Ritzarev, Marina. Tchaikovsky's ‘Pathétique and Russian Culture (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 363 personified in Gan’s close association with the artists Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. Lodder argues that Gan was a man of wide-ranging talents, and as such it is difficult to categorize him (p. xi). He edited two important journals, CinemaPhoto (Kino-Fot, 1922–23), and Contemporary Architecture (Sovremennaya arkhitektura — SA, 1926–30), which articulated Constructivist theory and practice in relation to film, photography and architecture. Gan also worked in theatre and film, designed some of the first kiosks embodying Constructivist principles, and developed the theory and practice of typography along Constructivist lines (p. ix). Lodder also explores Gan’s organizational and administrative involvement with the arts after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and amid the context of the emerging debates on Constructivism’s role in contemporary Soviet life. Her examination of the artistic and political setting profoundly enriches Gan’s text, making this publication a crucial resource for future scholarship on this important figure. Lodder’s knowledge of Gan’s career and reputation, her mastery of the complex historical and theoretical debates of the time and her ability to analyse diverse cultural positions in an integrated manner is impressive. In her account of Gan’s career, Lodder interweaves discussion of both contemporary theory and art-historical debates of the 1920s with close reading of a wide range of primary sources. This volume is an important contribution to the growing literature on Russian Constructivism, and will become essential reading for scholars and students of Russian cultural history and politics of the twentieth century. Rutgers University Alla Rosenfeld Ritzarev, Marina. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ and Russian Culture. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2014. xiv + 169 pp. Music examples. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. £60.00. Ever since Rimskii-Korsakov first pressed Chaikovskii for details of the programme he claimed to have heard in the Sixth Symphony on the occasion of its premiere on 16 October 1893, critics have expended a great deal of effort and not a little imagination in trying to uncover the hidden narrative of the Pathétique. They are justified, of course, by Chaikovskii’s claim, made in a letter to his nephew, Bob Davydov, that the idea behind the work ‘will remain a riddle for everybody’ (p. 1), as well as by his early intention to call the new work a ‘programme symphony’. Marina Ritzarev’s new interpretation of the symphony is just the latest attempt at solving the riddle and in many ways, SEER, 93, 2, APRIL 2015 364 it is an auspicious project. Ritzarev is a well-respected historian of Russian music, with a strong command of sources and a feeling for cultural semiotics (her principle area of expertise has been the eighteenth century). With her insider’s knowledge of the field, she is hardly likely to make the errors of interpretation that so mar the writings of certain Western scholars, such as Timothy L. Jackson’s now infamous Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) (Cambridge, 1999). Blessedly, Ritzarev dispenses with the disreputable notion that the symphony was a requiem for the composer himself, a musical suicide note written as he faced a scandal over an alleged affair with a young man with high connections. Rather, she argues that the work is an ‘artistic reflection of the Passion in symphonic form’ (p. 47). Superficially, Ritzarev’s intuition has much to recommend it and she adduces a considerable body of evidence relating to the question of the composer’s religious faith (or lack thereof). She makes interesting parallels with the writings of Dostoevskii and Tolstoi, as well as with the prominent depiction of religious themes in the visual arts at the time (although it must be said that Chaikovskii’s feeling for painting was rather limited, at least in comparison to his literary sensibility). She even assays an etymological interpretation of the symphony based on the fact that the Greek word pathos and the Latin one passionis may both allude to Christ’s suffering, as well as to human emotion, as in the interplay between the Russian words strasti and stradaniia (p. 156). That fact is, however, that the symphony’s subtitle was proposed by Chaikovskii’s brother, Modest, and not by the composer...