Unpredictable Encounters: Reconsidering Russian Music
Music has always been profoundly transnational, transcending language barriers and crossing borders in ways that few other cultural artifacts can. In Unpredictable Encounters, leading scholars from around the world examine how Russia's musical culture has undergone this process, interrogating its engagement with other cultures from the nineteenth century to the present.

Dedicated to the memory of the late Richard Taruskin, a leading scholar of Russian and Eastern European music, Unpredictable Encounters considers how individuals, organizations, and cultural artifacts crossed seemingly immutable and impenetrable borders. Its contributors ask fundamental questions about music as an activity operating along complex transnational networks, including what roles composers, performers, critics, and others played in the exchange of musical information; what a study of this scope can reveal about Russia's ongoing sociocultural and sociopolitical development; and, most broadly, what Russia's transnational musical engagement with the world can offer as a case study for thinking about the global landscape, both musical and otherwise.

Written against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency in 2012 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine ten years later, the essays in Unpredictable Encounters aim to confront Russia's colonial power and assess the effects of these events on the creation, performance, and reception of Russian music and musicians today.

1147357293
Unpredictable Encounters: Reconsidering Russian Music
Music has always been profoundly transnational, transcending language barriers and crossing borders in ways that few other cultural artifacts can. In Unpredictable Encounters, leading scholars from around the world examine how Russia's musical culture has undergone this process, interrogating its engagement with other cultures from the nineteenth century to the present.

Dedicated to the memory of the late Richard Taruskin, a leading scholar of Russian and Eastern European music, Unpredictable Encounters considers how individuals, organizations, and cultural artifacts crossed seemingly immutable and impenetrable borders. Its contributors ask fundamental questions about music as an activity operating along complex transnational networks, including what roles composers, performers, critics, and others played in the exchange of musical information; what a study of this scope can reveal about Russia's ongoing sociocultural and sociopolitical development; and, most broadly, what Russia's transnational musical engagement with the world can offer as a case study for thinking about the global landscape, both musical and otherwise.

Written against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency in 2012 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine ten years later, the essays in Unpredictable Encounters aim to confront Russia's colonial power and assess the effects of these events on the creation, performance, and reception of Russian music and musicians today.

50.0 Pre Order

Paperback

$50.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on March 31, 2026

Related collections and offers


Overview

Music has always been profoundly transnational, transcending language barriers and crossing borders in ways that few other cultural artifacts can. In Unpredictable Encounters, leading scholars from around the world examine how Russia's musical culture has undergone this process, interrogating its engagement with other cultures from the nineteenth century to the present.

Dedicated to the memory of the late Richard Taruskin, a leading scholar of Russian and Eastern European music, Unpredictable Encounters considers how individuals, organizations, and cultural artifacts crossed seemingly immutable and impenetrable borders. Its contributors ask fundamental questions about music as an activity operating along complex transnational networks, including what roles composers, performers, critics, and others played in the exchange of musical information; what a study of this scope can reveal about Russia's ongoing sociocultural and sociopolitical development; and, most broadly, what Russia's transnational musical engagement with the world can offer as a case study for thinking about the global landscape, both musical and otherwise.

Written against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency in 2012 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine ten years later, the essays in Unpredictable Encounters aim to confront Russia's colonial power and assess the effects of these events on the creation, performance, and reception of Russian music and musicians today.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780253075437
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Publication date: 03/31/2026
Series: East European Music Studies
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.13(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction, by Pauline Fairclough and Peter J. Schmelz
Section 1: Borders and Boundaries
1. Il Dolce Suono: Glinka's Ruslan Between Archaism and Modernity, by Olga Manulkina
2. Tango and Jews Under the Sultry Skies of Odesa and Beyond, by Inna Naroditskaya
3. The Mutual Gaze: Anglo-Russian Musical Alliance During the First World War, by Pauline Fairclough
4. Henry Cowell and the "Paradox" of Soviet Russia, by Kevin Bartig
5. Crossing Impenetrable Borders: Crossing Impenetrable Borders, by Klára Móricz
6. Cybernetic Disco Party: Toward a New Geography of the Soviet Underground, by Gabrielle Cornish
7. Improvisations with a Soviet Flavor: Sergey Kuryokhin Tours the United States, Fall 1988, by Peter J. Schmelz
Section 2: Wartime Reflections
8. Revolution, Trauma, and a Transition to Nowhere: Russian Music and Culture Post-1991, by Marina Frolova-Walker
9. Witnessing a New Exodus, by Elena Dubinets
Section 3: Remembering Richard Taruskin
10. Remembering Richard Taruskin, by Pauline Fairclough
11. Richard Taruskin and Us, by Liudmila Kovnatskaya
12. Taruskin and Us, by Olga Manulkina
Contributors
Index

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews