A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (review)
2002; Music Library Association; Volume: 59; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/not.2002.0113
ISSN1534-150X
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Musicological Studies
ResumoOver the past two decades or so, the field of Russian music studies has undergone a sea change; research by foremost musicologists, most of them American, led by Richard Taruskin, has resulted in nothing short of a major revision of the history of Russian music. Many notions previously held to be unassailable have been reconsidered and consequently altered. This obviously began even before the breakup of the [End Page 74] former Soviet Union and it is still ongoing. As a result, what has been needed is a general work that encapsulates and incorporates these revisions into a "new" history of Russian music for a wider audience. Francis Maes has provided us with that work. In fulfilling this goal, Maes has fashioned a book that is engagingly written (and translated), logically organized, and elegantly presented. Within its fourteen chapters, spread out over 374 pages, Maes charmingly and persuasively explains and documents the 140 years or so of this revisionist history, beginning with Mikhail Glinka and his Life for the Tsar in 1836 and ending with the death of Dmitry Shostakovich in 1975. Based on the reappraisal of primary documents, the music, and the milieux (cultural, historical, and social) in which the composers lived and worked, this revision affects in some respect most major composers in this study—namely, Glinka, Mily Balakirev, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Aleksandr Borodin, Modest Musorgsky, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergey Rachmaninoff, Alexsandr Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky (through Les Noces), Sergey Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Three lesser-known composers, Aleksandr Dargomizhsky, Aleksandr Serov, and Anton Rubinstein, through their music, activities, and influence, also figure significantly in this history. Although Maes discusses or briefly mentions numerous other composers and their works in relation to trends or developments of their time, his focus remains on those named. Further, Maes does not include any of the post-Shostakovich (or even, for that matter, post-Stalin) generations of composers.
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