All about the song "Blue Eternity" (Oh, sea, sea...)
Содержание
For most music critics and listeners alike, "Blue Eternity" is the most significant work in Muslim Magomaev's oeuvre. Actually, each listener has his own opinion about it. Be that as it may, but this composition really deserves attention. Especially the story of its creation!
The story of the creation of one of Muslim Magomaev's most recognisable compositions (Oh, sea, sea...)
Magomayev wrote only the music, while the words were written by Gennady Kozlovsky, a heating engineer who liked to compose poetry at his leisure.
It is difficult to answer the question of which of these two components appeared first. As many times as Muslim Magometovich gave interviews, he contradicted himself. For example, in one of his radio programmes he shared the following memories:
"...Gennady Kozlovsky is an engineer living in Baku and occasionally composes poetry. His creativity has always inspired me. And here I wrote "Blue Eternity" on one of his poems...".
However, in his autobiography Magomayev recalled quite the opposite:
"...This song was written under very interesting circumstances! We were having dinner as a group in a restaurant, and the melody to "Blue Eternity" came up by itself! I maniacally wrote down the notes on a bleached napkin, which I paid for after dinner and took away with me. Later, Gennady Kozlovsky wrote poems to my music..."
Later, this version was confirmed by the poet's son Alexander Kozlovsky. He told how in one of the noisy summer evenings Muslim Magometovich sketched the notes of the future song on a napkin! And later his father, Gennady Kozlovsky, composed the verses to the music... To make the poet's task easier, the legendary performer pre-recorded the melody on a tape recorder:
"After a while my father asked Magomayev sharply: 'Muslim, what do you think of this - "... Oh, the sea, the sea!"? Muslim sat down at his instrument and sang: "Oh, sea, sea..." Everyone was delighted!" - says Alexander.
That's how the first line of the refrain was born! But if the first line was born quickly and was immediately successful, the work on the rest of the text was very slow and painstaking... Magomayev didn't like the rhymes, or the phrases... Muslim was sifting through new variations in search of perfection. Many expressions had to be abandoned, for the performer feared that the artistic council would reject such lines as "Sea, take me to distant lands" or "You break both grief and pain".
If Alexander Kozlowski is to be believed, when the musical form was completed, it was... uncommonly beautiful!
Very soon the artist flew to the capital. Two weeks later, he phoned Gennady with a request to switch on the programme "Happy Birthday", in which the all-Union premiere of their joint masterpiece took place for the first time. Later, the Soviet performer repeatedly performed this composition at his concerts. And once performed it as a virtual duet with Tamara Gverdtsiteli in the programme "Property of the Republic". The audience liked the new sound of the old, but not forgotten piece....
