On the Collection of Sheet Music “As Long as My Blood Boils”

The name of RSFSR People’s Artist Lev Konstantinovich Sivukhin is widely known among the choral collectives of Russia and among composers working in choral genres.

Absolutely everyone knows about the talented conductor’s native city on the Volga, Gorky. For a quarter of a century he has been artistic director of the Gorky Boys’ Choir Chapel. This year the Chapel turned 40; it was organised by Sivukhin’s teacher, Vasily Pavlovich Malyshev. In Gorky no significant event of cultural and public life takes place without the boys’ chapel, with its large repertoire, creative mobility and, above all, high musical merits (it rightly bears the high title of laureate of the Lenin Komsomol Prize).

Since 1973 L. K. Sivukhin has also headed the chamber choir he created at the Gorky regional Choral Society. This collective too leads an interesting creative life. In 1983, at the International Competition of Academic Choirs in the Bulgarian city of Varna, it won a large gold medal and the title of laureate.

Both collectives, and now the student choir of the conducting and choral faculty of the Gorky Conservatory as well (a year ago Associate Professor L. Sivukhin took on the chairmanship of the Department of Choral Conducting), give many successful concerts, performing the music of different countries and eras. The leader attaches special importance to the music of Soviet composers, and among them, quite naturally, to works by Gorky composers.

L. Sivukhin gave many works their start in life by performing them for the first time. Some of them won prizes at the patriotic music competition in Ivanovo.

Leading an active, many-sided performing career, L. Sivukhin has long and successfully made choral arrangements, and alongside them he also composes original choral works. Some of them have firmly entered the repertoire of several children’s choral collectives. Such is, for example, the stern and manly song to words by the Gorky poet Valery Shamshurin, “Tell Us, Young Sailor” (about the feat of the teenagers of the Solovki School of Ship’s Boys).

In the collection offered here the author has included his works of different years. Although this is only a part of what he has created in recent years (and the author turned 50 in 1985), the collection gives a sufficient idea of the composer’s ideological and imagistic inclinations, of his deeply Russian choral nature and, finally, of the high professionalism of his choral scores.

The collection opens with a cycle of 7 choruses to poems by the Gorky poet Alexander Lyukin for unaccompanied mixed choir, entitled “As Long as My Blood Boils”. Its first and last parts contain a deeply patriotic meaning: “There is no country that rose more fiercely from the ruins to the stars than Russia.” It is the artist’s duty to sing of those who work miracles and raised Russia to the stars! In keeping with the meaning of the poems, the music is restrained, manly and full of dignity.

All the middle choruses, from the second to the sixth, are built logically from serious reflection (“The Road”) and sorrowful remembrance (“To a Fallen Friend”) to a gradual clearing through lyrical feeling (“The Embroideress”) to the dashing “Russian Dance”. The cycle makes a good, integral impression, but some of its individual numbers can also be included in mixed programmes.

The collection includes a choral song to words by V. Shamshurin, “Children of the War”. One of a great many songs and poems on this theme, it always moves and touches the heart. In the music, a rhythmic pattern imitating the sound of the wheels of a moving train, a sparing declamatory line of narration and, as an emotional outburst, choral singing without words, a vocalise between the verses, are organically combined.

The Russian folk songs recorded in the Gorky region are interesting in themselves as original folklore. In the choral arrangement they undoubtedly gain, and in this collection they testify to the skill and taste of the arranger.

The Lyrical Concertino is a work of a different kind. Its external features, the choral vocalise and the accompaniment by a small instrumental ensemble (piano, flute, trumpet, bass guitar or double bass, drum kit), are not the main thing. More important in it is the youthfully bright lyrical mood, directness of expression, simplicity of the melodic line, and accessibility. The lyrical concerto presents itself as free collective music-making by young people in love with life and with choral art.

On the whole one hopes that this collection will serve choral collectives that have a serious interest in Russian choral music.

Valentina Blinova. Introductory article to the collection of sheet music \nLev Sivukhin “As Long as My Blood Boils…”

Choruses. Publishing house “Sovetsky Kompozitor”, 1988