The power of music

Nikolai Plotnikov
The state and the individual
Antagonisms in the history of ideas in Russia
The state and the individual are understood in Russia as opposites. This antagonistic idea is frequently traced back to a Byzantine tradition. It is in fact, however, the legacy of a specific reception of western theories of the state and concepts of personality. With their help, unlimited state power – which can form society (understood as tabula rasa) in the name of the "public weal" – is legitimised. In this way of thinking, the individual cannot be understood as a legal entity but only as an exception, as artistic genius or isolated figure on the periphery. This radical antagonism of state and individual – which is based on the history of ideas – encumbers the establishment of a state founded on rule of law that makes human rights the principle of its legitimacy.

Jens Siegert
From continuity to stagnation
Instable stability in authoritarian Russia
The global economic crisis has hit Russia hard. Even the authoritarian regime in Moscow has been forced to recognise this. Instead of continuing to deny the consequences of the collapse in oil prices and the reduced demand for other raw materials, Putin and Medvedev are engaged in a hectic form of crisis management. This activism, however, cannot disguise the fact that the regime is still shying away from structural reforms. At the same time, tensions within the country are growing, and the consensus of the elite, which was purchased with petrodollars, is once again brittle.

David Fanning
Getting oriented in difficult terrain
Dorothea Redepenning's History of Russian and Soviet Music
With her book Geschichte der russischen und der sowjetischen Musik [A history of Russian and Soviet music], Dorothea Redepenning has submitted a fundamental overview of the musical repertoire in all its depth and width. Displaying great knowledge, she illuminates the cultural background and refrains from making the kind of ideological judgements that have long characterised the treatment of Soviet music. The work is obligatory reading for all academics, musicians, and music lovers who are active in the field. Redepenning deserves great respect. Nonetheless, there are still a few problematic pages in this new book. These concern methods, the attempt to place Soviet music history in a European context, and the intent to do justice to all genres in equal measure. These problems make all too clear the limits inherent in such an ambitious undertaking.

Melanie Unseld
Music history without blinders
Dorothea redepenning on Soviet music
For decades, the discussion of Soviet music was shaped by political bias. With her substantive narrative of Soviet music history, Dorothea Redepenning overcomes this shortcoming. Redepenning understands Russian and Soviet music as an integral component of European music history. Her book captivates through its wealth of material, meticulousness, and readability and encourages a continued preoccupation with the subject.

Jascha Nemtsov
Jewish music culture in Ukraine
The music section of the Kulturliga in Kiev
Despite the civil war and pogroms between 1918 and 1921, Kiev advanced to one of the most important centres of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. While the work of Yiddish writers and avant-garde painters of the Jewish Kulturliga are widely known, Jewish music culture has gone unnoticed to this day. The music section of the Kulturliga included a music school, a singing ensemble, and a seminar for music teachers and choir directors.

Stefan Weiss
An encounter in Charlottengrad
The Berlin music world receives the Russian exile
Together with the Russian emigration that followed the October Revolution, numerous musicians also made their way to Berlin, where, thanks to a rich infrastructure, they were offered a diverse array of possibilities to remain active. The Russian contribution to the German capital's concert life met with only lukewarm acceptance among the local population of the early 1920s. But the Berlin stays of composers such as Lev Knipper or Vladimir Shcherbachev promoted musical exchange between Berlin, Moscow, and Leningrad.

Levon Hakobian
Tertium datur
The Soviet music avant-garde 1956-1982
In the eyes of the West, the Soviet Union had only art that conformed to the regime and art that was critical of the regime. Little attention was given to the wide current of art that was removed from politics and independent. In music, which suffered less under ideological constraints than other forms of art, an avant-garde developed after Stalin's death. It was as alien to Socialist Realism as it was to the West's new music. The tense juxtaposition of opposing styles was representative of its compositions. The marginalisation of the non-conformist avant-garde came to an end with the famous concert of April 1982, when works by Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Alfred Schnittke were performed in the Moscow Conservatory.

"Only art can set us free"
Vladimir Tarnopol'skii on his work and the world
In conversation with Kerstin Holm, composer Vladimir Tarnopol'skii recalls the era of castrated culture, when the performance of a Schütz cantata was an act of resistance, recognizes in the popularity of minimal music in the East a capitulation to the technical sophistication of new music in the West, and analyses the correlation of the lack of ideas in art, society, and technology. He looks back on his search for his own compositional language, sometimes misses a reverberation of real problems in Western music, is fascinated by complicated sounds made by acoustic and electronic elements as well as noises, and professes a "new euphony".

Svetlana Savenko
The freedoms of sounds
On the situation of the New Music in Russia
The liberation from pressure and censorship after the demise of the Soviet Union remained almost without influence on the musical creativity in Russia. At first, the reception of new music from the West stood centre stage. Today, academic concert life, festivals, and performances make up a diverse musical landscape. Currents such as minimal music, neo-romantic music, and new simplicity exist alongside one another, composers form groups such as Kompozitor, Structural Resistance Group, or Sound Plasticity and strive to create a new musical language. The spiritus rector of new music, Vladimir Tarnopol'skii, deserves special attention. He is one of the most important and most inspiring composers of the present and has become a link between Russian and Western culture.

Amrei Flechsig
Requiem for the Soviet Union
Schnittke's Life with an Idiot and conceptualism
Alfred Schnittke's work was influenced by visual art, literature, and film. He was especially close to Moscow Conceptualism. His Life with an Idiot, which debuted in Amsterdam in 1992, included a libretto by Victor Erofeyev and a set designed by Ilya Kabakov. This is a characteristic product of the symbiotic interlocking of the literary, visual, and musical currents that were at work in Russia starting in the 1970s.

Leonid Luks
Misleading parallels
Authoritarian Russia is not fascist
In Osteuropa, Alexander J. Motyl presented his thesis that Russia is a fascist state – or at least on the way to becoming one. This is untenable. Key features of German and Italian fascism such as a comprehensive ideology or the glorification of violence are alien to the bureaucratic-authoritarian regime that has been established under Putin. Anybody who subsumes the Putin regime under the term fascism runs the risk of failing to recognise the threat posed by real Russian fascism.

Karlheinz Kasper
On the carousel
Russia's new literary elite and literature prizes
Literary Russia is experiencing a generational change. In recent years, a number of young writers between 20 and 40 have attracted considerable attention on the book market and in literary competitions.

Peter Oliver Loew
"Take a seat in the first row!"
The great diversity in German research on Poland
Research on Poland in the German-speaking countries has suffered so far from disciplinary isolation. The first meeting of German researchers on Poland – "Deutsche Polenforschung" –, which took place in Darmstadt in February 2009, showed how vigorous it is nonetheless. All signs now point to continued networking by means of an Internet platform. The goal is to strengthen research on Poland institutionally. The existing possibilities should be used better.

Published 2009-05-05

Original in German
Contributed by Osteuropa
© Osteuropa