Classical Music of The USSR
Classical music of the Soviet Union developed from the music of the Russian Empire. It gradually evolved from the eccentric experiments of the revolutionary era, such as orchestras with no conductors, towards classicism favored under Joseph Stalin's office. The Union of Soviet Composers was established in 1932, and became the major regulatory body in Russia's music. Later in the 1930s, Joseph Stalin enacted more boundaries for music, which was then further limited in content and innovation. Classicism was favoured, and experimentation was discouraged. For example, Shostakovich's veristic opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was denounced in Pravda newspaper as "formalism" and soon removed from theatres for years.
The music patriarchs of the era were Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian. With time, a wave of younger Soviet composers, including Georgy Sviridov, Tikhon Khrennikov, Alfred Schnittke managed to break through.
Many musicians from the Soviet era have established themselves as world's leading artists: violinists David Oistrakh, Leonid Kogan, Gidon Kremer, Viktor Tretyakov and Oleg Kagan; cellists Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniel Schafran, and Natalia Gutman; violist Yuri Bashmet; pianists Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels and many other musicians.
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“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
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Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow’s morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.”
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