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In the Soviet Union, especially during the Cold War, all music produced was generally expected to conform to the ideals of the party. [1]
The Resolution of 1932 mandated music nationalism and also brought about a trend towards more conventional compositions. This brought about the formation of party guidelines for all creative work. The reason for the Resolution of 1932 was to expand the spheres of already organized artists, as well as produce new artist organizations which would be under Party control. [2] [ page needed ]
Socialist realism in Soviet music was considered to be "progressive music". The music was used as a "literary concept" to emphasize the ideal of the "Soviet man", and opposed folk-negating modernistic/bourgeois art. [2]
The Red Army Ensemble is the official army choir of the Russian Armed Forces, also known as the "Red Army". It was formed in 1928, specifically on October 12 when 12 members made its first presentation. During the Cold War, it was known for performing propagating Soviet songs.[ citation needed ]
Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov was the first artistic director of the Red Army Ensemble. He was a major-general, a folk-artist, a composer, and a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. [3] He believed he could use his music to help the Soviet Union during the War. He was once quoted to say: "How could I help my Motherland, at sixty years of age? I had never held a rifle in my hands and certainly was not a military specialist. And all the same I did hold in my hands a mighty weapon which could strike the enemy- it was the song! What could I give to the front, to the fighters, to the commanders, to the political workers? Songs!" [4] He remained the artistic director of the Red Army Ensemble for 18 years until his son, B.A. Aleksandrov took his place in 1946. [3]
During the Cold War, the Red Army Ensemble played songs by composers like Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, Anatoli Novikov, Matvey Blanter and Boris Mokrousov. [3] They played all kinds of music, including, but not limited to, folk tunes, church hymns, operatic arias, and popular music. One of their more popular and propagating songs is the "Guard Song", which is a song about the heroism of the guards of the Red Army. [5]
Today, the Ensemble is made up of 186 people. There are 9 soloists, a choir of 64 people, an orchestra of 38 people, and even an eclectic dance group. The Red Army Ensemble has won numerous awards (including the prestige of becoming an academic organization), played in over 70 countries, and now has a repertoire of over two thousand works. [3]
Mass songs are characterized by several characteristics that most of them seem to share.[ citation needed ] They intrinsically belong to the Socialist Realism genre, which supported the Communist Party and sought progressive music that creatively depicted reality in the revolutionary era. [6] Mass songs are often patriotic and optimistic. Their message is usually clear so that nearly anyone listening can understand it. The actions, people, and settings described within the song are intentionally vague so that the overall theme appears generalized to any situation. [1] These songs also praised the Red Army, and attempted to positively portray mothers. Many mass songs were also written about pure, traditional love; others show direct religious influences.[ citation needed ]
The Soviet organization Prokoll is credited with the creation of the mass song. The organization was founded in 1925 and established most likely in response to previously failed attempts at creating accessible propaganda music. [7] The influence of mass songs spread far beyond this initial organization, eventually influencing famous, noteworthy composers like Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. An example of a mass song would be "Youth", set to music composed by Shostakovich. In it, a group of young "volunteers" get on a train and go east. By being optimistic, simple, and vague, it meets several of the main criteria for mass songs. Other songs, such as Ivan Dzerzhinsky's "The Cossack Song", attained international acclaim.[ citation needed ]
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer.
Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a Soviet Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Soviet composers.
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 and 1928 and was instrumental in the reorganization of the institute into the Petrograd Conservatory, then the Leningrad Conservatory, following the Bolshevik Revolution. He continued as head of the Conservatory until 1930, though he had left the Soviet Union in 1928 and did not return. The best-known student under his tenure during the early Soviet years was Dmitri Shostakovich.
Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43, between September 1935 and May 1936, after abandoning some preliminary sketch material. In January 1936, halfway through this period, Pravda—under direct orders from Joseph Stalin—published an editorial "Muddle Instead of Music" that denounced the composer and targeted his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Despite this attack and the political climate of the time, Shostakovich completed the symphony and planned its premiere for December 1936 in Leningrad. After rehearsals began, the orchestra's management cancelled the performance, offering a statement that Shostakovich had withdrawn the work. He may have agreed to withdraw it to relieve orchestra officials of responsibility. The symphony was premiered on 30 December 1961 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra led by Kirill Kondrashin.
The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a "triumphal success" that appealed to both the public and official critics, receiving an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.
The Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103, by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1957 and premiered by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin on 30 October 1957. The subtitle of the symphony refers to the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905, which the symphony depicts. The first performance given outside the Soviet Union took place in London's Royal Festival Hall on 22 January 1958 when Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The United States premiere was performed by Leopold Stokowski conducting the Houston Symphony on 7 April 1958. The symphony was conceived as a popular piece and proved an instant success in the Soviet Union, his greatest one since the Leningrad Symphony fifteen years earlier. The work's popular success, as well as its earning him a Lenin Prize in April 1958, marked the composer's formal rehabilitation from the Zhdanov Doctrine of 1948.
Mieczysław Weinberg was a Polish, Soviet, and Russian composer and pianist. His compositions include 22 symphonies, a host of chamber works, a violin concerto, and seven operas. He was a contemporary of Dmitri Shostakovich, and they often shared ideas with each other. A 2004 reviewer considered him as "the third great Soviet composer, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich". A 2017 article in the New York Times noted that his "darkly lucid music is beginning to gain wider recognition."
The Alexandrov Ensemble is an official army choir of the Russian armed forces. Founded during the Soviet era, the ensemble consists of a male choir, an orchestra, and a dance ensemble.
The music of Adygea has a long history. Adygea is a republic in Russia. The Republic's national anthem was written by Iskhak Shumafovich Mashbash; music—by Umar Khatsitsovich Tkhabisimov.
Russian folk music specifically deals with the folk music traditions of the ethnic Russian people.
The music of the Soviet Union varied in many genres and epochs. The majority of it was considered to be part of the Russian culture, but other national cultures from the Republics of the Soviet Union made significant contributions as well. The Soviet state supported musical institutions, but also carried out content censorship. According to Vladimir Lenin, "Every artist, everyone who considers himself an artist, has the right to create freely according to his ideal, independently of everything. However, we are communists and we must not stand with folded hands and let chaos develop as it pleases. We must systemically guide this process and form its result."
Mikhail Vasilyevich Naumenko, better known as Mike Naumenko was a Soviet rock musician, singer-songwriter and interpreter, leader of the band Zoopark.
Po dolinam i po vzgoriam, also known as Partisan's Song, is a popular Red Army song from the Russian Civil War.
Evgeny Mikhailovich Belyaev, also written as Yevgeny Belyayev, was a Russian tenor soloist of the Alexandrov Ensemble under Boris Alexandrov. He is remembered in the Soviet Union as the Russian Nightingale and in the West as one of the definitive singers of Kalinka.
Boris Alexandrovich Aleksandrov was a Soviet and Russian composer and, from 1946 to 1986, the second head of the Alexandrov Ensemble which was founded by his father, Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov. Aleksandrov reached the rank of Major-General and was awarded the order of Hero of Socialist Labour, the Lenin and Stalin Prize, and named People's Artist of the USSR.
The Alexandrov Ensemble choir is the choir of the Alexandrov Ensemble.
The Suite on Finnish Themes or Seven Arrangements of Finnish Folk Songs is a suite composed in 1939 for soloists and chamber ensemble in seven movements by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75). The composer later disowned the work, and the suite does not have an opus number.
Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was a Soviet composer, conductor, pianist and pedagogue of Russian gentry descent.
The Decembrists is an historical opera by Yuri Shaporin with libretto by Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Aleksey Tolstoy and others. It was premiered in 1953 after a long and difficult period of composition lasting some 30 years. In a style highly reminiscent of the great 19th-century Russian composers, especially Borodin, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, it gives a rather fictionalized account of the 1825 Decembrist revolt of Russian army officers against the Tsarist government. Frequently performed in the Soviet Union, where it was seen as the culmination of Shaporin's career, it has never been well known in the West except through its most popular number, the Soldiers' Chorus.
