I will say a few words for proletarian music.
I spent four years as washroom attendant at the conservatory, in my capacity as a specialist.
And let me tell you: nowhere is there such a bourgeois domination as in music.
Comrades! Why is it that they've stuck us, the proletariat, with a three-stringed balalaika, and grabbed those grand pianos -- with more strings on them than that guy over there's got hairs on his noggin -- all for themselves?
Why?
And I'll tell you too, comrades, that those grand pianos are nothing but a swindle. We all know that music has seven notes, the so-called gambit. But those bastards have crammed so many notes in there that I've seen guys barely manage to keep up with both hands! And they always have to keep pushing on something underneath, too. What kind of fairness is this? If you cut one of those grand pianos up, you could make eight little ones out of it, for the people.
Comrades, we don't need those Schuberts and Muberts -- we want our own, real, proletarian stuff!
And those little black keys that they've got sprinkled all over the place? We get three strings -- or maybe seven, like on a guitar -- and they get both white keys and black ones?
"Half-tones," they say. Yeah, yeah -- what good does that do us? No good at all. The other day, I tried to play Don't Cry, Marusya, You'll Be Mine Yet, using only the white ones -- and it worked just fine! So what are the black ones for? Just to lull the class consciousness of the proletariat?
So they give us those crappy balalaikas, and in the meantime, they make almost a hundred keys for themselves -- out of ivory! It's true, I swear. They kill an elephant and make piano keys out of him. Why? What if the elephant's just as much a human being as you and me? Nothing but brutality and oppression.
Take their scores. They're so messed up, on purpose, so you'll go nuts trying to make head or tail of them. Why do they write their squiggles on five lines? Why not on one? It must be the vodka talking. Just like it's easier for a guy who's plastered to walk on five floorboards than on one -- so, same here, they scatter their chicken-scratch up and down, up and down. It's embarrassing. Show it to me all on one line, if you're a real musician!
And those sharps and flats... Some idiot sticks a bunch of them on the left-hand side, and I'm supposed to remember that? What if I don't want to?!
And even that's not enough for them: they've come up with these "naturals," too. What the hell's natural about them? The working proletariat doesn't find them natural!
That's all those running dogs are trying to do -- make it harder to understand.
Have you seen that thing they call a treble clef? It looks like a tapeworm. How does that help with anything?
And those pauses! If you're gonna play, then keep playing honestly all the way through -- don't stop and just knock your paw against the floor. Or else we could do some knocking, too, if you catch my drift.
To conclude my lecture, I can only say this: the Russian proletariat is already awakening, and once it wakes up fully and completely -- it'll show you such music that all these Tchaikovskys, Mayakovskys, Mechnikovs and Bechnikovs will spin in their graves!
Loud applause from the audience.