Russian Composers Abroad

Elena Dubinets

Description

As waves of composers migrated from Russia in the 20th century, they grappled with the complex struggle between their own traditions and those of their adopted homes.

Russian Composers Abroad explores the self-identity of these émigrés, especially those who left from the 1970s on, and how aspects of their diasporic identities played out in their music. Elena Dubinets provides a journey through the complexities of identity formation and cultural production under globalization and migration, elucidating sociological perspectives of the post-Soviet world that have caused changes in composers' outlooks, strategies, and rankings.

Russian Composers Abroad is an illuminating study of creative ideas that are often shaped by the exigencies of financing and advancement rather than just by the vision of the creators and the demands of the public.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Part I: National versus Global
1. The "Universal": Globalizing the Local
2. The National: Super-Icons
3. National Identification versus Cultural Affiliation: Non-Russian Composers
4. Cultural Affiliation versus Citizenship: Russian Diaspora
Part II: How to: Perspectives of Music Creation
5. The "Social" Perspective
6. The "Production" Perspective
Part III: How they left
7. A Brief History of Russian Diaspora Through Music
8. "Kolbasa Emigration": a New Cultural Mythology?
Part IV: How they stayed
9. The Trauma of Migration
10. The Many Professions
11. Supporters and Connectors
Part V: How they returned
12. Homecoming and Reception at Home
13. Russia under Putin: to stay or to go?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Music
• Ethnomusicology
• History of classical music traditions
• Ethnic Russian music
• Russian diaspora
• Multiple signal classification
• Russian nationalism

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253057808
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Russian Composers Abroad
Russian Music Studies
Simon A. Morrison and Peter Schmelz, editors

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2021 by Elena Dubinets
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of Americ a
First printing 2021
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-05777-8 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-05778-5 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-05779-2 (web PDF)
To Nadya, Richard, Misha, David, and Claudia without whom my emigration would not be the same.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Part I. National versus Global
1. The Universal : Globalizing the Local
2. The National: Super-Icons
3. National Identification versus Cultural Affiliation: Non-Russian Composers
4. Cultural Affiliation versus Citizenship: Russian Diaspora
Part II. How To: Perspectives of Music Creation
5. The Social Perspective
6. The Production Perspective
Part III. How They Left
7. A Brief History of Russian Diaspora through Music
8. Kolbasa Emigration : A New Cultural Mythology?
Part IV. How They Stayed
9. The Trauma of Migration
10. The Many Professions
11. Supporters and Connectors
Part V. How They Returned
12. Homecoming and Reception at Home
13. Russia under Putin: To Stay or to Go?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Preface
It was one of those rare vacation days when I didn t intend to do any work. I was in Porto, Portugal, hoping to enjoy the glorious June weather in a beautiful city I had never visited before. My husband and I decided to take a boat cruise, and on purchasing tickets we discovered that included in the price were two after-cruise visits to the tasting rooms-so-called caves-of well-known wineries. The first one was situated right on the river, and its interior design was slick and modern-a typical tourist trap. We almost gave up looking for the second, as it was located on an inner street, farther away from the riverfront, but-purely by accident-we found a sign for it after turning into a tiny alley.
On entering, we were greeted by a young lady speaking good English with a barely identifiable accent who informed us that the guide was just finishing up the previous tour. We spent a few minutes looking at the multiple wine barrels and bottles in the entryway. When the guide came back, he turned to the couple who had arrived before us and asked them where they were from. They were of Polish origin but now lived in Portugal. He greeted them in Polish. Then he asked us the same question, and we responded that we were from the United States. He wasn t satisfied: I can hear by your accent that you are not Americans. Where are you from originally? I can greet people in fifty-seven languages, and I would be happy to greet you in your language!
As he was saying all this, I realized that my vacation day was over. I knew that answering his question would involve telling our family story. My husband is from Ukraine (but he spent half his life studying in Russia before we left for the United States), I am a Jew from Moscow, and our native countries are now at war. Neither of us is content with current Russian policies, and we despise being put in the same category as many other people who were born in the same place. This entangled family history was the reason we did not originally say we were Russians-and, strictly speaking, we aren t, by ethnicity or nationality. But Russian is the label usually slapped on all former citizens of the USSR, regardless of their actual ethnicity or self-identification. To further complicate things, of all the languages from the former USSR, my husband and I only speak Russian, so a greeting in any other language-other than English, which had already happened-would have been pointless.
The guide meant well, and his innocent question was typical for situations when strangers meet for the first time. I am used to answering this question by now-twenty-five years after emigration-but the longer I live outside of my native country, and the more its policies deteriorate, the more difficult it becomes for me to express belonging to Russian culture.
And of course, it is impossible for one person to fully know what another person is feeling; not every type of experience is translatable, and the significance of someone else s situation might not be immediately apparent. The tour guide s question-a question he likely asks a hundred times a day-turned my own experience into a simple transaction. From his standpoint, this question implied that I was similar if not identical to many other people who happily volunteer an answer. For me, this question revealed a social gap between me and so many other patrons there, as I wasn t willing to come forward with the unambiguous answer he had expected. His question reduced me to a stereotype; it was an Othering, an implicit alarm screaming at me: You are a stranger, a foreigner, an alien. You don t belong with the rest of those who speak your language! His question burst into my internal discourse about belonging and not belonging, about being recognized as one of us and being excluded as Other.
I am clearly not the first person unable to self-identify easily or to hesitate about answering such a question. But as a scholar, I agonize over the fact that people can be labeled and ghettoized based on their appearance, accent, ethnicity, and nationality-even if their actual circumstances are very different. In this book, I explore the multiple modes of self-identification that people become entangled with on leaving their native country. More specifically, I explore how professional composers from the former Soviet territories experience their emigration and express it in their music.
The wine tour felt a little strange after that initial hiccup; we felt guilty about resisting the guide s question and purchased several bottles of extra-dry white port-a specialty one cannot readily find in the US. When we were paying the cashier-the same woman who greeted us-her cell phone rang, and she picked up and said quietly, in Russian: Mamochka, u menia seichas klient, ia tebe perezvoniu (Mom, I ve got a customer now; I ll call you back). A sense of silent sisterhood immediately sprang up. It became clear that all along she had known that we were her former compatriots-she understood both the origins of our English accent and the few phrases we exchanged in Russian about our wine choices. She rightly didn t say a word: she didn t identify herself as a like-minded person or a colingual. I am grateful to her for this discretion and respect. She did what most migr s do: she used her native language only for speaking in a very intimate way with close relations. For the outside world, she used English. I am not familiar with her story; her situated knowledge might be very different from mine, and we don t have to march together in the same direction. But we do speak the same language. And we both love port wine.
Acknowledgments
My emigration story has been incredibly successful by pure luck that somehow descended on me. I left my native country of Russia in 1996. There was no war or other major social upheaval, Russian borders were open, and obtaining migr status and the necessary paperwork wasn t an issue. My husband, Sergey, was hired to work as a software engineer in the US, and a few years later, we won a green card (a residency permit) in a US state lottery. I became a US citizen in 2005 but have retained my Russian passport. Our children, Maria and Lev, were two and a half years and four months, respectively, when we left Russia, but they have regularly visited my parents and sister (who stayed in Moscow) and are fully bilingual.
On paper, this seems easy. In reality, the second half of my life, like any migr s life, has been exciting, frustrating, and full of fears, joys, challenges, and opportunities. But I have always been surrounded by the most interesting, generous, and creative people in the world, many of whom I am fortunate to call my close friends. This book is dedicated to the five of them who have shaped the trajectory of my emigration and without whom I cannot imagine my life.
Nadya Kuznetsova was the first person I met when we moved from Boston to Seattle in 1998; our husbands worked together at Microsoft, and our children were of similar age. We have enjoyed playing piano four hands, traveling around the world, editing a Seattle-based Russian-language newspaper auspiciously titled Russkii mir , studying German, and going to an endless number of concerts. By applying her immense skills as a hairstylist, Nadya created my look and image; she and I think and even look like sisters. What a joy to be able to share many unique moments with someone like her!
Soon after settling in Seattle, I was invited to curate a festival of Russian music organized in 2000 by Professor David Gompper at the University of Iowa, which was attended and reviewed by Richard Taruskin. 1 Since then, Richard has become a mentor and a dear friend, guiding both the musicological and concert production areas of my professional career in every possible way. He has followed my activities, written about my work in his essays, and participated in multiple events that I organized. 2 He was one of the peer reviewers of this book, helping me navigate through multiple issues and saving me from