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Repetition in a Cold Climate: Russian Minimalist Music as Identity and Discourse
Russian minimalist music is a national, culturally-bound and postmodern variant of American minimalist music that first emerged in the Soviet Union during the early Seventies. Its key exponents are Vladimir Martynov, Alexander Knaifel, Nikolai Korndorf, and Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky to name the most prominent. Similar to American minimalist music in both style and technique, it differs primarily in that its main aim is to function as discourse. While post-structuralism dictates that all music is problematic when functioning as discourse, this is especially true of Russian minimalist music, with its intended significations being commonly either not perceived or else misunderstood. The reasons for this are compositional as well as semiological. They include the fact that minimalist music has highly reductive signifiers on the neutral level. These, far from being empty, actively prompt multiple interpretations and engender unwanted significations on the esthesic. In addition, the majority of Russian minimalist works are narrativic, with the minimalist structure and its limited teleological development being actively at odds with the narrative form. Another difficulty in relation to this music is that of analysis. While American minimalist music is the subject of ongoing analytical debate due to its structural transparency and the range of aural and kinesthetic experiences that it engenders, analysis of Russian minimalist music is even more problematic given its additional semiological dimension. In this seminar, I will examine Russian minimalist music as an identity and how it functions as a semiotic system. I will also explore some of the difficulties involved in relation to music analysis and suggest ways forward in coming to better understanding of this music within a semiologically-based context.
Dr Tara Wilson is a British musicologist, having completed a PhD on Russian minimalist music at the Centre for Russian Music, Goldsmiths, University of London in 2015. Her research specialisms include Russian and Post-Soviet music, minimalist music, as well as theory and analysis, notably in relation to post-structuralist methods and music semiotics. The author of several publications in the UK, Europe and Russia, she currently works and resides in Moscow.
This seminar will be held on Microsoft Teams. You don’t need a Teams account to attend, just click on the link below shortly before the advertised start time and follow the instructions:
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