On Russian Music
- Author: Taruskin, Richard
On Russian Music
- Author: Taruskin, Richard
Purchase product
About
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.
Contents
- preface against utopia / ix
- 1. Et in Arcadia Ego; or, I Didn't Know I Was Such a Pessimist until I Wrote This Thing (a talk) / 1 From the New York Times, mostly
- 2. Only Time Will Cover the Taint / 21
- 3. "Nationalism": Colonialism in Disguise? / 25
- 4. Why Do They All Hate Horowitz? / 30
- 5. Optimism amid the Rubble / 37
- 6. A Survivor from the Teutonic Train Wreck / 43
- 7. Does Nature Call the Tune? / 46
- 8. Two Stabs at the Universe / 51 Away with the Ives Myth: The "Universe" Is Here at Last / 51 Out of Hibernation: Ives's Mythical Beast / 55
- 9. In Search of the "Good" Hindemith Legacy / 60
- 10. Six Times Six: A Bach Suite Selection / 66
- 11. A Beethoven Season? / 71
- 12. Dispelling the Contagious Wagnerian Mist / 81
- 13. How Talented Composers Become Useless / 86
- 14. Making a Stand against Sterility / 94
- 15. A Sturdy Musical Bridge to the Twenty-first Century / 98
- 16. Calling All Pundits: No More Predictions! / 104
- 17. In The Rake's Progress, Love Conquers (Almost) All / 109
- 18. Markevitch as Icarus / 118
- 19. Let's Rescue Poor Schumann from His Rescuers / 124
- 20. Early Music: Truly Old-Fashioned at Last? / 129
- 21. Bartok and Stravinsky: Odd Couple Reunited? / 133
- 22. Wagner's Antichrist Crashes a Pagan Party / 138
- 23. A Surrealist Composer Comes to the Rescue of Modernism / 144
- 24. Corraling a Herd of Musical Mavericks / 153
- 25. Can We Give Poor Orff a Pass at Last? / 161
- 26. The Danger of Music and the Case for Control / 165
- 27. Ezra Pound: A Slim Sound Claim to Musical Immortality / 181
- 28. Underneath the Dissonance Beat a Brahmsian Heart / 186
- 29. Enter Boris Goudenow, Just 295 Years Late / 191 For the New Republic, mostly
- 30. The First Modernist / 195
- 31. The Dark Side of the Moon / 202
- 32. Of Kings and Divas / 217
- 33. The Golden Age of Kitsch / 241
- 34. No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage / 261
- 35. Sacred Entertainments / 280
- 36. The Poietic Fallacy / 301
- 37. The Musical Mystique: Defending Classical Music against Its Devotees / 330 From the scholarly press
- 38. Revising Revision / 354
- 39. Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology / 382
- 40. She Do the Ring in Different Voices / 406
- 41. Stravinsky and Us / 420 Envoi
- 42. Setting Limits (a talk) / 448
- index / 000
