SHIRVANI CHALAYEV


Like a weeping and laughing baby reaching out for its mother, I m
eternally yearning for my native land .

These words from a Lakets folk song may be an epigraph to the story
about the life and creative work of the Dagestan composer Shirvani Chalayev.

Lakets by nationality, he was born in 1935 in a mountain village of
Khosrekh; much in his temper was inherited from his ancestors-ploughmen,
shepherds and craftsmen. Stamina, almost peasant's tenacity in achieving
a goal, bold spirit and wisdom these qualities of his nature more than
once helped Chalayev to overcome obstacles and win.

Without any musical training in his childhood, in his teens he started
to work as a turner at a plant, then studied at the foreign languages
department of the Dagestan State University. Only at 18, Chalayev
started to study music seriously and at 23 entered Prof. G. Fere s class
of composition at the Moscow Conservatoire. In 1968 he completed a
post-graduate course; at that particular period in the late 1960-ies his
seven lakets songs for voice and chamber orchestra revealed a new gifted
composer to the widest audiences. The melodies which had been selected
over the centuries, the cultural wealth created by the people started to
sound in an unusually fresh, up-to-date key.

Chalayev's creative work both his music, deeply rooted in the national
soil, and the very principles of his art and his outlook on the whole
is inseparably linked with the life of this mountainous country, with
the fate of his native land and unique culture of Dagestan. I m for
ever in lore with the mountains and everything connected with them, I
like mountain herbs in winter, when they under the snow, and in spring,
when each has its own scent and taste, and in late summer, when they
have already become dried-up and faded and can be crushed in the palm
an incomparable sensation... And the most precious thing I have are the
songs of the mountains, the songs of mountaineers. I am happy that I had
occasion to make a walking tour around my native land , Chalayev said
once. I got to know hundreds of destinies... heard a great deal of
beautiful melodies .

The composer has a first-hand knowledge of the tunes of many peoples
inhabiting the Northern Caucasus. The wonderful samples collected by him
in folkloric expeditions were compiled into special books of songs
supplied with most interesting commentary. That is why Chalayev's own
works are convincing in their authenticity, though the author is far
from being tempted to surprise with some spectacular ethnographic detail
(for example, to introduce the sounding of an untempered instrument into
the score). He speaks fluently the language of his ancestors without
copying or citing any individual motifs, but achieving an artistic
generalisation of the typical features of national thinking. This is
distinctly heard in Chalayev's music in its intonationally astringent
melos, specific rhythm, its peculiar modal tint. Folklore as a sense of
life has been and remain a life giving source for the composer. His
music truly modern and vividly national in spirit-fascinates by its
pathos of high morals imbued with a keen compassion for man, with
admiration for the wisdom, beauty and grandeur of nature.

The principal place in this system of views and appraisals not without a
kind of pantheism is taken by the idea of the eternal antagonism and
unity between man and nature, the theme of a heroic deed, the problem of
honour and dignity of a personality. This is what the artist speaks
about in his symphonies Mountains and People, Sulak the witness, the
cantatas The Mountaineer s Heart; I m kissing woman s hands, the
symphonic poem The Gentle Tunes of the Mountains, the operas The
Mountaineers, Reading the poet s diaries, the ballets Girei-Khan,
Kamalil Bashir.

Shirvani Chalayev, while remaining a true son of his land in art, will
not confine himself to the range of strictly local themes. He seeks to
comprehend treasures of world art, to acquaint his people with them. So
he writes an opera to the plot of Shakespear's King Lear. Thus, the
images of Pushkin and Lermontov, Blok and Yesenin, Fet and F. Garcia
Lorca come into his creative work. So the vocal cycle to verses by US
poetess Emily Dickinson Circumference Between appears, with a dedication
to Dmitry Shostakovich. So the wonderful children's opera after Rudyard
Kipling's famous book Mowgli created.

The birth of this opera was not an easy one recollects producer
Natalya Sats. There was this good libretto lying dead on the shelf at
our literary department. I felt that no one among the numerous composers
willing to work with our theatre is capable to carry us into the heart
of the jungle+
But the very first sounds of Shirvani Chalayev's music made
the libretto, R. Kipling's novel, alive for me. I believed that he
was the man I had been waiting for The Jungle, and my ardent belief in
him stirred the same belief in me in response .

The vocal sphere in Shirvani Chalayev's works in constantly conjugated
with most curious finds in the instrumental sphere. His two cello
concertos, Small Quartet for two violins, alto and cello, seven pieces
for piano jointly entitled Around the Auls of Dagestan, suite Darginets
Kids for cello and piano and many other works are evidence of the
composer's outstanding colouristic gift. The unusual combination of
purely traditional rhythms and intonations with up-to-date devices of
music-writing, the appealing candour have made these works widely popular.
The compositions of People s Artist of the Russia Chalayev are performed
in different countries throughout the world in Bulgaria, Hungary, the
GDR, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, England. Prominent musicians include them
into their repertoire.

Nelli Alikperova

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