scholarly journals Shostakovich’s Topics

Per Musi ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Luciano de Freitas Camargo
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Soviet Music ◽  
Structural Positions

The study of musical signification constitutes an important key for the comprehension of Shostakovich’s music. This becomes particularly evident when one observes that social and political background plays an important role in his compositional process through the configuration of specific musical topics on structural positions of his music. These specific topics have arisen after cultural and social events during the establishment of the Soviet Union and became typical elements of the Soviet Music. This paper aims to show the function of these elements as compositional roots in the creative concept of Shostakovich’s music. The rising of the concept of musical topic after Leonard Ratner (1980) has opened new paths for a consistent comprehension of the musical discourse, identifying social and cultural signs that may articulate ideas which go beyond the music itself: ideology, criticism and politics became elements of musical expression, composing a new soundscape of music in Revolutionary Russia.

scholarly journals Boris Asafiev and soviet musical thought: Reputation and influence

Muzikologija ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Daniel Elphick
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
To Come ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Soviet Music ◽  
Musical Process

The theories of Boris Asafiev, including musical process, symphonism, and intonatsiya, proved to be hugely influential in the Soviet Union and beyond. While Asafiev?s ideas were widely adopted by theorists and audiences alike, they were also appropriated by a generation of music critics. As composers struggled to come to terms with what might constitute socialist-realist music, critics built a discourse of projecting meaning onto works via Asafiev?s theories. At the same time, multiple theorists developed and expanded his ideas. The picture that emerges is of a multitude of applications and responses to a multivalent body of work that became a vital part of musical discourse in the latter half of the Soviet Union. In this article, I survey the main theories from Boris Asafiev?s writings on music, and their significance after his death. I begin by defining key terms such as symphonism, musical process, and especially intonatsiya. I then discuss the 1948 Zhdanovshchina and Asafiev?s involvement, and the less well-known 1949 discussions on Musicology. For the remainder of the article, I provide examples of key studies from Soviet music theorists using Asafiev?s terms to illustrate how their usage expanded and, in some cases, moved away from Asafiev?s myriad intentions.

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.

Journey to America

1962 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-128
Author(s):  
Boris Yarustovsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Music

In November, 1959, the composers Fikret Amirov, Konstantin Dankevitch, Dmitri Kabalevsky,1 Tikhon Khrennikov, Dmitri Shostakovitch, and the musicologist Boris Yarustovsky made an official visit to the United States under an agreement between the American and Soviet governments which had made possible the visit of the Americans Roy Harris, Ulysses Kay, Peter Mennin, and Roger Sessions to the Soviet Union the year before. Yarustovsky wrote an account of his impressions for the February 1960 issue of Soviet Music, a journal of the Union of Soviet Composers. In selecting excerpts from that lengthy report I have tried to retain both the breadth and the quality of Yarustovsky' s observations. Yarustovsky belongs to a society which believes that the artist is a potent ethical force and that his responsibilities to society take precedence over considerations of personal fancy. To us, the implications of that belief seem dangerous; to Yarustovsky, the danger lies in ignoring the implications.

Glasnost and Perestroika in Russian Soviet Music Education

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-212
Author(s):  
Laurence Lepherd
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Soviet Music ◽  
Considerable Concern

There is considerable concern in the Russian Federation of the Soviet Union about the state of music education in general schools, the schools most children attend. Many observers draw attention to the decline in musical standards in these schools since the Revolution of 1917. Glasnost – ‘openness’ and Perestroika – ‘reconstruction’, are key factors in contemporary Soviet society which are affecting attempts to raise the standard. In particular, the Kabalevsky system developed in the 1970s and implemented in the 1980s is the focal point of reconstruction and, because of openness, is also the focal point of criticism.In this article the author outlines some of the features of current music education in general schools. The influences of glasnost and perestroika on development are discussed and some international implications are suggested.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Andy Byford
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Child Development ◽  
Social Self ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Child Study ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Science In Russia ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Interwar Era

The book’s introduction sets out the historical, social, cultural, and political background, linking the rise of child science in Russia and elsewhere with processes of rapid modernization characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter begins by relating the emergence of the sciences of the child at this particular historical juncture to the expansion of the professional middle classes, highlighting the role that the concept of development played in the latter’s social self-understanding, which in turn helped shape the ideologies of the rising welfare/warfare states. The historical roots of the child study movement are identified in an evolving post-Enlightenment biopolitics of childhood. The chapter stresses the normative nature of the sciences of child development and outlines the different kinds of norms that came to shape this field’s interests and priorities. Next, the chapter dwells on the multidisciplinary and inter-professional character of child science, elaborating how this both influenced and problematized its mobilization and self-identification as a movement. Also highlighted is the transnational nature of this movement. An analysis of the positioning of Russians within it is followed by a discussion of the path that child science took in the Soviet Union in the interwar era. The concluding section is a review of extant historiography on Russo-Soviet child science and a brief outline of the content and approach of the present study.

Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet

Tempo ◽  
1949 ◽  
pp. 30-32
Author(s):  
Iris Morley
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Other ◽  
Original Music ◽  
New Work ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Music

In the Soviet Union of today, as in the Imperial Russia of the past, ballet occupies the position of a major art and enjoys all the privileges of that station, not the least of which is having original music composed for each new work. Few of the distinguished names in Soviet music have not, at some time or other, appeared upon the score for a ballet, and as these are all three or four acts long, composing for the ballet can be compared to writing an opera—a major work requiring time and co-operation with the other arts involved.

Women, wars and militarism in Svetlana Alexievich’s documentary prose

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-326
Author(s):  
Aliaksandr Novikau
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Gender Perspectives

This work examines the war prose of Svetlana Alexievich, an author from Belarus who writes predominantly in the oral history genre about significant political and social events in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet states. Alexievich is the 14th woman who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature and is one of just a few nonfiction authors recognized by the Nobel Prize Committee. Although only one of Alexievich’s writings from her magnum opus – the grand cycle of books Voices of Utopia – is explicitly devoted to women in wartime, essentially many of her creations analyze war from gender perspectives. Her honest and raw books are based on carefully documented eyewitness accounts of the scariest things that can happen to people in horrific wartime situations. In each of her works, Alexievich emphasizes the discrepancy between the official Soviet discourse of glorious wars and the survivors’ true accounts of the horrors they experienced.

scholarly journals Musikgeschichte der DDR: Ein Pilotprojekt zur digitalen Musikvermittlung

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Tischer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

Thirty years after the so-called ‚Wende‘, a fundamental and comprehensive study of the musical history of the GDR - encompassing both the music itself and the political and cultural contexts (i.e. the musical relations) - still represents a desideratum. The same is true for a long-term comparative music history of the divided Germany, for which the our project develops some essential prerequisites. The research project presented here is an informed cultural-historical analysis of the musical discourse of the GDR under the auspices of the Cold War. It is not about a revised version of national history only, because despite a relatively strong national and regional self-centredness of the musical life of the GDR, it can hardly be understood without the political and cultural references to the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic of Germany and the neighbouring European states.

scholarly journals SOME HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND AND REASONS FOR THE CREATION OF THE 1ST POLISH INFANTRY DIVISION NAMED AFTER TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO IN 1943-1945

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Muratuly ◽  
◽  
D. Panto ◽  
A. Smanova ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Research Article ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Background ◽  
The Creation

In this research article addresses the issue from the point of view of the Soviet government a "betrayal" of the Polish General Anders, and it was his decision to evacuate the entire Polish army in the Soviet Union, particularly from Kazakhstan and Central Asia in Iran. Some historical and political reasons for the creation of the 1st Polish infantry division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko are investigated.

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