Andrey Smirnov :: main projects

Sound out of Paper

Concert-presentation of the tape-music from 1930-s


Georges Bizet – Torreodor from the Opera "Carmen". Transcription for Variophone by E. Sholpo (1935)
Ferenc Liszt - Rhapsody. Time programming by G.Rimsky-Korsakoff (1934-35).
Nikolai Timofeev - Waltz (1935).
Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov - March-Trot "Galop" (1935).
Igor Boldirev & Evgeny Sholpo - Soundtrack from the cartoon "Sterviatniki" (1941).
Frederic Chopin - Nocturne. Time programming by G.Rimsky-Korsakov (1930-s)
Frederic Chopin - Prelude. Time programming by G.Rimsky-Korsakov (1930-s)
A. Liadov - Music Snuffbox.
Georgy Rimsky-Korsakoff & Evgeny Sholpo - The Carburettor Suite (1933-34)
Richard Wagner - Valkiry Flight.
Isaak Dunaevsky - The song of Robert (1936).

Graphical (Drawn) Sound technique was invented in Russia in 1929 as a consequence of the newly invented sound-on-film technology. This invention came at least twenty years too early while the World War II was already at the threshold. As a result in Soviet Russia by late 1930-s the work in this domain effectively came to a halt. The the most important documents related to Graphical Sound were never published at all and were circulating in manuscript form, similar to “Samizdat” (self-published forbidden literature) from the 1960a through the 1980s. Almost no information about exiting concepts and inventions was translated and published in any foreign language.

Fortunately many of those unique documents survived and are collected now in the Smirnov's archive at the Theremin Center for Electroacoustic Music in Moscow. Over two hours of synthesized music, produced in 1930s by means of Variophone Synthesizer twenty years before the foundation of electronic music, were discovered recently at the Russian State Film Archive. Although most of music synthesized in 1930-s was based on transcriptions of classics, several composers were continuously involved in the graphical sound research. Among them - Georgy Rimsky-Kosakoff, Igor Boldirev, Nikolai Timofeev. Their music, synthesized by means of Variophone, is the basis of our concert program.