Vladimir Pleshakov, writings on his music
04/06/10 08:30 Filed in: New Works
“At age four I heard for the first of many times the wonderful choir of the Shanghai Cathedral, and experienced the transcending beauty and power of their sound from whispered murmurings to thundering exultation. I sang in that choir as a boy soloist for a few years, soaking up the great Russian choral heritage which the emigres brought intact to their chosen exile in the Orient.
“The music I write is the music I hear in my imagination. It seems to me that I do not really compose, I merely write down, in the best way I can, what already exists - somewhere. The music is everywhere, and I hear it when I take pains to listen. I hear clearly, through seventy years of elapsed time, music that others might have composed but never did, music that the Shanghai choir might have sung, but never did. It is my turn to do what others have not done yet, but do it my way.
“This music that never was resonates more clearly and truthfully in my memory than anything else I have ever remembered from my childhood days. This reconstructed past runs by as a stream of consciousness, a movie that can be started, stopped, restarted, repeated any number of times.
“This Proust-like reconstruction of the past is more real to me than the past reality itself. I am the moviemaker, the recording engineer, the scribe, the stenographer, the chronicler who records what was and what could have been, as faithfully as he can, and as fast as he must, while the conjured past rolls by, inexorably and in minutest detail. The music I hear is the finished product. If I make no mistakes in capturing on paper what I hear on my "radio", then the first draft is the final draft, ready to be printed and sung.“ — Vladimir Pleshakov, May, 2010
“The music I write is the music I hear in my imagination. It seems to me that I do not really compose, I merely write down, in the best way I can, what already exists - somewhere. The music is everywhere, and I hear it when I take pains to listen. I hear clearly, through seventy years of elapsed time, music that others might have composed but never did, music that the Shanghai choir might have sung, but never did. It is my turn to do what others have not done yet, but do it my way.
“This music that never was resonates more clearly and truthfully in my memory than anything else I have ever remembered from my childhood days. This reconstructed past runs by as a stream of consciousness, a movie that can be started, stopped, restarted, repeated any number of times.
“This Proust-like reconstruction of the past is more real to me than the past reality itself. I am the moviemaker, the recording engineer, the scribe, the stenographer, the chronicler who records what was and what could have been, as faithfully as he can, and as fast as he must, while the conjured past rolls by, inexorably and in minutest detail. The music I hear is the finished product. If I make no mistakes in capturing on paper what I hear on my "radio", then the first draft is the final draft, ready to be printed and sung.“ — Vladimir Pleshakov, May, 2010
