Unique opera score by Mark Karminskyі
Authors: Demchenko Aleksandr 
Published: January 2021

The main goal of this publication is to draw the attention of musicologists and the general music community to the rich creative heritage of Mark Karminskyi, whose 90th anniversary is celebrated in 2020. One of the milestone works of the talented composer was the opera “Ten Days That Shook the World” (1970). Staged at one time by several theaters in the former USSR and abroad, it was later practically forgotten. The author of this article is the first to deeply analyze Karminskyi’s score, coming to the conclusion that the composer has an innovative understanding of the very nature of the opera genre, and that this and other works of a great master should be analyzed and evaluated outside any ideological context. The research results. The uniqueness of Karminskyi’s opera “Ten Days That Shook the World” (1970) consists primarily in the fact that the maximum concentration of conflict-dramatic tension was achieved here. This concentration is due to a well-executed libretto (V. Dubrovskyi), which was also quite unique for its time. The fact is that the whole text is based on fragments from the book by John Reed, manifestos, leaflets, telegrams of 1917, speeches and letters by Lenin, as well as epitaphs of the field of Mars. During the free assemblage of the selected material, a completely independent literary canvas was formed. Based on specific documents, the authors sought to identify and emphasize the exciting dramatic pathos of the historical moment being recreated. That is why the libretto includes the most compressed, elastic in rhythm, explosive in meaning phrases, replicas, individual words. The final design of the selected texts went along the line of additional dynamization, strengthening of their “shock” impact. Total documentation and open journalistic verbal canvas led to a completely innovative interpretation of the genre. Here the principles of the grand historical opera were revived, but they were revived in a kind of transcendental version, which needs of gigantic artistic forces. Based on such a performing foundation, an attempt is made to recreate the colossal scale of revolutionary events. The leading musical image is conceived as a symbol of the inevitable course of History, a kind of pendulum of the revolution (in the performance of the Prague national theatre, the pendulum has become an important attribute of scenography). In various intonation and tempo variations, it permeates the opera as a whole in the full sense of the word, preserving unconditional recognition (primarily due to the constant rhythm and jerky articulation). This motif is one of the expressions of the “motor” of the revolution, for the materialization of which imitations of the active knocking of various mechanisms are used, all kinds of toccate formulas are reproduced. With the introduction of the noted motor layer, the atmosphere of sound documentary, so characteristic of this opera, is established. Another major musical reality of the revolutionary era is associated with all kinds of signaling – communicative, notifying, summoning, imperative. The composer does not seek to disguise the nature of this semantic layer and often emphasizes it using in its most elementary quality. The third component of the documentary – sound element is all sorts of orchestral tremoli (mainly in the lower register). In terms of meaning, their amplitude extends from describing the “subsoil” of what is happening (dull rumbling, unclear noise) to recreating the pictures of the raging flow of Time (violent seething, catastrophic bubbling). In any of its manifestations, with the introduction of this tool, different degrees of tension are poured into the sound wave. Defining for the dramaturgy of the opera “leitmotif of struggle” absorbs and transmits in the most generalized forms the characteristic for the documentaryjournalistic style of this work oratorical declamation, invocatory signaling and energy tremolo including the conflict tone of the main dissonance (here – the small second). In the marked lays of documentary-sound atmosphere, as a rule, the main energy of conflict is concentrated. Constant intonation-rhythmic and texture-dynamic injections of this energy give the dramatic movement a special purposefulness of the incessant “tidal” wobble. In turn, these forces themselves are subordinated to the determining regularity of compositional development: the increase in the activity of the life search, transmitted in procedural forms (on the basis of recitation), ends with the acquisition of the resulting state (on support of a bright melodic relief). Naturally, the highest degree of conflict is achieved in those scenes where there is a direct clash of the forces of revolution and counterrevolution. In music there is an extremely colorful, tense documentary-sound environment in which the clash of views, opinions, and positions is unfolding. The full magnitude of the social conflict is revealed in a kind of freeze-frames, where the initiative goes to the orchestra and the “oratorio” choir. In such cases, the narrative rises above the local soil, the musical and journalistic document acquires the comprehensive fullness of the epic canvas about the national movement, and the specific scenic and event series fits into the monumental frame of the oratorical frescoes. This generalizing plan, which at first seems to be accompanying, framing, in fact turns out to be leading in terms of volume and its centralizing role. In “Ten Days” not only the powerful offensive and dramatic potential of the revolutionary movement is recreated, but also its deep soil, the decisive component, is revealed by artistic means: it gained a powerful force and became truly ineradicable due to the support of the masses. This idea permeates the entire ideological structure of the work, since many oratorical episodes represent the personification of the voice of the people. As a result of the analysis of the opera “Ten Days that Shook the World”, we note the following. – The score in a concentrated manner expresses the current tendencies of large-scale opera drama, in particular, the revival of the genre of large historical opera based on the material of the revolutionary era, the defining features of which are realized in forms sustained in modern style. – The music embodies an exceptional conflict-dramatic tension and high civic pathos, which fully corresponds to the ideas about the character of that time.