Taruskin_Stalin_Lives_On.pdf

8/14/2019 Taruskin_Stalin_Lives_On.pdf

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276 STALTN LMS ON IN THE CONCERT HAI_L

What can it mean to tosshats in the air for Prokofieff's Cantatafor the2othAnnfuersarl ofthe October euolution?Composed for performance in the blackpurge year rgg7, it ended by extolling the "Stalin Constiturion" and its guar-antee of its citizens' Right to Work at a time when thousands of Sovier citi-zenswere being carted off to slave abor camps in Siberia.What can it mean to squeal in rapture at the same composer's Zdraoitsa,a "Ioast" to the Great Leader and Teacher on his sixtieth birthday in 1939?With revolting hlpocrisv it condernns prerevolutionary repressions ("forprotest the Tsar killed us, left women without husbands") while exalting as arawboned, guileless folk hero-some kind ofJascha Appleseed-the perpe-trator of savageries wice as vile. At that very moment oldJascha was wipinghis maw after gobbling up eastern Poland in a deal wi*r another beloved hon-cho to the west.What are we celebrating when we go out ofour way to revive this kitschand cheer it? No, not Stalin, of course-but what? Is it a version ofthe sameinfantile in-your-face brar,adomany ofus affect to decry in gangsta rap, madedoubly reprehensible for being expressed not by the disenfranchised and re-sentful but by the otiose and overprivileged?Or are we celebrating the freedom to perform ofour own volition worksthat were once forced down gullets and banned by turns? That might un-derstandably make them attractive to Mr Gergiyevand his hardworking play-ers. It would be a case ofreplaying actively what one had endured passively,

a satisfying if perhaps selfdeluding exercise of personal control (thoughhardly self


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2lJo STALIN I, IVES ON IN THI] CONCERT HAI,L

realized. It would violate the most fundamental ethics of classicalmusrc roperform them so.How ethical, tlen, are those ethics?What are we saying when we say hatthe integrity ofworks ofart transcendshumanitarian concerns?What are wesaying when we dismiss as mere "misguided puritanism" objections to theZdrauitsaon behalf of Stalin's victims-or to Stravinsky's rgb2 Cantata (orBach's St.JohnPassioz)on behalfofthe sensibilities ofJews today who do norlike to be called Christ killers?Are we not saying hat artists and art lovers areentitled to moral indifference-and worse, thar the greater the artist thegrealerLheen i t lement?Gustav Holst once set to music the same anti-Semitic carol ("Io-Morro$Shall Be My Dancing Day") that Stravinskyset in lnis Cantata- t is an attrac-tive piece. Unlike Stravinsky's setting, it waswritten long before the Holcaust, in 1916. I would wager, though, that performers would be far morelikely to think twice before performing Holst's setting than rheywould beforeperfbrming Stravinsky's. Ask the organizers ofthe BBC London Proms con-certs this summer; they are performing Stravinsky's.)By the same token, Idoubt that anyone would propose Khachaturian's stirring PoemAbout Stalinfor performance at Lincoln Center. \4'hy?BecauseStravinsky and Prokofieff.not Holst and Khachaturian, have been certified as great artists by the pro-moters of classicalmusic.Is great art ennobled by this artitude? Are we? Or are we not debasedanddegraded, both asartists and as human beings,by such a commitment to "ab-stract musical worth"? And for a final thought, has that commitment noth-ing to do with the tremendous decline that the prestige ofclassical mustc-and of high art in general-has suffered in our time? Mr. Rockwell, MrGergiyev, and their fans have indeed struck a blow. It is not for art that the\have struck it, though, but for poshlust. A blow for poshlust, by any reckon-ing, is a blow against art.

POSTSCRIPT,2OO8Yes,yes, I know. The word, as many wrote in to remind me, is properh.transliterated poshlost' I thought it wasclear enough that I was taking overNabokov's transliteration, which he employed both for the sakeof simplicinand fur the possibility ofpunning. The poshlustyperformances and the posh-lustier reception of Prokofieff's Zdraritsa cor.tir'ue, now mainly abetted brMadimir Ashkenazy. t continues to sicken me that classicalmusic audiencesare still prepared to cheer celebrations ofa massmurderer because hey likethe tunes. Here the popular music world seemsethically superior. Pop per-lormers and audiences aya ent ion ro texts.Poshlusty nterpretation also advancesapace. A benchmark of sorts uasachieved by Martin Anderson in a review-publi shecl n Tempo,hen still the


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282 STALIN I, IVES ON IN THF CONCER1 HALLThis attitude, I am happy to say, s spreading. Most ex-Soviet musicians and

scholars, other than those who are out to make their fortune in the West, nowacknowledge this. It was a great consolation, arnid all the flak I had to take forarticles like this and the preceding one, on laan the Tbl.Tibl2, o receive the fol-lowing, from Izaly Zemtsovsky, a great exSoviet scholar (ethnomusicologist):

I had to share my impressions ofyour Neza o& Tirnzsar'jcle.l wovld put it rhisway: unfortunately, you are right. "Unfortunately," because I love Prokofieff'smusic very much, especially his piano sonatas,all his early operas and ballets,hisThird Piano Concerto, etc. "Unfortunately," becausehe really wasmercenaryand q'nical when it came to commissions. I can share with you one of the oldpublishers' tales that were current in the years of my youth in St. Petersburg:Prokofieff, who hadjust come back from abroad, appeared at the publish-ing house n an elegant suir and, taking from his breast pocket a scrap of musicpaper, told an editor (who told me), "Here is my latest musical theme. Howmuch can you pay me? Ifthis much "-here he gestured to indicate a large sum;if I am not mistaken, his usual asking price for a q,rnphony was rz,ooo rubles;compare thatwith mysalary then as a senior scholar at the Institute ofTheater,Music and Cinema, which was 88 rubles a month-'then I'll write you a sym-phony. If less"-S,ooo, as I remember-"it will be an overture, and ifyou onlyoffer a little' say, 4,ooo-"I won't write anything longer than a sonata."This is more or less he way thingswere, but even knowing the cynical rruth,when I listen to RomeoandJuliet I am willing to forget all the evil tales for awhile. . . .Of course Ttan he TerrrDks a specialcase, and I would answeryour question("Who needs it now?") unequivocally: besides performers who are looking tomake a sensation, it accords with the mentality of our, alas, many contempo-rary nationalist?atrioS. They are ready and willing to remember not only theRussian glories of the Terrible's bloody era, but also the facr, especiallydear totheir hearts, that lvan supposedly wrote music for the Russian Orthodoxchurch (and the music attributed to him waspublished in Sovier times, asyoucertainlv know).It is sad to write the truth about Russianhisrory . . .

Oh, and Valeriy Gergiyev's comment? Here is what he told an interviewer(quoted byJustin Davidson in Nezzsdal) after this piece appeared: '"Ib say thismusic should notbe played, that is notAmerican. It smells Soviet." Ayear later,touring Australia, Mr. Gergiyev still had me on his mind: "Look, if you ask mewho is more important, Prokofieffor Taruskin, my answer is Prokofieffwith avery big P And Prokofieff was not a pocket composer for a q,rant like Stalin.Thruskin would better speak about some American filmswhich provoke Amer-ican kids to shoot each other in schools." Hm, now tiat smells Soviet,

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Taruskin_Stalin_Lives_On.pdf