Alexander Mosolov. To the 120th anniversary of the birth

2020 marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of one of the leaders of the early Russian avant-garde, Alexander Mosolov. His symphonic painting “Factory. Music of Machines "- the same calling card of its era, like" Black Square "by Malevich.

The style of Mosolov’s compositions of the twenties is musical constructivism. The poet Selvinsky, the writer Shklovsky, the artist and photographer Rodchenko, and the director Vertov were closely related to the constructivist theorists in those years. Among composers Mosolov was almost the only one adhering to constructivist idioms.

His "Newspaper Announcements" manifest the music of the fact, the music of the thing: this is an episode in the life of a little man. But the next issue of the newspaper came out, the old issue was thrown out along with this fact. But the ad finds a second life as an appliqué in a piece of music. Think of the collages of avant-garde artists sticking newspaper clippings and labels on their canvases! And in his other works, Mosolov simply edits musical episodes, just as Vertov and Rodchenko did in films and photographs.

Editing can be deliberately careless, which adds even more brightness to strange, often grotesque musical images ranging from foxtrot to parody fugue. Or, for example: here is a village. But tractors are driving with the song "Forward, to meet the dawn", which was popular in those years.

Like other avant-garde artists of the 1920s, Mosolov came under increasing criticism from the cultural establishment of the first half of the thirties. By studying and using Central Asian folklore, he takes a step towards the ideologues of art. But composing music in the spirit of socialist realism did not save the composer either. He was arrested and sent to a labor camp. During the arrest, a whole suitcase with notes of compositions disappeared, which we will probably never hear again.

Miraculously, he was released during the "Beria thaw" in 1938, continued to compose sound, academically and ideologically verified music and never returned to his experience of the avant-garde. This is evidenced by the numerous works for a cappella choir or for a choir accompanied by an orchestra of Russian folk instruments, written as if by another author. The composer’s name was forgotten until the end of the seventies, until his critics passed away.

The concert program includes both works of the avant-garde period, recreating the bizarre and harsh, grotesque and at times very sad musical world of the composer, as well as choral miniatures of the later period, testifying to the artist’s creative surrender, crushed and suppressed by the totalitarian power machine.