"Classics for the Masses" by Pauline Fairclough

Classics for the Masses Shaping Soviet Musical Identity under Lenin and Stalin Pauline Fairclough

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Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 16 Apr 2016
ISBN:: 9780300217193
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 296 pages: 235 x 156mm

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Musicologist Pauline Fairclough explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavor. Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how “undesirable” repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how Russian and non-Russian composers such as Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Bach, and Rachmaninov were “canonized” during different, distinct periods in Stalinist culture. Fairclough’s fascinating study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical-political landscape identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than occurring post-World War Two, as is often maintained, while documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.

Pauline Fairclough is senior lecturer in music, University of Bristol, United Kingdom, where her special interest is Soviet music and culture.

“Noteworthy not only for opening another door into the Soviet music world but also for its subtle, informed analysis.”—Choice

“These books give fuller, finer-grained and better-shaded accounts of Soviet policy ups and downs and their impact on musicians than any previous study.”—Richard Taruskin, TLS