Two portraits of Vladimir Mayakovsky by Alexander Rodchenko, via paris.blog.lemonde.fr

James and I have been listening to this excellent box set of vocal music from the former East Germany.

The widget above plays a sample of Friedrich Schenker's "Leitfaden fur angehende Speichellecker" (Guide for bootlickers-in-training) composed in 1974. The text is based on a 1927 poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, in which the poet provides a satirical "guide for toadies" and at the end rips off the mask and says tells the audience to do just the opposite. In the Schenker piece, the singer tears up her music and throws it away at the end, and the pianist slams down the piano lid and stomps away. My description is adapted from the booklet of the box set mentioned above.

I just finished reading Marcia Tucker's memoir, A Short Life of Trouble, Forty Years in the New York Art World. Here is a quote from the letter she wrote to the museum's trustees after her firing from the Whitney Museum.

As a scholar, it has always been my conviction that it is the museum's responsibility not only to reflect the consensus of educated opinion by which art history is made, but also to seek out the best work at its source, rather than only after it has achieved commercial exposure.

Shostakovich on the cover of Time, 1942, via Zeitschichten

William T. Vollmann's historical novel Europe Central is at times a long, dark slog, but definitely worth the effort. His research into Nazi and Soviet history is impressive, particularly on musical topics -- don't miss the notes at the end. What other contemporary novel is likely to spend so much time with not only Dmitri Shostakovich, but less-famous composers such as Moisey Vainberg and Galina Ustvolskaya?

The only thing I disliked about the book was when the chapters about Shostakovich imitated the verbal tics he developed as he got older, due to the extreme mental stress he suffered under the Soviets. One example, from the "Opus 110" section of the book, when he is talking with NKVD men about his work, is below:

Because my hands get tired, comrades, even when I ... It, so to speak, subverts me. But I'm only a worm, and my symphonies are mere, uh, so it's no loss to, to ... I do apologize.

I understand the importance of conveying how he communicated later in his life, and a letter by Isaiah Berlin about his sad visit to Oxford in 1958 certainly documents that, but it's painful to read one hundred consecutive pages written in that style.

The long passages about the harrowing conditions for Soviet and Nazi soldiers on the Eastern Front, civilians in Leningrad, Dresden, and 1944-45 Berlin, as well as chapters set in East Germany after the war, serve as a strong antidote to the ridiculous idea that the USA saved Europe single-handedly in World War II. The Soviets and the countries of Eastern Europe lost millions of people -- soldiers and civilians -- as the West allowed them to grind down much of the strength of Nazi Germany. The people of central Europe were then abandoned to the sinister realities of Stalinism once victory was declared.

The novel is overlong, and could have used some more editing, but its empathy for the people of Europe Central is a worthy accompaniment to the works of Anna Akhmatova and Shostakovich regarding this dark period of our "civilized" 20th century.

No, I didn't film it. It's a YouTube find.

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