Music: In & Out of Russia

In Philadelphia, in Manhattan and over the radio, Conductor Leopold Stokowski had his Philadelphia Orchestra play all-Russian programs last week. Stravinsky, Skriabin, Prokohev and Moussorgsky are composers comfortable now on any U. S. concert program. But along with them Stokowski introduced two strangers: Serge Nikiforowitsch Wassilenko and A. S. Illiashenko.

The Witches’ Flight by Wassilenko was eerie music fairly descriptive of its title. Illiashenko’s Dyptique Mongol dissonantly depicted the retreat of the warriors escorting dead Genghis Khan, their preparations for battle afterward. The Witches’ Flight is 23 years old. And the composer of Dyptique Mongol teaches at the Brussels Conservatory, is a White Russian expatriate like Prokofiev and Stravinsky. But most people knowing that Conductor Stokowski brought the two new scores home with him on his return from Russia last spring, knowing him to be an alert musical reporter,* assumed that these importations were Soviet products.

Truly typical of Soviet music was Mossolow’s Soviet Iron Foundry which Stokowski played early in the season (TIME, Nov. 2). Soviet Iron Foundry perfectly describes a mass of noisy machines. Most Russians prefer Tchaikovsky or Beethoven to the kind of din they hear all day at their work. But the Government encourages music which publicizes the new regime. It frowns on any music that is languorous or melancholy. For this reason gypsy music, so popular before the Revolution, is generally tabooed. The new music is vigorous, direct and, like Soviet newspapers, optimistic.

However they may be inspired, Russian composers do well to comply with governmental wishes since musical performances are as strictly supervised as industry under the Five-Year Plan. Concerts and operas to be approved must serve one of two purposes. They must exert an indisputable cultural influence, hence the current enthusiasm for the classicists. Or they must promote propaganda. Since jazz does neither, it is never played. Madame Bufferfly may be given at the opera house but extremists reconcile themselves to it on the ground that Pinkerion. the naval officer who deserted Butterfly, was a capitalist. All religious music is banned. Spirituals are popular but Russians hear them only after references to the Lord are eliminated. A performance of Haydn’s Creation was forbidden even after new words were written. The music stayed essentially religious. A concert dedicated to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven was advertised lately as “The Dawn of Industrial Capitalism.” When Dancer Ruth Page was in Moscow last year the Government asked her to come on stage riding a tractor, waving a red flag.

Most foreign artists now exclude Russia from their European tours. Their pay is mostly in rubles which they cannot take out of the country. The Government acts as impresario for all artists. A young Russian musician must pass examinations proving himself familiar with Russian politics, testifying that he has aided in some social movement like the abolition of illiteracy or alcoholism. The Government then advertises him in simple, forthright fashion. He may not call himself ”World’s Greatest Tenor” as does Beniamino Gigli or “Famous Boy Violin Genius” as does Yehudi Menuhin. Tickets for his concert will cost anywhere from 7¢ to 25¢. Factory workers then get a 60% reduction.

Stokowski returned from Russia enthusiastic over the results that energetic resident artists are getting. But Soviet composition has yet to impress itself beyond the border. Laymen wrongly attribute the Internationale to the Russian Revolution. It came out of the Paris Commune (1871). Tourists have been deeply stirred by the Soviet Funeral March, played on all state occasions. It is a folk song, a relic of old Russia turned into a Revolutionary song beginning “We fell victims. . . .”

* Stokowski has Mexican music on his mind now, gleaned from his midwinter vacation. On March 31, with the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company, he will put on H. P., a ballet by Mexican Carlos Chavez. Mexico’s famed mural painter, Diego Rivera, is designing sets & costumes.