DEFINING RUSSIA MUSICALLY Defining Russia Musically HISTORICAL AND HERMENEUTICAL ESSAYS Richard Taruskin PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 1997 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire 0X20 1SY All Rights Reserved Third printing, and first paperback printing, 2000 Paperback ISBN 0-691-07065-2 The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Taruskin, Richard. Defining Russia musically : Historical and hermeneutical essays / Richard Taruskin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-01156-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Music—Russia—History and criticism. I. Title. ML300.T37 1997 780'.947—dc20 96-41182 This book has been composed in Times Roman The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper) www.pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 5 7 9 10 8 6 ISBN-13: 978-0-691-07065-0 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-691-07065-2 (pbk.) For Caryl and Karol who have set me so many good examples and for P. C. van den Toorn public adversary, private pal Music reaches its high-water mark only among men who have not the ability or the right to argue. —Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880) If Russia is to be saved, it will only be as a Eurasian power and only through Eurasianism. —Lev Gumilyov (1992) I've no doubt that Russia has not lost the opportunity to reach prosperity and democracy. But it can do so only under one condition: a realization of itself as a true part of Western civilization. —Vassily Aksyonov (1994) It's been very nice, the reception these stories have got, because, broadly speaking, people have managed to respond to them as stories rather than messages in a bottle. It's been very nice to be a writer again. I feel like everything I say or do is treated as an allegory of my situation. The point is that I'm trying to not be defined explicitly by this situation. —Salman Rushdie, on East, West (1994) Russia is so Russian! —John Updike (1966) .