Unfinished melody

In memory of composer Yevgeny Tikotsky

The fate of Yevgeny Tikotsky is a unique monument to the history of the twentieth century, with all its grandiose ups and deep faults, artillery cannonade and triumphant melodies of Victory. He, a nobleman, the son of a rear admiral, who seemed destined for a completely different life, exchanged brilliant St. Petersburg for modest Bobruisk, went through two world wars, became a musical classic, people’s artist, the founder of the Belarusian school of composition and national opera, having experienced and having survived all the zigzags of the era, which could either lift to the top or easily scatter any destiny into dust...

Yevgeny Tikotsky  Oleg Karpovich

According to various sources, Yevgeny Tikotsky was born into a noble family on December 25th or 26th, 1893, in St. Petersburg. His father Karl Tikotsky was a military sailor, commander of the cruiser Africa, squadron battleships Gangut and Poltava, rear admiral, and later vice admiral, first mayor of the Black Sea city of Nikolaev. The family was not wealthy, but like any young man of the noble class, Yevgeny Tikotsky studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum and also received an excellent education at home, which included the ability to play music — his father himself was a good cellist and flautist. The boy’s extraordinary talent manifested itself very early, but, of course, a career as a professional musician for the son of a nobleman and a high military rank was nonsense at that time. Therefore, to comprehend science, the young scion of the Tikotsky family, at the insistence of his father, went to the St. Petersburg Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute: medicine at the turn of the century was experiencing a period of rapid development and, without exaggeration, fateful discoveries — a worthy path for a young man from a worthy family. True, at the same time, Yevgeny negotiated for himself the right to study music at a private educational institution. He tried to create his own works under the influence of his friend, a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Vladimir Deshevov, a future pioneer of the Soviet school of composition. He started with piano pieces and arrangements of folk songs, but for many years he cherished the dream of someday composing an opera. True, he had to comprehend the basics of composition on his own. But during the medical course, Tikotsky met his future wife Maria Sergievskaya, who throughout her life walked side by side with him, accompanying her husband even on the fronts of the World War I.
In 1915, Yevgeny went to the front. In 1916 he took part in the Brusilov’s breakthrough. After the revolution, he remained in the cadres of the Red Army, clearing Belarus of White Poles. Rogachev, Mogilev, Pukhovichi, Bobruisk, Brest — how many kilometres did he walk across Belarusian land in a soldier’s overcoat? But even then, in rare moments of rest, there was energy for music: playing the piano in clubs, amateur performances, improving his compositional talents — composing musical scores for performances of the amateur army theatre. The Battle of Warsaw, a wound in the neck, which had to be treated for a long time... After returning from the campaign, Tikotsky ended up in Bobruisk, where he was demobilised, deciding not to return to Petrograd, but to settle in Belarus and finally seriously take up what he loved — music. He lived here for 14 long years, 

“Bobruisk, where I came with the Red Army, and through it all of Belarus, became my second homeland. Here I plunged into Belarusian reality for the first time and soon fell deeply in love with Belarusian nature and its people.”

It was then that he became acquainted with Belarusian folk songs — and filled his first symphony with national melodies. He communicated with the local intelligentsia, becoming close friends with the writer Mikhas Lynkov. He taught at a music school (today it bears his name), nurturing young talents, including teaching the future classic of composition Vladimir Olovnikov. In 1934, Tikotsky received an offer to work at the Belarusian Radio, composing music for broadcasts, creating vocal and choral works. Of course, he is happy to move to Minsk — he is attracted by the breadth of creative opportunities. The beginning of his long-term collaboration with the Kupala Theatre (Tikotsky composed music for a total of 25 performances) and other theatre troupes of the Belarusian capital dates back to the same period.

Children’s school No. 1 in Bobruisk is named after the composer Yevgeny Tikotsky

In 1939, he wrote the Mikhas Podgorny opera, taking as a co-author the poet Petrus Brovka, who acted as a librettist. This is the first national performance of the Bolshoi Theatre of the BSSR — a folk-heroic drama, in which the magnificent Larisa Alexandrovskaya shines in the role of Marysia in the very prime of her beauty and vocal talent. 

Mikhas Podgorny makes a splash at the decade of Belarusian art in Moscow; Stalin himself was in the audience, who does not skimp on applause, and then on awards: Tikotsky returns from the Kremlin as an Honoured Artist of the BSSR, Alexandrovskaya — People’s Artist of the Republic. 

The peaceful course of life is again interrupted by the Great Patriotic War. She overtakes the composer in Crimea, where he went on a creative business trip, planning to write the ballet Bela based on Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time. He is trying to return home, but Belarus is already occupied, there is only one way — to evacuation. First to Ufa, then to Nizhny Novgorod, knowing nothing about the fate of his wife and children who remained in devastated Minsk, captured by the Nazis. 

The composer was already approaching fifty, his health left much to be desired — the road to the front was closed for him. They say that he turned grey overnight from grief — just like the soldiers who miraculously emerged alive from hopeless battles turned grey. Tikotsky had no information about his family or loved ones for several more years. 

From evacuation he was called to Moscow — the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement, under which Panteleimon Ponomarenko launched the broadest cultural and ideological activities, recruiting artists, writers and musicians, set the task: we need an opera that will glorify the feat of the Belarusian partisans. Tikotsky gets to work, again involving Petrus Brovka as a librettist. The evacuated troupe of the Bolshoi Theatre of the BSSR lives in Gorky, and the composer creates his opera Alesya, seeing Larisa Alexandrovskaya in the title role of the heroic partisan. The famous director Boris Pokrovsky, who was also evacuated to these parts, undertakes to stage the work.
And at this time, a whole special operation is secretly unfolding to rescue the Tikotsky family from the occupied territory: Panteleimon Ponomarenko has never been anyone, but a cracker, insensitive to the misfortune of others. And while Tikotsky served his homeland in the field of music, creating a grandiose work that would glorify the partisans, the Minsk underground secretly took his wife and children out of the city, who were hidden in the forests for six months in one of the partisan detachments. And then there was a plane that broke through the front line and took the composer’s family to Moscow...

The premiere of the Alesya opera took place in 1944 in liberated Minsk. The city was in ruins, the opera house was almost completely destroyed, so the performance was hosted by the House of the Red Army.

The Alesya opera became a real sensation during the war. The triumph also lay in the fact that, like Dmitry Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, Yevgeny Tikotsky’s opera was written in a warring country — and nothing like it had been created in Western art. The play was performed on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre for many years. In 1955, Alesya in a new edition and with an updated cast went to conquer Moscow for the next decade of Belarusian art — from there the composer returned with the title of People’s Artist of the USSR. In 1968, the next edition of Alesya entitled Girl from Polesie received the State Prize of the BSSR.

The Alesya opera became a real wartime sensation

Yevgeny Tikotsky left a great creative legacy: six symphonies, operas, concerts, symphonic poems, choirs, music for films and plays, many songs... He headed both the Belarusian State Philharmonic Society and the Union of Composers of the BSSR, taught for many years, was a deputy of the Supreme Council, but, despite to the social load, he continued to compose. He said, “I am a happy person: I don’t know what boredom, insomnia and headaches are.”

So he left, not having time to finish his last opera, Anna Gromova... Not a day without a note, until his last breath.

By Irina Ovsepyan