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Music
for the Revolution Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia
Amy Nelson
5/25/2004 | 346 pgs | 6.125 x 9.25
20 Illustrations |
History,
World History, Music
Hardback: $48.00 SH
ISBN: 978-0-271-02369-4
Winner
of the 2005 Heldt Award given by the Association for Women in Slavic
Studies of the AAASS as the Best book by a woman in any area of
Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies
Mention
twentieth-century Russian music, and the names of three “giants”—Igor
Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitrii Shostakovich— immediately
come to mind. Yet during the turbulent decade following the Bolshevik
Revolution, Stravinsky and Prokofiev lived abroad and Shostakovich
was just finishing his conservatory training. While the fame of these
great musicians is widely recognized, little is known about the creative
challenges and political struggles that engrossed musicians in Soviet
Russia during the crucial years after 1917. Music for the Revolution
examines musicians’ responses to Soviet power and reveals the
conditions under which a distinctively Soviet musical culture emerged
in the early thirties.
Given
the dramatic repression of intellectual freedom and creativity in
Stalinist Russia, the twenties often seem to be merely a prelude
to Totalitarianism in artistic life. Yet this was the decade in
which the creative intelligentsia defined its relationship with
the Soviet regime and the aesthetic foundations for socialist realism
were laid down. In their efforts to deal with the political challenges
of the Revolution, musicians grappled with an array of issues affecting
musical education, professional identity, and the administration
of musical life, as well as the embrace of certain creative platforms
and the rejection of others. Nelson shows how debates about these
issues unfolded in the context of broader concerns about artistic
modernism and elitism, as well as the more expansive goals and censorial
authority of Soviet authorities.
Music
for the Revolution shows how the musical community helped shape
the musical culture of Stalinism and extends the interpretive frameworks
of Soviet culture presented in recent scholarship to an area of
artistic creativity often overlooked by historians. It should be
broadly important to those interested in Soviet history, the cultural
roots of Stalinism, Russian and Soviet music, and the place of music
and the arts in revolutionary change.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Musical Examples
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Bread, Art, and Soviet Power: Musicians in Revolution and Civil
War
2 The Peculiarities of the Soviet Modern: NEP Culture and the Promotion
of “Contemporary” Music
3 The Three Faces of the Musical Left
4 Of “Cast-Off Barroom Garbage” and “Bold Revolutionary
Songs”: The Problem of Popular Music, 1923–1926
5 Politics and Patronage: State Agencies and the Development of
Cultural Policy During NEP
6 “Training Future Cadres”: Modernization and the Limits
of Reform at the Moscow Conservatory
7 The Music of 1927: Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the
Revolution and the Centennial of Beethoven’s Death
8 Cultural Revolution
Epilogue
Glossary
Works Cited
Index
Amy
Nelson is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech.
