Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and PerspectivesAuthor(s): Urve LippusSource: Acta Musicologica, Vol. 71, Fasc. 1 (Jan. - Jun., 1999), pp. 50-60Published by: International Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/932903Accessed: 29/09/2010 05:09

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50

Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives*

URVE LIPPUS (TALLINN/ESTONIA)

Present-day Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are often taken as a

homogenious region. However, the area is not as closely integrated as it is often

presumed. Baltic peoples do not have a common regional language. Estonian is a Finnougric language, very close to Finnish. Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic

languages. For centuries, German was the language of upper classes and edu- cated people. From the second half of the 19th century some knowledge of Rus- sian became common. Considerably large communities of Baltic peoples lived in the multinational capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, the closest metropolitan city to the Baltics. After the Russian revolution in 1917, when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania obtained sovereignty, contacts with Russian cultural centres practi- cally stopped, many people of Baltic origin repatriated. This first period of inde-

pendence lasted only twenty years, in World War II the Baltics were occupied by the Soviet Union. In Soviet times international musical relations were largely reduced, communication within the Soviet scene was encouraged and supported by the authorities. The knowledge of Russian became vital again. Estonia and Latvia are further related by common history as old Livonia in Medieval times and the Baltic Provinces of the Swedish Kingdom (17th century), later of the Russian Empire. Lutheran church and German higher culture dominated in the Baltic Provinces while the Catholic church is an integrated part of Lithuanian culture. In its history, Lithuania has been more related to Poland than to the other Baltic countries.

However, similar cultural situation in the three countries during the 50 years of Soviet occupation has been a strong unifying factor. Studying the ideological background of Estonian music history writing I started to notice similar ideas in the articles of Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues. In this paper, I shall examine some common views on music history using the published materials of Baltic

musicological conferences.'

Baltic Musicological Conferences The first Baltic musicological conference took place in 1967, organized by the

musicological sections of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Composers' Unions. That was more like a festival - a week of concerts in all three Baltic capitals (Tal- linn, Riga, Vilnius). During that week a musicological session was held in Riga, participants listened to three papers that all surveyed the present musical scene

This article is based on a paper presented at the IMS 16th International Congress, August 14-20 1997, London.

Four volumes of papers have been published: IpH6arITHI4CKHHII My3bIKoBeAqeCKHa c6opHHK [The Baltic Musi-

cological Collection], No. 1 Vilnius: Vaga 1982, 184 pages; No. 2 Tallinn: Eesti Raamat 1985, 180 pages; No. 3 Riga: Zinatne 1987, 208 pages; No. 4 Vilnius: Muzika 1992, 190 pages; in addition, copies of abstracts were distributed at several conferences.

Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives 51

in one of the three countries. With this event, the forum for Baltic musicologists was founded and the second conference in Vilnius (1968) was more like a musi- cological meeting. The program contained eight papers read on two days, a con- cert in the evening, and a demonstration of musical movies. Since that, such conferences have become regular, organized each year in turn by one of the Composers Unions. In the Soviet system, Composers Union, supported by the state, was the most important professional organization of musicians, and its musicological section functioned in many ways like a musicological society.

The 1960s were a time of liberation in Soviet life - new music flourished, some exchange of people between the new Soviet republics and the West started. However, contacts to the West were severely limited, therefore, com- munication between the Baltic peoples became much more important than it had been before the war. Although the working language at the Baltic musicological conferences was Russian, attempts to change them into Soviet regional meetings by joining the musicologists of neighbouring Belorussia were rejected by the Baltic community. Musicologists from Leningrad or Moscow were received as guests, they did not take part in deciding things. Actually, there was no central organizing institution or some formal committee behind those conferences - the leaders of each musicological section were rather free to arrange their conference every third year. General themes and some other problems were certainly dis- cussed at common meetings, but each section selected its papers and partici- pants within a set limit (usually 3-4 papers and about 10-15 participants from one country).

After the breakdown of the Soviet Union the conferences have changed. Not only that working languages are English and German or that many guests come from Nordic countries and Germany. Most important is that after the fall of the Soviet Union the need for such meetings seems to be lost. Baltic conferences were not academic musicological meetings. They were born from the deficiency of contacts and information in a closed society. One of the driving forces was the need to support one another in standing against Soviet cultural unification. No doubt that regional conferences are necessary in the future, but they have to develop into normal scholarly meetings. This process is taking place. Although the Baltic conferences have continued in the 1990s, serious organizational prob- lems are evident. At the same time, several successful meetings between smaller groups of musicologists with better defined common interests and research methods have taken place (e.g., in music analysis, regional music history). I hope that after some ten years we can observe those developments and put to- gether a new retrospective. At present, I shall discuss problems presented at the conferences before the end of the 1980s, before the rapid political changes started that finished the Soviet period some years later.

Music in the Baltics There has been European professional music in the Baltic countries as long as in the neighbourhood - Poland, Northern Germany, Sweden: similar institutions,

52 Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives

the same musicians travelling in the area. In the 18th century, Baltic towns were on the routes of musicians travelling to the new imperial capital St. Petersburg and many famous musicians stopped on their way. National movement, typical for 19th century Europe, reached first into the Baltic-German community, but

spread also among local people. Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian national movements strengthened in the middle and the second half of the last century. Many national institutions were created in the beginning of this century and the

years of independence between the two world wars were certainly the most decisive period in the formation of contemporary nations. That process was

interrupted by new waves of Russification in Soviet times. Therefore, the history of art music in the Baltics is long, but the concept of national music came in less than 150 years ago.

Musicology It is a general presumption that musicology in Soviet-dominated countries was based on Marxism. That was not always true. When we speak about Marxist

musicology now, we presume a certain system of views, specific research prob- lems and approaches, some relatedness to, e.g., the ideas of Theodor Adorno, or Zofia Lissa. We do not find much of that in Soviet musical historiography. In the Baltics, most authors of musicological writings did not have much methodologi- cal training in historical research. Their approach to the material reflects their intuitive and mostly traditional views. The most consistent idea in those writ-

ings is the progress and continuity of national music. This basic idea and corre-

sponding evaluations can be traced back to the first attempts to survey the field in the 1920s.2 Although the texts written in Soviet time are often subdued with some use of Marxist-Leninist jargon demanded by academic officials and pub- lishing houses, central values remained the same. I am not going to discuss what different authors found as expressions of national essence in music (though, that is certainly interesting), I am only claiming that this was the axis for structuring the story and the measure for historical and aesthetic evaluations.

One reason for such conservative approach to music history was certainly constant pressure toward the national cultural values. But no less important was the general position of musicology in the academic world. First, in the Soviet Union musicology was not taught at universities but at conservatories. There-

fore, training in music theory and developing practical skills in music domi- nated over academic disciplines like philosophy, historiography, or methods of research. Second, the official professional organization of musicologists was not a musicological society, but the section of musicologists at the Composers Un- ion. The national Composers Union was the strongest musical organization and, to some extent, it represented interests of all musicians. Such a place for musi-

cology reflects the expectations of the community as for what musicologists should do. The most important task was to write about national music, or rather

2 In Estonia, the first attempt to put together the story was: LEENART NEUMANN, Veerud eesti muusika ajaloost [Some Columns on the History of Estonian Music], in: Looming 1924, S. (2-6), p. 107-112, 201-205, 282-287, 379-382, 461-465.

Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives 53

about living composers, but the rise of national music and its great men were also important. The line separating musicological texts from journalistic surveys was rather thin and sometimes disappeared altogether; at that, historical, ana-

lytic and journalistic approaches could blend in one text. Very few musicologists were engaged in scholarly research that was based at the institutes of the Acad-

emy of Sciences. As a part of their job, the faculty of a conservatory had also to do research, because Soviet conservatories were university-level institutions. However, academic life at a music school of higher learning is (and must be) centered around performing.

Thus, it is clear that Baltic musicological conferences could not be an exclu-

sively academic forum, otherwise they would have constituted a very small

group of researchers. The main goal of coming together was to introduce each other's music; presentations of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian new music were an essential part of the program. Although this audience was not well pre- pared to discuss specific problems, most of the few musicologists active as re- searchers participated also at those meetings and sometimes introduced their works. For example, in 1969 Arno Rohlin from the Estonian Radio presented the results of a sociological study (Musical taste of professional musicians in the Esto- nian SSR); in 1975 there was a paper Formal analysis of monodic melodies intro- ducing the work done by some musicologists together with mathematicians and linguists at the Institute of Estonian Language, Estonian Academy of Sciences. In 1983 the conference entitled Early music and the present included a number of papers based on serious historical research. The situation started to change after 1985, when it became easier to attend special conferences abroad, and Baltic meetings lost their importance for researchers.

Musicological papers at the Baltic conferences The scope of the papers presented at the Baltic conferences during those years (1968-1985) is rather wide, and most of the influential musicologists of each country are represented among the authors. It is not surprising, considering the background of the conferences, that music-historical papers are in majority, in- cluding surveys of current music that are done mostly from the historicist view- point. There is a large group of papers on folk music and on the use of folk mu- sic by composers; some general conference-themes addressed the relationships between folk and art music. Problems of national style are also important in papers that might classify as aesthetic or methodological, other problems dis- cussed involve the concept of style, the current state and the goals of music criti- cism, etc. Many papers deal with practical questions of current music life. Al- though analysis is an essential part of many papers, there are very few directly theoretical contributions and that is quite normal regarding the heterogenious audience.

Observing the music-historical papers presented at those meetings, it is pos- sible to form some thematic groups: (1) surveys of the formation of national music or some extensive historical period, sometimes comparing similar pro-

54 Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives

cesses in the three countries;' (2) surveys of some genre, e.g., opera, orchestral music, organ music, either through the history of national music or during a definite period, e.g., the current decade, the Soviet time;' (3) surveys of current music, e.g., music of the 1970s, music by young composers; (4) descriptions of the style of some important composer;' (5) discussions of national individuality.6 It is characteristic that the authors prefer to present a panoramic picture of some

genre or a period. Thorough studies and focused problems are not missing, but

they are not in favour. The most concentrated papers deal with some important composition or composer.' Such a preference for a wide approach and compre- hensive problems was characteristic of Soviet musicology in general, not only of those conferences where it might be justified by the need to give more general information. To some extent, musicological research in the Baltics had to follow norms established by the central institutions at Moscow and Leningrad- St.Petersburg (for academic people that was vital, because all dissertations and

promotions had to be approved by a central organ - the Highest Committee of Attestation or Vysshaya attestazionnaya komissiya (VAK) at Moscow). Viewed from the centre, specific problems of local music or composers not known outside national culture were often considered insignificant; it was difficult to

get funding and academic recognition for such work. Here we come to the first problem. General surveys are often not sufficiently

supported by archival studies and monographic works. The situation is just the

opposite of the current state in musicology as seen by Joseph Kerman in his book Contemplating Music." In 1985 he was concerned with the predominant role of positivistic historical studies in Anglo-American musicology, complaining that piles of special studies have accumulated in libraries as the result of mod- ern(ist) research. His criticism called for interpretation, for new kind of stories. Piles of special studies accumulate as a result of institutionalized academic re- search, and dissertations form an essential part of it. I have characterized briefly

3 For example, papers at the conference Sources, development, and the present state of musical culture in the Soviet Baltic

republics in 1980: OFELIA TUISK, Forty years of Estonian Soviet music, LEO NORMET, The rise of Estonian artistic culture in the period 1900-1940, ARNOLDS KLOTINI, Some problems of style in the music of Soviet Latvian composers (1940-80) (NB,

labelling the period of 1940-1980 as "Soviet" was obligatory and did not imply ideological or social interpretation of musical processes; this and similar papers observed compositional features from a style-historical viewpoint). 4

In 1975 the conference theme was Symphonic music of the 1970ies and the program included several surveys of the

genre; in 1977 we find a paper Latvian organ concert and some genre-specific problems by ILMA GRAUZDINA at the conference dedicated to the patriotic theme in Baltic music; in 1981 the main theme was Baltic music in the 1970ies

and, in addition to general surveys, papers The development of the genre of concert in Latvian music of the 1970ies by JANIS TORGANS, Some aspects of pitch systems in the music of Lithuanian composers (1970-1980) by RIMANTAS JAN- ELIAUSKAS, and others were presented. 5 For example: JONAS BRUVERIS, About the artistic language of M. K. Cfurlionis (1969); ONA NARBUTIENi, Artistic portrait

of Algimantas Kubiliunas (1972); OFELIA TUISK, About the style of the composer Arvo Pdlrt (1977). 6 In 1973 the conference theme was National and international in the music of Baltic republics, some papers: DZINTARS

KAVINS, About the international sources of the genre of Latvian classic choral song; JONAS BRUVERIS, Some characteristics of national style in contemporary Lithuanian music; in 1978 ALGIRDAS AMBRAZAS presented a paper The problem of national

individuality in Lithuanian professional music; in 1985 the general theme was Music of Soviet Composers and Folk Music, several papers touched the theme from the point of national style in art music.

7 For example: MERIKE VAITMAA, New composition techniques in the music by Arvo Pdrt and Kuldar Sink, or VYTAUTAS

LANDSBERGIS, Synthesis of representative art and music in the compositions of Ciurlionis, both presented at the 1968 conference.

8 JOSEPH KERMAN, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, Mass. 1985).

Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives 55

the organization of musicology in the Baltics in Soviet time and the weak position of academic research. A limited number 'of dissertations and methodological problems are the result of that. In Estonia, the time for institu-

tionalizing music-historical research was almost ready by the mid-1930s, when at Tartu University there were some young scholars preparing for the musi- cological career. Elmar Arro, a student of Guido Adler, worked in Tartu and his best studies were written at that time when living close to the source materials and archives.9 Unfortunately, the war and the following Soviet period inter- rupted this development. But without special studies, positivistic or not, there is nothing to build up new kinds of discussions. There are some areas in the Baltic music history that have been more thorougly studied (the rise of national music, some prominent composers) and rather extensive lacunae (earlier history, church music, methodological problems, and many others). Several of the gaps clearly result from Soviet political pressure - scholars studying some neutral theme were much more free in their reconstructions and evaluations than those who chose to study some ideologically sensitive problem (like the role of Baltic- Germans in recent local history, Baltic composers living in the West, the years of "bourgeous republic", and similar themes).

History from national perspective The second issue to be discussed is the ideological framework of music history. In the introductory chapter to his 19th-Century Music Carl Dahlhaus writes: ,,One of the characteristic claims of the nineteenth century' is that for individual- ity to be truly original it must be rooted in the 'national spirit'."'o Like a red line this thought goes through all Estonian music historiography from the first es- says in the beginning of the century up to the 1970s. At least the mentioned writings from Latvia and Lithuania revealed the same conviction. The backbone of music history is to follow how Estonian (or Latvian or Lithuanian) composers have, step by step, created music that is more and more national, that meaning also more and more original, closer to the folk song, folk music, or at least to a vague national spirit.

I am far from diminishing the importance of these ideas for the development of Baltic musical cultures. However, a music history written basically from this point of view - advance of national music - brings up several problems. First, it turns everything that happened before the mid-nineteenth century into a kind of prehistory. Earlier music cannot be evaluated as highly as national music, be- cause it was only an extension of German, Italian, or whatever 'foreign' idioms. Second, it is not so easy to define what is national and what is not, what should be included in the story of national music and what can be ignored (e.g., com- posers living abroad, foreign musicians working here). Further problems arise

9 ELMAR ARRO, Baltische Choralbicher und ihre Verfasser, in: Acta Musicologica 3 (1931), S. 112ff., 166ff.; ELMAR ARRO, Die Dorpater Stadt-Musici 1587-1809, in: Sitzungsberichte der Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft 1931 (Tartu 1932), S. 90- 157.

10 CARL DAHLHAUS, Nineteenth-Century Music. Translated by Bradford Robinson (Univ. of California 1989), p. 37.

56 Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives

with contemporary music. After a rapid opening to the modern music in the 1960s, national idiom and the use of folk music were actually left aside by most local composers, and those who continued working with folk material found new more universal ways how to do it. Still, the belief that one cannot escape one's national character and that it is important to support national initiatives was rather widespread even among composers, not to speak about historians who are usually much more conservative. As a result, writers on music had to invent different ways in which the 'national spirit' can manifest itself in music.

Most earlier writers on Estonian music history are very stingy in giving space for local Baltic-German music and musicians: ,,this was not our music". Still, even around 1920 many professional music teachers in Estonia were local Ger- mans and refugees from revolutionary Russia. In the first volume of "Estonian music", printed in 1968," everything that happened before the mid-nineteenth

century is told with the 49 pages of the introductory chapter.2 From that time on, the role of local Germans was predominantly negative: their musical taste is conservative, they gave the model of Liedertafel choral music, their piano-teach- ers used sentimental amateurish repertory, and so on. In Estonia and Latvia we can explain that bias with fierce cultural competition between the two commu- nities which extended even into the period of political independence. This con- frontation was finished only with the Umsiedlung of Baltic Germans, the repa- triation campaign after the Soviet-German treaty in 1939 that opened the way for Soviet occupation.

However, we meet the same scheme in Lithuanian music-historical writings. Somewhat unproportional stress on the formation of national music leaves the

impression that earlier events were much less important. But Lithuania had its own early music, Lithuanian courts and court music. Vytautas Landsbergis has sketched the main periods of Lithuanian music in his paper published in the

proceedings of Baltic conferences in 1982." He writes: ,,As an introductory ex-

planation, it is necessary to stop on the term of national, in this case, Lithuanian music. This term, if applied to earlier centuries, will become somewhat condi-

tional, but we cannot do without it."'" He emphasizes that one should not restrict the concept of national culture and its development with the formation of a na- tion in the capitalist era, i.e. in the 19th century. Still, the first two periods out- lined by Landsbergis cover very quickly the vast time-span up to the end of the 19th century, then single decades are differentiated as fundamental periods ac-

cording to the important events in the advance of national music. Such ideas were normal in the intellectual climate of the 1930s. That was the time of estab-

lishing national states, fighting for the use of native language in higher educa-

" Eesti muusika I, II [Estonian music], ed. ARTUR VAHTER (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat 1968, 1975), 239 and 530 pp, resp. 12

Those chapters were written by KARL LEICHTER, an author of a few more studies about earlier music and music

life; he retired approximately at the time when the Baltic conferences started and has not presented any paper. 13 BHTayTac JIaHgc6eprHC, OCHoBHbIe STanIbI pa3BHTH4I JIHToBCKofI My3bIKaJI'bHoI KYJI'bTypbI [VYTAUTAS LANDSBERGIS,

Fundamental periods in the development of Lithuanian musical culture], in: HpH6a.THAncKHA My3hMKoBCKZeACCKHI C6opHHK

[The Baltic Musicological Collection] 1, ed. Adeotatas TAURAGIS (Vilnius: Vaga 1982), p. 117-134.

14 All quotations from Russian and Estonian are translated by the author.

Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives 57

tion and sciences in all the Baltic countries. But due to the following suppression of national culture in Soviet time those ideas only strengthened and petrified as cornerstones of music-historical thinking.

Since the Baltic conferences were not meetings of historians but those of much wider musical audience, it was rather normal to devote more attention to the recent periods: this music was actively used in every-day concert life. The magnifying effect of a national axis is more evident in the number of papers devoted to the rise of national music'" and in the total absence of papers about earlier history before the 1983 conference Early music and the present (in Siauliai, Lithuania).6 Also, some puzzling efforts to establish national characteristics or to find ,,the intonations of folk melodies" in modern music can be explained with the distorting effect of this measuring stick.

National music and Soviet doctrine After the outside pressure toward a national cultural identity had stopped, it is possible to study the phenomenon from some distance, but in the years under discussion it was hard to question. Carl Dahlhaus has analyzed the sources and components of national ideas in the 19th century music in an extensive essay Nationalism and Music.17 He differentiates between two main groups of ideas that inspired national strivings in music: the romantic Volksgeist hypothesis, more important in the beginning of the century, and political national movements spreading through Europe from the 1840s up to the end of the century. Folk music, earlier connected with lower social groups, could only then become a national symbol, the most genuine and original expression of national spirit in music. The bourgeous nationalism was a pan-European phenomenon, not lim- ited to the peripheral ,,national schools", and different national styles can be very similar if we study only the technical aspect of composition, the structure of music (the use of folk melodies, modal harmonies, etc.). Though presenting national aspirations in music as largely a factor of ideology, something extramu-

15 The 1973 conference National and international in the music of the Baltic republics included a paper by DZINTARS KIAVIN?, About the international sources of Latvian classical choral song; at the 1978 conference Compositional schools of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania TIIA JARG, LIA KRASINSKAJA and VYTAUTAS LANDSBERGIS, The influence of St. Petersburg school to the Estonian Latvian and Lithuanian national musical culture, VARDO RUMESSEN, About the fundamental periods of the development of Estonian classical music; at the 1979 conference The developmental laws of musical culture in the Baltic republics - LIA KRASINSKAJA, The initial period of the formation of musical cultures in the Baltic republics (an article based on this paper was published in No. 1 of the proceedings, pp. 5-39), VYTAUTAS LANDSBERGIS, The fundamental periods of Lithuanian musical culture (also in No. 1 of the proceedings, pp. 117-132), JOHANNES JORISSON, Important branches in the development of Estonian musical culture in the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century (article in No. 1 of the proceedings, pp. 40-57), LEO NORMET, The formation of Estonian artistic culture during the period 1910-1940 (this paper was continued at the next conference and an article published in No. 1 of the proceedings, pp. 58-91); among the published articles we find VIZBULITE

BERZI•NA, Some parallels in the national movement of Estonian and Latvian

people in the 19th century (in No. 2 of the proceedings, pp. 7-20). By that time the movement of early music performance had spread with such strength that it had some influence

on the entire musical community. Some papers presented at that conference: JORATE TRILUPAITIENE, Lithuanian vocal music in the 16th century, Vytautas JURK?TAS, The development of opera theatre in the Lithuanian Great Princedom in the 17th-18th centuries, GUNTAS PUPA, J. G. MiUthel's Riga years, SOFIJA

VERINI•A, Some features of Latvian musical culture in

the 17th century; later, two early music conferences followed at Siauliai (1985, 1987) introducing new historical themes. 17CARL DAHLHAUS, Nationalism and Music, in: DERS., Between Romanticism and Modernism. Translated by Mary Whittall (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1980), pp. 79-101.

58 Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives

sical, Carl Dahlhaus emphasizes that: ,,If a piece of music is felt to be character- istically national, that is an inseparable feature of the work, not something ex- traneous.""' Thus, if a composer and his audience feel some music to be national, it becomes an aesthetic fact, although it may be difficult to establish national elements in the structure of music.

Discussions about the essence of national individuality of some composer and descriptions of a national style were among the favourite themes at the Bal- tic conferences. It is clear that many musicologists avoided going directly into

ideology and aesthetics. Those fields had double censorship - official doctrine from the outside and the need to support, not to question national values from inside. Therefore, it is characteristic that the best efforts were given to demon- strate national individuality in the field of compositional technique, by analyz- ing music itself and checking thematical material against folk melodies. The ideas of Bart6k about different levels of absorbing folk material by professional composers were rather widespread.

Discussions and studies of the use of folk music were not a special Baltic interest that was an important theme in Soviet musicology. And now we come to the greatest blunder in our local musical historiography. Official Soviet cul- tural policy, or official aesthetics, though directed against ,,bourgeous national- ism", propagated actually the same ideas about a national spirit for a source of true individuality, the value of folk songs, as the source material of art music. The most forceful event to establish Soviet official demands and jargon in the Baltics was the decision of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist

Party about the opera Great Friendship by Vano Muradeli in 1948. This document was certainly important for the entire Soviet music, but here it started a decisive cultural sovietization campaign. One of the reproaches to Muradeli was that the

composer had not used folk melodies. Further, the leading conservatory of the state, Moscow Conservatory, and its director, the well-known composer Vis- sarion Shebalin, were accused of supporting formalistic tendencies instead of

introducing the best traditions of classical music, particularly Russian national

opera, and folk music. After that, the local Communist Party committees made their decisions and gave directions (some composers were labelled formalists; conservatories were obliged to teach more Russian and Soviet music).

Formalist music was characterized as atonal, dissonant, non-melodic, di- rected towards originality and novelty - such as the ,,modernist bourgeous mu- sic in Europe and America that reflects the degeneration of bourgeous culture, total negation of the art of music, a dead end.""' Opposed to that was realistic music: based on classical legacy, particularly on the traditions of the Russian

school, using and developing those traditions, uniting high content with artistic

perfection of musical form, true and realistic, deeply and organically related to

people, to folk music and songs. It is clear that Soviet musical aesthetics were

is Dahlhaus, ibidem, p. 86.

19 I am using a bilingual brochure (Estonian and Russian) published in Estonia that contains the decisions of the Central Committee, the Estonian Communist Party, and some other programmatic articles: Eesti njukogude heliloomingu dekaad [The Decade of Estonian Soviet Music] (Tallinn: ENSV Heliloojate Liit 1949), p. 17-18.

Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives 59

largely based on the more conservative ideas of the Russian school (or St. Pe- tersburg school) of the turn of the century. Due to its conservatism, the Soviet official doctrine was actually much more bourgeous than the ,,modernist bour- geous" west-European tendency that contained a strong Marxist component. The idea of a national culture with music expressing the national spirit, the symbolic meaning and aesthetic value given to folk music, all that belonged to urban middle classes and intellectuals, not to the peasants or ,,workingclasses". A consistent proletarian ideology should have been critical to it. But Soviet cultural policy was very suspect of any new phenomenon in art. In the following campaign against formalism the degree of conservatism, not national qualities or the use of folk music, became decisive. The antimodernist campaign passed by the end of the 1950s, but the traces of those ideas can be found in public discourse about music much longer, in some cases through the Soviet time.

Distancing from the political bias and the axis ,,bourgeous formalist" -,,so- viet realist", similar ideas about the relatedness of national spirit, folk music, and art music were current in the Baltic musical discourse of the 1920s-1930s, although in a completely different political context. Even the source was largely the same - many Baltic musicians had been the students of Rimski-Korsakov at St. Petersburg conservatory. Thus, in Soviet time, speaking about national style, national individuality, or relations between art and folk music could be politi- cally ambiguous or obtain double meaning. Some Soviet jargon could be used for defending old national ideals, and that was often consciously used by writ- ers. In any case, it takes some cultural experience to read the texts of that time.

In this context we can understand the comparatively high number of papers presented at the Baltic conferences that discuss national characteristics or the use of folk music. Papers like The use of folklore in the contemporary Lithuanian music by Algirdas Ambrazas in 1969, or The problem of national individuality in Lithua- nian professional music published by him in the proceedings of 1982 represent an important area of intellectual reflection in Soviet musicology in general, but put into the local perspective, in the Baltics such themes were not considered Soviet but national. In the introduction to his article Ambrazas refers to another Baltic musicologist Arnolds Klotipi, who has written: ,,For there is the most stable factor in the compositional school of each nation, that serves as the basis for many different historical and aesthetic developmental periods. That is folk- lore.'20 Ambrazas adds that folklore can be considered as the concentration of national individuality and the most stable feature of national psychology, the so called ,,national spirit" is expressed in the pieces of folk art, because that is the product of collective creative activity of many generations.2' He writes that a composer must not work with folk music through all his life, but the study of

20 ApHoJIng KJIOTbIH'b, 3CTeTHwecKHe BoIpoCbI pa3BHTHIm My3blKaJIbHoto TBopiecTBa [Aesthetic problems of the development of musical composition], in:

My3blKaJrLHax KyfTTypa JIarTBmCKO# CCP [Musical Culture of the Latvian

SSR], (Moscow: My3bKa, MocKBa 1976), p. 78. 21 alnrupAac AM6pa3ac, rpo6neMa Ha9lHOHaJIbHoro CBoeo6pa3H a B JI ToBCKOf IIfaoo(ecCHOHaJIbHofi My3bIKe [The

problem of national individuality in Lithuanian professional music], in: HIpHa5rJTHffCKHf My3•lKOBeYqeCKHI c6opHHK [The Baltic Musicological Collection] 1 (Vilnius: Vaga 1982), p. 140-161.

60 Urve Lippus: Baltic Music History Writing: Problems and Perspectives

folk music is an important condition for the formation of national style. Further, he mentions how Lithuanian composers have used folk melodies starting from biurlionis in the end of the 19th century. He quotes extensively from articles by a leading Lithuanian composer, Juozas Gruodis, written in the 1930s. The

thoughts are very similar to those expressed at the same time in the articles of the Estonian music journal Muusikaleht. For example, that a composer can write a national piece without using a folk song, and it is possible to produce a foreign composition using only folk songs as themes. An important thought in the 1930s was that national style and modern music should not exclude each other, na- tional does not mean traditional or simplistic music, just the opposite - earlier

layers of folk songs demand new harmonies. The survey goes up to the 1970s,

discussing the works and writings of present composers. There is an abundance of articles about Estonian music that follow the same framework of ideas.

The pressure to find national individuality in the relations of professional music and folklore, to check all folksong-like melodies used in a composition as for whether they are authentic songs or not, loosened around 1980. By that time the movement of authentic folk music ensembles that spread in all those coun- tries during the 1970s had given a new direction to discussions concerning the function of folk music in present-day music life.

In conclusion we can say that the ideological background of Baltic music

history writing is a very complex phenomenon. Texts written in the 1960s and later do not represent a uniform Soviet historiography, not to speak about Marxism. Often we must know the terms and rules of the game in order to un- derstand the author. But the good news is that most musicologists have done honest work, they are not political falsifiers. However, neither histories written before the Soviet time nor those of that time can be used as methodological basis for further work. They are interesting objects of study as documents of an extensive historical period. Distancing from the national bias in some recent Estonian music-historical projects has brought fresh ideas and young students to the field that was considered dull and petrified.