Composer Vasily Andreev

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Composer Vasily Andreev was born in 1861 into a merchant family. He did not become a merchant, but became interested in music. Thanks to him, a fashion for Russian folk instruments arose, which received significant public recognition and distribution on the concert stage. Andreev was not just a composer, but also an organizer and promoter of this field of art.

Virtuoso and theorist

Vasily Andreev formed his first orchestra in St. Petersburg. It included lovers of ps altery, pity, tambourines and other folk instruments. The concerts of the orchestra spread the passion for playing the balalaika throughout the country. Vasily Andreev himself masterfully mastered this instrument.

The composer actually created a new area of musical creativity, called the Russian folk instrumental art of the written tradition. It merged both professional-academic and folklore elements. That is why everything that Vasily Andreev did is considered unique. The composer came to the idea of creating a new type of musical art not immediately, although the balalaika fascinated him from childhood. Most of all, he liked the original timbre of this instrument and its performancetricks.

Vasily Andreev is a composer who was distinguished by a fanatical determination in the implementation of his own plans. On the one hand, he was a virtuoso of live performance, and on the other hand, he was a thoughtful theorist who wrote a huge number of articles and books on his favorite topic.

The first chromatic balalaika

Although Vasily Andreev specialized in folk instruments, he was also influenced by academic music. For three years he studied the violin, taking lessons from the outstanding conductor and violinist Nikolai Galkin, a former professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. That is why Andreev, over time, made more and more demands on the balalaika that are typical for a concert instrument. Movable frets gave only a diatonic scale. The composer used a fixed chromatic temperament. He became a reformer of performing technique.

In 1887, together with the talented master Franz Paserbsky, Andreev created the first chromatic balalaika. The tool immediately gained popularity. In the summer of the same year, the book "School of playing the balalaika" was published. Paserbsky's model was of fundamental and cardinal importance for Andreev's life's work. For the first time, the balalaika appeared, which became an academic instrument and retained its characteristic folklore properties (the number of strings, the triangular shape of the soundboard, playing techniques, system). There were prospects for mastering the classical musical heritage on it.

Promotion of the balalaika

In fact, Andreev gave the country a balalaika inimproved and enhanced. Prior to this, the nationality of this instrument was in its ethnographic origin, and now it has become popular also in its mass distribution. Many experts consider this phenomenon unique in the history of music.

In just ten years, the balalaika has come a long way that other instruments took centuries to complete. At the beginning of the 21st century, there were about 200 thousand of them in Russia (while in St. Petersburg there were about 65 thousand).

Advantages of the Andreev model

The instrument for which Vasily Andreev wrote many articles and created a new performance technique determined the musical fashion of his era. The new balalaika has been improved in such a way that it has become much more accessible for beginners to master. Her sound turned out to be more distinct and sonorous intonation than the sound of her predecessors.

The shape of the balalaika has become more convenient, and most importantly, more compact. The advantages did not prevent the tool from remaining cheap and easy to manufacture. It was equally suitable for both lyrical soulful folk song and temperamental dance. The combination of all these pluses attracted more and more enthusiasts who wanted to master the musical craft unknown to them.

Rise of the Orchestra

After the appearance of a new chromatic balalaika, Andreev acquired a large number of students. It was they, together with their teacher, who created the most popular St. Petersburg orchestra (the initial composition was 8 people). His first concert took place on 20March 1888. This date is the birthday of the Russian folk instruments orchestra.

Instrument parts were duplicated and had a clear functional division (chord accompaniment, bass, melody). Balalaikas played in unison. Later, in the 1890s, the orchestra expanded to 16 people.

Propaganda of music in the army

When getting acquainted with the instrument for which Vasily Andreev wrote plays, created orchestras and composed books, one should not forget that a competent campaign to popularize the balalaika made a significant contribution to his success. Having become famous in the capital, the composer began to organize thematic circles in military units. He believed (and believed correctly) that soldiers demobilized and returning to their native places would cultivate love for the balalaika among friends and relatives.

Thus, in the villages, factories and factories, folklore was being revived, and the broad strata of the people received aesthetic and musical education. If only for this reason, Vasily Andreev occupies a worthy place in the galaxy of great musicians-enlighteners. The composer's pieces became widely known and were used by many enthusiasts as source material for their studies.

In 1897, Andreev achieved the establishment in the army of a teaching staff engaged in the promotion of playing the balalaika. Many soldiers who learned from the composer played at the Mariinsky Theater. The concert dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Andreev's group was attended by an orchestra consisting of 380 balalaika players.

However, do not think thatthe organization of training became a simple enterprise for the composer. At first, he had to fight with the bureaucracy and bureaucracy in the military offices, which treated folk instruments with many prejudices and contempt.

Composer's students

Following Andreev's St. Petersburg orchestra, similar orchestras began to appear throughout the country, specializing in Russian folk music. Moscow became the second city with a new circle of balalaika lovers.

Andreev's orchestra was also expanding, which consisted of the most devoted students of the composer. The most famous among them was Nikolai Fomin. He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and brought additional academicism and professionalism to the circle. It was Fomin who became the author of most of the transcriptions and arrangements of Russian folk songs for the orchestra. His works quickly became classics. Of course, Vasily Andreev himself also influenced the formation of Fomin. "Meteor", "Faun" and his other works have become a practical guide for several generations of musicians.

Andreev and domra

Over time, Andreev ceased to be satisfied with the timbre of a homogeneous balalaika orchestra. He considered such a sound to be insufficiently diverse. Therefore, the composer began to introduce new instruments into his orchestra. They helped to update the concert program with more serious classical academic works. Interestingly, the expansion of the repertoire of the Andreevsky orchestra was encouraged by many famous figures of Russian art.of that period. Balalaika music captivated not only musicians. So, Andreev's correspondence with the great artist Ilya Repin has been preserved.

Looking for Russian folk instruments suitable for reconstruction, Andreev decided to turn to stringed and plucked domra. The question of its ownership was then debatable. Andreev found the “heiress” of the domra in the Vyatka balalaika, which had long disappeared from wide use. Their characteristic feature was a round body (different from the "classic" triangular).

For what instrument did Vasily Andreev write pieces? Most of his works were created for balalaikas. Nevertheless, the composer did a lot to popularize other instruments as well. The example of domra in this sense is the most indicative. Having reconstructed it, Andreev found a new source of timbre diversity for his orchestra of Russian folk instruments.

Orchestra Update

The first domras according to the Vyatka model were made in the summer of 1896. After they were added to the concert program, the Andreevsky orchestra was renamed the Great Russian. The composer explained the reason for the appearance of a new sign by the fact that he and his students used instruments that were characteristic exclusively for the northern and middle strip of the country. At the same time, reconstructed helmet-shaped harps first appeared in the orchestra.

Besides the balalaika, Vasily Andreev loved the harmonica since childhood. He played this instrument from an early age. At his home in Maryino, together with the harmonica, the composer often rested after long concerts. At firstthe orchestra regularly alternated numbers on this instrument with balalaikas. With the help of the harmonica, Vasily Andreev performed serious and detailed works. At the same time, this instrument did not become a classic for the Great Russian Orchestra. The fact is that the harmonica is more connected with the city song, while Andreev (with all his love for it) tried to revive an earlier layer of folklore.

Musician's works

“Memories of Vienna”, “Faun”, “Butterfly”, Polonaise No. 1 - this is not the whole list of works authored by Vasily Andreev. "Orchid" was also a well-known repertoire number of the Great Russian Orchestra. Even modern folk groups continue to perform the arrangement of the song “Shining for Months”, created by the composer more than a hundred years ago.

Vasily Andreev wrote instrumentally colorful pieces, bright in melody and popular among the widest audience. They attracted more and more ardent adherents to get acquainted with the new orchestral folk culture.

Tours

The instrumental composition assembled by Andreev impressed even the most recognized academic composers. Among them was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Andreevsky influence is felt in his opera about the city of Kitezh. The propagandist of the balalaika and other folk instruments himself welcomed the idea of composing new large-scale works for his own orchestra.

Becoming popular, Andreev's teambegan to give concerts not only in Russia, but also abroad. Performances of the Great Russian Orchestra with a full house were held in Germany, France, America and England. There is a known case when the Italian composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo refused to go to Berlin for the premiere of his own opera Pagliacci in order to attend Vasily Vasilyevich's concert at the same time.

Andreev remained an energetic and dedicated performer until his last years. After the revolution, the Civil War began, and the composer went to the front with concerts. His performances were massively popular with the Red Army. During one of the concerts, Vasily Andreev was conducting in the cold in a light suit and became seriously ill. He was transferred to Petrograd. He died on December 26, 1918. Andreev's grave is located on the Composer's Path of the Tikhvin Cemetery, where famous figures of musical art are buried.