Prokofiev's Soviet Operas

Prokofiev's Soviet Operas
Author: Nathan Seinen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 110708878X

Offers a critical and contextual study of the last four operas of Prokofiev, the leading opera composer in Stalin's Soviet Union.

The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement

The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement
Author: Neil Edmunds
Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN:

The question of how music and politics interact has always aroused passionate debate, and it looms large in this study of the Soviet proletarian music movement. The proletarian music movement was the driving force behind many of the developments in early Soviet musical life, and its influence was felt long after the groups that belonged to it disbanded in 1932. It consisted of politicians, composers, musicologists, performers and educators who were united by their desire to create a dictatorship of the proletariat in musical life, and develop musical forms that responded to the needs of their new society. Based largely on primary and contemporary secondary sources, this book charts the history of the proletarian music movement, examines its beliefs, and discusses its work in the fields of musical education, amateur musical activities and composition. It discusses the origins of important characteristics of Soviet musical life, sheds light on a neglected area of early Soviet cultural history, examines how the cultural apparatus was mobilised to instil a political ideology, and challenges how Soviet musical life of the 1920s has traditionally been viewed.

Classics for the Masses

Classics for the Masses
Author: Pauline Fairclough
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2016-05-28
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0300219431

Musicologist Pauline Fairclough explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavor. Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how “undesirable” repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how Russian and non-Russian composers such as Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Bach, and Rachmaninov were “canonized” during different, distinct periods in Stalinist culture. Fairclough’s fascinating study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical-political landscape identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than occurring post-World War Two, as is often maintained, while documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia
Author: James Von Geldern
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 1995-12-22
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780253209696

This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.

The Stalinist Era

The Stalinist Era
Author: David L. Hoffmann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107007089

Placing Stalinism in its international context, The Stalinist Era explains the origins and consequences of Soviet state intervention and violence.

Everyday Stalinism

Everyday Stalinism
Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1999-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195050002

Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.

On Russian Music

On Russian Music
Author: Richard Taruskin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0520268067

This volume gathers 36 essays by one of the leading scholars in the study of Russian music. An extensive introduction lays out the main issues and a justification of Taruskin's approach, seen both in the light of his intellectual development and in that of the changing intellectual environment.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music
Author: Christopher R. Wilson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1289
Release: 2022
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0190945141

"This compendium reflects the latest international research into the many and various uses of music in relation to Shakespeare's plays and poems, the contributors' lines of enquiry extending from the Bard's own time to the present day. The coverage is global in its scope, and includes studies of Shakespeare-related music in countries as diverse as China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and the Soviet Union, as well as the more familiar Anglophone musical and theatrical traditions of the UK and USA. The range of genres surveyed by the book's team of distinguished authors embraces music for theatre, opera, ballet, musicals, the concert hall, and film, in addition to Shakespeare's ongoing afterlives in folk music, jazz, and popular music. The authors take a range of diverse approaches: some investigate the evidence for performative practices in the Early Modern and later eras, while others offer detailed analyses of representative case studies, situating these firmly in their cultural contexts, or reflecting on the political and sociological ramifications of the music. As a whole, the volume provides a wide-ranging compendium of cutting-edge scholarship engaging with an extraordinarily rich body of music without parallel in the history of the global arts"--