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p If one imagines dramatic art as a symphony orchestra, then music is one of the instruments in that orchestra. In other words, it has to be properly integrated with all the other “ instruments” to produce the artistic whole.

p Music is coming to play an increasing role in the drama theatre, but unfortunately it is not always assigned its proper function. The chief bane here is “illustration”, which leads straight to vulgarity and melodrama. We usually find music accompanying the actor, illustrating whatever he happens to be doing. It is commonly employed as an auxiliary element intended to reinforce the action.

p This aspect of production tends to be left to the director’s discretion, to his personal taste and intuition, as it were, and very often the result is an extremely primitive use of this important expressive means.

p I am referring to the music introduced by the individual theatre as a psychological element, and not to the music that derives from the “given circumstances” of a work and is part of its very fabric, and simply cannot be dispensed with. For some reason theatre folk and critics pay very little attention to this matter: the latter tend to ignore music, and indeed design too, in their analysis of a production. Yet music, if handled properly, can produce an extremely powerful impact on the audience. Since the theatre disposes of this expressive means and its use is increasing, it is time we made a conscious effort to determine certain principles governing its use.

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p We are only concerned here with the dramatic theatre, since music clearly has quite different functions and purposes in opera, where it is the basis of the work and the medium through which everything is expressed.

p It seems to me that music in the drama is a very dangerous weapon to handle, and that there is one rule that must invariably apply: music should only be used when it is indispensable. In order to decide whether the music is really necessary in a production, one has only to try and dismiss the music, imagine that for some technical reason there can be no music in today’s performance and ask oneself whether or not the performance can take place anyway. If it can, then the music was not really necessary, since it was not an organic part of the production. Could Princess Turandot, for example, be performed without music? Clearly it never could.

p Another thing that must be borne in mind is the genre key of the work. The question is whether the author’s method of presenting life, the degree of convention involved, calls for the introduction of music as an element of the production. There are certain dramatists (Gorky, for example) into whose works I simply cannot imagine music being introduced. Thus, one must first of all decide the functions the music will have in the conventions agreed upon with the audience.

p I feel that music can only produce a real emotional impact through contrast. Here the important thing is to decide “contrast with what?” Thus, the music and the actors may be contrasted to the scenery and all the other elements, or the music and the scenery may “ally” against the actor. It is essential to accurately determine the place of the music in relation to the other elements of production. Chekhov, superb dramatist that he was, understood this very well. Suffice it to recall the magnificent use of music in The Three Sisters-the march in Act Four. This is a perfect example of the device of contrast: at the moment when the sisters say goodbye to their dream a joyous march strikes up to which the regiment marches off.

p Great dramatists were also, as a rule, brilliant directors, and we are hard put to find a case where the music was not used according to the principle of contrast in a work. We may not always be able to grasp at first sight what exactly it is in contrast with, but only very rarely does it sound in unison with a character.

p This should be the goal of the stage-director today. I should say that the only genre where a unison musical solution is possible is parody.

p In the Gorky Theatre production of The Death of the Squadron the sailors abandon the ship in the last scene to the strains of rousing, triumphant music. This is the tragic climax of the production.

p In our production of The Idiot we have a musical theme that creates 266 a highly tense atmosphere around Myshkin, who goes around with a smile on his face as though unable to hear it. Imagine how ghastly it would be if the actor “played to the music”, expressing anguish and a premonition of impending disaster.

p One more example. In the Moscow Stanislavsky Theatre production of First Day of Freedom you have a deserted town, music and a man coming onto the stage arousing a sense of fear, desolation and solitude, while the scenery is quite idyllic. Here we have a dramatic contrast between the music and the actor on the one hand and the scenery on the other.

p There is also the case where the music carries the theme of one of the characters in contrast to all the others. Thus, in our production of A Memory of Two Mondays we have a scene where Mister Eagle is accompanied by music, while the life of all the other characters is in complete contrast to his life and behaviour. However, since the music is in unison with one of the characters and everything else is contrasted to him and this music, the whole has a symphonic ring.

p In a certain American film there was a scene where the hero and heroine board an ocean liner amid a gay festive atmosphere of music, flowers and happy smiling faces. The liner draws slowly away from the quayside and the camera remains fixed so that a life belt gradually comes into our field of vision with the word “Titanic” on it. And the louder the crowd shouts from the quayside and the louder the music plays, the more powerful the impact of that fateful word “Titanic” for it spells death.

p Whatever may be said about good, interesting, appropriate application of music, I remain firmly convinced that it will always be most expressive in a production if used according to this principle of contrast. Nevertheless, I do not intend to dictate any general formulae and insist that they are valid in all situations, since every production requires its own particular solution.

p A play where music is an organic element of the dramatic structure is The Optimistic Tragedy, in which the author actually thinks in sweeping musical-rhythmic images. If there are dramatic works which do not seem to necessarily require music, Vishnevsky’s play is unthinkable without it: here it is one of the main means of revealing the •emotional state of the characters and provides the rhythmic transition from one scene to another, thereby serving as a major unifying factor in the action.

p From the very first lines of the work one is struck by the way the author thought in musical images. Here are the opening words. “ Musical introduction. A roar of overwhelming power and sadness. Rapid bursts of powerful delight, stirring and breathtaking. The din of human 267 activities, an anguished cry ‘Why?’, a frenzied search for answers and discoveries.” Later on, we find these “musical stage directions” cropping up throughout the play. They help us create the right atmosphere and intensify the action at times when the emotional tension reaches such a degree that words seem useless and even a nuisance.

p “In the silence, somebody’s boundless human pain, which can only be given musical expression” Vishnevsky writes in one of the stage directions early in the play. The final stage direction at the end of Act One runs, in part, as follows: “The first movements of the dance. The first couples have moved into the lyrical wave of the waltz which is at once sad and militant.... A slightly repressed sadness in the rhythms .... Armed men intersect the rhythms. A signal vibrates, calling the men into line .... The waltz writhes in a death agony .... The sailors have moved off .... A flash of bronze. The regiment roars out a thunderous song.” These words are like a lyric tale expressed in music of the “sailors’ farewell ball”, of the naval regiment leaving for the front.

p The musical features given by the author-the tempestuous rhythms of the regiment setting out on its road to glory, the stinging anguish of the last farewell waltz and the vibrating alarms calling the men to form up-all this, together with the general emotional colouring of the scene calls forth in our imagination an image of epic sweep, a universalised image of farewell to those marching off to war.

p Thus, “musical commentaries” help us make a concrete generalisation, while the generalisation takes the form of a complete musical-artistic image imbuing Vishnevsky’s stage directions with colossal emotional power.

p The director felt that the stage direction at the end of Act One represented a definite musical programme for the composer.

p Now let us look at the beginning of Act Two. “An uneasy, threatening silence. Hardly discernible horizon. Storm clouds. The regular movement of the chain .... Music conveys the first sounds of battle .... The roar of battle gradually fades away in the air. A night attack has passed before us. The music conveys the battle fading away into the distance and morning advancing over the sea. The sounds are harmoniously clear and pure and enter the blood.”

p Here the author’s “musical commentary” is somewhat different. We are not given a precise indication of what the music should be like, as in the case cited above, but only the general theme which the composer should elaborate.

p Similarly in the finale of Act Two: “The regiment stands in a precise mass. It has moved off. Sweeping, stirring rhythms .... The movement of the regiment is magnificent”.

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p In Act Three where the dramatic action comes to a climax the “musical commentary” is again different, once more acquiring its former concrete, “programme” character.

p After the capture of the group of sailors led by the Commissar, we have the following stage direction: “A musical prelude, full of the themes whose roar has just faded, feverish excitement, expectations of death and dialogues with fate. Night birds cry over the plain, while the captive sailors sleep hugging the earth”.

p In the grand finale, after the death of the Commissar: “A musical appeal breaks the silence ... a naked, rending burst.... Like the flow of mighty rivers bathed in light, like the overwhelming, awe-inspiring forces of nature, terrifying in their growth, raw, coarse, colossal sounds are heard, purged of all melody-the roar of cataclysms and the torrents of life”.

p I have already spoken of the two genre layers in Vishnevsky’s tragedy: the exalted, heroic pathos of the author’s stage directions and the Narrators’ lines, and the concrete sketches of sailors’ life and the period details of the civil war years. Everything that has been cited above provided the basic material, the point of departure for the composer in creating the music for the first genre layer. This music must have an independent significance and be an artistic component of the production alongside the text of the play, the actors’ skill and the scenery.

p But the author also gave indications in the play of the need for music for the second layer, music which we stage-directors generally refer to as the “internal music”, and which, although important has no independent artistic value.

p How were the general principles of the production solution realised in the work of the composer?

p The combination of convention with real-life authenticity that underlay the general solution was expressed in the music by a clear distinction between the fundamental, independent music, written entirely by Kara Karayev, and the “borrowed” music, selected by him for guitar or choir, and in some cases orchestrated.

p Moreover, as in the play itself, so in the music the conventional was organically fused with vivid, lively “period” elements and authentic colour. The division between the two musical layers was strictly adhered to and the two were often interwoven and used to enrich each other in the general fabric of the production.

p Take, for example, the “Sailors’ Waltz”, specially written by Kara Karayev for the sailors’ farewell ball scene. The music evokes associations with dozens of other waltzes and is strangely familiar while being at the same time fresh and original. It is started on the accordion and 269 then taken up by the orchestra, combining the charm of authentic “period” intonations and devices with a profoundly poetic image of farewell pain that provides the emotional background for the whole scene. When the same melody is played by Alexei on the accordion, we perceive it as an old, familiar tune.

p The same applies to the “March of the Regiment”, which sounds just like the marches to the strains of which sailors set off for the front during the civil war and at the same time is a symbol, an image reflecting the heroic spirit of those times.

p Or take the “Variag” melody, begun on the accordion and taken up by the orchestra in the scene of the battle by the stone wall, which is one of the musical leitmotifs of the production, associated with the selfless courage of the sailors.

p The regiments “road” found musical expression in the afore- mentioned “March of the Regiment” and also in the sweeping march-like “Party Theme”. The “March of the Regiment” and the “Party Theme” were the musical leitmotifs of the production, in different variations according to the dramatic intensity of the events, building up to full pitch in the finale.

p The “March of the Regiment” is first heard as a stern swelling theme in the scene of the sailors’ departure for the front. In the finale of Act Two it sounds again, this time quietly, as a gently insistent call, illustrating as it were the formation of the First Naval Regiment. It is heard again, before the night watch scene, in sharp, precise rhythms, expressing the firm step of the regulars of the Red Army, “where every man knows where he is going and why”. In the last scene, “In Captivity”, the march sounds as the roar of battle, a hymn of triumph and liberation. It changes sharply in the last bars, where the sailors appear bearing the dying Commissar, expressing anxious anticipation.

p The “Party Theme” is a powerful, integrated piece of music, which gradually, in the course of the play, becomes the theme of the Commissar heroic life, based on the same musical material.

p The Commissar has failed in her attempt to unite “members of the Communist Party and sympathisers”. The sailors have all left except for the stubborn “little Finn”, Vainonen. He and the Commissar stand alone on the vast deserted deck.

p “Commissar: You’re alone?

p “Vainonen: You’re alone too, Commissar.

p “Commissar: No. There’s the Party.”

p Here the “Party Theme” comes in for the first time, clearly and precisely, not yet in its complete form, but already expressing power and strength, and faith in the triumph of the Party’s great cause. The theme returns after the scene at the anarchist camp, this time dramatic- 270 ally, not so much the theme as its various elements creating an impression of general alarm with the piercing notes of the trumpet calls and restrained pizzicato of the strings.

p After the night battle scene, when the Commissar gets the demoralised anarchists to reform and leads them into the attack, the “Party Theme” sounds as a triumphant brass fanfare, in a major, assertive tone, ending with sharp finality. When, after a pause, the “Farewell Waltz” plays, full of lyrical sadness as an old memory, the necessary musical-emotional contrast is created for the transition to the scene where the Commissar sits down on a rough stool to write a letter to her mother in her faraway home town of Petrograd.

p The events build up towards a climax. The Commissar has decided to begin battle with Vozhak. Once again the “Party Theme” sounds forth, this time in a sharp, imperative, purposeful manner.

p The “Party Theme” plays at the beginning of Act Three, creating an atmosphere of anxious, almost tragic premonition, with the trumpets sounding warning notes.

p When, betrayed by Siply, the small group of men under the Commissar are smashed, encircled and pressed back to the stone wall, Alexei siezes his accordion and the strains of “Variag”, so dear to the sailors’ hearts, spread over the steppe, to be taken up by the orchestra. The sailors prepare to counter-attack and once again the “Party Theme” swells up as a stirring melody forcing us to relive the scenes of base treachery and unequal struggle. This time the “Party Theme” is imbued with tragic feelings and sounds as a solemn march of triumph and respect for those who die rather than surrender.

p When the curtain rises to reveal the magnificent spectacle of the southern night sky with the countless stars of the Milky Way, a Nocturne begins with gently quivering strings, illustrating the calm grandeur of nature. The captive sailors lie side by side “hugging the ground” and once more stirring emotional contrasts arise in the music.

p When the “Party Theme”, now the Commissar’s Theme, plays for the last time in the scene of the Commissar’s death, it is like a requiem, dedicated to the immortality of the fighters of the revolution.

p Description of the enemy camp plays an important part in the musical side of the production, and is embodied in the “Enemy Theme”. It first makes its appearance in the night battle scene when the sailors crawl forward towards the barbed wire, intent on the imminent attack. It is a violent, treacherous, ugly theme, played by solo wood instruments. In the night watch scene it appears again, cautious and furtive this time, emphasising the tense atmosphere before the enemy assault.

p After Vainonen has been treacherously killed by Siply, the “Enemy Theme” swells threateningly, gradually lashing the whole orchestra, 271 ugly and dully-mechanical, culminating in a frenzied, inhuman din of trumpets and triumphant, strident trombones. It is drowned out by the feverish rattle of the machine-gun as the small group of sailors fight desperately with their backs to the wall to withstand the enemy onslaught.

p The “relay of generations” theme at the beginning and end was given musical expression in the “Sailors’ Paradise Theme”. This appears in the prologue as a bright, cheerful flow of harmonies with the occasional intervening deep trumpet calls. When the same theme, unaltered, sounds once more in the epilogue, the beginning and the end-the present and the past-are musically related, emphasising the closed-circuit composition of the work.

p In addition to the aforementioned themes, Kara Karayev wrote a prelude, a kind of overture, to the accompaniment of which the Narrators come down through the audience and mount the stage to take their place on the enormous rostrum from which they will address the spectators.

p In our production, the Narrators were directly included in the action of the play and their “interruptions” also given musical expression. The “Narrators’ Theme” is in a deeply reflective mood, expressing vital questions and the painful search for answers.

p The Nocturne, which we have already mentioned, stands somewhat apart from the rest of the music. The composer conceived it as a lyrical contrast between the fading din of battle and the calm grandeur of nature.

p Although the orchestra was not very numerous, with all the limitations this involved, Kara Karayev managed to produce music that has artistic value in its own right, with all the wealth of timbre, colours and shades of a diverse and brilliantly executed orchestration.

p The “internal music” in our production was strictly “ documentary” and designed to create local colour, and period detail and atmosphere. Usually such music is chosen by the director and may then be orchestrated by the composer.

p The “internal music” may play diverse roles in a production. Sometimes it provides an additional psychological stroke to a character,, sometimes it creates the necessary atmosphere, and sometimes it serves to give emotional relief after a particularly tense scene or a comic contrast to some dramatic event.

The rollicking “Barinya”, the melancholic “Yablochko”, “Siskin” played as a solemn march at the Commander’s entry, the “Variag” played before the fierce hand-to-hand battle with the enemy-all this music, played by Alexei on the accordion, provides additional strokes to his portrait. All this is given by the author. We, for our part, introduced several songs of the period in addition.

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p Thus, in the dialogue between Alexei and the Commissar, we had Alexei, in an attempt to assert his independence, enter playing the already familiar “Sailors’ Waltz”, followed in swift succession by a hypersentimental rendering of the gypsy romance “Dark Eyes” and the rollicking “Char-a-banc”. After the dialogue Alexei exits singing the civil war favourite “Tsiplyonok”, a kind of anarchist anthem.

p To the wild strumming of a guitar, Vozhak hoarsely drones “Hostile whirlwinds sweep above us . . .,” esconced in state amid the plunder. “Into the battle fierce, sacred and just. . .,” he continues, energetically stirring a strange brew of moonshine and stolen wines in an enormous samovar. “Left, right, forward march, the workers....”

p The grotesque incompatibility of the revolutionary “Varsoviennc” and the ambiance in which it sounds is like profanation of the revolutionary cause and stresses Vozhak’s essential hostility to the revolution.

p With a lump in his throat, Siply sings the saccharine folk-cum-thieves romance “The Splendid Roses Shed Their Petals”, dreaming of the Commissar. “When the war’s over, I wouldn’t mind marrying a woman like that!”

p “Only you, my dear, sit by my bedside . . .,” he sings throbbing with emotion-and a moment later orders two perfectly innocent people to be shot. Thus this romance helps to bring out the monstrous combination of sniveling sentimentality and brutality in Siply’s character.

p After the arrest of the Commander and the Boatswain’s Mate, Alexei and Siply’s rendering of the song “Sleep Mine Own Child” in front of the Commissar is full of gloating triumph.

p The old sailors’ song “The Open Sea” appears twice in the course of the play, each time with a special function, creating a certain atmosphere. The first time, during the lower deck scene, the first scene in the play, it wells up from the crew’s quarters to accordion accompaniment full of pain and hopelessness. “Comrade, I haven’t the strength to stand watch, said the stoker to the stoker....”

p This hushed protracted singing gave a special colouring to the dialogue between Vainonen and Alexei about the future. Alexci’s insistent questions acquire ever new shades: “So it’s all going to be alright?”, “For those who get killed too?” “Perhaps you can tell me what it means now, to be alright?”

p The song sounds the second time in the captivity scene. The sailors sit in a group around the Commissar. In reply to the demand of the Officer of the enemy forces that they give away their forces’ positions, the sailors begin to sing, at first softly, then louder and louder. The singing unites them, makes them feel the power of their comradeship, their superiority over the enemy.

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p The Officer is furious. “A Bolshevik strike!” he screams. But the song swells into a mighty chorus, a vast choir singing an old song familiar from childhood days.

p Here then the song has a completely different function. It helped us create the atmosphere of comradeship among the sailors, and disrespect and scorn for the enemy. At the same time the tune and the words were such as to enable us to avoid an excessively forthright solution, giving the scene a latent sadness, natural in people doomed to die.

p At the end of Act Two the familiar “Tsiplyonok” comes up again,, but this time in a completely different manner, producing comic relief.

p The sixth scene (Vozhak’s camp) is crammed with dramatic events. After the farcical interrogation, the captured officers arc shot. The last battle between the Commissar and Vozhak builds up to the maximum dramatic pitch. But Vozhak has been shot and the Commander and the Boatswain’s Mate have been freed, and the sailors are eagerly awaiting further developments.

p The text contains the following stage direction: “Suddenly, singing is heard from somewhere, drawing nearer and nearer . ...” A voice cries: “Anarchist reinforcements!” With a great deal of noise and the usual lack of discipline a new mob of sailors appears, wearing their weapons anyhow.

p On the basis of the words “Suddenly, singing is heard from somewhere, drawing nearer and nearer”, we made this entry musical, but not by means of a song. In our production, the anarchist unit arrives quite unaware that Vozhak has been shot, led by a highly picturesque “band” with piccolos, violins, a trombone and a huge drum with cymbals, playing “Tsiplyonok” as a solemn march. This absurd, grotesque assortment of instruments and the highly ironic orchestration of the tune together with the wild and woolly appearance of the contingent of reinforcements with their menacing banner of the skull and crossbones on a black background after all we have just witnessed, creates a highly comic effect and relieves the tension.

p Thus, the “internal music”, serving the most various purposes, gave us extra opportunities to develop the characters, create atmosphere and organise strictly rhythmic transitions between the scenes and episodes in the play.

I have been speaking only of what I personally consider to be of importance, the main principles underlying the musical side of a production. These principles must be found, for it is a very sad state of affairs when such an important aspect of theatrical production depends entirely on the director’s whim and intuition as is so often the case today.