Francis Maes
A History of Russian Music:
Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar, translated by
Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans.
University of California, 427 pages, $45

In the sphere of Western classical music, changes in historical perspective take hold gradually—if they occur at all. Bach the Supreme Genius, Mozart the Divine Child, and Beethoven the Curmudgeon Revolutionary are characterizations which have persisted for eighty years or more. We may offer new interpretations of music’s major figures, but the portraits, history, and scholarship surrounding them remain largely the same.

For a long time the popular interpretations of Russian music were similarly static. Even the musics history was filled with critical assessments passed off as simple facts: The group of composers known as the “Mighty Handful” was a force in revolt against the Czarist regime. The Handful was opposed to the Germanizing i ...

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