Socialist Realism in Music

Socialist Realism has frequently been badly received outside of its intended audience. The following is a memorable review by Harold C. Schonberg for the New York Times on a production of Kiril Molchanov's The Dawns are Quiet Here . -------------------------------------- New York Times, July 14, 1975. 'Socialist Realism Comes to Met Stage' Presumably, there was a political reason for the Bolshoi Opera to bring 'The Dawns are Quiet Here' by Kiril Molchanov to the Metropolitan Opera. It is hard to think of any other. The opera had its premiere this year in Moscow, and its American premiere yesterday afternoon. It is the very paradigm of a socialist realist work of art. It carries an inspirational message. It has dollops of folk music. It celebrates the heroism of Soviet woman. It is sentimental, patriotic, and just plain awful. Musically, most of it is pre-Rimsky-Korsakov, though there are some fleeting echoes of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and some amplif...

Where to begin?  Practical definitions of socialist realism are hard to come by. Soviet composers spent years agonising over a satisfactory way to define the aesthetic (and, arguably, they never did come up with a good definition).  In short, socialist realism is the name given to a body of art, music, literature, poetry, and theatre that was created under communist rule during the twentieth-century. It was an intrusion of official power into the realm of artistic creation when governments dictated what sort of art artists should and shouldn't create.  Under Soviet communism, all aspects of life were harnessed to serve the purposes of the people (as decided by the government), including music. Various governmental figures decided that art had to be approachable, educational, and ideologically-correct in order to best serve the citizens of the Soviet Union. In terms of music, this meant that it had to be relatively easy to understand, tuneful, and be capab...

Welcome to the new blog, 'socialist realism in music'. This blog has been set up to share ideas, resources, and findings from an ongoing research project into socialist-realist music in the twentieth century. Here, I will post articles containing precursory thoughts on the project, links to audio recordings and scores, as well as articles of interest around the project. This blog is run by Dr Daniel Elphick, a musicologist and researcher based in London. Please note: this is an ongoing research project, so resources may be edited, reposted, or removed at short notice.