Shostakovich and Literature

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Philip Ross Bullock (University of Oxford)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence 1922-1975

Places

Russia (Location)

Russian culture is frequently perceived in terms of its tendency to logocentrism, a feature that has long tended to shape the development and perception of the various non-verbal art forms. Music is no exception to this rule, characterised as it is by the dominance of texted forms, most notably opera and song. Take, for instance, the nineteenth-century fascination with Pushkin, which extends from Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Liudmila, via Tchaikovsky’s [Chaikovsky’s] Eugene Onegin, Mazeppa and Queen of Spades, as well as Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, to the various attempts to set his Little Tragedies (Cui, Dargomyzhsky, Rakhmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov). …

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3349 words

Citation: Bullock, Philip Ross. "Shostakovich and Literature". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 June 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1732, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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Shostakovich and Literature

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