Maxim Shalygin

Maxim Shalygin, Composer, Conductor, Poet & Visual Artist
©Dmitry Hai

A letter from Maxim Shalygin ‘About Europe’

I'm not a writer. 
I doubt I can express my thoughts as sharply and precisely as I sometimes do in conversation. 
The rest of my life, I try to express myself mostly through music, sometimes through painting.

Of course, the issues raised for discussion ‘About Europe’ are worth discussing, but I think they're a bit overdue, 20-30 years too late. 
Today, we can confidently say that if art ever fought a battle for political or other freedoms, it has lost miserably. 
It seems that a truly artistic statement is incapable of being received by those it's addressed to, due to its rather complex form and language. 
At the same time, much politicised art is a jumbled mess of random thoughts from great composers over the years, often without any reason or justification.

Let's add to this the fact that if we're talking about music, what kind of political musical statement can we possibly talk about if the microphones are always occupied by the same people in large halls, festivals, orchestras, and ensembles? 
I mean, it's not we - contemporary composers - who speak out; it's Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, and other composers who, while they may have some connection to our era, are only tangentially "involved". 
Young people flee concert halls anywhere, just to avoid hearing this boring, as they see it, nonsense. 
So, for my part, the only thing I can think of as any kind of statement is an attempt at screaming into a pillow. 
Because everything I write, everything I try to convey to people today, doesn't really interest anyone.

I don't know how to put it more precisely. 
But I think we need to call a spade a spade. We can sit around a table with a serious face and discuss whether contemporary art influences politics. 
But that's complete nonsense, since contemporary art needs at least a stage to influence anyone at all. 
And the situation in music is very sad. Very, very sad. 
So the only person I could influence was my dog, since he was practically my only loyal listener.

To be more precise, we've become a civilisation of preservers. Today, no one needs to create anything. 
That's enough. Everyone's focused on preservation. Look at the enormous amounts of money being spent on museums... 
More and more keep popping up like mushrooms after a spring storm. 
Once upon a time, there was great art, once upon a time, there were great artists and composers. 
Now, it's more the amusement of some small group of people with some kind of mental disorder who suddenly decided, for some reason, that they can make music better than Bach. Ha-ha-ha.
Funny.

Recently, I couldn't resist writing a piece with a flamboyantly political title: Burlesque on the Death of a Dictator. 
Do you think anyone was interested in it? Oh no, Beethoven's Ninth is enough. 
It looks like we'll just keep stumbling under bombs, joyfully shouting, "Hug, millions..."

Please forgive me for the slightly crude tone of my essay. I'm simply tired of the pretence. 
I just want us all to rub our eyes and admit to ourselves that we've gotten ourselves into a complete ass without even realising it. 
And that something needs to be done about this shit. 
And we need to start by recognising that incredibly talented people can be born today, too...
And maybe we should consider that music didn't end somewhere at the beginning of the 20th century, but is still breathing deeply today,  but could soon suffocate under the concrete slab of classical tradition. 

Perhaps when we begin to trust contemporary art more, we will understand more clearly who we are today. 
And we will transform from simple guardians of history into people who create history.