Mikhail Marash. “Boys”
Thirty years ago, in the first post-war year, a boys’ choir chapel was created in the city of Gorky. Its organiser and first director was a talented choirmaster and teacher, a man with a sensitive and responsive heart, Vasily Pavlovich Malyshev.
It was a hard time, but half a year later, on Soviet Army Day, forty pupils of the Chapel — “chapel boys”, as they called themselves — came out on the stage of the Gorky Drama Theatre, and a boy host announced: “Composer Solovyov-Sedoy. ‘Budyonny’s Meeting with the Cossacks’. Conducted by the Chapel’s artistic director Vasily Pavlovich Malyshev…”
Without taking his eyes off the conductor, Lyova Sivukhin sang. He sang without yet knowing that time would pass and another boy at a concert would announce: “Conducted by the Chapel’s artistic director Lev Konstantinovich Sivukhin…”
Now the Chapel’s teachers include pupils of Lev Konstantinovich. Over these years more than 130 pupils of the Chapel have become professional musicians.
The Gorky Boys’ Choir Chapel is a music school of a special type and at the same time a performing choral collective that is constantly engaged in concert activity. It is hard to imagine how the boys manage to do everything. After all, first of all they are simply pupils. And along with everyone else they learn the secrets of suffixes and prefixes, wrinkle their foreheads before putting in a comma; in history lessons they storm the Winter Palace, build the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station and the Gorky Automobile Plant. Physics… Chemistry… Pioneer detachment meetings and Komsomol meetings…
But when the last bell rings, lessons do not end for the hundred pupils of School No. 14 of the Nizhegorodsky district. Gathering their satchels, they go to the Chapel building, where after lunch classes continue: solfège, music theory, music literature and, in the upper grades, conducting. Piano lessons are compulsory for all. And whoever wishes can study the violin or composition. The basis of the Chapel’s teaching is work in the choral class. Pupils of grades 1 and 2 sing in the junior choir, those from grades 3 to 8 in the concert choir.
Boys… Their singing life is short. Up to the 4th grade they are still too small. From the 7th (and for some even from the 6th) comes mutation, the change of voice. So they sing the main programme for only 3–4 years. And all the time some leave and others arrive. And these “others” have to be introduced to the repertoire.
“And why not create a girls’ chapel? After all, they can sing longer?” — this question was put to L. K. Sivukhin. Of course, girls sing longer, and they also look more striking. The bows alone are worth something! And it is easier to teach them outward expressiveness. Boys are stricter, more restrained. But that is only outwardly. And besides, the timbre is quite different. It is not for nothing that since the earliest times composers have willingly turned to the boys’ choir. Foreign, Russian and Soviet composers alike were attracted by the inimitable timbre of a boys’ choir — silvery, with a special kind of soaring quality… and at the same time deep…”
For Lev Konstantinovich there are no rehearsals in the ordinary, everyday sense of the word. Each one is creation, a search and the discovery of something new. And together with their leader the boys take part in this creation. Perhaps that is why the favourite lesson at the Chapel is choir.
The face of the Gorky Boys’ Choir Chapel is defined not only by its special manner of performance but also by its repertoire, the basis of which is works by Gorky composers.
A frequent guest of the Chapel is the oldest composer of Russia, USSR People’s Artist A. A. Kasyanov. There are many of his works in the choir’s repertoire, but the favourite song is perhaps “A Family Song”, whose words, warm and full of great love for the boys, the “chapel boys”, were written by Alexander Alexandrovich himself. A permanent “own” author is Honoured Art Worker of the RSFSR A. A. Nesterov. The composer B. Blagovidov wrote a lot for the Chapel. With pleasure the young Gorky composers B. Getselev, S. Strazov, I. Kruzhkov and the Chapel’s pupil, Honoured Art Worker of the Yakut ASSR G. Komrakov, give their works to the Chapel.
In the years of its existence the Chapel has given more than 700 concerts.
The boys’ voices can be heard in children’s programmes on Gorky radio and television, at the traditional song festival on the Volga embankment and in the concert hall of the Gorky Conservatory. The Chapel took part in performances of the oratorios “Song of the Forests” by D. Shostakovich, “On Guard for Peace” by S. Prokofiev, “Joan of Arc at the Stake” by A. Honegger and the “Requiem” by D. Kabalevsky. The little artists also take part in productions of the opera theatre: “Boris Godunov”, “The Queen of Spades”, “Carmen”, “La Bohème”…
The Gorky boys have been heard in Ulyanovsk and Kuibyshev, in Volgograd and Yaroslavl, Vologda, Krasnodar, Kirov, Novosibirsk and Vilnius. The boys have been to “Artek” and “Orlyonok”. They sang in Moscow, at the All-Union House of Composers.
We leaf through the visitors’ book.
“I am sincerely delighted by the mastery of the boys of the Chapel who, despite their young age, show great art of choral singing.” USSR People’s Artist, Professor V. G. SOKOLOV
“Dear people of the Volga! How well you sing! And what is surprising in that! Here, in the very heart of the Russian land, only the beautiful soul of our people can sound, in all its boundless breadth.”
USSR People’s Artist, Professor K. B. PTITSA
“Dear boys, young singers! My connection with the whole collective of the Chapel, lasting since the day it was founded, always remains for me among my best musical memories in life. I thank you deeply, performing artists, for your attention to my works.” USSR People’s Artist, Professor A. A. KASYANOV
“Dear boys! I admire your mastery and also your attitude to, and love for, the choral art that is dear to us. It is only in educational institutions such as yours that true and devoted continuers of the Russian choral traditions are born.” Artistic director of the A. Yurlov State Russian Choir Chapel, Yu. UKHOV
… Every morning the sun looks into the windows of the house where Music lives. And the sun sees a hundred boys of all kinds — cheerful, sad, sometimes mischievous, sometimes thoughtful. Some love reading books, others only want to kick a ball… others… yet others… They are different, boys. But there is one thing that unites them, and that is MUSIC. They have absorbed the love of it here, in this house on Sverdlova Street. And later they will carry that love along the roads of life. And they will give their pupils a love of music. And they will say proudly: “We are from the Chapel!” As today say German Komrakov, composer; Vyacheslav Mochalov, artistic director of the Novosibirsk Philharmonic; Sergei Kalagin, conductor of the Leningrad Maly Opera Theatre; Georgy Muratov, chief choirmaster of the Gorky Opera Theatre; Anatoly Ezhov, head of the choral studio “Zhavoronok”; Alexander Skulsky and Viktor Kurzhavsky, conductors of the symphony orchestra of the Gorky Philharmonic; Valery Trishin, head of the boys’ choir in Rybinsk; Vladimir Popov, director of the Gorky Boys’ Choir Chapel; Alexander Kanakov, Anatoly Shestakov, Alexander Bezukhov and Oleg Poletaev, teachers of the Chapel; and Lev Sivukhin, artistic director of the Boys’ Choir Chapel.
Mikhail Marash. 1976