Who: Paul the First, Russian emperor. 

Why: since his personality, history and connections managed to arouse my interest. I feel he was and is underestimated, and it’s very unfair that people around him – like his own subjects that spammed with offensive cartoons in the infamous “yellow box”, noblemen that assassinated him, and even his own mother – had been extremely inconsiderate towards him since early childhood, many hated and mocked him, labelled him hilarious and even insane. Of course I can understand those people, for example noblemen, who wanted to get rid of him because of his unpredictable moves in inner and global politics, for example possibility of falling into disfavour any day, and “friendship” with Napoleon Bonaparte lead to breaking relations with Britain and immediately and significantly affected the economy and noblemen’s lives. Perhaps Paul’s desperate frantic attempts to “put everything in order”, his obsession with chivalrous ideals, his tough character and abuse of power were bothersome and even unbearable, but I strongly believe that violence is absolutely unacceptable, and the atrocious murder of Paul the First can not be justified no matter how “noble” the cause was. How: I chose “Passacaglia” by Anton Webern as the core of my product, since, in my opinion, the style of expressionism in music perfectly fits into the emperor’s profile: hectic, frantic and often tragic, as it’s unstable and lacks tonality. “Passacaglia” by Anton Webern in this context conveys the feelings of melancholy, when Paul wasn’t an emperor and, according to his notes, “was doing absolutely nothing”, and escalates to the expression of both physical and emotional anguish. I decided to combine the music with the sound from the death scene of Paul the First from the Soviet experimental film “Assa”, since I watched it while studying about Paul the First. It’s ironic and dramatic that the film is Soviet, but it perfectly illustrates the tragedy of murdering the Tsar. In my humble opinion, these two soundtracks excellently compliment each other, and the changes in music match with the key moments from the film scene.