Some Thoughts: Artyom Rondarev, 2018 (440 Hertz: Conversations about Russian Music)

Although having only recently found out about the (relatively) recent monograph by Russian Hip-Hop journalist and expert critic Artyom Rondarev, I quickly realized how important of a book this is, ESPECIALLY for someone interested in Russian Hip-Hop scholarship such as I am and its connection to the grosser development of Russian classical music. In this two-part work, he first looks at some of the seminal composers of the 19th and 20th centuries before moving into the popular side, although I have not yet reached that section in my reading. Regardless, now that I have finished reading his chapter on Balakirev some very seminal elements should go noticed, as they directly relate to the desired outcome of my Masters dissertation. That being a reconstructed notion of how to more effectively 'hear' and investigate Russian Hip-Hop in a way that puts the genre into a direct relationship with its classical variant. How you might ask? By appealing to the characteristics and what could be called anti-characteristics of what is ineffectively known as "the Russian style." In this blog post I'll briefly reiterate some of the most impactful points in Rondarev's first chapter which is dedicated to the popularizer of "musical Russianness," that being Mily A. Balakirev.

Geographical Differences

What I hadn't come across, at least not until this book, was the recognition of the different outlooks associated with Balakirev, and not simply from a composer-to-composer perspective but instead a grosser, worldview-based perspective. Ronderev notes that opinions on Balakirev differentiate between the "Western" and the "Domestic Soviet/post-Soviet," the main difference being the ways in which the connotations of Nationalism are interpreted. Generally, from the non-Russian perspective the "New Russian School" (one alternate name for The Mighty Five) was seen to be the progenitor of an compositional ideology centered around a reflexivity of cultural identity-creation. By borrowing and reinterpreting the aesthetics laid out by Mikhail Glinka, the first Russian composer to find extraordinary recognition outside Russia, an artificial notion of Russianness was born. Regardless of its musical effectiveness in creating a working idea of what Russia sounded like, scholars like Richard Tarushkin and Marina Frolova-Walker pointing out the composite nature of the constructed aesthetic and its subjective mythos, the "Russian style" helped give Russia a reason to hold its head up high. By placing Russian music into a "localized geographically, ethnically and historically”-minded framework, composers were open to creating the version of their country from their perspective, not Europe's. They cast Glinka as a Russian, and refused to allow his legacy to be whitewashed by the West.

Russianness as Protest

A major point that had only really been insinuated from other sources was that the creation of a solidified Russian style, complete with theoretical infrastructure to support it, came about in-part due to a series of actions that took place in the second-half of the 19th century. In 1859, the Jewish-Russian composer Anton Rubenstein had opened his school "The Free Music School" designed to help alleviate the poor status of Russian composition students at the time, and help facilitate the growth of a strong technical backing in the 'Western' Academy tradition, along with helping to expand the Russian musical tastes into more Western soundscapes. This was followed-up with the founding of The St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1861, now named after Rimsky-Korsakov. During this time, various lines of the Slavophile vs. Westerner debate were underfoot, Ronderev noting the movement called "Slavic Pride" as among them (Rykhtnk, 2020), and in the musical arena was Balakirev. This realization had not yet occurred to me, that the very creation of a musical style qualified as Russian was but the natural outgrowth of steep discontentment with movements towards Westernizing Russian musical practice. There's a connection to Tarushkin's 2009 book "On Russian Music," as he notes that on-top of the animosity towards Rubenstein's Westward focus was his Jewish identity, as this non-ethnic Russian was dictating the future of the Russian musical tradition, another avenue for the tie-in of Russian Hip-Hop and post-Soviet nationalist discourses in culture and beyond!

Aesthetic Intention

Another key element that he mentions is how, unlike Glinka's co-opted style which was not necessarily dictated by a desire to create 'Russian music' but instead utilize the sounding world around him as he understood it, Balakirev and the Kuchkists purposefully set-out to create a 'Russian style.' Therefore, as Rimsky-Korsakov would note all the way in 1908 towards the end of his life, this meant excessive tailoring and refining of what was and was to fall under the purview of the aesthetic traits of Russian music. While Rimsky-Korsakov had called the pursuits a 'negation-based' formula, and what Stravinsky would call dangerous due to its co-optation and reimagining of material, I argue that without this Russia's musical legacy wouldn't have had any legs to stand-on, as Glinka's success was not nearly strong enough nor self-aware enough to jumpstart the project of 'musical Russianness.' Like Frolova-Walker noted, he primarily focuses on the urban world and didn't necessarily focus exclusively on it either, instead creating a romanticized version of what he heard, what she calls a "drawing-room folklore style." It's fascinating, in this regard, to think about how on the one-end you have the passive romanticization of folk-material and on the other you have a fidelity towards correctly detailing such folk-material and using passages in compositional practice. HOWEVER, this was just as contrived at the end of the day.

---

I certainly have more reading to go with this book, and I look forward to learning more about the relationship between Russian classical music and its popular music corollaries as I go. If you are interested in reading the book with me, I have a PDF that I can share if you'd like!

---