"MASQUERADA"

“I lived with this drama, and composed the music with thrill. It’s hardly to put into words, how it was engendered in myself…”, Khachaturian described later his feelings of work on "Masquerada".
In 1941, Khachaturian composed music to Lermontov’s “Masquerada”. Here the composer switched to another manner: other epoch, idea and artistic concept, style… A feeling of time, environment, essence of drama conflict and individual characteristics were very subtly reflected in this music. One of the best Russian experts of Lermontov, Irakliy Andronnikov, wrote on music of Khachaturian: “It’s difficult to imagine the music that meets the character of Lermontov’s drama much more. If I say, that it’s a music to one of Pushkin’s works, you won’t believe. This is Lermontov! It is his victorious and beautiful sorrow! The triumph of his verse, thoughts…”
“When starting the work”, recalled Khachaturian, “I was very troubled, and realized that in capital of Russia, I compose a music to Russian classic play after Glazunov. By the way, as far as I know, Glazunov didn’t compose a waltz to “Masquerada”, but he used Glinka’s “Waltz Fantasy” instead of it…In a one word, I recognized the degree of my responsibility. Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky helped me very much… He gave me a rare collection of music before Glinka’s epoch. Due to that, I was able to penetrate into music atmosphere of the epoch. And of course, I read very carefully Lermontov, he is very close to me…”
The scores of symphonic suites, re-composed by Khachaturian from music to plays, are sounding at symphonic stages till the present.
Khachaturian wrote: “Applied music must be re-composed. At symphonic stage, its own rules are acting. Therefore, I am indebted to myself for my “Shakespeareiana” remained unmoved and doesn’t live out of theater and film…
What is undoubtedly for me, that real music of theater and film, with own specifics, must be composed in such a way, that it could also sound at symphonic stage, and it shouldn’t be musical pieces, but something the whole, united by one idea”.