Feminine Histories and Identities in Russian and Ukrainian Music

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Our panel introduces lost female figures from the Ukrainian and Russian musical past -- the composers Valentina Serova and Stefania Turkevych – as well as two famous women, real and fictional, from the 1930s: the pianist Maria Yudina who inspired Alexei Losev’s writings, and Katerina Izmailova, the heroine of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Spanning a century, from the late Imperial period to the late 20th century, we address the theme of ‘liberation’ through political exile (personal freedom at the cost of creative stagnation), through male perspectives on female power and agency (personal and professional) and by examining the unconventional career of a female composer, till now almost completely erased from historical accounts of late Imperial musical life.

Sub Unit

• Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies

Papers

• Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and the Limits of Early Soviet Feminism - Pauline Fairclough, U of Bristol (UK)

• Grappling with a Woman-Thinker: Representations of Female Pianists in the Writings of Alexei Losev - Marina Frolova-Walker, U of Cambridge (UK)

• 'Strange to Imagine My Insignificant Figure Next to Him': Valentina Serova, Widowhood, and the Emancipation of Creativity - Nicholas Ong, U of Cambridge (UK)

• A Forgotten Ukrainian Composer in England: The Case of Stefania Turkevych - Mariia Romanets, U of Bristol (UK)

Discussant

• David G. Tompkins, Carleton College