Frolova-Walker’s discussion of Soviet attitudes toward folk music struck me as particularly interesting. Folk music, almost by definition, harkens back to earlier time and for the Soviet linear view of history it makes sense that this would be seen as regressive with a desire instead for the revolutionary. And yet, because of that history rather than in spite of it, folk music is music of the masses and regardless of how the Bolsheviks felt about the peasants they really were the masses. This creates a tension wherein people in power were choosing to discard the peoples’ culture to make way for what they believed to be the correct culture of the people. This tension was born out in the justifications Soviets attempted to make for why folk music had to be revolutionary and progressive – I particularly appreciated Arseny Avraamov’s claim that folk music contained “highly revolutionary elements” (Frolova-Walker, 333). It strikes me that there must have been a better way of incorporating the peasant into Soviet society rather than just disparaging him as regressive considering the way his social status aligns with that of the proletariat, even if he is less technologically entrenched than his proletariat counterpart. Did the Bolsheviks need to reject peasant in order to produce the society they envisioned? Why did Soviet opinion on folk music change if their position on the peasant didn’t?
The conception of what the Russian national music style should be seemed fairly weak and that weak conception was ultimately bad for the production of Russian music. Frolova-Walker talks about how some composers leaned so far into a Russian style, which in practice seemed to mean anything not Western, that it bordered on the absurd. One particular opera had “an obsessive avoidance of standard “Western” traits, such as a basic four-part texture, common modulations, chromaticism, and the leading tone in minor mode” (Frolova-Walker, 345). This absurdity seems almost inevitable when the primary guidance given to composers was to eschew all the rules of composition that could be considered even mildly western. Is it possible to have a national music form that still incorporates certain tropes associated with other cultures?
When they say “nationalist in form, socialist in content” they mean that the music needs to extoll the virtues of socialism and fit ideologically into the Soviet socialist framework but should do so through the cultural particularities of each nation. Do you hear that happening in the listening assignment? Do the various nationalities’ music strike you as different in form? What similarities are there in the different musics and what differences?
Regarding the question, “is it possible to have a national music form that still incorporates certain tropes associated with other cultures?” I don’t know whether this can be considered possible, but I think one of the early claims Frolova-Walker makes is that even when “some of the republics later preferred to forget about their Russian guest composers…the lasting influence of these ‘guests’ on indigenous composers was undeniable” (338). She even extends this to the post-Soviet period in her discussion of the de-Russification of the Kazakh national conservatory. The point being that in her reading the Soviet republics and their national composers were quite capable of denying Russian influence on their musical forms, even when such influence was, according to Frolova-Walker, obvious. My follow-up question would then be, why does she highlight the contradiction in the claims on national form made by composers in the Soviet republics both in the post-Stalinist and post-Soviet periods?
Also responding to the question “Is it possible to have a national music form that still incorporates certain tropes associated with other cultures?” I think it may be helpful think about what “national music form” necessarily means, and if that concept is necessarily paradoxical and self-defeating.
Firstly, I think that it may be good to explore the idea of a “national music form”. The concept originated in Russia, and was then imported to other peoples in the Soviet Union, and then was approved or rejected by central government in Moscow. I would say that this history of the idea means that it never could truly be “national” in the way that the Soviet Union wants “national” to mean.
Secondly, the creation of “national music form” had to work through the process of converting the music into the 12-tone octave and putting harmonization on melodic tunes, while simultaneously avoiding rules and forms that were seen as “western” (as Isa’s post talks about). In this way, the creation of “national music form” was done through a lens that was almost entirely focused on either Russia or the west. To explore this point further, it’d probably be good to look at orientalism, occidentalism, and exoticism’s role in the creation of this music, because orientalism is a similar process of defining the “west” through an exoticized understanding of the east.
Regarding your question, “Why did Soviet opinion on folk music change if their opinion on the peasant didn’t?” I think it’s important to notice that when we see this change, the music that’s being produced is made by both Russian and native composers, and rather than being true folk music, it is folk music turned into symphonies. Additionally, Frolova-Walker mentions this change after describing these republics as having “arbitrarily drawn borders”. So, perhaps the change in opinion on folk music has to do with the necessity of helping to unify these republics, or it is considered safer when Russian influence in incorporated.
“Did the Bolsheviks need to reject peasant in order to produce the society they envisioned? Why did Soviet opinion on folk music change if their position on the peasant didn’t?”
In the 19th century, Russia had not yet really industrialized, and was backwards especially in comparison to the rest of Europe. In this, Russian intellectuals saw an advantage for Russia’s future development. Having observed what protracted pain was undertaken for the European nations to industrialize through the capitalist phase of development, they wished to avoid that. Russia had peasant communes in which there already was communal property and more than less non-hierarchical relationships. They, and Marx, saw in it the potential to skip the capitalist phase and go directly to Socialism.
However, the critical moment for this eventually passed as the State proceeded along the normal line. The peasant commune lost much of its revolutionary potential it might have had. Given this, the peasants became a danger just as they had in the West, for the theory was that “If you go back to the origins of Western societies, you will everywhere find communal ownership of the land; with the progress of society, it everywhere gave way to private ownership; it cannot therefore escape the same fate in Russia alone” (–Marx 1881, Late Marx and The Russian Road 118). The peasant’s relationship to land may shift from stewardship to ownership, and land ownership is one of the best ways to aggrandize wealth. If promoted or protected, inevitably, the peasant would give way to the petty-bourgeoise, according to this historical materialist line of thinking. Thus it was necessary to reject and suppress the peasant.
But this was the economic side of things, which I suppose the Soviets could or were willing to separate and distinguish from the cultural side. The Soviets were after all trying to create a proletarian culture, not a revived folk culture. They were merely using folk culture as a basis to effect a hopefully less resistant transition to the socialist culture, by coating it with a national tinge.
I believe partly the reason why folk music was considered revolutionary while the peasants themselves were not may be because during the 1930s and 1920s, there was such an influx of former peasants (now proletarians) into the cities that instead of the peasants adopting urban, industrial culture, the city adopted peasant culture. To this extent, the culture of the new proletariat class was the culture of their peasant origins, but not lived out through those who held the right role in a socialist society.
I think Frolova-Walker identifies a key distinction in how Bolsheviks approached different classes of peasantry. While “specifically proletarian” peasants in urban centers were celebrated as revolutionaries, rural peasants. She deploys this example to argue that “disseminators of folk music had to find in it something specifically ‘revolutionary’ or ‘progressive’ rather than merely national.” (333) In this sense, I think the “revolutionary” attitude is supposed to bind national music forms to the Soviet Union, and that “socialist in content” really speaks to praising Bolshevism rather than socialism. (363)
“Do you hear that happening in the listening assignment? Do the various nationalities’ music strike you as different in form? What similarities are there in the different musics and what differences?”
I kept thinking about “socialist in content” while listening and watching the pieces on YouTube. I think music is unique because it often doesn’t have words to accompany (except in the opera) and there are few images associated with music (except in the opera, again). Can sheet music, when played, sound… socialist? In trying to detect something “socialist” about each of the pieces, I relied upon the visuals rather than the sound itself. I looked at what the performers were wearing, the kind of backdrop there was, and the general setting of the performance (the venue). I think it is easier to see nationalities at work more than socialism. In the ballet, the dancers were what looks like to me to be traditional Russian outfits. In the third video, I looked at the outfit that the woman wore; it looked like it was national in content. In the orchestra, I payed attention to how the music struck me. Had I heard a lot of orchestras that sounded like that before? This was my thought process.
I think in many ways, the “socialist in content” principle cannot be seen in an explicit way. There is no “socialist” pairing of notes, no particularly socialist way to dance. Instead, I noted how different these performances were to their European counterparts. My sister is a ballet dancer (she learned the French style of ballet), so I have been to many ballet performances. I noticed that this Russian ballet was very different than any of the ballets I have been to — in the music, the way the performers danced, and the type of things they did that a French ballet company would not do. For the orchestra, it sounded different than a work of a European composer. Maybe these pieces of music are socialist in content simply because they are distinct from European pieces (representing the West). Perhaps it is this contrast with the capitalist West that implies socialism.