B. Tishchenko's Music for S. Shuster's Documentaries (on the issue of the radical renewal of Russian Symphonism in the 1960s)

Serov Yurii Eduardovich PhD in Art History Lecturer and master of the student symphony orchestra at St.Petersburg music school named after M.P. Mussorgsky 191028, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, ul. Mokhovaya, 36 serov@nflowers.ru Other publications by this author

Tishchenko's early works in documentary films turned out to be an undoubted success of the young composer — we are talking about suites for the films "Suzdal" (1964), "Palekh" (1965) and "Northern Studies" (1968). All of them became the fruit of joint work with the director and collector S. Shuster^[1] — a bright and, to the highest degree, original personality in the cultural life of Leningrad. Tishchenko's music for Schuster's scientific documentaries of the second half of the 1960s is a separate and very valuable part of the composer's creative heritage. Shuster, with his special ability of an experienced collector and collector of valuables to notice the true beauty and true art in the world around him, in these film works found himself in his native element — whether it was the majestic archaic churches of Suzdal, the catchy festive play of colors of the Palekh casket or the harsh nature of the Russian North. The director, in turn, admiring the original imagination, the huge talent of a young colleague and not wanting to constrain him with the rigid framework of technological tasks, gave the composer creative freedom. Tishchenko became a full-fledged co-author of these films, creating music of the highest quality, making full use of the opportunity given to him to experiment in the field of meter, rhythm, fret, timbre, various ensemble compositions and modern composition techniques. Documentary films in the Soviet Union of those years (we are not talking here about outright "propaganda") allowed the authors to express themselves in a non-trivial, modern way, made them think, differed in a certain intellectualism, since it was not designed for too wide an audience ^[2]. All this was in tune with Tishchenko's music, his search in the field of "new" symphonism. The composer collected the scattered episodes for the films into suites (though not published until now), in this form they received a full concert life. It seems that these compositions were important to the author, he embodied in them much of his composing experience.        

Tishchenko preferred monumental symphonism, the surroundings of "Suzdal" and "Palekh" — the ballet "Twelve", the grandiose Second Symphony "Marina", the First Cello Concerto, "Requiem" to poems by A. Akhmatova. In the reviewed film suites, the author seems to have armed himself with a sharpened reed stick for calligraphy, so subtly and precisely does he work with orchestral timbres. Here we do not find the most significant stylistic, linguistic signs of Tishchenko's music — a pronounced tendency to deformation of everyday genres, quoting "low", symbolization of musical speech, prolonged pumping, turning ordinary-looking motives into universal evil and passing further into rampant destructive forces. But the suites became an important milestone on the composer's symphonic path and occupied a fairly solid place in his orchestral catalog. In the stylistic orbit of both compositions, the author involved all possible avant-garde techniques of contemporary musical writing.   

Work on the short film "Suzdal. Pages of the Past" was the first meeting in the cinema of Shuster and Tishchenko. For the director, it turned out to be the debut work at Lennauchfilm. Schuster created a kind of "portrait" of the ancient city, with pleasure "plunging" into its endless, centuries-old history, enjoying the amazing architecture of its cathedrals and churches. In "Suzdal", the two main hobbies in Schuster's life — art criticism, love of artifacts and directing - were combined in a remarkable way: the birth of a story lasting in time about what is dear and interesting to him, addressing the viewer and listener through the lens of a movie camera. But for Tishchenko, this work turned out to be remarkable.  The history of Ancient Russia, full of harsh charm and detached and proud grandeur, bell ringing and ascetic sounds of church chants is an organic line of his work, the culmination of which is considered to be the ballet "Yaroslavna" that appeared ten years later.

The composer collected the music for the film into a suite in nine parts, calling it "Suzdal. Songs and games"^[3]. The orchestra here is extremely chamber, it is a small ensemble of soloists, in which the predominance of wind instruments is noticeable (in addition to the oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, French horn and trumpet, bells, harp, piano and violin also sound). Tishchenko additionally introduces two vocal parts into the score — soprano and tenor with a folk text, which in itself already brings an archaic element to the work. The musical numbers are concise and even aphoristic. These are not so much landscapes as sketches, however, executed as accurately as possible. In the foreground here are the smallest details and strokes, matching timbres and patterns of melodic lines. The manner of writing resembles the music-making of folk performers. They gather together and improvise: sometimes everyone has their own, sometimes they exchange remarks, and often they adjust to a partner. But all this is under the vigilant control of Tishchenkov's high intellect: he precisely constructs this improvisation, fills any motive with thought, opposes orchestral timbres as advantageously as possible, giving each instrument not only pronounced functions of soloists, but also assigns to them an individual image, a "line of conduct", "humanizing" them. There are no actors in the film, there is no everyday life, there are no dialogues, so Tishchenko's music, saturated with conversational intonation, fills the space entirely, the actor's word no longer has a place in it. Music is too informative to fade into the background, it requires attention to itself, it does not want to share leadership with anyone. But this is exactly what Tishchenko is, and the small suite to the documentary turns out to be a very accurate "self-portrait" of him, a very definite reflection of his entire extensive symphonic work.

The language of the suite is modern and organic at the same time ^[4], there are almost no verticals, harmony arises as a derivative of moving horizontal lines or, in some cases, in prolonged pedal consonances, tart, unexpected, fascinating. The smallness, so characteristic of Tishchenko's film music and so rare in his parallel large symphonic works, becomes a joy to the ear — you have time to recognize the timbre, follow the instrumental line, listen to the motive, rejoice at the unusual combination of voices. There is something of Stravinsky in this music, from his "Russian cycle" of the first years of emigration, from "Tales" ^[5], finally (without a pronounced buffoonish beginning).   

 In the first number ("Ancient Cities"), the quiet singing of a high (salt of the third octave) of an absurd violin is broken by the blows of low piano clusters, after a pause, a shrill "cry" of the oboe is heard (like the voice of a strange and mysterious bird that was suddenly startled), fading along with the bell. The lapidary phrase of the bassoon soars skyward and, already to the much more insistent stroke of the bell, the violin responds with aching dissonances. From the first sounds, a sparse, maximally spaced by registers sound space appears as pure frosty air, as a breathtaking view from the bell tower of an ancient monastery.

The second number ("Black Woodpecker") it is even more brief than the first one: the "sinuous" figuration of the clarinet is superimposed on the dragging sound of the oboe, which begins with a sharp forschlag (this is salt again, the tone becomes an important element in the architectonics of the suite, the oboe will always return to it). Again, the oboe has a "screaming" phrase from the beginning of the suite — it begins the third, longest number is "The First Song about Suzdal". It is based on a folk text, the tragic meaning of which does not need too long comments: "Get a haircut, my nemilaya, get a haircut, my postylaya. I'll give you a hundred rubles for a haircut, I'll give you a thousand rubles for a haircut. I'll put a cell in the red city of Suzdal for a little, a little. Princes and boyars came together and marveled at that cell. And what kind of cell is this, and a thin one, and a little one. And what kind of an old woman is this that a young girl has been tonsured." These words sound in the tenor in a high register, with sharp rhythmic breakdowns and constant stops like crying, like unbearable pain, causing compassion for the eternal Russian female share. In the orchestra there are long pedals of harp and piano (author's remark lungo sonore sempre), unexpected sff pipes that add some kind of painfulness to the overall atmosphere of the song, and wide intervals of the violin, which she seems to "inflate", contributing to the overall creepy picture. The phrases of the tenor soloist are broken by the oboe "scream theme" from the first number, it becomes a connecting intonation link in the suite.

The fourth number — "Black Woodpecker" — repeats the material of the second part with insignificant changes, it is replaced by bizarre "highlights" of the piano (filled, however, with rhythmic energy) on the "howls" of the French horn and bassoon ("Outlandish Animals"). Glissandi French horns evoke thoughts of some ancient worlds, about primitiveness, while the pointillism of the piano returns consciousness to the modern channel. Then the text "Laugh, my nemilaya" sounds in the female version of the soprano solo ("The Second Song about Suzdal"), which came unchanged in the suite from the earlier Tishchenkov cycle "Sad Songs" (1962). Compared to the tenor version of folk words, the melody here is completely different, the character is different, the rhythmic pattern is new: tense in high tessitura, but detached in the manner of utterance, the story about the eternal and bitter theme of lost, cooled love. The recording of this number is remarkable: only halves and quarters and the complete absence of division into bars is an endless intonation line in which the performer can place her accents, fill the vocal matter with her own meanings. The oboe and clarinet parts are whimsically intertwined in an inventive dialogue in the next issue — "Dawn on the Nerl". Sadness appears in the character of the play. Improvisationality, the freedom provided by the composer, only seems so. Tishchenko prescribes it precisely, very clearly marking the boundaries of performing freedom.  After the scherzo-sharp dance "Pattern Game", in which the bassoon and bell join the oboe and clarinet, the laconic "Black Woodpecker" sounds again. The low sounds of the harp give this part a character of mystery and mystery.

In "Suzdal" Tishchenko uses instrumental timbres very interestingly. Each of the soloists has his own character, his "physiognomy", his role in the overall sound process, and the composer insists on observing the rules of ensemble music-making established by him. The piano part is filled with essentially bell clusters, the harp imperceptibly adjusts either to the piano, or plays in chords with wind instruments. Tishchenko does not use it as an alternative to the Old Russian gusli, the only harp solo sounds only in the very last number. The violin, and this is very interesting, has no solo playing at all, only long pedal intervals. All solo instrumental episodes are given by the author to wind instruments, first of all, to the oboe: the folklore origins of his timbre are obvious. The clarinet and bassoon fill oboe tunes with a variety of figurations, and a pair of clarinets is used by the author for time-sustained wide intervals and static pedals.  The brass wind instruments sound extremely lapidary: the trumpet has several sharp pop-songs in "The First Song about Suzdal", and the French horn listens wonderfully to the "vytye" invented by the author in "Outlandish Beasts". Inventively, bells participate in the common cause, but also quite succinctly.

A year after "Suzdal", Shuster and Tishchenko are working on another popular science film, now about masters from the Ivanovo hinterland, from the village of Palekh. Since pre-Petrine times, Palekh was famous for its icon painters, after the revolution of 1917 they had to retrain as masters of lacquer miniature. It must be admitted that they turned out this art wonderfully, it was the New Soviet Palekh tradition — painting with tempera on wood, and Shuster's film is dedicated to it. The composer collected the film fragments he created into a small suite "Palekh"^[6]. There is very little music by Tishchenko in this picture, and the composition of the orchestra (ensemble) continues the line of "Suzdal" with emphasized attention to solo wind instruments. The composer is again interested in a variety of timbres and their original combinations: two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two French horns, trumpet, trombone, tuba, xylophone, timpani, violin and cello. In a tiny (no more than five minutes) orchestral miniature, malonotye is even more striking than in "Suzdal".

The composer does not assign long lines to the instruments, but stratifies, splits, "scatters" bizarre short songs and individual sounds throughout the space of the score. There is a wonderful sound game, like sun glare, a kind of brightly colored "spots". Sharp, flying, slightly dancing intonations create a festive atmosphere, which, without any doubt, is also present on the paintings of Palekh caskets, caskets or brooches. It is noteworthy that even in such a "frivolous" play, Tishchenko builds dramaturgy: closer to the point of the "golden section" there is a climax. The disjointed, seemingly uncontrollable musical ligature is transformed for a short time. There are active strong-willed ensemble exclamations of several instruments at the same time, virtuoso passages of woodwinds, sharp accents of bass trombone, and, as a result, three sharp, slightly "evil" chords of the entire vertical of the orchestra on fff.

The noisy burst of instrumental energy gradually subsides, dissolves, disappears in neat pizzicati strings, light, muffled staccati French horns and whistling flutes. "Palekh", despite its extreme conciseness, is an important part of Tishchenko's orchestral heritage. The stylistics of the work is quite difficult to determine (we can talk about pointillism techniques, methods from Stravinsky's arsenal, neo-impressionism), there is a search, novelty in everything, but also recognizable elements of his own compositional language characteristic of the young author. "Palekh" in a good sense is original among Tishchenko's other works. His freshness, organicity and catchy modernity, slightly muted by the intimacy of his utterance, become a serious milestone on his symphonic path. 

The tools of "Palekh" are much more diverse than in "Suzdal". The composer needs bright colors, the game impulse is even more significant here. There is absolutely no severity, detachment, tragic hopelessness in the play. The sound of the suite is akin to a warm sunny one the light of an elegant box: it is pleasant to "take it in your hands", the joy of creativity and creation comes from the music of "Palekh". The soloists of the ensemble are in live instrumental dialogues. Tishchenko uses a variety of combinations of timbres, numerous imitations, speech intonations. The piccolo flute can be in dialogue with the tuba, and the violin can respond to the bassoon or bass trombone. Chants and cues pass from one voice to another, enriching the overall sound palette: orchestral timbres mix, shimmer, and are saturated with shades, like paints on a master's wooden tablet. 

In "Suzdal" and "Palekh", the author demonstrated almost his entire arsenal of modern composition techniques, violating metrorhythmic regularity, using sophisticated dimensions, polyrhythmy, elements of dodecaphony, pointillism, aleatorics and sonoristics, he clearly and definitely declares fresh solutions and approaches, principles of renewal, the collapse of previous foundations. Both suites are atonal, moreover, in "Suzdal", as we have already noted, the steady tone is at the very top of the ensemble vertical, the harmonic "pyramid" seems to be turned upside down. In "Palekh", the uncompromisingly "torn" texture is impressive, disintegrating into numerous musical "atoms". Each individual sound becomes important and weighty, akin to Webern's "polished crystals". The composer uses film works to search for new stylistics, samples of fresh techniques, and in this regard, suites are at the epicenter of his language experiments. Let's recall Tishchenko's conversation with his colleague V. Bibergan. In response to the praise of the music for "Suzdal", he proudly told about his methods of working with thematism: "You know, there are solid "mirrors" and "crayfish" here" ^{[3, p. 317]}.

The folklore basis of both suites deserves special attention. V. Syrov noted that Tishchenko's folk art is not associated with quoting, but with free creative implementation, and in this regard he continues strong traditions in Russian music ^{[4, p. 43]}. Indeed, the composer is extremely organic in his early film works, nowhere following the tradition literally. He deeply absorbed and refracted it through his own hearing of folk music, including it in his figurative and stylistic clip. A. Demchenko also writes about this: "Being one of the "sixties", he discovered the energy of avant-garde means of expression and, in parallel with the innovations of Western "technologies", actively participated in the formation of a "new folklore wave" of purely domestic "production". As we know, then next to such significant experiments as "Kursk Songs" and "Wooden Rus" G. Sviridova, "Not only love" and "Naughty ditties" by R. Shchedrin, "Songs of Freemen" by S. Slonimsky and V. Gavrilin's "Russian Notebook", his "Suzdal" and "Palekh" appeared" ^{[5, p. 39]}. It should be noted that if in "Suzdal" the author's desire to enrich the suite with elements of folklore language is quite obvious, to break the folk song tradition in the cutting-edge, avant-garde style, then in "Palekh" a completely different approach. The game, dance beginning comes to the fore here. In two compositions similar in initial tasks, the composer demonstrates a diverse technical embodiment, without constraining his creative imagination once and for all with the acquired skill. Thus, these suites became a continuation of the composer's development of Tishchenko himself and an important component of the process of updating the entire domestic symphonism of the second half of the twentieth century.

To confirm the exact words of A. Demchenko, let's consider another remarkable work of Tishchenko in a documentary film — the music for Schuster's film "Northern Studies" ^[7] (1968), this time about the Solovetsky Monastery and people living on islands in the White Sea. According to the saturation of folklore, this is perhaps the most revealing work of Tishchenko, he uses here authentic folk tunes collected in conservative expeditions. The composer arranged the scattered numbers into a rather lengthy suite for a small orchestra — instrumental ensemble: oboe, clarinet, trombone, a compact but extremely diverse percussion group (snare drum, box, tom-tom, tom—tom, bells), harp, piano violin, viola, two cellos and, of course, human timbres - songs Ulyana's grandmother and a tape recording of a child's voice. Extremely free meter, not constrained by clock restrictions, inventive timbre work, precise distribution of sound roles, colorful sonoristics based on clusters of bells, harp and piano, naturally horizontal monody, fresh and sometimes unexpected textured and ensemble solutions. In everything — as if improvisation, strictly controlled by the author. The suite is full of subtle instrumental details, curious modern techniques of notography, it reflects, as in the waters of the White Sea, the key stylistic characteristics of the young composer, the linguistic signs of "new" music.

There are twelve numbers in the work-sketches, musical impressions related to architecture, nature, art and everyday life of the Pomors. The composer's imagination, embodied in a colorful sound recording, is truly limitless. "Northern saints" (in the Russian North, there was a special circle of revered saints, their iconographic faces were often created by ordinary people who knew them, remembered their appearance) — a bizarre "ligature" of oboe and clarinet, accompanied by the chromaticism of two cellos and the strokes of a bell. "Solovki. Engravings are" ascetic and concise: the harp and ricochet of the violin seem to echo the expressive singing of the clarinet. "Solovki. The evening" is very beautiful: the duet of harp and oboe is joined by zasurdinennye strings. Unexpectedly, the number of "Solovki. Night. Prison" (a gloomy name, if you recall the Solovetsky special purpose camp, but in the play we are talking about the famous monastery prison, which existed for several centuries and finally closed at the end of the XIX century). The piano performs a powerful, register-scattered chord cadence, saturated with a rigid dotted rhythm. He is echoed on fff by bells and tom- toms: a mighty, long-distance ringing. "Monastery" is an expressive monody of a trombone on booming bell chords. In the "Bells" there is an expanded solo of bells, it is echoed by calm piano chords. "Kiy Island" (a tiny, extremely picturesque rocky island in the Onega Bay of the White Sea with a Monastery of the Cross located on it) is a small, rhythmically inventive toccata for 6/8. The oboe and violin are gradually joined by all the other instruments of the ensemble. "Grandma Ulyana. Funny toys" (wooden toys: dolls, horses, animals and birds, angels, tops, rattles, sometimes painted, more often — with preservation of natural ornament) — a playful march with variable size (5/4, 6/4, 7/4), like a procession of wooden soldiers. It starts with a trombone with mischievous glissandi, the piano has "clusters" of clusters, the strings and woodwinds have "wild" microchromatics and hard rhythms. "Sad toys" turn out to be the complete opposite of the previous issue: a leisurely elegant dance trio of oboe, violin and cello. In the "Birch Tree" Tishchenko introduces a tape recording of a child's voice (even three voices superimposed on each other) with the words: "You give a voice through the dark forest." The whole number, in fact, is a long—drawn folk song on the sustained pedals of a string group. Wooden protrusions with subtle imitation the material that sounds in the voice.

The texts and musical notation of Babka Ulyana's songs are very interesting. Tishchenko gives them in the appendix to the score and asks them to perform between No. 8 ("Cue Island") and No. 9 ("Grandmother Ulyana. Funny toys"). There is no doubt that these songs were recorded by the composer himself. He participated in a conservative expedition trip to the Opochetsky district of the Pskov region in 1959 under the guidance of the famous folklorist N. L. Kotikova and to the Lodeynopolsky district of the Leningrad region in 1962 under the guidance of the authoritative collector of folk tunes F. A. Rubtsov. Moreover, it is known for certain that his colleagues on the second trip were composers V. Gavrilin, S. Banevich and G. Belov, musicologists-conservationists N. Ryazanova, A. Schnittke, S. Sigitov, N. Dolzhanskaya, conductor E. Serov. Both monodies are recorded in the bass key (at the turn of the minor and first octaves, i.e., in a real hoarse-contralto register), in an extremely free meter (without clock features), with numerous signs of aleatorics and microchromatics. If the text of the first song is typically deplorable and tells about the hopeless fate of a Russian woman ("All people live like flowers grow. My head is withering like the grass. Withers like grass and mowed. Wherever I go, I'll get all the blame. You give a voice through the dark forest. Through the dark forest and into Moscow Kamenna"), then the second is filled with rude folk humor, mixed with an almost surreal picture of village life ("You sell, husband, a cow with a mare, get me a kokoshnik with a golden scythe. I came to mass, they didn't recognize me. They say: "Whose, whose beauty? And the tailor's wife“ (laughter). I came from mass and sat on the bench. And my husband goes and carries a yoke: "Harnessed wife in big firewood, we will go with you to the dark forest for firewood" (laughter). Under the mountains on the mountain, he slaps. And from the mountain he whistles (laughter, muttering)").

An interesting idea about Tishchenko's work of the 1960s was expressed by V. Syrov in an article published already in this century: "Another roll call is "minimalism", which was established in Russian music in the 80s. In Tishchenko's 60s, the prerequisites of minimalism look organically in the context of the search for a "new folklore wave". Examples are some numbers of the vocal cycle "Sad Songs", "Postscript" of the Third Symphony, instrumental suites "Suzdal", "Northern Studies" ^{[6, p. 141]}. It is difficult for us to agree with such a statement. Tishchenko's colleagues in the composition workshop (A. Schnittke, S. Gubaidulina, E. Denisov) just in the mid-1960s, they also worked a lot with small orchestral compositions, with multi-timbre instrumental ensembles^[8]. In such compositions, skills were honed and fresh creative and technological ideas were born. The high intellectualism of S. Shuster's documentaries^[9] stimulated the special freedom of self-expression of the young co-author, and their fragile beauty demanded the intimacy of utterance. Tishchenko, as always, strictly subordinated the means of musical expression to the general artistic idea. Any other (larger-scale) music would come into conflict with the subtle and refined lines of black-and-white Schuster art.     

"Northern Studies" is a little—known score by Tishchenko, in which he organically embodied the folk song tradition, using the impressions received during the collection of field expedition materials. The composer thoughtfully studied folklore sources, dissolving folk tunes in his own language, while enriching it with new stylistic techniques. 

^[1] Solomon Shuster (1934-1995) was the son of a collector and a famous collector of Russian avant-garde paintings. According to the memoirs of film director S. Solovyov, he was "one of the most colorful and memorable figures in the Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet art world of the bygone twentieth century and, to a special extent, in the cultural world of Leningrad" ^[1]. Shuster dreamed of making films all his life, at one time he studied at the famous Higher Directing Courses in the workshop of G. Kozintsev and began his collaboration with Lenkinochronica with the documentary film "Suzdal" in 1964, where his partner just turned out to be a very young Tishchenko. Directing was something of a hobby for Shuster, a hobby, but his highest intelligence, deep rooting in the cultural life of Leningrad and a great desire to master the profession, to take place in it, allowed him, in the end, to shoot feature films: "He never shot anything stunning, but, mind you, not I took it off and there was nothing bad to be ashamed of. Throughout his adult life, Solomon shot his modest, dignified, calm, always very "Shuster" paintings" ^[1].

^[2] Nowadays, such a movie would fall into the category of arthouse.

^[3] "Suzdal. Songs and Games", suite for soprano, tenor and chamber ensemble. Op. 30 (1964). I. Ancient Cities; II. Black woodpecker; III. The first song about Suzdal; IV. Black Woodpecker; V. Strange animals; VI. The second song about Suzdal; VII. Dawn on the Nerl; VIII. The play of patterns; IX. Black woodpecker. First execution: January 26, 1966, DC of the First five-year plan. Ensemble of soloists of the ZKR Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Conductor B. Tishchenko; soloists E. Gromova, A. Manukhov. Score: manuscript.

^[4] "Suzdal has aroused attention with a new type of synthesis of modern musical language and Russian archaic" ^{[2, p. 56]}.

^[5] I. F. Stravinsky. "A tale about a fox, a rooster, a cat and a ram" (1916) is a musical and stage work for 4 male voices and 16 instrumentalists.

^[6] "Palekh", film music, suite. Op. 34 (1965). Score: manuscript

^[7] "Northern Studies", suite for ensemble. Op. 42 (1968). I. Northern Saints; II. Solovki (engravings); III. Solovki (evening); IV. Solovki (night, prison); V. Monastery; VI. The bell; VII. Russian "grandmothers"; VIII. Cue Island; IX. Funny toys; X. Sad toys; XI. Birch; XII. Conclusion. First performance: January 5, 1971, Gorky, Philharmonic Concert Hall. Chamber Ensemble of the All-Union Radio and Television, artistic director A. Korneev.

^[8] M. Tarakanov rightly says that "in the 60s there was a well-known departure from broad-ranging, global symphonic concepts in favor of more modest, sometimes even chamber compositions, where the foreground is not so much an acting as a reflecting hero, striving to find an answer to the fundamental questions of his personal existence" ^{[7, p. 93]}.

^[9] In one of the conversations with the author of the dissertation, the composer's widow Irina Anatolyevna Tishchenko-Donskaya called Solomon Shuster a genius, adding that they had warm and friendly relations with Boris Ivanovich.