Texts on Avtorskaya Pesnya, Romansy

[Rachel Platonov]

On Thursday, February 5, 2004, at 09:18 PM, Laura Kline wrote:

> Dmitry Suxarev's "Avtorskaya pesnya: Antologiya" (2002) includes short
> biographies along with an extensive collection of songs.

The Sukharev anthology is somewhat idiosyncratic, though. It includes
poems by a very wide range of authors--including Akhmatova, Davydov,
Lermontov, A. A. Milne, Pablo Neruda, Aleksei Tolstoi, and many
besides--that have been set to music by an equally wide range of bards.
It also includes song lyrics by a large number of contemporary bards.
The end result is that, of the 700-odd songs in the anthology (my rough
count), only about 10% (once again, my rough count) are by the so-called
"kity" of the genre.

In short, the anthology covers a lot of ground, and this is both a
strength and a weakness--depending on what you're looking for. I
wouldn't recommend it as a single source for works by the traditionally
heralded major figures of the genre; it does, however, provide a very
broad and interesting picture of avtorskaia pesnia as a phenomenon in
ways that extend beyond such "imenitye pevtsy."

- Rachel Platonov

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