Music helps us to feel things better. When we listen serious pieces we have a chance to understand better all the things around us - people, buildings, industrial objects, grass and stones, winds over rivers, and, finally, ourselves.
Personally I began to interest in serious music in university where I studied chemistry in years 2000-2005. One of my friends, Maxim Grigoriev, told me that his favorite composers are Mozart and Beethoven and that he tries himself to write something interesting. For me these news were pretty amazing - I never knew people with musical composition skills before.
After a few months of listening of classical music I finally came to conclusion that composition is a good way to reflect my own feelings.
Later, after my first reception of contemporary pieces of Schoenberg. Webern, Boulez, Varese and other composers I have realized that musical language is so reach that it can reflect not only feelings, but also dreams, including inmost ones.
Thus, in 2002's Autumn I've decided to learn musical composition myself. I got few books in a local library and began to master musical theories.
In years 2002-2004 I wrote a lot of exercises, including drafts of a few symphonies.
Honestly saying, quality of my early pieces isn't exciting. Obviously, the main reason for that is a huge amount of influence coming from composers of the past I learned from. If you make something similar to, let's say, Chopin's mazurkas, it's difficult to make your pieces brilliant enough compared to pieces of your great predecessor, right? ;-)
Another source of young composers' failures is lack of experience. You must have something to say if you wish to write an interesting music. If you have nothing to say, you'll never write a piece which will take an interest from others.
Hopefully, I had always something to say and a few years of my musical education brought me some fruits. First of all, I have defined exactly a range of themes I have a huge interest in. Then, I defined, what actually I'd like to say on these themes.
Several years passed since that time... and finally, in the beginning of year 2011 I realized that I need a complete review of my musical concepts.
After a month of hard daily work I came to a final conclusion that music must be expressive to be interesting. In other words, a really good music reflects something real, existing at least in dreams. And, it reflects such things in an interesting manner.
On the contrary, if music reflects nothing, usually it sounds terrible because it doesn't start associative lines in listener's mind. In other words, such a music neither reflects real things nor remembers us our inmost dreams.
When I got to the conclusion, only a few of my pieces passed through a strong selection.
Here are listed some of my works.
The best is, of course, a piece I'm working on nowadays ;-)
As you may notice, I highly prefer laconic style of composition which goes from late Beethoven's Bagatelles (op. 119 #10). Later this style has been widely used by Webern and by Boulez in his famous 12 notations for piano solo.
Russie
dmitri-arkhangelski
