[Ellen Bakulina]

Dear SMT-Rus members,

I am happy to announce The Russian Theory Interest Group meeting, on Thursday November 10 at 7:30 pm (Jackson room) during the annual SMT conference. Our meeting will include three papers dedicated to issues of microtonality in Russian, Russian émigré, and Soviet theory and composition. It will be great to see all you there! Presenters and papers include:

• Inessa Bazayev, “The Missing Link in the History of Soviet Microtonality”
• Gabrielle Cornish, “New Tones for a New Society”
• Lee Cannon-Brown, “Historical Teleology in Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Theory of Всезвучия”

The presentations will be followed by a business meeting, where nominations for the next three-year chair term will be discussed. (A separate announcement about that to follow.)

Here are paper abstracts and presenter bios

Inessa Bazayev

Professor of Music Theory, Louisiana State University

Title: The Missing Link in the History of Soviet Microtonality Abstract: I begin by briefly surveying the writings of Arseny Avraamov (1886–1944), Gyorgy Rimsky-Korsakov (1901–1965), and Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893–1979), whose writings—largely from the 1910s and 1930s—were among the earliest on the concept of microtonality, which divided the octave into 24 equal quartertones (Avraamov 1916; Rimsky-Korsakov 1920; Wyschnegradsky 1932). Their respective nomenclatures, indicating quarter tones (i.e., a higher or lower) share common symbols, and Wyschenagradsky’s symbols have been standardized today and widely used in spectral music notation.However, one of the missing links in the Soviet history of microtonality is the work of Alexey Ogolevets (1894–1967), who invented a harmonium that was untempered and divided the octave into 17 parts. There are three fascinating points about Ogolevets’ work. First, unlike the theorists mentioned above, Ogolevets used traditional nomenclature of sharps, flats, double sharps, and double flats (Ogolevets 1941, 742–862). Second, Ogolevets clearly noted in his treatise that his unusual division of the octave is in dialogue with greater historical traditions rooted, especially in the maqams of Arabic and Turkish music, which go back to the 13th century. This is a rather startling statement as the treatise was published during the height of Soviet regime—1941—and bluntly went against the accepted so-called “norms” of traditions. [Music-theoretical writings of that time attributed their work to Western, especially German theoretical writings (e.g., Reimann)]. And, third, I show that the nomenclature used to indicate quartertones in maqams is identical to those used by Wyschnegradsky and Gyorgy Rimsky-Korsakov. I use Turkish maqams to show that Ogolevets’ achievement as a composer and an inventor of microtonal instrument—harmonium—was radical, as it was linked to non-Western traditions, which, for Ogolevets, had greater profundity than its European counterparts.

Bio:Inessa Bazayev is Paula G. Manship Professor of Music Theory and Faculty Senate President at Louisiana State University. Her research focuses on Soviet and Russian music and music theory. She has published on these and related topics in major music theory journals and books. Most recently, she was the co-editor and contributing author of Analytical Approaches to 20th-Century Russian Music published by Routledge. Professor Bazayev was also a contributing author to Interpreting Scriabin, which was published by Boydell and Brewer earlier this year. Bazayev currently serves as Associate Editor of Music Theory Online.

Gabrielle Cornish

Assistant Professor of Musicology,University of Miami, Frost School of Music

Title: New Tones for a New Society

Abstract:In this paper, I map a series of transformations taking place within Futurist aesthetics in Saint Petersburg (i.e., Petrograd from 1914-24) and Moscow from roughly 1910 to 1924. Composers like Mikhail Matiushsin, whose Victory Over the Sun (1913) was the first Futurist opera, Arsenii Avraamov, Arthur Lourié, and Ivan Wyschnegradsky worked to develop new means of musical expression that would match the tones of modernity: namely, in light of the October Revolution, political upheaval and utopian change. Through a study of these composers’ writings, I argue that Russian futurist composers sought to create new sound worlds—worlds in which the senses were merged through multimedia performance and microtonal techniques—that would help to usher in a new political utopia. In doing so, I advocate for a continuity between the early twentieth-century music of mysticism of composers like Scriabin and the millenarian ambitions of Bolshevik cultural iconoclasts. Ultimately, this paper provides a jumping off point for further inquiry into the aesthetic and political entanglements of early socialist realism as well as the cultural resets of Khrushchev’s Thaw.

Bio:Gabrielle Cornish is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Her research broadly considers music and everyday life in the Soviet Union. In particular, her monograph-in-progress, Socialist Noise: Sound and Soviet Identity after Stalin, traces the intersections between music, technology, and the politics of socialist modernity during the Cold War. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the American Musicological Society, and the American Councils of Learned Societies. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Musicology and the Journal of the American Musicological Society as well as Slate, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Lee Cannon-Brown

PhD candidate, Harvard University

Title: Historical Teleology in Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Theory of Всезвучия

Abstract:In early twentieth century Russia, theories of microtonality emerged in tandem with narratives about social and cultural progress. A first wave of microtonal thought involved figures such as Nikolai Kulbin, Mikhail Matyushin, and Arseny Avraamov, who participated in the social and aesthetic upheavals of Russian Futurism. These Futurists in turn inspired a young Ivan Wyschnegradsky, who pursued his own utopian theory of microtonality after 1920 as an émigré in Paris. My lightning talk elaborates on the currents of teleological thinking that formed the basis of Wyschnegradsky’s project. First, I gloss Wyschnegradsky’s music-theoretical teleology, which anticipated a future, microtonal epoch of “Pansonority” (Всезвучие). Then, I show how Wyschnegradsky’s theory of Pansonority was enfolded within a broader view of social and cultural history, rooted primarily in Russian religious cosmism. Ultimately, my excavation of Wyschnegradsky’s thought highlights its differences from the contemporaneous thought of Schoenberg, which Wyschnegradsky himself challenged throughout his career. With its alternative teleology, I argue, Wyschnegradsky’s Pansonority today decenters Schoenberg’s ideas, destabilizing their unmarked prominence in histories of post-tonal theory.

Bio:  Lee is a doctoral candidate in music theory at Harvard University. For Fall 2022, he is a Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and since 2019, he has chaired the Society for Music Theory’s Music and Philosophy Interest Group. Lee’s dissertation reimagines the history of early post-tonal thought from a global perspective, comparing theories that emerged contemporaneously in Austria and Germany, Russia, the United States, and Mexico. His dissertation has received support from the Paul Sacher Foundation, and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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