“The Modernity of Nikolai Popov: The novelty of music and the novelty of the world”

Abstract

PhD Doctor, Professor of MSC, Valentina NikolayKholopova. - “The Modernity of Nikolai Popov: Thenovelty of music and the novelty of the world”.Nikolai Popov is a talented Russian composer of the youngergeneration, whose music is regularly performed in his nativecountry and in other countries. His worldview combines togetherthe most ancient and the most contemporary parameters. Theobjects of his philosophical and musical thinking are the cosmos,the physical sound of the world, and in the sphere of humanhistory antiquity and new technologies. His musical languagesynthesizes classical instrumental timbres with electronic sounds,as well as with video footage. Popov was born in Bashkortostan,graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, participated in themaster-classes of many innovative composers from outside ofRussia. He created video-musical multimedia compositions incollaboration with several video-artists. Especially noteworthy arehis compositions from 2013 — “The Song of Uldra,” writted incollaboration with Andrew Quinn and Alena Skornyakova, basedon Scandinavian folklore, “Artra”, written in collaboration ofTodor Pozarew and Andrew Quinn with a quotation from the“Danses des adolescentes” from Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”heard on a disc of the spacecraft Voyager, “Nibiru 20/13”together with Skornyakova and Quinn, based on motives fromShumerian-Acadian mythology. In order to find solutions to theissue of correlation of the audio and the visual effects, Popov alsoadmits pure sounds without video footage in some of hiscompositions. Such is one of the versions of his composition “TheSong of Uldra”, as well as his early compositions for bayan,strings and percussion. The emotional “message” to the listenerprovides a specially important component for him.