In its scope and command of primary sources and its generosity of scholarly inquiry, Nikolai Findeizen's monumental work, published in 1928 and 1929 in Soviet Russia, places the origins and development of music in Russia within the context of Russia's cultural and social history. Volume 2 of Findeizen's landmark study surveys music in court life during the reigns of Elizabeth I and Catherine II, music in Russian domestic and public life in the second half of the 18th century, and the variety and vitality of Russian music at the end of the 18th century.

In its scope and command of primary sources and its generosity of scholarly inquiry, Nikolai Findeizen's monumental work, published in 1928 and 1929 in Soviet Russia, places the origins and development of music in Russia within the context of Russia's cultural and social history. Volume 2 of Findeizen's landmark study surveys music in court life during the reigns of Elizabeth I and Catherine II, music in Russian domestic and public life in the second half of the 18th century, and the variety and vitality of Russian music at the end of the 18th century.

A pathbreaking, monumental work on the origins and development of music in Russia

Volume 1 details the development of musical culture in pre-Christian and Kievan Rus' and in Novgorod the Great; the activities of Russia's first folk musicians, the skomorokhi; the varieties and evolution of musical instruments, especially old Russian folk instruments; music in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Moscow; music in the monastery and in court life in the seventeenth century; and music and theater in the age of Peter the Great.

A pathbreaking, monumental work on the origins and development of music in Russia

Little is known outside of Russia about the nation's musical heritage prior to the nineteenth century. Western scholarship has tended to view the history of Russian music as not beginning until the end of the eighteenth century. Marina Ritzarev's work shows this interpretation to be misguided. Starting from an examination of the rich legacy of Russian music up to 1700, she explores the development of music over the course of the eighteenth century, a period of especially intense Westernization and secularization. The book focuses on what is characteristic and crucial to Russian music during this period, rather than seeking to provide a comprehensive survey. The musical culture of the time is discussed against the rich background of social, political and cultural life, tying together many of the phenomena that used to be viewed separately. The book highlights the importance of previously marginalized sectors - serf culture, choral sacred culture, the contribution of foreign musicians, the significant influence of Freemasonry, the role of Ukrainian and West-European cultures and so on - as well as casting new light on the well-researched topic of Russian opera. Much new archival material is introduced, and revised biographies of the two leading eighteenth-century Russian composers, Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky, are provided, as well as those of the serf composer Stepan Degtyarev and the Italian Giuseppe Sarti. The book places eighteenth-century Russian music on the European map, and will be of particular importance for the study of European musical cultures remote from such centres as Italy, Germany-Austria and France. Eighteenth-century Russian music is organically linked with its past and future and its contributory role in forming the Russian national identity and developing the Russian idiom is clarified.

Volume 1 details the development of musical culture in pre-Christian and Kievan Rus' and in Novgorod the Great; the activities of Russia's first folk musicians, the skomorokhi; the varieties and evolution of musical instruments, especially old Russian folk instruments; music in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Moscow; music in the monastery and in court life in the seventeenth century; and music and theater in the age of Peter the Great.

In Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage, author Inna Naroditskaya investigates the musical lives of four female monarchs who ruled Russia for most of the eighteenth century: Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great. Engaging with ethnomusicological, historical, and philological approaches, her study traces the tsarinas' deeply invested interest in musical drama, as each built theaters, established drama schools, commissioned operas and ballets, and themselves wrote and produced musical plays. Naroditskaya examines the creative output of the tsarinas across the contexts in which they worked and lived, revealing significant connections between their personal creative aspirations and contemporary musical-theatrical practices, and the political and state affairs conducted during their reigns. Through contemporary performance theory, she demonstrates how the opportunity for role-playing and costume-changing in performative spaces allowed individuals to cross otherwise rigid boundaries of class and gender. A close look at a series of operas and musical theater productions--from Catherine the Great's fairy tale operas to Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame--illuminates the transition of these royal women from powerful political and cultural figures during their own reigns, to a marginalized and unreal Other under the patriarchal dominance of the subsequent period. These tsarinas successfully fostered the concept of a modern nation and collective national identity, only to then have their power and influence undone in Russian cultural consciousness through the fairy-tales operas of the 19th century that positioned tsarinas as "magical" and dangerous figures rightfully displaced and conquered--by triumphant heroes on the stage, and by the new patriarchal rulers in the state. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the theater served as an experimental space for these imperial women, in which they rehearsed, probed, and formulated gender and class roles, and performed on the musical stage political ambitions and international conquests which they would later enact on the world stage itself.

Claudia R. Jensen presents the first unified study of musical culture in the court and church of Muscovite Russia. Spanning the period from the installation of Patriarch Iov in 1589 to the beginning of Peter the Great's reign in 1694, her book offers detailed accounts of the celebratory musical performances for Russia's first patriarch -- events that were important displays of Russian piety and power. Jensen emphasizes music's varied roles in Muscovite society and the equally varied opinions and influences surrounding it. In an attempt to demystify what has previously been an enigma to Western readers, she paints a clear picture of the dazzling splendor of musical performances and the ways in which 17th-century Muscovites employed music for spiritual enlightenment as well as entertainment.