Introduces the general public to the scholarly debate that has revolutionized Russian music history over the past two decades. Summarizes the new view of Russian music and provides an overview of the relationships between artistic movements and political ideas.

This new collection views Russian music through the Greek triad ofÊÒthe Good, the True, and the BeautifulÓ to investigateÊhow the idea of "nation" embeds itself in the public discourse about music and other arts with results at times invigorating, at times corrupting. In our divided, postÐCold War, and now postÐ9/11 world, Russian music, formerly a quiet corner on the margins of musicology, has become a site of noisy contention. Richard Taruskin assesses the political and cultural stakes that attach to it in the era of Pussy Riot and renewed international tensions, before turning to individual cases from the nineteenth century to the present. Much ofÊthe volume is devoted to the resolutely cosmopolitan but inveterately Russian Igor Stravinsky, one of the major forces in the music of the twentieth century and subject of particular interest to composers and music theorists all over the world. Taruskin here revisits him for the first time since the 1990s, when everything changed for Russia and its cultural products. Other essays are devoted to the cultural and social policies of the Soviet Union and their effect on the music produced there as those policies swung away from Communist internationalism to traditional Russian nationalism; to the musicians of the Russian postrevolutionary diaspora; andÊto the tension between the compelling artistic quality of works such as StravinskyÕs Sacre du Printemps or ProkofieffÕs Zdravitsa and the antihumanistic or totalitarian messages they convey. Russian Music at Home and Abroad addresses these concerns in a personal and critical way, characteristically demonstrating TaruskinÕs authority and ability toÊbring living history out of the shadows.

20th-century Russian history comes to life through six generations of a family in their Moscow apartment The Apartment: A Century of Russian History explains the true history of 20th-century Russia through the fictitious story of a Moscow family and their apartment. The Muromtsev family have been living in the same apartment for more than a century, generation after generation. Readers are taken through different rooms and witness how each generation actually lived alongside the larger social and political changes that Russia experienced. A search-and-find element has readers looking for objects from page to page to see which items were passed down through the generations. Beautifully illustrated with minute details, this book helps readers engage with Russia’s history in an all new way. The book includes a timeline, glossary, bibliography, and index.

Mention twentieth-century Russian music, and the names of three &"giants&"&—Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitrii Shostakovich&—immediately come to mind. Yet during the turbulent decade following the Bolshevik Revolution, Stravinsky and Prokofiev lived abroad and Shostakovich was just finishing his conservatory training. While the fame of these great musicians is widely recognized, little is known about the creative challenges and political struggles that engrossed musicians in Soviet Russia during the crucial years after 1917. Music for the Revolution examines musicians&’ responses to Soviet power and reveals the conditions under which a distinctively Soviet musical culture emerged in the early thirties. Given the dramatic repression of intellectual freedom and creativity in Stalinist Russia, the twenties often seem to be merely a prelude to Totalitarianism in artistic life. Yet this was the decade in which the creative intelligentsia defined its relationship with the Soviet regime and the aesthetic foundations for socialist realism were laid down. In their efforts to deal with the political challenges of the Revolution, musicians grappled with an array of issues affecting musical education, professional identity, and the administration of musical life, as well as the embrace of certain creative platforms and the rejection of others. Nelson shows how debates about these issues unfolded in the context of broader concerns about artistic modernism and elitism, as well as the more expansive goals and censorial authority of Soviet authorities. Music for the Revolution shows how the musical community helped shape the musical culture of Stalinism and extends the interpretive frameworks of Soviet culture presented in recent scholarship to an area of artistic creativity often overlooked by historians. It should be broadly important to those interested in Soviet history, the cultural roots of Stalinism, Russian and Soviet music, and the place of music and the arts in revolutionary change.

Presented here is a rare collection of some of the best Gypsy folk songs popular among the Romanies of Russia and Eastern Europe. All offered in the original Romany tribal dialect, as appropriate to each song, with easy-to-follow pronunciation guide specially formulated for the native English speaker and literal (word-for-word) English translation. the appended short historical and linguistic overview offers a rare insight into the history, traditions, language as well as the music and songs of this unique and mysterious people. Great addition to any pianist's collection!

This volume gathers 36 essays by one of the leading scholars in the study of Russian music. An extensive introduction lays out the main issues and a justification of Taruskin's approach, seen both in the light of his intellectual development and in that of the changing intellectual environment.

Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) was an influential and celebrated writer on music. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1894, in his 101 years he taught and coached music; conducted the premieres of several 20th century masterpieces; composed works for piano and voice; and oversaw the 5th-8th editions of the classic "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians." Beginning in 1926, Slonimsky resided in the United States. From his arrival, he wrote provocative articles on contemporary music and musicians, many of whom were his personal friends. Working as a freelance author, he built a large file of reviews, articles, and even manuscripts for books that were never published. This is the second volume of a 4 volume collection on the best of this material.

Little is known outside of Russia about the nation's musical heritage prior to the nineteenth century. Western scholarship has tended to view the history of Russian music as not beginning until the end of the eighteenth century. Marina Ritzarev's work shows this interpretation to be misguided. Starting from an examination of the rich legacy of Russian music up to 1700, she explores the development of music over the course of the eighteenth century, a period of especially intense Westernization and secularization. The book focuses on what is characteristic and crucial to Russian music during this period, rather than seeking to provide a comprehensive survey. The musical culture of the time is discussed against the rich background of social, political and cultural life, tying together many of the phenomena that used to be viewed separately. The book highlights the importance of previously marginalized sectors - serf culture, choral sacred culture, the contribution of foreign musicians, the significant influence of Freemasonry, the role of Ukrainian and West-European cultures and so on - as well as casting new light on the well-researched topic of Russian opera. Much new archival material is introduced, and revised biographies of the two leading eighteenth-century Russian composers, Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky, are provided, as well as those of the serf composer Stepan Degtyarev and the Italian Giuseppe Sarti. The book places eighteenth-century Russian music on the European map, and will be of particular importance for the study of European musical cultures remote from such centres as Italy, Germany-Austria and France. Eighteenth-century Russian music is organically linked with its past and future and its contributory role in forming the Russian national identity and developing the Russian idiom is clarified.

The Three Apostles of Russian Music looks at three figures in the Soviet avant-garde who led modernist music in the 1920s. Mosolov, Popov, and Roslavets were popular composers who are now unfortunately forgotten. These remarkable musicians produced compositions like the sensational machine music Foundry by Mosolov. The first symphony by Popov attracted musicians in Europe and America but was banned after the premiere, while Roslavets discovered serialism before Schoenberg, opening up a new trend in modernism. This book is the first study in English of the work, lives, and legacies of these “apostles” of the Russian avant-garde.

Philip Ross Bullock looks at the life and works of Rosa Newmarch (1857-1940), the leading authority on Russian music and culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. Although Newmarch's work and influence are often acknowledged - most particularly by scholars of English poetry, and of the role of women in English music - the full range of her ideas and activities has yet to be studied. As an inveterate traveller, prolific author, and polyglot friend of some of Europe's leading musicians, such as Elgar, Sibelius and Jan?k, Newmarch deserves to be better appreciated. On the basis of both published and archival materials, the details of Newmarch's busy life are traced in an opening chapter, followed by an overview of English interest in Russian culture around the turn of the century, a period which saw a long-standing Russophobia (largely political and military) challenged by a more passionate and well-informed interest in the arts Three chapters then deal with the features that characterize Newmarch's engagement with Russian culture and society, and - more significantly perhaps - which she also championed in her native England; nationalism; the role of the intelligentsia; and feminism. In each case, Newmarch's interest in Russia was no mere instance of ethnographic curiosity; rather, her observations about and passion for Russia were translated into a commentary on the state of contemporary English cultural and social life. Her interest in nationalism was based on the conviction that each country deserved an art of its own. Her call for artists and intellectuals to play a vital role in the cultural and social life of the country illustrated how her Russian experiences could map onto the liberal values of Victorian England. And her feminism was linked to the idea that women could exercise roles of authority and influence in society through participation in the arts. A final chapter considers how her late interest in the music of Czechoslovakia pi