Candle (song)

The appearance of the song is directly related to the events of 1978-1979, as a result of which the collapse of one of the first, relatively stable, compositions of the “Time Machine” took place. So, in the period from 1975 to 1979, Andrei Makarevich ( guitar ), Sergey Kavagoe ( drums ) and Evgeny Margulis (bass guitar) played in the group. The first two were members of the team since its founding in 1969 ^{[Comm. 2]} and until a certain point found mutual understanding with each other.

However, as the group grew in popularity, the relationship between Makarevich and Kawagoe became more and more conflicted. The reason for this situation, Kawagoe saw that the name of Makarevich “more and more often sounded in connection with the“ Time Machine “, and the names of the others - respectively, less frequently” ^[3] . As journalist Alexei Bogomolov wrote, “the phrase “ Andrei Makarevich and the Time Machine ”that appeared for him [Kawagoe] was like “ Paul McCartney and the Beatles ” ^{[4] [Comm. 3]} . Moreover, the authorship of almost all the songs of the group has become steadily associated with the name of Makarevich, although, according to Kawagoe, “in fact, his [Makarevich] 100% contribution to the“ common piggy bank ”was only poetry” ^[5] . This state of affairs, according to Makarevich, "very offended" Kawagoe himself, creating the basis for reproaches for the inequality of all members of the collective before each other ^[3] . As a result, by the end of the 1970s, in the group, according to Makarevich, “something didn’t stick” with the music ^[3] .

Makarevich mentioned the occurrence of tensions between musicians in his memoirs “Everything is very simple” in the context of the events of the fall of 1978 ^[6] , however, according to Alexander Kutikov , relations between Makarevich and Kawagoe were already tense in the spring of 1978 ^[1] - for a year until Kutikov’s final return to Time Machine, which occurred in early May 1979 ^{[Comm. 4]} .

During a friendly meeting with Kutikov, which took place in the spring of 1978 in the apartment of his wife Makarevich on Leninsky Prospekt , the latter for the first time sang a song about a candle to guitar accompaniment , written directly under the impression of the differences that had accumulated in the team ^{[1] [7]} . Both musicians discussed the internal conflict in “Time Machine”, treated themselves to nutritious fried Makarevich ^[8] , while, according to Kutikov, “they had a great drink” ^[7] . After listening to the song, Kutikov, in his words, “understood that [Makarevich] really had something so serious there”, wishing him the patience necessary to keep the group from collapse ^[7] . “I told him:“ Be patient! The main thing is that you wrote this song ” ^[1] .

In fact, right after the composition of The Candles, she was included in the concert repertoire of The Time Machines: as early as February 1979, she was performed as part of the first edition of the Little Prince concert program. The program was also attended by professional poet Alexander “Fagot” Butuzov , who read in pauses between songs excerpts from the eponymous novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupery . A feature of this, the earliest, concert version of “Candles” was a separate instrumental part in the final chords of the song. According to music journalist Anton Chernin, “The Candle” was “one of the most shocking moments of the Little Prince program” ^[9] . The growing popularity of the song was facilitated by the subsequent active distribution of tape recordings of The Little Prince in samizdat . The first edition of this program has not been officially published. In 2000, the second edition of The Little Prince was released , already recorded by a new lineup of musicians.

By the beginning of May 1979, the Makarevich – Kavago – Margulis trio actually broke up, after which a new composition of the “Time Machine” was formed, which, in addition to Kutikov and his submission ^{[1] [10]} , also included Pyotr Podgorodetsky ( keyboards ) and Valery Efremov (drums). Kutikov himself called the process of his return to the group “natural” ^[7] , and the song “Candle” - “the most important” in the group’s work, stressing that he “would not [return] to the“ Machine “from the“ Leap Summer “if I wouldn’t hear “Candle” ^[1] .

After updating the composition of the group, the musicians began rehearsing the new program and by the end of May 1979, eight songs were recorded in the training speech studio of the State Institute of Theater Arts , including “Candle” . As Podgorodetsky wrote later, part of the musical material was rehearsed by the previous composition of the group, however, for these songs “new arrangements were made , the sound changed” ^[11] . Kutikov insisted on preparing an introduction for Svechka, which he had been “inventing for a very long time” ^[1] . The newly arrived musicians jointly proposed to Makarevich to supplement the arrangement of the song with an additional loss, which at first provoked resistance of the latter, since in the previous composition of the group the losses “didn’t like very much” ^[2] . In addition, as Makarevich later claimed, it seemed to him that in this version there were “too many pink drooling, some kind of pseudo - symphonies , and the song is so serious and hard. Then he believed them, because there were more of them ” ^[2] . As a result, the instrumental part, which was played earlier at the end of the song, in this version of “Candles” was moved after the first couplet and significantly increased in duration. The instrumental parts themselves became more diverse, and Podgorodetskoy also invented a special keyboard effect, which together distinguished this arrangement of “Candles” from later ones. It was in this version that the song was performed on September 15, 1979 at the first concert of the updated composition of Time Machine in Moscow ^[12] .

Much later, in 1982, this version of “Candles”, along with the phonograms of other songs from the 1979 studio recording at GITIS, were included in the soundtrack of Alexei Uchitel ’s documentary short film “Who's for?” (Three episodes on a contemporary theme). ”

In early 1980, "Time Machine" received an invitation to perform at the All-Union Festival of Popular Music " Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi-80 ”in the Georgian USSR . In fact, this event was the largest of all rock festivals ever held in the country, distinguished by both the composition of the participants, which included many underground music groups at that time, and the general underground atmosphere directly on the stage and around the festival in whole ^{[13] [14]} . The festival was held from March 8 to 16 at three venues - in the Big Concert Hall and in the Officers House of Tbilisi and in the building of the Gori Circus ^[15] . The event was attended by 27 ensembles from 17 cities of the country ^[16] . The Time Machine performed twice: on the third day (March 10) and again - on the last day (March 16) ^[17] and following the results of the performance - shared the first prize with the Magnetic Band ensemble ^[18] . There is no exact information about the set lists of the group for both days of the performance in open sources.

Later, television journalists from Finland accredited at the festival prepared the documentary “Soviet Rock” ^[19] , the last episode of which was the performance of “Time Machine” with the song “Candle”. For the song, Andrei Makarevich took the place of the keyboards. Later, when the group completed the concert performances with the performance of “Candles,” Makarevich in some cases repeated this move, accompanying himself on the keyboards ^{[20] [21] [Comm. 5]} .

Episode with the performance of "Candles" at the festival "Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi-80 "as a music video was included in the officially published on DVD collections of video clips of the group: a disc from the Anthology" Time Machine "" To Russia from the USSR "(2004) and" Video Collection-I "(2005).

In addition to performing within the framework of the festival program, the musicians were given the opportunity to record their own songs in the Tbilisi melodia recording studio for their subsequent publication. As a result, Time Machine recorded six songs, including the new Candle version. The arrangement of this version of the song was slightly simplified, compared with the first studio version. As Makarevich later recalled, since the musicians were intoxicated with “their own victory and Georgian hospitality ”, they recorded the song “from a monstrous hangover ” ^[9] . Initially, a single-channel recording was made, which was later superimposed with additional instrumental parts previously distributed over the channels . As a result, after mixing (mixing), a pseudo stereophonic phonogram was obtained. This phonogram was published by “Melody” on a flexible insert to number 12 (546) of the magazine “Club and amateur performances” for June 1980. This magazine was a socio-political and scientific-methodical publication of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and the USSR Ministry of Culture, two flexible plates were invested in each issue of the journal. The first of the records included in number 12 (546) contained audio recordings of Leonid Brezhnev ’s book “Renaissance” . On the second disc, phonograms of the recordings of two songs of the Araks group and Tatyana Antsiferova (on one side) and two songs of the Time Machine - Candle and Right (on the back) ^[23] were published. The song “Candle” for this release editors entitled a line from the refrain of the song - “As long as the candle burns”. Sources containing detailed information about the circumstances of the inclusion of the two songs “Time Machines” in the specified issue of the Club and the Amateur Artist magazine are not known. However, this insert was the first official release in the eleven-year-old, at that time, history of the group. In samizdat, this version of the song was distributed, starting in 1981, as part of the Moscow-Leningrad magnetic album.

In the period from 1983 to 1986, the musicians of “Mashiny Vremeni” took part in the filming of the musical feature film “ Start First ” directed by Alexander Stefanovich ^{[24] [25]} , for the sound track of which several songs and musical themes composed by Makarevich and Kutikov were selected. In particular, in the final scene of the film, the main character - the young bard Nikolai Kovalev, who was played by Makarevich, sang the song “Candle”. Initially, Makarevich opposed its inclusion in the film's soundtrack, arguing that the performance by the bard hero of a song about himself also demanded that the song conform to the style of bardic culture. “Candle” by that time was widely known precisely as the composition of the rock group “Time Machine” ^[9] . However, in the end, the director convinced Makarevich that the performance of the “Candle” in the final scene of the film would be a “strong” ending, which “there is nothing equal in strength” ^[9] .

The soundtrack was recorded in 1985 at the Mosfilm studio under the guidance of composer and sound engineer Viktor Babushkin . In the version of the song, which is directly used in the film, the hero performs the first couplet to the accompaniment of a guitar. However, an option was prepared for release in which the first verse was performed with keyboard accompaniment. This version of the song was close to the Tbilisi version of its arrangement. It was published by “Melody” in 1986 on the single “Music under the Snow” and on the first long-playing record of the group “Good afternoon” . On the envelopes of both records, as in the case of the magazine Club and Amateur Performances, the song was entitled “While the Candle is Burning”.

In 1986, Time Machine prepared a demo of several of its own hits , previously translated into English. The English version of Candle was entitled Until Until Candle Burns ^[26] . It was assumed that the demo could be used to promote the band’s music abroad - outside of a Russian-speaking audience. This studio version of Candle has not been officially released on any albums.

Since the second half of the 1980s, the “Candle” has occupied a special place in the structure of the concert programs “Time Machines”. Talking about the approach to building the program “ In the Circle of the World ” in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper in 1988, Makarevich called the “Candle” a program song expressing the concept of the group and performed, together with “famous fighters,” in the concert finale ^[27] . Since the 1990s, the song is the final number of the concert program, during the performance of which part of the public traditionally turns on the lights or uses lighters ^{[28] [29]} .

July 5, 2003 "Time Machine" performed at the rock festival "Wings" at the Tushino airfield , during which an explosion was carried out, later qualified as a terrorist attack ^[8] . By the time the musicians entered the stage, the Kommersant newspaper reported, “all viewers knew something, but were still not sure of anything” ^[30] . The entire airfield "began to sing with one voice together with Makarevich, Kutikov and Margulis all their songs" ^[30] . After the end of the set, the musicians were called “encore” and performed the “Candle”, which, according to Kommersant’s observers, sounded like a requiem for the dead ^[30] .

During a performance at the first Creation of the World music festival on August 30, 2008 in Kazan, the song “Candle”, a duet with Makarevich, was performed by American singer Patti Smith , having previously composed an English text for her ^[31] .

Note The table shows information about all the studio and the most significant concert versions of the song.

The key of the song is in A minor . Structurally, the song consists of two verses - quatrains , after each of which are followed by a chant and refrain ( Until the light fades, // While the candle is lit ), combined into a five-note ^[32] . The poetic size of the song’s lyrics is a five-foot iambic , which, according to N. Klyueva, thematically brings it closer to the author’s song and confirms Andrei Makarevich’s commitment to the bardic song tradition ^[33] .

The semantic load of the song text is interpreted ambiguously: from religious motifs that arise in connection with the symbol of the candle ^[34] , to the open call “those in power” ^[35] , “social and political foundations” ^[36] . N. Nezhdanova analyzed the lyrics from the standpoint of substantiating the thesis about the antinomy of Russian rock poetry, in which contrast and contrasts are often achieved using syntactic means (parallelisms, concessive constructions) ^[37] . From this point of view, the last five-letter passage of the text “Candles” (starting with the stanzas “And let there be few days today, // And the snow fell and the blood is not hot” ) is an example of a particularly spectacular, according to Nezhdanova, concessive construction, “transmitting repulsion from something, usually negative, and the affirmation of positive values, faith in the ideal ” ^[37] .

Musical decisions that determined the sound of the main versions of “Candles” (see sections “First Versions”, “Tbilisi-80”) were repeatedly used by “Time Machine” in the future. So, according to P. Podgorodetsky, the song “My Birthday” (Music by A. Pakhmutov , verses by R. Gamzatov ), included in the group’s concert program at the request of the Rosconcert, which regulated its activities in the early 1980s, was arranged by musicians in a style that “strongly resembled” the “Candle” ^[11] . According to the music producer of the Time Machine album, Vladimir Matetskiy , the keyboard part in the song “Sorry” from this album is similar to the same part in the “Candle”: “Andrei [Makarevich] played the piano great: confident and concise, with sparkles of the“ Candle ” ^{[38 ]} .

Soviet official criticism evaluated the song from the standpoint of its correspondence to the prevailing ideology in the country, the degree of originality of the poetic techniques used. So, the Literary Russia newspaper turned to the fact that Melody released a record with the Candles phonogram in 1980 - an insert to the Club and Amateur Performances magazine (see sections Tbilisi-80, Releases), evaluating itself the decision to publish Makarevich’s songs as “irresponsible” ^[39] . The newspaper ironized over separate lines from the text “Candles”: “to be with oneself apart” is the “complex mental disorder” of the lyrical hero Makarevich, who became his cross ^[39] . However, “the forest is fenced [the song is composed] just because of several unfulfilled intentions:“ I wanted to go anywhere, close my house and not find the key, but I believed, not everything was lost ... ” ^[39] . Further, it was suggested that a large number of young people - “sufferers on the soft couch”, “passionate about narcissism” - “musically sound that“ there are few days left and snow fell and the blood is not hot ”, after which the authors asked a question whether it is necessary to provide these young people with the opportunity to publish their works ^[39] . “Moreover, all this chic“ suffering ”by candlelight is replaced by an assertive declaration-warning:“ But if I straighten my shoulders with a song, it will be difficult to make me keep silent ... ” ^[39] . The newspaper concluded the conversation about the “Candle” with a quote from its own readership: “Before“ straightening our shoulders ”, let this group comprehend the basics of our ideology” ^[39] . Literaturnaya Gazeta wrote about the band’s songs’s urgent problems, about “exploiting their favorite but well-practiced tricks”, for example, “demonstrating mathematical skills in and out of place:“ I’ll start over again for the hundredth time until the light fades ... " ^[40] .

Music critic Artemy Troitsky described the period of the late 1970s - early 1980s as the “peak of creative form” of “Time Machine”, the song “Candle” was noted among the best compositions of this period ^[41] , and also cited it as an example of optimistic and life-affirming songs - both “by letter” and “in spirit”, since, from his point of view, “there cannot be a “ pessimistic ” song in which there is a genuine interest and concern for life problems, a song based on faith and partiality” ^[42] . In fact, right after “The Candle” became popular, its perception as a program song of the group, which sounds “with great optimism”, arose among the listeners of the “Time Machine”, which was mentioned in the readership of the newspaper “ Komsomolskaya Pravda ” in response to the critical article “ Blue Bird Stew ” ^[43] .

The journalist Alexander Shcherbakov spoke about the possibility of completely different musical compositions composed at different times, to act as a means of “salvation” in moments of despair, in those “ days when you lower your hands and there are no words, no music, no strength ” ^[44] . The author compared the “Candle” with the Sixth Tchaikovsky Symphony . So, if the specified symphony, in his opinion, is capable of “taking on the category of already intolerable negative energy accumulated in our souls,” then the song “Candle” by Makarevich consoles, affects the soul “not just with verses, but verses inside music, but music inside the voice, and with the voice - precisely with that intonation that at once overcomes everything that is between the tape and mine, singing inaudible to anyone without sound waves ”of this song ^[44] . The author also shared observations about the equal relevance of the song “Candle” for himself, as well as for the younger generation, noting that the musicians of the “Time Machine”, thus, to the best of their abilities and abilities “build bridges between generations”, “bind times, like a welding machine - a pipeline ” ^[44] . Other critics also spoke about the effect of the song on individual generations of listeners. So, Evgeny Bychkov noted the high level of Makarevich’s songwriting as a whole, as well as “how deep a trace in the hearts of an entire generation was left by songs like“ Candles ” ^[45] . Troitsky also called the “Candle” one of the “ hymns of generation”, comparable in influence “to Russian people with the songs of The Beatles or Bob Dylan ” ^[46] .

The song also influenced subsequent generations of rock musicians. So, for example, Maxim Leonidov mentioned it, describing his impressions of one of the first concerts of the “Time Machine” concert in Leningrad : “I was completely struck by everything: the construction of the show, this inspired Makarevich,“ The light does not fade, the candle burns ” ^{[47 ]} . In 1992, together with Makarevich, Leonidov recorded a cover version of “Candles” for the first solo album “Maxim”. Other well-known covers are versions of the bands “ Uma2rmaH ” and “ The Brothers Grim ”, recorded in 2009 for the tribute album “Typing” . The musical interpretation of the song, prepared by “Uma2rmaH”, was favorably received by critics and described as fusion - Bosanova , with which “it is possible to light up at jazz festivals” ^[48] . The Brothers Grim version was less highly appreciated, as an option that “would be suitable for the honeycomb finale of a musical called, for example,“ Eternal Love ”, and the group itself was categorized as“ not loving the “Car“ in yourself, and yourself in the "Machine" ^[48] . In 1996, at joint concerts with Makarevich, the song was performed by Boris Grebenshchikov (published on the live album “ Twenty Years Later ” in 1997) ^[49] .

“Candle” first hit the charts “Soundtrack” - the musical section of the newspaper “ Moskovsky Komsomolets ” - in April 1980, the month after the “Time Machine” won its first prize at the festival “Spring Rhythms. Tbilisi-80 ”, and following the results of this year it took 13th place in the general list of songs ^[50] . In 2000, the radio station Our Radio included the song in the list of “100 best songs of Russian rock in the 20th century” ^[51] , and in 2014, it was included in the list of “500 best songs of Our Radio” ^[52] .

The song was parodied in the TV shows “ KVN ” ^[53] and “Crooked Mirror” ^[54] . The line “ While the candle is burning ” from the refrain of the song was included in the list of the most famous quotes and expressions of the 20th and 21st centuries ^[55] .

The phonogram of the song “Candle” from the album “Goodnight” was a musical accompaniment to the participation of Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko in the demonstrations of the European Figure Skating Championship 2010 , held in Tallinn ^[56] .

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Links

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• A. Makarevich. Everything is very simple. Tales. - M .: Spark, Radio and communications, 1991 .-- 223 p.
• Makarevich A.V. Seven thousand cities. Poems and songs. - M .: Trien, Eksmo-Press, 2002 .-- 432 p.
• Margolis M. A protracted turn: The history of the Time Machine group. - St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2009 .-- 352 p.
• Nezhdanova N.K. Antinomicity as a dominant of the artistic thinking of rock poets // Russian rock poetry: text and context. - Tver, 2000. - No. 4. - S. 15-22.