Leonid Fedorov interview. Leonid Fedorov: “I have never met people so relaxed and free

He had a long and detailed conversation with Dmitry Lisin, which resulted in the publication cited below.

Leonid Fedorov: “Our country is now being damaged”

SINGER AND MUSICIAN - ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM “CONSTANTITY OF FUN AND DIRT”, KIRILL SEREBRENNIKOV’S PERFORMANCES AND ABSURDITY IN THE STATE

On April 6 in the Moscow Central House of Artists, and on April 8 in the St. Petersburg Erarta there will be a presentation of the new album by Leonid Fedorov and Israeli musician Igor Krutogolov “The Constancy of Fun and Dirt” based on texts by Daniil Kharms. Dmitry Lisin talked with the leader of "AuktYon" about how this work came about, as well as about much else - from life in exile to paintings by Chaim Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani.

Leonid Fedorov is 55 years old and continues to climb musical Olympus, which became quite Oberiut for his work. And the poetry of the author of most of the songs in “AuktYon”, Dmitry Ozersky, is also in this tradition. Listening new album“The Constancy of Fun and Dirt” by Leonid Fedorov and Igor Krutogolov to texts by Daniil Kharms, you notice, first of all, how complex this music is external simplicity, that is, with a huge “branded” number of different sounds, simple melodic lines are etched into memory. The first result of listening is the immutable and strange fact: the song “Fefulinka” can’t get out of my head anymore, because you are my little lady, friend doll, you are my auntie, circle berry. And you will never be able to get rid of the percussive slogans “Bang-bang”: the whole whole marriage poof. In the first, title song of the album, “The Constancy of Fun and Dirt,” Fedorov’s bass appeared, depicting the infernal janitor-caretaker of our dreams, in the second song, “Ball,” a touching children's vocals Lydia Fedorova, in “Sheep” there is Krutogolov’s countertenor, and all the songs are ruled by Fedorov’s melodic gift. There is also a song “Quarter of Smoke”, made with lips without instruments, and there is infrasound, which is not possible for the big drum. There is “Sazheni” with an alien rhythmic pattern, there is a lot of that, as many as 14 compositions. The music is divided into two characteristic, very different streams; Fedorov and Krutogolov wrote four songs each and four together. It is important that two songs are sung by Lida Fedorova, that is, they are on the child-female “yin” pole, responsible for the fun of the album. And for dirt, heaviness, absurdity and darkness human life The absurdist-prophetic poetics of Kharms and the percussive bass guitar of Krutogolov answer.

— What is the story behind the album “The Persistence of Fun and Dirt”?

“Igor Krutogolov has long and deeply loved Kharms and tried to persuade me for a long time, but for some reason I didn’t want to. He composed the songs " New Year" and "Sazheni", and for some time we thought that this would be included in the film "Dau" by Ilya Khrzhanovsky. Didn't go in. And then Lida suddenly came up with two songs - one right in the car, the second in a New York bar, where they immediately recorded it on a tape recorder. And I realized that Kharms’ time had come. It is important here that the music was written for the texts, as on the “auction” disc “On the Sun,” where I took the finished poems of Dima Ozersky. Usually we write lyrics to music.

Leonid Fedorov and Igor Krutogolov Vladimir Lavrishchev

— Kharms has a language congenial to modernity and what is happening to us now. Generally speaking, how are they present? great poets in modern times?

— In Europe, it seems to me, all poets are considered modern, and readers there treat them without much reverence. Well, Goethe. And everything that Dante wrote is modern Italian language, and in any Italian city a man can be seen reading Dante aloud. If a man came out in London and started reading Chaucer in the garden, which Dante wrote a little later, not a single Englishman would understand anything. That is, Dante made the modern Italian language back in the 13th century. And a hundred years before Dante, Francis of Assisi wrote. And before Pushkin, who built the Russian language, we had better poets than Derzhavin: now Vasily Petrov, a close friend of Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky, has been published.

— What do you think about today’s fashion for rap? Theater experts suddenly began to admire rap battles and attribute them to “Theater. doc ”, then to post-dramatic theater.

- Yes, we also had a rare experience, you know how “often” we go to the theaters. At the end of the year before last, Lyosha Agranovich approached me and said, “I’m playing Walsingham in Serebrennikov’s Little Tragedies.” I sat down and wrote a song over the course of the evening, after which we went to meet Kirill Serebrennikov. We went to the play in December, and halfway through the first act I realized that I actively didn’t like it. Lida says be patient, but I can’t anymore. Then Lyosha came out, said his monologue more abruptly than Smoktunovsky’s, and things became more or less better. Until that moment, it didn’t matter what the text was; Agnia Barto could have been instead of Pushkin. All the young people on stage - as if they were not there, and then the rapper Husky came out, who is no longer there. Okay, you don’t have to recite Pushkin’s text, but you had to do something adequate to this power. As a result, I left and drank cognac alone at the bar. Now, if there were a hundred of us in the bar, then yes, but there’s no need to be upset, I say to Lyosha. And at the end powerful grandmothers played, and everything was fine. I remember when Kinchev appeared with rap, there was energy there. Serebrennikov’s ideas are clear, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, but what was missing was the live presence of the director. For comparison, I’ll say that Serebrennikov’s other things that I managed to see are much cooler. “The Müller Machine” is an awesome performance. " An ordinary story“According to Goncharov, it was good, it didn’t make me want to leave. Kostya Bogomolov and the beautiful Sati Spivakova played in “Machine Muller”, the rest were naked. And everything rested on this couple: she is good, and Bogomolov is cool, he has something inside, he is calm.

Lida Fedorova Dmitry Lisin

— What other actors do you like besides Bogomolov and Agranovich?

— Lars von Trier has a signature actor, Stellan Skarsgard, he is the grandfather in “Nymphomaniac”, and in “Breaking the Waves”, and everywhere. And then we watched the darkest series “River”, it stands alone against the background of others, and you understand its power. No one is even close to where he is, just some Solonitsyn. He smiles and you laugh; he frowns and you cry.

- And what do you think about Kharms’s nightmare, which covered everyone who values ​​the arts with a copper basin? I mean the “theatrical case”, which began with the prosecutor announcing: there were no performances of the “Seventh Studio”, and you just came up with reviews and sent them to newspapers that were published five years ago.

- Looks more like Kafka. I don’t see much novelty, because the delirium of life in the state never went away, which is why Kafka and Kharms are great writers. State people they hardly understand what absurdity is - it’s theirs normal condition. At some point, in the 90s, we thought that the absurdity would go away, but it didn’t happen. If you look at it more broadly, this happens everywhere in the world. Any ban is absurd. Why can't you drink beer on the street? And once upon a time it was possible to eat people. One friend told me what he overheard in the Sapsan - two people in suits were traveling, and the older one taught the younger one: remember, the most important thing is to be able to obey. So much for the order of obedience, the absurdity of living by order. I thought it would shake even more. We have to approach this in a Kharmsian way, because both in everyday life and in the courts there are a lot of absurd stories. Anyone can be imprisoned, blaming him for the fact that a common person considers it a feat. Absurdist texts are uninvented things.

- It's better to run somewhere. How much time do you spend with Lida in Moscow and how much time behind the border?

— For the last two years, every month we have been in Moscow for no more than a week, that is, three quarters of the time we are in Europe. If we sit here for a month straight, a very strange feeling sets in - why aren’t we going anywhere?

— Clean tourism?

— I wouldn’t say that this is happening at the same time as the case. Over the past two years, we have started to travel to London frequently, every month. We try to appear in Italy three times a year. We were in Portugal last year, and this year we went to Greece, to Thessaloniki for the first time. It's a cool country and people there. They have self-esteem, and at the same time they are unobtrusive, open and friendly. (Lida adds: “In Israel it’s funny compared to Moscow: when we arrive, we walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, and they say to us, good morning, are you as usual? Grandfather the newspaperman shouts: “ Good morning!” - and if I walk alone, he asks: “Where is Romeo?” Let's go further, a man runs out of the cafe and offers to urgently make fresh juice. And here, in our native Serpukhovka, we have been going to the same store for 13 years, we say “hello” to the same saleswoman, but she sits, looks from under her brows and does not answer.”)

- That is, it is difficult to integrate into world economy life?

- "Who the hell are you?" - the city asks you a question. The young people from the wave of emigration of the 90s grew old and left New York: it was too expensive to live. Only those who left as children are integrated into America. London is an expensive city, but the former children who arrived in the 90s settled in because they fit into the country and the economy. It’s the same in Europe and Israel: a generation of people who came as children or were born there has grown up. Moreover, the parents remained in the circle of Russians, and the children involved in cinema, theater and music are natural Israelis, combining two cultures in themselves. We will not be able to enter this river. Although in monocultural countries - Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Montenegro, Hungary, where we have friends, this happens more easily, because there you are just an emigrant. And in New York Spanish now the second, there is a Spanish-language Grammy Award and its own radio stations, where there is never “black” music, blues and rap. That is, there you are not just an emigrant, but you also have to show your culture among others. And provincial Israel still has, relatively speaking, its own Russian literature. And in Berlin, a multinational center electronic music, IT-technology and theater, you understand that the Germans here are the main thing and everything for the Germans.

- Wow, you're practically a sociologist. Tell me then, in general: how has the demand for emigrant professions changed?

— This is interesting, because the artistic public came to the USA in the 70s, and in the 90s programmers came in large numbers, and half of them moved due to Jewish connections. And for the last five years, a lot of people have been going there from all over former USSR, mainly from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. And they are completely different - mostly 30-year-old engineers with their families. They are fluent English language and immediately find a job. And this looks depressing to me. Because it’s one thing when the creative intelligentsia, who own a brush, a bow and a word, are not allowed to do things, when they have no implementation for decades and they take off to other countries. And here came people from the Russian hinterland, engineers, doctors and economists who had nothing to do with art. A year ago he played a solo album in London, then a line of about a hundred meters lined up for autographs from all over the former USSR. I was amazed: I had never seen this before.

— Is it now impossible to give tours to clubs in Europe?

— The system has changed. Then there was a promotion for huge amount second-tier teams - Indians, Russians, British, Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, anyone. A poster was hung on the fence, and a week later in Berlin we had a full hall for two and a half thousand people. There was a first echelon at stadiums and festivals - Sting, U2 and others, and there was a huge second echelon, including even King Crimson, who then played in the same clubs as us. I don’t know why this system collapsed for our teams. Or rather, it is clear that here too Russia is in trouble. I remember after the concert in Paris the press was very complimentary Sounds of Mu And Auction, and here Movie They described it coolly, because they have a lot of such music. But still the public went to Movie, there was enormous interest in Russia. And now Russians listen to Russians in Europe, and no matter how fashionable you are, the very word “Russian” has gone negative.

— Would you stay in Germany? We'd take a seatRammstein?

- Yes different variants. We could easily fit in with the local musical life, they loved us there. I know that they could have easily stayed when the wall collapsed, after the 1991 putsch, if only they had gone to the consulate in Hamburg.

— Is it possible to recognize your departed friends, Alexei Khvostenko and Anri Volokhonsky, as the heirs of Kharms and Vvedensky?

- They are heirs of tradition, not of Oberiutism. Khvost and Anri have no horror in their texts, unlike Kharms and especially Vvedensky, who is more gloomy than all Russian literature. And there is the story “The Old Woman” by Kharms, also a record of gloom. When Baryshnikov and Dafoe in Robert Wilson’s “The Old Woman” in New York uttered the phrase “what could be worse than dead old women - only children,” no one laughed. On the way out, people said: yes, this is purely Russian humor. In fact, they don’t understand what is humor and what is horror.

- Okay, but are your memories of the absurdity of Soviet life completely Kharmsian?

— I recently remembered that my father, when he left work in 1986, laughed at me: come on, write your own songs before you’re 30, you’ll become a bohemian. And my father worked from 14 to 60 years old and left for work at seven in the morning. I am an early bird, but I woke up at nine, which for him was already bohemian. I remember coming to my parents’ house in the summer, my dad was retired and repairing something. In the morning he says: you’re right, it’s cool not to get up at seven, not to go to work, not to show your pass at the entrance.

— Jerzy Grotowski told the actors: remove the prison from your mind, teach the audience freedom, even if they run away in horror. Even if they are cringed by your yoga, they will learn inner freedom.

- This the right word- “to distort.” Our country is currently in a state of disrepair. There is no turning back, but it is not that easy. Europe followed this path for 500 years.

— Moreover, the “teaching of freedom” in the field of art abolishes, first of all, the love of the authorities, popularity among the people and the box office.

- Yes, there are plenty of such experimenters - in ballet and music, everywhere. You see, this all overlaps with how we jumped out of all common paths thanks to 1917. We've been in this hole for a hundred years. We have nothing to do with huge culture Russian Empire. This is the same attitude that today's Chinese have towards the times of the Yellow Emperor and Taoism. Well, yes, something great happened, but it passed. Everyone rushed to toast greatness, remember, film and be proud - and it’s too late, with every decade we are carried further and further. Literary scholars can no longer say anything about the essence of Tolstoy’s “Resurrection,” for example. Or what Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” is. It is impossible to imagine how powerful these novels were when they were released. It’s amazing how much these people were the same as us, but they were doing something that had long been inaccessible to us.

- How would you like to in three words described the history of art of the 20th century?

— It is difficult to compare any current composer with Tchaikovsky. Maybe Shostakovich? Prokofiev, Rachmaninov? No. And not because they are worse. Arvo Pärt is probably the most important composer in the world right now. But Tchaikovsky is a champion in terms of number of performances, because everyone likes him. Wagner was the John Lennon of his time, but a hundred years have passed and he has disappeared into the rays of Verdi, whom everyone likes. They also put Chekhov in the very small theater peace. “Uncle Vanya” or the comedy “The Seagull” can be found in every city where there is a theater. New translations of Chekhov are endlessly emerging, and everyone wants to capture the untranslatable meaning, horror and humor at the same time. Look: when the 20th century began, Meyerhold and Eisenstein, Malevich and Kandinsky became giant people. But they are also incomparable with Dostoevsky.

— And Vladimir Ivanovich Martynov with a lot of original theories?

— He is unique and writes for others who are equally unique. A music world nothing is subtracted from him. In short, we shouldn’t be talking about music, complicated story, there is no correspondence between things of different quality, there are no criteria for comparing Beethoven and some noise music. It is precisely Martynov who says that at a time when new cases are brewing, we cannot determine what is happening.

— In Martynov’s “Book of Changes” this is the general idea - no matter how much you throw the dice, you won’t see modernity.

- And what can I say: we cannot evaluate anything in essence, well, we can say some crap like “beautiful” - and that’s all. And taste is meaningless for defining art. Vasya Azemsha and I discussed who Chaim Soutine and Modigliani were. Both friends, Italian and Russian, are great. One seeks ugliness in beauty, and another seeks beauty in ugliness. There is an exhibition in St. Petersburg where there are two portraits of a girl, drawn by both. It is impossible to compare these portraits, although both are brilliant. Modigliani portrays a bundle of beauty, but you understand that American Expressionism and everyone later than Francis Bacon still came out of Soutine. Soutine’s aestheticization of ugliness turned out to be the coolest of all Modigliani. The village Jew Soutine was forbidden to paint portraits of people; this strangely made him a giant. Moreover, talents in art do not depend at all on education. The most educated, sophisticated esthete Modigliani, who chose a bohemian lifestyle, and the simple, hardworking Soutine, who immediately left his hive upon receiving his first money. Nothing external affects the degree of talent. When Soutine was already buying precious rings for himself and going to dinners in the salons of princes, his wife stood in the market and sold his engravings.

— Compared to other cultural figures, you read a lot.

- This is all bullshit compared to the Smena newspaper. Didn't tell you? When glasnost began, I subscribed to this newspaper because on the last page Mikhail Sadchikov wrote about a rock club. There were poems there, I read Vvedensky for the first time. I cut out these poems, showed them to Dimka Ozersky and said: look, there’s a guy from St. Petersburg, Sasha Vvedensky, he thinks like us, he’s probably the same age as us and is published in Smena, we should get to know him. And one day, at the very peak of perestroika, I unfolded the newspaper and saw a gigantic article by some KGB major writing: why are you happy, do you think your time has come? Do you think this one of yours with the stain is worth anything? Naive. You will see: not even ten years will pass before we come to power, because all the activities of our organization are devoted to studying the history of our people and their characteristic internal features. I read this and forgot. But I shuddered and remembered when Yeltsin took Putin out from somewhere and showed everyone. The prophetic newspaper “Smena”, but it was even worse when we were riding on the subway after the 1991 coup, and the old people had already taken out portraits of Lenin. We then came up with the song “Bird”. And there was a feeling that everything had changed. And we recorded “Bird” during a tank attack in October 1993, and all hope was gone. Then Henri Volokhonsky worked at Radio Liberty in Munich, he came and we met. And in response to my doubts, he said: after all, the gigantic 70-year-old lie, when white was called black and vice versa, has gone. But now I think how easily everything can come back, and Ilya Khrzhanovsky thought about this when launching the giant Dau project, which is where we started the conversation.

Leonid Fedorov:​​​​
“We must ban bad taste”

The leader of the group "AuktYon" about why we live in brilliant times, what is considered art and where did pathos go?

W→O→S You will now give solo concert. How is this different from auction performances?

I don’t know about the audience - I’m used to not seeing anyone from the stage. But for yourself there is a difference, of course. One is calmer, less fuss. When there are a lot of people on stage, you are always trying to hear someone other than yourself.

W→O→S But it’s hard not to hear the audience.

I don’t know who is waiting for what, and besides, I’m not very interested in it. I don’t have such an Artist Artistovich inside me. Let them wait for “The Bird” and “Darling”, but maybe I’d rather drag out Khlebnikov for ten minutes, huh. I want myself to feel good. So that there is no shame later.

W→O→S Did you ever feel ashamed?

It happened, how! It's when you're trying to be liked that you feel ashamed. So it’s better to think about yourself, understand what you need.

W→O→S This is why you don’t fit into any of the usual formats...

I can't stand the word "format". There are no formats, there is only what you choose for yourself. Previously, there was a radio station in Moscow called SNC, which, for example, played 20-minute compositions by the group Can - very easy, what was there? There are now a lot of small university radio stations in America - in Berkeley, for example, in San Francisco. They make such tracks that even I don’t know what to call it. It all depends on desire, and if people only want to drive bullshit... I’m not against it, but other than that, there’s nothing else. Garkusha told me that there are now about five hundred groups in St. Petersburg. Five hundred! I'm not saying that they are all geniuses, but I am sure that among these five hundred there will be a dozen good ones. Where are they? What format do they follow? For example, my friend Vladimir Ivanovich Martynov believes that if a composition lasts less than ten minutes, it’s funny to even talk about it. And we are taught to listen to three-minute tracks, which are also crookedly cut and made clumsily, with cliches from a hundred years ago. And this is not only our problem - this is universal history.

W→O→S Okay, have you heard anything from these five hundred groups yourself?

Unfortunately, not much, and I liked it even less. For example, in Moscow there is an excellent group “Syncopated Silence”, such a strange one. In general, I'm more Western groups. I listened to ours a little before, because I still love music more, but Russian rock had little to do with music. And I don’t see any poetry in it, to be honest. Well, except for Yankee and Bashlachev. And everything else is closer to the bard theme. Now there is probably something interesting, but I’m not specifically looking for anything. I’m an ordinary consumer, and in general I’m more interested in early baroque music now.

There are no formats, there is only what you choose for yourself.

I don’t like all this museum bullshit - I always liked to somehow get out of my time.

1. "Strange Games"
The team from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute was very different from the rock club adherents new wave- rollicking ska and rhythm and reggae were atypical for the local swamps. Participants in the “Strange Games” founded three more teams: “AVIA”, “Igry” and, in the late 90s, the electronic “Deadushki”.

Then

Now

2. “Night Avenue”
One of the innovative electronic industrial projects on the territory of the USSR. The group survived the collapse and death of its co-founder, but continues to record records and perform.

Then

Now

W→O→S What excites you about poetry now? Russian avant-garde?

The word “avant-garde” is also something... Although it suits Khlebnikov very well. He pushes forward even now. Simply because there was no one equal in strength. And none Nobel Prizes, which continue to hand over for some reason, do not solve anything. Kharms said that there are writers who will be called great and will defend dissertations on them, and there are those who push literature. In Khlebnikov, in Vvedensky, I feel some kind of strong energy that gives me the opportunity to develop. Something good appears inside me. Evil, which is important, appears too.

W→O→S And what do Vvedensky and Khlebnikov have that others don’t?

Vvedensky and Khlebnikov are two people who managed to push their personality aside. For all the emotionality in their poems, there is a powerful coldness. You can only read Akhmatova in a certain way, and not everyone can do it. But everyone can read Khlebnikov, and it doesn’t make him any worse. Because here the words are not stupid: they do not contain everything that human relationships are built of. Surely there is also something in all Akhmatova’s “Oh, he stopped loving me” and “Oh, I dropped the glove,” but I don’t feel it, because for me it’s all funny.

3. “Sounds of Mu”
The project of the eccentric translator from Scandinavian languages ​​Petr Mamonov gained fame thanks to the otherworldly charisma of the leader and the ability to gather all the figures of the underground scene of that time in one room. Mamonov had long quarreled with his musicians and turned to theater and Orthodoxy.

Then

Now

4. "Jungle"
The least revered group of the Leningrad rock club now. Thanks to the eternal search in the range from post-punk to Robert Fripp and technical insanity in the spirit of King Crimson, the team was in the forefront of touring abroad. After collaboration with Aquarium and Kuryokhin and changes in the composition, it broke up in 1990.

Then

Now:

not functioning

5. “Nicolaus Copernicus”
The team of postmodernist Yuri Orlov existed in relative isolation from the processes of Russian rock and recorded many psychedelic opuses. For example, music from the 1986 “Motherland” magnetic album is set to poems from a collection prepared for the 60th anniversary of the USSR. Having disbanded in 1993, the group resumed activities in 2005 with a new lineup.

I commanded the raven to be a wing
And he dryly remarked to the sky: “Be good, die!”
And when I later had the urge,
I want to laugh more and more,
The whole race of people broke like a box of matches,
And he began to read poetry.
There was a globe
Perfectly captured by the paw of a madman.
- Follow me!​
There is nothing to be afraid of!

Now:

Then

“War in a Mousetrap”, Velimir Khlebnikov

6. "Collegiate Assessor"
The Kiev group appeared on the wave of the psychedelic renaissance of the late 80s and produced what can be called a specific Soviet sound. Formally, the team did not stop its activities: the last notes dated back to the early 2000s.

W→O→S Is it funny or boring?

Both. If it had said, “Oh, they cut off my head,” it would have been at least scary. A most of poetry is about dropping the gloves. And when it’s time to chop off heads, Vvedensky or Kharms appear. In my opinion, emotions should be as intense as possible or they should not exist at all.

W→O→S But for many, “Ah, I dropped the glove” remains the most intense emotion.

We live in brilliant times with a completely different information background. After, for example, I saw on the Internet how soldiers play football with their heads, try telling me about the dropped glove. Why should I read these verses? Why are you making me a hunchback here - every day I can see things that even our fathers never dreamed of! And those guys had their own life - but I don’t care about it! I don’t like all this museum bullshit - I always liked to somehow get out of my time.

W→O→S Well, museum bullshit has always existed for the average reader and viewer.

Lidochka (my wife - W→O→S) and I once went to the Russian Museum for an exhibition. And there was a wonderful picture of Filonov, remember where he, she, the baby is sitting, and on foreground the rooster is so gorgeous. And we stood there so admiringly, and next to us one said to the other: “Well, what is this, you better look” - and points to a copy of mannered Italian pictures, where there is a valley, and Jesus is walking along it. And the exhibition was called something like “Christianity in Russian Painting.” Well, of course, Christianity means Jesus, painting means nature. Damn it, there is a masterpiece nearby that is like nothing else, you can look at it for hours! But people are too lazy to open their eyes, and they consider a postcard to be art. And there are a lot of them. There’s a table here, but if it doesn’t have a tablecloth, it’s already a bad table for them.

Then

Now:

There are no modern video recordings in the public domain.

"Peasant Family"
Pavel Filonov
1914

W→O→S You admire Vvedensky’s globalism, but at the same time you have said more than once that now we must avoid any pathos.

But there is no more pathos. Throughout the 20th century, the very possibility of pathos was methodically destroyed. It's not just about dictatorships and world wars. Let's say there has never been anything more pathetic than death, right? And now the sense of the sacredness of death has been lost - there is nothing more ordinary than murder: you walked into the front door, stabbed you with a knife, took your cell phone and ran away. Heroic pathos is also impossible, because for the first time in many centuries, it is not those who fight, but the civilian population who die in wars.

W→O→S And if we talk about music?

Direct pathos in pure form can no longer be issued. We already know something worse. This was well understood by what's his name, who directed Melancholia... Trier. He distills this pathos into wild, wild grotesquery. “Melancholia” is generally one of the most convincing things I’ve seen. And if we talk about some kind of “Ring of the Nibelungs” by our standards, then from the point of view of dramaturgy it’s nothing at all. It's boring and vulgar, in my opinion.

W→O→S What about your music?

The fear of immersing yourself in pathos actually leads to the fact that you try to knock it down everywhere, you start to be ironic everywhere. The music of “AuktYon” suggests both pathos and reflection on it. And that’s why it always remains unfinished for me. Like with the album “Girls Sing,” which I still wanted to make more direct.

W→O→S And despite the feeling of incompleteness, you still haven’t learned how to cut something out for a long time.

Well, no, tortured stories immediately give themselves away, and then it’s a terrible shame for them. So at some point I decided that I would do everything spontaneously. And then, I record an album and never listen to it again. Because music exists now and never again. Well, since such a record came out, what to do, it will be like this. Here again there is no pathos: we are not making an immutable Thing. To be honest, I’m afraid of this path: something was born to me, then I did it, and now I have this faceted, damn, decanter. Then the question arises: “What next? All?" This is called creative impasse.

W→O→S Do you like the way your music sounds in films? Balabanov, for example?

No. At Balabanov's last movie I just liked the way he staged “Head and Foot,” but that’s the only example. As for the rest, I think it could have been any other. Cinema is a subjective thing. Especially in the case of Balabanov. That’s what he saw, that’s what he heard, and for God’s sake.

W→O→S Don’t you regret that you couldn’t act with him?

I'm glad I couldn't, to be honest. I never aspired to act in films. This is what Garkusha loves.

W→O→S You rarely give interviews, so, apparently, it’s customary to ask you about current socio-political events. I don’t want to go into detail now about the fight against Americans, gays and obscenities. Just curious: do you really have any civil position on all these issues?

All this is some kind of nonsense. In my opinion, these things are discussed only to confuse people, to move them away from some other things. Freedom, for example, elementary. Nobody even remembers that we have such a thing as registration. Yeltsin also said that it should be abolished, that it would not go anywhere. Or here’s what Eddie Limonov wrote about: while everyone is talking about this nonsense, they passed a law according to which a person who was a member of any so-called extremist organization has no right to participate in political life. This has not happened in Europe since the days of Hitler. Well, that is, in reality we are the first here after the Nazis. They care, but I care about bad taste. It needs to be banned. For example, Saakashvili once banned the playing of blatnyak in all taverns - this, I think, is an awesome law.

* Thanks to the Workshop club for their assistance in conducting the interview.

Leonid Fedorov, leader of the "Auktsion" group, gave one of the rare Lately interview. In it, he talked about the end of time for composers, that the Pilot group is stupid, and that Konstantrin Kinchev and Yuri Shevchuk have not changed at all over the past decades.

The online publication prorok.noonet.ru asks Leonid Fedorov questions.

Leonid Valentinovich, in one of your interviews you said that the works that appear now do not carry the same strength and power as the music of the past. Is it so?

There is a book called "The End of the Time of Composers." The conversation then was about specific composer music. About music, as we understand it, classical. She is no longer what she was in XVII-XIX centuries. This doesn't speak to the quality of the music. The conversation is about some kind of spirituality, an energy message. There was a time when Beethoven was not just a great composer, but the pinnacle of spiritual life. He represented the height of intellectual power European civilization at that moment. It was his work that was, as it were, the quintessence of his time. In the 20th century composer's music, despite the fact that there were great composers, ceased to be leading. Absolutely different things became the rulers of thoughts: jazz, rock and roll and so on. Music has ceased to be leading. What is now called music is a little different. Doesn't mean it's worse. In order for her to become one, you don’t have to do anything. Because she will never be one. It won't come back.

- Maybe it's a matter of religiosity?

It's not about religiosity as such. It's about the rulers of souls. And in Beethoven's time there were musicians, such as minstrels, troubadours, a powerful phenomenon, who sang songs of the entertainment genre. But they were a marginal layer, a condition. And they were slowly pushed back.

Now it's the other way around. The troubadours climbed up. All big stages and the screens are occupied by idols - rock musicians, and the classical musician is in a marginal position. A change of eras has occurred. That's why they talked about the end of composer's music. The end of her influence, favor cultural life. The book is not about music, but more about spirituality, about the state of music in the world, in people, about the influence of cultural music today. And music as such has nothing to do with it. She is. Some other things will be significant. It would have been funny in Beethoven's time to think that there would be some kind of Beatles. What does it mean for that historical moment? Some people from the gateway. That's all. They were like that back then too.

We are talking about the art of composition, its power, which is now being lost. Of course, there are many composers left, but...

The question is not about religiosity, but about relationship with God. After Nietzsche said that God died, the attitude towards him changed. In Purcell’s time there was a slightly different attitude towards God, and in even more ancient times, Gregorian music, had its own flavor. How did music composition begin in the 13th century? This was a way out when a person felt that he was more free. During Gregorian music there was no such concept as religious - non-religious. There were certain musical canons that could not be changed. This was the composer's dogma. The first composer said: “Why should it be like this? I think it should be like this!” This is where composing music began. And now it's over...

Opera is the pinnacle of the art of composition. It's a spectacle. And now TV, movies, whatever. Computers... The language is different. Appeared and is developing. And when you talk about opera, you mean retro, an established form that was once upon a time. Probably, now you can call some things opera, but it will still be a classic nod. What other musicians do is very difficult to attribute to her. Is this music at all?

- Leonid Valentinovich, what can be called new in music?

There are a lot of new things in music. In what we call music. And if we talk about some specific melodies and so on, then nothing new can happen. Melodies, as Beethoven said, fly in the air. The language and expression changes. And everything else remains the same. Nowadays there is such a wealth of all kinds of devices and techniques that are not even called music. Any sound is a concrete paint that I can use in any way I want. Regardless of Mahler's "9th Symphony", the sound of a tram or a river. This is something from which you can make some kind of sound image. The same is true in any other form of art.

If in a medieval opera you put on a mask and you are already a lion or Eve, now the means of representation have become much more sophisticated. Now there is a general confusion of all languages, globalization, boundaries are blurred.

Classic example. There was a festival of Tibetan music in the city of Oslo. This is quite strange. I don't think any of the Tibetan musicians were there. Mostly Europeans played. Tibetan music. A strange event... This is new. A new one appears artistic language. It's funny to paint pictures in the spirit of the early Dutch. It is pointless. And in general, painting is funny.

When you decorate your apartment, you won't buy paintings crazy dear masters. You can calmly buy a reproduction of Volkhov or something else and calmly hang it up. It's cheaper too. In fact, you need to create a certain state in the apartment. You created it quickly and cheaply, and most importantly - with high quality. On the one hand, this is quite offensive, but on the other hand, there is truth in this - this is the situation today.

The same thing happens with music. Why collect Symphony Orchestra, write a giant score for it, pay for the team and the people involved, if you can just take a synthesizer and portray what you want at home, in a calm environment. You know your specific state. Art comes in slightly different forms, not in writing a score, but in creating an image by other means. Such is fate.

- Is music becoming not creative, but more technological?

Creativity has nothing to do with it. There are other means. For a composer, the creative process can be depicted like this: he sits at home and writes notes. You don't even need a piano. He hears music and writes it immediately. But here some other things are required: a video camera, computers. And creativity lies in how to put it all together so that it is expressive and bright.

- But today it’s easy to set certain patterns, for example, the same bossa nova, and not invent a radio.

You're talking about how to technically reproduce what you've already heard. Need bossa nova? Easily. I'll do it in five minutes. But this is precisely what craftsmanship is. And creativity is about creating something new. Essentially new. A thing that didn't exist before. Not bossa nova, but music that can be invented and written, although this is unrealistic. How can you convey the squeak of a fingernail on glass? This cannot be written down on notes, but it must be done in such a way that it is artistic. And if you also use some kind of video, light, color, and if you also write yourself, face, grimaces... How to put it all together convincingly is creativity.

- Do handicrafts predominate now?

It has always been there. I would not say that there is more of it now than there was a hundred years ago. A lot of composers, writers, and artists were produced. Entire institutes were working. And what? Do we know many of them? Have you read a lot? How much waste paper! It's exactly the same story in music. There have always been not so many real talents, only a few. It is a fact that craftsmanship has always existed. If you approach it from the point of view of asking bossa nova, then, of course, this does not require any special creative impulses. And if we talk about a specific song, then we need to come up with something.

- Can rap using pieces of classical works be called creativity?

I'm not a fan of rappers. Again, of all the rappers I've heard, there aren't many that are truly outstanding. This is some kind of commercial story. Why not? There are no claims to any great music and poetry. Although perhaps among them there are talented people, it’s hard for me to say - I’m not interested in them.

- Leonid Valentinovich, what creative environment can be considered the most ideal for you?

I generally like creativity. In any of its guises. It wasn't even necessarily related to music.

- Have the abundance of fashionable parties, show business, and commercialization affected the quality of rock music?

Why? You don't hear much real music because it is non-profit. But there is a lot of it. And then the country today is upside down. Lots of all kinds of music. You go into a store - there’s a lot of non-commercial music, a huge amount. This is true in all countries. We probably have less, because we generally have little music and everything else.

Non-commercial music is more expensive on the market. This is true. How better music, the more expensive it is. It’s just that not everyone will listen to it, but there will still be connoisseurs. And the music is simpler... Few people run to Vermeer. If you look at his paintings, you think that there must be mad crowds standing there, with Davilovs, with records of queues a year in advance. But they’re not worth it! Who needs it? I understand that this is one of the pinnacles of painting. Someone understands. But for the most part, some people are interested in watching naked body exhibitions.

- Avant-garde, glamorous creativity...

There are also avant-garde here. Glamor is not avant-garde. It was they who came up with the term for themselves and rejoice on their own. Well, let them rejoice!

You are happy to perform with "AuktYon", but, nevertheless, you have many solo projects. What do you see as the advantages of working solo and with a team?

I don't see any advantages either here or there. They are different in essence. There are some things I can’t do with “AuktYon”, it doesn’t even occur to me. But there are some things I can’t play alone. Even on a physiological level. These are again different technical means. I can do it this way, but I can do it another way.

- When did you first pick up a guitar? Who was your first teacher? What music did you learn to play?

The first chords were shown to me back in the village, in 1976. I was 12 years old. My friend showed me the first blatant chords. Then they bought me a guitar for 7 rubles 50 kopecks. They sang Vysotsky and someone else. But even then I already liked non-criminal music, even then I wanted to play rock.

I don’t remember what I was listening to then. I didn't even have a tape recorder. It cost a lot of money at that time. In order to be given a tape recorder, you had to try hard. I think he came to me in the year 1977-1978. Then I started listening to Pink Floyd, Rush, 10 CC, Queen. And I came across bands like the Doors later.

- Are you a fan? classical music. What is your favorite classic?

I love Bach, Vivaldi, Mahler, Beethoven, Russian classics - Mussorgsky, Borodin, although less so. I consider Wagner and Mahler to be my pinnacle. I like it more theater music. My parents instilled an interest. It sounds closer to me by ear. Of the modern ones, I like Martynov.

You prefer to use the works of various poets for your music - Joyce, Dmitry Ozersky, Anri Volkhonsky, Velimir Khlebnikov. How does poetry fit into music?

Hard to say. I like a certain moment, I get into it. Some things work out, some don't. There are some things that you take to heart. I hardly read poetry.

What happened with Khlebnikov? I read several of his texts and felt a certain internal state which was close to me. I realized how you can do this specifically for yourself. I'm not a writer. I can hear what it sounds like. One sound is enough for me. Khlebnikov amazed me because for the first time I heard poetry in which rhythm, sound and deep energy are primary than the things that we are accustomed to consider as meaning.

We were just talking with Martynov just now. He expressed a cool idea that the chatter in our literature actually began with Pushkin. The entire Russian nation was silent; there were significant things that did not need to be explained. And “Eugene Onegin” is small talk, which for the most part carries nothing in itself. Except for some isolated moments.

And Khlebnikov is precisely the person who avoided this chatter. He understood that the rest was chatter, but what he wrote was not chatter. In the beginning there was the word. Khlebnikov felt this for himself and composed texts on a completely different level, which are new era in poetry. Rock music is a continuation of those futuristic quests.

- But you yourself tried to write a little poetry.

Sometimes I have lyrics, but they appear for a specific melody, and this happens very rarely. I just don't write like that. I did not set myself such a goal, because no words come to me, they are not familiar. Some musical phrases sometimes appear in my head. But verbal ones - no. For me everything is the same.

- You helped the Leningrad group open up. What prompted you to do this?

It was interesting to try to do something unusual. I was interested in recording and experimenting. It was an experience. I’m not the one playing, but listening from the sidelines. At the same time he helped, of course. Worked as a sound producer. He listened, suggested, helped build the sound.

The popularity of "Bird" turned you away from music of this kind. Is success among the masses the wrong path for you?

I didn’t like and don’t like the album “Bird” for one simple reason: this work was done clumsily. I don't like home-grown stuff. And not at all because the album was a commercial success. I don't care about that. This is not the main thing for me. If it exists, let it be. I don't mind. I just think that a lot of the great music I know isn't commercially successful. At the same time, it does not detract from it at all as music. And the avant-garde... For me, creativity is essentially an experiment. Something new is born, which surprises even myself. And when you make some given tracing paper, if someone likes it - for God’s sake, someone likes these “advantages”. To achieve some interesting things, you need something else. Avant-garde or what pushes music into itself.

You can't do a routine. At some point she starts to feel sick. The songs were successful. This process is the most uncontrollable. Except for the drum songs. It's like a feeling. You enter the house, there are pictures hanging. It's funny if all the walls have the same story. It would look very wild, terrible. When you imagine that you will create ten more such “Birds”, it becomes sad. Some people like it. Develop in this direction, making one picture, constantly improving its quality. I’m interested in simultaneously working on improving the quality and making the pictures different.

- “AuktYon” appeared during the beginning of the work of such groups as “Alice”, “DDT”. These groups have changed a lot since that time and have become commercialized. Some argue that "AuktYon" has remained the same. What is your point of view?

Thank God he changed. The spirit remains. We have changed. It seems to me that “Alice” and “DDT” have changed less than “AuktYon”. Heard latest songs Kincheva. I have already experienced this story and have been calm about it for a long time. He still writes the same strong hard rock, strong lyrics. But that's not the point. Everything remains, in my opinion, the same. For me this is just a big problem. Or maybe let him be better this way, so as not to change for the worse. It would be more interesting if he began to open up in some other expressions.

Everything that changes will change only in meaning. If he said “I love you” in the past, now he says “I don’t love you.” It's absolutely the same, meaningless. All this is tied to some time, to oneself, to something. This is stupid poetry, not interesting.

It’s more interesting when they do things that are above time, below it, or from within. This is living poetry, which is timeless. She's more out of touch and therefore crazier. At the same time, more vital and truthful.

I heard what the Pilot group is doing. One song I heard is similar to Kinchev, another is similar to Tsoi. Everything was played confidently and convincingly. And in my opinion, this is stupidity. For me, a living Kinchev is better. It’s better this way than “like Alice.” This is completely primitive.

- “When, at what point in history was “AuktYon” born? Who said “a”?

In my opinion, it was the end of 1985, when they began to play unusually for those times. I don’t remember exactly who said “a”. At that time we already had a fully formed group. And there was a drummer Igor, the only one who could more or less play, and there was Garkusha.

- Your wishes to all fans of the work of "AuktYon"?

Try to listen not only to “AuktYon” - there is so much going on! Keep your tail in the wind, carrot up. There are many good things in life. Just like it's full of nasty things. Smile more. There are more, otherwise some kind of glacier will climb on us or something else. Or other problems will begin...