Perm is one of the largest Russian centers of culture. It is famous for its Art Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art, Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and Choreographic School, one of the best in the world. In recent years due to "Flahertiana" festival the city has become one of the most famous centers of Russian documentary. The Flahertiana International Documentary Film Festival is the most important film festival in the world.
From 1995 to 2009 there were 9 festivals. They welcomed 512 participants and guests from different countries and cities of Russia. 611 films from 41 countries of Europe, Asia, Southern and Northern Americas and 16 cities of Russia were shown at the festival. About 52 000 people attended festival events. 53 films from 16 countries were awarded different festival prizes.
On the website of the festival one can read about Robert Flaherty, the great American filmmaker. Robert Flaherty (16.02.1884—23.07.1951) is an American director who takes a special place in documentary filmmaking of the XXth century. He didn't create his own school, but he started a new turn in the world of documentary films.
Flaherty did not separate cinematography from reality. His camera was always a participator in real life events. In contrast to European documentary filmmakers, Flaherty was neither a chronicler, nor an exposer. His films’ hero lives on the screen a part of his life. The hero’s life is directed by the author according to the laws of dramatic art. The first film of this genre, “Nanook of the North”, was made by Robert Flaherty in 1922. The film became the aesthetical manifest for many generations of cinema-makers.
III семестр
1. A pupil of a famous composer. Н.И.Либерман (p.115)
Toscanini comes to a little town in America. In the evening he goes for a walk. Suddenly he hears that some musician is playing Chopin in one of the houses. Toscanini stops and listens. Then he sees some paper in the window. It says: “Miss Smith. Music lessons. 2 dollars an hour.”
The composer thinks: “Miss Smith isn’t playing this piece well at all. She is wasting her time. She is making too many mistakes.”
So he decides to teach her how to play the piece. He rings the door-bell. The music stops and a young woman opens the door.
- Are you Miss Smith? – the composer asks her. – My name is Toscanini. I see that you are playing Chopin’s Nocturn. I want to show you how to play it better. Miss Smith is very happy. Toscanini’s name is familiar to her. She asks him to come in. The composer sits down at the piano and tries to teach Miss Smith how to play Chopin’s piece. Miss Smith thanks the composer and promises not to forget his lesson. Then Toscanini is leaving.
A year passes and Toscanini comes to the same town again. One day he passes Miss Smith’s house and he sees a new big piece of paper in the window. It says: “Miss Smith. Pupil of Toscanini. Music lessons. 4 dollars an hour.”
2. From the biography of Frantz Liszt. Н.И.Либерман (p. 152)
The great Hungarian pianist and composer Frantz Liszt was born on October 22nd, 1811 to the family of a poor musician in a small Hungarian village. His father wanted to give his son a good musical education. He began to teach him music when the boy was only five. The boy had excellent ear for music and a wonderful musical memory. Like the other boys of the village little Liszt didn’t go to school. A local priest taught him arithmetic, spelling and grammar. But the boy had other teachers too – great writers, poets and composers. Beethoven was his main idol.
once the little boy announced proudly to his parents that he was going to become a great composer like Beethoven.
In 1820 Adam Liszt brought his son to Vienna to persuade Karl Czerny who was one of Beethoven’s favourite pupils, to teach Frantz music. Czerny listened to the boy’s playing attentively. But to the surprise of Adam Liszt, the famous musician did not express any admiration or enthusiasm. He just agreed to give the boy music lessons for a small fee. But when after the twelfth lesson Adam Liszt brought him the fee, Czerny refused to take it, so much was he astonished by the phenomenal progress of his little pupil.
Two years later Listz began to study composition under Antonio Salieri. The former rival of Mozart was now an old man. Salieri grew very fond of Liszt and like Czerny gave him free music lessons almost every day.
On December 1st, 1823, Liszt gave his first public concert. It was the beginning of a wonderful career. His witty improvisations were a great success with the public.
So the youth decided to invite Beethoven to his next concert in order to hear his opinion. It was not easy to persuade Beethoven to come as he was old and sick. On April 13th, 1823, the concert took place and, to Liszt’s joy, Beethoven came too. For the first time in his life Liszt was really excired. He did his best to please the old composer. When Liszt finished his music piece, Beethoven came up to the stage and, to a storm of applause, kissed the young musician on his forehead. It seemed that Beethoven was passing over the immortal fire of true art to the new genius. Liszt was then only 11 years old.
3. Music in Britain. С.А.Шевелева (p. 207-208)
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English musicians had a great reputation in Europe, both for their talent and for their originality. It was their experiments in keyboard music which helped to form the base from which grew most of the great harpsichord and piano music. William Byrd was the most distinguished English composer of this time, and his name is still widely known.
In the centuries which followed, England produced no composers of world rank except for Purcell in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Elgar in the twentieth century. Today, however, many people believe that there has been a reflowering of English music, and that the compositions of some contemporary composers will live on after their deaths. The music of Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten and William Walton is performed all over the world.
Benjamin Britten was not modern in the musical sense of the word, but he was modern in his attitude towards his public. He has been called a ‘people’s composer’ because he composed music, particularly operas and choral works, that can be sung by ordinary people and by children. Some of his operas, such as Noyes Fludde (Noah’s Flood) are performed in churches every, and people from the surrounding area sing and act in them. The festival which he started in his little home town, Aldeburg, on the North Sea coast of Suffolk, has become one of the most important musical festivals in Europe. Benjamin Britten’s music, however, is traditionally compared with the works of many of the younger generations of composers. The music of composers like Peter Maxwell Davies, Richard Rodney Benett, John Tavener, and Andrew Lloyd Webber are having considerable influence and popularity abroad.
It is significant that Richard Rodney Benett is a very fine trumpeter and once played the piano in a jazz band. The dividing lines between serious music on he one hand and jazz, pop and folk music on the other, are becoming less and less clear, and the influence that they are having on one another is increasing. Many twentieth-century British composers, including Vaughan Williams, Tipett and Britten, have been attracted and influenced by old English folk songs.
Most musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, like Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Sunset Boulevard are still hits staged in the best theatres of England, the United States and other countries.
4. The Beatles. С.А.Шевелева (p.214)
The Beatles, British pop music was based on rock ‘n’ roll exported from the USA by singers like Elvis Presley. In the early 1960s the new British sound was heard, very different from anything which had come from the American side of the Atlantic. This was the Liverpool ‘beat’ of The Beatles. Until 1960 Liverpool, the birthplace of The Beatles, was known only as one of Britain’s largest ports. Then, almost overnight, it became world famous as the birthplace of the new pop culture which, in a few years, swept across Britain and America, and across most of the countries of the western world.
In 1970-1971 the partnership of The Beatles broke up, but their influence continued, both in Britain and the USA. When John Lennon was murdered in New York, in December 1980, he was mourned by millions of people all over the world.
Many singers and musicians are now popular in the world for the music and the words of their songs. Many British singers like Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, David Bowe, Elton John and Boy George have challenged previous standards of ‘good’ and ‘normal’ behaviour, taste and sexual definition.
5. Chopin and Delacoix. Н.И.Либерман (p.161-162)
In albums of the places where Chopin lived you may find a lot of photographs of his friends, and he had a lot of them, but one was especially dear to him. It was Delacroix.
Chopin (1810-1849) and Delacroix (1798-1863) were very fond of each other. Delacroix was one of the greatest painters of his time, if not the greatest and probably the most modern. Chopin was one of the finest pianists and one of the greatest composers. Chopin was younger than his friend but they were two natures very much alike. Both were pale, uneasy and elegant in their appearance, refined in speech. They were a mixture of skepticism, politeness and dandyism, and finally they had a kind of special goodness which always goes with genius. Chopin’s taste in painting was not so modern as in music. He didn’t understand his friend’s art (he preferred Ingre); but Delacroix thought that Chopin was as great as Mozart. He was never tired of listening to his friend whose music he knew by heart.
6. Igor Stravinsky. Н.И.Либерман (p.260)
1. The composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was one of the most talented and outstanding people of the XX century. The highlights of his music career such as “The Fire Bird”, “Petrushka” (1910), “Oedipus Rex” (1926) and “Rake’s Progress” («Похождения повесы», 1951) were epoch-making for their invaluable contribution. His versatile interests were reflected in his close friendship with Debussy and Ravel, in his intellectual contacts with Picasso and Cocteau, and in his cooperation with Matisse, Bakst and Nijinsky.
2. Igor Stravinsky was born in June 18, 1882 near St. Petersburg. His great musical talent was apparent very early in life. His father, a well-known bass singer, used to invite other singers and musicians to his house. At ten, Igor began taking music lessons from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The teacher and pupil soon became friends. From 1908 on, Stravinsky mostly lived abroad and seldom visited Russia. He took an active part in Diagilev’s “Saisons Russes” and became almost a permanent resident of Paris. During World War I he lived in Switzerland, then moved back to France and later to the United States.
3. Recognition and popularity didn’t come to Stravinsky at once. His compositions always aroused heated arguments. Seeming disharmony of his operas and ballets reflected the features of a time when Einstein made his discovery which broke the traditional physical concepts of the world, when Picasso’s cubist paintings destroyed the usual laws of perception, when classical poetry was breaking down. Trying to understand the very essence of things was how the 20th century men of genius looked for universal harmony.
4. Stravinsky’s versatility made him always turn to all important tendencies in contemporary music: starting as an orthodox pupil of the Korsakov – Glasunov school, he was later influences by the French impressionism of Debussy though this influence was short-lived. Some years later Stravinsky suddenly turned from neo-primitivism to neo-classicism. However Stravinsky never lost his creative individuality, his own musical style. His experiments in different genres and styles showed versatility of his interests. At one time he studied Japanese philosophy and poetry, tried to express perspective and volume in his music. At another time he gave a musical treatment of Russian folk tales. Once he became interested in Latin and Greek poetry, which resulted in “Oedipus Rex” and “Symphony of Psalms”. And later he produced his witty “The Rake’s Progress” under the influence of William Hogarth’s engravings.
5. When analyzing Stravinsky’s contribution to world music we should remember the multi-national influence and complex “geography” of his background. Four countries have the right to be called his motherland: Russia, Switzerland, France and the United States. We can see the influence of the French music tradition in the “Fire Bird” and “Nightingale” («Соловей») as well as in his later ballets. We can find the influence of the American jazz in his “Black Concert” and “Game of Cards” as well as elements of American show in his neo-classical opera “The Rake’s Progress”. However Russian national colouring can be felt in most of his compositions. His attitude towards Russia was always warm and lyrical. When an old man Stravinsky wrote: “I have spoken Russian all my life. I think in Russian. Maybe one doesn’t hear it at once in my music but the spirit of Russia is always there.” His visit to the Soviet Union in 1962 was a great event in his life. Some music critics emphasized inner likeness between Stravinsky’s music and Russian painting of Bilibin, Rerich, Perov and others.
6. During his long music career Stravinsky wrote about one music compositions. His best works have stood the test of time and are performed today all over the world. Igor Stravinsky was the maker of the 20th century musical history. His death on April 6, 1971 closed a whole epoch in contemporary music.
