Cosmonautics Day has passed. As every year, we, having joined the great action, despite all sorts of "descents from orbits", bombarding each other with photographs of Gagarin and the Vostok-1 spacecraft, listening to Levitan and "Let's go!", quickly switch to everyday affairs, removing space on the mezzanine until the next suitable occasion.

In the phone of my old friend, meanwhile, Cosmonautics Day never ends, there is Andrei Petrov's overture to the film "Taming the Fire" on the bell. Andrei Petrov wrote a lot of music for what films: "I'm walking around Moscow", "Beware of the car", "The Way to the Pier", "Zigzag of Luck", "White Bim Black Ear", "Office Romance", "Autumn Marathon", "Garage", "Cruel Romance", "Say a Word About the Poor Hussar", "Station for Two", "Battalions Ask for Fire" - this is all music by Andrei Petrov, and the list can be continued for a long time. Andrei Petrov is recorded in our genetic code - the best fate and the most faithful confirmation of the composer's nationality.

There is such a thing ...

Words cannot express.

That's what life is filled with...

This is what we purr under our breath.

Petrov, Leningrader. Born in 1930. His military childhood was evacuated to Siberia. I've seen everything. He graduated from the Leningrad Rimsky-Korsakov Music College, and then from the Conservatory. He worked, taught, wrote music. He was a major amateur Pushkinist - not like Lotman, he academically, but in spirit and in the inner involvement of Pushkin's poetry. He loved Mayakovsky and understood well what he was shouting in our ears, but we did not always hear.

Petrov wrote music for the ballets "The Station Keeper", "Pushkin. Reflections on the Poet" and the opera-extravaganza "Mayakovsky Begins". And the opera "Peter the Great". He was a versatile person. He did not forget about the pioneers - "Pioneer Suite", "Poem about a Pioneer Woman" on poems by Bagritsky for mezzo-soprano and symphony orchestra. How many of us have heard? And it's worth listening. But this is not the main thing.

The main thing was concluded in the two most important moments of the biography (life) of Andrei Petrov: he was a great melodist (as God pointed his finger) and a great worker. He knew how to listen and hear. Without quirks about their own greatness.

Here, for example, the story is very revealing. Georgy Danelia wanted Petrov to take up the music for the "Autumn Marathon", and moreover, Danelia formulated the task as follows: "Music, in principle, is not needed. Why does this film need music? Let it be something like a metronome. Let the time lived senselessly by the hero count down. Now remember the melody. She is the metronome. Nothing superfluous. Not a single note. That's what Andrey Petrov is all about.

He could. He knew how to do it very well. About geniuses and villains. About our greats, who make up "our everything." About you and me, about the most ordinary people with petty and sublime passions to the gnashing of teeth. Right? The day is like the Plyushkin Boxes, the day is the warriors of the spirit. Such is the human race: how can it be altered? How's his?.. Remake?

And I started with Cosmonautics Day. And for good reason. When Petrov was invited as a composer to his film by Daniil Khrabrovitsky (talking about "Taming the Fire"), Petrov already understood the scale of the task: Khrabrovitsky was the screenwriter of the film "Nine Days of One Year" and by some inconceivable hook or by crook obtained permission to shoot a two-part film about the nuclear missile shield of the USSR, or rather, about space, but we understand.

This topic was absolutely secret. The people of the Land of Soviets learned the real names and surnames of the designers only on the days of the state funeral.

It was difficult, almost impossible, to make a film about all those who created a nuclear missile shield, and at the same time not to highlight anyone.

Khrabrovitsky repeatedly met with Ustinov, Glushko, Mishin, Chertko. And Kamanin simply did not know where to get away from him. It would seem, what is so? Don't allow it, and that's it. A state secret! What's unclear?!

But...

There were some really significant buts.

In 1966, we lost Korolev. In 1967 - Komarova. In 1968 - Gagarin. I should have said something, at least something about it. The information vacuum — the inability to connect a coherent picture from scraps of gossip and rumors — was depressing. At that time, we were sick of space - evil and desperate. We wanted to go to Mars, we were eager to go to Venus, the Moon was a done deal for us, but ...

In 1969, the Americans landed (or did not land) on the moon first. It was simply impossible to tolerate this, and it did not fit into the general logic, into the sequence of our cosmic steps. It didn't go to bed, it's true. Because... Because the role of the individual in history is extraordinarily great, no matter who and how it is denied. Korolev's death brought us down. It was such a terrible and all-crushing blow that by and large we could not recover from it.

Khrabrovitsky felt it. He was generally a man about "feeling". Look, it is he who after the "Taming of the Fire" will shoot "The Tale of the Human Heart" (cardiac surgeons are heavenly angels on earth) and "The Poem of Wings" (about Tupolev and Sikorsky). Back in 1968, after the death of Gagarin, Khrabrovitsky decided to create a legend, a majestic epic about a Soviet man who stepped into the sky. About the Soviet man who overcame truly biblical hardships and hardships, who passed through fire, through water, through the firmament of the earth. And stepped into the sky!

In 1971, work on the film was already underway. On June 30, 1971, the crew of the Soyuz-11 spacecraft died during the descent - Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsaev. In the country, an internal, perhaps the deepest mourning was "declared" - for the greatest dream of the generation of victors - for space. It was slipping out of our hands. He again became unattainable and distant. And therefore Khrabrovitsky had nowhere to retreat (and the surname obliged).

Khrabrovitsky reworked the script three times (he was both the director and screenwriter of the film, and that's also important - at the Higher Screenwriting Courses he was a student of Yevgeny Gabrilovich), and when the main people of the Soviet cosmos finally got him questions about the accuracy of the characters of the heroes (and this despite the fact that the accuracy of political and military remained under a strict taboo), he replied:

"You all argue with me all the time because you know how it really was. I don't have to be reverent of actual characters and biographies. The heroes of the film are mine, not yours, and the viewer will believe me because he will love these heroes. I consciously idealize people, I want them to be like that. These should not be varnished ideals, but the viewer should love each of my characters. There will be no villains, traitors, executioners, prostitutes, spies in our film. I admire you all for who you are, but I want to make you even better. I see this as my task."

Petrov Khrabrovitsky said: "Andrew! We need music that is transcendental. It is necessary that as on a date with the sky. My heroes are like torches. Burning, lighting the way to the future. That's why they burn out ... It is necessary to show that everything is in spite of. Contrary to the war. Contrary to the logic of everyday life. That's the only way they could... We need that kind of music."

Petrov wrote just that. And we do not care about the accuracy and inaccuracies of biographies. All the launches are real, all the accidents are real, and this is the pure truth - they were filmed live.

Khrabrovitsky got money for all this at the very top. Both in the army and in the Politburo. And the music in the film is real.

Perhaps, thanks to "Taming the Fire", the spirit of Korolev and Gagarin is alive in us. Maybe thanks to the music of Andrei Petrov.

Do you remember what kind of dialogues there are? How is the triumph of Korolev (in the film he is Bashkirtsev - it was categorically impossible to use real surnames) over himself, over overcoming the earth's gravity? How he talks on the day of Gagarin's flight, on the night after the flight, with his beloved woman, who has a son from him. It's ... Understand at last! It is impossible to say so, guided by "social status"!.. This is not about cheap show-offs, this is about the greatness of the Red Empire ...

We would have it back.

We would have to resist.

Conversation between Bashkirtsev and Natasha. In "The Seagull". With direct government communication. They say that Khrabrovitsky literally weighed every word on the scales.

"Can you drop by for a minute?" I have a lot of guests, look how I live, and I'll show off my son!

"No, I can't.

"You can! If you want, you can!

"No, I don't. I can't. Another time...

To the gallery page

- Yes, there will be no other such time! Today I am a birthday boy, today is my day. Do you want me to come to an agreement with your regional committee? Who do you have there - Zimin? (Bashkirtsev calls from the car.) Hello! Crimean Regional Committee, Zimina! No, an apartment.

And in another minute.

Having already stopped at the House on the Embankment.

"Show me your ticket?" Invalid.

- Are you acting from a position of strength?

- Exactly! Fly my plane.

"Do you even have your own plane?..

"Imagine...

"Are you a shahinshah?..

"Yes... Approximately.

One more thing...

Already in the apartment.

"I didn't know it was you...

- Everything that I have done and am doing is related to the defense of the country. This is what I do, in general, mainly. Well, as you can see, satellites, spaceships, so on, so on and so on ...

"Well, as you can see."

So, in a simple way.

Korolev was unbearable in life. Caustic and ruthless. True, he had a heart - everyone admits. And he was the greatest passionary. Glushko and Mishin are not. Under Korolev, not a single cosmonaut died, because Korolev, precisely as the CHIEF DESIGNER, did not allow unprepared launches, knew how to resist any call from Moscow and was not afraid to talk and argue with anyone. Glushko and Mishin were afraid, and they had no idea. IDEAS. Dot.

Korolev, brought up by Tsiolkovsky and Zander, knew one thing after each unsuccessful launch: "I need space! You see, space! And then everything else! Because everything else will follow!"

And they also say that he was a gloomy cynic who liked to repeat: "Slam without an obituary, and that's the end of it." But the first detachment, all the cosmonauts, loved as his sons. And so in his life he had a daughter, Natasha. She is now 88. She is a great doctor, scientist, professor of Sechenovka.

The conversation about music turned out to be strange, right?

According to legend (and after all, our whole life is a legend), Petrov said after the premiere: "Such a flight control center showed, and the labels on Borjomi were at random. Right on the table of the chief designer. Khrabrovitsky smiled in response.

Those who lived at that time remember that the rockets went into a given orbit, and the labels on mineral water and lemonade, yes, were glued at random.

So what do we need, sisters and brothers?

"Smooth labels"?

"Into a given orbit"?

Everything does not happen at once. There is a spirit ahead. Behind him is matter. Korolev in space is like Tito in socialism. But we cannot be afraid of even the most terrible losses. And to hell with them, with labels.

And finally.

In the episode after the successful launch of the first Soviet satellite, Natasha says to Bashkirtsev (Korolev): "Work is your great joy. Your Way of the Cross..."

I have nothing to add to what has been said.

The screenwriter has outdone himself. We are forever in love with his violent heroes. The composer opened the doors to the sky. We light up inside, like a rocket engine, it is worth hearing the first notes of the overture.

What's wrong with us now?

Or does everything with us take time?

- "Minute readiness"!

"The key to start"!

- "Broach one"!

- "Purge"!

- "The key to drainage"!

- "Broach two"!

- "Ignition"!

- "Preliminary"!

- "Intermediate"!

- "Home"!

- "Rise!"

"Let's go!"

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.