Drew Olsen MUSI105 Music article Review

   In Chapter 7 “The art of fear” The author, Alex Ross, delves into how the overall political landscape during times of war can influence compositional freedom, the different interpretation or consumption of music, evolution, and the purpose of music in society. The section “The Great Patriotic War” focuses on music composed during the Second World War; specifically, composers living in countries run by totalitarian dictators such as Stalin, and how the overarching intent of composers and the way music can be interpreted were limited by Nationalistic ideologies.

   In the first section of the Article, Ross summarises the compositional period of Shostakovich during the second world war and discusses the various secret messages and codes he put in his music, and what effect this has on the interpretation of music for people at the time. Ross argues that the fact that Shostakovich’s attempt at evoking complex thoughts and emotions through his hidden messages in his 7th Symphony “Leningrad” was ineffective. “Music is, in fact, better at communicating these primal emotions that it is at managing anything as tricky as irony.” (Ross, Alex 2007, The Great Patriotic War). I would consider this statement/section a strength of the article because at a fundamental level, music is understood by everyone who can listen to it, so everyone will tend to have their thoughts to what the music means to them personally. It becomes difficult to interpret messages such as irony, fear, or isolation as it is nearly impossible to know without further context whether the composer was being genuine or not. Complex thoughts and ideas such as Shostakovich’s appeasement of Stalinism in his 7th symphony are easily lost in the ‘translation’ of the music from composer to listener. To most, it is a just a piece that sounded like heavily nationalistic propaganda music for the Soviet cause, but for Shostakovich, it was a way to express his disapproval for Stalinism and the political climate of the time. Shostakovich, unfortunately, isn’t remembered today for his contribution to the musical landscape during his time but is instead remembered because of how he worked around these restrictions, expressing powerful emotions via double meanings and clever deception.

   Throughout the article, Ross discusses the effect of Nationalism and Political Ideologies on music produced during this time of war. He summarises ways in which composers modified their music to meet expectations of dictators such as Stalin, who wanted music to be comprehensible to the common man, something ‘Avant-gard’ music inherently goes against. A weakness of Ross’s article is the lack of insight on how censorship and restrictions that were brought on by wartime, affected the legacies of composers such as Shostakovich and Prokovief and how they would be remembered in today’s musical landscape. “Shostakovich told Flora Litvinova, "without 'Party guidance' ... I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.” (Wilson, Elizabeth.1994. p.426 Shostakovich: A Life Remembered:). The quote from Wilson’s book provides a much better insight than Ross’s article on how Shostakovich felt about these wartime restrictions stopped him from reaching new compositional heights. It expresses the doubt of his success and legacy as a composer because of war. For composers like Shostakovich and Prokoviev, the opportunity to join the great pioneers of new musical ideas at the time, such as Shoeburg with Tone Rows and Poems, Bartok with his exploration of Ethnomusicology, and Cage’s use of probability and chance, were severely limited by restrictions on how music “should be composed” as seen by nationalistic ideologists of the time. For example, the new Avant-garde ideas hinted at in Shostakovich’s first and second symphonies were completely removed by the time it came around to his 5th, instead of being replaced with new music that had rather bland and uninspired narratives that were simplistic in comparison. It was because of the ideologies that came with World War Two, that these composers were unable to reach their maximum greatness and push the boundaries of what their compositional output could achieve, limiting their potential create what they truly desired.

   Composers having these restrictions changed the course of musical history as we knew it. The rapid rate of classical musical evolution that the early part of the 20th century saw was halted to a sluggish rate because of war. A potential weakness of the article is the lack of insight that war had on classical music’s evolution and why music took a turn to the specific path it did, changing how music mattered in new contexts. The beginning of the 20th century saw the rise of Atonality and dramatic exploration in rhythms, whereas the interwar period of about 1917-1945 saw a large shift to Neoclassicism, which was a return to the order and emotional restraint of the music of the 18th and early 19th centuries.“Many music theorists have ratified this notion viewing neoclassicism as a sort of salvage operation… By which the ‘doomed tonal system’ was given a superficial preservative restructuring” (Taruskin, Richard. (1993): 286-302. doi:10.2307/746396. "Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology." 19th-Century Music 16, no. 3) This review by Taruskin shows that the ideologies that came with war and the desire for Music to be used as a tool to fuel and inspire the people, lead to music becoming much less complex, with simpler harmonic, rhythmic and narrative devices, so it would become more ‘consumable’ by the common man. War changed how and why music matters to people as they were now subjected to what they ‘should’ listen to, rather than what they ‘want’ to listen to.

   War is very powerful in shaping how composers create and listeners interpret music. Ross’s article provides a unique view of how the composition during times of war was affected by the political views and ideologies of the people ruling, in terms of how the music is consumed, the legacy it holds in today’s society and how music matters to different members of society. The main strength of Ross’s article were his ideas of the interpretation of composers who lived during this time of war, specifically his views of Shostakovich’s music, which were insightful into how different individuals may react to it, and how music matters to different people during times of war. However, the article lacks scope and depth about how war changes the wider legacy and evolution of composers and how a complete stylistic change was brought on because of war, affecting ways music matters to different people.