Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia by Amy s> Nelson (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 327 historicalsensitivityand tracesan arcfrom Pushkin'soriginalmock-heroictext of I820, through the rise of official nationalism in the I830s, to 'the advent of the I840s an epoch that turned out to be introspective,self-searching, withdrawninto a privatespace' (p. 55). Gasparov'sclaim that '[i]n one way or another, virtuallyall of the major achievements in Russian literature,music, and thoughtin the second half of the nineteenthcenturywere due to thisshift' (p. 55) is typical of his tendency not to see works of art as emanations of a certain historicalmood, but the very agents of culturaltransformation.Thus the incoherence and anxiety of Modest Musorgskii'sKhovanshchina is seen as a positive advantage,anticipatingas it does not only aspectsof modernism,but also 'the dawns and eruptionsof the century that was to come' (p. I3I).And, as the century progressed, Russian art began to enjoy a resonance beyond its borders;BorisGodunov itself the subjectof an importantstudy by Caryl Emerson (BorisGodunov: Transpositions of a RussianTheme,Bloomington and Indianapolis,I986), that has clearlyinfluencedGasparov,as have the writings of RichardTaruskin- marksthe high point of Russianinfluencein the West, most famously on Debussy's PelleasandMelisande, but more strikingly,on the orientalismof Puccini's Turandot. The five operas discusseddate from a fifty-yearperiod between I840 and I890; the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is dealt with in terms of the reception of Russian music in modernism Europe. But what of the symphony mentioned in the book's subtitle?At first glance, the inclusion of a chapter on Dmitrii Shostakovich's symphonies of the high Stalinist era, particularlythe enigmatic Fourth, seems peculiar,not least because his opera LadyMacbeth of theMtsensk Districtmight well have been the expected exhibit. Furthermore,Shostakovich'smiddle symphoniesmarkthe composer'sinterest in the abstractheritageof the grand,Austro-Germannineteenth-centurysymphony and hence might seem out of place in a book about words and music. Yet even here, as Gasparovsuggests,'[t]he listeneris overcome by the distinct feeling that the music is striving to tell him something, to communicate directly' (p. I63), and hence the inclusion of these works adds to our understanding of the hermeneutics of Russian music, one of the most contentious scholarlyquestionsof the moment. As Gasparovarguesin the book'sconcluding sentence (in a discussionabout the fate of the Russian national anthem, surelythe most significantinteractionbetween words and music),'[t]he words come and go, succumbingto ever-changingcircumstances,and yet the music remains unshakablein its unarticulatedbut palpable message' (p. 2I8). School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies PHILIP Ross BULLOCK Universiot College London Nelson, Amy. Music for theRevolution: Musicians andPowerin EarlySoviet Russia. The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 2004. xvi + 330 pp. Illustrations.Musical extracts.Notes. Glossary.Bibliography . Index. $45.00: f3195. As Amy Nelson observes, twentieth-centuryRussian music is dominated by the discussionof Stravinskii,Prokof'evand Shostakovich,as well as by 'images 328 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 of terror,censorship,and the repressionof intellectualfreedom' (p. xiii). The literaturethatflourishedbetween the October Revolution and Stalin'sconsolidation of power has been well studied but, until recently, the music of the period has been less well understood. Scholarssuch as Detlef Gojowy, David Haas, Peter Deane Roberts and LarrySitskyhave shed light on modernism, and Neil Edmunds has studied the proletarianmovement. Now, drawing on archivaldocuments, contemporaryjournals and the insightsof historianssuch as Katerina Clarke, Boris Groys and Sheila Fitzpatrick,Nelson focuses her attention on the individuals and institutions that shaped and were shaped by Soviet musical policy as it evolved over the course of the 1920S and offers an impressiveaccount of the period that is both rich in detail and strong in analysis. An introductorychapteris dedicatedto the initialimpact of the Revolution, as well as to debates between those who felt that revolutionaryart should rejectthe elite cultureof the past and 'otherswho wanted to make the cultural legacy of the past accessible to the proletariat' (p. 14). Thereafter, Nelson eschews a conventional narrative,preferringinstead to analyse a number of key themes in detail. Chapterstwo and three are devoted to 'modernist'and 'proletarian'groups respectively. It is here that one of the strengthsof this book becomes apparent. Nelson refuses to see this as a period in which beleagueredmodernistsand vulgarproletarianswere lockedin a fatalstruggle for supremacy,preferringto concentrateon the complex interactionbetween artistsof a variety of views. Arguing that 'the avant-gardein music was...