An involuntary continuation of the note “Beethoven’s Sonata number 17 and the Petrel”.

This sonata has drawn my soul into itself. I’ve listened to it probably ten times in a row in different versions. Truth. there was also a personal, “selfish” motive – in my mind all the time, interfering and mixing with Beethoven’s “Song over the Water” by Franz Schubert sounded, the main motive of which was completely borrowed from this sonata (the third movement of The Tempest).

But, listening to “The Tempest” many times, as usual, I discovered something melodically new each time. In the second half of the third movement, Berhoven musically COLLIDES two Oppositely Rotating Vortexes!

Not waves!

Waves in a storm are unlikely to collide with each other, because the wind, although gusty, still blows strongly in one direction (in this area of the sea).

(I know from personal experience. I have sailed more than once, in particular, on an inflatable boat, in stormy weather in the bay, and even almost drowned when, seeing how well it holds on to steep waves and smartly jumps to their tops, I boarded to try on how to cast a homemade floating anchor, forgetting about the laws of physics. For which he immediately paid the price. The surging wave immediately put the boat vertically on board and I, along with the still NONFLOATING anchor, cheerfully went to the bottom, and from above, wrapping and tying me, a multi-meter rope, folded in rings in the boat, descended…

But this note is not a horror story about me!)

Therefore, it occurred to me that THIS Collision of TWO OPPOSITE VORTICES is just an additional CONFIRMATION of my perception of the storm from a bird’s–eye view.

The bird, soaring fearlessly over the waves of raised waters, sees these waves well, but with the tips of its wing feathers, it does not FEEL them with its whole body, but just agitated air currents, minitwisters and powerful large vortices. All this can be heard in the sonata in both the middle and upper octaves, as well as in the fortifying-sounding low ones. And suddenly, in the mentioned second half, the main “musical direction of the vortices” suddenly changes to the opposite, and the bird – the petrel, the seagull, the albatross – of course FEEL this change in the direction of the vortices! Her sensitive nerve endings at the base of her feathers instantly pick up where the jets of stormy air are moving and swirling.

AND we CAN HEAR IT CLEARLY IN THE SONATA!

Unfortunately, I’m not a composer, and even though I “feel” music, I’m not the creator of it! Otherwise, I would have written a symphonic poem “The Bronze Horseman”, in which the main motif, which sounds menacingly from the first note to the last, would be the motif of a double, BUT DIFFERENT MELODIC PATTERN, the roar of the wind and the Neva! After all, the beautiful lines of the poem are asking for an even more artistic and emotional reflection in music.

I don’T need to poke at the already existing mediocre efforts of Glier (Ballet), Asafiev (Opera), Barabashev (Symphonic Poem), Beder (cycle of eight pieces for piano), Myaskovsky (10th Symphony). Perhaps someone else has dropped something.

A ballet or, even more so, an opera from this poem can only be made by incompetent, show-off idiots, bursting from the inside with an irrepressible desire to blurt out something and, by all means, EPIC!

How big should a ballerina who performs the part of NEVA be? Or a singer who “Swelled and roared…” Or a dancer who portrayed the WIND? Or the singer in Boreas’ aria?

And to DANCE or SING the part of the “Bronze Horseman” himself, you need a duet, a human singer or dancer riding a horse, and the horse himself, who also sings neighing!

I thought of it!

We need to genetically raise a CENTAUR that can sing and dance!

“What fire in yonder charger flames!

Proud charger, whither art thou ridden,

Where leapest thou? And were, on whom

Wilt plant thy hoof?–Ah, Lord of doom…”

If these were truly talented compositions, yes, even at the level of a song, they would still be performed all over the world. But you can’t hear or see them!

Reinhold Glier’s micropiece from the ballet, it seems, is occasionally performed under the title “Hymn to the Great City” (suspiciously very similar to the choir of pilgrims from Wagner’s opera “Tannhauser”).

Mediocrity remains mediocrity, regardless of the degree of pomp and puffiness of its name!

(I took the liberty, within the framework of “Improvisation”, to slightly change the original text of the poem, which sometimes suffers from some illogicalities and simply absurdities. Pushkin was drunk, and without it he could not write a single line, and his memory and sanity were often knocked out.

Peter the Great, it seems, said: Joy in Russia is drinking. I just had to add: Poetry in Russia means drinking too! However, not only in Russia!)

“That dreadful day! – For Neva leaping

Seaward all night against the blast

Was beaten in the strife at last,

Against the frantic tempest sweeping;

And on her banks at break of day

The people swarmed and crowded, curious,

And reveled in the towering spray

That spattered where the waves were furious.

But the wind driving from the bay

Dammed Neva back, and she receding

Came up, in wrath and riot speedind;

And soon the islands flooded lay.

Madder the weather grew, and ever

Higher upswelled the roaring river

And bubled like a kettle, and whirled

And like a maddened beast was hurled

Swift on the city…”

 (Translation from Russian made by Oliver Elton)

Well, what’s not the music of the STORM?

MUSICAL TALENT IS NEEDED AND URGENTLY!

Music should be LOGICAL, and logic should be MUSICAL!

13 IX 2025