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The present outsider is under no illusion that
aesthetic matters would be handled any more convincingly in his own country
by a committee made up of either Democratic or Republican party chiefs
or by a consortium of concert managers and publicity agents or by any other
group among us that might be animated by an itch to use music and the
public’s
enjoyment of it for its own purposes. It is probable, even, that a congress
of American composers, held under a similar emergency, would show a not
inconsiderate amount of conformist sentiment and also that some of the
resistant spirits would remain shamefully (if sagaciously) silent. All
the same, the Russian spectacle is entertaining, more so, indeed, to this
observer than a great deal of the music that it is all about. And little
by little one gets an inkling of what it is the Party in Russia has on
its mind, musically speaking.
The magazine Sovietskoye Iskusstvo (Soviet Art) published on February 28 of this year articles by Tikhon Khrennikov and Marion Koval that, for all the carefully routined phrasing of their indignation, here and there let the cat out of the bag. The former, moderately well known here as a symphonist, has lately replaced Aram Khachaturian as president of the Society of Soviet Composers. The latter is music editor of Soviet Art and president of the State Music Publishing Committee for the selection of works to be printed. Both use the word formalist (or, rather, its Russian equivalent) as a term of intense reproach and join it regularly for emphasis with the adjectives Western and decadent. Both have some difficulty defining formalist tendencies, but both insist that when a work’s subject matter is not clear to all formalism is present. Wherever the subject matter is frivolous, pessimistic, or “unhealthy” it is also assumed to exist, though its running mate, the word decadence, is more easily comprehensible to us in that connection. . . . The Russian word translated as “formalism” seems to mean something like “formulism,” that is to say, composition by means of stock formulas, technical or expressive. In Soviet aesthetics, however, undesirable subjects and sentiments are assumed to be inseparable from “formalistic” expression. And “formalistic” expression (also equatable with “individualistic”) is recognizable in music by excessive dissonance, harsh instrumentation, unusual instrumentations (of a kind not available in provincial orchestras), percussive instrumentation, too much counterpoint, “linearity” in general, slow tempos, failure to employ folklore themes, the distortion of folklore themes, failure to follow “classic” models, distortion of classic models, and the use of any device or texture for its intrinsic interest rather than for directly expressive purposes. For critics unskilled in musical analysis, subject matter, where clear, is apparently sufficient basis for judgment, since sound subjects are assumed to make for sound musical expression, just as “decadent” subjects make for “decadent-formalistic” (add “Western” and “bourgeois”) expression. . . . . . . . it would seem that the Russians are trying to do two things. One is to limit music to its possible uses as an arm of the state’s social policy. Many governments have tried this at one time or another. The idea is not a new one, but the history of its success is meager. The other effort is to create a nonexplosive, a foolproof kind of art, a beauty with no “strangeness in the proportion.” This is not a new idea either, although precedent for its success is, to my knowledge, nonexistent. . . .
Virgil Thomson
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