Abstracts (Music) Rebecca Mitchell (Middlebury College, USA)

Abstracts (Music)
Rebecca Mitchell (Middlebury College, USA)
Leonid Sabaneyev’s Apocalypse and Musical Metaphysics after 1917
Perhaps best known for his pre-revolutionary Russian musical criticism and Soviet-era
account of his friendship with composer Alexander Scriabin (Vospominaniia o Skriabine,
1925), the life and work of music critic and composer Leonid Sabaneyev offers a
particularly valuable means of tracing the personal twists of fate confronting Russia’s
former cultural elite. Once a cosmopolitan and embracer of modernist musical style,
Sabaneyev initially sought to work within the Soviet regime before his permanent
emigration in 1925. From his adopted home in Nice (France), he devoted the final years of
his life both to a reassessment of the Russian musical legacy he had once loved, and to the
composition of his Apocalypse, a work that, echoing the dreams of his former idol
Scriabin, he referred to as his “Mystery”. Drawing on published articles, personal
(unpublished) letters, and the unfinished score to his Apocalypse, this paper employs
Sabaneyev as a case study through which to explore the fate of “musical metaphysics”: the
prerevolutionary, theurgic dream that music might provide a means to overcome the
divisions within Russian society. From exile, Sabaneyev (like many contemporaries)
actively sought to redefine the place of music within Russian and world culture: a personal
journey and engagement with the question of national identity that sheds light on the
process of cultural adaptation central to many members of “Russia Abroad”.
Olesya Bobrik (State Institute for Art Studies, Moscow, Russia)
Memory of Russia in the Literary and Musical Œuvres of Arthur Lourié from the
1940s–1960s.
The presentation is devoted to the American period of the life of composer and musical
writer Arthur Lourié and is based on the materials of his archive preserved for the most
part at the Paul Sacher Stiftung (Basel) and the New York Public Library. Its primary
sources are Lourié’s unpublished daries and notes made when he was preparing his articles
and lectures on Russian music, which he read in such venues as “L’École libre des hautes
études” and the Russian club “Gorizont” in New York in February and March 1944. These
texts reveal the main attributes of Lourié’s thinking during his period of life in America: to
a considerable degree retrospective, directed towards and experiencing and understanding
the past – his own personal past, as well as that of Russian culture in general. His
alienation from the American way of living and thinking lead to his immersion into
retrospection and experiencing the events of the wartime and post-war time – the
reevaluation of the concepts of “national” and “folk”. His withdrawal from the actual life
surrounding him into the history of Russian culture as an alternate type of reality, the
reevaluation of Russian poetry and music from the times of Peter the Great to the Silver
Age are also characteristic for Lourié’s musical œuvres from the 1940s-1960s, which
manifested itself especially vividly in the most important composition of that period – the
opera “Arap Petra Velikogo” (“Peter the Great’s Blackamoor”).
Irina Akimova (independent researcher, France)
1
L’apport des musiciens russes dans l’élargissement des sujets sur la musique entre
1920 et 1960 : Un aperçu de quelques périodiques français traitant la question de la
musique durant ces années
Notre intervention aborde les publications des musiciens russes, auteurs d’articles publiés
dans des revues françaises telles que La Revue musicale, Musique, Contrepoints, La
musique et ses problèmes contemporains. Cahiers Renaud-Barrault. À travers des auteurs
issus de l’émigration russe (P. Souvtchinsky, B. de Schloezer, A. Lourié, V. Ivanov, I.
Markevitch, V. Fedorov, V. Dukelski), nous démontrons l’évolution de leur influence dans
le paysage éditorial parisien. N’ayant pas de certitude quant à leur implantation définitive
en France au début de leur arrivée, ils se cantonnent, en effet, à des sujets propres à leur
culture natale ; cette période est d’ailleurs caractérisée par les publications dans les
périodiques russes comme Versti ou Eurasie. Le temps passant, ils intègrent dans leur
réflexion les problématiques liées à l’actualité musicale parisienne dont ils deviennent peu
à peu des témoins directs. La période proposée correspond aux premières publications des
« sujets russes », jusqu’au dernier projet initié par P. Souvtchinsky, à savoir la collection
Domaine musical, avec, pour principal objectif, de faire découvrir aux lecteurs français des
ouvrages d’auteurs peu connus, voire ignorés.
Jonathan Powell (independent researcher, composer, and pianist, UK/Poland)
The Russian Musical Avant-Garde in Paris: Lourié, Obukhov, Sabaneyev and
Wyschnegradsky
This paper will examine the stories of four composers who left Russia during the period
1918—1926 to settle in the French capital. They all wrote music of an avant-garde
orientation and were all influenced to some degree by Alexander Scriabin. I will compare
their work with that of their Soviet contemporaries; it could be argued that their emigration
to Western Europe allowed them to continue on their chosen path, albeit in relative
obscurity. In the USSR, Lourié had been the director of the music section of Narkompros
(the Soviet state arts body) and he subsequently moved on to the US where he became
close to Stravinsky; Sabaneyev had been a prominent critic and musicologist. Obukhov
and Wyschnegradsky, on the other hand, had been comparatively unknown but I will argue
that these two later exerted a decisive influence on French musical culture. Obukhov was
admired by Ravel and parallels with Messiaen’s early work are highly suggestive that the
latter knew his music, while the development of electronic instruments in France may well
owe a lot of Obukhov’s pioneering work. Wyschnegradsky was ‘discovered’ by Boulez in
the late 1960s and thus had an impact on the development of microtonality in France and
further afield. The presentation is combined with a concert of solo piano music, featuring
first performances of some of the works, still in manuscript, that these composers wrote in
France.
Stephen Walsh, Cardiff University
Stravinsky in Emigration: How to Stay Russian in Exile
Although Igor Stravinsky was for sixty years effectively an exile from his native Russia,
his connections with the emigration were spasmodic and sometimes ungracious. As a rare
example of a highly successful Russian exile, he was wary of the demands of his fellow
migrants, their “foggy insularity” and “bitter factiousness”. He had little interest in
Eurasianism – what he called the “Russia of the mind” – but instead looked to the west,
2
and specifically the USA, as a land of promise for a creative musician. Nevertheless he
preserved a strong Russian atmosphere in his provincial French homes, partly through the
influence of his first wife, only abandoning such things when he settled in America in
1940. His powers of adaptation without loss of contact with his roots are displayed in his
music throughout his life, however. While overtly Russian materials largely vanish from
his work from the 1920s on, the associated methods and discourse survived, and underpin
everything he wrote from Mavra (1922) to the Requiem Canticles (1966).
Tatiana Baranova-Monighetti (independent researcher, Switzerland)
Russian Emigration and Antisemitism: Stravinsky’s Case
In 1988 we observed the heated debate between Richard Taruskin and Robert Craft
regarding Stravinsky’s antisemitism. Taruskin denounced Stravinsky as an antisemite (the
title of his controversial article is “The dark side of modern music”), Craft represented him
almost as a philosemite. This debate sparked a lot of questions which did not have answers
until today: (1) what kind of antisemitism (according to Nikolai Berdyaev’s classification)
was peculiar to Stravinsky; (2) how typical were Stravinsky’s views for the first wave of
Russian emigration; (3) what origin and what reasons did antisemitism have in “Russia
Abroad”; (4) the evolution of Stravinsky’s religious and political views; (5) the impact of
the Orthodox and Catholic Church on his position towards the “Jewish question”; (6) the
relation between Stravinsky’s cosmopolitanism and antisemitism; (7) how the evolution of
Stravinsky’s views influenced his work (appearance of new linguistic and musical idioms);
(8) a comparison of the positions of Russian musicians in exile and their Soviet colleagues
on the “Jewish question”. We can find some answers to these questions in Stravinsky’s
published and unpublished correspondence and memoirs, in his personal library (part of
which is preserved in the Paul Sacher Stiftung), in his sketches, and in his music.
Elena Dubinets (independent researcher, USA)
Which Place is Called a Musical Home? Multi-Country Migration and Homecoming
Experiences of Russian Émigré Composers
Composers who have left the former USSR over the last 50 years represent that country’s
typical mixture of different ethnic identities (Russian, Jewish or ethnicities from Soviet
republics) and also possess characteristics of the multi-ethnic imperial identity developed
in the Soviet Union. After leaving the former Soviet territories, some of them have
changed their countries of residence multiple times. Now that borders are open, many
come back home either permanently or for short visits. These multiple ethnic
characteristics, border crossings and homecomings inevitably reflect upon the formation of
the composers’ creative identities. The composers may feel either local or global, or both,
depending on the different circumstances, and often a hyphenated self-awareness emerges
at the intersection of broader existential and aesthetic experiences, diminishing ethnic and
national traces. As recent research in cultural psychology has shown, specific behaviors
may be shaped within particular cultural (rather than nationalistic) contexts that create an
emotional space for perceptions and memories. Such cultural contexts can stipulate certain
musical outcomes depending on how composers chose to reflect or reject their ethnic or
national belonging.
3
In my presentation, I shall discuss how the multiple moves from one country to another, as
well as homecoming experiences, of such important Russian composers as Andrey
Volkonsky, Alexander Raskatov and Boris Filanovsky, each representing a different wave
of emigration from Russia, have influenced their self-identity, artistic mission and creative
output.
Simo Mikkonen, University of Jyväskylä (Finland)
Russian Artistic Intelligentsia of Shanghai, 1919-1949: Russian Culture in a
Cosmopolitan Context
While majority of Russian emigration headed west to Europe in 1917-1922, a sizable
emigration settled in China, especially Kharbin and Shanghai. Russians were the biggest
non-Asian minority in cosmopolitan Shanghai, yet, little research exists on this
community. This is a major lack for several reasons. Firstly, influx of Russians
transformed the cityscape making it a major artistic center in whole Far East. Secondly,
Russian pedagogues, composers, and musicians had an influence on Chinese classical
musical tradition. Thirdly, Shanghai’s tens of thousands Russians form an interesting
community to study, existing in a city with several million inhabitants. Shanghai Russians
established several magazines, journals and presses leaving hundreds of titles as a result.
Shanghai Russians came to dominate the artistic scene especially in the 1930s and through
World WarII. Yet, instead of one community, Russians were far from united and there
were several features dividing the community into smaller units. In addition to national and
political lines, one factor was one’s attitude towards Russia and Russian culture. Many in
the artistic community had a cosmopolitan outlook, mingling both, with other Europeans
and Chinese, while others aimed at preserving what they considered to be genuine Russian
culture, free from Bolshevist influences. This paper aims at presenting some conclusions
about the role played by Shanghai Russians in the developing arts scene of Shanghai.
It is based on an extensive work with Russian language materials produced by Shanghai’s
Russian community, gathered from archives and repositories around the world.
Hon-Lun Yang (Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)
Russian Émigrés and the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra
Emigration is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon for both the émigré community as
well as the émigrés’ adopted country. This was no doubt the case with the more than
30,000 Russians landing in Shanghai since the early 1920s. Among them were many
musicians whose music making did not just make ends meet but also helped transform
China’s soundscape. While Russian musicians contributed to Shanghai’s musical scene in
many different ways, this paper focuses on their contributions to the prestigious Shanghai
Municipal Orchestra (SMO), the first professional orchestra in China and one of the best in
Asia, and also an icon of Shanghai’s cosmopolitanism. While Russians made up more than
two-third of SMO’s members, a good number of its concerts featured Russian soloists and
Russian compositions. Most of all, the SMO featured Chinese performers who were
students of renowned Russian pedagogues and who were to become China’s leading
musicians.
The objective of this paper is to reveal the interactions among the SMO, the Russian
musicians as well as the early Chinese Western music practitioners, which, as will be
4
argued, mirrored the racial and cultural complexities of inter-war Shanghai. Informed by
Bruno Latour’s ANT (Actor Network Theory), this paper is part of a larger study on
Russian musicians in Shanghai, focusing on one of the nodes of the Russian musical
network through an in-depth look into archival materials of the SMO, Shanghai
newspapers in different languages, and Chinese musicians’ writings and memoirs.
Vitaliy Ryzhenkov (independent researcher, Russia)
Николай Евреинов в европейском культурном пространстве 1930-1950-х гг.
Николай Евреинов (1879-1953) – один из выдающихся русских режиссеровреформаторов театра, историк, теоретик театра, до сих пор по достоинству не оценен
на родине. Его вклад в культуру европейских стран, и в первую очередь Франции,
изучен еще меньше. Цель доклада – доказать, что Николай Евреинов, являясь одним
из главных носителей русской театральной культуры в эмиграции, в тоже время был
самобытным наднациональным театральным деятелем, оказавшим влияние на
театральную жизнь Европы.
Эмигрировавший из СССР одним из последних деятелей культуры, он никогда
не объяснял своё решение политическими причинами. В основе его эмиграции –
стремление к мировой известности и материальному благополучию. Отсутствие
политических мотивов в его отъезде из России стало одной из причин его
ограниченного участия в театральной жизни русской эмиграции и, в то же время, в
сравнении со многими другими эмигрантами более продуктивное интегрирование в
культурную, в первую очередь театральную, жизнь Европы. Другой причиной этого
стала идеология русского эмигрантского театра – сохранение традиционного
русского театра до эпохи МХТ, то есть отвержение всех реформационных
достижений русского театра эпохи Серебряного века.
Евреинов приходит в европейскую культуру не только как режиссер и
постановщик. Он участвует в нескольких театральных предприятиях (постановки
опер Н.А. Римского-Корсакова и ряда других произведений во Франции и
Чехословакии). Евреинов – это и драматург, пьесы которого, в первую очередь,
«Самое главное», были переведены на многие языки, а «Самое главное» было
сыграно на сценах многих стран Европы. Для Европы Евреинов, как и для России, –
театральный теоретик, чьи труды были переведены на английский и французский
языки и стали частью идеологии европейского театрального авангарда. Наконец,
Евреинов был проводником истории русского, и что еще более ценно – истории
советского театра, малоизвестного европейской публике и специалистам.
Nicolay Evreinov in the European Cultural Space of the 1930s-1950s.
Nicolay Evreinov (1879-1953) is one of the most outstanding Russian theatre
directors-reformers, theatre historians and theorists, who has not been appreciated in
Russia yet. His contribution into the culture of Europe, and first of all of France, is
researched even less. The main aim of this paper is to prove Nicolay Evreinov, who was
one of the chief bearers of Russian culture in the West, to be an original supranational
theatre figure who made an impact upon the theatre life in Europe.
He was one of the last who left the USSR, and he never explained his decision using
political reasons. There were ambitions for international recognition and material wellbeing at the heart of his decision to emigrate. Leaving the country without any political
motivation appeared to be one of the reasons for his limited involvement into the theatre
5
life of Russian emigration. At the same time, it was also the reason of his more fruitful
integration into the cultural theatre life of Europe, in comparison with many other émigrés.
Here the ideology of Russian émigré theatre also played its role – the desire to go back to
Russian traditional theatre of the epoch before Moscow Art Theatre and to actually reject
all the reforms made in the Russian theatre of the Silver Age. Evreinov came to European
culture not only as a theatre director. He took part in a few theatre enterprises (stages of
N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas and some other plays in France and Czechoslovakia).
Evreinov was also a playwright, whose plays such as “The chief thing” was translated into
many languages and performed on the stages of many European countries. Evreinov was
also known as a theatre theorist both in Europe and in Russia. His chief theoretical works
were translated into English and French and became part of European theatre avant-guard.
Finally, Evreinov was a promoter of the history of Russian theatre, and especially of Soviet
theatre, which was little known among European public and professionals.
Olga Velitchkina (independent researcher, France)
Facing New Soviet Russia: Russian Cabaret Culture in Paris between Thaw and
Perestroika
This paper presents a case study of cabaret culture in the particular historical context of the
1960-1980s. This period was marked by a significant change in the way that the Russian
emigration in Paris perceived its relationship with the Soviet Union. In spite of the quite
tragic post-war emigration history, the second wave of emigrants that consisted of people
raised in the Soviet Union experienced nostalgia for the popular and folk songs which they
had heard or sung in their youth. Parisian artists were responsive to their audience and
willing to separate the oppressive nature of the regime from the artistic activities that took
place under it; most importantly, they were in search of a new repertoire that could at the
same time confirm their cultural identity and their “modernity”. This partly explains the
appearance of a substantial number of folk and Soviet lyrical songs in the repertoire of
Russian cabaret artists. These songs, learned by ear from “Melodia” vinyl discs that were
as difficult to find in Paris as were Western discs in Moscow, obviously have been selected
and then changed to fit the new performance context. The stories of musical groups,
individual artists, and concert venues of the time based on interviews are presented in an
attempt to answer the question of what it meant to be a Russian Parisian musician and how
they themselves conceived their cultural and musical mission.
Evgeniy Tsymbal (film director, Russia)
Андрей Тарковский – сны об эмиграции и эмигрантская реальность в
«Мартирологе» в 1976-1986 гг.
После чехословацких событий 1968 года, в СССР партийная номенклатура
обрушилась на интеллигенцию. Это привело к нарастающей волне эмиграции.
Уезжали музыканты, писатели, философы, артисты балета, искусствоведы и т.д. Из
страны выехали кинорежиссеры Богин, Калик, Фрумин, Иоселиани. В 1980 году
уехал на Запад сын автора советского гимна и соавтор сценария фильма «Андрей
Рублев» Андрей Михалков-Кончаловский. Об эмиграции стал думать и Тарковский.
Заниженная оценка Госкино его фильмов, снискавших мировую славу, урезание
гонораров, годы безработицы, привели к буквальному обнищанию режиссера. О
своем желании эмигрировать Тарковский не говорил, но записи в дневнике
красноречиво свидетельствуют об этом. Ему казалось, на Западе он получит
возможность свободно снимать. Ему снились сны об эмиграции, полные надежд, и
6
затаенного ужаса. Познакомившись с итальянским сценаристом Тонино Гуэрра,
встретив с его стороны сочувствие, Тарковский стал думать о работе в Италии.
Благодаря ему, Тарковский получил возможность снять там фильм «Ностальгия». Не
получив на Каннском фестивале (членом жюри был Сергей Бондарчук) главный
приз, на который он рассчитывал, режиссер решил не возвращаться в СССР. 2 июня
1983 года Тарковский объявил, что остается на Западе.
Внешне жизнь режиссера на Западе была успешной, почти триумфальной. Он
свободно перемещался по Европе, съездил в США, поставил два фильма и оперный
спектакль в Лондоне. Купил небольшой замок в Италии. Однако, внутренне он был
чрезвычайно тревожен. Его представление о Западе оказалось во многом
ошибочным. Финансовая цензура оказалась не менее жестокой, чем идеологическая.
Тарковского волнует судьба сына, вынужденного расти без отца. Да и житейские
проблемы - незнание бытовых реалий на Западе, неумение распоряжаться
финансами, приводили к неразумным тратам, нехватке денег и новым стрессам. По
ночам его снова мучают кошмары. Многолетние депрессии привели к
онкологическому заболеванию. Андрея Арсеньевича лечили во Франции, затем в
Германии. Ухудшение здоровья вынуждает его вернуться в Париж. Там 29 декабря
1986 года Андрей Тарковский и скончался.
Andrey Tarkovsky: Dreams of Emigration and the Émigré Reality in
"Martyrologue" (1976-1986)
After the Czechoslovak events of 1968, the Soviet party nomenclature clamped down on
the intelligentsia. This led to a new growing wave of emigration – musicians, writers,
philosophers, dancers, art historians etc. left the country. The filmmakers Bogin, Kalik,
Frumin, and Ioseliani all emigrated to the West, as did the son of the author of the Soviet
anthem, the co-director of the film “Andrey Rublev” Andrey Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky (in
1980). Tarkovsky also started to think about emigration. The derisory payments for his
films, which had won worldwide fame, a general cut in fees and many years of
unemployment contributed to this desire. Tarkovsky did not express his desire to emigrate
overtly, but his diary entries speak eloquently about it. It seemed to him that in the West he
would have the opportunity to create freely. He had dreams about emigration, full of hope
and of hidden terror. Acquainted with the Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who was
supportive of his decision to emigrate, Tarkovsky began to think about working in Italy on
the film “Nostalgia”. Not having won the main prize at the Cannes film festival, which he
had expected, Tarkovsky announced his decision not to return to the USSR on June 2,
1983.
At first glance the life of Tarkovsky in the West was successful, almost triumphant. He moved
freely around Europe, visited the USA and produced two films and an opera in London. He
even bought a small castle in Italy. However, internally he was extremely anxious. His visions
of the West were largely erroneous: financial censorship turned to be no less cruel than its
ideological counterpart, he worried about the fate of his son, forced to grow up without his
father, and there were many other problems. A long-term depression led to an oncological
disease. Andrey Tarkovsky went to France, then to Germany for medical treatment. His
deteriorating health forced him to return to Paris, where he died on December 29, 1986.
Katerina Levidou (University of Athens, Greece and KCL, UK)
7
On the Poiesis of the Poetics: Stravinsky’s ‘Bible’ of Neoclassicism as a Reflection of
Russian Émigré Thought
Composed in 1939, initially in the form of academic lectures to be delivered at Harvard
University in the academic year 1939-40, Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music is essentially an
aesthetic manifesto of his neoclassicism. Indeed, quotations from this text are habitually
employed in order to illustrate aspects of his objectivist, internationalised neoclassical
style. The complex authorship of the Poetics as a result of the collaboration between the
Russian composer himself, the composer and critic Alexis Roland-Manuel – who finalised
the manuscript – as well as the Russian émigré thinker Petr Suvchinsky – who played a
significant role particularly in drafting the content of the lectures and, moreover, wrote the
fifth chapter (‘The Avatars of Russian Music’) – has been well established by now. Since
the Poetics is essentially a collaborative project, it synthesises views that originated (apart
from Stravinsky) on the one hand from Roland-Manuel’s and, on the other, from
Suvchinsky’s input. This paper will trace the latter’s contribution to Stravinsky’s
neoclassical manifesto moving beyond the obvious places to look, namely the fifth chapter
and the well-known reference to Suvchinsky’s ideas on music and time. Indeed, there are
numerous other passages in this book that reflect views voiced by Suvchinsky in his own
writings, views that, notably, reflect his association with Eurasianism. These will be
highlighted and analysed. The Poetics will thus intriguingly emerge as a most unexpected
platform for the presentation and dissemination of positions associated with a certain
strand of Eurasianism.
Patrick Zuk (University of Durham, UK)
Boris Asaf’yev and the Development of Soviet Musicological Constructs of ‘the West’ and
‘Russia Abroad’
This paper focuses on the crucially important role of Boris Asaf′yev in developing Soviet
critical constructs of the musical culture of the ‘West’ and ‘Russia abroad’, as well as of
‘authentic’ Soviet musical creativity. Yet, in spite of being regarded in later life as the
doyen of Soviet musicologists, this eminent position was hard-won: his writings of the
1920s had proved highly controversial and aroused hostility from musicians of very varied
artistic and ideological outlooks. A close examination of these publications in conjunction
with Asaf′yev’s private correspondence with Nikolay Myaskovsky, Vladimir
Derzhanovsky, and other prominent artistic figures reveals his position to have been
bewilderingly complex and internally contradictory. On the one hand, he forged a
reputation as an ardent propagandist of musical modernism, producing important
publications on Stravinsky and other Russian representatives of this movement, as well as
on a wide range of important Western figures. Yet, at the same time, he was amongst the
first important commentators to present the view that Western musical modernism could
be interpreted as symptomatic of cultural decline, and that a notable falling-off in quality
was perceptible in the work of leading Russian émigré figures since leaving their native
country. As the 1920s progressed, he increasingly espoused Russian/Soviet cultural
exceptionalism, arguing that the USSR should be regarded as the guardian of traditions of
high musical culture that had lapsed into decadence in the West. It is difficult to judge to
what extent these views were born of sincere conviction or of opportunistic motives: close
friends such as Myaskovsky inclined in later life to the latter view, and found it impossible
to forgive Asaf′yev for what they regarded as a betrayal of his own artistic principles.
Whatever the case, Asaf′yev’s writings were profoundly influential in formulating what
8
would become standard tropes of Soviet musicological discourse, and especially after the
imposition of Socialist Realism as an officially binding creative aesthetic.
Suzanne-Laetitia Kassian (Université Paris-4, France)
Pierre Souvtchinsky et Boris Assafiev, collaborations et échanges
Ma communication est consacrée à la collaboration et aux échanges épistolaires entre deux
figures emblématiques de la culture russe d’émigration et soviétique, Pierre Souvtchinski
et Boris Assafiev. Dans ma communication je me propose d’étudier ce sujet sous deux
angles :
premièrement, la collaboration de Souvtchinski et d’Assafief avant la révolution
d’Octobre; deuxièmement, leur collaboration après le départ de Souvtchinski en exil et son
installation définitive à Paris.
Dans la reconstitution des faits historiques l’étude de leurs héritages épistolaires joue un
rôle important, en particulier la correspondance d’Assafiev avec Pierre Souvtchinski qui se
trouve à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Elles nous dévoilent des pages inconnues de
la vie d’Assafiev. Inédits jusqu’à présent, ces échanges sont évoqués pour la première fois
dans ma contribution.
Svetlana Zvereva (independent researcher, UK)
Russian Sacred Music Beyond the Frontiers of the USSR from the 1920s to the 1940s:
Affirming Traditions, Seeking New Forms
The fate of ecclesiastical art took a dramatic turn in Russia after the October Revolution.
Under the Soviet atheist system this art, which had blossomed magnificently at the turn of
the century, became a marginal form of artistic activity subject to destruction, enjoying the
support exclusively of the ‘internal’ emigration. But at the same time within the ‘external’
emigration, which was for the most part Orthodox, this form of national art not only
continued developing but acquired special significance as a means of expressing and
supporting national identity.
This paper discusses the sacred-music life of a number of Russians diasporas in Germany,
Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and France. It outlines
trends in the development of Russian sacred music outside the USSR aimed, on the one
hand, at preserving the traditions and, on the other, adapting them in a new cultural and
religious milieu. The latter refers not just to western society’s perception of traditional
Russian music through concerts but also to the creation of new inter-denominational forms
of strictly liturgical music. Particular attention is paid to sacred music in the USSR and to
contacts between émigrés and church musicians from Soviet Russia. Russian sacred
musical art in the 1940s in the diasporas and the territories occupied by the Third Reich, as
well as the ‘meeting’ of two waves of the Russian emigration, are considered.
Maria Razumovskaya (independent researcher, UK)
Heinrich Neuhaus: An Émigré Within
The pianist-pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus (1888-1964) was regarded as one of the leading
figures in the formation of the Soviet Piano Tradition. However, he had always described
9
himself as ‘an other’ and sought to be identified within a Russian, rather than Soviet,
national identity. This Russian identity was in itself a complex and conscious aesthetic
transformation which he undertook whilst living, for almost fifteen years, as an émigré in
Central Europe in the early twentieth century. Neuhaus’s amalgamated Russian identity as
a musician was rooted in his engagement with the ideas of Rubinstein, Blok, Soloviev,
Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Stanislavsky and the Peredvizhniki artists. Yet, it was synthesised
with his distinct appropriation of Germanic influences and linguistic alterations which he
encountered abroad, including the philosophy of Kant and Nietzsche, and writings by
Goethe and Busoni.
Whilst it was not Neuhaus’s intent to forge a career in Russia, the outbreak of the First
World War necessitated his return. The changes brought about by the October Revolution
were particularly traumatic to Neuhaus as he felt the Russian identity he had created for
himself as an émigré was being replaced with aesthetics which were completely foreign to
him. Thus, Neuhaus saw himself as a cultural émigré trapped geographically and
symbolically within an alien Soviet landscape. This paper will explore the aesthetic and
philosophical transformations which Neuhaus undertook in the search for a national
identity, its manifestations in his pianism and how, faced with the reality of Soviet
aesthetics, his unique transformations allowed him to avoid censorship and isolation.
Biographical Notes (Music)
Rebecca Mitchell is Assistant Professor of Russian History at Middlebury College (USA).
She received her PhD in history from the University of Illinois (2011), after completing
Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in piano performance (SMU, 2001, University of
Saskatchewan, 1998). Her first monograph, Nietzsche’s Orphans: Music, Metaphysics and
the Twilight of the Russian Empire is forthcoming with Yale University Press in Fall 2015.
Olesya Bobrik graduated in musicology from the Moscow P. Tchaikovsky Conservatory
in 1999, held research fellowships from the Institute of Musicology at the University of
Vienna (2002) and the Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel (2004). In 2007 she defended her Ph.D.
thesis «Viennese Publishers Universal Edition and Soviet Musicians: History of
Collaboration in 1923-1945» (published in 2011). She is currently a Scientific Researcher
at the State Institute for Art Studies and at the Archive of the Bolshoi Theatre music library
and she holds teaching positions at the P.Tchaikovsky Conservatory and Academic Music
College at P.Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Her research interests center on West European
and Russian music of the 19th and 20th centuries, the work of Arthur Lourié and Boleslav
Javorsky, the music of the Russian emigration, history of musical publishing, and history
of orchestral styles.
Irina Akimova est née à Penza (Russie) où elle débuta ses études musicales avant
d’intégrer le conservatoire national de Saint-Pétersbourg pour ses études musicologique et
instrumentale (piano, clavecin). En France, elle poursuit ses études de clavecin puis suit les
cours à l’université de Paris IV Sorbonne. En 2008, elle soutient une thèse de doctorat de
musicologie du XXème siècle qui fut l’objet de la publication chez l’Harmattan, Pierre
Souvtchinsky. Parcours d’un Russe hors frontières. Outre sont intérêt pour l’histoire de
l’émigration russe, Irina Akimova a travaillé sur les compositeurs de la seconde moitié du
XXème siècle (L. Berio, P. Boulez, K. Stockhausen, M. Fano, F.-B. Mâche). Bénéficiaire
de plusieurs bourses d’études pour le travail dans de nombreuses archives (Moscou, Bâle),
10
elle continue ses recherches autour ces deux sujets. Professeur au conservatoire classé
d’État, elle enseigne la formation et culture musicales et participe aux concertsconférences.
Jonathan Powell is a pianist, composer and writer on music. Recent orchestral
engagements include Brahms’ 2nd Concerto under Leoš Svarovsky and the Slovak State
Philharmonic; he has also appeared at numerous contemporary music festivals including
Borealis (Bergen), Musica Nova Helsinki, Space (Bratislava) and Huddersfield. Broadcasts
include work for the BBC, Radio Netherlands and two live concerts for the Festival Radio
France Montpellier. He has performed and lectured on Scriabin’s 10 sonatas on numerous
occasions and published articles on early 20th-century Russian modernism. He has made
about 20 CDs, some of them first recordings.
Stephen Walsh is an Emeritus Professor of Cardiff University, where he held a personal
chair in music from 2001 to 2013. He was for many years deputy music critic of The
Observer and a frequent reviewer for the London Times, Daily Telegraph and Financial
Times. He now reviews for the arts website theartsdesk.com. His most recent books
include a two-volume biography of Igor Stravinsky and a study of the Russian Moguchaya
kuchka, Musorgsky and his Circle: A Russian Musical Adventure.
Tatiana Baranova-Monighetti graduated with distinction from the Moscow
Conservatoire as a doctoral student in musicology. She worked as an Associate Professor
in the Music Theory department at the same institution. In the 1980s she elaborated the
first in Russia course of studies on the history of notation for musicologists and an
integrated course of music theory for performers. She gave guest lectures in Poland,
Portugal, France and the US, and published over sixty articles in scholarly editions. Dr.
Baranova-Monighetti subsequently worked in the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia
in Madrid. In recent years she is living in Basel and undertaking research at the Paul
Sacher Stiftung. Her latest publications are devoted to Stravinsky: “Stravinsky’s Russian
Library” (in: Stravinsky and His World. Princeton University Press, 2013); “In between
Orthodoxy and Catholicism: The Problem of Stravinsky’s Religious Identity” (in: Igor
Stravinsky: Sound and Gesture of Modernism, Brepols 2014); “Working on The Rite of
Spring: Stravinsky’s Sketches for the Ballet at the Paul Sacher Stiftung” (in the same
book); “Russian Music in Stravinsky’s Library” (in: Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung,
Basel, 2015).
Elena Dubinets is Vice President of Artistic Planning for the Seattle Symphony. She has
published four books and numerous articles, primarily on contemporary Russian and
American music. She was a NEH fellow at America’s Russian-speaking Immigrants &
Refugees Summer Institute at Columbia University in New York (2013) and a Stipendiat at
the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel (2002). Dubinets has given presentations at the meetings
of the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, International
Musicological Society and other conferences. Dubinets received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees
from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia and has lived in the United
States since 1996.
Simo Mikkonen is Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland and an adjunct professor
of Russian history at the University of Jyväskylä. His primary research interests include
the cultural, international and transnational relations of the Soviet Union, as well as
Russian and Soviet emigration. He has previously published State Composers and the Red
11
Courtiers. Music, Ideology and Politics in the Soviet 1930s (Mellen, 2009), and edited
volumes Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe (Berghahn, 2015)
and Music, Art and Diplomacy. East-West Cultural Interactions and the Cold War
(forthcoming on Ashgate, 2016).
Hon-Lun Yang is Professor of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research
interest focuses on East-West musical encounters and musical transnationalism. She is the
author of over 30 articles in such journals as Asian Music (2010), International Review of
Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (2011), etc. and books chapters in titles such as Music
and Protests in 1968 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Music and Politics (Ashgate
2013), etc. She is currently editing a volume with Michael Saffle entitled East-West
Musical Encounters (University of Michigan Press) and also working on a tri-author book
(with Simo Mikkonen and John Winzenburg) on Russian musicians in Shanghai.
Vitaliy Ryzhenkov, an independent historian from St. Petersburg, was born in 1986. In
2008, he graduated from St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of history, where he
defended a Ph.D. thesis “Nikolay Nikolaevich Evreinov in the cultural life of Russia and
foreign countries” (2011). In 2013 he produced a monograph “Nikolay Evreinov in the
cultural life of Russia and foreign countries”. In 2013-2015, he participated in the project
of the cultural fund “St. Petersburg and foreign countries”, devoted to the history of
Russian Public library of I.S. Turgenev in Paris, and became one of the authors of the
collective monograph “Russian public library of I.S. Turgenev as a crossroad of cultural
life of Russia and France”. Nowadays he works as a history teacher in the gymnasium. His
research interests include the history of Russian and Soviet culture of the 1st half of the 20th
century and the history of Russian émigré culture.
Olga Velitchkina received her Master’s Degree from the Moscow Tchaikovsky
Conservatory (1987) and then a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the Ohio State University
in 1998. Since then she has been living and working in France where she is an independent
researcher, music teacher and artistic director of several performing groups. She is a
member of the French Society for Ethnomusicology and has taken part in numerous
international conferences on subjects concerning Russian and Soviet music and Russian
traditional music.
Evgeniy Tsymbal is a film director, a screenwriter, a historian, and a film critic. Born in
1949, he graduated from Rostov University and the Higher Courses for scriptwriters and
film directors, Moscow. He worked as an assistant of Andrey Tarkovsky, Eldar Ryazanov,
Larisa Shepit’ko, Mark Zakharov, and Nikita Mikhalkov. Since 1988, he has produced
over 30 films. He is a winner of the BAFTA Award, a two-time winner of the Russian
National Cinematographic Award “Nika” and a three-time winner of the Prize of the Guild
of Film Critics for the best book of the year. Furthermore, he acted as the organiser and
moderator of two international scientific conferences on Andrey Tarkovsky and of the
international film festival “Zerkalo” in Ivanovo. Tsymbal is the author of over 80 articles
on the history of cinematography and the history of literature, published in Russia, UK,
Germany, USA, Ukraine, France, Sweden, Yugoslavia, and Kazakhstan.
Katerina Levidou is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Athens and Visiting
Research Fellow at King’s College London. She has previously conducted postdoctoral
research as a Junior Research Fellow (Christ Church, Oxford), and Swiss Federal Scholar
and External Scientific Collaborator (University of Lausanne). Her publications focus on
12
Russian and Greek music of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as the reception of Greek
antiquity in music, while her research interests include modernism, nationalism,
emigration, spirituality, identity, aesthetics and music festivals. She is co-convenor of the
BASEES Study Group for Russian and Eastern European Music.
Patrick Zuk is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Durham in Great Britain. He
is currently working on a biographical-critical study of Nikolay Myaskovsky, and is coeditor (with Marina Frolova-Walker) of a volume of essays Russian Music Since 1917
which will be published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the British
Academy.
Suzanne-Laetitia Kassian, AMAS, l’Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-4), Docteur d’Etat
en musicologie, Géorgie, qualifiée Maître de conférences, France. Membre de la Société
Française d’Analyse Musicale et de la Société Française de Musicologie. Ayant reçu une
éducation musicale et universitaire complète en République de Géorgie, URSS, elle a
soutenu sa thèse de doctorat en musique et musicologie à Tbilissi, Géorgie. L’histoire de la
musique soviétique comptait parmi les matières étudiées sous divers angles : proprement
l’histoire, l’analyse, l’écriture, l’esthétique, la critique de l’art. En France, elle a complété
son expérience par ses recherches dans les fonds de la BNF et des apports des
musicologues européens et français, des rencontres avec des représentants de l’émigration
russe.
Svetlana Zvereva studied at the Leningrad Conservatoire and the State Institute for the
Study of the Arts in Moscow. She is a part-time tutor at the Royal Conservatoire of
Scotland and has taught at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. She is joint musical
director of the chamber choir Russkaya Cappella (Glasgow). She is the founder and an
author/editor of the series Russian Church Music in Documents and Materials published in
Moscow since 1998. She has published over 70 scholarly articles on Russian sacred music
of the late Middle Ages and of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the Russia Abroad.
Maria Razumovskaya is a pianist and researcher. After completing her Bachelor and
Master of Music in Performance and Research at the Royal Academy of Music in London
with Distinction (class of Rustem Hayroudinoff), she undertook further studies as an
AHRC and RCM doctoral scholar at the Royal College of Music with Dr Natasha Loges,
Professor Dmitri Alexeev and Dr Amanda Glauert. She completed her thesis, Heinrich
Neuhaus: Aesthetics and Philosophy of an Interpretation, in December 2014. She is an
active performer and teacher, and has presented papers at international conferences and
contributed articles to musicological publications.
13