...> preserving the generic features of the genre, the composer highlights, lifts a particularly effective detail, turns it from a conceptual into a context—forming one - and a "genre inside out" arises, with a special internal conflict, with paradoxical "semantics from the opposite" ^{[2, pp. 86-87]}.

Let us note the important thought of the researcher about the special internal conflict of the dramatic plan of the "Russian Notebook" — the "plot" of the work does not contain such powerful dramatic collisions, although it is tragic in essence. In one of the issues of Yunost magazine in 1968, the composer recalled: "Once I was told that a tenth-grader, a handsome, smart guy, whom everyone loved very much, died of illness in one of the Leningrad schools. It's a tragic situation, and nothing can be done. He died without knowing much, without seeing, without loving. And, probably, there is a girl somewhere who would love him if he were alive. And I decided to write about failed love on behalf of that girl, I wanted to write a poem about love and death" ^[7], in the same interview Gavrilin revealed his principles of the dramatic plan of the "Russian Notebook", shedding light on his author's decisions: "I tried to arrange each of the eight songs of the cycle in such a way that it was already the alternation expressed the contrast of feelings, experiences, and forced them to follow their plot. <...> Extreme exposure of feelings was necessary in the "Russian Notebook", as well as spontaneity" ^[7].

So, in fact, we have before us a mono opera for a female voice with a piano, eight detailed numbers-scenes arranged according to the principle of contrast, a musical drama with a tragic emphasis on strong and open emotions. The dramatic beginning, sometimes hidden deep inside the heroine, spills out with scenic relief, imparting theatricality to the vocal cycle, scaling the intimacy and intimacy inherent in it by generic characteristics. The outstanding performer of the work Gavrilina Z. Dolukhanova also speaks about this: "The Russian Notebook is a real dramatic performance, with a dynamic, intense plot, constant change of situations and moods, with several climaxes. And in the center of it is not some one—dimensional goddess, but a rich, strong, whole female nature" ^{[8, p. 9]}. Based on the genres of folk music, Gavrilin forms a new vocal form, reaches truly operatic and symphonic peaks. Almost from the first attempt, being a very young musician, he stands on a par with the largest masters of Soviet art, and the "Russian Notebook" — with the culminating domestic vocal cycles of the second half of the twentieth century: "Departed Russia" by G. Sviridov and a Suite based on the words of Michelangelo D. Shostakovich.

The Russian Notebook is a kind of "love and the life of a woman" in the peasant version, a collection of pictures from folk life presented through folklore genres and intonations: archaic and modern, familiar and unexpected. Gavrilin's cycle reflects the whole world: human characters, folk worldview, love and separation, loyalty and suffering, deception and hope. As a result, the story of a girl's fate, sad and tragically doomed, takes us to a completely different plane - to the world of spiritual beauty, sublime feelings: "Through the songs you can see people whose destinies are imprinted in them, life itself is visible. This is a precious quality of art!" ^{[9, 174]}.

A. Sokhor was one of the first to respond to the appearance of the "Russian Notebook". In his work, he touches on the issues of drama, rightly noting that "the drama of the vocal cycle is a problem that has not yet been developed in musicology (especially in relation to Soviet music). Therefore, it is difficult to assess what Gavrilin has done in this sense. But it is indisputable that in the "Russian Notebook" the "concentric" construction of a cycle (with two circles and two climaxes) based on an internal plot (the fate of love) turned out to be successful" ^{[9, 173]}. The remark of the patriarch of Soviet musicology is true even though, thanks to the already mentioned research by I. Demidova, an analysis of the drafts of the "Russian Notebook" turned out to be available to us, we managed to look into the composer's "creative laboratory".

The cycle was originally supposed to start with "Winter", the first three parts were born later than the rest of the material. These songs ("Kalina stands above the river" and two "Suffering" ones) they turned out to be a kind of prologue in the cycle. The motif of love, which increases from song to song, finds its powerful expression in the fourth issue — in "Winter". Further, through the riotous "fun" (put—on, strained, insincere, genre-extremely relief - ditto) "I'm going" and "It was" the author reaches the second climax, a dramatic breakdown, another, and already the final turning point in the heroine's mind. The second round of development thus closes, followed by an epilogue-farewell ("In the most beautiful month of May").

The score of the "Russian Notebook" is full of interesting compositional details, full of various "technologies", including the avant-garde. Gavrilin did not reject modern techniques and solutions, although he publicly "scolded" composers (Moscow "avant-gardists caused him a "feeling of protest" ^{[10, p. 321]}), who were passionate about "fashionable" musical trends. In the cycle we find harmonic delights (a kind of phonism), tart fret, polytonal counterpoint, free chord shifts (chord chains), deep polyphonic elaboration (and not only imitation), polymetry, numerous sonorous signs (clusters, fresh textured solutions, detailed, sometimes emphatically aggressive articulation and dynamics), modern techniques performances of the vocal part, original vocal techniques. Of course, the composer subordinates all this diversity to his structured, thoughtful, felt artistic task, but we are interested in his method, the interweaving of modern means of expression with folklore material, his personal linguistic acquisitions. It is the "personal", "Gavrilinskoe" that attracts us most of all in the "Russian Notebook", distinguishes the work from a series of other, albeit talented works, makes us return to this vocal cycle again and again, stimulates us to study, perform, listen.

The vocal part of the "Russian Notebook" requires extraordinary performing resources: a variety of sound production, wide register possibilities (over two octaves), and most importantly, numerous techniques of figurative transformation. Gavrilin builds the storyline of his cycle in a highly multifaceted manner, fills the composition with ambiguous artistic associations, in short, the variation of performing and listening comprehension of images. G. Belov rightly considers the "Russian Notebook" as a "masterly complex concerto for voice and orchestra", speaks of the need for a "stereoscopic" representation of the character of Gavrilin's heroine, that to perform the "Russian Notebook" "for real", both the singer and the pianist-accompanist "should be in a mature artistic form" ^{[8, pp. 9-10]}.

The special difficulties of the composition are also pointed out by its performer Z. Dolukhanova: "The Russian Notebook requires a strong voice rich in timbre colors, a huge emotional and physical return, the ability to find a balance between the "vernacular" flavor of the work and its purely concert presentation. Any falsehood, imitation or, on the other hand, naturalism, hysteria are completely impossible here, they will immediately destroy and vulgarize everything" ^{[8, p. 10]}.

Let's disagree with the word "vernacular" taken by the singer in quotation marks, speaking about the "color" of the work. Gavrilin does not imitate folk singing, does not imitate a saying or crying. He is in love with Russian speech, with an old peasant song. The intonation and spiritual closeness of his own compositional language with this song makes the "Russian Notebook" a unique composition in the history of Russian music of the second half of the twentieth century.

But Z. Dolukhanova is absolutely right about the main thing: how difficult and how necessary it is to find an exact balance in the "Russian Notebook", how easy it is to destroy the fragile spiritual world of the author, conveyed through the tragic experiences of the heroine of the cycle. It is important to place the artistic and vocal "accents" correctly, to feel the time that is different in folk music, to see the authentic human life behind the folklore genre. But the author himself gives us all the answers to difficult performing questions: with detailed and precise remarks in the score of the "Russian Notebook" and his numerous statements about the folk song tradition: "The peasant song is strict in the use of sounds, but each of them has a colored flashlight; and depending on which one is lit, which of the lantern sounds will be given a semantic accent depends on the coloring of the entire musical and emotional scattering, the fret meaning of which can change with each new word of the text, just as a kaleidoscope changes the position of one colored piece of glass changes the character of the entire drawing" ^{[5, p. 106]}.

How can a performer of Gavrilin's music understand which "flashlight" needs to be lit in a particular song of the cycle? Is intuition, voice, and a master accompanist at the piano enough?

In the "Russian Notebook" three internal themes-images are organically intertwined: love (passion, tenderness, joy and happiness), the death of love (longing, sadness, tragic acceptance of fate) and, finally, "everyday life" (the world around, nature, folk traditions). Life, love, death — isn't it quite a romantic plot, which is not surprising, knowing about Gavrilin's long-term attachment to the poetry of G. Heine (let's add, a very rare "guest" in Soviet music). Each of the listed life phenomena requires its own understanding not only by the author-composer, but also by the performer, more precisely, by a duo of performers. Thoughtful drama, precisely placed semantic accents, the ability to instantly switch from one emotional state to the exact opposite, the balance between word and sound, voice and piano, theatricality and academicism, understanding the genre nature of Gavrilin's music are the key performing tasks in the "Russian Notebook".

Musical contrasts in the song cycle (highlighting, repeated repetitions of key phrases or words, abrupt changes in the nature of movement, dynamics, tempo) emphasize the mental tossing of the heroine, the drama of her life "plot". The author confronts carefully "sculpted", strictly outlined musical images in intense conflict, he does not need a special development like a symphonic one, since contradictions and screaming emotional inconsistencies are dramatic in themselves.

In the first part of the cycle ("Kalina stands above the river"), three important topics are outlined, which we mentioned in connection with the images of the "Russian Notebook": life, love, death. In the following issues ("Suffering" No. 1 and "Suffering" No. 2), the author repeatedly strengthens the motive of love (in Russia, to love means to suffer), but love is inseparable from longing here ("oh, sick, oh, I feel bad"). In "Winter", longing breaks out, filling the entire sound space. "I'm cold..." is the key thought of the whole Russian folk life. A woman's howl, crying, and girlish despair at the loss of a loved one are superimposed on a masterfully painted picture of a terrible blizzard accompanied by the author.

In the second "circle of songs" that arises after the powerful and devastating climax of "Winter" (here we use the apt expression of A. Sokhor ^[9]), Gavrilin follows the path of forcing a tragic beginning, but gives this tragedy through folk dance genres - dance, round dance ("I see, I see" and "It was"). Dancing in rhythmic and genre lines organically combines with a ditty in the text: harsh, angry, with veiled obscene rhymes — real, Russian. In riotous fun there is a lot of "strain", insincerity, attempts to forget oneself, laugh through tears. Finally, the seventh song (again "Suffering") returns us to lamentations, lamentations, long unaccompanied chants, interrupted by stingy textures, simple and artless interludes at the piano and colloquial phrases of the soloist.

The final part becomes a kind of epilogue. Shepherd's playing in piano accompaniment, the reliance of the vocal part on simple harmonization, symmetrical rhythm and structure of phrases and motifs. The music seems to be mesmerizing, soothing and, obviously, sharply contrasted with the juicy emotional atmosphere of the cycle. E. Shevlyakov rightly notes that the beauty of this song is deceptive, that "behind the imperturbable clarity of the finale, something else arises — numbness of feelings, the inability to continue raging in your grief. There was a riot of blood and a fierce rejection of undeserved misfortune, the heroine screamed, begged: "It's cold, I'm cold!". Now the soul is dead, the cold is familiar" ^{[2, p. 88]}. The voice (according to the author's remark) should sound here without vibration, detached, empty, even dead, as if "from the other world". The heroine leaves her beloved, with hopes, with grief, with life itself: "Goodbye, my darling, my little friend."

Russian Russian in the Russian Notebook by V. Gavrilin, the outstanding Soviet folklorist I. Zemtsovsky ^[5] analyzes the composer's cycle in detail, "lays out" the folk song beginning according to genre "shelves". Let's highlight the main thing that is important for the performer who took up the "Russian notebook" to know.

Most of Gavrilin's melodies are based on a peasant song. The researcher considers the song beginning to be the "root system" of the "Russian Notebook". The songs in the cycle are very different: lyrical, comic, yamschitsky, soldier, dance. Already in the first part, the most important words for the content of the work are sung and widely: "Oh, I feel sick, oh, I feel bad." But the song organically and as if imperceptibly passes into other folklore genres, the young author synthesizes fresh variant forms of folk art. So, the main melody of the first "Suffering" resembles a chastushka (first of all, with sharp interval jumps), and the second theme, appearing in the accompaniment and then in the voice, resembles both a chastushka and funeral lamentations.

In the second "Suffering" Gavrilin brings to the forefront a kind of ditty-suffering. The folk manner of intonation, the open emotionality so characteristic of suffering, is emphasized by the composer with a somewhat exaggerated dotted rhythm. But even Gavrilin's recitatives are based on a song beginning.

The main melodic chant of "Winter", repeated many times, acquires the features of a spell, at the end of the part it also, "falling down" and "drooping", returns to the lyrical song tradition. The image of winter — "death" becomes the key for the entire chamber vocal cycle. This is what he is like in the Russian song. The poetics of "Winter" is full of vocal and instrumental oppositions, depicting the confused state of the main character. Emphasizing the idea that the origins of Gavrilin's musical thematism should be sought in lyrical ballad songs common in many regions of Russia, we should not forget about the poetic basis of the cycle: the literary text (author's, Gavrilinsky) also stands "on a par with samples of folk lyrics and thereby acquires the quality of a true nationality" ^{[4, p. 121]}.

Gavrilin returns the word to its true sound and meaning, and this is an essential feature of the composer's entire vocal work. In this regard, we note an important remark (from the perspective of understanding the new poetry and literature that came to Soviet music at the turn of the 1960s) by the researcher of Gavrilin A. Tevosyan: "After many years of the domination of the word, which began in the Stalinist era, focused on the categorical one-sidedness of the guiding report, the revival of the word intonated, playful, vibrating with pronounced and implied meanings, carrying a huge layer of paralinguistic, contextual and situational meanings began" ^{[11, p. 170]}.

In the sixth part of the cycle "It was", a chastushechny beginning prevails, elements of folklore associated with dancing are recognized. Ditties "to the dance", with a tart and sharp folk word, with a "chopped" rhythm, with a frenzied rampant emotion. But both grief and loneliness break through here in the intonations of lamentations, exclamations, through a lyrical song. The musical speech in "It was" is impulsive, and the word is extremely convex and significant.

The unassuming melody of "Seyu-veyu" resembles comic folk songs, while its middle part is akin to the rollicking yamshchitsky. I. Demidova found three variants of the main theme of "Seyu-veyu" in the collection "Folk Songs of the Pskov region" ^[12] and quotes the folk singer about the style of her performance: "This is sung, how to chop with an axe" ^{[4, p. 128]}. There is no doubt that the composer was guided by this kind of sound. The detailed conclusion of the seventh song of the cycle is permeated with intonations of spring, wedding songs. "The final "lamentation" of this part is sustained in the spirit of Russian lyrical songs with characteristic descending chants and glissanding exhalations at the end of phrases, common for peasant performance" ^{[5, p. 110]}.

In the penultimate part of the cycle ("Suffering"), the author reproduces the characteristic musical features of lamentations (lamentations). Gavrilin almost completely abandons piano accompaniment here, the soloist is given significant freedom of expression. The heroine mourns her lover, thus finally acknowledging his death.

Russian song speech is also heard in "In the most beautiful month of May" (the final part of the cycle). Interestingly, the song intonations are concentrated not only in the vocal, but also in the piano part. The piano performances are filled with peasant-shepherd motifs. Gavrilin combines the vocal and song beginning with typical instrumental folk forms and this should also be remembered by the performers of the "Russian Notebook".

Let's say a few words about the piano accompaniment in the "Russian Notebook". Gavrilin, unlike some of his Leningrad peers (B. Tishchenko, S. Slonimsky) or his Moscow colleagues (R. Shchedrin, B. Tchaikovsky), was not a concert pianist. He started playing the piano more or less systematically quite late. The pianistic literature necessary to achieve performing heights (Cherni, Moshkovsky, scales, exercises) disgusted him, the role of a concert musician did not suit him. He played the piano "as a composer" (in this aspect of his activity Gavrilin was close to G. Sviridov): bright, expressive, timbre, convincing, emotional, but not completely technologically. This imperfection was more than compensated for by many truly artistic virtues of his performance. However, some other of Gavrilin's colleagues in the renewal of the national musical language — E. Denisov, A. Schnittke, S. Gubaidulina, A. Kneifel, Y. Falik - were not bright pianists either. In the "Russian Notebook" the author almost does not use popular piano formulas, but seems to "reinvent" them, uncompromisingly subordinating textured solutions and technical tasks to a solid and strong artistic idea.

M. Bialik recalled Gavrilin's cycle: "He transformed the established intonation formulas so much that it became difficult to recognize them in bold and complex sound constructions" ^{[13, p. 250]}. Indeed, with regard to the piano part, we can rightfully talk about bold and complex sound structures. Gavrilin saturated the piano with a new type of virtuosity that has no analogues in Russian vocal literature, interpreted the piano as a large ensemble consisting of folk (balalaika, accordion, psaltery, pipe) and percussion instruments, organically combined folklore songwriting with the conquests of the avant-garde, with acute rhythmics, with textured asymmetry, with sometimes brutal dynamics, with carefully thoughtful voice guidance, detailed elaboration at the level of motive, intonation, and a brief thematic formula.

The variety of textured techniques in the score is amazing. Everything is very simple here — dynamics, articulation, pace, emotions. The piano part is filled with sonoristics — long, sustained pedals in a variety of layers akin to orchestral fabric, register contrasts, percussive and soft mesmerizing clusters, bell-like (alarm, funeral bell, bells), rigid ostinate inflections. The author makes extensive use of limit registers in the right and left hands with simultaneous full-sound textured filling in the center of the keyboard (the principle of "three-handed" pianism). Jumps, complex fast passages, constant rhythmic interruptions, numerous sub-notes requiring isolation, polyphonic conducting — all these are the hallmarks of the Gavrilinsky piano in the "Russian Notebook". The author consciously or intuitively responds to the "new sounding image" in the instrumental accompaniment of his vocal cycle, keeping up with the times, of which, undoubtedly, he himself was the personification.

Gavrilin's piano is very "talking", not a single introduction or conclusion to the song, acting out or interrupting should be performed formally, it is always a duet with a voice, a conversation, an argument, sometimes an angry remark. As a student at the Leningrad Conservatory, three years earlier Russian Notebook Gavrilin composed his first serious work for voice and piano — "German Notebook" based on poems by G. Heine. This cycle was strongly influenced by Gavrilin's favorite composer, Schubert. The Leningrad master worshiped him, studied with him. For Gavrilin, the Austrian genius is the personification of beauty, spiritual purity, clarity, and song melodism. The amazing "talkativeness" of the piano in Schubert's songs, sometimes stingy, but always expressive texture, the duet type in the ensemble of the singer and the pianist, the absence of "extra" notes in the piano part, and finally, the indispensable response of the accompaniment to the word, to the vocal "plot" — isn't it true, all this is in the "Russian Notebook", and this is Gavrilin's from Schubert.

Let's summarize the results. The Russian Notebook is an authentic encyclopedia of folklore genres. Gavrilin penetrates deeply into the folk song tradition, organically refracts folklore, passes it through his amazing artistic world, thereby making the folklore language accessible to the general public. The peasant song is the key to understanding the composition. Performers need to study the tradition deeply in order to freely interpret Gavrilin's cycle with an understanding of stylistic features. The works of I. Zemtsovsky ^[5], A. Sokhor ^[9], I. Demidova ^[4], E. Shevlyakov ^[5] help us today in mastering this difficult material for a modern musician.

The issues of the drama of the "Russian Notebook", which we have raised in the article, are also extremely important. Note the "concentric" construction of the cycle, with two "song circles" and two climaxes. The musical contrasts here emphasize the heroine's emotional tossing, the drama of her life "plot". The author confronts carefully "sculpted", strictly outlined musical images in intense conflict, and contradictions and screaming emotional inconsistencies themselves turn out to be a drama.

"Russian Notebook", as we have already noted, is a chamber mono opera with its own plot and complex dramatic development: a series of characteristic scenes. Relying on a variety of folklore genres helps to build these performances in the spirit of folk theater. Music, words, and numerous composer's remarks indicate to the performer the only right way to solve a difficult interpretive task.