Richard Taruskin

Resisting the Ninth

Author(s): Richard Taruskin Reviewed work(s): Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, op. 125 by Beethoven-Archiv Bonn ; Yvonne Kenny ; Sarah Walker ; Patrick Power ; Petteri Salomaa ; The Schütz Choir of London ;The London Classical Players; Roger Norrington Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Spring, 1989), pp. 241-256 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746505 Accessed: 11/12/2008 07:53

'Entoiling the falconet': Russian musical orientalism in context

This essay originated as a contribution to a symposium organised by the Dallas Opera and Southern Methodist University around the Operas production of Boro-dins Prince Igor in November 1990. Since many Soviet guests had been invited, the poster and programme book were printed in English and Russian side by side. I found that the word ‘orientalism’ in my title had become tema vostoka – ‘the Eastern theme’ – in translation, even though orientalizm , or more commonly, orientalistika , are perfectly good Russian words (well, Russian words, anyway). It was a sensible precaution. ‘The Eastern theme’ is neutral: from a paper with that phrase in the title one expects inventories, taxonomies, identification of sources, stylistic analysis. ‘Orientalism’ is charged. From a paper with that word in the title one expects semiotics, ideological critique, polemic, perhaps indictment. The translator was quite right to err on the side of innocuousness, rather than saddle me with a viewpoint I might not wish or manage to live up to.

Christian themes in Russian opera: A millennial essay

The millennium to which my title refers is that of the Christianisation of Russia, which took place in 988, and which was recently celebrated the world over, not least in newly broad-minded Russia herself.1 And yet the designation is somewhat imprecise: the millennium was really that of a sovereigns baptism. After considering and rejecting Judaism and Islam (so the legend goes), the Great Prince Vladimir of Kiev embraced the Christian faith and established it as a state religion the statiest state religion that ever was (or is: the situation has been updated under the Soviets, but not fundamentally changed). The distinction is necessary if the subject of these remarks is to have any meaning at all, and it will also help explain why there is relatively little to say about it.

Two Serendipities: Keynoting a Conference, “Music and Power”

The purpose of the discussion, which served as keynote at a conference convened under the title “Music and Power,” is to complicate what is often a simplified and overly dichotomized view of that relationship. Two figures, Dmitry Kabalevsky and Tikhon Khrennikov, are singled out for commentary as musicians who wielded political power or conspicuously benefited from it under the Soviet regime. The titular serendipities were occasions through which the author was made unexpectedly aware of the ambiguities and nuances that attended the interactions of music and musicians with the Soviet state.

Teeth Will Be Provided: On Signifiers

In his autobiography, Goldmark boasted that he had employed four distinct orientalist idioms in his works: one in Sakuntala and three in Die Konigin von Saba. Actually, his deployment of orientalist signifiers was a lot more varied and subtle than that. None of them, moreover, was based on actual ethnographic models. All were purely imaginary and conventional – and for that reason legible and effective. This essay surveys and classifies them, analyzes their motivation and effect, and compares them with the practice of contemporaries such as Anton Rubinstein and Camille Saint-Saens.

Did He Mean It

The program note I want to gloss concerns the Symphony in Three Movements, which was composed over the years 1942 to 1945 and first performed, on 24 January 1946, by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra under the composer’s baton. In 1963 Stravinsky seemed to have had a change of heart that rendered him willing to admit what he had formerly denied, even if he still needed to cloak the admission in paradox. Is it evidence that (to recall a book of outdated centennial essays) Stravinsky the musician never really meant what Stravinsky the modernist averred? We’ll never know. Meanwhile, we’ll go on performing and interpreting Stravinsky’s music the way not he but we need to hear it. As long as we do that, his work will live.

Acts of Faith

Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc, United States, 2000. Paperback. Book Condition: New. Reprint. 170 x 102 mm. Language: English . Brand New Book. They met as children, innocents from two different worlds. And from that moment their lives were fated to be forever entwined. Timothy : Abandoned at birth, he finds a home--and a dazzling career--within the Catholic Church. But the vows he takes cannot protect him from one soul-igniting passion. Daniel : The scholarly son of a great...