Defining ‘Russianness’, defining ‘Austrianness’ – defining ‘Europe’: Austrian Tchaikovsky imageries during the Allied occupation, 1945–55

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay will examine critical discourses regarding Peter Tchaikovsky as a symbolic figurehead of high-brow Russian music in the two most widely circulated Austrian newspapers of the Allied occupation period: the Wiener Kurier (WK) and the Salzburger Nachrichten (SN), both affiliated with the US administration. In the context of Austria’s (problematic) denazification, post-war reconstruction, nation-building and reorientation towards the West, the reception of Tchaikovsky serves as a litmus test of negotiations concerning questions of cultural capital, habitus, musical canon, and nationalism (Otherness), Austria’s position as Europe’s Musikland, and a composer’s branding. Influential critics evaded a clear positioning within the Cold War ‘East–West’ context by appropriating Tchaikovsky for constructing an Austrian, European identity from a position of cultural power. This led to the coexistence of several musical ‘Russias’ in the Austrian public space: Soviet cultural diplomacy, US promotion of musical modernity (Stravinsky) and Austrians’ own, and self-interested, reconstruction of a Russian ‘national’ canon. Wiener Kurier and Salzburger Nachrichten columnists display a significant degree of middle-term continuity, while developing remarkable independence from and agency vis-à-vis the hard power presence of both the United States and the USSR, by subverting the superpowers’ cultural offensives, engaging in Austrian prestige politics, and affirming their interpretative sovereignty and knowledge-power within the re-emerging Austrian musical field. The music critics’ robust judgment, combined with the relative popularity that Tchaikovsky enjoyed, affirmed the considerable autonomy of the cultural field, and the discursive pre-eminence of musical conservatives and their knowledge-power.