On Russian Music

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.

CONTENIDO:

Preface: Against Utopia

1. Et in Arcadia Ego; or, I Didn?t Know I Was Such a Pessimist until I Wrote This Thing (a talk)

From the New York Times, mostly
2. Only Time Will Cover the Taint
3. ?Nationalism?: Colonialism in Disguise?
4. Why Do They All Hate Horowitz?
5. Optimism amid the Rubble
6. A Survivor from the Teutonic Train Wreck
7. Does Nature Call the Tune?
8. Two Stabs at the Universe: Away with the Ives Myth: The ?Universe? Is Here at Last. Out of Hibernation: Ives?s Mythical Beast
9. In Search of the ?Good? Hindemith Legacy
10. Six Times Six: A Bach Suite Selection
11. A Beethoven Season?
12. Dispelling the Contagious Wagnerian Mist
13. How Talented Composers Become Useless
14. Making a Stand against Sterility
15. A Sturdy Musical Bridge to the Twenty-first Century
16. Calling All Pundits: No More Predictions!
17. In The Rake?s Progress, Love Conquers (Almost) All
18. Markevitch as Icarus
19. Let?s Rescue Poor Schumann from His Rescuers
20. Early Music: Truly Old-Fashioned at Last?
21. Bartók and Stravinsky: Odd Couple Reunited?
22. Wagner?s Antichrist Crashes a Pagan Party
23. A Surrealist Composer Comes to the Rescue of Modernism
24. Corraling a Herd of Musical Mavericks
25. Can We Give Poor Orff a Pass at Last?
26. The Danger of Music and the Case for Control
27. Ezra Pound: A Slim Sound Claim to Musical Immortality
28. Underneath the Dissonance Beat a Brahmsian Heart
29. Enter Boris Goudenow, Just 295 Years Late

For the New Republic, mostly
30. The First Modernist
31. The Dark Side of the Moon
32. Of Kings and Divas
33. The Golden Age of Kitsch
34. No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage
35. Sacred Entertainments
36. The Poietic Fallacy
37. The Musical Mystique: Defending Classical Music against Its Devotees

From the scholarly press
38. Revising Revision
39. Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology
40. She Do the Ring in Different Voices
41. Stravinsky and Us

Envoi
42. Setting Limits (a talk)

Index