GRMUS H647 — The Avant Garde of the Soviet World

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a think tank for creative artists until Joseph Stalin began to stifle dissent in the early 1930s, forbidding anything other than the eternally optimistic “Socialist Realism.” When Stalin died in 1953, repression relaxed under his successor Nikita Khrushchev – the so-called “Khrushchev Thaw” – but resumed when he was deposed in 1964. It was too late: Young composers kept writing what they wanted, producing extraordinary music that had to be for the “bottom drawer,” where they hid scores that they knew no one would ever play. Eventually, some of them were heralded as among the most important composers of the later 20th century. This course explores those innovators, emphasizing the first generation – primarily Alfred Schnittke, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Edison Denisov (Russia); Arvo Pärt (Estonia); Sofia Gubaidulina (Tatarstan); Leonid Hrabovsky and Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine); Tigran Mansurian (Armenia), Oleg Felzer (Azerbaijan), Giya Kancheli (Georgia) – and some of their younger successors, as well as colleagues in Eastern Europe. The instructor will share personal experiences of getting to know many of these composers and performing their music.