UC Berkeley

This dissertation is an historical, stylistic, and sociological analysis of new Russian music from the mid 1980s until today. It examines how Russia's social transformations of the past quarter century have affected the way composers write music and critics write about it. As a case study, it focuses on the works, activities, and critical reception of Russia's "middle generation" of modernist composers - that is, those composers born in the 1940s and 50s who entered the professional ranks before perestroika and were middle-aged at the time of the Soviet collapse. The study is organized longitudinally, tracing these composers' activities and critical reception from the mid 1980s onward. As a point of comparison, the dissertation looks, too, at the activities and reception of Russia's first post-Soviet generation, educated during the 90s and who entered the professional ranks in the 2000s. The study is based upon interviews with composers, musicians, and musicologists conducted throughout 2007-08, along with analyses of recent musical works, archival research, and readings from the contemporary Russian musicological literature and musical press. It focuses almost exclusively on music and musical life in Moscow, the site of the author's research.

This dissertation argues that social conditions during the late Soviet era bred a high degree of group cohesiveness and artistic likemindedness among modernist composers. As these social conditions changed, this cohesiveness and likemindedness largely dissipated. With the collapse of the Soviet system, modernist composers in Russia could no longer rely upon the same well-worn networks for information. At the same time, they enjoyed new opportunities to pursue careers abroad, develop new professional relationships and peer groups, and court new patrons. As a result, the homogeneous group approaches common in Soviet modern music circles of the 1980s gave way to an increasing diversity of styles during the 90s and beyond.

These stylistic developments were motivated not just by aesthetic concerns, but also by changes in the resource environment within which professional composers worked. With the end of the Soviet system, domestic institutions supporting composers largely collapsed, too. European organizations, especially government foundations and contemporary music groups, became the main source of support for Russian new music composers. Facing an institutional vacuum at home, integration with Europe--professional, personal, and stylistic--provided Russian composers the best strategy for preserving and advancing their careers. Those composers who chose to participate in European networks had strong incentive to conform to the stylistic norms expected within them. The more thoroughly one could conform to these norms and demonstrate professional aptitude in the eyes of European colleagues, the more likely he or she was to be accepted into these networks as a peer, thus gaining greater access to funding and career opportunities. As detailed in chapters 3 and 5, these stylistic adaptations took several forms: while some composers wrote pieces in the early 90s proving conversance with recent trends in new European music, others purged from their works features perceived as too old-fashioned or Soviet.

This study looks, too, at composers' perception of their position in post-Soviet society - and, more broadly, debates in Russia today about the status of classical music in contemporary Russian life. While many of the musicians featured in this study have emerged as "winners" in the post-Soviet transition, having gained in prestige or benefitted materially since 1991, most report feeling more like "losers," stranded in a society that little values their talents. These feelings of social irrelevance were amplified by the rapidity of the Soviet collapse and the quickness with which domestic institutions supporting and honoring composers have deteriorated. In the past few years, various groups have proposed programs of reform to fix Russian music and return it to its position of prominence. For some, the solution lies in emulating the cultural institutions of Western Europe; for others, Russian music's salvation lies not in emulating the West, but in rejecting it, and restoring to Russian music the qualities of tunefulness and beauty eroded from the 60s onward by the corrosive effects of the avant-garde.