Fastidious Horses / Vladimir Vysotsky

Today I will write of a great modern Russian poet, Vladimir Vysotsky. A prominent theatre actor in his own right, his real fame originated in a corpus of approximately 500 poems, written to be sung under the accompaniment of a Russian string guitar.

Musically, as songs, these works were usually very basic, almost always set in the same minor scale, melodically simple and avoiding complex guitar technique.

The lyrics are another matter entirely. Vysotsky employs different stratas of regular, everyday speech (including the Russian criminal jargon, "fenya", illiterate women's speech, 'proletariat speech', 'intelligent Soviet citizen speech'), however beneath it is a powerful undercurrent of the author making a point - and often having a very good swing at it. Almost all songs were performed by the author; when employing the different stratas of speech, he masterfully accented them, achieving perfect intonation, ranging from straight-out parody to profound drama.

Vysotsky himself was a highly educated man (which was desirable for theatre actors of his time, unlike much of what's hot in Hollywood or the Israeli show industry today). He was a patriot, and as all Soviet citizens, fearful from the KGB. However his sense of poetic honesty often brought him to mention the inhumanity and insincerity of the regime, usually not head-on. What appears to the Western observer as mild and casual critique, was quite acrimonious in Soviet standards. However, due to his popularity Vysotsky himself did not suffer personal persecution, besides not being allowed to perform officially for most of his life. Instead, his recordings had to be distributed via bootleg channels.

Personally, Vysotsky was extremely temperamental, fiery and unstable. He was an alcoholic and probably also a drug user. This led to his early death at age of 43. The song I bring here - 'Capricious Horses', 'Кони привередливые' - appears to be based on his personal feeling of going over the edge, several years prior to his death.

• Original lyrics in Russian


• Unruly Horses by Kathrine and Bruce Hamilton. Notable for its high poetic language.


• Capricious Horses by Ilya Shambat - sounds a bit easier.

I also attach a video of a performance by Vysotsky himself. I saw once a comment (I'm not sure if on this video or another one of the same song) - some lady wrote that 'seems he really means it'. He sure did.