Mosolov's Casus or the Story of One Rehearsal

The documentary "The Mosolov Casus, or the Story of One Rehearsal" is dedicated to the work of avant-garde composer Alexander Vasilyevich Mosolov (1900-1973). The film is part of the multimedia project "Reviving the Legacy of Russian Composers," in which Radio Orpheus and PAO Unipro are reviving rare editions, scores, and manuscripts of forgotten music by Russian composers from the Radio Orpheus sheet music archive.

A contemporary of the century, Alexander Mosolov burst onto the scene in the 1920s and seamlessly blended into the turbulent spirit of that era, embodying its rebellious spirit and openness to new trends with all his impulsiveness and irrepressible energy. Mosolov's experiments in musical constructivism occurred precisely in the 1920s. Some of his avant-garde works, especially the symphonic episode "Factory," are also featured in this work. The compositions "Music of Machines" (1928) and the short vocal cycle "Four Newspaper Advertisements (from the Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee)" (1926) generated considerable interest both in the USSR and abroad. They also served as the basis for harsh criticism from members of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. The composer was subjected to persecution. In 1937, Mosolov was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and sentenced to eight years in prison. In 1938, at the request of Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Myaskovsky, he was released, but was denied the right to reside in large cities. Having experienced a crisis in his life and creativity, Alexander Mosolov radically changed his style: he actively participated in folklore expeditions, recorded folk songs in the Kirghiz SSR, Turkmen SSR, Bashkiria, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and the Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais, and made extensive use of folklore in his works.

Unfortunately, a significant number of the composer's works from his avant-garde period have been lost.

2017