Serafim Tulikov

Serafim Tulikov (1914–2004) was a Russian and Soviet composer, who was born in the Imperial Russia, and died in Russia. Serafim Tulikov is known for his patriotic and officially ideological compositions. Serafim Tulikov was born in Kaluga. He was eventually enrolled into the Kaluga Academy of Music, and at the age of 18, he studied at many conservatoires in Russia. During the mid-1940s Serafim Tulikov composed a range of melodious lyrical-patriotic songs which became quite popular. National fame came to him in 1947, when he composed We Are for Peace, with lyrics by Aleksandr Zharov, a marching song meant to mobilize the masses all over the world on behalf of the USSR-led effort to prevent the escalation of international tensions during the early phase of the Cold War. In 1951, Tulikov composed March of the Soviet Youth which received the First Prize at the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students held in East Berlin. This march continued and developed the pattern established by the composer in We Are for Peace!; unbridled optimism, mass-mobilizing appeal, and sunny imagery. Tulikov continued to contribute mass songs dedicated to various important events in Soviet history and politics. His song "To the Distant Planets!" (lyrics by Yuri Polukhin) was a work of optimism designed to celebrate the USSR's technological breakthroughs. Unsurprisingly, it was written in the wake of Yuri Gagarin's first space journey in 1961. In 1964, Tulikov's only opera, Barankin, bud' chelovekom, premiered in Moscow. As the Soviet Union unravelled in the late 1980s, Serafim Tulikov found himself increasingly isolated to deal with the change. Tulikov's traditionalism, as well as his penchant for slow-flowing and sweet lyrical tunes, was sharply at odds with the newly fashionable avant-garde and radical rejection of harmony and tranquility in music, in favor of cacophony and wild rhythms. Tulikov gradually faded away from public prominence. He died in retirement in 2004. Some of his musical legacy has been resurrected by the lovers of Soviet music. However, the majority of what has been reissued and revived has been Tulikov's most non-political, light lyrical music of the 1960s-70s.