Значение культуры

in the spirit of the finest Russian classical traditions, which they  strove

to protect from modernistic influences.

    Procofyev was a man of independent thinking who traveled his own  way.

He was one of the greatest masters of the new, Soviet period in the  history

of the Russian music. Never satisfied with his achievements,  Procofyev  was

forever probing, forever working on new ideas. The development of  music  in

the first half of this century is unthinkable without him.

    Operas and  ballets  held  an  important  place  among  the  works  he

created. The opera Love for Three Oranges was written in1919 and has  become

very popular. Procofyev wrote another opera in the twenties  –  The  Flaming

Angel, but did not live to see it on the stage. No more than  two  fragments

of it were performed in his lifetime.

    Ballet music appealed to Procofyev even more than the  opera.  Besides

his Buffoon he wrote three other ballet scores while abroad  –  The  Age  of

Steel, The Prodigal Son, and On the Dnieper. The Fourth Symphony,  the  last

to be written abroad, was the most interesting.

    Procofyev’s best works, written after his return to the  Soviet  Union

are: the ballet Romeo and Juliet (1935 - 1936), the symphonic fairy  –  tale

Peter and the Wolf (1936), the  heroic  cantata  Alexander  Nevsky  (1938  –

1939), the opera War and  Peace  (1941),  the  Fifth  Symphony  (1944),  the

ballet Cinderella (1944).

    The last five years of his life brought such important works as  the

Seventh Symphony, the oratorio  On  guard  of  peace,  the  symphonic  suite

Winter Fire and the ballet The Stone Flower. Unforgettable  are  Procofyev’s

sonatas and concertos for violin and many other compositions  revealing  the

finest qualities of his tremendous talent.

    Other greatest Russian composer is Igor Stravinsky.

    Stravinsky was a pupil of Rimsky – Korsakov, but  his  reputation  was

made by the music he wrote for the Diaghilev Ballet in Paris (The  Firebird,

Petrouchka, The Rite of Spring).  This  period  is  marked  by  interest  in

Russia folk song and brilliant orchestral coloring. The most varied  rhythms

are  used  for  percussive  effects  to  accentuate   the   brutally   harsh

sonorities,  and  a  highly  dissonant  harmony  results  from  the  use  of

polytonality.

    About 1920, Stravinsky struck out in directions that were new,  partly

in technique and partly in the kinds of subjects and mediums  employed.  His

technique showed a new restrained, a less dissonant and  more  tonal  style,

and greater clarity of form; in short,  a  tendency  toward  the  neoclassic

style. His material was typically drawn from the classics of the  eighteenth

century. The great variety of the musical types after 1920  is  astonishing:

oratorios, chamber music,  concertos,  ballets,  symphonies,  pieces  for  a

piano, and so on. Every work  of Stravinsky’s has a  special  individuality,

and in each he achieves a uniqueness of style and solves a problem to  which

he seldom returns. Directly  after  first  World  War,  Stravinsky  wrote  a

number of works marked by economy of means and expression, using a few  solo

players (The Soldier’s Tale; The Wind Octet). Later, in his “third”  period,

he returned  to  the  larger  forms  of  the  symphony  (Symphony  in  Three

Movements, 1945). Stravinsky’s  early  interest  in  American  jazz  rhythms

dates from Ragtime (1918). A more ambitious work ,  Ebony  Concerto  (1945),

for jazz band, appeared after he  had  settled  permanently  in  the  United

States.

    On the whole, Stravinsky’s style  is  essentially  anti-romantic.  The

elasticity and primitive vigor of his rhythms was  calculated  to  represent

his non-romantic subject matter,  and  his  melodies,  especially  in  later

works,  are  deliberately  matter  –  of  –  fact,  dry,  and   occasionally

commonplace, as a reaction to the expressive melodies of Romanticism.

Stravinsky uses the tonal material of the  diatonic   (seven  –  tone)

scale, sometimes combined with the old  modes.  His  early  polytonality  is

replaced later by clearer tonality, but his dissonant harmony is  often  the

result of the combination of polyphonic voices. A  special  feature  of  his

style is parallel dissonant chords or intervals.

    Stravinsky was always a virtuoso orchestrator. A fondness for the  dry

brilliant sonorities  of  the  woodwinds  and  particularly  the  percussion

instruments  tended  to  relegate  the  strings  to   the   background.   To

individualize the voice parts of chords, Stravinsky often  used  instruments

of different timbre.

    As a young man, Stravinsky burst on the musical scene with ballet  The

Rite of Spring. It excited everybody, exhilarated  a  number,  and  outraged

more. Stravinsky’s later styles were also  viewed  with  alarm  –  often  by

those who had just accustomed themselves to his  earlier  style.  They  were

dry, the wells of inspiration had run out, some  said.  The  truth  was,  of

course, that Stravinsky was simply  being  himself,  and  like  every  great

artist, his style changed, as he did, from work to work.  No  one,  however,

has ever denied Stravinsky’s consummate draftsmanship, his deep respect  for

the past, or his extraordinary impact on the music of the present day.

As for Russian pop music I could say almost nothing. I  don’t  know  a

contemporary pop singer or compositor who, by my  opinion,  bring  in  world

musical culture anything really great. But I think that  our  time  arranges

to make anything memorable in the musical area and may be soon we could  see

a birth a new Russian musical talent.

    In conclusion I should say that music is the  greatest  occurrence  in

our life. From this work we can see that music don’t has limits and  however

it try  to  unite  the  people  in  the  world.  Someone  famous  said  that

mathematics is the universal language. I’m ready to argue  –  music  is  the

universal language, because this language understands everyone. If you  want

understand foreigner – listen his native music and you  will  see  his  true soul.