On Russian Music

Richard Taruskin

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780520249790
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520942806
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

Over the past four decades, Richard Taruskin's publications have redefined the field of Russian-music study. This volume gathers thirty-six essays on composers ranging from Bortnyansky in the eighteenth century to Tarnopolsky in the twenty-first, as well as all of the famous names in between. Some of these pieces, like the ones on Chaikovsky's alleged suicide and on the interpretation of Shostakovich's legacy, have won fame in their own right as decisive contributions to some of the most significant debates in contemporary musicology. 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, which has been particularly marked by the end of the cold war in Europe.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION: TAKING IT PERSONALLY
• 1. Some Thoughts on the History and Historiography of Russian Music
• 2. For Ukraine, He's a Native Son, Regardless
• 3. "Classicism" à la Russe
• 4. A Wonderful Beginning
• 5. Dargomïzhsky and His Stone Guest
• 6. Pathetic Symphonist: Chaikovsky, Russia, Sexuality, and the Study of Music
• 7. Chaikovsky and the Literary Folk: A Study in Misplaced Derision
• 8. The Great Symbolist Opera
• 9. Chaikovsky as Symphonist
• 10. Russian Originals, De- and Re-Edited
• 11. A New, New Boris?
• 12. Christian Themes in Russian Opera: A Millennial Essay
• 13. The Case for Rimsky-Korsakov
• 14. Kitezh: Religious Art of an Atheist
• 15. Sex and Race, Russian Style
• 16. Yevreyi and Zhidy: A Memoir, a Survey, and a Plea
• 17. The Antiliterary Man: Diaghilev and Music
• 18. From Fairy Tale to Opera in Four Moves
• 19. To Cross That Sacred Edge: Notes on a Fiery Angel
• 20. Prokofieff's Return
• 21. Tone, Style, and Form in Prokofieff's Soviet Operas
• 22. Great Artists Serving Stalin Like a Dog
• 23. Stalin Lives On in the Concert Hall, but Why?
• 24. The Last Symphony?
• 25. For Russian Music Mavens, a Fabled Beast Is Bagged
• 26. Restoring Comrade Roslavets
• 27. When Serious Music Mattered
• 28. Casting a Great Composer as a Fictional Hero
• 29. Shostakovich's Bach: A Pill to Purge Stalinism
• 30. Five Operas and a Symphony
• 31. Hearing Cycles
• 32. Of Mice and Mendelssohn
• 33. Current Chronicle: Molchanov's The Dawns Are Quiet Here
• 34. The Rising Soviet Mists Yield Up Another Voice
• 35. Where Is Russia's New Music? Iowa, That's Where
• 36. North (Europe) by Northwest (America)
• INDEX