Modernism, Soviet Musical Criticism, and the Interwar Soviet Tours of Alfredo Casella

• In Event: Music, Professional Identity, and Border Crossing in Eastern Europe during the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

Between the October Revolution and the Great Terror, a small but steady stream of Western European and American musicians, composers, and music critics toured Soviet Russia, a significant but understudied international facet of interwar Soviet musical culture. This paper examines the Soviet experience of the Italian composer Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), who was seen by some of his Soviet hosts as both a progressive model to be emulated and a link to a transnational world of European modernism. Yet Casella’s foreignness in the USSR ultimately made him an exceptionally malleable symbol in debates that cut across the full ideological spectrum of Soviet culture.

Author

• Kevin Bartig, Michigan State U