From: nikolay@scws7.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Subject: Re: Leave Vysotsky alone! (was Re: A blasphemy...)
Date: 7 Nov 92 04:21:20 GMT
Article-I.D.: scws7.NIKOLAY.92Nov6202120
 <92310.125601VABHC@CUNYVM.BITNET><1992Nov05.211007.15640@watson.ibm.com><1992Nov6.190823.17178@husc3.harvard.edu>
Organization: The Kremlin Wall of Harvard
In-reply-to: verbit@coolidge.harvard.edu's message of 6 Nov 92 19:08:22 EST

verbit@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:

> In article <1992Nov05.211007.15640@watson.ibm.com>
> bil@burka..aix.kingston.ibm.com (Igor Belchinskiy) writes:
>>In article <92310.125601VABHC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <VABHC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:

>>>Anybody, any person, and Shnittke also may say anything he wants.
>>>Even he said what you wrote, it wouldn't reflect on my opinion,
>>>that he's music is good.

>>You are so generous :-) Yet Shnitke sounded as responsible person.

> Responsible for what? Vysotsky's music? What a funny idea!  Or you
> meant that they both are contained in Cthulhu?  Well, it could
> happen that he ate them both, together with Krishna and Jesus
> Christ...

This is a bit muddled. Please specify: who ate who with whom?
Or should that be, "Who ate whom with who?" Shit, in other words, 
who the bloody hell ate, and who got eaten....

> BTW, all writers of music are divided on ones who know the notes
> (how to read a score) and ones who don't. The opinions of one who
> knows (Shnitke) on one who doesn't (Vysotsky) is as worthless as an
> opinion of, say, Andrei Makarevich on, say, Bruckner. These are
> different genres.  For example, Shnitke often says that he does not
> understand anything in jazz. Why I will believe that his opinion on
> grass-roots urban folk music is worth something?  He never wrote a
> song someone *could* sing, has he?  He wrote a score to a some
> Taganka performace and film, I know. The songs there could be worth
> something from the classical point of view (I doubt :), but
> nevertheless you could never see a KSP-fan singing this song, nor a
> taxi driver playing its tape.

There was a time when the song "Zhil na svete rytsar' bednyi" 
was all over KSP. I think it's Shnitke's.

> One more note: the arguments like "Shnitke says Vysotsky is a great
> musician" and "Korzhavin likes his poetry" are typical for scs
> collective consiousness. Why on the earth you need to judge Vysotsky
> by whatever these (for someone, highly esteemed) people wrote? Could
> you just buy a boombox and *listen* to his songs? Don't you have
> your own opinion? Do you believe that everybody should like someone
> if (sigh) Shnitke does? That's called authoritarian complex: people
> cannot imagine that everybody can have different opinion than them.
> If someone does, they are trying to persuade him by mention of
> esteemed people who are thinking the same as they, or by calling him
> names.  I *hate* Sovietic mentality sometimes :).

Misha, I think you've missed something here. I think it's plain
hilarious that Shnitke said anything of the sort about old
Vysotskii's music. I certainly hope that it's true, because it's so 
funny. As to whether these guys have *an opinion of their own*,
I'm amused that you give a fuck about that.

> Misha

Phil