Who wrote the cantata it is snowing. Analysis of a piece of music by georgy sviridov it is snowing

Integrated music lesson (integration with the visual arts) (grade 2)

Topic: Snowy winter in G. Sviridov's cantata, B. Pasternak's poem and paintings by Russian artists.

Purpose: to acquaint with G. Sviridov's cantatas on the verses of B. Pasternak, to enrich the vocabulary, to introduce the word "cantata" into the passive vocabulary; to acquaint with B. Pasternak's poem "It is snowing ..."

During the classes.

Knowledge update.

Children! Do you think southern and northern winters are different? (Yes) What do you think is the winter in Italy and in Africa?

And what is the strongest sign of a northern winter? (snow) Is the snow the same everywhere? (No) Where is it more? (in the bosom of nature, in the country)

What kind of snow? (cold, invigorating). Describe it.

Work on the topic of the lesson.

Children, I will now read to you a poem by Boris Pasternak. Listen to him. "Snow goes"

Boris Pasternak

Snow goes

Snow is falling, snow is falling.

To the white stars in the blizzard

Geranium flowers stretch

For the window coverings.

It's snowing and everything is in disarray

Everything starts flying, -

Black staircase steps,

Crossroads turn.

As if with the look of an eccentric

From the top of the staircase

Sneak around playing hide and seek

The sky descends from the attic.

It's snowing, it's snowing

It is snowing and everything is in disarray:

Whitened pedestrian

Surprised plants

Crossroads turn.

Children, how differently can one say about snow! about your feeling! What words did Boris Leonidovich Pasternak choose to describe snow? Look at the first 2 quatrains on your desks. Snow is like white stars. Why did he write like that?

Now we will hear how the composer Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov (1915-1998) composed small cantatas on the verses of Boris Pasternak. Sviridov was very fond of snowy Russia, with its many villages, peasant songs and fun. (The teacher shows pictures on the theme "Winter in the painting of Russian artists" and "Winter fun"). All his work is distinguished by songwriting and is associated with peasant folklore.

Children, cantata (from Italian cantore), which means to sing, this is a musical piece intended for one or more soloists, chorus and orchestra)

Let's listen to this music. We sat down to make it comfortable for you, closed your eyes. What music? (cold, but light, sparkling). What picture of nature do you imagine when you listened to this music? (We feel cold, chilliness, but the mood of the music is light, joyful. Phrases are like snowflakes.)

What kind of snowflakes are there? What snowflakes have you observed? Let's get a look. What are the colors of the snowflakes? When are they best seen, against what background? When, for example, did you catch a snowflake on a white mitten, or when did you notice a snowflake on a dark jacket?

Now we are going to draw a snowflake. We took a sheet of blue cardboard to make the snowflake even more noticeable and look even more beautiful. Look at the board, I also have a sheet drawn. Where are we going to draw the snowflake? How we place it on the sheet. In this corner? in this corner? (no), where? In the middle. Right. I found the middle and set a dot. What kind of snowflake will it be? petite? No, the whole sheet. Right. Like this (the teacher shows on the board). Now I will decorate our snowflake. Like this. You can paint, decorate your snowflake as you like. We started to paint. We took the tassels, found the middle, Sviridov's music will help you.

Who made the special snowflake? Who wants to tell about her?

Let's do an exhibition. Let's admire our snowfall in silence! What all the snowflakes are beautiful and fluffy.

The Little Triptych (1964) is one of the few works by Sviridov for a symphony orchestra. It, nevertheless, is firmly connected with the main, "vocal" line of his work. The first part is entirely built on the intonations of the znamenny chant, the third - one of the symbols of Sviridov's music - resurrects the images of Russian antiquity. The most mysterious part - the second - evokes memories of the harsh beauty, the looming heaps of churches, of the bloody pages of Russian history. The music of The Little Triptych is used in the legendary performance of the Maly Theater “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” (staged by Boris Ravensky).

The little cantata Snow is Coming - perhaps the first appeal in Russian music to the poetry of Boris Pasternak - was written in 1965. It is interesting primarily for the unusual interpretation of the choir. In Sviridov's works, he is rather the bearer of not meaning, actually melodic expressiveness, but color. For example, in the first movement (“The Snow is Falling”) he sings only on two repeating notes: in the third movement (“Night”), the staccate (abrupt) stroke also dominates in the part of the chorus and in the orchestra.

The day of the first performance of the "Poem in Memory of Sergei Yesenin" on May 31, 1956 became significant in the history of Russian culture of the 20th century. It was this composition that revealed the genius of Georgy Sviridov to the world. Until that day, there were twenty years of creativity, fame (the first composition of the twenty-year-old author, a cycle of romances on Pushkin's poems, attracted everyone's attention), the painful elimination of the influence of the teacher, Dmitry Shostakovich (Sviridov studied in his class at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1937-1941). There was no theme in art. And it was on this day that the Artist and the Theme finally found each other. The "Poem to the Memory of Sergei Yesenin" focuses on the main aesthetic priority of Sviridov - new traditionalism. Sviridov's music is simple, sometimes static, but this simplicity is very complexly organized; the traditional musical language incorporates the achievements of 20th century music - sonerics and neo-folklorism. At the time of his enthusiasm for the finally permitted (albeit in a metered) avant-garde, Sviridov went against the current - towards the natural Russian singing (in a broad sense) intonation. The Poem became for Sviridov the first step into the depths of the national tradition: subsequently, this path naturally led to an absolute rejection of “worldly” music; in the late period of his creative work (from the beginning of the 1980s), the composer writes exclusively in the spiritual genre, and the znamenny chant becomes the intonation basis of his music. "The Poem to the Memory of Sergei Yesenin" was of great public importance, arousing an unprecedented interest both in Yesenin's work and in general to the theme of the Russian countryside. It is Sviridov's musical composition that stands at the origins of “village prose” as a powerful stylistic trend in Russian literature of the late 1950s - mid-1980s (among the authors - Vasily Belov, Valentin Rasputin, Fedor Abramov, Boris Mozhaev and others). There are ten numbers in the poem, and all of them, one way or another, are imbued with nostalgia for "wooden Russia" (the name of the cantata, also based on Yesenin's poems). Remarkable are the two culminations of the cycle - numbers 9 and 10. No. 9 - "I am the last poet of the village" - a quiet sad song from the depths of the heart: the significance of each note and phrase is emphasized by a meager orchestral accompaniment (tonic quint, just like in "Organ-grinder" of the cycle "Winter Way" by Schubert). № 10 - "The sky is like a bell ..." - a festive bell finale, in which, however, one can feel the author's ambiguous attitude to the death of old Russia.

Mikhail Segelman

About the artist

How

Sviridov, Georgy (Yuri) Vasilievich (1915-1998), Russian composer.
Born December 3 (16), 1915 in Fatezh (Kursk province) in the family of a postal employee. My father died during the Civil War. After graduating from a music school in Kursk, he studied at the Leningrad 1st Music College, and since 1936 - at the composition department of the Leningrad Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1941 in the class of D.D. Shostakovich. From 1956 he lived in Moscow; worked in theater and cinema, in 1968-1973 he headed the Union of Composers of the RSFSR.

As a composer, Sviridov made his debut with a cycle of romances based on poems by Pushkin (1935) - a bright and still repertoire composition; in his early instrumental opuses (piano trio, string quartet, various piano compositions, etc.) Shostakovich's influence was noticeable. But from the mid-1950s, starting with the magnificent Poem in Memory of Sergei Yesenin (1956), the composer's individual style was defined, which was rather the opposite of Shostakovich and his school. First of all, Sviridov focused on genres associated with the Russian poetic word - cantata, oratorio, vocal cycle (the boundaries between genres are often blurred with him), and all his highest achievements are associated with this area, although among the composer's few instrumental music there is real masterpieces, among them - Small triptych for orchestra (1966) and Snowstorm (musical illustrations for Pushkin's story, 1974). In addition, the name of Sviridov is associated with a movement in Russian music characteristic of the 1960s, which is sometimes called the "new folklore wave". The reference points in this movement were the aforementioned Poem in Memory of Sergei Yesenin, the vocal cycle My father is a peasant (1957), the cantata Wooden Rus (1964) and the poem Pulling Russia away (1977) to Yesenin's verses, as well as - to a very large extent - the Kursk cantata songs (1964) to genuine folk tunes and texts and a number of works based on Blok's poems (in particular, vocal cycles Petersburg Songs, 1964, and Six Songs, 1977), Nekrasov (Spring Cantata, 1972), Pushkin (Pushkin Wreath, 1979). Sviridov also wrote on the verses of Mayakovsky (for example, the Pathetic Oratorio, 1959), Pasternak ("little cantata" It's Snowing, 1965), Lermontov, Khlebnikov, A.A. Prokokofiev, M.V. Isakovsky, A.T. Tvardovsky and translated texts by Shakespeare, Burns, Isahakian.

The main feature of the composer's style can be considered a reliance on the primary national genre (in almost all of his works, one way or another, the song basis can be traced) and on national intonation, speech and song (in this sense, Sviridov is the successor of Mussorgsky); then we can talk about laconicism and wise simplicity of forms, transparency of texture, etc. "Sviridov's simplicity", which has nothing to do with "simplification", is in fact a complex phenomenon: in modern studies it is sometimes compared with the tendencies towards minimalism in Western culture, and the composer's constant desire to work with words is considered as nostalgia for the primary inseparability of music and verse; Sviridov's "neo-folklorism" can also be viewed in the same vein - the acquisition of roots. With even greater grounds, one can speak of nostalgia in connection with the imaginative world of his music, which often sounds like a cry for a lost homeland, a farewell to the departed ("departed") Russia.

The shrillness of Sviridov's intonation is peculiarly manifested in that layer of his work, which is associated with spiritual motives (meaning by this not "churchliness" in its pure form, but rather the state "near church walls"). One of the first, very early he turned to this layer, creating in 1973 three wonderful choirs to the tragedy of A.K. Tolstoy Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and a choir concert in memory of A.A. Yurlov (a wonderful choirmaster who died early, one of the best performers of Sviridov's music) ... In the last decade of his life, Sviridov constantly worked on choirs for Church Slavonic texts: some of them were included in a large choral cycle of Chants and Prayers, but most of what was written has not yet been published and performed.

The creative biography of Sviridov as a whole is an amazing example of internal freedom and independence with external complete adaptation to the existing political and social conditions: he received the title of People's Artist of the USSR, the star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, laureate of state awards, his music (from film Time, Go!) sounded (and still sounds) in the headband of the news of the first state TV channel; at the same time, one can often hear Sviridov's melodies performed by street musicians (especially Waltz and Romance from the Snowstorm).

Snow is falling, snow is falling.

To the white stars in the blizzard

Geranium flowers stretch

For the window coverings.

It's snowing and everything is in disarray

Everything starts flying ...

Little cantata on the verses of Boris Pasternak

"It is snowing" is Sviridov's appeal to Pasternak's poetry after many decades of meditation. It is curious that “this poet, close to music in his life and musical in his poems, nevertheless, apparently, has never attracted the attention of composers before,” writes A. Sokhor, a researcher of Sviridov's work. - Sviridov, thus ... acted as a pioneer, and not in the figurative, but in the literal sense of the word.

For his little cantata, Sviridov selected three poems from the last period of the poet's work, united by the theme "artist and time". These are "Snow is Falling ..." (1957), "Soul" and "Night" (1956). The little cantata was completed in 1965. The premiere took place on December 21, 1966 in Moscow, in the Great Hall of the Conservatory.

1st part, "Snow goes", conveys the measured, non-stop passage of time: sopranos and altos sing monotonously, on one note, the orchestral part fascinates with the repetition of two unsteady chords, lulling downward intonation.

In the 2nd part, "Soul", monotonous whirling reminds of the smooth course of time in the 1st. Here the sparse accompaniment with stretching sounds, against the background of which a simple melody in the spirit of a city song unfolds, creates a feeling of inner concentration, detachment from everything external.

3rd part, "Night", unexpected in its decision. This is a children's song performed by children's voices. The discants play a simple, almost primitive melody, accompanied by light abrupt chords. The images of nightlife, the bottomless depth of the sky are conveyed by the most simple means, but all the more unexpected is the conclusion in which the appeal arises:
Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist,

Don't fall asleep

You are a hostage of eternity

Time is in captivity.

Little cantata on the verses of Boris Pasternak

Cast: female choir, boys ensemble, orchestra.

History of creation

After the end of "Wooden Rus" in 1965, Sviridov conceived the next small cantata, this time on the verses of B. Pasternak (1890-1960). Although less noticeable, Pasternak's poetry also passed through the composer's entire life. The very first romances were written on his poems, which Sviridov himself considered so imperfect that he did not even include in the list of works.

The poetry of Pasternak never left the composer indifferent. In his diaries, over the years, he returns to her in one way or another. In particular, about Doctor Zhivago there is such a record: "Separate deep (though far from all-embracing) thoughts P about life, about Man and his destiny, about time, about the Revolution, which outraged Man ...".

"It's Snowing" is Sviridov's appeal to Pasternak's poetry after many decades of meditation. It is curious that “this poet, close in his life to music and musical in his poems, nevertheless, apparently, has never attracted the attention of composers before,” writes A. Sokhor, a researcher of Sviridov's work. - Sviridov, thus ... acted as a pioneer, and not in the figurative, but in the literal sense of the word.

For his little cantata, Sviridov selected three poems from the last period of the poet's work, united by the theme "artist and time". These are "Snow is Falling ..." (1957), "Soul" (the date of writing is unknown, the poem was not published in the USSR and was taken by Sviridov from a foreign source) and "Night" (1956). The little cantata was completed in 1965, in the same year No. 3 was published in the last, 12th issue of the magazine "Soviet Music". The premiere took place on December 21, 1966 in Moscow, in the Great Hall of the Conservatory.

Music

The first movement, "Snow is Falling," conveys the measured, non-stop passage of time: sopranos and altos sing monotonously, on one note, the orchestral part fascinates with the repetition of two unsteady chords, lulling descending intonation. In the second part, "Soul", the monotonous whirling reminds of the even course of time in the first. Here the sparse accompaniment with stretching sounds, against the background of which a simple melody in the spirit of a city song unfolds, creates a feeling of inner concentration, detachment from everything external.