(The term "expressionism" is also used to define a musical genre typified by the early works of Schoenberg.
Shostakovich was denounced in the Soviet newspaper Pravda in January 1936 in connection with a Moscow performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
[4] Another allegation came as part of the Zhdanov decree in February 1948, which cited Shostakovich, together with other prominent Soviet composers: Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Shebalin, Popov, Myaskovsky "and others", as being formalists.
For instance, in Poland immediately after World War II the Stalinist regime insisted that composers adopt socialist realism, and those who would not do so, including Witold Lutosławski and Andrzej Panufnik, had performances of their compositions banned in Poland for being "formalist".
[7] The term has also been used to designate an approach to writing about music history, sometimes called the "Great Works" approach (in analogy to "Great Books") where the music history is conceived in terms of relationships between works of art, to the exclusion of considering cultural contexts.