The Ark of Music and Memory

The Ark of Music and Memory.
From the book about the great Russian conductor Yuri Ivanovitch Simonov
«Toward the Unattainable Ideal» (http://proza.ru/2021/03/19/1539)
by the Methamonk Angelblazer
2025-09-21


It all comes down to the pencil.
In the hands of some children, it becomes the instrument of great painters; in the hands of others, a conductor’s baton sketching musical images. The “Sacco and Vanzetti” pencil once led countless Soviet children into schools of painting and to the Tretyakov Gallery, and a chosen few into the Bolshoi Theatre. The painter, locking himself in his studio, creates a canvas and then brings it forth into the light of the public. The composer, having drawn his portrait in notes, seeks musicians and a conductor to breathe life into the work, so that it may be heard once upon the stage.

Paintings are preserved in museums as guardians of visual masterpieces; but music fills our vibrational space, dwelling in hearts, kept alive by musicians and conductors who perform the visions of composers. And yet, one must not forget: “the psychology of the museum does not always coincide with the psychology of creation; the one is conservative, the other revolutionary.” A “genius painting” may be irretrievably lost — but a “genius piece of music” can never be. Both painting and music are born of man. But painting is an object of art, while music is a language of communion with the Creator. Without sound, man is literally starving. It all comes down to the pencil — for bad music destroys and kills, being itself vibration, the resonance by which we shape the surrounding world “in the image and likeness.”

I realize that what bound us together was not only the humble “Sacco and Vanzetti” pencil, with which little Yura and I once conducted our imaginary orchestras across the span of a single generation, but the deeper gift — the love and the talent to perceive beauty in music. The image of conductor Yuri Ivanovitch Simonov is always invisibly present whenever classical music reaches me — in concert halls, through the radio, on television, in the many countries where I have lived and worked. He remains my highest measure of orchestral sound, articulation, and the magical language of a conductor’s hands.

For me, music is never a finished theme, because I have loved it since childhood. The warm tones of the Russian accordion in the village of Malye Alabukhi, played by my grandmother Ulyana Vasilievna Khlynina, and the “Hungarian Cranes” flying away from the violin of my mother, Ilona Pavlovna von Betesh–Esterhаzy, still travel with me everywhere. This love was nursed by the sonic aura of mother earth, trained and disciplined at the Moscow Military Music School, and raised to its fullness in the great classics of the “symphonic and brass Gardarika of Rus’.” It lives within my body and will remain there until my last breath.

And yet, professions fade. Knowledge grows scarce. Our beloved teachers depart into infinity. Inevitably we are brought to the thought: we must build an Ark of Knowledge for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren — and thus rediscover a new purpose for our existence, lived not for ourselves but for those who will come after us. We dwell amid the audible sounds and magnetic vibrations of the Universe and the Earth. They move across the planet; she receives them and returns them purified. Man is a paramagnetic being — he takes in energy and gives it back. This is why “in the beginning was the Word.” This is why music is not entertainment, but nourishment. We are, each of us, musical batteries. The quality of our lives, the length of our days, and the health of our bodies all depend on the charge we accept into our souls.

But what is happening today with the world of classical music? Some see “Armageddon”; I see “Apocalypse” — the veil lifted from our eyes by the digital world. The pencil of the composer and arranger has been replaced by the computer. Tours have been halted, theaters closed, fear monetized. Resources are redistributed; so too will musical energy be. Programmers train artificial intelligence to compose symphonies; holographic machines may soon perform them without error or breath. No musicians. No conductors. A world of soul transmutation.

“European civilization” has walked five centuries toward this — through empires destroyed, monarchies dethroned, communism and fascism overthrown, until it became a totalitarian liberalism. One must conform to the “open society,” or be cast aside from the tram of history. The goal: to capture human consciousness and create the “post-man.” And what music shall such a creature be permitted to hear? Which civilizations will preserve their classical identity? Will we still breathe freely and look to the stars? Or bow our heads beneath the muzzle?

Do not fear. This is not our script. Natural intelligence will rise against the artificial. For no machine can abolish man’s hunger for symphonic beauty. Musical energy is Ambrosia, gifted by the Almighty Creator. Russia too will awaken. She may hibernate, or carry revolutions and radiant futures in her womb, but she will not perish. If “money is the blood of the economy,” then music is the energy of man. Through music, societies either decay or preserve the Spirit of a nation.

The perennial question, “What is to be done?” echoes through our age with renewed urgency. The ancient magi, the Lamedvavniks of biblical lore, gave the answer: “Build Noah’s Ark.” Not of timber, but of words, memory, faith, language, music, and craft. Its beams are sacred texts and ancestral songs, its nails the duty of fathers and mothers, its pitch the prayers of children. Such an Ark will not sink when the waters of chaos rise.

The Ark is not for survival only — it is for the dawn. Beyond the flood lies the mountain of covenant, a new Ararat where the rainbow will again seal heaven’s promise. To endure is not enough — we must endure for the sake of rebirth. For in the end, it all comes down to the pencil: the symbol of creation borne not of convenience, but of conviction. And just as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky once turned from politics to the soul, so too must we. My role is not to govern, but to witness from the taiga — to point toward the Ark, so that each may, in his own way, begin to build.