<i>A Shostakovich Companion</i> (review)

Union of the RSFSR and exercising significant liberality within that role (notwithstanding his later vilification in the West). Another factor in Schmelz’s historical approach is his borrowing of Karol Berger’s concepts of “mimetic” and “abstract” music. On one level, there is little really new in Berger’s ideas, which are, after all, one of the foundation stones of Adorno’s writings on music; but as a later writer, Berger usefully extends these concepts to twenty-firstcentury culture. Schmelz convincingly applies the same concepts to Soviet music, proposing an aesthetic shift away from the extreme rationality of the early avantgarde’s serial works to the overtly “mimetic” spirit of music as disparate as Gubaidulina’s Night in Memphis, Pärt’s post-1968 music, and Schnittke’s polystylistic works. Schmelz is surely correct in his view that this “softening” of the avant-garde was a factor in facilitating performances of their music: a culture in which art’s social responsibilities were so taken for granted—in however abstract terms—could never embrace the aloof abstractions that were so fashionable in the West. He is slightly coy about offering his own view on the appropriateness of describing Schnittke’s music as “postmodern” though (p. 322); surely this is one— even the only—attempt to draw Soviet (and post-Soviet Russian) music into the mainstream of Western scholarly discussion. So long as clear distinctions are made between individual approaches (and assuming that the label “postmodern” itself is useful, which is questionable), it seems to me a constructive, rather than negative, way of “normalizing” the discussion of this repertoire, and I would have assumed Schmelz would welcome it. But this is a very minor query: there is no doubt about the fact that this is an outstanding piece of scholarship, rigorously researched and backed by a sensitive, probing attitude to its complex subject.