Eight Soviet Composers (Paperback)

Text extracted from opening pages of book: Gerald Abraham EIGHT SOVIET COMPOSERS GEOFFREY CTJMBERLEGE Oxford University Press LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMEN HOUSE, E. C. 4 I/ ondon Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras GEOFFREY CUMBERI, EGE PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY First published - 1943 Second impression r 944 Third impression 1 944 Fourth impression 1 946 Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS 1. Introduction . page 7 2. Dmitry Shostakovich 13 3. Sergey Prokofiev . . . . . . .32 4. Aram Khachaturyan ...... 43 5. Lev Knipper 52 6. Vissarion Shebalin . . . . . 61 7. Dmitry Kabalevsky ....... 70 8. Ivan Dzerzhinsky . . . . . . 79 9. Yury Shaporin 89 Index . . . .... - 99 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Six of these essays have appeared in slightly different form in The Monthly Musical Record, that on Shostakovich in Horizon, that on Prokofiev in The Music Review, and part of the Introduction in The Gramophone, and I offer my grateful thanks to the respective editors for permission to reprint them. My thanks are also due to Dr. A. Aber, of Novello & Co., Ltd., the English agents of the Russian State Music Publishing Company, for kindly allowing me to consult scores otherwise inaccessible. I. INTRODUCTION THE AIM of this little book is much less to offer criticism than to give information. Ask any English musician what he knows about the music of our Soviet allies and the odds are about seven to one that he will answer, ' Oh, Shostakovich, you know. And that old chap, Myaskovsky, who writes innumerable symphonies. And the fellow who wrote the steel-foundry thing Mosolov, ' and that he will then, or very soon after, stick. My object is to help himpast the sticking point by describing in some detail the careers and work of eight outstanding Soviet composers. It would be easy to add to the number, but these eight are not only, in my view, the most impor tant: they are thoroughly representative of Soviet Russian music as a whole. There are numerous reasons for our British ignorance of this music: not political prejudice so much as commercial reasons, the chief of them being neglect by the Russians themselves to push the sales of their scores and gramophone records in Western Europe. This neglect often infuriating to those of us who have been anxious to get to know the work of Soviet musicians was by no means entirely due to lack of business sense on the part of the State Publishing house; sheer indifference, I suspect, played a big part simple indifference to what musicians outside the U. S. S. R. might think. And that leads us straight to the main characteristic of Soviet music, particularly during the last ten years: its self-centredness. Soviet music is self-centred and self-sufficient but by no means self-satisfied: on the contrary, it is intensely self-critical because it has a special problem or set of problems to cope with and is exclusively preoccupied with finding the solution. The problem was posed by the Soviet Government, which treats composers very handsomely 1 but, paying the pipers, insists on its right to call the 1 Through the Union of Soviet Composers it commissions from them works for which it pays generously; in addition composers are entitled to performing fees and to payment by the State music-publishers if their works are printed. If the Soviet composer is ill he gets free treatment; if he goes on holiday, heis given help in paying for it ( if he needs help). The Govern ment, through the Union of Soviet Composers, may even provide him with 8 EIGHT SOVIET COMPOSERS tunes. Being a government of the people, it insists on music for the people, not music for intellectuals, for those with highly trained ears and sophisticated tastes. It insists that Soviet music shall be lyrical and melodious, that it shall be the expression of real feeling, and of joyous or heroic or optimistic feeling rather than of personal, subjective brooding. These conditions are quite foreign to

General

Imprint:	Read Books
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	March 2007
First published:	March 2007
Authors:	Gerald Abraham
Dimensions:	216 x 140 x 6mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	104
ISBN-13:	978-1-4067-6519-9
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > General Books > History > General
LSN:	1-4067-6519-8
Barcode:	9781406765199

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