Composer Alexey Rybnikov: "The Antichrist is not against Christ, but instead"

Composer Alexey Rybnikov: "The Antichrist is not against Christ, but instead"


— Alexei Lvovich, today your opera “Prince Andrei” based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” sounds somehow super-relevant. Did you foresee something when you started working on this material?

- I started working on this material in 2010, that is, 12 years ago. The idea wandered around me, and I thought: “Well, what nonsense is it to take on such an unbearable topic ...” Moreover, Prokofiev's opera exists, is known all over the world. There were doubts until the genre was “groped”, which we later called “opera-drama”. It has elements of both rock and classics, and in general everything in the world. Of course, I partially realized this genre even earlier in Juno and Avos. But in "Prince Andrei" he was fully formed. And it seems to me that for the modern public it is relevant.

- Why was it called “Prince Andrei”, and not “Pierre” or “Natasha”?

- It is impossible to embrace the immensity, as Kozma Prutkov said. I decided to follow the fate of only one character and through him to understand all the events of the novel. And then all of a sudden a form emerged, which is an extremely important component. There were sketches, for some time the material just lay there. And so it continued until the pandemic, when I was locked up outside the city and police posts made sure that I didn’t go anywhere, God forbid, and that I sat and wrote. And it turned out to be a two-act version, rather compressed, with a tense plot. I wrote everything in a couple of months.

- Did you release it as a director?

Yes, this is my second production after Liturgy of the Catechumens. Technically, it is very difficult. There are many light scenes, everything is controlled by a computer. The actors have to fit into this electronic score, you know. Everything has to be perfect in seconds. And we have a lot of people employed - artists, musicians 16 people, 12 people from the New Moscow Ballet. Plus the technical part - the installers who participate in the action. In total, there are almost 80 people in the performance.

Photo: Dmitry Korobeinikov





“That is, the performance has undergone a very serious upgrade. Has anything changed in terms of content?

- No no. The performance uses the prose of Leo Tolstoy. Only the texts of Napoleon's diary, the decrees of Alexander I and the text of his speech on the square in Paris have been added.

- Apparently, when a work is really brilliant, it does not require updating. I know that you have taken up making films based on your musical performances.

- Yes. I discovered a new genre. I had musical films - that is, ordinary films with songs. Like, for example, "The Adventures of Buratino." But I must admit, I didn’t like movies-performances terribly. Any performance on video makes a terrible impression. But you just need to be able to shoot it, apply special methods. I had an excellent cameraman Alexander Martynov, and my grandson, film producer and director Stepan Rybnikov, also worked with me. We filmed Liturgy of the Catechumens, Spirit of Sonora. I showed them at the film markets in Berlin, in Cannes. It was 2019, the epidemic had begun, and we joked that we had "closed" Cannes. Of course, these films are not intended for distribution in cinemas - they are very theatrical, conditional. And I came up with the idea to show them in the theater, combining them with "live" performances. “The Liturgy of the Catechumens” along with “The Quietest Prayers”, because these are parts of one large cycle.

— Tell us more about the Silent Prayers.

- "The Quietest Prayers" is the first part of a large cycle called "Sequence Ultima" - "the final sequence." There is a prologue in heaven and a prologue in hell. The prologue in heaven is "The Quietest Prayers", where only saints, prophets, angels participate. If, according to Dante, this is heaven. There is not a gram of a minor there, there is no theme of repentance, the recognition of one's own sinfulness, which is characteristic of prayers. The texts of sacred scriptures are used, everything where there is deliverance from earthly hardships. It is insanely difficult when the whole work has to go in major, in enlightenment. We are used to living inside conflicts, contradictions. Here it had to be abandoned. The second movement is the Sixth Symphony, a symphony of twilight and darkness. This is a prologue in other worlds. "The Rise of Hell" - when not the soul enters hell, but hell itself ascends to earth. The third part is the Liturgy of the Catechumens, where there is both light and darkness, and a man appears. The last part is "The Resurrection of the Dead". This composition has already been performed many times in different countries. The first performers of my symphonic works were excellent conductors - Valery Gergiev, Teodor Currentzis.

- So you are creating a multi-genre concept that combines cinema, theater and concert?

- Yes exactly. On our order, they made a huge black screen - they made it in Germany and literally just brought it, despite the whole world situation. We use this screen in Prince Andrey.

You have just finished work on the book. Is this your second book?

— Yes, it is such, it is possible to tell, mystification. It's called "The Deer Turned Its Head". Four different works, written in different styles, as if by different authors. But as a result, all come down to the same theme of awareness of the world in which we are now.

“And what kind of world is this?”

- In order to understand this, you need to fly a little above the globe and look at it from the side, imagine as if we are aliens. And now we understand that there were different eras, different civilizations on earth. There were ancient civilizations, the Sumerians and so on. Then the civilizations of Ancient Egypt. Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome. After Ancient Rome came our era. What does our era mean? Now we are all living in 2022 AD. Era after the birth of Christ. Within the framework of our era, an unprecedented, unheard of art arose. Picturesque, architectural, musical. Within the framework of this our era, a science arose that moved us into space. We fly into the air, we drive cars, we use electronics. All this within the framework of our era, which dictated its values.

And now we are presented with the values ​​of the next era. What is the fight for? For the values ​​of this supernova era to become generally accepted, and for the era of Christianity to become a thing of the past. And it turns out that instead of the art created within the framework of the Christian era, a new art should arise. Anti-art. After all, the word "anti" from Greek is translated not only as "against", but also "instead of".

The most striking example of this anti-art is Malevich's Black Square. You are used to seeing icons. You are used to seeing painting. You are used to seeing something beautiful on a canvas. I'll cover everything with black paint. And instead of painting there will be a “Black Square”. Instead of music, which asserted both harmony and form, a certain sound arose outside the form, outside the harmony, outside the melody. That is, all the main positions were canceled, anti-music arose. Instead of a family, the love of a man and a woman, it is proposed to blur all gender characteristics. And it will turn out anti-family, anti-love. That is, everything with the prefix anti - represents new values. Instead of Christ, we are offered an anti-Christian epoch. It is written in the Holy Scriptures: the Antichrist will come. And this means - not someone against Christ, but instead of Christ ...

"Liturgy of the catechumens". Photo: theater press service





Therefore, we live at the break of these two eras. And all the events that are taking place now are a war between the Christian and anti-Christian eras. This is why there is a war going on. Not because of territories, not because of political ambitions. This is a war of values.

- If this is an objective process, then how to resist it?

“This is how we resist, this is how we must resist. I really would not want this to happen now, because, alas, the end of the world will follow this. I don't want this to happen now. Because the values ​​that we have now, they are, of course, given to us from above by God, and not from below. So I would like us, our children, and our grandchildren to continue to exist in them ...

- Recently I thought that it was your art that was really oppositional in Soviet times - your "Juno" and "Avos" with its Orthodox message, and not at all Lyubov's "Taganka" with the liberal "fig in your pocket."

— Alfred Schnittke wrote prayers to Orthodox texts in Shepitko's film Ascension, which he was categorically forbidden to do. Even in some microscopic version they struggled with it. And in "Juno" we made a whole performance, where there is the appearance of the Mother of God, where we have Orthodox prayers - the most important. And this somehow mysteriously remained on the stage of the Lenin Komsomol Theater. There was nothing like it, nothing similar in Soviet art. This is true.

- You once said that a composer of the 21st century has the right to use the entire arsenal of compositional means known to him. So what is contemporary music?

- There are many musical languages ​​... There is a traditional language, there is a pointillism technique, there is sonoristics, dodecaphony, there is jazz, there is rock, these are also musical dialects, musical languages ​​spoken by composers. It's stupid to reject something. This, by the way, is characteristic of those who speak an anti-musical language and consider it the only correct one. But musicians who speak traditional languages, including jazz or rock, watch with interest what is happening around. There is no aggression. Therefore, the usurpation of any one musical language is very wrong. You can speak different languages, but stay with yourself so that you can be recognized, your handwriting, your style.

- What is handwriting?

— In spiritual radiation. Here were the epigones of Shostakovich, since he captured so many. And they seem to write similarly, but there is no radiation. Music is a mysterious art, with the help of sounds you simply share spiritual and spiritual radiations directly. Your handwriting is in the radiation that the audience receives from you. You don't have to worry about handwriting. Mozart did not think about his creative style in order to differ from Salieri and other contemporaries. And yet, it was different. Not harmonies, not texture, not passages - they seem to be the same. But Mozart's music is brilliant and recognizable.

— There is mysticism in it.

If music is the key, what does it unlock? This is absolutely not amenable to science. This means that there are substances that are not defined by science, they are not defined in painting either. How many kilograms of paint you spent, what kind of canvas - you can count. And is it great or not? How we study a person - we do some kind of analyzes, encephalograms, we make a difficult diagnosis, but it is impossible to say whether he is a bastard or a very kind person. Man has more than just a mind. Reason will never dictate to us to stand up for a girl who was attacked by a bully. And a person rushes contrary to reason. Irrational forces still operate in a person, which allow him to be either a scoundrel or a hero. It has nothing to do with mind and brain.

- Then, probably, the attempt of people to fight the onset of this aggressive anti-epoch, which sweeps away our era, is also motivated not by the area of ​​\u200b\u200breason, but by what you are talking about?

“You can call it a soul, but I call it a “personality.” A person's personality that somehow reacts to everything without being their physical body.



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