Music of the Soviet Union
With time, a wave of younger Soviet composers, including Georgy Sviridov, Tikhon Khrennikov, and 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 Tretiakov and Oleg Kagan; cellists Mstislav Rostropovich, Daniil Shafran, and Natalia Gutman; violist Yuri Bashmet; pianists Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels and many other musicians.
After Joseph Stalin had succeeded in expelling Leon Trotsky from the Central Committee in 1927, he very soon cut off connections with the West and established an isolationist state[citation needed].
Stalin rejected Western culture and its ‘bourgeois principles,’ as these did not agree with the policies of the Soviet Communist Party or the working class.
In 1934, Prokofiev wrote in his diary about the compositional necessity for a "new simplicity," a new lyricism that he believed would be a source of national pride for the Soviet people.
Although Shostakovich's work was initially critically well received, Stalin and the Communist Party found the opera's themes of a "pre-socialist, petty-bourgeois, Russian mentality" entirely inappropriate.
Wartime music featured a reemergence of grand symphonic works compared to the simplistic ‘song operas’ (such as Tikhii Don) of the 1930s.
[16] Tikhon Khrennikov, a composer by trade, lead the USC from 1948 to 1991 as one of the only Stalin-era political appointees to remain in power until the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.
Khrennikov's USC actively attempted to undo the policies of Zhdanovischina, the campaign of ideological purity waged by Stalin's second in command Andrei Zhdanov from 1946 to 1948.
[17] The Khrushchev Thaw yielded greater artistic autonomy for Soviet composers and musicians, but it did not end the state's involvement in the production of classical music.
For example, serialist composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern were not covered in official Soviet music curriculum of the late fifties and early sixties, including that of the premiere Moscow Conservatory.
[19] Sergei Prokofiev's Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution is the prototypical socialist realist composition, written in 1937 but not performed until 1966.
Prokofiev's cantata romanticizes the events of the Bolshevik rise to power, set to a libretto drawn from the writings of socialist heroes Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
Sviridov's song cycle depicts pastoral scenes of peasant life in the composer's native Kursk, adopting Western Russian folk melodies and styles.
[22] Though Shostakovich had fallen out of favor with the Party following his denunciation by Zhdanov in the late 1940s, his status as the premiere Soviet composer was gradually re-established through the Khrushchev Thaw until his death in 1975.
The USC under Khrennikov favored Shostakovich's mastery of conventional classical forms, upholding his 15 monumental symphonies alongside the works of pre-Soviet masters like Gustav Mahler as examples for young Soviet composers to follow.
[22] Following the end of Stalin-era persecutions, a new cadre of Soviet avant-garde composers developed parallel to the mainstream, state-sponsored musical establishment.
[24] Volkonsky's experimentation during the late 1950s and early 1960s eventually inspired more musicians to rebel against the strictures which had until then governed Soviet classical composition.
[28] Composer and inventor Arseny Avraamov was engaged in scientific work on sound synthesis and conducted a number of experiments that would later form the basis of Soviet electro-musical instruments.
One of the most commonly known songs is "Boldly, Comrades, in Step" (Смело, товарищи, в ногу) and the funeral march "You Fell Victim" (Вы жертвою пали).
They include If Tomorrow Brings War (Если завтра война) and Three Tankmen (Три Танкиста) by the Pokrass brothers and Tachanka by Listov, which have patriotic themes.
Among the artists of the early period were Leonid Utesov (also one of the pioneers of Soviet jazz), Mark Bernes, Lyubov Orlova, Coretti Arle-Titz, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Rashid Behbudov.
Among the many artists of the Khrushchev Thaw and the Era of Stagnation were Yuri Gulyaev, Larisa Mondrus, Aida Vedishcheva, Tamara Miansarova, Lidia Klement, Eduard Khil, Maria Pakhomenko, Edita Piekha, Vladimir Troshin, Maya Kristalinskaya, Vadim Mulerman, Heli Lääts, Uno Loop, Anna German, Valery Obodzinsky, Joseph Kobzon, Muslim Magomayev, Valentina Tolkunova, Lyudmila Zykina, Lev Leshchenko, Lyudmila Senchina, Sofia Rotaru, Alla Pugacheva, Valery Leontiev and Sergei Zakharov - all of them graduates of music courses in universities and conservatories.
A mix of western and Soviet trends of the time, VIA combined traditional songs with elements of rock, disco and new wave.
The singer-songwriter movement of the Soviet Union is deeply rooted in amateur folklore songs played by students, tourists and traveling geologists.
Music characteristics of the genre consist of simple, easily repeatable parts, usually played by a single acoustic guitar player who simultaneously sang.
Among the singer-songwriters, termed as "bards", the most popular were Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky, Yuri Vizbor, Sergey Nikitin and Tatyana Nikitina.
[47] Popular bands of this time-period included Kino, Alisa, Aria, DDT, Nautilus Pompilius, Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Gorky Park.
Since the end of the cold war and the inclusion of Russia in pop culture, Russian music has also been included in many games, the most notable being the Tetris theme.
Introduction of Russian songs in media also brought about background music, including "Glory to Arstotzka"[48] from the 2014 video game, Papers, Please.
