Музыкальная классика в мифотворчестве советской эпохи

The process of creating new and overthrowing old meanings of classical music showed a powerful potential for ‘myth-building’: its aim was to form a new image of the old art and, in the final account, to develop a futurological project of new art. This new art and, more importantly, the society that had to be represented by it, could be legitimized only if the ‘myth-building’ model had its roots in the great tradition. Hence, the musical mythology of the Soviet era was centred on the question of classics taken in two different, though interconnected senses: the classical musical art of the past had to be ideologically reconsidered in order to become a foundation for the classical music of the future.

The present study’s subject matter is just the specific situation of classical music in the Soviet culture, namely the peculiar mythology of music, which interpreted in new ways the place and the mission of classical music, as well as the music’s inherent meanings. This new ‘mythology of music’, like the previous, Romantic one, found its most complete expression first of all in verbal form.

Through verbal commentaries on music the Soviet ideology ‘appropriated’ the classical musical heritage. The new political doctrine was gradually building its cultural genealogy, captiously picking out the names of great artists of the past, deemed appropriate for such an ideological task, and imposing on their work the artistic and ideological concepts that corresponded to the requirements of a given political moment. The new image of classics was based on a simplified and popularized notion of it; and it was just this new image that served as the foundation of the Soviet musical culture.

The ‘word on music’, however, can be expressed in non-verbal forms as well. Metaphorically speaking, the ‘word’ or the utterance on music (or else its semantic interpretation) can be represented also by a visual image. Theatre and cinema can do it in various ways, supporting the visual aspect with verbal texts. The visual aspect, just as the verbal one, reflects the already existing structure of mythological notions and at the same time continues moulding it. New musical works, too, can function as commentaries on their predecessors. That is why the materials used for this study include a large array of texts – musical-critical and musicological essays, political documents, musical and literary works, movies, sources in the history of Soviet theatre – each type of text interpreting the meanings of classical music in its own manner. This reflects the principle of Soviet cultural policy, according to which music, just as any other art, had to enter the mass market, to cease being esoteric or ‘closed’, to expose its meanings so that they could be verbalized and, hence, interpreted with the use of various artistic means. Thus, the pressure of legitimized semantic interpretations of the classical heritage on the audience’s (as well as on professional musicians’) perception was all-embracing.