Serafim Tulikov

Serafim Sergeyevich Tulikov, ( _ru. Серафим Сергеевич Туликов) (July 7, 1914 - January 29, 2004), was a Russian and Soviet composer who was born in the Imperial Russia, and died in Russia. He was often credited as S. Tulikov, in his musical works and his cameo appearance in Russian television series. Serafim Tulikov is well-remembered for his recherché composition of "Lenin is Always With You", a Soviet revolutionary tune, depicting the continuity of the Soviet Union, saying, "Lenin will always live in the hearts of the people."

Early years

Serafim Tulikov was born in Kaluga to the family of bookkeeper Grigoriy Boboedov. Both parents of Serafim were active in choirs during their youth, and Serafim was deeply immersed in to music during his childhood. He was eventually enrolled into the Kaluga Academy of Music, and at the age of 18, he studied at many conservatoires in Russia Fact|date=February 2007.

A promising composer

During the mid-1940s Serafim Tulikov composed a range of melodious lyrical-patriotic songs which became quite popular (for instance, "The Kursk Nightingale" [lyrics by Olga Fadeeva] ). The majority of these songs celebrated the return of peaceful life to war-torn Russia. Tulikov was also heavily influenced by the post-war trend in Soviet popular music towards increasingly archaic and folkloristic imagery and melodic formulas (for instance, see songs such as "They have come for a sojourn" [lyrics by Yakov Belinsky] , "Moscow the Capital" [lyrics by Sergei Vasiliev] , "Blossom, my Homeland!" [lyrics by Sergei Vasiliev] ).

Union-wide fame came to Tulikov in 1947, when he composed "We Are for Peace" (lyrics by Alexander Zharov), a rousing marching song meant to mobilize masses all over the world on behalf of the USSR-led effort to prevent the escalation of international tensions during the early phase of the Cold War. The song's refrain - "We are for peace! And we will carry this song through all corners of the earth - let it resonate in the hearts of humanity!" - became legendary. In 1951 Tulikov composed "March of the Soviet Youth" (lyrics by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky) which promptly received the First Prize at the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students held in Berlin. The march continued and developed the pattern established by the composer in "We Are for Peace!" -- unbridled optimism, mass-mobilizing appeal, sunny imagery. The initial version of the "March of the Soviet Youth" contained the following words: "Our youth carry love for their Great Leader in their hearts! Stalin is leading us into the future! The path he has chosen for us is the right one!" After Khrushchev's deStalinization compaign in 1956, these words were duly replaced.

Throughout most the 1950s Serafim Tulikov continued to compose prolifically for all sorts of official ideological occasions -- Party congresses, Youth festivals, professional conventions, etc. Tulikov's style of optimistic, rousing and mass-mobilizing songs found its expression in such interesting songs as "This is Us, the Youth!" (lyrics by Lev Oshanin), written on the occasion of the 5th World Festival of Youth and Students held in Warsaw in 1955, "My Beloved Motherland" (lyrics by Andrei Dostal), dedicated to the 40th Annivesary of the October Revolution in 1957. It is important to notice that with time Tulikov's style of mass marching songs had undergone some substantial changes. If in the beginning his marches were rather dynamic and energetic, strongly influenced by the mass songs of Isaak Dunaevsky ("March of the Soviet Youth" is an excellent example of this style). Already in the late 1950s Tulikov's marches became more solemn, more static and more hymnal (it can be easily detected in "My Beloved Motherland").

In his more lyrical songs of the early career, Tulikov developed in a highly talented manner his initial style of heartfelt and quiet melodies, filled with wistfulness, melodiousness as well as the expectation of bright future and improvement. Among such songs the following should be mentioned: "My Love, my Life" (lyrics by Anton Prishelets), "I Love You, my Sea" (lyrics by Anatoly Salnikov), "Next to the Moscow River" (lyrics by Lev Kondyrev), "Golden Altai" (lyrics by Tsezar Solodar). The composer also made his contribution to the special sub-genre of the Soviet song -- the army song. He authored a famous song dedicated to the Soviet Pacific Fleet -- "Next to the Bleak Kuriles" (lyrics by Nikolai Bukin), a work which combined elements of heroic devotion to the Motherland with pensiveness and longing for the far-away family and its comforts.

In reflecting on the sources of inspiration for his songs, Serafim Tulikov later confessed that it came mostly from the reminiscences of his homeland, Kaluga, and most of the elements within the songs were present in Kaluga. In the early 1960s Tulikov would write a song dedicated to Kaluga, properly entitled "The Town of My Youth" (lyrics by Mikhail Pliatskovsky), a sweet and unassuming yet sincere and heartfelt song.

During Khrushchev's "Virgin Soils" campaign of bringing the vast steppes of Kazakhstan and South Siberia into agricultural use, Tulikov composed another famous song -- "Komsomol's Instruction" (lyrics by Tsezar Solodar), which loudly and joyfully declared: "On the go! On the go! The Komsomol has issued an instruction! And the merry song is waiting for us at the threshold, calling us forward!"

Mature Phase

Many of the "older generation" Soviet composers did not feel particularly comfortable after the onset of the television age (1960s and later). Serafim Tulikov adjusted himself perfectly and established himself as one of the leading and most popular Soviet song-writers. His repertoire as well as the stylistic forms of expression expanded significantly. On the one hand, Tulikov composed such near-hymnal solemn songs as "Lenin is Forever with You" (lyrics by Lev Oshanin), perhaps one of the most successful and widely-known Soviet song dedicated to Vladimir Lenin, and "Motherland" (lyrics by Yuri Polukhin). On the other hand, he wrote songs which clearly carried in themselves an imprint of the cultural thaw of the 1960s ("Smile!" [lyrics by Mikhail Pliatskovsky] , "Equation with One Unknown" [lyrics by Mikhail Pliatskovsky] , "This will Never Be Repeated" [lyrics by Mikhail Pliatskovsky] ) - they contained no explicit elements of ideology or patriotism and they were decidedly divorced from the folkloristic tradition in which the majority of Tulikov's lyrical songs of the 1940s-50s were rendered.

Serafim Tulikov continued to contribute mass songs dedicated to various important events in Soviet history and politics. His song "To the Distant Planets!" (lyrics by Yuri Polukhin) was a work of sparkling and unbridled enthusiasm and optimism designed to celebrate the USSR's technological breakthroughs. Unsurprisingly, it was written in the wake of Yuri Gagarin's first space journey in 1961.

In 1964, Tulikov's only opera, "Barankin, bud' chelovekom", premiered in Moscow.

In the late 1960s Tulikov began to compose songs with overtly neo-Slavophile overtones. They were all dedicated to Russia, yet different from his previous patriotic style. They became explicitly more folkloristic and filled with rural and natural imagery - Russia's meadows, fields, sky, lakes and rivers, etc. The elements of wistfulness and even light sadness, as if bidding farewell to something destined to extinction, became more and more prominent: "There, Far Away is my Russia" (lyrics by Vladimir Kharitonov), "Love Confession" (lyrics by Mikhail Tanich), "Treasure Russia" (lyrics by Oleg Miliavsky), "My Native Homeland" (lyrics by Peter Gradov), etc.

The composer continued to write songs dedicated to the Soviet Army and its heroic exploits and traditions: "Veterans' Souls Do Not Age" (lyrics by Yakov Belinsky), which became popular with the USSR leadership, itself comprised of many who actively participated in the Great Patriotic War, "The Son of Russia" (lyrics by Vladimir Kharitonov), etc.

Tulikov became notorious for composing multiple songs about Lenin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. For instance, an incredibly pompous and anthem-like song "I Sing of My Motherland" (lyrics by Nikolai Dorizo) was dedicated to the opening of the 26th Party Congress in 1981. The song praised the strength and the global mission of the Soviet state and pointed out that this strength was not based on fear and intimidation but rather on genuine achievements and generosity of the Soviet people.

In the early 60s Tulikov wrote a very successful song about Moscow -- "I sing of you, my Moscow" (lyrics by Yuri Polukhin). The phrase "Moscow, your fame is flying on the wings of your glory all over the world! Moscow, you are the heart of my Motherland!" became legendary.

In the 1970s Tulikov contributed several songs to the project of constructing a railway road Baykal-Amur Mainline launched by the Soviet government in 1974-75. The "BAM Waltz" (lyrics by Mikhail Pliatskovsky) became perhaps the most famous of these songs.

Assessment

As the Soviet Union unravelled in the late 1980s, Serafim Tulikov found himself increasingly isolated and ill-equipped to deal with the tide of innovations and the larger features of social chaos. He was widely ridiculed as a "party composer" capable of writing songs even on the basis of official party telegrams. Tulikov's traditionalism as well as his penchant for slow-flowing and sweet lyrical tunes was sharply at odds with the newly fashionable avant-guard and radical rejection of harmony and tranquility in music in favor of cacophony and wild rhythms. Serafim Tulikov gradually faded away from public prominence. He died in retirement after a stroke in 2004. Some of his musical legacy has been resurrected by the lovers of Soviet retro music. However, the majority of what has been reissued and revived has been Tulikov's most non-political, most purely light lyrical music of the 1960s-70s. What made Tulikov into a major Soviet song-writer -- his patriotic songs and marches -- are still largely forgotten and remain to be re-discovered.

Audio

*Vocal Rendition of "Lenin is Always With You" (Audio|Lenin_1.ogg|Listen

):"Tune by Serafim Tulikov, Lyrics by L. Oshanin"

*Instrumental Rendition of "Lenin is Always With You" (Audio|Lenin_2.ogg|Listen

):"Tune by Serafim Tulikov"