Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk

Abstract

Reviewed by: Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk Albrecht Gaub Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times. By Patrick Zuk. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2021. [xlviii, 533 p. ISBN 9781783275755 (hard-back), $99; ISBN 9781787448155 (e-book), price varies]. Illustrations, music examples, maps, index, bibliography. During the gestation of Patrick Zuk’s long-awaited biography of Russian/Soviet composer Nikolaĭ , Gregor Tassie anticipated Zuk and published a biography, Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). Zuk dismisses the earlier work in his preface: “Tassie’s [book] contains little original research and relies heavily on standard Soviet publications of the composer” (p. xxx n. 33)—and ignores it thereafter. While Tassie’s book is problematic in many ways (see my review in Notes 72, no. 3 [March 2016]: 558–61), it does contain a fair amount of original research. Tassie, on his part, does not mention Zuk’s earlier articles at all, seminal though they are. Be this as it may, although Zuk’s book is in no way a response to Tassie’s, I could not help comparing the two as I read along. Like Tassie’s book—or even more so—Zuk’s is a biography focused on one composer and his environment. Unlike Tassie’s, Zuk’s is well written and competently edited, even though there are a few glitches, such as the consistent misspelling of Berkeley as “Berlekey.” Zuk does acknowledge literature in languages other than Russian and English, but when he elaborates on surveys of Soviet music by Western authors (pp. xxvii–xxix), Dorothea Rede-penning’s monumental and relatively recent Geschichte der russischen und sowjetischen Musik, vol. 2: Das 20. Jahrhundert (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2008) goes unmentioned; if Zuk considers it insignificant, he should say so. Another no less striking omission is the collection of essays Neizvestnyĭ Nikolaĭ : d iz XXI veka ([The Unknown : A View from the Twenty-First Century], ed. Elena Dolinska [Moscow: Kompozitor, 2006]). Neither book appears in the bibliography. The narrative unfolds in strict chronological order. Identifying and correcting myths handed down from the Soviet [End Page 239] era is one of Zuk’s goals. This becomes apparent already in his description of the prerevolutionary St. Petersburg Conservatory (or “Conservatoire” in the uncompromisingly British style of his book) as a fossilized institution stifling creativity, with Anatoly Konstantinovich Lyadov receiving particularly harsh treatment. Trained as a military officer before studying music, was mobilized during the entire First World War and saw action on the front in Galicia. This chapter of Zuk’s narrative is most gripping, but the map on page xlviii should show the historical borders rather than the modern ones. The Fifth Symphony (1918), performed and printed in 1922, initiated the brief vogue that the composer internationally enjoyed in the 1920s and early 1930s. ’s contract with Universal Edition in Vienna, signed in 1925, was seminal in this, even though always remained distrustful of the “businesslike ways” of the publisher, represented by Abram Dzimitrowski, and of “the West” in general (pp. 240–44). Zuk’s description of the first fifteen Soviet years is bleak. Material need and hunger were pervasive, with only some relief during the time of the New Economic Policy (1924–29), and musical life in Moscow, where had settled in 1918, was accordingly meager. Zuk demonstrates that the famous Association for Modern Music, in which figured prominently, originated as some kind of Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen, and its outreach remained always limited (pp. 214–18)—unlike that of its antagonist, the Russian Association for Proletarian Music, which was one of the driving forces of the 1928–32 Cultural Revolution. The German invasion of Russia in 1941 caused new turmoil. While Soviet historiography paints a heroic picture of the composers in trans-Caucasian and, later, Central Asian evacuation, Zuk exposes the dire conditions under which the composers existed. Zuk sheds new light on ’s circle of friends. Soviet literature idealizes his lifelong friendship with Sergey Prokofiev; Zuk takes a more nuanced view. While the much older was a mentor to the rebellious prodigy during the early years, their relationship was reversed after resumption of contact in the 1920s...