Molchanov Kirill Vladimirovich is an outstanding Soviet composer. He composed music for operas, ballets, theater performances, and films. Many of his songs have become folk songs. In his family life, a sudden and great love happened, for the sake of which he sacrificed his official career.
From the biography of the composer
Kirill Vladimirovich Molchanov was born in 1922 in Moscow. His mother, Natalya Konstantinovna, was an opera singer. Fifteen-year-old Kirill took part in a show of young musical talents. During the war he served in the song and dance ensemble. After the war he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory.
Academic creativity
One of the musical genres that captivated K. Molchanov and to which he devoted his life is opera. Operas with his music were successfully performed on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater.
The themes of the operas are varied - fabulous and heroic-revolutionary, recreating the emotional atmosphere of the revolutionary days of 1917, dedicated to the harsh days of World War II, and glorifying the feat of the Soviet people in the first days of the Great Patriotic War. The music for these operas, sometimes temperamental and dynamic, sometimes optimistically enlightened, sometimes naggingly sad, still lives in theaters.
Song motives
The composer's widespread popularity was associated with the song. Molchanov's songwriting is sincere, pure, sincere, deeply cordial and severely restrained. Even during the most intense work in the theater, he did not forget about the song. The content of his songs is patriotism, war and peace, dreams of high love and happiness.
The current number of songs and music about soldiers is considerable. And what were they like in the 50s of the twentieth century? K. Molchanov has songs about soldiers with a march-lyrical, pensive mood. In them, harsh and disturbing music makes the listeners think about the fate of these people, about what our defenders think about, what they strive for. And their thoughts are lyrical, heartfelt - about their homes, which they must vacate. The composer's music helped convey the traditional patriotic meaning of the soldier's song theme.
Svetlana Ivashova came to a small town to visit her beloved. The war began, and he could not meet Svetlana. She made the decision to await his return at his house. She believed that he would return. When Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who plays the role of Captain Vyacheslav Suzdalev in the film On Seven Winds, sings, the viewer hears a modest and soulful melody and realizes that the hero of the film performing the song is the same.
Deep and piercing music during the performance of the song helps to feel the state of wartime people, including scouts, whose hearts should be silent during their military worries, and feelings should be hidden, because they have a combat mission in the first place. There is so much optimism, faith, love, hope in these words and in this music! Looking at their favorite unforgettable actors and listening to their musical performance, people enjoy the purity of the thoughts of the representatives of the military generation. In our time, there is an older generation who invites their children to learn such songs.
Actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, playing the role of a talented history teacher, a former front-line officer Ilya Semenovich Melnikov, sings a peaceful song about the oriole on the piano. The calm musical tone of the first lines in the following turns into a tense intonation, because this person is still living with thoughts of the past war.
In the melody of the school waltz, one can hear the sadness of the school years, the memory of a beloved teacher who loved the song about cranes. Maybe he is still working, and the young man wants the cranes to convey greetings and the remorse of the former rake to him. The sad and expressive melody conveys his desire to remember this teacher always.
A lullaby for men … A paradox … How can this be? It turns out that it can. And K. Molchanov wrote this lullaby for the film of the same name. In the lullaby melody, we hear the voice of a mother who sings to an adult son, a soldier, and he, as in childhood, falls asleep serenely.
An amazingly warm, calm, amazingly soulful melody sounds when this recognition song is performed. The sad story of a girl who fell in love with a married man and who takes the responsibility of unrequited love upon herself touches the heart of any person. A melodic, heartfelt melody made this song a folk song.
To a slow, melodic melody, it is as if this love story is being told, which happened in the village in the middle of the twentieth century, when a specialist girl came to the collective farm. It seems that Matvey Morozov, performing this song to the sounds of an accordion, protects the girl from people who want to harm her.
From personal life
The first wife of K. Molchanov was the singer and poetess A. A. Rustaikis, the second - the theater actress M. V. Pastukhova-Dmitrieva, the third - the ballerina Nina Timofeeva.
His musical career went on brilliantly. But the official collapsed when he fell in love with the ballerina Nina Timofeev. For her, he wrote the ballet Macbeth and attended all of her performances. During one of them, to the sound of his music and under the impression of the performance of his beloved woman, he died. He was 59 years old. When the ballerina was asked to interrupt the performance, she said that she would dance it to the end.
The son of the composer and M. V. Vladimir Pastukhovoy is a journalist and TV presenter, their adopted daughter Anna is a multiple USSR tennis champion.
Highest level of creativity and dedication
Kirill Molchanov left us hundreds of songs, many operas, films, performances, musicals and works for voice and piano.
The level of K. Molchanov's musical creativity was defined as the highest. The sincere song melodies of the famous composer became popular, because he wrote music with his soul and heart. The words of the writer B. Pasternak about the goal of creativity as self-giving can rightfully be attributed to K. Molchanov.
