Music Expectations in Soviet Russia: Tradition, Avant-Garde, and Legitimacy in the Soviet Public Press

Abstract

This paper looks at Soviet music journalism of the 1920s and early 1930s with the aim of highlighting the debate around the concept of Neoclassicism. Starting from a definition of the phenomenon as it emerged in the Western music landscape, it traces concepts semantically close to it in the writings of the most active advocates of modernism, who expressed their views on the pages of Sovremennaya muzïka (Contemporary music) – the bulletin of the homonymous Society based in Moscow. The analysis of terms and concepts leads to the discussion of this debate as regards Western music aesthetics and the expectations of coeval music consumers in the USSR. In reference to the subsequent development of music life in the Soviet Union – with the elaboration of Socialist Realism and the raise of the accuse of formalism in the public discourse – the article enhances motives that passed on from the modernist discourse to the Proletarian camp.