Orthodoxy, Music, Politics and Art in Russia and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This collection of essays is dedicated to Alexander Ivashkin (1948-2014), a long-standing Professor, Chair in Performance Studies, Director of the Centre for Russian Music, curator of the Alfred Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths, University of London and a virtuoso cellist. The collection grew out of the Conference and Festival Orthodoxy, Music, Politics and Art in Contemporary ñussin and Eastern Europe, held at Goldsmiths, University of London, 16-17 March 2013, and jointly organized with the University of Eastern Finland, by Alexander Ivashkin and Fr Ivan Moody, who was then Professor of Church Music at the UEF. The initiative, however, belonged to Alexander, with whom the possibility of such a project had been discussed over several years. The event was a tremendous success, but alas, Ivashkin’s sudden illness and death on 31 January 2014 meant that he would not see the present publication, which has undergone a series of delays that have, in the end, in fact only enriched its content. As a Visiting Research Fellow with the Centre for Russian Music at Goldsmiths and a disciple of Ivashkin, Ivana Medic took over his role as a co-editor of the present volume, which also includes chapters from two of Ivashkin’s former PhD students, Rachel Jeremiah-Foulds and Tara Wilson. The book comprises shorter essays, as well as longer, thoroughly researched studies, covering a wide range of topics and dealing with both sacred and profane, Greek, Russian, Latvian, Bulgarian and Serbian music, inspired by the Orthodox tradition. The central idea behind the event, and the subsequent publication, was always the exploration of connections between Orthodoxy, music, politics and art in the broadest sense, unhindered by specific ideological considerations or disciplinary straitjackets, but rather bringing together expertise from a number of related areas in such a way that every contribution might spread light on one or more of the others. Thus, while the emphasis in general is on Russia and Eastern Europe, we begin the volume with a contribution dealing with Byzantine chant. This has practical and symbolic significance: the Byzantine tradition lies at the heart of Orthodox musical practice, but, as Achilleas Chaldaeakes’s paper shows, it has never been a tradition immune from the reality of that unfortunate phenomenon known as “Church politics". Nevertheless, it is the music that survives, and the detailed analysis of Patriarch Athanasios’s kalophonic heirmoi provides some intriguing possibilities for future scholarship and performance. From the Byzantine world we move to that of Russia. Elena Artamonova sheds new light on the figure of Sergei Vasi1en1‹o, whose investigations into the music and culture of the Old Believers make of him far more than the marginal figure he has often been assumed to be. Though far better known, Stepan Smolensky is still an under-appreciated figure in the West, and Tatiana Soloviova’s chapter places his work within the context of the rediscovery of early sacred chant in Russia. He too was interested in the chant of the Old Believers, but whereas Vasilenko’s approach was decidedly that of a composer, Smolensky’s was that of what we would now call a musicologist. This detailed contextualization of his work brings that to the fore, whilst always bearing in mind the deep influence he had on younger Russian composers of the period. Mediaeval Russian chant might, on the other hand, be little associated with the music of Prol‹ofiev in most people’s minds, but I4atya Ermolaeva’s thorough discussion shows just how far the technical details of the characteristic trichord permeated the music he wrote for Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible. The four subsequent chapters deal with music in other countries of Eastern Europe. Jiilija Jonane provides an overview of the way in which Russian Orthodox musical traditions have influenced the composition of sacred music in contemporary Latvia, a country that was of course annexed by the Soviet Union, but is also distinguished by its multi-confessional nature. Predrag Dokovic and Ivana Medic discuss different aspects of music in Serbia: Dokovic gives a presentation not only of the situation of sacred music during the Communist period in the country, but a discussion of the consequences of this for Serbian musical culture in recent years. Medic, on the other hand, provides more than a glimmer of light in her discussion of the influence of Orthodox church music used by Serbian composers in their piano music. Ivan Moody’s chapter is placed more or less at the centre of the book as an attempt to give a wide-ranging account of the intersections of politics, modernism, religion and music in Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia. The last section of the book brings together five chapters dealing with various aspects of contemporary Russian music. Paulo Eustachi takes us on a personal journey through the Orthodox-infected world of Tarkovsky and other film directors, particularly in terms of the music they chose for their films. Boris Belge discusses the importance of the role of religion in the music of Sofia Gubaidulina, and Rachel Jeremiah-Foulds undertakes a similar task for a very different composer, Galina Ustvolskaya. The work of the enigmatic Russian-Canadian composer Ni1‹o1ai I4orndorf, and in particular his early setting of texts from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, is examined in detail by Gregory Myers, and Tara Wilson gives a fascinating account of the role of Russian Orthodoxy in the music of the maverick composer Vladimir Martynov. We are grateful to Dr Tamsin Alexander, Lecturer at Goldsmiths and Head of the Centre for Russian Music, as well as Dr Gavin Dixon, who secured the collaboration between Goldsmiths and the Institute of Musicology SASA on the present volume. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia provided funds necessary for the preparation and publication of this book. We would also like to thank our colleagues at CESEM — Universidade Nova, Lisbon and the Institute of Musi-cology SASA, Belgrade, and last but not least, our outstanding peer reviewers — one of whom, Dr Dimitrije Stefanovic (1929— 2020), Fellow of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and one of the foremost experts in Orthodox church music is no longer amongst us, but his legacy lives on.