Analytical Approaches to 20th-Century Russian Music Tonality, Modernism, Serialism

This volume brings together analyses of works by thirteen Russian composers from across the twentieth century, showing how their approaches to tonality, modernism, and serialism forge forward-looking paths independent from their Western counterparts. Russian music of this era is widely performed, and much research has situated this repertoire in its historical and social context, yet few analytical studies have explored the technical aspects of these composers' styles. With a set of representative analyses by leading scholars in music theory and analysis, this book for the first time identifies large-scale compositional trends in Russian music since 1900.

The chapters progress by compositional style through the century, and each addresses a single work by a different composer, covering pieces by Rachmaninoff, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Mansurian, Roslavets, Mosolov, Lourié, Tcherepnin, Ustvolskaya, Denisov, Gubaidulina, and Schnittke. Musicians, scholars, and students will find here a starting point for research and analysis of these composers' works and gain a richer understanding of how to listen to and interpret their music.

Table of Contents

Contributors

Introduction

Part I: Tonality

Chapter 1

Tonal Pairing in Two of Rachmaninoff’s Songs

Ellen Bakulina

Chapter 2

Abundant Novelty of Antitonic Harmony in the Music of Nikolai Myaskovsky

Scott Murphy

Chapter 3

House of Mirrors: Distorted Proportions in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1

Rebecca Perry

Chapter 4

A Curiosity in the Early String Quartets of Shostakovich, and Its Precedents in Previous Works

Patrick McCreless

Chapter 5

Navigating Post-Soviet Armenia: On Decoloniality in Tigran Mansurian’s Requiem

Knar Abrahamyan

Part II: Modernism

Chapter 6

Fifths’ Paths through Nikolai Roslavets’s Three Poems of Zinaida Gippius

Inessa Bazayev

Chapter 7

Alexander Mosolov’s Piano Sonata No. 1 and Its Synthetic Modernism

Daniil Zavlunov

Chapter 8

The Rebirth of Melody in Lourié’s Post-Neoclassical Concerto da camera

Klára Móricz

Chapter 9

The Features of Alexander Tcherepnin’s Nine-Step Scale and Its Use in the First Movement of His First Symphony

Joshua Bedford

Chapter 10

Timbre and Vibration in Galina Ustvolskaya’s Composition No. 1, "Dona nobis pacem"

Maria Cizmic

Part III: Serialism

Chapter 11

Edison Denisov and Multiple-Row Serialism

Zachary Cairns

Chapter 12

Historical and Stylistic Reconciliation in Sofia Gubaidulina’s Reflections on the Theme BACH

Joseph Straus

Chapter 13

Monogram, Theme, and Large-Scale Form in Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto

Christopher Segall

Index

Inessa Bazayev is Paula G. Manship Associate Professor of Music Theory and Theory Area Coordinator at Louisiana State University.

Christopher Segall is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati.