כדי לשחזר את השיר בשפה המקורית אם אינו מופיע לאחר לחיצה על שם השיר המסומן כאן בקוו תחתון או כדי למצוא גירסות נוספות העתיקו/הדביקו את שם השיר בשפת המקור מדף זה לאתר YOUTUBE
To restore the song in the original language if it does not appear after clicking on the name of the song marked here with a bottom line or to find additional versions Copy/Paste the song name in the original language from this page to the YOUTUBE website
התרגומים לאנגלית נעשו באמצעות המנוע "מתרגם גוגל" והתרגום הועתק לאתר בצורתו המקורית ללא עריכה נוספת
The English translations were done using the "Google Translate" engine and the translations were copied to the site in their original form without further editing.
Two dogs, on their own, emerged a long time ago-a hundred years ago. At least before the brick factory. The work with this name was written by a young musician named Meeung Beilinson. And, in fact, in this phrase there is almost everything that we know about the author, about his origin and residence in the early years-as they say, somewhere in Russia. But it is well known that soon after the revolution Beilinson (a.k.a. Bellison, a.k.a. Baylison or Baylezon, a.k.a. Bellison-Semin, Simon, Simon or Simeon, as well as Simeon) emigrated to America, where, like many natives of Eastern Europe, made a good career in the musical field, becoming a fairly famous American clarinetist. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Beilinson's waltz "Two Dogs" recorded the orchestra of the 108th Infantry Saratov Regiment- dropmaster Franz Volner: S. Beilinson's waltz "Two Dogs" is performed by the orchestra 108 of the Saratov Regiment (August 1912). Although the old photo shows a guitar, but it is not the orchestrators of the 108th regiment, and the warrant officers of the Russian army. And all they have ahead of them: and the waltz "Two dogs," and the world war, and all-all-all that happened next...It is possible, however, that the main musical theme of the waltz was known long before Beilinson, whose role, in this case, was reduced only to the creative reworking of the melody that was popular. And, it seems, it is not by chance that Beilinson's waltz was willingly picked up by the musicians of the 108th Infantry Regiment, whose permanent location was the provincial town of Vilna-the center of the Vilnius province, a little more than half of the urban population of which, according to the statistics of 1912, were citizens of the Jewish religious community...However, in the pre-jubilee turmoil (after all, the three-hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty) 1912 flew unnoticed. And then came 1914, and then 1917, 1918...and everyone didn't care about Beilinson's dogs. They were remembered only in 1923, when everything had already died down and more or less calmed down. It was in the spring, in the spring, that the young poet Pavel Herman wrote, as we remember,the immortal lines of his "Aviamarsh": Мы рождены, чтоб сказку сделать былью, Преодолеть пространство и простор…It was in the spring-and already, obviously, at the end of the same year from under the pen of Pavel Herman appeared quite a different line (although beginning, oddly enough, also from the words of birth): На окраине где-то города Я в убогой семье родилась…However, this is how Vyacheslav Hotulov wrote about the birth of the new song in the biographical novel "Claudia Shulzhenko: Life, Love, Song". January 1924. Kharkiv Drama Theatre. In the intermission of the play, a handsome "young man in a dark shirt with a leather narrow belt", who came for a day from Kiev, found a young actress and addressed her with an unexpected proposal: ... Listen to me, dear Claudius. I brought you a song, my friend and I wrote it, especially for you. Klava looked incredulously at him: "Don't you know what you're lying about?" "Here! Herman pulled the sheets out of the military tablet. "Look…After watching the notes, Klava laughed: "Let me, Paul. But it's a waltz of the beginning of the century, "Three Dogs" is called. Was it written by your friend? "That's right," Paul said calmly. "Not just three, but "Two Dogs." It's processing. arrangement. The important thing is that there is something that is needed today...You, Klava, will have your own repertoire. You will be the first in our Soviet country to sing not all the nonsense there, I'm sorry, but our Soviet songs about our Soviet life! "Klava" is Claudia Shulzhenko at the age of 18. At that time, no one really knew her and did not record any records there, so the loss of the reputation of "Klava" did not threaten - in fact, she had nothing to lose. In general, she decided to try...The success was resounding. Silently read further about the first reaction of the public:...After "Mine No. 3" (and that's how Pavel Herman called the second of his two songs, offered then "Klava"-VA-politely and with interest applauded. Then the story began, how a guy and a girl loved each other and worked in a brick factory. And the plant belonged to an evil heartless factory worker, but the revolution came and the workers themselves became the owners of the plant. Parenek became, of course, the director of the plant, and the girl who managed to marry him, successfully works in the same factory, but under the leadership of her husband. Actors and invitees seemed to go crazy. Clave had to perform this song twice for an encore. She's never had anything like it. Then everyone turned it on and began to ask who the author was, whose words, and asked Klava to rewrite the words. It is funny that the guy who, "naturally" became the director of the brick factory in The Text of Pavel Herman, was called just like the aforementioned author of the melody of the song-Semyon, or simply Senya, Senka. In general, "I'm a tapercha not yours, I'm a copper Senina". So-simply and naturally-the local "Two Dogs" by Semion Beilinson entered the new proletarian life, settling on the brick factory of Pavel Herman. From this modest evening began the victorious procession of "Bricks" on the young Land of the Soviets. If you look at the press about K.I. Shulzhenko for the last, say, fifty years, we can pay attention to the fact that journalists do not shine originality. Most articles certainly start with "Blue Handkerchief." However, its popularity in no comparison with the popularity of "Bricks." Nothing like this has happened in the history of mass culture of the 20th century. Within a few days, "Bricks" were sung in restaurants and pubs in Kharkiv. After each performance, young workers and girls in red scarves approached Klava and asked, no, to demand that Claudia rewrite their words. And those words were given to them...Okay. If the people demand so insistently, here they are, these words that once drove the whole country crazy. Paul Herman's words about the brick factory:
On the outskirts of somewhere in the city I was born in a poor family. Grief mopping, fifteen years old I was hired at a brick factory. It was difficult for me the first time, But then, after working for a year, For the cheerful hum, for the bricks I fell in love with this plant. At the factory I met Senka: I only used to hear a beep, Wash my hands and run to him Into the workshop, throwing on a handkerchief. Every night we met, Where the brick forms a passage...Here for Senka, for the bricks And I loved this plant. But, as usual, unemployment hit the plant all of a sudden: Senka flew out, followed by me, And another two hundred and seventy pieces. Then the war went bourgeois, The people became coarse, angry And the empty factory was razed by screw, brick by brick...Together with Senka, we decided to look at a familiar plant. There I again found the old happiness, After having spent a year for repairs, And by screw, brick by brick We revived Senka Avod. The plant puffed, the whistle blew, As it used to be, he is still, Became a director at the Comrade Semyon plant. So my love and my family Strengthened from all adversity I am a foundation made of bricks That the Soviet plant is pressing.
Of course, it would be very interesting to listen to "Bricks" performed by 18-year-old "Klava" Shulzhenko, but no of her recordings were made then, of course. In the years that followed, a song about as a rough people, under a hot hand, on a cog and by a brick (this phrase then became winged), dragged brick production - this song, which became, in fact, its first and, perhaps, unsurpassed later mega-shlage, Claudia Ivanovna Shulzhenko did not hurry and even seemed to be ashamed of her. Vyacheslav Hotuleu claims that the popularity of the famous song "Blue Handkerchief", which became a real "visit card" by Claudia Shulzhenko a decade and a half later, cannot even be compared closely with the popularity of "Bricks" in the 1920s. Now it is hard to believe, but one thing is certain: in a short time "Song about a brick factory" (this is the name given to it by Pavel Herman) became a truly mass song - at least in the cities of the entire Soviet Union, it knew old and young. The song is firmly rooted in the people, and there is a lot of evidence in the form of preserved newspaper and magazine publications of that time. For example, in the article by R. Blumenau entitled "Soviet Song" published in the journal Circus and Variety (May 1928), so bluntly stated (the spelling of the source is preserved): The first Soviet song introduced in everyday life appeared only in 1924-it was "Bricks". "Bricks" have turned into a "Russian folk song" (as the inscription on some notes and gramophone records says). Recently, the Eiffel Tower radio broadcast "Bricks" to the Antilles. The fame of "Bricks" was spontaneous, the notes were produced in tens of thousands of copies, film, radio and gramophone records made "Bricks" a household name. The "movie" mentioned here was released in late 1925 under the same name as the song "Bricks". And the fact that the film was created based on the song (and this is an exceptionally rare case in the history of cinema) only reflected the absolutely phenomenal popularity of "Bricks". On the outskirts of somewhere in the city, Where there is always impassable dirt. The main roles in the movie "Bricks" played by Varvara Popov and Piotr Baksheev В ней, как в песенке, вы увидите, Как влюбился в Марусю Семён, И Поповою и Бакшеевым В ней наш подлинный быт отражён! It must be said that Piotr Baksheev, the performer of the role of song-movie Semyon, was the real domestic movie star, and since pre-revolutionary times. In the film, he really became the song director of the brick factory, in which-I'm talking now not about the factory, but about the director-the heroine of the song "Bricks" (the creators of the film named her Marusay, and in this role acted 25-year-old actress Varvara Popova) again found her "happiness old". Well, as "old"...The old one was not old, but the cinema-Semyon, that is, Peter Baksheev, was then under forty. (And, by the way, in real life, his wife was, of course, not Marusya from a brick factory, but Irina, the eldest daughter of Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin. Returning to the song: it would be a mistake to believe that the triumphaical procession "Bricks" all applauded. not at all. As the song grew in popularity, there was also a fierce criticism from supporters of true proletarian culture, who instantly recognized it as merely "the over-faced old" - figuratively speaking, the local "Two Dogs" by Semion Beilinson. An example is a quote from an article with the eloquent headline "Down with a gypsy from the repertoire of circles!" (For Proletarian Music Magazine, No. 2 for 1930): But foxtrots and songs such as "Gypsy," "Bricks," "All Higher," inherited from the petty bourgeois bourgeois environment and its way of life, or instilled in us by the bourgeois West, deeply penetrated the workers and peasant masses. What's "Two Dogs" like? We all remember, of course, Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "On trash" (about the same topic): The storms of revolutionary bosoms have calmed down. The Soviet mishmash was covered with mud. And the mule of a tradesman got out from behind the back of the RSFSR. In general, "the scarier Wrangel's everyday life"...The champions of the true proletarian song found, for example, that through the lines of the famous Soviet song of the early 20's "We are blacksmiths"("We are blacksmiths, and our spirit is young, / We are happy keys...") clearly comes something quite different: "We chansonettes, shoot aptly ..."and that there was, for example, through the chasing lines of the air marshal "All the above"-about it. Speaking of the bourgeois West and foxtrots. In 1929, the famous dance orchestra under the direction of the young "king of dance violinists" Efim Shahmeister (of course, also a native of Russia) recorded in Berlin several "fox-trots on a famous motif", among which we find not only "All Above" but also "Bricks":
"Bricks" is a "fox-trot on a famous motif." Efim Shahmeister Orchestra (Berlin, 1929) And "The March of the Aviators" is a "fox-trot on a known motif." Shahmeister Orchestra (Berlin, 1929)
And by some strange coincidence-nd maybe not so strange-the words to both these songs were written by Pavel Herman, the same age and partly a countryman of Efim Shahmeister. (Remember?... "Listen to me, dear Claudius. I brought you a song, especially for you...".) Но, как водится, безработица По заводу ударила вдруг: Сенька вылетел, а за ним и я, И ещё двести семьдесят штук. I do not know what feelings the text of "Bricks" causes in others, but personally I have these lines cause a persistent feeling of some original parody: so to speak, a number from the popular humorous TV show "Big Difference" performed by the poet Pavel Herman. "And two hundred and seventy more...". Well, I couldn't write such lines without irony the same person who had written "Aviamarsh" shortly before, and two or three years later, such a poem:
Жёлтый тон от парусины. Блики солнечно-косы. Чьи-то бёдра, чьи-то спины, И затылки и носы. Разговоры, оранжады, Силуэты женских ног, Полуфразы, полувзгляды,Солнце, зелень и песок…Чайных чашек перезвоны, Обнажённость простоты,
Жесты-вяло-монотонны, Примитивны и просты. Дым ленивой папиросы. Шорох скомканных газет, Чьи-то тихие вопросы, Чей-то вкрадчивый ответ…Вальс струится еле-еле, Плачет Шуманом рояль…Вдалеке, в тонах пастели, Розовеющая даль…
Pavel Herman's poem "On the Veranda" was written by him in 1926 in France, and at the same time it was published-in a collection of his poems published in Paris...It must be said that the sensitive people's ear very soon caught in the text of "Bricks" his certain parody. Years passed, decades went by, and the initial excitement around "Bricks" gradually subsided-but it is only at first glance. Conceding concert venues, theatrical stage and wide cinema screens to other, new songs, "Bricks" became a song of truly folk, went somewhere in the depths, in the city yards and in communal apartments, spontaneously growing along the way with an absolutely incredible number of new texts - now exactly parody...Here are just a few:
Был торговый трест показательный, А в том тресте торговый отдел, А в отделе стул основательный, На котором директор сидел. В одном городе жила парочка, Он был шофер, она-счетовод, И была у них дочка Аллочка, И пошёл ей тринадцатый год. Ни «Кирпичики», ни «Червончики» Я в народе теперь не пою, А спою я вам, как девчоночки Иногда нас подводют под суд. На окраине града Ленина Я в преступной среде развился, Ещё мальчиком лет шестнадцати В исправительный дом забрался. На Украине, где-то в городе, Я на той стороне родилась И девчонкою лет семнадцати Мужикам за гроши продалась. Тут познал Семён счастье важное-Полюбил всей душою цыган, И по рублику, по червончику Разрушал он советский карман. Как-то вечером я домой ишла, Повстречался брюнет молодой. Был красивый он и высок собой. Сердце девичье сразу разбил. Люди добрые, посочувствуйте-Человек обращается к вам: Дайте молодцу на согрев души Я имею в виду на сто грамм! Вы послушайте, добры граждане, Я какую вам песню спою, Как на кладбище Митрофаньевском Отец дочку зарезал свою. Крепко спали в ту ночь пограничники, Обманул их еврей-генерал, И по камушку, по кирпичику Разобрали Суэцкий канал. Ой вы, девочки, ой, девчоночки, Не влюбляйтесь в военных ребят, Бо военные-все женатые, В заблужденье заводят девчат. На заводе том была парочка: Он был, Сенька, рабочий простой, А она была пролетарочка, Всем известна своей красотой. На базаре их была парочка: Он был жулик, карманник блатной, А она, его «пролетарочка», Фраеров фаловала в пивной. На окраине где-то города Там, где наша семейка жила, Папа часто брил себе бороду, А мамаша меня родила. И провёл Лужков реконструкцию, И поставил мотор от «Рено». Изменили мы всю конструкцию-Всё равно получилось… «Москвич»! Эту песенку про кирпичики В Ленинграде поёт каждый дом. В переулочке с милой дамочкой Шёл прилично одетый пижон. Где-то в городе, на окраине, Где стена образует проход, Из кино вдвоём с модной дамочкой Шёл шикарно одет паренёк. Всё «кирпичики» да «кирпичики»! Почему б не пропеть про Шанхай? Шанхай-города, главный улица, Твоя-слушай, моя-не мешай!
"And Luzhkov carried out the reconstruction, / / And put the motor from "Reno" ..." - it seems that in 1923 Pavel Herman seemed to foresee the fate of his "Bricks": his simple-minded, unpretentious, deliberately sleazy text did not claim to be serious feelings, but only imitated it. The lyrics of the song turned out to be surprisingly adequate to the equally unpretentious folk melody, well and long known both on the outskirts of the city and in small Jewish places. This melody existed before "Bricks" and after them it did not change. And the texts - well, time changed, and the texts changed...After the obvious insidiousness of the bourgeois West, after the Berlin foxtrots of Shahmeister and the Parisian poems of Pavel Herman it is natural to ask about the adventures of "Bricks" outside the Soviet Union. It's hard to believe, but "Bricks," our "first-ever Soviet song," our "Bricks" were also extremely popular among expats from Russia. But if we had this song boldly went deep into the city yards, then abroad it was rather planted at restaurant tables. Who only and where only did not sing "Bricks"! And Leonid Morastanov in Harbin, and Yuri Morphesy in Berlin, luba Jolly in New York, and Vitya Prokhorov somewhere in Belgium, and... and... and... Some gramo recordings of "emigrants" are easily now available on the Internet (for example, all of the above), and about some of their performances have only obscure memories. The emigrant texts of "Bricks" changed only very, very little over time - in fact, they remained the same "Bricks" of 1923, but, needless to say, without any "Smolny happiness" raised from the ruins of factories and the like inappropriate proletarian excesses. And the usual style of execution abroad, compared to the domestic balagurism and somewhere even hooliganism, was characterized by increased seriousness and often truly "gypsy" break. Well, yes, it is, in general, the same "Bricks" of Pavel Herman, only severely shortened - the original song narration breaks down here right before unemployment and the "war bourgeois". And as a result, the "first-in-house Soviet song" easily turned out to be a typical urban romance of all times and peoples..."The first Soviet song instilled in everyday life"...We remember this coined formulation from the 1928 article by R. Blumen, published in the journal Circus and Variety, a quote from it above. By the way, in the same quote there is also one mysterious phrase, which personally puzzles me: "Recently, the radio of the Eiffel Tower passed "Bricks" to the Antilles." To the Antilles?...Did the radio of the Eiffel Tower hope to find fans of the "first Soviet song" ?...I can't say anything about the Antilles, but here, for example, in Finland, the song to the tune of "Bricky" - there it is called "Asfalttikukka"-remains widely known and popular to this day: on the Internet you can easily find at least a dozen different performances. Here is the very first of them-the recording was made at the end of May 1929. Waltz "Asfalttikukka" performed by singer Toure Ara What is said in this Finnish song, I can not say exactly because of ignorance of the Finnish language. In any case, if there is any connection with the brick factory of Pavel Herman, it is very, very remote. However, here is the text of this song, written by Vyainyo Siikanemi:
Laulu kaupungin, yllä asfaltin kesäiltahan huumaten soi neito armahin, sulo harmahin sinut sattuma tielleni toi tuoksu tuulien, hymyhuulien katu kulkijan vallata voi.
Nojaat siltahan, katso iltahan eikö kuulu jo kultasin suntokko kaipuneet, varpu vaipuneet ilta hetkeksi huomahan mun jossa kaipuneet varpu vaipuneet saan ma sulkea syliihin sun.
Sad lyrical waltz...The author of the melody is a certain J. Loke. Behind this pseudonym hides a talented composer Ernest Pengu (Ernest Pingoud), born in St. Petersburg and received a brilliant musical education. He was a student of Rubinstein, Glazunov and Roman-Korsakov, took lessons from Alexander Siloti, and then studied in Germany with Max Reger and Hugo Riemann. He has written several symphonies and piano concerts. There's a lot of authors doing with the same melody, isn't it?...He wrote the waltz "Two Dogs", Ernest Pengu-waltz "Asfalttikukka", Boris Prozorovsky or Valentin Kruchinin-proletarian song "Bricks", Efim Shahmeister wrote foxtrot "on a known motif "...but the melody is essentially the same?..
You can include, for example, Sholom Second in this list if you wish. Sholom Second, as readers of "Sunny Wind" must remember well, back in 1907, a thirteen-year-old boy, emigrated with his parents to the United States-after the Jewish pogrom in the city of Nikolaev, Ukraine. Unlike Irving Berlin or, say, the same Byin Beilinson, Sholom Secunda focused mainly on the environment of Jewish emigrants in his musical activities. In the early 30's he wrote the melody of the famous song "Bai World Bistu Shane"which soon became a worldwide hit. In 1939, the american film "Kol Nidre" was filmed in the United States-a melodramatic account of the fate of a Jewish girl who refused to marry one who escaped from her parents' home with another, but eventually returned to her parents just on the eve of the most important Jewish holiday, the Day of Purification and Forgiveness-Jom Kippur. Kol Nidre, or Kol Nidrey, is the name of a sad prayer-song performed in synagogues on the yum Kippur festival. The point of this prayer is not to accumulate a load of unfulfilled promises, not to drag them from the past to the future. For hire in the Jewish diaspora, the film "Kol Nidre" was made in Yiddish, a language that before the war was widespread among Eastern European Jews and which many emigrants knew much better than English. The film is musical, it has a lot of music, a lot of sad Jewish songs. It is not surprising, therefore, that a person like Sholom Secunda was invited to the creative team as a composer. The lyrics are written in Yiddish. And to the brick factory this text has nothing to do with it: it tells about the hard fate and tragic death of a young girl, the daughter of a Jewish-porter, who lived with her father somewhere in Ukraine, and even the action itself, apparently, does not happen in the Land of the Soviets...So, two dogs, pulled on a cog and brick factory, a flower on the city asphalt and the disenfranchised life of Ukrainian Jews before the revolution... The words are all different, but the melody, in fact, is one. And Seen Beilinson-aka Simeon Bellison, the lead singer of the new York Philharmonic clarinet group - was not in a hurry to the American court with a claim to Sholom Secunda for infringement of his copyright, as well as Soviet composers Valentin Kruchinin or, there, Boris Prozorovsky-they were not at all offended by his former compatriot Ernest Peng. Because each of them perfectly understood: remaining the undisputed author of his own work (whether it is a waltz "Two Dogs", the song "Bricks" or foxtrot "on a known motif" and so on), he was still simply the author of the next processing of the same melody-the melody is not invented by them and known to many long before "Two Dogs" and "Brick." "The first Soviet song instilled in everyday life" to the words of Pavel Herman is performed by Alla Nikolaevna Bayanova. Recorded in Bucharest in 1977. City romance "Bricks" performed by Alla Bayanova (Bucharest, 1977). The article uses a fragment of Alexander Rodchenko's "Fire Ladder" (1925) and one of Vasily Khvostenko's posters (also 1925). Valentin Antonov, January 2015.
Kol Nidre. About The Film. Husband and wife Warsaw theater stars Leon Liebgold and Lili Liliana are reunited onscreen in KOL NIDRE, a newly-restored Yiddish musical about a love triangle among New York City childhood friends. The daughter of devout parents, the romantically conflicted young Jenny (Liliana) refuses to marry Yosef (Liebgold) who has become a rabbi. Instead, she elopes with Jack (Menasha Oppenheim), a nogoodnik actor who gets her pregnant and eventually abandons her. Overcome with hopelessness, Jenny prepares to end her life on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the solemn chant of the Kol Nidre prayer, and the compassion of her family and Jewish community, rescue her from despair. Surprisingly risqué for its time, this rousing tearjerker explores issues of cultural identity and marital conflict, and features lovely songs written by Sholem Secunda and performed by Cantor Leibele Waldman.
Zemereshet. Uri Jakubowicz tells about the Russian source: The original poem (lyrics by Powell German) appeared in Meyerhold's play "The Forest" based on a play by A. N. Ostrovsky (premiered January 19, 1924), in the scene of the love affair between Piotr and Axiosa. The original melody is the waltz melody Две собачки ("Two Puppies") by composer S. Bliss previously written and adapted to the lyrics of the song by Valentin Crocinin. And Amos Rodner adds: A song from the days of the nep, the economic plan that allowed a certain personal initiative. The poem was banned in the days of Stalin, perhaps because of the emphasis on the factory's bottom-up initiative, and perhaps because he perceived that the author was mocking the ardent communist (and seduction) .According to Robert Rothstein, the poem was printed in various anthologies in 1927, 1932 and some time later in 1967 with changes in the text.
Zemereshet: Semyon Blison (Blison). composer. Birth: 4.12.1883-Death: 4.5.1953. According to the Russian Wikipedia, a clarinet player and composer, of Jewish descent. Born in Moscow, since 1920 has lived in the United States. About the composer's names: During his tenure in Russia / USSR the composer's name and surname appear in various forms. Was Bailison.In the Russian entry his last name also appears Bailison and in one of the frames Beilinson.Since settling in the US he has been known as Simeon Bellison.
Biography of Simeon Bellison. Posted by Dan Leeson, 27 Jan 1996. As many of you probably know, I have been slowly donating the entire contents of my clarinet library to the Univ. of Maryland's clarinet collection. In order to do that, I have had to deal with each work in terms of describing it, estimating its cost, etc. Thus, I have to go through every work with some care. Today, while prepare a shipment, I was pleased to see a work that I had completely forgotten I owned.It is a clarinet quartet of Mozart arranged by Simeon Bellison for 2 B-flats, basset horn, and bass clarinet. I think the arrangement dates from much earlier than the publication date of 1954 by G. Ricordi and sons, but this is speculation on my part. I don't remember what the quartet cost when I bought it, but the cover price determined at the time of publication ws $2.50. Makes one grit their teeth, eh? Anyway, in the back of the edition, and written by Bellison himself, there was a very fine and authentic biographyof the great man, one who I had the pleasure of hearing when I was a kid. He used to give one recital a year in New York and I always went. I know that many biographies of the man exist but this one was done by himself and has an interesting insight that the other might have missed. For example, I did not know that Bellison had a fiction novel published! Here is the biography. The reference to the music arranged by Bellison for his Clarinet Ensemble is particularly interesting because it is all in Israel where it was donated by his wife and his death. Simeon Bellison, clarinet virtuoso, was born in Moscow on Sept. 4, 1881. He showed musical talent at an early age and began studying the clarinet at nine with his father. A year later, he played in the Voluntary Fireman's Band, which his father conducted, and in several military bands. At eleven, he was heard by the late Wassily Safonoff, former conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, who was then director of the Imperial Conservatory in Moscow. Safonoff placed the young musician in the clarinet class of Prof. Joseph Friedrich. Seven years later, Mr. Bellison was graduate with honors and a degree of Bachelor of Music which is the highest degree obtainable for music in his native country. He began teaching the clarinet in some of the leading schools in Moscow and became first clarinetist of the opera and symphony orchestras there. For the thirteen years of this period he took part in the presentation of many operas, operettas and ballets. In 1908 Mr. Bellison toured northern Europe with a chamber music organization. In 1915, he won the coveted post of first clarinetist in the orchestra of the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera, which was the goal of every orchestra musician in Russia. In 1902 Mr. Bellison organized the Moscow Quintet and gave a series of concerts throughout Russia, Poland and Latvia. In 1918 when musical activities were at a standstill in Russia, he organized a second ensemble in St. Petersburg. He named the group "Zimro," and under the flag of the Russian Zionist Organization, started a pilgrimage throughout the world. During its three years of activity, the ensemble played in the Urals, Altay, all the large Siberian cities, China, Japan, India, Canada, and the United States. In 1920 Mr. Bellison was engaged as first clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, which position he held until 1948. During that time, he also was affiliated with almost every chamber music organization in the United States and Canada and played under all of the greatest conductors of this period here and in many capitols of Europe. He is perhaps the only clarinetist who has appeared as soloist on the legitimate stages of Europe, Asia, and America. When he made his home in New York in 1920, he opened his clarinet studio, which is attended by students from every part of the United States and Europe. In 1927, with the patronage of the New York Philharmonic Society, he organized the Clarinet Ensemble of seventy- five players. He arranged, personally, a large library for this unique group. Mr. Bellison has arranged and has had published more than 100 pieces for clarinet and piano and for various chamber music combinations. He also wrote a novel, "Jivoglot," (Eat 'em Alive), portraying the life of the poor and obscure musicians in Old Russia. In 1948 he retired from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to give all his time to teaching, arranging music and playing chamber music concerts. His 57 years as a clarinetist include 28 years as first clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic.
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