My composition sets the poem Azovstal, written by great Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova in the spring of 2022 under the impression of the brutal siege of Mariupol by the Russian army. Though the poet can see all the gruesome details of the attack, his poem is not a direct reaction to the events, but an epic utterance rooted in the poetic traditions of the Antiquity. Presence and distance, an eyewitness perspective and a historian’s stance endow this poem with the same quality that I strive to attain in my music: the multiplicity of perspectives. Without reducing the possibility of ethical judgment, it expands the horizons and involves the audience in experiencing the text, within their own perception of time. 

I have divided the ten stanzas into three musical sections of different lengths, alternating with an introduction and with instrumental intermezzi. The voice moves from quasi-folk singing to rap, and culminates in a long, seemingly improvised solo accompanied by a rhythmic ostinato in the bass. The simultaneous presence of various tempi, static and expressive elements are deliberately employed in order to convey the multidimensional, complex character of the poetic source in the music. 

The use of ensemble sound typical of twentieth-century funeral music deserves a special mention. The gongs, harps, low piano registers with asynchronous descending lines bring references to various musical epitaphs from the second half of the last century, from Stravinsky’s Orpheus to Grisey’s Quatre Chants.

Sergej Newski 

 

Azovstal

Hail to you, forgotten Goddess of History,
With your rocket-shell retinue, slaughtered soldiery!
We recognise you – still incipient – that day of fear,
When caterpillar treads and helicopters cross the border.

Then we grow accustomed to your rule. At first:
A high-rise’s ruptured chest, trees ablaze on the coast,
Blasted train junctions, the endless steppes’ theatre
Where, mired in black earth, Mazepa was cursed by Peter.

For Death is still young. She needs agility, time—
To train, master her craft – slowly takes aim,
Flails for a while: the body greeted by shrapnel
Only after the fifth try – after, a dead lull falls.

A drone traces an invisible path in the air.
The twenty-year-old guard slowly leads an elder
Behind a fence’s shelter – what matter he’s a civilian—
For both, the last few meters will only lengthen.

A pea coat’s owner abandons one site of ruin—
Occupies another. A satellite docked in the heavens
Impassively looks on. Cannons blast a nitrogen cistern:
Ten blocks have been taken – gloria nostra aeterna.

How distant the harbours and train stations of salvation!
Facing the checkpoint: friend or foe? It’s unknown—
Will they shoot or let you go? Chickens left by gates
For looters, goats loose in yards – turn the gaze

To the map with unmarked Trostyanka, Merefa, Irpin—
With their torn-off roofs thrusting up through nettles,
And caught in the throat: the stench of those no longer,
While children learn to say “traitor,” “rifle,” “hunger.”

A bullet, not a seagull, incises the low tide’s line,
Beyond a broken window, a mirror reflects clear skies –
Descendants born in shelters will observe it with fear,
For not God’s kingdom, but a sky of nuclear threat is near.

Clotted blood stains. The bass and alto of explosions.
For every Thermopylae there will be an Ephialtes.
Bid them farewell – for honor or shame, you don’t know:
The path’s cut off: in the end, the Medes will break through.

So then, Goddess of History, war remains war.
In a hostile city: a sunshine-struck boulevard.
A student under a linden grinds a cigarette into sand,
Repeats the old line: “How sweet it is to hate one’s fatherland.”

And the soldier – his comrades won’t recall his patronym –
Subsists on stale air in the underground labyrinth,
Yet when his words cease, stone and concrete will repeat
The defiant riposte Cambronne hurled at his attackers.


Translated from Lithuanian by Ellen Hinsey and Rimas Uzgiris