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The Khruschev Thaw

Nikita Khrushchev's 1953 rise to power inaugurated a period of moderate liberalization in Soviet culture often dubbed the "Khruschev Thaw". This period marked an end to the anti-formalist persecutions of the late 1940s and early 50s. Composers who had fallen out of favor during the final Stalin years returned to the public eye, and pieces which had previously been deemed unsuitable for public presentation for their unorthodoxy were once again performed. Perhaps most notably, many of Dmitri Shostakovich's early, banned works, including his first opera and his symphonies, were rehabilitated over the course of Khrushchev's premiership. Western musicians like Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould also toured the Soviet Union for the first time in the late 1950s. The Khrushchev administration also solidified the position of the Union of Soviet Composers (USC) as the dominant administrative authority over the state sponsorship of classical music, a process which began during the later Stalin years. Tikhon Khrennikov, a composer by trade, lead the USC from 1948 to 1991 as one of the only Stalin-era political appointees to remain in power until the the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse. Khrennikov's USC actively attempted to undo the policies of Zhdanovischina, the campaign of ideological purity waged by Stalin's second in command Andrei Zhdanov from 1946 to 1948. In 1958, Khrennikov persuaded Khrushchev to officially rehabilitate many of the artists indicted in Zhdanov's 1948 "Resolution on Music of the Central Committee of the Communist Party", a document censuring composers whose music failed to sufficiently realize the socialist realist aesthetic.

"Official" Soviet Music, 1953-1991

The Khrushchev Thaw yielded greater artistic autonomy for Soviet composers and musicians, but it did not end the state's involvement in the production of classical music. Though the Union of Soviet Composers (USC) now rarely endorsed the outright imprisonment of unorthodox composers, it often blocked state sponsorship for composers it deemed unrepresentative of the Communist Party's ideological position. The Communist Party remained opposed to techniques developed by Western modernist composers, especially atonal harmony and serialism. For example, serialist composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern were not covered in official Soviet music curriculum of the late fifties and early sixties, including that of the premiere Moscow Conservatory. Over the course of the 1960s, these techniques were gradually introduced into the Soviet musical vocabulary- by 1971, even Khrennikov, the embodiment of the Soviet musical establishment, employed a serialist twelve-tone melody in his Piano concerto no. 2 in C major.

The conservative posture towards the introduction of new techniques into the musical repertoire was only one arm of the aesthetic of "socialist realism". In addition to its general adherence to the stylistic norms of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, socialist realism in Soviet classical music expressed itself as a heroic focus on working class life and Soviet revolutionary iconography. Sergei Prokofiev's Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution is the prototypical socialist realist composition, written in 1937 but not performed until 1966. Prokofiev's cantata romanticizes the events of the Bolshevik rise to power, set to a libretto drawn from the writings of socialist heroes Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The 1964 Kursk Songs by Georgy Sviridov also embody socialist realist aesthetic. Sviridov's song cycle depicts pastoral scenes of peasant life in the composer's native Kursk, adopting Western Russian folk melodies and styles. The music of Dmitriy Shostakovich defined the dominant style of Soviet classical music for subsequent generations of Soviet composers. Though Shostakovich had fallen out of favor with the Party following his denunciation by Zhdanov in the late 1940s, his status as the premiere Soviet composer was gradually re-established through the Khrushchev Thaw until his death in 1975. The USC under Khrennikov favored Shostakovich's mastery of conventional classical forms, upholding his 15 monumental symphonies alongside the works of pre-Soviet masters like Gustav Mahler as examples for young Soviet composers to follow. The Party's idolization of classical masters like Shostakovich stood in deliberate contrast to their disdain for experimental composers who eschewed traditional classical norms. Several prominent Soviet composers have been described as disciples of Shostakovich, including Georgy Svirdov. His influence touched the work of nearly every composer of the post-Stalin era, who either adhered to or reacted against the musical language he authored.

"Unofficial" Soviet Music, 1953-1991

Following the end of Stalin-era persecutions, a new cadre of Soviet avant-garde composers developed parallel to the mainstream, state-sponsored musical establishment. The foundation of the Soviet experimental tradition is often traced to composer Andrey Volkonsky. In 1954, Volkonsky was expelled from the Moscow Conservatory for his unorthodox style of composition and lackadaisical approach to his studies. Despite his abandonment by the Soviet musical establishment, Volkonsky continued to write music. In 1956, he went on to compose Musica Stricta, a solo piano work usually acknowledged as the first use of twelve-tone serialism in Soviet classical music. Volkonsky's experimentation during the late 1950s and early 1960s eventually inspired more musicians to rebel against the strictures which had until then governed Soviet classical composition. This new generation of avant-gardists included composers such as Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke, and Arvo Pärt. Each composer contributed their own unique innovations. Denisov continued Volkonsky's exploration of serialist techniques, while Gubaidolina incorporated previously unacceptable religious themes into her music. Pärt expressed his spirituality with his stark, minimalist musical style. Schnittke became known for his polystylistic compositions, which often simultaneously incorporated several conflicting styles and themes, blurring the static distinctions between genres.

In 1979, Khrennikov publicly denounced Denisov and other experimental composers in a public address to the composer's union, and similar attacks surfaced in state-sponsored media like Pravda. Despite facing clear opposition in the Communist party, the prestige of the Soviet avant-garde only grew both domestically and abroad. In April 1982, the Moscow Conservatory held a concert featuring works of Denisov, Gubaidulina, and Schnittke. Before this landmark event, the works of the avant-garde had been barred from performance in the leading concert halls of Moscow and Leningrad. From this point forward, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the place of the experimental composers was grudgingly acknowledged by the Soviet musical establishment.