Russian Music Since 1917: Reappraisal and Rediscovery is a voluminous, 434-page collection of essays that deals squarely with what is arguably one of the most problematic concepts of our postmodern era: reflection. Originating from conference proceedings hosted by the Music Department of Durham University in July 2011, and published in late 2017 to coincide with the centenary of the October Revolution, it is ambitious in its undertaking and unapologetic in setting out its agenda. Taking the events of 1917 as a socio-political, cultural, and musical watershed, it seeks to identify and evaluate the trends, tensions, and developments that have occurred not in relation to Russian art music per se, but in relation to its surrounding scholarship. Subtitled ‘Reappraisal and Rediscovery’, it aims to fill a musicological void, asserting its claims as the first book-length study to critically examine and assess the current state of research connected to Russian art music dating from 1917 onwards.

Anyone giving more than a cursory glance at the book's cover will be in no doubt as to the scope and magnitude of the task at hand. Combining and foregrounding multiple signifiers – a white background, Kasimir Malevich's Black Square (1915), a manuscript page from Shostakovich's ‘pre-Twelfth’ Symphony, and to the fore, an offset square in striking crimson – the sign system produced clearly conveys not only the concept of ‘Sovietness’ in all its manifestations, but also the extensive timeline that is under scrutiny: 100 years’ worth of music and related research and analysis, running from the birth of Futurism in the second decade of the twentieth century to the end of the Soviet avant-garde and beyond. Ironically, it is the black and white in the background that best signifies the extent of the problem. At the heart of this book's attempt to both reappraise and rediscover is an acknowledgement that scholarly interpretations of Russian music, especially those written before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, have tended to be stylized, one-dimensional, and fraught with inaccuracies: a condition attributed to Soviet censorship and political bias, as well as to the lack of critical perspective regarding Soviet life and culture that has prevailed in the West for decades. In the past twenty years or so, not only has Russian music scholarship become noticeably more abundant, with Russian music itself attracting more attention in the public domain, but the scholarship in question has become far more nuanced, with new, increasingly complex and multifaceted interpretations coming to light. This, quite rightly, has led academics to lambast past over-simplistic and ‘black-and-white’ interpretations, including, significantly, those concerning the ‘top-down’ model of Soviet culture and its associated narrative that Soviet music (and musicians) were powerless in the face of totalitarian oppression and shaped inexorably by it. Indeed, Moscow-based scholar Levon Hakobian, speaking of the West's naivety as regards the existence of a far more complex interaction between music and state, laments:

Similarly, Richard Taruskin, considering such problems from a Western perspective, bemoans the difficulties that those outside of Russia have had not only in obtaining Soviet sources, but equally in verifying them, with this leading to what he calls ‘severe limitations’ in any attempt to ‘reappraise Russian musical life’.Footnote ²

The current scholarly climate, not least with its increased opportunities for openness and access to resources, thereby demands a more rigorous, informed, and objective appraisal. This volume builds upon recent attempts by scholars such as Peter Schmelz, Pauline Fairclough, and Marina Frolova-Walker to readdress long-held misconceptions.Footnote ³ While these examples painstakingly blur the black and white and collectively present a more accurate and subtle portrayal of Russian music from the 1920s to the 1960s, the volume in question also navigates the little-charted waters of the post-Soviet era. It not only seeks to bring Russian music scholarship up to date by including the musics which have evolved post-1990, but also provides, crucially, a comprehensive reassessment of pre-glasnost Russian music, in line with current post-1990 (historical) musicological approaches, thus making it unprecedented in its scope and vision. Significantly, the study also has a third objective in that it brings together an unusually wide range of contributors. Aimed at an English-speaking audience, and taking a broadly Western musicological stance throughout, it is the result of a unique collaboration between leading Western and Russian/former Soviet scholars in the field of historical musicology – many of the latter, but by no means all, now being based in Europe or the United States. While differences in Russian and Western musicological approaches are evident, the potential for intellectual exchange that such a collaboration brings has clearly been maximalised, with any difference in approach being seen as a positive attribute, one that provides a more rounded and comprehensive take on a number of issues and musics, most importantly, those which are pre-glasnost.

Following an introduction by editors Patrick Zuk and Marina Frolova-Walker, the volume itself is divided into six thematic and/or chronologically ordered sections. Part I, ‘Russian Music History and Historiography Today’ – comprising a hefty 102 pages – provides an overview of recent research, in both Russia and the West, thus outlining the changes and developments in musicological approach that have occurred during the last two decades. The first two chapters of the section, by Marina Rakhmanova and Patrick Zuk, both examine the state of scholarship since 1990, discussing in equal measure its strengths and its areas for development. Of particular benefit is the fact that both authors include research that is sharply up to date. The Moscow-based Rakhmanova supplements her original address from the 2011 Durham conference with reflections as to how scholarship has evolved during the six years since, including, for example, a discussion of how government funding currently affects Russian institutions, and how the latest publications perceive and present Russian music and its related musicology. Zuk, similarly but with more of a Western focus, summarizes the difficulties that have affected scholarship (both Russian and Western) leading up to glasnost, before discussing the main developments and areas of interest that have evolved post-1990, which he identifies as avant-garde composers of the 1920s, Shostakovich, and composers of the ‘post-Trinity’ second generation of the Soviet avant-garde. Discussing recent research by notable scholars of Soviet music such as David Fanning, the late Alexander Ivashkin, and Richard Taruskin, Zuk also suggests how important research in other areas of Soviet culture has been in its reassessment of the aforementioned ‘top-down’ model and its related narratives. He writes:

The two remaining chapters in this section, by Levon Hakobian and Marina Frolova-Walker, both take a fairly different stance in that they deal with the difficulties in re-evaluating pre-1990s scholarship, practically and psychologically. After summarizing the West's relations with Soviet music from the mid-1920s onwards, and compiling a list of notable Western performances of Soviet music, primarily those by non-conformist composers between 1964 and 1984, Hakobian turns his attention to how this music has been perceived (and indeed, misunderstood) by Western critics, musicologists, and even Western composers such as Pierre Boulez; this final section, while offering invaluable insights and carefully collated references to musics which are little known, could usefully be extended further. Frolova-Walker, in providing first her own recollections of the somewhat conservative approach to Russian (and indeed, Western) music taken by Soviet institutions during the early years of glasnost, discusses how Soviet music has been regarded during the years since. In examining the Soviet and post-Soviet position on what she terms ‘masterpieces’, she discusses at length the difficulties involved in reassessing certain works in light of more critical investigations, and in having to ‘let go’ of past values and opinions, not least in a context whereby the Russian Federation is becoming again increasingly conservative. Concluding what is a particularly personal, honest, and thoughtful account, Frolova-Walker states:

She adds, ‘it is important for all to resist easy but misleading explanations of a complex reality’ (124).

The four chapters that comprise Part II, ‘Reappraising the Soviet Past’, also explore a more specific aspect: the examination of Soviet music of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s from a contemporary perspective. Broadly speaking, two key themes emerge, irrespective of differences in approach, subject, and content. The first is the effect of state control on Soviet life and culture, with the second being the extent to which state control shaped the music and musicians, both aesthetically and compositionally. Here, both Marina Raku and Inna Klause (whose chapter ‘Composers in the Gulag: A Preliminary Survey’ includes groundbreaking archival work) re-evaluate the ‘top-down’ model and its effect, thereby challenging formerly held assumptions and suggesting that a more complex and less controlling inter-relationship existed between artist and state. Similarly, Yekaterina Vlasova, in ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, examines what little effect the state had when producing Socialist Realist operas for the Bolshoi Theatre during the 1930s and 1940s, with many of these failing to make it into production due to bureaucratic difficulties, and those that did often having little artistic merit. Pauline Fairclough, in contrast, explores the positions and reputations of Russian and Western composers of a very different ilk as viewed through the prism of official Soviet culture during the 1930s and 1940s, taking as her primary source material concert programming in Leningrad. Again, Fairclough has not only utilized to the full the now greater opportunities for archival work in Russia, but also provided a robust and well-crafted caveat to the notion that concert life under Stalin was dictated to and constrained by the state, with her findings – that the music under question was compositionally and aesthetically rich and varied – being further proof of the need to reappraise the ‘black and white’ interpretations still largely in force.

Part III, ‘Soviet and Post-Soviet Musicology’, explores the lingering effects of Soviet ideology on contemporary Russian musicology. Olga Manulkina examines a musicological ‘campaign against “cosmopolitanism”’ (221) in 1949, and suggests how this campaign has continued to influence the organization and approach of Russian musicology, in ways of which its practictioners are largely unaware. Daniil Zavlunov focuses on Glinka scholarship as an area of Russian musicology in which the stakes are especially high (244). He traces how current musicological approaches to Glinka react in complex ways to Soviet constructions of the nineteenth-century composer, and continue to be informed by a sense of his music's ‘a priori Russianness’ (263). One way for scholars to exorcise ‘Soviet spirits’, he argues, is to work to place Glinka's music in wider European contexts. Inevitably, this third section overlaps with some of the material in the first two sections, particularly on the conservatism in Russian institutions noted by Rakhmanova and Frolova-Walker, but it approaches that material from a very different perspective.

At this point the book substantially narrows its focus and examines the state of research regarding an individual composer, albeit an especially important one for Soviet music studies (19). Dmitri Shostakovich has been the object of intense interest and considerable controversy in recent decades. Part IV, ‘The Newest Shostakovich’, clearly builds on an earlier reappraisal, The New Shostakovich (1990), as well as several other studies that enable fresh consideration of his motivations and relationship with the state.Footnote ⁴ Both of the chapters here again make considerable use of the now greater opportunities for research and archival work. Both present as a result a much more nuanced and up-to-date portrayal of a composer whose multifaceted persona has been extremely difficult to identify and define. Liudmila Kovnatskaya's chapter, arguably one of the most enlightening pieces of research within the current volume, examines the young Shostakovich's relationship with fellow composer, musicologist, and critic Valer'yan Bogdanov-Berezovsky in the 1920s. Not only does it present a much more intimate and, indeed, paradoxical portrayal than some previous writings, but it also shows the young Dmitri in a vein that is passionate, witty, enthusiastic, even gung-ho, actively contradicting the image of the older Shostakovich, a man adopting an official persona and with little opportunity for direct, unabated self-expression. Consolidating this image of the young Shostakovich is Olga Digonskaya's articulate and vivid account of the composer during the same era, in the process of sketching a large-scale work with the intention of portraying Lenin. Her contribution again examines in detail the dichotomy that has existed in scholarly circles between the person who, in his youth, seemingly had genuine sympathies for Communist ideology, and the older composer whose actions and music seem to signify a distinct move away from these ideologies. Both of these chapters are evidence not only of painstaking research but, moreover, of a doggedness in trying to establish a more accurate portrayal, however complex, in the face of numerous obstacles.

Part V, ‘Russian Music Abroad’, looks beyond Russia to deal with the concept of the diaspora: a subject which has been explored much more readily post-1990. In the first of two chapters, Richard Taruskin, taking among others the writings of Marc Raeff (1990), asks provocatively ‘Is There a “Russia Abroad” in Music?’, before discussing whether or not the work of expatriate Russian composers (including nineteenth-century examples) has ever constituted a ‘Russian’ music. Deliberating upon whether Russian music differs in either aesthetic or style from that penned on Russian soil, Taruskin furthers his argument with a controversial point cited by Arthur Lourié in 1931, that music written by Russian émigrés was in fact more ‘Russian’ than that written in the Soviet Union. Using Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Koussevitzky as key examples, Taruskin boldly re-assesses the idea that cultural identity is independent of location, before asserting that, in many cases, the Russian diaspora constitutes a cohort rather than an identifiable community. Continuing in this vein, Elena Dubinets – referring to herself and other contemporary Russian émigrés as an ‘anti-community’ – explores the concept of modern Russian identity and ‘otherness’, examining the challenges in defining oneself through musical composition when simultaneously faced with the task of negotiating one's former native traditions and those newly adopted. Sensitive in her discussion and using a wide range of works by post-Soviet composers including Nikolai Korndorf, Dmitri Sminov, Valery Arzoumanov, Alexander Raskatov, and Ivan Sokolov, Dubinets argues that Russian music abroad goes beyond definition but risks being labelled as ‘the product of a ghettoized minority with a narrow world view’ (354).

However, it is the sixth and final section, ‘1991 and After’, that has arguably the most difficult task of reflection given the lack of historical and critical distance involved. Examining the effects of transition from Soviet to post-Soviet on the contemporary Russian music scene as well as on scholarship, the section comprises three very different subjects and approaches. First, in what is perhaps one of the best examples of reappraisal in the entire volume, Laurel E. Fay in ‘Musical Uproar in Moscow (II)’ presents her own testimony of the events at the Eighth All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers in April 1991: this being presided over by the 77-year-old Tikon Khrennikov, a key figure in the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Composers in 1948, in which Shostakovich and others were denounced for Formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Providing an invaluable account of a key moment in Soviet musical history, Fay compares and contrasts both congresses while providing a vivid and invaluable commentary on a long-standing system in a state of flux. William Quillen examines how contemporary Russian composers have used art and literature of the 1920s as an artistic stimulus but also as a vehicle of self-reflection and renewal, in a time of enormous political and cultural change and upheaval. In the book's final chapter, Lidia Ader presents an account of what it means to be ‘avant-garde’ in today's Russian music scene.

In summary, Russian Music Since 1917: Reappraisal and Rediscovery is a detailed and engaging but, moreover, highly considered attempt to reassess and update Russian music scholarship. While clearly making full use of the now greater opportunities for research and archival work, it considers at length the difficulties, both practical and psychological, that such a re-evaluation brings, doing so with honesty, integrity, and sensitivity. Yet it is unwavering in its critique, with the issue of reappraisal being handled with an astute awareness of the many dilemmas and obstacles involved. Although the collection is scholarly in both aim and content, attempts have clearly been made to make the volume reasonably accessible for the informed non-specialist, not least given its attention to areas of general interest such as Shostakovich's biography. While also being a highly relevant and useful resource for those working in disciplines beyond musicology, one of its greatest merits is the extent to which it attempts to bring music scholarship up to date, with its focus on the post-Soviet (in terms of both its music and its musicological approaches) rendering it unique.

Ironically, it is music theory and analysis (in both its Western and its Russian guise) that sadly receives limited attention. While references to the developments in these areas are evident throughout, more could have been made of the developments surrounding ‘new musicology’ and how this has impacted upon a Russian music scholarship already going through enormous change and redirection. In relation, more could also have been made of the ingrained differences between Soviet and Western musicological approaches in relation to theory and analysis from the 1930s onwards, with this being used as a basis to reflect upon the differences that again emerge in the 1980s and beyond. While the subject of post-Soviet analysis is examined in more detail, again, a direct comparison between analytical approaches before and after the 1990s watershed could have been included. That said, the aim of the volume is clear: to provide discussion and reflection pertinent to the history and historiography of Russian music since 1917, and in this, it meets its goals. In short, it has a scope and a stance that will render it a canonical text for courses on Russian music, culture, and beyond, although one suspects that it will quickly become outdated due, ironically, to the very nature of reappraisal as well as to the increasing trend for Russian music scholarship. It is for the present and foreseeable future, however, both visionary and indispensable.