Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw

by Peter J. Schmelz

Following Stalin's death in 1953, during the period now known as the Thaw, Nikita Khrushchev opened up greater freedoms in cultural and intellectual life. A broad group of intellectuals and artists in Soviet Russia were able to take advantage of this, and in no realm of the arts was this perhaps more true than in music. Students at Soviet conservatories were at last able to use various channels--many of questionable legality--to acquire and hear music that had previously been forbidden, and visiting performers and composers brought young Soviets new sounds and new compositions. In the 1960s, composers such as Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Valentin Silvestrov experimented with a wide variety of then new and unfamiliar techniques ranging from serialism to aleatory devices, and audiences eager to escape the music of predictable sameness typical to socialist realism were attracted to performances of their new and unfamiliar
creations.

This "unofficial" music by young Soviet composers inhabited the gray space between legal and illegal. Such Freedom, If Only Musical traces the changing compositional styles and politically charged reception of this music, and brings to life the paradoxical freedoms and sense of resistance or opposition that it suggested to Soviet listeners. Author Peter J. Schmelz draws upon interviews conducted with many of the most important composers and performers of the musical Thaw, and supplements this first-hand testimony with careful archival research and detailed musical analyses. The first book to explore this period in detail, Such Freedom, If Only Musical will appeal to musicologists and theorists interested in post-war arts movements, the Cold War, and Soviet music, as well as historians of Russian culture and society.

Genres: Music, History

408 pages, Hardcover

First published March 4, 2009

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter J. Schmelz's SUCH FREEDOM IF ONLY MUSICAL is a substantial chronicle of Soviet avant-garde music during the Krushchev "thaw", using oral history to compensate for the limited view available from publications. After the death of Stalin in 1953, artistic exploration flourished for a time in Russia and some other Soviet republics. Composers and performers who came of age during the era include Volkonsky, Denisov, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Pärt, Silvestrov, Lubimov and Shchedrin. Nonetheless, such art nonetheless remained underground. Artists pursued bold new concepts that interested them, but often came up against officialdom. That's not to say that they sought to challenge the state, for many composers sought escape instead of confrontation -- the label of "dissident" applied to these figures by Western musical festivals is to a large degree a misnomer.

Schmelz describes how serialism had long been studied clandestinely from scores, and it appeared in concerts as early as 1956. He introduces the figure of Andrey Volkonsky, a name I had never heard before, but a fascinating man with a long and complicated life story. Volkonsky's music opened the ears of his contemporaries even before the legendary visits of Glenn Gould (1957), Igor Stravinsky (1962) and Luigi Nono (several times in the 1960s).

In the mid-1960s, many composers had reached frustration with serialism and began several years of searching for a more personal style. Schmelz provides four case studies for how a series of works shows detachment from strict serialism and stylistic uncertainty: Gubaidulina, Silvestrov, Pärt and Schnittke. In the case of Schnittke, the author documents the 1972 premiere and reception of the composer's Symphony No. 1 as a sign of reaching a new maturity and confidence, as well as what Schmelz sees as the end of the era.

The book's epilogue discusses how the 1960s are filtered through the feelings of the elderly figures he interviewed in the late 1990s and early millennium. Many feel outright nostalghia; Gubaidulina claims that the economic pressure after this era was worse than the ideological pressure during it. Funny enough, the author reveals he was entirely unable to secure an interview with Arvo Pärt: "His spokesman informed me that 'The period of the Soviet Union is a completely closed chapter for him and he is not prepared to evoke this era again,' betraying the clearest sense of non or even anti-nostalgia that I encountered, a refusal to even acknowledge let alone discuss his memories."

SUCH FREEDOM IF ONLY MUSICAL is a fascinating book. It will not be, perhaps, so attractive to those interested mainly in the music itself, as the pieces are not analysed in so much depth, and for several composers their music of this era is juvenalia. However, Schmelz's book is an informative and downright gripping depiction of the milieu in which this music was written, overturning many myths and introducing the reader to details not recorded elsewhere (even in many Russian sources).