|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
THE UNION OF SOVIET COMPOSERS: ITS HISTORY, DOMINANCE, AND INFLUENCE
The Soviet Union has long been the subject of speculation and conjecture. ... What were the results of the oppression that the Soviet composers experienced? ... The Union of the Soviets was a promise of a life unfettered by all-powerful leaders. ...
Beginning in 1921, many events brought in a new chapter of Soviet life. ... This is how it would remain throughout Soviet history:
the center would determine the face of Soviet culture…
All was not bad news for musicians during this period. ... The Moscow association endorsed contemporary music concerts and kept close contact with international composers. ... These composers were described respectively as “White Guard bandit,” “degenerate aristocrat,” and “obscurantist. ... Pshibuyshevesky was fired and arrested, and the portraits of Tchaikovsky and other classical composers reappeared.
On 23 April 1932, Shostakovich was one of six representatives
from Leningrad in attendance with other composers in Moscow
at a two-day (April 23 and 25) conference held by Anatoliy
Lunacharsky’s successor as cultural commissar, Andrey Bubnov.
Along with other speakers, Shostakovich analyzed the unhealthy
situation in Soviet musical life, cataloguing the abuses of RAPM’s
despotic stranglehold on Soviet music and its vindictive persecution
of ideological opponents…He appealed for the immediate formation
of a Union of Soviet Composers, and when the Leningrad branch
was organized in August 1932 he was elected to its governing board,
taking an active role in its future development. That the party and
Soviet society seemed to be demanding of its composers a wider and
more sophisticated spectrum of musical attainments - from symphonies
and operas to chamber and variety music - than the marches and mass
songs that had been condoned almost exclusively by RAPM, came as
heartening news to Soviet musicians. ... Little did they realize that they exchanged
the dictatorship of a small clique for the control of a super-power - the Soviet
government and bureaucratic machinery of the Party.
In the field of music, the body that would be in charge was the Union of Soviet Composers. This Union was organized first in Moscow, and then was organized in Leningrad, and later organized in all of the Soviet Union. This Composers’ Union was the only group sanctioned to publish and commission music.
Composers were obliged to attend meetings at which their work was
discussed and criticized while it was still in progress, a practice that
gave rise to the typical Soviet phenomenon known as “Bolshevik self-criticism.”
Composers were expected to allow their work to be constantly examined
by collegues and to take account of their views. ... From 1933 onward, the findings of such forums were published in the Union’s journal,
Sovyetskaya muzika (Soviet Music).
“It took some time, however, for Soviet composers were to realize that they were no longer free to write music as they wished, without regard to the Party line.”
This was particularly true of such a composer as Shostakovich, who
found it hard to forget the relative freedom of the twenties and whose
style was closely related to that of contemporary Western Composers.
It was necessary for the Party bureaucrats to discipline Shostakovich
not once but repeatedly and through him the Soviet composers who
followed his example. ...
“The Soviets themselves [had] been unable to arrive at a precise concept, and the official pronouncements of Soviet authorities on what is and is not desirable on the part of an artist demonstrate how much easier it is to state a theory than to apply it, particularly to something as abstract as music. ... Kerridge traveled to the Soviet Union in September of 1934. He met with leaders of the Union of Soviet Composers and wrote about his experience in The Musical Times, in December of 1934. Kerridge saw some positive aspects in the situation facing musicians, but agreed that most musicians would choose freedom over the Soviet Union’s constraints.
Since, according to Soviet philosophy, art should be an expression and reflection of Life and not merely an escape from it, the State’s primary
concern it to ‘liquidate musical illiteracy’, or, in the commercial terms
of the West, create a musical ‘demand’…Thus ample provision is made,
in the towns at least, for any worker in his or her spare time to study
music or any other cultural…Hence by first creating a wide
demand, the State believes it is directly fostering art and encouraging
the artist. ... Foreign performers were banned, and Soviet performers began to be interrogated and disqualified.
The events of 1936 demonstrate the efficiency with which the Party
leadership had tightened its grip on composers. Instead of defending
Shostakovich, the Union of Soviet Composers turned on him. Everyone
how tried to save his own skin by proving his loyalty to the regime…The
discussions of the Union of Soviet Composers turned into a blatant smear
campaign against Shostakovich, in which nearly all of his collegues joined. ...
The subject matter to discuss during a gathering of composers at the House of Writers in Moscow in February of 1936 was Shostakovich. ... He desperately needed to restore his standing in Soviet society. ... He gave up his plans to compose a Soviet “Ring” cycle. ...
Composers lived in fear during the years of 1936-1938. ... The results of his paranoia and purges were a decimation of the population of men in the Soviet Union. This loss was to be suffered in the years following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II.
At 3:15 Berlin time, and 4:15 Moscow time, on the morning of June 22, 1941, Germans attacked on Soviet Union territory. ... German air power was a key element in their power against the Soviet Union. Kiev fell on September 19 with huge Soviet losses, including 655,000 prisoners. ... The music conservatories and universities were evacuated, as were most composers. ... This brought a time of relative freedom for composers. ...
In March of 1944, a Composers’ Plenum was held. ... Shostakovich had previously declared that the theme of the Ninth Symphony would be the victory and greatness of the Soviet people, but there was an apparent change of plans and an instrumental work was the result with no chorus. ...
When members gathered at the Union of Composers in Moscow
to discuss Shostakovich’s new symphony in early December, Zhitomirsky
found himself obliged to defend it from the deep disappointment of
those who found it an inappropriate reflection of the self-congratulatory
national mood, as well as the literal, oversimplified interpretations of the
content of the symphony…
The war end brought restrictions back to musicians.
Approximate Word count = 5428
Approximate Pages = 21.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|