Composer Gennady Gladkov, the author of music for “Bremen musicians” and “Ordinary Miracle”, died

Here are five compositions by which we will remember it

Soviet and Russian composer, People's Artist of Russia Gennady Gladkov died at the age of 88. In 1969, the cartoon "Bremen musicians" with the music of Gladkov, which brought him all -Union fame, was released. In continuation, “in the wake of Bremen musicians,” he himself sang the party of the stupid king. Gladkov also wrote music for the animated films “Baby and Carlson”, “Blue puppy”, “Like a lion and a turtle sang a song”, “Well, wait a minute!”. In full -length feature cinema, his most famous works are “gentlemen of good luck”, “man from the Kapucin boulevard”, “12 chairs”, “ordinary miracle”. Medusa chose several Gladkov’s works that allow you to hear his music from the non -trivial side.

In the mass consciousness, the name of Gennady Gladkov is tightly connected with melodies from cinema and cartoons. The main activity of the composer - and with it large -scale recognition - came on the Brezhnev era. He released his first work in the cinema after thirty: in 1966 the cartoon “The most, the most, the most,” about a boastful lion cub, who imagined himself the best, was released.

After this work, Gladkov’s career developed stably-without any roughness or ideological conflicts with the authorities. His position remained so until the very end - in 2022, Gladkov supported the actions of the Russian army in the war with Ukraine: “My father spoke in front -line brigades in front of the soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. And today I would speak in front of the guys at his . They call - I’ll go, it will be an honor for me. Urine is not to endure the parasites of these Bandera! " -In an interview with the publication "Interlocutor", an 88-year-old People's Artist said.

Bremen musicians

1969. Director - Inessa Kovalevskaya

Remaining conventionally Soviet, Gladkov’s music has always been more complicated than the works of many of his contemporaries: the ability to catch a melody that the whole union would hum, was combined with a composer with Hooligan excitement. He sought to use some modernist technique in the essay or play in stylization-be it thieves folklore (score for the "gentlemen of good luck") or a gypsy romance (" song of robbers " from "Bremen musicians").

At the same time, he could turn to something more exalted-for example, to Baroque music, but in a fashionable processing for the 1960s. In those years, Baroque Pop took a noticeable place on the Western rock scene for a short time-the musicians tried to flirt with European music of the XVII-XVIII centuries. These experiments can be found out by the sound of harpsichord - it was often used in arrangements or even allowed it to solo (as, for example, in the “In My Life” The Beatles). In the Gladkov archive there is an exemplary example of this game - “The Duet of the King and Princess” from the second series of the cartoon “In the footsteps of Bremen musicians” - with a completely baroque refrain: “I do not want anything”. Gladkov himself in this song performed the king's vocal part.

Kid and Carlson

1968. Director - Boris Stepantsev

Gladkov’s irrigation, which could work in a variety of genres, had its own prerequisites. His father, Soviet jazzman, Yuri Gladkov, played in the legendary ensemble of Alexander Tsfasman, the ancestor of Soviet jazz. Gladkova’s grandfather Stepan Maksakov at one time accompanied the accordion of Lydia Ruslanova, a brilliant Soviet performer of Russian folk songs.

A striking example of how these worlds mixed in the head of one composer is the score of Gladkov for the cartoon "Baby and Carlson". In one of the episodes “Minorly, a well -fed man in full flourishing” dances under the melody “along the St. Petersburg” . Chaliapinsky “folk” hit smooths arranges for a pop ensemble, teasing and slaughtered.

12 chairs

1976. Director - Mark Zakharov

Gladkov’s songs at a certain moment also turned into folk ones - as if ceasing to belong to him, they entrenched in the images of those who performed them. Without the baritone, Muslim Magomayev is difficult to imagine the song “Ray of the Sun Golden” - the famous Serenade of Trubadur, addressed not only to the princess, but also to every Soviet man who dreams of a bright future. Or the Foxtrot “My Sail is whitening in the Zakharov film adaptation of“ 12 chairs ” - the anthem of escapism and narcissism became the most important in the repertoire of Andrei Mironov.

Soviet cinema knows not many strong duets “director and composer”, we can call only a few such synthetic unions: Eduard Artemyev’s electronic music and Andrei Tarkovsky’s films, the score of Alexander Zatsepin and the comedy Leonid Gaidai. But another example of organic co -authorship is the duet of Gennady Gladkov and Mark Zakharov. He originated in the theater: first in the Moscow Theater of Satire, and later in the cult "Lenkom".

The formula of love

1984. Director - Mark Zakharov

The most famous platform of Soviet rock-memes, “Lenkom” introduced the Moscow audience to Gladkov’s serious music: in 1974, the performance “Til” appeared in the theater, one of the first Soviet rock musicals, according to the work of Charles de Coster “The Legend of Tila Ulenspigel” . The main role in it was played by Nikolai Karachentsov.

Five years later, on January 1, 1979, the Soviet viewers saw an “ordinary miracle” - another fairy tale for adults, for which he wrote a magical, elegant and daring music. It is enough to recall the Farewell Song or the Song of the Wizard .

Through the five -year period, smoothness catches a completely different intonation in the new film by Mark Zakharov “Formula of Love”. To the parody serenade “Uno, Uno, Uno, Un moment” he composed not only music, but also the words that imitate the Italian text. Party Semyon Farada on the record also performed Gladkov.

The eldest son

Opera 1983

As for many film composers, the 1990s became a challenge for Gladkov-in these years his professional activity fell sharply. He received a new round of popularity thanks to the conductor Vladimir Yurovsky . About the music of the composer of “Bremen musicians”, Yurovsky, while working on the musical “Ordinary Miracle” said :

I consider Gladkova a composer of no less level than Leonard Bernstein or Stephen Sondheim. What the “Bremen musicians” and “Ordinary Miracle” created in our latitudes in our latitudes, similarly to the effect that the WestSaid History in America had produced at one time. In connection with the language barrier and iron curtain, this music did not get to the west, unfortunately. But in the very music of Gladkov is no less truth than in any other academic or avant -garde music of the same period. Therefore, I have a special attitude towards Gladkov. I wanted to get his music out of the framework of cinema, theater, pop, introduce it into a philharmonic context.

At his educational concerts in the Moscow Philharmonic, Yurovsky has repeatedly addressed the symphonic works of Gladkov-the opera "Elder Son" based on the play by Alexander Vampilov, the ballet-semen "Return of Odyssey" and others. Yurovsky tried to show the audience the legacy of Soviet composers, many of whom were locked in their workshop conventional.

But it seems that Gladkova never worried the tough frames - even in them he felt quite free, constantly changing the masks and not allowing himself to be reproached.

Polina Dorozkova