Download or read book Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia written by Boris Schwarz and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Such Freedom If Only Musical written by Peter J Schmelz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels--many of questionable legality--to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo P?rt, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar creations. This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in post-war arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society.
Download or read book Music Under the Soviets written by Andrey Vasilyevich Olkhovsky and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Red Wave written by Joanna Stingray and published by Doppelhouse Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir by an American who almost single-handedly introduced Soviet rock to the free world, [...] Stingray, who wrote this memoir with her daughter, Madison, nicely captures her daring amid an atmosphere of liberation and fear, and she's a study in moxie and enthusiasm. --Kirkus Reviews As one of the first American musicians to break through the Soviet scene, and one of the few women to be seen as an equal amongst Leningrad's pantheon of rock superstars, Stingray's perspective on the development of late Soviet rock is probably the single most important source for those who want a birds-eye view of late Soviet youth culture, and Stingray's stories are as entertaining as they are relevant and illuminating. --Alexander Herbert, author of What About Tomorrow?: An Oral History of Russian Punk from the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot Wild and vivid -- a rollicking memoir of romance and rock 'n' roll in an era of upheaval and transition. From Los Angeles to Leningrad and back again, Joanna's story is borne along by her infectious, headlong enthusiasm. It's quite a ride. --Patrick Radden Keefe, creator of the Wind of Change podcast and author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland The history of Russian rock music could have been very different without Joanna Stingray. Joanna was friends with rock musicians, recorded songs with them, shot their videos and brought them clothes and instruments from the West. Her video footage, capturing young icons of Russian rock like Viktor Tsoi, Sergei Kuryokhin, Timur Novikov and Boris Grebenshchikov, is rare evidence of the golden era of the Soviet underground. --The Moscow Times Red Wave is a warm and conversational autobiography about a lost world, peopled with courageous artists risking their freedom for the ideas of expression, art, and rock 'n' roll. [...] We root for her and her friends to overcome bureaucracy, oppression, isolation, deprivation, and the heavy footsteps of the KGB. [...] In a readable and personable way, Red Wave helps shine some light into this remarkable corner of rock history. --Tim Sommer, Guernica Joanna Stingray's appearance in St. Petersburg in the early 1980s must have been God's response to our unconscious prayers. Her naive bravery, curiosity and generosity created a kind of a lifeline for us rockers: she brought in things we needed to play our music, and took out not only our recordings but the very message of our existence. Had it not been for her and her Red Wave, it would have taken Aquarium many more years to have official records on Melodiya and Kino to start touring Europe. This fearless maiden broke through the siege that looked hopelessly unbreakable. She threw a life-saver into our waters and she changed everything. No matter how many times we thank her -- it's never enough. --Boris Grebenshchikov (Aquarium), 2018
Download or read book Soviet Music and Society Under Lenin and Stalin written by Neil Edmunds and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the place of music in Soviet society during the eras of Lenin and Stalin. It examines the different strategies adopted by composers and musicians in their attempts to carve out careers in a rapidly evolving society, discusses the role of music in Soviet society and people's lives, and shows how political ideology proved an inspiration as well as an inhibition. It explores how music and politics interacted in the lives of two of the twentieth century's greatest composers - Shostakovich and Prokofiev - and also in the lives of less well-known composers. In addition it considers the specialist composers of early Soviet musical propaganda, amateur music making, and musical life in the non-Russian republics. The book will appeal to specialists in Soviet music history, those with an interest in twentieth century music in general, and also to students of the history, culture and politics of the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Music Under the Soviets written by Andrey Olkhovsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2024-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music Under the Soviets (1955) examines the concept of Soviet music, its special characteristics and its differences from the musical tradition of the West. As the musical practice under the Soviet totalitarian dictatorship, it should be viewed as the musical policy of that regime, a policy which aims at the 'reconstruction' of not only the historically developed musical forms but the essence of music itself as artistic creation. It was during the years of Stalin that Soviet music acquired its peculiar features, developed its most characteristic distinguishing marks, and determined the paths of its evolution.
Download or read book Such Freedom If Only Musical written by Peter J Schmelz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels--many of questionable legality--to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar creations. This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in post-war arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society.
Download or read book Virtuosi Abroad written by Kiril Tomoff and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet musicians and ensembles were acclaimed across the globe. They toured the world, wowing critics and audiences, projecting an image of the USSR as a sophisticated promoter of cultural and artistic excellence. In Virtuosi Abroad, Kiril Tomoff focuses on music and the Soviet Union's star musicians to explore the dynamics of the cultural Cold War. He views the competition in the cultural sphere as part of the ongoing U.S. and Soviet efforts to integrate the rest of the world into their respective imperial projects. Tomoff argues that the spectacular Soviet successes in the system of international music competitions, taken together with the rapturous receptions accorded touring musicians, helped to persuade the Soviet leadership of the superiority of their system. This, combined with the historical triumphalism central to the Marxist-Leninist worldview, led to confidence that the USSR would be the inevitable winner in the global competition with the United States. Successes masked the fact that the very conditions that made them possible depended on a quiet process by which the USSR began to participate in an international legal and economic system dominated by the United States. Once the Soviet leadership transposed its talk of system superiority to the economic sphere, focusing in particular on consumer goods and popular culture, it had entered a competition that it could not win.
Download or read book Back in the USSR written by Artemy Troitsky and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First hand account of the history of rock music in the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Classics for the Masses written by Pauline Fairclough and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A History of Russian Soviet Music written by James Bakst and published by New York : Dodd, Mead. This book was released on 1966 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Music for the Revolution written by Amy Nelson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-02-24 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book X ray Audio written by Stephen Coates and published by X-Ray Audio. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many older people in Russia remember seeing and hearing mysterious vinyl flexi-discs when they were young. They had partial images of skeletons on them, could be played like gramophone records and were called 'bones' or 'ribs'. They contained forbidden music. X-Ray Audio tells the secret history of these ghostly records and of the people who made, bought and sold them. Lavishly illustrated in full colour with images of discs collected in Russia, it is a unique story of forbidden culture, bootleg technology and human endeavour.
Download or read book Notes from Underground written by Thomas Cushman and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-07-06 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the Russian rock music counterculture and how it is changing in response to Russia's transition from a socialist to a capitalist society. It explores the lived experiences, the thoughts and feelings of the rock musicians as they meet the challenges of change.
Download or read book Testimony written by Solomon Volkov and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed classical composer chronicles his life and work in twentieth-century Soviet Russia with the help of a distinguished musicologist. Since the time of his death, Dmitri Shostakovich’s place in the pantheon of twentieth-century composers has become more commanding and more celebrated, while his musical legacy, with all its wonderfully varied richness, is performed with increasing frequency throughout the world. This seemingly endless surge of interest can be attributed, at least in part, to Testimony, the powerful memoirs the ailing compose dictated to the young Russian musicology Solomon Volkov. When Testimony was first published in the West in 1979, it became an international bestseller, and was called the “book of the year” by The Times in London. The Guardian heralded Testimony as “the most influential music book of the 20th century.” Testimony offers a chance to reckon with the life and work of one of history’s most lauded musical geniuses—as a man and an artist.
Download or read book Dangerous Melodies Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War written by Jonathan Rosenberg and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Juilliard-trained musician and professor of history explores the fascinating entanglement of classical music with American foreign relations. Dangerous Melodies vividly evokes a time when classical music stood at the center of twentieth-century American life, occupying a prominent place in the nation’s culture and politics. The work of renowned conductors, instrumentalists, and singers—and the activities of orchestras and opera companies—were intertwined with momentous international events, especially the two world wars and the long Cold War. Jonathan Rosenberg exposes the politics behind classical music, showing how German musicians were dismissed or imprisoned during World War I, while numerous German compositions were swept from American auditoriums. He writes of the accompanying impassioned protests, some of which verged on riots, by soldiers and ordinary citizens. Yet, during World War II, those same compositions were no longer part of the political discussion, while Russian music, especially Shostakovich’s, was used as a tool to strengthen the US-Soviet alliance. During the Cold War, accusations of communism were leveled against members of the American music community, while the State Department sent symphony orchestras to play around the world, even performing behind the Iron Curtain. Rich with a stunning array of composers and musicians, including Karl Muck, Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Kirsten Flagstad, Aaron Copland, Van Cliburn, and Leonard Bernstein, Dangerous Melodies delves into the volatile intersection of classical music and world politics to reveal a tumultuous history of twentieth-century America.
Download or read book MUSIC UNDER THE SOVIETS written by ANDREY. OLKHOVSKY and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
