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The Russians are at it again. First there appears
in the left-hand column of Pravda’s front page a criticism of the
nation’s leading composers. They are charged with
“formalistic” tendencies,
with being influenced by the “decadent” West, with neglect
of Russia’s
“classical” tradition, with failure to maintain the ideals
of “socialist
realism” and to ennoble as they ought the Russian people. Next the Central
Committee of the Communist Party issues a formal denunciation by name and
in detail. Next the offending works are removed from the theaters, the
symphony concerts, and the radio. Then the composers under attack write
open letters to Pravda and to the Central Committee thanking them
for the spanking, confessing all, and expressing full intention, with the
kind advice of the Committee, to reform. After that there is nothing for
them to do but “purify” their music, to write new works that
will hopefully
be in accord with that “new look” that has been the stated
ideal of Soviet
musicians (and their political leaders) for the last twenty years. Then
in a reasonable time they will mostly be back in favor.
. What have they done, these composers, to provoke denunciation and disciplinary action? And what moral right has the Central Committee to order their even temporary disgrace? Well, what they have done is to fail, in the judgment of the Party leaders, to conform to the aesthetic of Soviet music in its relation to the whole public, as this was laid down by the musicians themselves back in 1929. That conception is, in our terms, certainly a false one; but it is already an old one, and it is certainly nothing imposed from above. The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians worked on it for five years before they got it stated the way they wanted it. And though the Association itself was dissolved in 1932, the declaration of 1929 remains to this day the basic aesthetic of Soviet music, of the proper relation of any Soviet composer to decadent “bourgeois” Western culture and to the rising masses of Russia. In this conception, a composer is an editorial writer. He is supposed to elevate, edify, explain, and instruct. He is to speak a language both comprehensible to all and worthy by its dignity of a nation-wide public. He is to avoid in technique the overcontrapuntal and the overharmonic, in expression the abstract, the tricky, the mystical, the mechanical, the erotic. He is to turn his back on the West and make Russian music for Russia, for all of Russia, and for nothing beyond. His consecration to this aim is to be aided and reinforced by public criticism, as well as by the private counsels of his colleagues. Judgment as to the accomplishment of the aim is not, however, his privilege nor that of his critics. That belongs to the Communist Party, which has the responsibility for leadership and guidance in artistic as in all other matters. The composers, in other words, have determined their own ideal and accepted, along with the ideals and forms of the society in which they live and work and which they have helped toward the achievement of its present internal solidity, the principle that the professional body alone, and still less the listening public, is not the final judge of music’s right to survive.
Virgil Thomson
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