Publication date:
05 May 2014Length of book:
438 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442231320
Gregor Tassie describes Nikolay Myaskovsky as “one of the great enigmas of 20th-century Russian music.” Between the two world wars, the symphonies of Myaskovsky enjoyed great popularity and were performed by all major American and European orchestras; they were some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged the symphonic genre. But accusations of “formalism” at the 1948 USSR Composers Congress resulted in the purposeful neglect of his music until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Myaskovsky wrote some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged and extended the symphonic genre. In Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music, Tassie gives readers the first modern English-language biography of this Russian composer since his death in 1950. Tassie draws together information from the composer’s diaries and letters, as well as the memoirs of friends and colleagues—even his secret police files—to chronicle Myaskovsky’s early life, subsequent far-reaching influence as a composer, teacher, and journalist, and his final persecution by the Soviet government. This biography will surely rekindle interest in Myaskovsky’s remarkable body of work and will interest aficionados, students, and scholars of the modern classical music tradition and history of the arts in Russia.
Myaskovsky wrote some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged and extended the symphonic genre. In Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music, Tassie gives readers the first modern English-language biography of this Russian composer since his death in 1950. Tassie draws together information from the composer’s diaries and letters, as well as the memoirs of friends and colleagues—even his secret police files—to chronicle Myaskovsky’s early life, subsequent far-reaching influence as a composer, teacher, and journalist, and his final persecution by the Soviet government. This biography will surely rekindle interest in Myaskovsky’s remarkable body of work and will interest aficionados, students, and scholars of the modern classical music tradition and history of the arts in Russia.
This book is the first full-length biography in English of the unjustly neglected Russian composer Nikolay Myaskovsky (1881-1950). To say that the volume fills an enormous gap in music historiography would be an understatement. In the 1930s and 1940s, Myaskovsky was one of the world's most often performed contemporary composers. He had the misfortune of dying at the height of the Cold War, before the death of Stalin. Accused in 1948 of ‘formalism’ and other violations of the official Soviet aesthetic of socialist realism, Myaskovsky found himself out of favor in the Soviet Union and no longer the recipient of wartime goodwill from the former anti-Nazi allies. Tassie has done yeoman archival work, and he presents a full account of Myaskovsky's early family life and education as a military engineer in the Tsarist period; his life as a student and young professional composer in the traumatic period between the 1905 and 1917 revolutions; and his remarkably successful career in the Soviet period as a composer of uncompromising artistic and ethical standards. Tassie also includes discussions of Myaskovsky's creative output: 27 symphonies and other orchestral works, solo works, and chamber pieces. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.