A History of Russian-Soviet Music . James Bakst .

1967 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-307
Author(s):  
Boris Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

James Bakst, A History of Russian-Soviet Music. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966. Pages x, 406. $12.50.

Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 522-523
Author(s):  
Stanley D. Krebs
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

The Adventures of Soviet Music in the West: Historical Highlights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levon Hakobian
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

This chapter deals with the history of Soviet music’s relations with the outside world from the mid-1920s until the end of the millennium. During all these decades the Soviet musical production of any coloration was perceived by the free Western world as something largely strange or alien, often exotic, almost ‘barbarian’. The inevitable spiritual distance between the Soviet world and the ‘non-Soviet’ one resulted in some significant misunderstandings. Though some important recent publications by Western musicologists display a well qualified view on the music and musical life in the Soviet Union, the traces of past naiveties and/or prejudices are still felt quite often even in the writings of major specialists.

scholarly journals The reception of Soviet music in the west: A history of sympathy and misunderstandings

Muzikologija ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 125-137
Author(s):  
Levon Hakobian
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

In this concise survey, the evolution of Western attitudes to Soviet music is retraced: from a certain interest in the early Soviet avant-garde, through ?Cold War? attempts to keep alive the works banned under Stalin, to the support of the Soviet avant-garde of the ?60-70s and the recent vogue for Soviet music of a stylistically ?moderate? kind, which has never been popular among Russian connoisseurs. Side by side with manifestations of sympathy, some typical misunderstandings are pointed out.

scholarly journals The Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music Transformations of Programming Policies

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Gąsiorowska
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Phenomena ◽  
Soviet Music ◽  
International Status

Abstract The present paper surveys the history of the Warsaw Autumn festival focusing on changes in the Festival programming. I discuss the circumstances of organising a cyclic contemporary music festival of international status in Poland. I point out the relations between programming policies and the current political situation, which in the early years of the Festival forced organisers to maintain balance between Western and Soviet music as well as the music from the so-called “people’s democracies” (i.e. the Soviet bloc). Initial strong emphasis on the presentation of 20th-century classics was gradually replaced by an attempt to reflect different tendencies and new phenomena, also those combining music with other arts. Despite changes and adjustments in the programming policy, the central aim of the Festival’s founders – that of presenting contemporary music in all its diversity, without overdue emphasis on any particular trend – has consistently been pursued. The idea of introducing leitmotifs, different for each Festival edition (such as: music involving human voice, mainly electronic, etc.) – is not inconsistent with this general aim since the selected works represent different aesthetics, and the “main theme” is not the only topic of any given edition of the Warsaw Autumn.

A History of Russian-Soviet Music

Notes ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
R. Sterling Beckwith ◽  
James Bakst
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

The Caucasian Connection: National Identity in the Ballets of Aram Khachaturian

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-438
Author(s):  
Harlow Robinson
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Sergei Prokofiev ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Dmitri Shostakovich ◽  
Special Place ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bolshoi Ballet ◽  
Soviet Music

The ballets of Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) occupy a special place in the history of Soviet ballet and of Soviet music. Considered along with Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev as one of the leaders of Soviet music, Khachaturian devoted many years to the creation of ballet, although in the end he produced only three ballet scores: Schast'e [Happiness], completed in 1939; Gayane, completed in 1942; and Spartak [Spartacus], completed in 1954. Of these three, Gayane and Spartacus (both repeatedly revised) were notably successful, both immediately acclaimed as important new achievements in the development of an identifiably Soviet ballet style. Taken on tour abroad by the Bolshoi Ballet in a revised version, Spartacus also became one of the most internationally successful ballets written by a Soviet composer, although it never came close to equaling the international recognition eventually achieved by Prokofiev's Soviet ballets Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella. Gayane was not widely staged outside the USSR, but some of the music from the ballet, arranged into three orchestral suites by the composer, became very popular internationally—particularly the “Sabre Dance,” which became the single most recognized piece of Khachaturian, recycled repeatedly in Hollywood film scores.

A History of Russian-Soviet Music

1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Gerald Seaman ◽  
James Bakst
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Music

The Struggle for Proletarian Music: RAPM and the Cultural Revolution

Slavic Review ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Soviet Music ◽  
Russian Association ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Since the 1930s, the zealous, idealistic proponents of musical revolution in Soviet Russia, the Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh muzykantov (Russian association of proletarian musicians, RAPM), have served primarily as an embarrassing footnote to the history of Soviet music and cultural politics. Scholarly opinion of RAPM is remarkably consistent in its condemnation, as Russian-Soviet scholars and westerners alike dismiss the organization for its "simplistic" (western) or "vulgar" (Soviet) ideology and aesthetics. This consensus suggests that RAPM deserves its place in the dustbin of history alongside the Rossiiskaia assotsiatsiia proletarskikh pisatelei (Russian association of proletarian writers, RAPP) and other militant advocates of cultural revolution. But the condescending (western) and embarrassed (Soviet) dismissal of RAPM is itself simplistic. Seeing members of RAPM as undertalented and unwitting tools of the regime's agenda, or misguided if well-intentioned deviationists, obscures the important role the proletarian musicians played in the evolution of Soviet musical culture and aesthetics.

scholarly journals Untaken Peaks of “National Musical Construction”

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-559
Author(s):  
Alexander L. Maklygin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Successful Solution ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Infrastructure ◽  
Insurmountable Obstacle ◽  
Artistic Heritage ◽  
Soviet Music

The article is devoted to the process of the establishment of national professional musical practices in the national culture of the 1920–1940s on the example of creating the first operas. Initiated by state policy, the accelerated rise of academic art in the new Soviet republics brought about different artistic results, where, alongside the successful solution of the tasks set, the phenomenon of creative failure was adjacent. This was especially manifested in the work on the opera as the most complex and highest genre of European music. As a result of this work, the problematic aspects of the accelerated conquest of academic artistic tasks in the national republics were distinctly expressed: lack of the necessary socio-cultural infrastructure, a weak level of musical and performing personnel and the creative unprepared pioneer composers to solve opera dramaturgical problems. The “folklore thinking” of the first opera authors encountered a number of genre problems, the overcoming of which was expressed in all kinds of national interpretations aimed at combining strict European canons (for example, the phenomenon of the so-called “Turkic opera”). The most common event in the national republics was the phenomenon of “unfinished operas”, which demonstrated a certain antagonism of the composer’s folklore thinking and the necessary genre standards. The surviving sketches of many failed opera “firstborns” are mainly exposition areas of the form — arias and choirs based on folk song material. The development sections of the form, as well as orchestration, turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle. By the end of the 1940s, a whole group of “failed operas” had already developed in Soviet music, each of which in its own way presents dramatic pages of the history of Soviet music as multinational art. Without attention to this “invincible” and often latent part of the artistic heritage, the completeness of the true conquests of Soviet national musical “construction” cannot be revealed.

On Gavriil Popov’s Symphony No. 1 (To the First Publication of the Score)

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Н.А. Мартынов
Keyword(s):  
Musical Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lady Macbeth ◽  
Public Executions ◽  
Soviet Music ◽  
Outstanding Work

В статье рассматриваются вопросы, связанные с историей создания, исполнения, запрета и  дискуссий вокруг Первой симфонии выдающегося отечественного композитора, выпускника Ленинградской консерватории Гавриила Николаевича Попова (1904–1972). Судьба сочинения оказалась трагической: исполненная лишь однажды, симфония была запрещена. Так произошла одна из первых «публичных казней» музыкального произведения — еще до  печально известных публикаций об опере «Леди Макбет» и балете «Светлый ручей» Д. Шостаковича, положивших начало борьбе с «антинародным формалистическим направлением» в музыке. Долгие годы замалчивания привели к тому, что яркое достижение отечественной симфонической школы «выпало» из истории советского искусства. Усилиями музыковедов И.  Барсовой, И.  Ромащук, Е.  Власовой, И.  Воробьёва, дирижеров Г. Проваторова и А. Титова Первая симфония Попова была возрождена к жизни. Сейчас готовится к печати первое издание этого незаслуженно забытого произведения. The article discusses issues related to the history of creation, performance, prohibition and discussions which surrounded the First Symphony of the remarkable Russian composer Gavriil Popov. The fate of the composition turned out to be tragic: once performed, the symphony was banned. It was one of the first public “executions” of a musical work — even before the infamous articles of the newspaper Pravda about the opera Lady Macbeth and the ballet Light Stream by Dmitry Shostakovich, which marked the beginning of the struggle against the “anti-national, formalistic trend” in music. Long years of oblivion led to the fact that the Symphony “fell out” of the history of Soviet music. Through the efforts of such musicologists as Inna Barsova, Inna Romashchuk, Yekaterina Vlasova, Igor Vorobyov, conductors Gennady Provatorov and Alexander Titov, Popov’s First Symphony was revitalized. And now the question arises regarding the first publication of this undeservedly forgotten outstanding work of the Soviet music.

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