Meaning in music- that must sound very strange for most people. Particularly in the West. It’s here in Russia that the question is usually posed: What was the composer trying to say, after all, with this musical work? What was he trying to make clear? The questions are naïve, of course, but despite their naiveté and crudity, they definitely merit being asked. And I would add to them, for instance, Can music attack evil? Can it make man stop and think? Can it cry out, and thereby draw man’s attention to various vile acts to which he has grown accustomed? To the things he passes without any interest? / All this questions began for me with Mussorgsky. And after his I must add the name of the little-known (despite all the reverence accorded him) Alexander Dargomyzhsky and his satiric songs, 'The Worm' and 'Titular Counsellor', and his dramatic 'Old Corporal'. Personally, I consider Dargomyzhsky’s 'Stone Guest' the best musical embodiment of the Don Juan legend. But Dargomyzhsky doesn’t have Mussorgsky’s scope. Both men brought bent backs and trampled lives into music, and that’s why they are dearer to me than so many other brilliant composers.