house Catherine’s paintings, library, and copies of the Vatican’s Raphael Loggias. The Winter Canal runs along the east side of the Large Hermitage and a gallery spans the canal and connects the Neoclassical Theater (built 1785- 1787 and designed by Giacomo Quarenghi) to the rest of the complex.
Nicholas I ordered the New and Large Hermitages to be opened to the public and a new entrance was constructed away from the Palace in
The Hermitage Museum complex includes the magnificent former Winter Palace and its art collection. © YOGI, INC./CORBIS
MUSIC
1852. Following the demise of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, the Bolshevik government combined the Hermitage and Winter Palace into one large complex that was designated as a public museum. The Bolsheviks nationalized the private collections of many wealthy Russians, further enhancing the collection.
During the nine-hundred-day Nazi siege of Leningrad (the city’s Soviet-era name), the museum was bombed nineteen times. Many holdings were evacuated to the Urals for safety, while curators moved into the facility to protect the remaining treasures. Twelve air-raid shelters were constructed in the basement, and at one point twelve thousand people were living in the museum complex. They planted vegetables in the Hanging Gardens in order to feed themselves.
The eventual Soviet victory over Germany allowed many priceless works of art to fall into Soviet hands, because Hitler had ordered the seizure of artwork from museums and private collections in occupied lands. Some paintings were immediately placed on display in the USSR, while others were hidden away and only revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union. Restitution of these trophies of war became a contentious issue in Russian politics. While some political leaders thought restitution would be morally and legally correct as well as positive for Russian-European relations, other politicians insisted that they are legitimate reparation for the immense damage and suffering the Soviet people experienced during World War II. See also: CATHERINE II; LENINGRAD, SIEGE OF; NATIONALISM IN THE TSARIST EMPIRE; RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO; WINTER PALACE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eisler, Colin T. (1990). Paintings in the Hermitage. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang. Forbes, Isabella, and Underhill, William. (1990). Catherine the Great: Treasures of Imperial Russia from the State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. London: Booth-Clibborn Editions. Gosudarstvennyi Ermitazh. (1994). Treasures of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Norman, Geraldine. (1997). The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum. London: J. Cape. Varshavsky, Sergei and Rest, Boris. (1986). Hermitage: The Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1944. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
The history of music in Russia is closely connected with political and social developments and is characterized by a fruitful tension between reception of and dissociation from the West. As elsewhere, the historical development of music in Russia is densely interwoven with the general history of the country. Political, social, and cultural structures and processes in the imperial and Soviet eras wielded a strong influence on musical forms. Even though aesthetic and creative forces always developed a dynamic of their own, they remained inextricable from the power lines of the political and social system.
The beginning of Russian art music is inseparably linked to a politically induced cultural event in Kievan Rus: the Christianization of the East Slavs under Grand Duke Vladimir I in 988. With religion came sacred music from Byzantium. It was to set the framework for art music in Russia up to the seventeenth century. Condemned by the church as the work of Satan, secular music could hold its own in Old Russia only in certain areas. Whereas the general population mainly cultivated traditional forms of folk music, the tsars, dukes, and nobility were entertained by professional singers and musicians.
The forceful orientation toward Western ways of life under Peter I introduced a new era of Russian history of music following European patterns. After Peter had opened the “window to the West,” the sounds of the music of Western Europe, together with its producers, irresistibly found their way into the tsarist court and Russian aristocracy. In the eighteenth century the Italian opera held a key position in Europe. The ambitious court in St. Petersburg brought in the big names of Italian musical culture, including numerous composers and musicians. Since the time of Catherine II the repertory of the newly founded theaters included the first music theater works of Russian composers as well as Italian and French operas. In spite of their native-language librettos, the Russian works were, of course, modelled on the general European style of the Italians. As in many other European countries, the forming of an independent, original, Russian music culture took place in the nineteenth century, which was characterized by “national awakening.” Through an intensive integration of European musical forms and contents on the one hand and the adaptation of Russian and partly Oriental folk music on the other, Russian composers created an impressive, specifically Russian art music.
MUSIC
The rich ambivalence of dependence on and distance from Middle and Western Europe can already be found in the operas of Mikhail Glinka, who, regardless of some predecessors, is considered the founder of Russian national music. Among his followers a dispute arose concerning how far a genuine Russian composer should distance himself from Western culture. The circle of the Mighty Handful of Mily Balakirev and his followers-still consisting of highly talented amateurs-decidedly adhered to the creation of Russian national music. Other composers like the cosmopolitan virtuoso Anton Rubinstein or Peter Tchaikovsky, who received his professional training in Russia at the Petersburg conservatory founded in 1862, had fewer reservations about being inspired by the West, though Tchaikovsky, too, wrote genuine Russian music. The work of these pioneers was continued well into the early twentieth century by such composers as Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmani-nov, and Alexander Skryabin. The latter, however, in his later compositions made a radical turn from the nineteenth-century mode of musical expression and became a leading figure of multifaceted Russian modernism.
In 1917 a political event again marked a turning point in Russian music life: the Bolshevik October Revolution. Although in the 1920s the Soviet state made considerable room for the most varied aesthetic conceptions, by the mid-1930s the doctrine of “Socialist Realism” silenced the musical avant-garde. Optimistic works easy to understand were the overriding demand of the officials; alleged stylistic departures from the norm could entail sanctions. Nevertheless, composers like Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, and others achieved artistic greatness through a synthesis of conformity and self-determination. Although the opportunities for development remained limited until the end of the Soviet Union, Russian musical life always met a high standard, which markedly manifested itself not only in the compositions, but in the outstanding performing artists of the twentieth century (e.g., David Oystrakh, Svyatoslav Richter).
Soviet popular music also succeeded, against ideological constraints, in finding its own, highly appreciated forms of expression. While the 1920s were still dominated by traditional Russian and gypsy romances as well as Western operetta songs, in the 1930s a genuine Soviet style of light music developed. Isaak Dunayevsky created the so-called mass song, which combined cheerful, optimistic music with politically useful texts. His style set the tone of popular music in Stalin’s time, even if the sufferings of war furthered the reemergence of more dark and somber romances. Jazz could not establish itself in Soviet musical life until the late 1950s. Russians had welcomed early trends of jazz with great enthusiasm, but the official classification of American-influenced music as capitalist and hostile hindered its development in the Soviet Union until Stalin’s death. Later, rock music faced similar problems. Only the years of perestroika allowed Russian rock to emancipate itself from the underground. Until then, the officially promoted hits, widely received by Soviet society, were a blend of mass song, folk music elements, and contemporary pop. In contrast to the unsuspected shallowness of these songs, the so-called bards (e.g., Bulat Okudzhava or Vladimir Vysotsky) did not hesitate to address human problems and difficulties of everyday life in their guitar songs. Probably these poet-singers left behind the most original legacy in Soviet popular music, whereas the other currents of musical entertainment distinguished themselves through their interesting synthesis of Western impulses and Russian characteristics, a central thread in Russian music culture of the modern age. See also: BALALAIKA; DUNAYEVSKY, ISAAKOSIPOVICH; FOLK MUSIC; GLINKA, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH; MIGHTY HANDFUL; NATIONALISM IN ARTS; PROKOFIEV, SERGE SERGEYEVICH; RACHMANINOV, SERGE VASILIEVICH; SHOSTAKOVICH, DMITRI DIMTRIEVICH; STRAVINSKY, IGOR FYODOROVICH; TCHAIKOVSKY, PETER ILYICH
