# Can you buy a composer?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

"President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has ordered his government to look into buying the archive and Swiss estate of the emigre composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, continuing an effort to reclaim and repatriate Russian cultural legacy."

http://tinyurl.com/pn6dtb9


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## Guest (Nov 27, 2013)

You were obviously steered away from the canned composer shelf last time you were in Walmart, Ken.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Many people bought composers, but they often turn out to be very unruly and troublesome pets. Just ask Count Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula Graf Colloredo von Wallsee und Melz.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The state can try and buy back all the artifacts it can afford (bet those won't come cheap  

He is quintessentially Russian, and all but six (!) of his works were written while a Russian in Russia.

The Russian State can not purchase back or erase the fact their Local Boy Done Good Golden Child emigrated from his homeland, and lived elsewhere for the rest of his life.

There is another regard in situations like this: whatever is thought of the attitude, I think it valid to be concerned that sending artifacts to a country with a past and current political history such as Russia's might also allow for a strong chance that within a few years those archived documents and scores could be on fire in a public square, once again denounced as "Bourgoise Elitist Crap" which is not of or for the Proletariat, or some such.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Aramis said:


> Many people bought composers, but they often turn out to be very unruly and troublesome pets. Just ask Count Hieronymus Joseph Franz de Paula Graf Colloredo von Wallsee und Melz.


Even Monarchs can find the trouble and ancillary vet bills extraordinary -- Just ask Ludwig II of Bavaria about the Wagners, et alia.

Louis XIV of France had to nearly threaten to neuter Jean-Baptiste Lully to get Lully to go much further on the Down Low or give up his more than occasional sexual taste for men.

The Duke of Weimar had a great deal of bother getting his Bach dog to obey, and sent that one to disciplinary school, though between a sociopathic / psychotic patron and a good honest dog, I would tend to lend more credence to the dog's side of the story than the Duke's


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

PetrB said:


> There is another regard in situations like this: whatever is thought of the attitude, I think it valid to be concerned that sending artifacts to a country with a past and current political history such as Russia's might also allow for a strong chance that within a few years those archived documents and scores could be on fire in a public square, once again denounced as "Bourgoise Elitist Crap" which is not of or for the Proletariat, or some such.


Given their history with the airbrush, they are more likely to be photoshopped out all recognition. Also, as the article quoted by the OP said



> the principal Rachmaninoff holding in Russia is at the Glinka Museum in Moscow - not the friendliest of research centers.


So one might expect access to be used to encourage a particular view of the composer.

Drat, I think the way this is going, this would be better in the politics section.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

PetrB said:


> There is another regard in situations like this: whatever is thought of the attitude, I think it valid to be concerned that sending artifacts to a country with a past and current political history such as Russia's might also allow for a strong chance that within a few years those archived documents and scores could be on fire in a public square, once again denounced as "Bourgoise Elitist Crap" which is not of or for the Proletariat, or some such.


I don't think sticking to tired old stereotypes like this will do any good to the international relationships. There is a lot of things to criticize Russia for, but trying to get back on its feet and rediscover its cultural heritage (real cultural heritage, as opposed to "social realism") is not one of them.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I don't think sticking to tired old stereotypes like this will do any good to the international relationships. There is a lot of things to criticize Russia for, but trying to get back on its feet and rediscover its cultural heritage (real cultural heritage, as opposed to "social realism") is not one of them.


As I implied, that "attitude" is, "You are not yet ready, and we are not sure if you would be responsible enough to yet be in charge of these artifacts." (Some cultural artifacts are greater than the culture, or at least deemed more important than the temporal culture.) But, if they are sold, they are the owner's to do with as they see fit.

There was an auction sale of some of Hitler's watercolors: the winning purchaser paid a pretty price. Once in his possession, he publicly, burned them


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

KenOC said:


> "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has ordered his government to look into buying the archive and Swiss estate of the emigre composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, continuing an effort to reclaim and repatriate Russian cultural legacy."
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/pn6dtb9


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_This post has been partially censored by the Russian Ministry of Truth_


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I don't think sticking to tired old stereotypes like this will do any good to the international relationships. There is a lot of things to criticize Russia for, but trying to get back on its feet and rediscover its cultural heritage (real cultural heritage, as opposed to "social realism") is not one of them.


A far better way to spend what it might take to obtain those archival documents from the Swiss would be to instead make a concerted attempt to restore all the written poetry, literature and essays that was censored, expunged, sometimes completely erased. That would go a very far way to also restoring the faith of the Russian people that their government was on the right track, had faith in the people themselves, and valued that very large part of their cultural heritage.

To instead make an open gesture of purchasing the Rachmaninov estate and archives is mere cosmetic and very safe and appealing politics, disingenuous at best. The restoration of scores and memorabilia of a very great late romantic Russian composer, none of it any way politically heated, then or now, and that composer from a landed serf owning upper middle class family who fled the country immediately after the revolution, says little if anything of value at all.

Besides, the Russians "have" Rachmaninov. His music is readily available, performed, aired on the radio, none of it censured, all of it already in place as popular / populist. Unlike Shostakovich, Prokofiev, or many another Russian artist, Rachmaninov never got called up on the carpet for music "not for the proletariat" because he was not there during those decades of oppression, fear-mongering, with the Sword of Damascus of exile or death hanging over his head while he composed.

The choice of Rachmaninov is a safe and cozy choice, a composer who made excellent and lovely music of wide appeal and _who said nothing to upset the apple cart_. The choice is a well-calculated ploy to easily please the Russian people, perhaps to also look good to other sovereign nations -- (ooh, they're restoring their cultural heritage, how nice. How assuring.")

I say address the nasty mistakes, restore those writers whose works were suppressed, before you go for the excellent candy of a popular late romantic composer's estate.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Besides, the Russians "have" Rachmaninov. His music is readily available, performed, aired on the radio, none of it censured, all of it already in place as popular / populist. Unlike Shostakovich, Prokofiev, or many another Russian artist, Rachmaninov never got called up on the carpet for music "not for the proletariat" because he was not there during those decades of oppression, fear-mongering, with the Sword of Damascus of exile or death hanging over his head while he composed.


First, the music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev is also widely available and performed, no less than that of Rachmaninov. Second, those two, having lived and worked in the USSR, are also viewed as "court composers" and their music as a part of the communist culture. Rachmaninov, on the opposite, was the kind of man communists hated and his work dismissed as "Bourgoise Elitist Crap", in your own words. Therefore, it would be a move in the right direction to reconnect with the culture from before 1917, the Russian culture (as opposed to Soviet culture) that the communists either destroyed or forced into exile.

Somehow I doubt the Russians' sincerity in reconnecting to it though. There is a lot to restore in that country first, before Rachmaninov's heritage.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Somehow I doubt the Russians' sincerity in reconnecting to it though.


You can doubt Russian government's sincerity. But that's irrevelant, because even if they are not sincere, they don't stand out. How many presidents, prime ministers and ministers who are part of culture-funding governments truely understand the neccessity of taking care of such things when they do it? Do you think that this year's Verdi and Wagner anniversary events were funded from public money because Italian and German governments are filled with opera lovers who understand the value of these figures? The initiative must have came from cultural institutions and the money was granted because it's widely acknowledged that goverments fund high culture and withdrawing from it would put these people in very bad light - and so their motivation is most likely very similiar to that of Russians. These days it's good enough when people in power take care of these issues as if they had some sincere intentions, regardless of whether they truely have them or not.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

That was a poor choice of words on my part. My biggest doubt is, whether the money for this undertaking will not get "appropriated" along the way, so that in the end it is not Rachmaninov's archive that will be moved to Russia, but some Russian cultural functionary, of a whole bunch, that will move to Switzerland.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Forget Rachmaninov - the Russian government would do better to fully rehabilitate Nikolai Roslavets, a composer who was a victim of _damnatio memoriae_ even as late as the 1980s (he died in 1944). Seeking out and making available some of his confiscated manuscripts would be a start.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

If I get enough money, I'll buy Glazunov's old home (it's been turned into a hotel complex now, along with the book publishing business that was next door), buy all his stuff, and just live there.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for posting the article, KenOC. I suppose the big issue is are the materials safe in Russia? Also, given the less than friendly culture of research institutions in the country (mentioned in the article by one researcher), will it be accessible (especially to foreign scholars?). I know that during the Soviet era, things where very hard to access for Western scholars, in the case of Tchaikovsky it was impossible for them to access the files at his archive back then.

Of course Rachmaninov had an ambivalent relationship to the Soviet regime at best. He endured the Bolshevik coup with his family in 1917, but then left and never returned. During the 1930's during the height of the Stalin era, the regime temporarily banned his music. His Vespers especially where singled out, due to their religious content (even though they where not meant for use in liturgy, its more or less a concert hall work) and also The Bells (because in Europe bells ringing can be taken as a symbol of freedom, eg. that a war is over). To an extent, Rachmaninov's music was subversive, however after the Stalin era he was rehabilitated. Similarly in the 1970's more balanced assessment of his contribution to the legacy of music where made. Western scholars began to finally drop the bias of those like Adorno, who pulled down Sibelius too, another composer whose real contribution was obscured for decades by ideology.

So with that I ask, can we rehabilitate Russia and give them a chance to build anew after the injustices of the past? I mean rehabilitate in its Iron Curtain meaning. In 1956 for example, Shostakovich was rehabilitated after the condemnations he received in 1948 (the Zhdanov anti-formalist decree) and 1936 (Stalin's notorious ghost written article in Pravda). Rehabilitation in this sense means that you are given a new lease of life, a blank slate in which to exist with some deal of freedom (well, that's the aim).

What I'm worried about is the patterns of the past in Russia (or the old Soviet Union). For example, with Tchaikovsky, the official line of him being a confused heterosexual or bisexual at most (not homosexual) was the official line taken by scholars until after the end of Communist rule. Details of his private life only emerged after documents that had been hidden in the vaults for decades finally saw the light of day. There is still mystery though over his death (which I don't want to derail this thread with). 

But think of this - most of the documents about what really happened during the Stalin era are not in Russia itself but abroad. As we know, history in totalitarian regimes tends to be re-written, ideology takes precedence over fact. If you wanted real and undoctored documents about the purges or show trials for example, you had to look in archives in the West. Now it might be different, but I'd think that the Western archives on that part of history are more reliable than those in Russia. Musicology is no different, and if there was ever a composer who got a raw deal in 20th century music - whether by Stalinist ideologues at home or hard line Modernists in the West - it was Rachmaninov. Whatever the case I hope that the documents can be maintained in an institution that protects his legacy, not distorts it as has been the case in the past.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

The nuclear blasts aren't on the news because before the bombs are able to explode I surreptitiously absorb the warheads into my green gelatinous matrix wherein I digest the enriched uranium as a form of energy. A small amount of radioactive waste is produced in the process, this I excrete into the pre-ordered drinks awaiting guests at the intermissions of performances of _Les Troyens_.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I don't know, but it might be possible to steal one. Check out the ebook "Xylophone Fragments."


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> If I get enough money, I'll buy Glazunov's old home (it's been turned into a hotel complex now, along with the book publishing business that was next door), buy all his stuff, and just live there.


Selfish  .....................


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Selfish  .....................


Well not that you would care, no one would want to own it but me.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Well not that you would care, no one would want to own it but me.


Don't be too sure. I just moved into a civilized but nonetheless rather grim basement flat, so at the moment, eying any above ground property, especially a self-standing house -- with windows which allow much of any daylight in -- has enormous draw and appeal


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