The Music: Lost in Translation

Oiva, Mila; Salmi, Hannu; Johnson, Bruce

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-69048-9_8

Mila Oiva⁴,
Hannu Salmi⁵ &
Bruce Johnson^6,7

90 Accesses

Abstract

The repertoire that Montand delivered on his tour programme was unchanged from his performances in Paris, already familiar to Soviet audiences through recordings and radio. Part of the pleasure they derived from his concerts therefore included that of hearing material they already knew, delivered in person by the artist himself, who enjoyed cult status. The presentation of the songs included in the documentary Yves Montand Sings, and the audience reception as portrayed in the film, along with the voice-over Russian commentary, present a narrative of perfect harmony between Montand and the Soviet audiences. This is underlined by scenes of interaction between him, Signoret, and members of the public. But the synergy presented in the film is in many ways misleading, as we know from such sources as published memoirs and unpublished primary documents. A careful examination of the music itself reveals that something is ‘lost in translation’, and there are disparities between the message sent by Montand’s music, and what is received by the audiences. There are odd dissonances between the content of the music and the way it appears as being interpreted by Soviet audiences, particular in the matter of attitudes to jazz.

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Notes

1.
Eleonory Gilburd. 2018. To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1.
2.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 12, 116.
3.
Cited Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 114.
4.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 117.
5.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 11.
6.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 105.
7.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 234, 247, 253, 144.
8.
Rachel Carson. 1962. The Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
9.
Kathleen E. Smith. 2017. Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 74, 76.
10.
‘Fight with the “Fifth Film Column” in France.’ Iskusstvo kino No 5/1950 (October), 43–46; ‘The Widening Front of the Protectors of Peace.’ Pravda 18 November 1952, 4.
11.
‘The announcement of the Committee for preparing 10th Anniversary of the French-Soviet agreement.’ Izvestia December 23, 1954, 4.
12.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 166.
13.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 167; Wages of Fear, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953, Thérèse Raquin, dir. Marcel Carné 1953.
14.
G. Aleksandrov. 1955. ‘The French Film Week.’ Pravda 17 October 1955, 3; see also Mikh, B. ‘The French Film Week.’ Iskusstvo kino 11/1955 (November), 113–117.
15.
P. Borisov. 1955. ‘Authors of the films that we will see.’ Smena 18 October 1955, 3.
16.
‘Head full of Sun. Yves Montand.’ Komsomolskaja Pravda 7 February 1956; ‘Tired Heroes.’ Iskusstvo kino 2/1956 (28 February 1956), 103; ‘Yves Montand shoots a film of De Santis.’ Iskusstvo kino 04/1956 (30 April 1956), 113.
17.
‘Meetings behind the pictures.’ Ogonek No 31 (July) 1956, 35.
18.
S. Andreiev-Krivich. 1956. ‘Yves Montand tells…’ Literaturnaja gazeta 15 May 1956.
19.
Simone Signoret. 1978. Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be. New York: Harper & Row, 155.
20.
On such licensing agreements, see further Evgeniya Kondrashina. 2019. ‘Soviet Music Recordings and Cold War Cultural Relations.’ In Entangled East and West: Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction during the Cold War, edited by Simo Mikkonen, Jari Parkkinen and Giles Scott-Smith, 193–215. On Soviet record production, see Pekka Gronow. Forthcoming. ‘Melodiya (USSR)’. In Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 1, Media, Industry, Society, edited by John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke. Updated edition. London: Bloomsbury Academic; for a discography of these recordings, see Appendix A.
21.
Yves Montand, Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman. 1992. You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, translated by Jeremy Leggatt. London: Chatto & Windus, 259; see also A.K. Krasnikova 2014. ‘“Kogda poet dalekii drug…” Pesni Iva Montana v Sovetskom Sojuze serediny 1950-kh godov (K 90-letiju so dnia rozhdenija Iva Montana).’ Observatorija Kul’tury 2: 88–89.
22.
Frantsuzskie pesni iz repertuara Iva Montana. 1956. Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe muzikal’noe izdatel’stvo ‘Muzgiz’.
23.
Poet Iv Montan. 1956. Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe muzikal’noe izdatel’stvo ‘Muzgiz’. For the second edition, see Poet Iv Montan. 1957. Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe muzikal’noe izdatel’stvo ‘Muzgiz’.
24.
R. Izmailova. 1955. ‘The Singer of Paris.’ Ogonek March 1955 (No 11), 40–41.
25.
G. Rassadin. 1955. ‘A warm meeting. Visiting French actors.’ Ogonek October 1955 (no 42), 28–29.
26.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 80.
27.
Joëlle Monserrat. 1983. Yves Montand. Paris: Éditions Pac, 117.
28.
Pravda 20 December 1956, 4.
29.
Ordered by the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union, Printing house: ‘Pervaia Obraztsovaja tipografija imeni A.A.Zhdanova’, Moscow, no information print date or number of copies.
30.
Description of the film Singer of Paris, version II, dated 21 December 1956. RGALI f 2487 o 1 e 560, 43.
31.
A suggestion to shoot a documentary film on Yves Montand’s visit to the Soviet Union by M. Slutskii and S. Yutkevich, no date [~ late November or early December 1956]. RGALI f 2487 o 1 e 560, 75.
32.
Tour plan of Yves Montand and his group in the Soviet Union, Paris 10 July 1956. Russian translation of the French original. RGALI f 2329 o 8 e 365, 81–82. [The original French version on pages 87–88.]
33.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 48, 55, 95–97.
34.
Nik. Smirnov-Sokol’skii. 1956. Golos serdtsa. Literaturnaja gazeta, 22 December 1956, 3; see further Krasnikova, ‘Kogda poet dalekii drug…’, 93.
35.
Zon, Boris Vul’fovich, actor, theatre director and pedagogue, b. 1898—58 years, diary entry dated on 9 January 1957, https://prozhito.org/note/311296 accessed on 10 March 2020.
36.
Interview with Anna (b. 1999), 8 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Daria Khokhlova, peer-review by Anna Ostapenko.
37.
Interview with Natalia Isaakovna Muchinskaya (b. 1945), 30 September 2019, Moscow. Interview by Yana Parshina, peer-review of the interview transcript by Angelina Naumova.
38.
Interview with Tatiana Chaykovskaya (b. 1941), 2 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Maria Korenko, peer-review of the transcript by Ivan Karnaukhov.
39.
See further Bruce Johnson. 2017A. ‘In the body of the Audience’. In Musicians and Their Audiences: Performance, Speech and Mediation, edited by Ioannis Tsioulakis and Elina Hytönen-Ng. New York and London: Routledge, 15–33.
40.
Evgenia Gordienko. 1998. Iv Montan. Muzhchina – Mif. Rostov-on-Don: Feniks, 203; see also Krasnikova, ‘Kogda poet dalekii drug…’, 94.
41.
Izvestia No 301, Friday 21 December 1956, 3.
42.
Nik. Smirnov-Sokol’skii. 1956. ‘Golos serdtsa.’ Literaturnaja gazeta, 22 December 1956, 3. It is worth noting that far from spontaneous, Montand actually rehearsed every aspect of his performance with, often briefly ill-tempered, fastidious attention to detail, as revealed in Chris Marker’s 1974 documentary on a concert given by Montand at the Olympia. Montand’s own comments are revealing: ‘They think you prepare a gesture, but they’re wrong … When I work on a song, I never say “I will do this, I will do that”. I first let the words take over. And if gradually I happen to make a gesture instinctively, I file it and leave it there’ (Loneliness of the Long Distance Singer 1974, dir. Chris Marker: 5.42–6.05). In view of comments below, it is notable how close this is to a description of jazz improvisation, which includes the accumulation of ‘licks’ that are discovered fortuitously.
43.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 144, 192.
44.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 155.
45.
Pravda 20 December 1956, 4; Izvestia, 20 December 1956, 4.
46.
Nik. Smirnov-Sokol’skii. 1956. ‘Golos serdtsa.’ Literaturnaja gazeta 22 December 1956, 3; Pravda 23 December 1956, 4.
47.
Nik. Smirnov-Sokol’skii. 1956. ‘Golos serdtsa.’ Literaturnaja gazeta 22 December 1956, 3.
48.
On the ‘love affair’ with Paris in particular, see Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 278–291; see also Krasnikova, ‘Kogda poet dalekii drug…’, 94–95.
49.
L. Raskin. 1955. ‘A Friendly Meeting.’ Ogonek March (No 12) 1955, 29; ‘Meeting of the participants of the festival in the Moscow Film House.’ Iskusstvo kino 8/1955 (August), 78.
50.
Nikolai Drachinskii. 1955. ‘Workers’ festival in Paris.’ Ogonek September 1955 (No 39), 22.
51.
Simo Mikkonen, Jari Parkkinen and Giles Scott-Smith. 2019. ‘Exploring Culture in and of the Cold War’. In Entangled East and West: Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction During the Cold War, edited by Simo Mikkonen, Jari Parkkinen and Giles Scott-Smith. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenburg, 5.
52.
Smith, Moscow 1956, 300.
53.
Smith, Moscow 1956, 329.
54.
Smith, Moscow 1956, 330.
55.
Diary of Ángel Gutiérrez, Spanish theatre director, born 28 August 1932, 25 years. Diary entry on September 14, 1957, Prozhito, https://prozhito.org/note/518648, accessed 10 March 2020.
56.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 278.
57.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 288.
58.
Krasnikova, ‘Kogda poet dalekii drug…’, 93. See also Chap. 6.
59.
See these three websites: Poema pro Iva Montana, Literary portal ‘Mir poezii’, http://mirpoezylit.ru/books/5852/1/, accessed 26 March 2020; Username ‘oldporuchik’ at Livejournal, https://oldporuchik.livejournal.com/14963.html, accessed 26 March 2020, and Coollib, https://coollib.com/b/365942-vladimir-solomonovich-polyakov-poema-pro-iva-montana/readp, accessed 26 March 2020.
60.
Film description of the film Singer of Paris, version I, dated 15 December 1956. RGALI f 2487 o 1 e 560, 45.
61.
Film description of the film Singer of Paris, version II, dated 21 December 1956. RGALI f 2487 o 1 e 560, 35.
62.
David Loosely. 2015. Édith Piaf: A Cultural History. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 175.
63.
Kondrashina, ‘Soviet Music Recordings and Cold War Cultural Relations’, 206.
64.
See further Penny von Eschen. 2004 Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press, 93.
65.
Monserrat, Yves Montand, 124.
66.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 237.
67.
Pravda 20 December 1956: 4.
68.
Signoret, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, 159.
69.
With thanks to colleague Michael Hollington, and Sue Fallon for the translation. They add the following note: ‘1) the title is difficult to translate because it refers to the noises people make with their mouths listening to music. The French say he makes “la” sounds, we have opted for the English “he goes la” and so have “he goes…” as our title. 2) Plaisir d’amour … refers to the famous 18th century song by Padre Martini, sung (amongst others) by Joan Baez.’
70.
Hollington and Fallon have opted for a loose translation of ‘Habits sans Style’ as ‘baggy pants’. That might apply to wartime French ‘jazz fanatiques’, but certainly not to Russian stiliaga, who usually wore very tight trousers. It is worth keeping this in mind as one of the differences between the two stereotypes, as discussed later.
71.
Literaturnaja gazeta 22 December 1956, 336.
72.
Marina Dmitrieva. 2010. ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’. In Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain, edited by Gertrud Pickhan and Rüdiger Ritter. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 243.
73.
S. Frederick Starr. 1983. Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union 1917–1980. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 235-260; Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 97–98. Abeßer, Michel. 2010. ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation – Soviet Debates on Jazz Between 1953 and 1964.’ In Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain, edited by Gertrud Pickhan and Rüdiger. Ritter Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang: 99–116.
74.
Pia Koivunen. 2013. Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festival as a Tool of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, 1947–1957. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tampere, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, 238.
75.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 108–109.
76.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 97.
77.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 99.
78.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 107.
79.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 100.
80.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 98.
81.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 113.
82.
Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World, 95.
83.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 97; Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 110.
84.
See, for example, Bruce Johnson, ed. 2017B. Jazz and Totalitarianism. New York: Routledge.
85.
Martin Lücke. 2010 ‘The Postwar Campaign against jazz in the USSR’. In Jazz Behind the Iron Curtain, edited by Gertrud Pickhan and Rüdiger Ritter. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 96.
86.
Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 245.
87.
Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 254.
88.
Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 239; Anne Applebaum. 2013. Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956. London: Penguin: 441–446.
89.
See Heli Reimann. Forthcoming. The Tallinn ’67 Jazz Festival: Myths and a Soviet-American Encounter. Routledge.
90.
See a more detailed overview in Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 252.
91.
Lücke, ‘The Postwar Campaign against jazz in the USSR’, 97.
92.
See further Graham H. Roberts. 2013. ‘Revolt into Style: Consumption and its (dis)contents in Valery Todorovsky’s film Stilyagi.’ In Film, Fashion & Consumption, 2/2: 187–200.
93.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 177–178.
94.
Lücke, ‘The Postwar Campaign against jazz in the USSR’, 97.
95.
Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 247.
96.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 110.
97.
Dmitrieva, ‘Jazz and Dress: Stiliaga in Soviet Russia and Beyond’, 248, 253–254.
98.
Signoret, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, 154.
99.
Letter from Georges Soria to Stepanov and the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union, dated in Paris, 10 July 1956. RGALI f 2329 o 8 e 365, 78–80. [The French original version on pages 84–86.]
100.
A letter sent to V. I. Riazantsev, the director OVIR [the Visa and Passport Registration Department] from E. Kachugin, the director of the Department of External Contacts of the Ministry of Culture, dated 19 December 1956. RGALI f 2329 o 8 e 365, 63.
101.
Tom Perchard. 2015. After Django: Making Jazz in Postwar France. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 62.
102.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 71.
103.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 159.
104.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 164.
105.
Perchard, After Django, 125.
106.
John Edward Hasse. 2012. ‘“A New Reason for Living”: Duke Ellington in France’. In Eurojazzland: Jazz and European Sources, Dynamics, and Contexts, edited by Luca Cerchiari, Laurent Cugny and Frank Kerschbaumer. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 111.
107.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 70, 71.
108.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 108; on jazz influences on Piaf see Loosely, Édith Piaf: A Cultural History, 90.
109.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 73–74.
110.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 74.
111.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 96, 97.
112.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 243-244.
113.
Perchard, After Django, 235.
114.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 129.
115.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 147.
116.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 205.
117.
Hasse, ‘A New Reason for Living’, 197.
118.
See http://www.playbill.com/production/an-evening-with-yves-montand-john-golden-theatre-vault-0000008446, accessed 31 January 2020.
119.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 210.
120.
A letter of Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Zorin V of the I European division of the Soviet Ministry for Foreign Affairs to the Vice-Minister of Culture Orvid, dated 29 October 1956. RGALI f 2329 o 8 e 365, 60.
121.
Interview with Alexey Veshkin (b. 1961). Interview by Anastasia Kurasheva (interviewee’s friend’s daughter), 28 September 2019, Moscow. Peer-review of the transcript by Darya Artemova.
122.
Interview with Elena (b. 1966), 10 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Alexander Bespalov and Sofia Kuznetsova, peer-review of the transcript by Elizaveta Karpova.
123.
Interview with Elena Dellanoy (b. 1966), 21 September 2019, Lille (France). Interview by Maria Korenko and Marina Zucconi, peer-review of the transcript by Ilya Lukhovitskiy.
124.
Abeßer, ‘Between Cultural Opening, Nostalgia and Isolation’, 108. See further Ferdinand Joseph Maria Feldbrugge, Gerard Pieter Van den Berg, William Bradford Simons, eds. 1985. Encyclopedia of Soviet Law, 2nd Revised Edition. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 555.
125.
An early version of the plan of the film Yves Montand Sings, no date. RGALI f. 2487 op. 1 ed. hr. 560; a suggestion to shoot a documentary film on Yves Montand’s visit to the Soviet Union by M. Slutskii and S. Yutkevich, no date [~ late November or early December 1956]. RGALI f. 2487 op. 1 ed. hr. 560, 71; Film description of the film Singer of Paris, version I, dated 15 December 1956. RGALI f. 2487 op. 1 ed. hr. 560; Film description of the film Singer of Paris, version II, dated 21 December 1956. RGALI f. 2487 op. 1 ed. hr. 560; an early version of the script of the Yves Montand Sings documentary film by Mikhail Slutskii and Sergei Yutkevich, no date [February 1957]. RGALI f. 2487 op. 1 ed. hr. 560; script of the Yves Montand Sings documentary film by Mikhail Slutskii and Sergei Yutkevich, dated 1 March 1957. RGALI f. 2487 op. 1 ed. hr. 560.

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CUDAN Open Lab, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia
Mila Oiva
Department of Cultural History, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Hannu Salmi
Department of Communications, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Bruce Johnson
Department of Cultural History, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Bruce Johnson

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Mila Oiva
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Oiva, M., Salmi, H., Johnson, B. (2021). The Music: Lost in Translation. In: Yves Montand in the USSR. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69048-9_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69048-9_8
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