Unpredictable Encounters

Pauline Fairclough is Professor of Music at the University of Bristol.Peter J. Schmelz is Professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University and an affiliated faculty member at the Peabody Institute.

"A timely intervention in a critical contemporary debate." – Philip Bullock, author of Rachmaninoff and His World"Fairclough and Schmelz present this volume as a scholarly answer to the threats to the discipline posed by recent geopolitical events, in particular in the dramatic outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine. In the introduction, they reflect on the horror of the situation, but also on the effects the conflict might have on the academic study of Russian culture. The editors contend that Russian music studies can no longer be pursued in the same way as before. . . . One can only sympathize with the heartfelt reactions to the terrible situation and with the sincere effort for responsible scholarship in the face of real-life threats. The plea for taking the politics of scholarship as a non-neutral defense of liberal and humanist values seriously will resonate with many readers who sympathize with the specific plight of Russian studies in the present circumstances." – Francis Maes, author of A History of Russian Music"Separating a delinquent government from its dazzling, canonized cultural past is a fraught process. This welcome volume, in equal measure commemoration, scholarly sleuthing, and lament, is also a plea to decolonize that imperial bucket we know as 'Russian music' – not to cancel it, but the better to hear its many distinct and competing parts." – Caryl Emerson, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature"Unpredictable Encounters investigates how music resists, negotiates, and transforms under pressure across the twentieth- and twenty-first-century post-Soviet world. From improvisations in the Soviet underground to the cultural upheavals following 1991, it demonstrates how sound shapes memory, identity, and power—and why these unpredictable encounters remain urgent today. Combining meticulous historical research with penetrating cultural critique, this book reveals music not merely as art, but as a force that challenges authority, crosses boundaries, and illuminates the unexpected currents of human experience."—Nana Sharikadze, author of An Introduction to Georgian Art Music: Sense-Making Through Music

• AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroduction, by Pauline Fairclough and Peter J. SchmelzSection 1: Borders and Boundaries1. Il Dolce Suono: Glinka's Ruslan Between Archaism and Modernity, by Olga Manulkina2. Tango and Jews Under the Sultry Skies of Odesa and Beyond, by Inna Naroditskaya3. The Mutual Gaze: Anglo-Russian Musical Alliance During the First World War, by Pauline Fairclough4. Henry Cowell and the "Paradox" of Soviet Russia, by Kevin Bartig5. Crossing Impenetrable Borders: Leningrad's Sonic Siege Diaries, by Klára Móricz6. Cybernetic Disco Party: Toward a New Geography of the Soviet Underground, by Gabrielle Cornish7. Improvisations with a Soviet Flavor: Sergey Kuryokhin Tours the United States, Fall 1988, by Peter J. SchmelzSection 2: Wartime Reflections8. Revolution, Trauma, and a Transition to Nowhere: Russian Music and Culture Post-1991, by Marina Frolova-Walker9. Witnessing a New Exodus, by Elena DubinetsSection 3: Remembering Richard Taruskin10. Remembering Richard Taruskin, by Pauline Fairclough11. Richard Taruskin and Us, by Liudmila Kovnatskaya, translated by Pauline Fairclough12. Taruskin and Us, by Olga Manulkina, translated by Pauline FaircloughContributorsIndex