Music and Letters - Advance Access

Kutuzov's Victory, Prokofiev's Defeat: the Revisions of 'War and Peace'

Seinen, N. — 2009-06-30

Prokofiev began his opera on Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1941–52) soon after the outbreak of the Second World War in the Soviet Union. The completed work was found by the authorities to be incommensurate with the requirements of wartime mobilization, and under supervision the composer began what would become a long process of revision. This article traces the genesis of Prokofiev's opera within contemporary history, politics, and aesthetics, showing how developments in ideology and subsequent demands on the mass arts made a direct impact on the evolution of the opera. What was originally an intimate work, closely tied to Tolstoy, ended as a grand opera to suit Stalinist taste. Particular attention is given to the presentation of Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, a role that was measured—in the opera as in parallel media and propaganda—against the Stalin cult. The article concludes with the suggestion that Prokofiev's original opera, which exists in manuscript form, may be due for re-evaluation.

Modernism, Politics, and Individuality in 1930s Britain: the Case of Alan Bush

Bullivant, J. — 2009-06-26

This article seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between modernism and left-wing politics in 1930s Britain. Accounts of Britten in this decade have associated both his eclectic interest in modernism and his left-wing political leanings with his individuality and otherness in a conservative decade. The 1930s music of Alan Bush (1900–95) has instead been discussed in terms of a conflict between his modernist-influenced serious music and his political commitments, a process that culminated in his open renunciation of his earlier ‘formalism’ in response to Zhdanov's 1948 dictates.

Using a variety of contemporary journalistic sources and unpublished letters and writings, broader understandings of the connections between modernism, politics, and Bush's aesthetic theories are explored. Drawing on case studies of Bush's workers’ music and his Concert Piece for Cello and Piano (1936), I argue that Bush sought a connection between modernism and left-wing politics that questioned the desirability of individual expression.

Material Gains: Assessing Susan McClary

Taruskin, R. — 2009-06-23

COMPARATIVE ORGANOGRAPHY IN EARLY MODERN EMPIRES

Irving, D. R. M. — 2009-05-18

Non-European musical instruments and their descriptions acted as transportable, material evidence of ‘exotic’ musics for early modern European scholars. As such, these objects and texts were literally instrumental in developing paradigms for the study of non-European musics. In this age of incipient globalization, they were also a contributing factor to the development of comparative ethnology. Drawing on a global range of reference, I assess critically a number of aspects emerging from early modern comparative organography, including diffusion, exchange, intercultural empathy, and adaptation, the use of European classical antiquity as a point of reference, and evidence of non-European reactions to European instruments.