Types and forms of pop programs. Variety history

Among the set of specific features of pop art, the most significant for the viewer are simplicity and accessibility, artistic clarity. A frequent visitor to variety programs is always disposed to the fact that the performer from the first minutes will establish a strong and natural contact with him.

A pianist, violinist or vocalist can count on the fact that gradually, from passage to passage, as they perform the works, they will be able to win over the audience. “A variety artist establishes immediate, sincere, open contact. The spectator's polite observation of what is happening on the stage is tantamount to failure.

In the history of the development of pop art, there are many examples of the loss of simplicity of perception, leading to the violation of open and sincere contact with the audience, which cost entire genres dearly. This applies primarily to this type of pop art, which is jazz music. In the pre-war decades, jazz in our country (and not only here - similar processes can be observed abroad, in its homeland in the USA) was very closely connected with light music, with mass song. Our popular singers, including Leonid Utyosov, performed their famous songs accompanied by jazz ensembles. Jazz instrumental music (A. Tsfasman, V. Knushevitsky) was also built on melodies and rhythms accessible to the ear of an ordinary listener.

Gradually, jazz music became more complex, borrowing the achievements of modern symphony in harmony and melodic-rhythmic constructions. Starting from the “be-bop” style in the post-war years and up to the modern “fusion”, jazz develops in fact in line with “serious” music, focusing on a trained listener, using the understanding and love of not everyone, as it was before. Today, a specific feature of jazz art is that the close connection of jazz with song and "light" music has weakened, if not broken.

The specific features of pop art - accessibility and simplicity - are closely related to another specificity - its mass character 35 . Today, one can no longer ignore the fact that the vast majority of viewers are familiar with the work of its best masters only through "correspondence" meetings. “Even without accurate sociological data, we can say with confidence that at least 90 percent of the public who love and know the repertoire of Alla Pugacheva or Valery Leontiev have never been to their performances in a concert hall. For them, the auditorium of unlimited size is the TV screen” 36 .

TV Variety art- a special, worthy of special attention, the subject of research. The process of social regulation of the modern audience cannot be fully understood without taking into account the processes taking place in television entertainment broadcasting 37 .

Many authors who write about the problems of television entertainment programs complain about the lack of such programs. Literaturnaya Gazeta, which conducted a questionnaire among young people about attitudes towards television, noted that “the proposals of viewers (“What programs for young people, in your opinion, could appear on TV?”) are clearly subordinated to two spirits - the spirit of entertainment and the spirit of knowledge. ". At the same time, 91 percent (!!) of the audience demand the stage! And even those who like the current variety programs: they just don't have enough - they need more” 38 .

I must say that the estimates of television variety art in quantitative terms are not entirely correct. Researchers take into account only specially pop programs, while in many other programs all artistic "inserts" (and there are many of them) are actually musical pop numbers. Today, two trends can be noted in pop art: the emergence of special entertainment programs - such as "The Last Hero", where, along with a narrow circle of pop "stars", unknown performers from the "Star Factory" also participate in the programs. Among the specific features of variety art, fashion should be singled out. Fashion can be for a particular genre, for a performer, even for external methods of presenting a number, for the appearance of an artist in a variety program. It is very difficult to establish the patterns of fashion development, all the more difficult to prepare a “custom-made” work that will gain general popularity and begin to “set the tone”.

Considerable damage to the aesthetic education of the population (especially young people) is caused by the thoughtless exploitation of the popularity of some variety programs by the administrators of concert organizations. Numerous facts were cited in the press, how individual heads of the philharmonic societies “promote” show programs to the detriment of symphony or chamber concerts. As a result, in many cities that used to be famous for their concert traditions, now all venues have been completely given over to the power of show business 39 .

Although it is easy to see that this circle has been expanded by young talented musicians and singers who satisfy the most diverse tastes of a wide audience.

As an example, we can recall the work of the excellent jazz ensemble "Arsenal" under the direction of A. Kozlov: in search of a stronger contact with the audience, these artists went for a bold and unexpected theatricalization of their performances, creating a new genre structure in variety art that excites the imagination of the viewer-listener . Starting the experiment, the musicians, of course, risked that fans of jazz improvisation would reject their performance. Everything was determined by the aesthetic category of measure and artistic taste - such seemingly ephemeral, hard-to-measure concepts.

All this suggests that pop art, despite its wide distribution, has its own specific features. The theoretical comprehension of this art shows that in any creativity there is an inevitable gap between the ideal and reality, desire and fact, intention and implementation, and the analysis of this circumstance is of fundamental importance for understanding the prospects for the artistic development of reality. As noted by I.G. Sharoev, “the interaction of various types of art in our time is becoming ambiguous, and the dynamics of violations of their boundaries is increasing. Today, the classification of types and genres is becoming extremely complicated, because types and genres are so connected with each other, intricately intertwined, that the designation of their boundaries is often rather arbitrary” 40 .

Such a process leads to the emergence and establishment of new genres in various types of art, it is especially noticeable on the stage, which has always reacted very sensitively to new trends. Thus, new genres and forms were established, unusually diverse and mobile: rock opera, zong opera, rock mass, rock suite and others, where there are elements of opera and ballet, drama and variety arts.

One of the specific features of the type of art we are analyzing is the combination of various genres, their diversity.

“Variety art by its nature combines diverse genre characteristics of other types of art, the commonality of which lies in easy adaptability to various conditions of public demonstration, in the short duration of the action, in the concentration of its artistic expressive means, which contributes to the vivid identification of the creative individuality of the performer, and in the field of genres related with a living word - in the topicality, acute socio-political relevance of the topics covered, in the predominance of elements of humor, satire and journalism" 41 .

The next specific feature of pop art is that the variety of genres and the background dictate both the temporal and spatial embodiment of the idea, the meaning in a separate number, which forms the basis of the pop performance.

It includes individual completed performances by one or more artists and lasts only 3-5 minutes.

When creating a performance, performers may or may not turn to the help of a director, playwright, artist, composer, choreographer, while they themselves decide its content side. The expressive means of the number obey his idea, and in this respect everything should be in perfect harmony: costume, make-up, scenery, demeanor on stage.

The combination of various numbers makes up a variety program, where all types of performing arts are concentrated: singers, jugglers, feuilletonists, performers of sketches, animal trainers, magicians, coupletists, acrobats, dancers, musicians, demonstrators of psychological experiments, aerialists and equestrians perform. This breadth of possibilities makes pop art varied, bright, original, with its own specific features.

Usually, numbers in a variety concert are united by an entertainer or a plot basis. Then on the stage - a variety review, which is diverse both in topics and in structure.

Another specificity of pop art is that its artists almost always communicate directly with the public. K.S. Stanislavsky formulated the law of the stage, according to which the actor acts in conditions of "public loneliness". “Playing in a performance, realizing that hundreds of spectators are watching him, the actor at the same time must be able to forget about them. The actor should not imitate the one he portrays, but become him, live the almost real life of a stage person in the circumstances offered by the play and the performance.

This is how the entertainer, coupletist or singer addresses directly to the auditorium. The audience turns out to be a partner of the artists, and it vividly reacts to what is happening on the stage, gives cues and passes notes to the performers. Even during the dialogue, the artists turn not only to each other, but also to the audience.

As noted by A.V. Lunacharsky: "... in its liveliness, as far as possible to respond immediately to topical events, in its political sharpness, the stage has great advantages over the theater, cinema, serious literature," because "... the latter requires a lot of time to prepare its products, in its main form it is significantly heavier than a light-winged and stinging, like a wasp, pop song or couplet chronicle” 43 .

The above qualitative features of pop art served as a criterion in the selection of various phenomena that characterize his creative experience.

In the course of its development, pop styles changed many times. Understanding style means penetrating the hidden mechanisms of technology. After all, not only any pop genre, but even a separate intonation, a random gesture are important here. These are metaphors that link the threads of life weaving in everyday life into a complex knot of art. Only, unlike other arts, pop metaphors are casts of not long, not extended periods of time; here the account goes not for years, but for months, days and even minutes. Estrada is a chronicle cursive record of the events of our time.

Of course, a historical period of a quarter of a century is a huge period for any art. But neither in literature, nor even in the theater and cinema, time has made such dramatic changes as in pop art. And it's not even that the new idols have ousted the former ones both from the stage and from the memory of the audience, but in another, more important thing. The changes affected the very essence of this species, the internal structure of its forms and genres.

Even in the 60s, pop art did not know, for example, any gala performances of a kind of “song theater” deployed around one “star” with a corps de ballet and magnificent spectacular entourage, which is now created by A. Pugacheva, V. Leontiev, S. Rotaru , L. Vaikule, nor vocal and instrumental ensembles of the 70s or rock bands of the 80s.

The programs of jazz orchestras have disappeared from the stage of the modern stage not because the founders and idols - L. Utyosov, B. Rensky, E. Rozner - have passed away. Their successors failed to prolong the life of jazz. The genre itself died - the theatrical divertissement, which was recreated with the accompaniment and participation of jazz musicians.

Numerous varieties of miniature theaters - from the "theatre of two actors" - M. Mironova and A. Menaker, L. Mirov and M. Novitsky or the theater of A. Raikin to a huge number of student pop groups of the late 50s - early 60s - one after another, for various reasons, they disappeared or were transformed beyond recognition, such as the Hermitage Theater - the brainchild of Vl. Polyakov. The last theater of miniatures faded away with the death of A. Raikin. Their place was taken by R. Kartsev and V. Ilchenko, M. Zhvanetsky, as well as "Theatres of one actor" - G. Khazanov, E. Petrosyan, E. Shifrin, V. Vinokur ...

Theatrical variety programs in some form have survived to this day, but they have become very different from the previous ones.

The number as a unit of measurement in some programs has grown to the size of an episode, which is quite natural, since pop art mastered new venues - arenas of Sports Palaces, stadiums. Large spaces required the enlargement of all elements of variety art and the technology for creating and reproducing new forms of variety programs.

In recent years, large-scale variety programs are increasingly crowding out chamber performances. The variety concert, which until recently was the main form of variety art, like a performance in the theater, a film in the cinema, turned out to be pushed to the periphery of spectacular practice. And the pop concert itself has changed beyond recognition.

In a historical retrospective, the basis of the concert was determined by the principle of diversity, according to which the number of one genre was replaced by another: a reader - a juggler, an illusionist - an accordion player, a guitarist, etc.

Over the past quarter of a century, performers of musical feuilletons, couplets, sketches, interludes, miniatures, readers, storytellers, instrumentalists, etc. have somehow imperceptibly dropped out of the assembled variety concert.

Individual performance on stage requires high self-control. To ensure a high level of activity of a screenwriter, director, performer, a detailed system of daily creative control is important, because you can engage in entertainment only when you own the philosophical category "measure".

Stanislavsky wrote: “Let's not say that the theater is a school. No, theater is entertainment. It is unprofitable for us to let this important element out of our hands. Let people always go to the theater to be entertained. But then they came, we closed the doors behind them (...) and we can pour into their souls whatever we want” 44 . This entirely applies to the functioning of variety art. In a pop concert, when there is a beautiful scenery, amazing performers, brilliant, sparkling lighting, everything activates, stuns the viewer.

It should be noted here that a specific feature of variety art is the openness of performance. A pop performer is not separated from the audience by either a curtain or a ramp, he is, as it were, a “come from the people” and is closely connected with the audience. He does everything in front of the public openly, everything is close to the audience, where the performers can both see and hear the audience, make direct contact with it.

The result of the specific features of variety art discussed above is only its inherent perceptual-communicative process, in which the close rapprochement of the performer with the public gives rise to a completely special system of communication, more precisely, communication. A pop performer during a performance turns attentive spectators-listeners into active partners, allowing them a lot in terms of responses. A pop performer himself can do much more than is provided for by a classical concert or theatrical performance. This performer occupies a position of maximum trust and openness in relation to the public.

In a word, the main difference between pop art lies in the specifics of the perceptual and communicative process, which is easily perceived by the public, helping to create unique works.

The perceptual-communicative process in pop art, despite the breadth of its genre palette and the influence of many social and cultural factors, is distinguished by the internal dynamics of creativity.

The genres of art include many musical and poetic works of the so-called love lyrics, which carry a touching penetration to the stage: they are characterized by entertainment and humor.

The answer should be sought in the same place, that is, in the system of relations between the two sides - performing and spectator, as well as in the performer's own life position, in the perceptual-communicative process. The love lyrics embodied in the pop program implies a very high degree of the performer's trust in the public, which allows a kind of confession to arise when a person needs to tell someone about something quite intimate - about his happiness or his sorrows.

A specific feature of pop art is efficiency, the ability to respond to the "hot" topics of the day, to form and strengthen the positive emotional tone of the viewer according to the principle: in the morning - in a newspaper, in the evening - in a couplet.

It is no coincidence that all socially acute situations stimulated the appearance, first of all, of new works of small forms, which, in turn, served as a source of strength and inspiration for the audience.

Therefore, the most important feature of variety art is a social orientation. Along with this, pop music developed as an art of festive leisure, which led to a variety of pop genres, to the unusualness of their perception, responded to the desires of a person to fill their festive leisure, their rest with new impressions, artistic discoveries, positive emotions. It is these qualities that distinguish the holiday from everyday life. Brightness and originality served and serve to attract the attention of the audience to each number, since a variety program, even a short one, necessarily contains a moment of competition between the numbers, because each of them has to defend their right to a friendly attitude from the audience.

The audience at a variety concert or performance expects from each performance, from each episode, some kind of novelty, an unexpected twist in the plot, in performing techniques. “The spectators who came to the variety show usually think that they know everything in advance - now the prologue will be played, then the entertainer will enter the stage, but we must strive to “disappoint” them in a good sense, please them (and more than once) a cheerful surprise, "blow up" the measured course of the program" 45 .

Entering the stage in front of an audience tuned in to a festive spectacle, the performer needs to satisfy her desires to reveal all his individual capabilities, to prove himself a “jack of all trades”. To do this, you should constantly update your repertoire, find a new twist in solving the performance, taking into account the specifics of the perceptual and communicative process of variety art, inventing a witty beginning, culmination and finale of the performance. Therefore, the renewal of well-known genres occurs due to the creation of an unexpected artistic image, the nature of its performance.

The most productive and artistically convincing attempts have always been attempts to complicate the pop genre, in which the performer usually performs. At one time, a theatrical jazz orchestra led by Leonid Utyosov appeared on the stage. Readers' performances began to turn into "one-man theaters", solo singers began to dance, and the process of the birth of completely new, previously unknown genres was observed.

A specific feature of pop art is a festive atmosphere, which corresponds to the nature of the creative process itself. Singing and dramatic art gave life to theatrical singing, which added to itself the art of dancing (dance with small amplitudes of movement), and modern pop singing has become an even more complex art in structure.

Today, pop numbers are very common, where one performer sings, dances, and pronounces a monologue, acts as a parodist. Variety musicians-instrumentalists are able to play several different instruments, thereby causing additional interest in their performance.

Consequently, a pop performer, unlike an academic artist, can perfectly master many professional skills that are “at the junction” of several types of art, but do not forget about this state. In this case, the performer both entertains and captivates the audience, evoking positive emotions not only with the content of the work, but also with its “festivity”, takes into account the specifics of the perceptual-communicative process of variety art.

A sense of festivity can also be created through purely external entertainment. The most common in the review performances of the music hall - the play of light, the change of picturesque backdrops, the change in the form of the stage platform before the eyes of the audience cause the audience to feel uplifted and in a good mood.

Yes, many genres of pop art attract with ease and conciseness of perception due to the well-known simplification of the structure of the work, facilitating its content and form. But this cannot be considered a petty issue. The chosen (touched) topic can be very large and significant. But from the fact that it will appear in the work freed from the complex interweaving of other themes, the work will be perceived more easily. Another way to master the content is to select topics that do not pretend to be large scale and deep, but are personal, corporate, and may be of interest to a certain circle of people.

Hence the concept of "variety" is interpreted as a specific language of expressive means, belonging only to this type of art.

Variety is a characteristic of the technique and artistry of the performer performing on the variety stage.

A pop performer is first of all a master in one of the genres, and only then can demonstrate his talent in various genres of pop art.

Consequently, a specific feature of pop art is its multi-genre, which combines music, dance, singing, conversation, circus, etc. Despite the multi-genre nature, each performer has his own artistic features and expressive means, the open stage (stage) on which the actor enters dictates its own conditions: direct contact with the public, “openness” of skill, the ability to instantly transform, etc. The main “brick” variety program, or concert, is a number - a short performance (by one or more performers), built according to the laws of dramaturgy. Short film implies the utmost concentration of expressive means, "attraction", the use of the grotesque, buffoonery, eccentrics. Of particular importance are the presence of a bright individuality, the image successfully found by the actor (sometimes a mask), internal energy.

These, in our opinion, are the main specific features of modern variety art.

If there is some unreasonably tall man in the chair in front of me, it begins to seem to me that I am hard of hearing. In any case, such music ceases to be pop music for me. However, it also happens that what is happening on the stage is perfectly visible, however, despite this, it does not become a fact of variety art; after all, other artists and directors concentrate all their efforts on pleasing our ears, caring little about our eyes. Especially often one encounters an underestimation of the spectacular side of pop art in musical genres, but the symptoms of the same disease can be observed in artistic reading and in entertaining.

- Well, - you say, - again we are talking about long-known things, that many pop artists lack stage culture, that their numbers are sometimes devoid of plastic expressiveness and are visually monotonous.

Indeed, all these serious shortcomings, which have not yet been overcome by pop art, often appear in reviews, problematic articles, and creative discussions. To some extent, they will be affected in this article. However, I would like to ask a broader question. The point here, obviously, is not only the lack of skill as such. This shortcoming affected even those pop genres that are addressed only to vision. Acrobats, jugglers, illusionists (even the best of them, great masters of their craft) most often sin precisely with the same visual monotony, a lack of plastic culture. All varieties of the genre are reduced, as a rule, to the alternation within the number of approximately one circle of tricks and techniques performed. Stamps that develop from year to year (for example, an acrobatic male couple, tall and small, working at a slow pace, performing power movements, or a melancholic juggler dressed in a tuxedo with a cigar and a hat, etc.) only reinforce, legitimize spectacular poverty pop genres. Traditions, once alive, become fetters for the development of art.

I will give as an example two jugglers - winners of the recent 3rd All-Russian competition of variety artists. I. Kozhevnikov, who was awarded the second prize, is the type of juggler just described: a bowler hat, a cigar, a cane make up the palette of the performance, performed impeccably in skill. E. Shatov, winner of the first prize, is working with a circus projectile - perch. At the end of it is a narrow transparent tube with a diameter of a tennis ball. Keeping the balance on his head, Shatov throws the balls into the tube. Each time, the perch grows, gradually reaching almost ten meters in height. With each new section of the first, the performance of the number becomes visually sharper, more expressive. Finally, the length of the perch becomes such that it does not fit in the height of the stage (even as high as in the Variety Theatre). The juggler comes to the fore, balancing over the heads of the front row spectators. The ball flies up, almost disappears against the background of the ceiling, and ends up in a tube. This number, in addition to the extraordinary purity with which it is performed, is remarkable in that the visual scales, which change from time to time, are perceived by those sitting in the auditorium in a holistic unity. From this, the spectacular effect becomes extraordinary. Moreover, this is a specifically pop entertainment. Imagine Shatov's number on a TV screen or in a movie! Not to mention the fact that in a pre-filmed television or film plot, an element of unforeseenness is excluded (because of this, the stage and the circus will never become organic to the screen!), The constancy of scale, dictated by the constancy of the size of the screen and our viewing distance from it, will deprive Shatov's number of his charms.

Shatov's art (to a much greater extent than, say, Kozhevnikov's number) loses if it is transferred to the sphere of another art. This is the first evidence of his real variety. If such a transfer can be easily carried out without obvious losses, we can safely say that the work and its author sin against the laws of pop art. It is especially revealing for the musical and speech genres of pop radio. Many of our pop singers listen best on the radio, where they are freed from the need to look for a plastic equivalent of the melody being played. In front of a radio microphone, the singer, for whom the stage is a real torment, feels great. A pop singer by nature, on the contrary, experiences a certain inconvenience on the radio: he is constrained not only by the lack of contact with the audience, but also by the fact that many of the nuances of the performance that are present in the visual side of the image will be absent in the sound side. This entails, of course, a depletion of the effect. I remember the first recordings of Yves Montand's songs brought by Sergei Obraztsov from Paris. How much deeper, more significant was the artist himself when we saw him singing on the stage: the charm of music and words was added by the charm of an actor who creates the most expressive plasticity of the human image. Stanislavsky liked to repeat: the viewer goes to the theater for the sake of subtext, he can read the text at home. Something similar can be said about the stage: the viewer wants to see the performance from the stage, he can learn the text (and even music) while staying at home. At least listening to it on the radio. Is it worth it, for example, to go to a concert to hear Yuri Fedorishchev, who is trying with all his might to restore Paul Robeson's performance of the song "Mississippi"? I think that in achieving his goal, Fedorishchev would have succeeded much more on the radio. Listening to "Mississippi" on the radio, we might marvel at how precisely the musical intonations of the Negro singer are captured, and at the same time we would not be able to notice the complete plastic inertness of Fedorishchev, which contradicts the original.

The directors of the program, in which I happened to hear Fedorishchev, tried to brighten up the visual monotony of his singing. During the performance of the French song “At Night Alone”, before the verse, in which the civil theme begins - the theme of the struggle for peace, the lights suddenly go out in the hall, only the red illumination of the backdrop remains. In the most pathetic part of the song, which requires vivid acting means, the viewer is forced to become only a listener, because all he sees is a black motionless silhouette against a dim red background. So directing, seeking to diversify the performance for the audience, renders the performer, and the work as a whole, truly a disservice. The surprising paucity of lighting techniques, which in the case described above led to a shift in emphasis, is one of the diseases of our variety art. The system of lighting effects is built either on a straightforward and illustrative principle (the theme of the struggle for peace is associated without fail with red, not otherwise!), Or on the principle of salon prettiness (the desire to “apply” the performer, regardless of the artistic content of the performance, its style) . As a result, the most interesting lighting possibilities are still not used. The same can be said about the costume: rarely does it serve to enhance the visual image. If there are good traditions in the use of a costume as a means of emphasizing the origins of the role (say, a velvet jacket with a bow by N. Smirnov-Sokolsky or a mime costume by L. Yengibarov), then a simple and at the same time helping to reveal the image of the image is extremely rare. Recently, I happened to be a witness to how an unsuccessfully chosen costume significantly weakened the impression made by the number. We are talking about Kapigolin Lazarenko: a bright red dress with large bustles fettered the singer and clearly did not correspond to the gentle, lyrical song “Come Back”.

Lighting, costume and mise-en-scene are the three pillars on which the spectacular side of the variety act rests. Each of these topics is worthy of a special discussion, which, of course, my article cannot claim. Here I will touch only on that side of the specific stage mise-en-scene that cannot be adequately re-created on the TV and cinema screens. The stage has its own laws of space and time: close-up, foreshortening, montage in cinema (and television), which violate the unity of these categories, or rather their integrity, create a new space and new time, not fully suitable for the stage stage. Stage deals with a constant plan, since the distance from the performer to each of the spectators varies slightly, only as far as the actor can move into the depths of the stage. The same must be said about montage: it takes place on the stage (if only) within the whole, which is constantly present on the stage. This montage can be produced either by lighting (a technique successfully used in the performances of the variety studio of Moscow State University), or it takes place in the mind of the viewer. Simply put, he singles out some parts in his perception of the visual image, while continuing to keep the whole in his field of vision.

In order not to seem unfounded, I will give an example. The play "Our Home is Your Home" by the Moscow State University Variety Studio. Very interesting searches for the expressiveness of the spectacle are being carried out in this team. At the same time, often lyrical poetry or allegory, based on the associativity of connections, turns out to be the main element of the story. But it is important to note that both poetry and allegory in the performances of the studio turn into a form of figurative, visual narration (for example, painted geometric figures in one of the numbers help to reveal the satirical meaning of many important concepts). In a scene that tells about the organization of youth leisure ("Youth Club"), four demagogue-screamers, having mounted, as if on a podium, on four massive pedestals, utter in turn fragments of phrases that together make up an amazing abracadabra of idle talk and bureaucracy. The viewer's attention is instantly transferred from one screamer to another: the speaker accompanies his words with a gesture (sometimes in complex counterpoint with the word), while the rest remain motionless at this time. I imagine this scene shot in the film. Her text and mise-en-scène, it would seem, immutably anticipate the future montage. Each replica is a close-up. A machine-gun burst of close-ups, replicas, gestures. But there are two significant losses here. Firstly, the lack of accompaniment to each replica: the frozen poses of the other characters. And the second is the transformation of all the lines into an alternation of phrases without transferring our attention from one character to another. Counterpoint, which becomes the author's strongest weapon in this scene, inevitably disappears in the film.

It would be wrong to say that the discrepancy, the counterpoint between the word and the image, is the property of pop art only. Both the theater stage and the screen know him. But there are different ways to achieve this effect. And in the stage they are very important. Here the counterpoint is exposed, it is shown as a deliberate clash of opposites, with the aim of striking a spark of laughter. I will cite as an example performers who constantly, from year to year, improve their mastery of this stage weapon. I mean the vocal quartet "Yur" (Yu. Osintsev, Y. Makoveenko, Y. Bronstein, Y. Diktovich; director Boris Sichkin). In the song “Travelers”, the quartet sings, while the hands of the artists, meanwhile, turn into travel certificates (open palm) and institutional stamps (clenched fist), stamps are put, money is given, etc. All this does not happen in the form of an illustration -strations of the text, but parallel to it, sometimes only coinciding, but mostly being in the contrapuntal row. As a result, from an unexpected collision of words with gestures, a new, unexpected meaning arises. For example, business travelers traveling in different directions have no business, except for playing dominoes on the train. Hands stirring the knuckles are "imposed" on the text, which says that people's money is recklessly spent on reciprocal business trips. From this, the gesture of the hands, mixing imaginary bones in the air, becomes very eloquent.

The last work of the quartet - "Television" - is certainly his greatest creative success in using the means of visual expressiveness of the stage. Here, the members of the quartet act equally as parodies, as readers, mimes, and as dramatic actors. In addition, they demonstrate an outstanding choreographic skill: in a word, we are witnessing a synthetic genre in which the word, music are closely intertwined with pantomime, dance, etc. Moreover, the freedom of combination and instantaneous transitions from one medium relationship to another is as great as it can be only in variety art. During the performance in front of us pass in parody almost all the genres that exist on
television. Their change, as well as the change of means used by the artists, creates a very picturesque spectacle. Variety undoubtedly belongs to the spectacular art forms. But there are a lot of performing arts: theater, cinema, circus, and now television, which reveals significant aesthetic potentials. What are the relationships within this group of arts? It seems that the variety theater still remains within the framework of theatrical art, although it has many similarities with some other forms. Naturally, the theater (understood in the broad sense of the word) is constantly changing its boundaries, which in some ways are already becoming cramped for the stage. However, some qualities of pop art, despite significant evolution, remain unchanged. First of all, they should include the principle of visual organization of the form of variety spectacle. And if we talk about form, then the image remains the main thing in the modern stage (up to some musical genres).

In this article it was not possible to consider all aspects of the topic. My task was more modest: to draw attention to certain theoretical problems of variety art, which largely determine its position among other arts and explain the nature of the creative searches of our variety art masters. Theoretical rules, as is well known, remain rules that are obligatory for everyone only until the day when a bright innovative artist comes and breaks the boundaries that seemed insurmountable just yesterday. Today we are witnessing the synthetic genres of pop art: the canons of the past cannot withstand the pressure of new discoveries. It is important to note that the ongoing changes have on their banner the constantly changing, but fundamentally unshakable principle of the stage as a spectacle.

A. VARTANOV, candidate of art history

Magazine Soviet circus. March 1964

Ticket number 30. Variety shows. Modern features and trends.

Show - this is a special enchanting spectacle, the semantic and plot side of which disappears in the direction of a spectacular presentation of impressions (the plot is “blurred” in effects), the show program should be built on a constant change of impressions and bright spectacular methods of expressive means.

Show business as a term appeared in specialized literature from the mid-80s. 20th century and replaced the previously existing concept of "Soviet stage". The term "variety" arose in Russian art history at the beginning of the last century and united all types of arts of easily perceived genres.

Variety art is characterized by openness, conciseness,

improvisation, festivity, originality, entertainment. Developing as an art of festive leisure, pop music has always strived for unusualness and diversity. The feeling of festivity was created due to external entertainment, the play of light, the change of picturesque scenery, the transformation of the stage, etc.

In the transition to an open democratic society, the consumer has a choice. Trend the modern show is this: the rapidly changing tastes of the public require the hard work of managers, artists, producers.

The product of cultural activity is already the subject of "purchase and sale", i.e. economically justified relations arise, and since the stage enters the world of business, for this it needs professionals, people who can organize business in such a way that it brings profit not only to the artist, group, company, but also to the state (in the form of taxes). Currently, show business is developing according to the laws of the market. Of great importance is the solution of issues related to personnel management, the use of its potential, which determines success in achieving the goal.

So, modern show- this is a magnificent stage performance with the participation of the "stars" of the stage, circus, sports, jazz orchestra, ballet on ice, etc. The emphasis of the show is shifting towards external effects, designed to embellish the content of ongoing events.

In the management of show business, a wide variety of methods, approaches and techniques are used to create conditions for effective work. Thus, we can highlight the features of the modern show:

1. The presence of a "star".

The concept of "star" arose in the era of cinema, when film actors were nameless, and the audience called the characters they liked by the names of the films, as well as by their external data ("a man with sad eyes", "a girl with curls", etc.). Viewers began to attack film production companies, asking them to provide the last name, first name and various biographical details of the actors they liked. The head of the American company "IMP" Karl Laemmle was the first to use the popularity of actress Florence Lawrence to attract the public to the cinema, spreading rumors about her death. Thus, he aroused the keen interest of the public and overnight turned the actress into an American movie star.

Thus, the beginning of the "system of stars" was laid. Other film companies followed suit. The number of "stars" began to grow rapidly. They become a box office bait for both the film industry and the music industry, theatre, model shows and more.

The essence of the concept of "star" is that the artist they like causes sympathy among the audience, and therefore they want to see him, they want to be like him. The consumer (spectator, listener) is not limited to just seeing an idol, he wants to know everything about him, including the details of his personal life. This aspect is of great service in the creation of "stars", as it is considered a sign of great popularity, which means that the fees of the "star" increase. Attracting a "star" to participate in a show, a model show, a movie, a musical, a theatrical production, an album recording is a guarantee of demand, a full house.

Chapter V

"Form is a way of existence and expression of content... The unity of the content and form of a work of art does not mean absolute identity, but only a certain degree of mutual correspondence... The degree of correspondence... depends on... the talent and skill of the artist."

Aesthetics. Dictionary

Concert [from lat. concerto - I compete] - a public performance of artists according to a certain pre-compiled program.

Theater Encyclopedia

Without deviating in this chapter from the position of exploring only what directly concerns the director's creativity on the stage, we do not need to fully disclose the features of the creativity of each of the forms of variety programs. Here, too, it is important for us to reveal only what distinguishes the work of a stage director from a stage director when he is staging a stage program.

As a rule, none of the forms of variety programs matter to the theater director, since in practice he does not have to deal with them when staging a play, because they (these forms) belong only to variety art.

Before talking about this or that form of pop program:

concert, performance, it is useful to determine the meaning ...... of the word "concert" (besides the fact that this word denotes a certain stage action, consisting of the sum of the numbers that make it up).

So, the word "concert" [lat. concert] in Latin means competition, competition.

Indeed, in any concert, including a variety one, there is, as it were, a competition, a competition between performers and numbers in their artistic creativity: according to the skill of performance, according to success with the audience, etc. Moreover, it is in the concert (competition in front of the audience) that the variety act receives its artistic completion.

Naturally, a pop concert, like any concert, is not just a mechanical set, but a fusion of different genre numbers into a single whole action, as a result of which a new work of art is born, the name of which is the concert.

It is the creation of a concert from sometimes different genres, characters, content of numbers - another important difference between the work of a stage director and a theater director, who, as a rule, deals with a work (play) of the same genre, with a single plot and developing from the beginning to the end of the performance as a single through action.

A pop concert is an effective dynamic spectacle, it is a special figurative world in which the entertainment element prevails, clothed in a bright, sharp form, a festive atmosphere that enables the viewer to easily perceive its content.

Of course, the success of a concert depends on many factors: here the performers, and the quality of their numbers, and their novelty, and the construction of the order of the numbers (composition), and the coherence of transitions from number to number, and its genre, and its types, etc. .

If we open page 95 of the VIII volume of the III edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, we can read: “A concert is a public performance by artists according to a specific program. Types of concert musical (symphonic, chamber, piano, violin, etc.), literary (artistic reading), variety (light vocal and instrumental music, humorous stories, parodies, circus numbers, etc.) ”We can read almost the same thing and in the "Theatrical Encyclopedia": "Types of concerts: musical (symphonic, chamber, piano, violin, etc.), literary (artistic reading), mixed (musical numbers, artistic reading, scenes from performances, ballets, etc.), variety ( light vocal and instrumental music, humorous stories, parodies, circus acts, etc.)

Without disputing the opinion of two authoritative sources, we note that such a concept of the word "concert" does not reveal a very important circumstance. Namely, that all types of concerts, according to the nature and content of the numbers performed in them, according to the way they are expressed (even if we are dealing with a “mixed concert”), are divided into two main types: philharmonic and variety. We proceed from the fact that functionally and psychologically philharmonic and pop concerts are isolated from each other. Despite the fact that both functions, without deviating from the solution of some common tasks (aesthetic, ideological, educational), satisfy the various needs of the viewer (listener).

Concert venues to meet the monthly performance quota.

There could be no question of any logic of constructing such a concert. That's where the entertainer had to "get out".

Perhaps the latter circumstance to some extent played a role in the disappearance of combined concerts from the stage: leading pop artists began to prefer solo concerts or large variety performances to national teams, since with a quantitative increase in the number of ordinary concerts, their creative level was overwhelmingly lower average.

Another important reason for the disappearance of combined concerts in our days was the extremely low artistic level of people who considered themselves professional entertainers. Genuine entertainers who know how to create pop action from numbers of different genres, for various reasons, have practically disappeared. Television also played a significant role in the disappearance of combined concerts, on the screens of which pop “stars” constantly flicker, especially in various advertising clips. Why pay a lot (not to say - a lot of money for a concert, when your favorite artists can be seen on the TV screen).

A survey of many potential viewers, conducted by the author of the work, indicates not only the coincidence of their point of view with the opinion of V. Kalisz, but also that the fashion for grandiose spectacles, no matter how show business planted it, will pass, and on the stage stage on Equal to the show, combined concerts will return, albeit in a different and, above all, in a spectacular quality, but consisting of numbers of various genres. Confirmation of this: the practice of Western pop music today and a number of past concerts at the Moscow Variety Theater, today's life of regional and regional philharmonic societies, and the fact that even in solo concerts his hero invites other performers in the genre to participate, because he subconsciously feels the inherent psychological human perception - the desire for a variety of experiences.

In recent years, on posters advertising pop concerts, we can most often find such names as "variety", "cabaret", but most often - "show". Although each of these concerts is based on a set of performances of various genres (as in the national team), each of them has its own rather obvious features.

If we consider "variety" as a special form of variety concert, then most often this name hides a light, entertaining performance, consisting of performances by singers, dancers, musicians, parodists, acrobats, magicians, etc.

Usually a variety show program is a kaleidoscope of numbers, often with minimal participation of an entertainer, not to mention other colloquial genres.

If we talk about the difference between a variety show and a cabaret, then since the middle of the 20th century, the line between them, both in content and in form, has practically begun to blur. Today it is very difficult to catch the difference between them.

Cabaret [fr. - zucchini] is not so much the audience sitting at the tables, but the style, form and content of a variety concert, largely dependent on the atmosphere in which it takes place.

At its core, a cabaret program is also a set of various performances (numbers). But these programs had a number of significant features.

First, they went to taverns, coffee houses, where the audience, sitting at the tables, looked at the speakers. At first, these were a kind of artistic and literary clubs, where poets, artists, writers, artists gathered after midnight. As a rule, those who came here to relax and have fun went up to a small stage located in the middle or on the side of the hall, singing songs, reading poetry. To some extent, what was happening in such taverns was a reflection of the processes that took place in the artistic sphere.

Secondly, the spectacle was varied and had an improvisational character. The performers sought to stir up the audience emotionally. Explosions of laughter, applause, exclamations of "bravo" were the usual atmosphere for a cabaret program. Excitement and rivalry reigned in the cabaret of that time, which created an atmosphere of ease, joy and freedom of creativity, festivity. In a cabaret, the line between the stage and the auditorium seemed to be blurred.

Thirdly, a prerequisite for the activity of a cabaret was the intimacy of the situation, allowing the performers to establish close contact with the public. And although the cabaret programs consisted and consist of various humorous and lyrical songs, solo dances, satirical numbers, parodies, etc. etc., the main role in them is played by the entertainer, who cares about creating a trusting, intimate atmosphere, leading a relaxed conversation, often causing an immediate reaction (which is very important in a cabaret program)

The volume of cabaret programs has increased significantly, becoming a kind of kaleidoscope of numbers characteristic of a cabaret. At the same time, in their solution, the techniques of the grotesque, eccentrics, buffoonery, and ironic stylization were used. Parodies began to be widely used, in which performances and events that were currently taking place on the stage were ridiculed.

In Russia, the first cabarets appeared at the very beginning of the 20th century. Among them, the most famous were: "The Bat" in Moscow - at first a cabaret of actors of the Moscow Art Theater, which later became the Cabaret Theater of N.F. Baliyeva, "Crooked Mirror", "Stray Dog", "Halt of comedians" in St. Petersburg and others. Soon cabarets appeared in Odessa, in Kyiv, Baku, Kharkov. Usually they were located in basements and semi-basements with a small stage.

Already in the early nineties of the XX century, many cabarets lost their generic features: tables disappeared, the structure and content of programs changed.

Cabaret theaters began to use theatrical equipment: a curtain, a ramp, stage decorations.

Show [English] - 1. Spectacle; 2. Show] - a very common type of variety entertainment spectacle, especially in our days, with the obligatory participation of at least one variety "star".

The show is a bright, emotionally rich pop program that does not have a solid plot, based on outwardly spectacular spectacular performances and attractions, connected into a single whole by unexpected transitions and ligaments; built on a rapid stage action, close in nature to the music hall. With the same music hall elegance of choreographic numbers, with the same brilliance and splendor, with stunning tempo dynamics, which allows saturating the show program with a large number of various numbers, but without the obligatory for the music hall program, albeit a primitive, “dotted” plot move. At the same time, the show program does not exclude the courage to present numbers. On the contrary, the more diverse the methods of presenting the numbers included in the program, the brighter the stage form of the show.

It should be noted that the show is not only a genre category. In the form of a show, performances by a popular pop artist, various competitions, presentations, theatrical auctions, etc. can take place.

A show program is a large-scale spectacle, the scenography of which is created in a real stage space and largely depends on the technical capabilities of the stage and its equipment. The show does not limit the imagination of the stage designer. It is important that his invention be technically feasible.

And although today one can quite often observe how a stage designer acts as a stage director, it seems to us that this phenomenon is the result of a shortage of genuine stage direction. We may be objected: they say, many artists subsequently became directors. For example, Gordon Craig, Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov and others. Indeed, their creative life began with the profession of an artist. But later their creative profession became directing, as the basis of their stage activities. Perhaps the same will be the creative fate of B. Krasnov, who calls himself a "stage designer".

Of course, the stage designer, to a certain extent, as a director, feels the dramaturgy in dynamics, in motion. But this means that by doing so he can replace the director-producer. Unfortunately, this is exactly what we are seeing today in the production of various show programs. Because of this, the stage look of the artist becomes dependent on the design, and not vice versa, when the artist, the content of his program, his performance determines a different scenography solution. Often one has to see how the solution of the stage, with all the modern tricks of playing with light, smoke, using electronics and other special effects, does not work for the artist, but becomes a pompous background. For example, as we said in the previous chapter, this was clearly manifested in the last production by A.B. Pugacheva "Christmas meetings" in 1998 (artist B. Krasnov).

Revue [fr. - pantomime, review] first appeared in France in the first third of the 19th century (1830) as a satirical theatrical genre. Thus, the "Annual Review", popular at that time, was a topical review of Parisian life. Even then, the contents of the revue were alternating numbers of various genres. That is, in fact, the revue carried all the main features of a pop program.

Revue (review) is a form of variety performance in which individual numbers are connected by a plot move that allows, as it develops, to “change” the scene all the time. For example, the stage stage, sometimes without changing the design (using only details), becomes an underpass for one number, a bench in the park for another, a stadium stand for the third, and so on. .Most often, the plot move is based on the need that arose for the hero (heroes) to make a “journey” or “search” for someone or something, or the plot move can be the release of a stage version of a newspaper, as in the same pop review “Vechernyaya Moskva”. In the revue, each number is perceived by the viewer not as an isolated work, but as a vivid episode, a vivid action in the overall composition of the concert. In other words, a revue (review) is a pop performance on a theme conceived and expressed through the plot, made up of different numbers combined into episodes.

Music hall program"

Usually, the "Music Hall" is defined in two ways: the first definition is a type of theater that gives variety concert performances, the second is a kind of variety program, a performance whose content is built on the alternation of various numbers, attractions, demonstrations of virtuoso performing techniques, stage tricks, cemented by a plot ( "dotted") move and dance numbers of a ballet, as a rule, a female group ("girls").

From the very beginning, music hall programs, unlike cabarets, did not aim to be topical. In the foreground in such programs there was not so much relevance as the brightness of the external form, performing sophistication.

The conditions of music hall programs, their saturation with various staged effects, attractions have changed the nature of the behavior of the public. "Instead of the role of an accomplice (as in other forms of variety art), in the music hall the audience became, as in the theater, an audience of spectators."

The fate of the Moscow Music Hall was rather difficult. Either it was persecuted and ceased to exist, then it arose again. In the early twenties, the theater did not have a permanent troupe. Guest performers, including foreign ones, who came almost on the day of the performance, performed on the programs. Naturally, the directors rarely managed to create a single, united by a common idea.

But the more significant were the successes that required an abyss of invention and skill.

The music hall program is a kind of staged bright, colorful, sometimes eccentric review-spectacle, consisting of enchanting pictures quickly replacing each other, full of variety and circus attractions; a review-spectacle in which first-class numbers and episodes with the participation of pop "stars" are connected by the so-called "dotted" storyline. A very significant place in the music hall programs is occupied by ingeniously staged mass dance numbers "girls" with perfect synchronization of movements. This is a program in which a variety orchestra participates, usually located on stage. These are always bright, catchy costumes of performers (especially ballet ones). This is the brilliance of colors, the play of light and shadows. This is a design transformation. For example, during the course of the program, ice stalactites suddenly turn into flowers; or a spaceship flies across the hall to the stage and lands (as in the Alcazar in Paris); or suddenly a huge glass pool rises in the center of the stage, where girls in bathing suits swim together with crocodiles, performing an underwater number of sports synchronized swimming (“Friedrichstatpalas”). These are various kinds of stage effects. This is the use of a wide variety of modern technical means of design.

In the art of variety there is such a form of variety performance as the “teamp of miniatures”.

In our understanding, the word "theater" emphasizes its creative and organizational beginnings, since in this case the word "theatre" is not equivalent to the concept of "Theater", when we understand this word as a creative organism, the repertoire of which is based on dramatic or ballet performances. On the other hand, in theaters of miniatures, their programs are based on the same pop numbers, which differ from variety shows and cabarets only in the scale of the numbers that make them up. As for the division in theaters of miniatures of spectators and performers (separation of spectators from the latter by a ramp and other elements of the stage) and the disappearance of tables from the hall, the appearance of a ramp, tables, also occurred in later cabarets.

The theater of miniatures is not only a certain form and a certain content, but also a special style and way of thinking, a way of life.

This is what frightened those in power, who saw in him (especially in the 1920s and 1930s) bourgeois art alien to the proletariat. Such an attitude towards the art of small forms could not but hinder the development of pop art.

Unable to forbid it (for reasons that are not the subject of our study), they only tolerated it. It was out of the question that on posters announcing pop concerts the words “variety show”, especially “cabaret”, appeared. The way out was found, as it turned out, acceptable to everyone: the art of small forms began to be called "variety", although before that the word "variety" meant a stage, stage, and theaters of small forms - theaters of miniatures, which did not have a stationary full-time troupe and but essentially served as a rental site.

Miniature [fr. miniature] - a word that once meant only a painted and painted decoration in ancient handwritten books (these drawings were named so after the paint prepared from mini), has a figurative meaning: something in a reduced size. The latter determines the repertoire of the Theater of Miniatures. Here you can see various variety performances: a short play-joke, and vaudeville, and a sketch, and a choreographic miniature, and a pantomime scene, and even cinema. That is, as they say, - works of small forms.

In the post-war years, the Moscow Theater of Miniatures under the direction of Vladimir Polyakov, the Saratov Theater of Miniatures (artistic director Lev Gorelik) and, of course, the most famous for many years was the Leningrad Theater of Miniatures under the artistic direction of the unique artist Arkady Raikin.

But in addition to the types of programs that we are talking about, in pop art there are such forms of variety performance that differ from those we have considered. This is a pop performance, a performance.

While retaining all the main features of a pop and variety program, and above all the presence of different genres in them, these works of art to a certain extent synthesize in themselves the signs of theatrical action. At the heart of the dramaturgy of a variety performance, a variety performance is a detailed plot move with role-playing personification and the fate of the characters. They widely use the expressive means inherent in the theater: stage action, mise-en-scene, stage atmosphere, etc.

Variety performance, variety performance is not accidentally singled out by us from the general concept of "variety concert". If the concept of “performance” does not need to be disclosed (perhaps there is not a single work on theatrical art where this concept has not been thoroughly studied), then “performance” has many, sometimes contradictory, definitions. Often before the word "performance" they write or pronounce the word "theatrical", that is, in essence they call oil oil, because the concept of "performance" in itself is identical to the concept of "theatricalization".

Since this concept (“theatricalization”) is interpreted differently to this day, we consider it necessary in this work to reveal it from the perspective of practitioners who have staged more than one variety performance, especially since a theatrical concert is the forerunner of a variety performance, in our understanding. the last one. The concept of "theatricalization" in relation to a concert means that when staging such a concert, in addition to all those pop expressive means that we talked about when analyzing the features of a combined concert, expressive means characteristic of the theater, theatrical action are used in a theatrical concert. Namely: stage action (as is known, the main expressive means of the theater), mise-en-scène (when such a combination of poses of performers’ movements is introduced into the statics inherent in the genre of the performance, which at the moment express the essence of the content of the performance and the relationship between the performers), stage atmosphere (for its creation, as in the theater, playful light, noises, background music and other elements are used to create a certain environment in which the action of the performance develops), costume and decoration.

Watching various variety performances, one can easily find that the plot move in such a performance makes the audience not only follow the development of the plot, but also understand and accept the logic of the presentation, and sometimes perceive this or that number (or all numbers) in an unexpected light.

A variety performance, unlike a theatrical concert, is characterized by the role-playing personification of the entertainer (leader or presenters). That is, he or they, endowed with certain character traits and characteristics (profession, age, social status, habits, etc.), become an active character in the performance, because it is he (they) who embodies the movement of the plot.

In the process of performing the performance, the director does not think about what "conditions of the game" - theatrical or pop - determine his director's decision of one or another moment of the performance. The synthesis of these "conditions of the game" for the director occurs on a subconscious level, and at the time of rehearsals the director does not realize what is currently coming from the stage and what - from the theater. This skill, albeit unconsciously, relies on two different types of performing arts.

As we can see, even in such a performance, seemingly close to the genres of theatrical art, as a variety performance, a variety performance has its own specifics, its own methods of directing creativity. And yet, despite the complexity of this pop program, according to our understanding, confirmed by modern practice, the future of pop music is connected with plot performances. When a performance is created by means of variety art, in which everything - spectacle, stage effects, the play of light and color, scenography, and most importantly, the selection of numbers - are subordinated to the thought, plot, conflict, and most importantly - the artistic image of the performance. Suffice it to recall some of the latest programs carried out on the stage of the Rossiya Concert Hall.

Of course, the performance is the most complex type of variety program, since, as the outstanding director Fyodor Nikolayevich Kaverin wrote: “there is a certain textual material, with its own plot, with some, even if a very small number of characters, and their characters and destinies (most often their comedic adventures) become the inevitable focus. Purely pop numbers are interspersed at certain moments in the course of the play... Developing the idea of ​​such a performance in action, the director meets with completely special tasks, completely different from what determines his work in the theater in general. He needs to establish the principle by which numbers are introduced into such a play-program, to find and establish the correct proportions in their number relative to the plot, to determine their character .... When working on such a performance, the director's special concern is to find and determine the style of the entire performance, the manner of acting, which, next to conditional pop pieces .... it also requires its own internal course and a clearly established correlation (whether it is consistent or consciously contrasting) within the performance”

Variety has taken an important place in the mass culture of Russia, and the events of recent decades show that variety, as the most popular art form, plays an important role in public life, becoming a popular means of expressing cultural needs and value orientations of various strata of society. In view of the fact that variety art is one of the most socially responsive and mobile art forms, the study of this phenomenon will help to better understand the spiritual processes taking place in society.

At the beginning of the last century, the gramophone business in Russia was gaining strength - the number of factories and factories producing records was growing, their quality was improving, and the repertoire was expanding. In fact, a new industry was emerging, unlike any of the known industries. It tightly intertwined problems of a technical and creative, commercial and legal nature. Composers, poets, singers, orchestras and choirs, coupletists and storytellers took part in the recording of records, organized by gramophone dealers. Studios with their atmosphere resembled the backstage of a theater with all theatrical attributes. Famous singers - proud and impregnable, knowing their own worth - contracts were offered with the courtesy inherent in any entrepreneur-entrepreneur, who anticipates success with the public and a good collection. Stars of the second magnitude and half-starved guest performers were met differently. Passions were seething near the mouthpiece and intrigues were woven - such was the wrong side of the gramophone business.
Collecting records began to become fashionable: in the homes of wealthy citizens there were record libraries with a hundred or more numbers.

The most common term, which appeared long before the emergence of the concept of variety art, is "variety", but not as the name of a concert institution, but as a designation for a whole variety of art. If we turn to the history of the appearance of the concept of "variety show", then its origins can be found in the programs of entertainment numbers shown in cafes and restaurants in the industrial regions of England at the end of the 18th century. The very word "variety" in French means variety, diversity. This term began to unite all artistic entertainment forms. Indeed, the performances of artists at fairs, in music halls, in concert cafes, in cabaret theaters are characterized by diversity, although, as it will be possible to establish as a result of further analysis, this is not at all the main and distinctive feature in this area of ​​art.

At the beginning of the 20th century, all kinds of theaters of small forms opened in Russia, and against this background another concept began to be used - stage, which denoted entertaining concert performances in open areas. Today, as a general concept that unites all varieties of art of easily perceived genres, one should accept the concept of "variety art" (or abbreviated variety art), which has been used in domestic art history for a hundred years.
Already in the first decade of the XX century. the term "variety" begins to flicker in the press, not only in the then generally accepted sense - "scaffold, elevation, for example, for music" - but also broadly, including all actors, writers, poets, entering this "scaffold". On the pages of the authoritative magazine "Golden Fleece" for 1908, an article "Variety" was published. Its author perceptively saw the antinomy that arises before everyone who enters the stage:

a) the stage is necessary for the development and maintenance of abilities, and for the formation of the personality of the artist;

b) variety art is detrimental to both.

The author saw “maliciousness” in the actors' desire for success at any cost, alignment with the tastes of the mass public, the transformation of art into a means of enrichment, a source of life's blessings. Indeed, such phenomena are also inherent in modern pop music, so in our work we introduce such a concept as “variety”, that is, playing “for the public”, the desire to capture the attention of the viewer at any cost, which, in the absence of true talent, taste and sense of proportion among performers, often leads to the perniciousness about which the author of the above article spoke. There were other articles that considered the stage as a phenomenon of a new urban culture. After all, it was during this period that the dependence of a person on natural conditions (primarily on the change of seasons) gradually weakened in the city, which led to the oblivion of calendar and ritual folklore, to a shift in the timing of holidays, their desemantization and deritualization, to their transition into the form of "ceremonial ", according to P.G. Bogatyrev, to a decisive predominance of verbal forms over non-verbal ones. In the same years (1980-1890), mass culture was born in Russia, which, in turn, reproduces many of the generic properties of traditional folklore, which are characterized by the social and adaptive significance of works, their predominant anonymity, the dominance of the stereotype in their poetics; secondary plot motivations in narrative texts, etc. However, mass culture differs sharply from traditional folklore in its ideological “polycentricity”, increased ability for thematic and aesthetic internationalization of its products and for its “streaming” reproduction in the form of identical copies unthinkable for oral creativity.
In general, in Russia, the urban stage of the late 19th - early 20th century is characterized by dependence on the audience to which it is oriented. Accordingly, the range of variety forms - from "salon" to the most "democratic" - is extremely wide and differed both in the nature of the "stage" and the type of performers, not to mention the repertoire. And yet, we can conclude that the term “variety” at the beginning of the 20th century was still used purely functionally: as “variety repertoire”, or “pop singing”, etc., that is, not only as a definition of a platform where action takes place, but also as an element of a musical entertainment spectacle.

As a result of the need, which arose after October, for the nationalization of “every kind of stage” and small private enterprises, many single actors, as well as small, often family groups, etc., the concept of stage established itself as the designation of a separate art. For decades in Soviet Russia, and then in the USSR, systems for managing this art will be developed and changed, various associations will be created, complex multi-stage forms of independent subordination. In Soviet aesthetics, the question of the independence of pop art remained debatable. Various kinds of resolutions, companies regulated variety practice. The "fight" against satire, Russian and gypsy romance, jazz, rock, tap dance, etc. artificially straightened the line of variety development, affected the evolution of genres, and the fate of individual artists.

In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia for 1934, an article was published devoted to the fact that the stage is a field of small forms of art, but at the same time the question of the genre composition of the stage is not addressed in any way. Thus, attention was paid not so much to the aesthetic as to the morphological content of this term. These formulations are not accidental, they reflect the picture of the searches of the 30s and 40s, when the scope of the stage expanded almost limitlessly. During these years, as E. Gershuni writes, "the pop art made a bid for equality with the "big" art...". First of all, this is due to the emergence in Soviet Russia of the forerunner of modern art, PR - the social technology of mass control. In fact, the entertainer (usually a local trade union activist) took under ideological control not only the holidays, but also everyday life. Of course, not a single holiday passed without a pop concert. It should be noted that the mass entertainer himself, in everyday life, as a rule, had a variety feeling. After all, he always needs to be in the spotlight, entertain and amuse the audience.

In the process of development of Soviet art, the content of the term "variety" continued to change. The concept of variety art appeared, which was defined as “an art form that unites the so-called. small forms of dramaturgy, dramatic and vocal art, music, choreography, circus.

The Russian recording industry began to develop in 1901. In fact, it was not entirely Russian, but rather a French industry in Russia: the Pate Marconi company opened its branch in Russia and began to stamp records. Just as in Europe the first recorded singer was Enrique Caruso, in Russia the world-famous opera singer Fedor Chaliapin also became the first. And the first Russian records, as well as in Europe, were with classical music.

The musical picture of pre-revolutionary Russia was complete. Academic music and pop music coexisted organically in the same cultural space, where pop music developed in the general mainstream of romance lyrics (reflecting its diversity and evolution) and the dance culture of its time. A special place was occupied by the folklore part of the stage - the Pyatnitsky choir, folk song performers - L. Dolina, epics - Krivopolenova and Prozorovskaya. After the defeat of the first revolution (1905), the songs of prison, penal servitude and exile were popular. In the genre of a topical couplet and musical parody, artists performed in different roles: “tailcoats” - for a fashionable audience, “bast shoes” - for peasants, “artists of a torn genre” - for the city bottom. Popular dance rhythms penetrated the consciousness of people with the filing of salon and city brass bands, which specialized in the performance of dance music. In salons and studios, tango, foxtrot, shimmy, two-steps were learned. The first performances of A. Vertinsky in the genre of musical and poetic short stories date back to 1915.

The heyday of the Russian stage took place against the backdrop of an unprecedented growth of a new means of "mass information", like gramophone records. Between 1900 and 1907, 500,000 gramophones were sold, and the annual circulation of records reached 20 million. Along with light music, they also had a lot of classics (Chaliapin, Caruso).
The popular choirs of D.Agrenev-Slavyansky, I.Yukhov and others, who performed songs in the "Russian style" ("The Sun Rises and Sets", "Ukhar the Merchant", etc.) compete with soloist performers. Orchestras competed with Russian choirs balalaika players, horn players, harp players.

In the 10s, the first truly folklore performers, such as the ensemble of M. Pyatnitsky, gained fame. Artists with the "intimate" style of French chansonniers appear in theaters and cabarets in St. Petersburg and Moscow (A. Vertinsky). By the end of the 19th century, there was a clear division of the song into "Philharmonic" (classical romance) and actually "Variety" (gypsy romance, old romance, songs of moods). At the beginning of the 20th century, mass songs that are sung at political gatherings and demonstrations become widespread. This song is destined for a number of decades to become the leading variety of the Soviet pop song.

After 1917 the situation began to change. The ideological state is a phenomenon that is not yet fully understood and not fully studied. The revolution was spiritually based on an idea that was forcibly planted in society, depriving people of the right to choose, making this choice for them. But a person is so constituted that his consciousness, in spite of everything, resists what is imposed on him, even from the best of intentions. The state decided that it “needed” the classics, “needed” a Soviet song, “needed” folklore. And unconsciously, even the masterpieces of classical music began to be perceived as part of the state ideological machine aimed at neutralizing the individual, dissolving a separate “I” into a monolithic “we”.

Pop music in our country is the least ideological part of the musical process. Involuntarily, she became the only outlet for the Soviet people, something like a sip of freedom. This music in the mind of a simple person did not carry anything instructive, appealing to natural feelings, not suppressing, not moralizing, but simply communicating with a person in his language.