Works for the Six-String Guitar by Soviet Composers From the 1930s to the 1960s

Abstract

In the present day the art of the six-string guitar in our country has developed to a high
level, and its achievement has become the result of a lengthy process. The article examines the
first stage of forming the repertoire for the instrument in which professional composers of the
Soviet era took part. The time of the creation of the examined compositions spans from the late
1930s through the 1960s. This period of history was characterized by the well-known ideological
pressure on artists from the government. Writing accessible music of instructive character,
incorporation of means of folk music and proletarian songs was encouraged. It was absolutely
logical in the given situation that at that time composers turned to folk instruments, including
the six-string guitar. The musical compositions of Boris Asafiev, Vissarion Shebalin, Nikolai
Rechmensky, Alexander Mosolov, Igor Sposobin, and other composers combined together the
distinctive marks of folk music and mass songs with the European methods of transforming
the musical material interpreted through the prism of the composers’ understanding of the
instrument’s nature. A positive conclusion was the appearance of a large number of compositions
for guitar in the music of authoritative composers, whose interest in the instrument was, as it
turns out, unfeigned and manifested itself in the creation of musical material based on the study
of its immanent traits.

Keywords: Boris Asafiev, Vissarion Shebalin, Nikolai Rechmensky, Alexander Mosolov, Igor
Sposobin, the music of Russia, Russian guitar music, six-string guitar.