If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
Gustav Mahler
Once in Paris, at a dinner party many guests gathered. They were all people from a creative environment; artists, musicians, journalists and writers. One woman who had long worked as a reporter at a cultural radio station, having learned from friends that I was a composer, asked me a direct question:
« Who are you composing for? »
« For myself, first of all…For myself, first of all…and only then can I be sure to remain honest in my attempts to change ordinary metals into gold », I answered.
And no matter how unfair it may sound in relation to composers who work a lot in cinema or for someone else who today does not need pure music as a piece of art, but needs a background, or musical design, which is made simply for a specific purpose or accompany the visuals; in general, the conditioned musical creativity is a craft, but not an art. Of course, we live in a completely different time, and electronic synthetic samples have replaced a lot of things in music. And in order to create something new and fresh, without succumbing to outside influences, you need to constantly ensure that you do not overload your musical consciousness and leave room in it for the birth of new musical images and sounds.
It is difficult to imagine what awaits us with the development of artificial intelligence, but real music will continue to live. It’s sad that nowadays tastes are so distorted and people lose sensitivity to beauty. But there is living creativity, and real music, as one of the sharpest and most effective tools for achieving truth in art, like a magic sword with the super enhanced sharpness can withstand this battle with the matrix.
One can only love the beautiful. The ugly can be tolerated, but it cannot be loved. Where only instincts and dark passions nest in the body… there people lose beauty – they lose love. Passions are ugly; people can give themselves to them, but they cannot love them. Love and beauty – these concepts are related to each other. People lose the beauty of their souls, so they cannot love and cannot be loved.
For thousands of years, alchemists tried to figure out how to turn lead into gold. Bankers were like modern-day alchemists who could create wealth from mere paper.
The composer must necessarily remain an alchemist, a heavenly wanderer and a wizard who can transform reality with the help of sounds and harmonies, creating a palette of sensations, and transfer the listener to his deep spiritual world.
Suite Moderna by Anna Bondareva will be released on Friday, the 2nd of February 2024 ! New EP-album has 4 piano pieces: Overture, Sarabande, Gavotte and Andantino grazioso.
Album sound & cover art by Oleg Kornev.