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Interview with Yuri Butsko, recorded by Marina Kovaleva in a conservatory class in the fall of 1989

Writer's picture: Ilia KononovIlia Kononov

recorded upon returning from France

The questions were erased when the recording was digitized.




…How do they treat Russia? Differently in different layers. There is the official layer, there is the lower layer. There are believers – a special layer of the enlightened intellectual West, attentive, extremely well-disposed towards us, preserving its political freedom, independence. This is the third layer, I managed to meet with them. I visited monasteries, was at the home of one Anglican priest. He is Jewish by nationality, a Protestant by religion, a man of very broad humanistic views – an amazing person. I was also with a friend in a Catholic monastery. The Sunday service was ending, and a hieromonk, apparently the main one there, came up to me, such a stern face. Well, I thought, now he’s going to hit me in the face. He had a very stern expression. But he somehow figured out from my appearance, my behavior, that I was Russian, Orthodox. So he hugged me, kissed me…

A composer, like any artist, is assessed socially. A composer is a executor of a social order, an order of his society at the current stage of its literacy and its development. There has never been and never will be another assessment. Another thing is that this social assessment was distorted in our country, just as society itself, social reality itself, was distorted. We corresponded to the West in the equivalent of giving, so to speak, laurels to the composer in his social assessment. I will name you composers in any country in the world - "commissioned" composers who fulfilled the order of society. Sometimes this order is very high and the assessment is inflated. For me, the assessment of, for example, Bernstein is inflated, the assessment of many other composers who received crazy money is inflated. In our country this assessment was, if not inflated, then distorted. Our society developed as a false corporate one and assessed composers according to some kind of its own scale. I do not really understand the awards that composers received during the era of stagnation. In fact, it was not an era of stagnation for them, it was a “raspberry”, a happy time of harvesting the crops that they did not sow.

I have never been a part of any social network. I am a nobody, as is well known. Nobody in the full sense of the word.

I am interested in the model: society pays for a service, in this case for a musical service. If this service is entertainment, say, a musical (in England, Lloyd Webber, for example), it is a social order that receives high praise. Composers in Russia in the 60s and 70s were divided into two parties. The first carried out a social gesture, an order, and received the same prizes – well, admittedly, not in dollars, in non-convertible currency. And there was a small part of freaks, underground producers of some unnecessary and unrecognized scores, scribblers, graphomaniacs – as was said about me, the unfinished Russians. I am not saying this myself, I heard this about myself. In my back, of course. This is not published anywhere. And I was not published and still am not published.

We, a few people, took risks out of our own conscience. But we also made terrible mistakes. We did not fulfill a social order, it did not come to us. We fulfilled some dream of our own. Maybe it was nonsense, graphomania. It was a dream, set from within and fulfilled for the sake of oneself. Almost like that. At the expense of one's family, one's health, the values of one's home, which suffered in the process. At the expense of a life that was not lived. I am talking about suicides, about people who could not stand it.

There was a Soviet social order – I am talking about Shchedrin, about Khrennikov, about all the laureates who lived comfortably in that happy era and continue to live and speak on behalf of Russia to this day. I am speaking on behalf of the dead, to whom I belong, for I am a living corpse, on behalf of those who were not given the chance to be born, who were aborted, so to speak, from the womb of their mother, thrown out initially in order to later create some kind of legend.

I am against the legend, I want to take a hard look at myself now. If I am the last one left alive, I want to understand whether we had value, whether we had essence and what mistakes we made. We made monstrous mistakes, and the main one, I repeat, was that we did not correspond to the social order. That is, we did not check our scores with our ears, we did not check the parameters of our works, we did not check with the taste of the listener, we did not even see any listener in front of us - we worked in an empty room, underground, in a basement. Without an order, without any hope. And I do not want to be reported to as if I were Pasternak or Mandelstam. I do not want that. I am not the Union of Composers, I am not a social order, I am nobody. But on the other hand, I am not a dissident.

I have heard about myself: a fascist, a graphomaniac. Well, a fascist, since I am Russian – that means I am a fascist right away. I have also heard about myself: why wasn’t he expelled from the conservatory, what is he doing there? What can he say to the students, this man? And I don’t always distrust this, I think there is some truth in it. This truth needs to be verified.

The situation is very tricky now. And I want to check myself on the big scale, on the scale that our generation set. I was the last in age, so to speak, bringing up the rear. Maybe they are right, all these honored, people's. They have a full iconostasis on their chests, dachas, cars, a set of mistresses and trips to Paris and other places. They have only traveled to the Moon...

Who are you talking to? You are talking to a person from the underground. Who was released and told: you are free, you are rehabilitated. And I want to check who is rehabilitated, me or them, and who is released – I want to check this. I want to check who is listening to me and who hears me.

Here I will have my first big concert in my life [December 12, 1989 at the BZK]. I organized chamber concerts myself, with my own efforts. And now I am given a privilege: to choose, to compose a program. I am even at a loss: how to choose, I can compose at least six programs.

In the 60s, we didn’t put people in jail, we put our ideas in jail. I know for sure from my students, who later worked in the secretariat of the Investigative Committee and other bodies, that Khrennikov said: “Who needs these religious people?” He meant people who had distanced themselves from the official worldview and gone into their own worldview, including music. That’s how Otar Chargeishvili was thrown out of life, my beloved friend Alemdar Karamanov was thrown out. And me too. Who needed these religious people? That is, a different worldview.

I am not talking about dissidence. Dissidents called themselves dissidents. In a letter to the Central Committee – I had several such letters, those were desperate years, sinful letters, probably, when I read them now, I will be ashamed – but there were such letters. So I wrote that I was not a dissident, but a dissident. My worldview was not based on ideological, social protest, which I considered senseless and even premature. I believe that a person should be given the opportunity to experiment, and a social experiment too. I am the son of my parents. My father was a party member since 1918, I think, one of the first Soviet generals (and before that he had been through both the Civil War and the First World War). I do not forget this and do not reject this experiment – a necessary, tragic experiment of humanity on the topic of its better future. I do not accept the pathos of today's nihilism. I believe that heroic and tragic days should not be ridiculed, they should be assessed differently.

Yes, I was not a dissident. I was close to them, knew many people, but I deliberately did not belong to them. I even asked, when I was in such companies, not to involve me in this. I do not like, so to speak, the shocking of the social structure, such things require a long check. I am a person of religious experience and can only answer for my religious experience. I am a bad Christian, but still a believer.

I did not come to this experience, I never left it. From an early age I had visions, initiations, which led me... But this is a secret, and there is no need to talk about it... It is not the right topic... One does not discuss God and counterpoint. Such questions are dangerous, provocative, one cannot ask about this, it is a forbidden technique.

There are religious people, superstitious people, and there are believers. There are more religious people, that's obvious to me... As for the other ones, I can't say anything.

There is a primordial faith, a traditional Russian faith, a broad faith. That is, we remember that we have a very powerful pre-Christian layer, a stage of development. Especially among Belarusians, to whom my father belongs, especially among the Slavs in general. The Slavs remember their paganism - the pre-Christian period, the brightest and most non-violent period of life, it even now nourishes, replenishes that insufficient layer of Christianity that we have. I love this paganism very much, I love it in myself, I love the Greek civilization that came to us through Crimea. That is, Christianity is one of the doctrines accepted by our culture. It lay on a certain soil, and I love this soil, I am first of all a Slav, a Russian. I am a Belarusian on my father's side, a Kursk peasant on my mother's side. And by place of birth - Ukrainian, I was born in Lubny, where my father's division was stationed. I love Slavism in general, I profess the theory of Pan-Slavism. For me, a Slav is distinguished by his taste for grain, bread, people, the attitude of a man to a woman, a woman to a man. This is a very complex and main complex that defines a person - an emotional complex. And for me, the most important thing is the earth, its breath, spring or winter ... I really regret that I look at everything from a city apartment. I am always nostalgic for my childhood, I remember myself before I was born. I always see different views: for example, a forest in the snow, through which no one has walked. Or a field of flowers, or a river in which no one has ever fished. I rave about such things. I see them. This is the main thing for a person - to return to his womb, to return to his mother. I see my dead mother in a dream, I talk to her all the time. I talked to her recently. I was very tense before a concert - and I saw her, talked to her.

This is the earth, the mother - these are very important things.

Schubert, they say, expressed this dream to his friends: that the state, the government, or whatever it was called then... He wanted to be given a living wage, and he would write whatever he wanted, and as much as he could. But he wanted some piece to be guaranteed. It's difficult for us, impossible, and you have to buy yourself time to work with your own hooves. While you're fighting for this time to work, you have to write a film, a theater, do some day labor. And when you earn this money... Let's say I get a fee that will last a year in advance. But I don't have the strength, because I gave it to day labor, to prepare for the start. Therefore, it takes a huge effort to pull yourself together, to screw up. But, of course, you burn out four times faster. That's the norm. After all, even Schubert could not prove in his lifetime that he was Schubert. That's why he died so early.

…If I had composition students… I have now given up on this, because I understand the complexity of the task… First: I would like them to be entirely in my monastery. My idea is this: if I had a house, a mansion, I would gather students there, feed them harshly – porridge, bread, kvass, I would not give them vodka – no, I would beat them – well, of course, I would beat them morally. I would only let them out on Sundays. That is, obedience is needed, and not just the study of the classics – we do this very easily at the conservatory. I have excellent students who know the classics. But this is not enough. They do not know the people, nor their ethnic group, nor their intonation. I would go with the students to monasteries, for a month, for example, before Easter. I would sing with them there, stand in the choir.

You need to do moral work on yourself, on your intonation. Just inventing intonation by picking your nose – that’s what conservatories all over the world teach, that’s nonsense, stillborn children. And only a few, who are born with the intuition of a genius, miraculously slip through this system. With Cs, with Ds, but they slip through because they have a huge inertia of talent that burns out social ugliness. They are sparks from God, fallen out of the general flow.

It is not only impossible to teach composition, it is also unnecessary. It is like a dedication, it is a form of moral work. If your profession is to preach to people, that is, to take away their time... After all, what is music, or a novel, or a painting? It is time taken from people. And the first question: do you have the right to take away from a person even a minute of sacred time, which God will not allow him to live a second time? While he is figuring out your stupidity, he is wasting time. This means that he must receive such information from you in a second, such... This means that you must organize yourself, you must live this second ten times yourself, in order to give something back later.

If the artist is equal to the given social life, social horizon, and the artist's horizon is equal to the listener's horizon, the listener says: well, I can do that too. The situation "you're a fool yourself" arises. Or you need to lead the listener by the nose, intrigue, create texture, shock, tease the listener with your entourage.

In the West, such things are built on a rational presentation. The composer prepares properly to fulfill a social order, a very tough order. It is a complex activity. For example, French chanson is a grandiose pleasure industry, raised to the level of a gigantic cult. It is gorgeous, it is incredibly cool. By the way, our film composers rob chanson and learn from the example of the French. They have developed such an industry in this area - orchestration, all sorts of tricks, that ours just gape and catch up with the departed train. I do not blame the authors of chanson at all. They perform a social function, and they do it so well that you can be healthy. He has a villa, a car, he lives comfortably. Only a Lenin Prize laureate lives like that here.

And anyway... I came to my unemployed composer friend in France, and he was whining to me about his life. I told him: "Why are you whining? Before leaving, I visited Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov, he doesn't live the way you live." At that point, my friend fell silent.

I have one title published by the Soviet Composer publishing house, and that is already a lot for me, and they say to me: why are you complaining? I am not complaining, I am saying that in the past 18 years, not a single title has been published for me. So give me back what society has taken from me. A person should live at the level of his last year and his last compositions: last year he wrote and the next year he sees his published and performed score, his result, if this is interesting to society – and such interest in me has not disappeared, even in the most remote times, I know… And can it really be called an achievement that I am now receiving a published score dated 1968-1969? [1] Now we are in 1989! And don’t poke my own carrot in my nose: you have eaten now, what difference does it make that you haven’t eaten for twenty years! They gave you a carrot, and shut up. I have stopped working now – yes, but I have done so much before that, give me back my ideas, you need them, not me. By the way, they have been dismantled for firewood, like the last hut in the village is dismantled. Dismantled by my colleagues. Some of them quoted without referring, some referred to my ideas. They need them, not me, I have already gone through this.

They are trying to satisfy me with a work from 1968, published now. Who did it? Why? If it is graphomania, why publish it, and if not, then what happened during the past twenty years? I did not take anything from anyone, I wanted to give to this world, to this society. Now they are recording my ideas post factum. For what? To continue their rations, their trips abroad? All their normal social existence, which they do not refuse? By the way, I do not refuse my existence either. I continue to live according to my strict minimum.

Schnittke seemed to have said about me: "He started going to the West." I didn't start, Alfred, I finished, having gone once. Well, how can you formulate it like that, if his words were conveyed to me correctly. This is the point of view of the official authorities: he started publishing, he started buying, he started going. This is insulting. I didn't start, I finished. I bought this one trip with my will. I bought the understanding I needed, I paid for it. I wanted to test myself - that's why I went.

I was not mistaken. History is being made correctly. And everything else is nerves. And besides, I am Russian, it is very difficult.

There is a discussion about the fate of the ethnic group. This is a fashionable word that came from the language of philosophers. Previously, they said: "the people", "I believe in the people". An ethnic group may include different peoples, but they constitute a single philosophical concept, a dense unity that lives by its own laws of growth, flourishing and dying. Now the fate of the Russian ethnic group is being discussed, and this may be the main fate of the century - the fate of Russia as an ethnic group.

Russia is the size of forty Frances. Our territory, the number of peoples living on it, the number of problems, the confusion, the filthiness of our history... Will Russians survive as an ethnic group, as a bearer of their symbol in the general culture of the world? Dostoevsky, Mussorgsky, Tolstoy, Ivanov, Vrubel, Tchaikovsky, Sergius of Radonezh... Will the Russian ethnic group survive, will it be able to give something positive? What can we say to civilization?

We can, I checked it, I went for it. We have a purely biological large reserve, a large breadth of acceptance, the power of our breed. The French, whom I met, value our ability to understand, they love Russian culture - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Musorgsky, our Silver Age. Russian holiness, the Russian church are surrounded by an aura. Russian pious old ladies...

I myself do not believe in the revival of the official church. It is sad. Its ideas, moral pathos remain, but the cult that is being created now, as if transferred from the "cult of personality" to the "cult of the Church" - it is as false and paradoxical as all previous cults. If a person believes, he does not need a cult. He will look for his own. Even if all members of the government come to the altar at once and pray - this will be another historical paradox, another game.

There is no shortage of play in our time, there is an excess of play. Play is one of the principles of human existence, but now it prevails with a dangerous preponderance. God is not a game, fate is not a game. These are secret, intimate things, they cannot be profaned. And as soon as the state, society begins to profane faith, people who feel will go to new caves, will begin to hide their secret from the officialdom. The catacomb church will begin, it has already begun...

Russian self-awareness is an elusive self-awareness, hiding "under the table" in any situation. Russians have experienced such training in the secrecy of their self-awareness that it is now in each of us. Even involuntarily: you live one life, but guess about another. This is a very complex, incomprehensible to the West, conspiratorial existence. You are constantly remembering something in yourself that is not entirely clear to you.

The most important sin according to the monastic charter is despondency. That is, apathy, sluggishness of the soul, unwillingness, lack of faith in oneself. The rest are side effects.

I really love Nil Sorsky, who wrote about this. Many years ago my wife and I were in the Nilo-Sorskaya Hermitage, where he lived and where he is buried, there was a nursing home for mentally ill people there, and in the middle there was a bronze bust of Lenin... But it would take too long to tell. Here Nil Sorsky wrote about the sin of despondency.

Mikhail Bulgakov answers this question differently in The Master and Margarita, a sly, provocative and seductive book. In general, temptation is the first attack of holiness. I remember I spat and threw away the first edition of the book, a magazine edition. But then I came back and was seduced by this book as literature. Let it be a temptation, but it is necessary for society. It is the main road, and individual people go further. So what is, according to Bulgakov, the main sin? Cowardice. This was also due to Stalin's times, of course. I do not think this is the right answer, the concept of "cowardice" hides many shades. But there is another sign - "stupidity", and this is unforgivable. If a person does not want to understand, does not want to think, he is not a person, does not correspond to his destiny. And I consider stupidity to be the first sin and I do not forgive it.

There is also a lie. But a lie can be a variant of a person's other existence. A person knows the truth, looks for other variants of existence. If a person understands - this is already dear to me. Let him do it differently, but he understands. This is fundamental for survival in general.

Russians remain in a tragic situation because they do not understand themselves, the abuse that is directed at them, they do not understand the privileges that they have historically and genetically. They do not understand many things, and the diasporas take advantage of this. The diasporas themselves are legal, they are eternal, but they are diasporas.

The sin of misunderstanding, lack of understanding, the sin of stupidity... I believe that an ethnic group should now be defined by the principle of understanding, it is connected with the heart, the spirit, that is, with the sacred. Without this, you will not understand. If you are a Russian person, you come to your father's grave and communicate with him, you just cannot translate this into a sign system...

[1] This most likely refers to the Polyphonic Concerto, which was published extremely poorly: it is impossible to play from such notes.

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