Russian Music

Soviet and Russian music of the first third of the 20th century--with the exception of the music of a few high-profile composers who were officially sponsored by the State--is still largely unexplored territory, known only to a few specialists. Nevertheless, the music has considerable intrinsic value well beyond its curiosity appeal, and includes many pieces unaccountably forgotten and certainly worth reviving, to the ultimate enhancement of our concert repertoire. The study of this music also explains much about the foundations of Soviet culture and its subsequent suppression and decline under the Stalinist yoke. The purpose of this volume is to stimulate interest in this little-known area of Soviet/Russian music. The works charted here constitute a great flowering of avant-garde music which was then savagely dealt with for Stalin's political purposes.

This anthology of Russian music criticism reveals the reactions of leading critics to new Russian music in the period 1880-1917. Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin were in their prime, and several new generations emerged: Rachmaninoff and Skryabin, Stravinsky and Prokoviev. Works reviewed range from In the Steppes of Central Asia and the Pathétique Symphony to The Golden Cockerel and The Rite of Spring.

In a wide-ranging account of a variety of cultural forms and site of cultural production -- literature, cinema, radio, television, the visual art, journalism, advertising and consumerism, music theatre, the Church -- this groundbreaking book gives greater prominence to the processes of cultural reception than in previous texts. In essays by an international roster of specialists, the volume spotlights the role images of national identity, gender politics, youth culture and the interactions of public and private consciousness have played in the formation of cultural forms in the USSR and post-communist Russia.

Donald W. Treadgold was professor of Russian history in the history department and the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington.