There’s a notion that classical musicians have historically steered away from controversy in their music for fear of offending their wealthy patrons, namely the church, state and aristocracy. Back in the day, a political misstep could jeopardize one's livelihood at the very least, or at worst lead to harsh reprisals including imprisonment and death.
Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich endured close scrutiny and resulting denunciations from the Soviet authorities through much of his career. His stone-cold facial expression concealed a seething contempt for the former Soviet Union premier Joseph Stalin. Shostakovich invented a survival strategy of creating cover stories for his musical compositions to assuage any possible concerns the Soviet authorities might have had about his true intentions. After Stalin died, Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 10. The second movement, scherzo, is believed to be a depiction of Stalin’s ruthless persona.
Author and blogger Norman Lebrecht maintains that self-muzzling lives on in Russia today, where leading classical artists have been silent on the anti-democratic trajectory of President Vladimir Putin’s leadership. As an example of this, Lebrecht points to the eerie silence in the Russian classical music community over the much publicized imprisonment of three members of the Russian feminist punk collective, Pussy Riot.
In case you missed it, the band stormed the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the tallest Orthodox Christian Church in the world, a highly conspicuous location for any unsanctioned activity. The collective interrupted a fashion show in progress to perform a “punk prayer,” which lasted less than a minute before the members were stopped by security. Three members were later arrested, charged with hooliganism and subsequently sentenced to two years in prison.
International response to Pussy Riot sentencing
The Russian judicial system’s heavy-handed punishment for what many believe was a relatively innocuous act has been criticized by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and a host of mostly pop musicians such as Bryan Adams, Björk and Paul McCartney. Although Pussy Riot’s video of the punk prayer from the cathedral lives up to its punk billing, the melody is borrowed from one of the monuments of Russian sacred music, Rachmaninoff’s Vespers.
Pussy Riot’s choice of music for their video is intriguing and raises more questions than it answers. Is it an ironic sending up of the classical source material, a clever homage to a well known piece of classical choral music or just a convenient re-imaging of a good melody? These are all questions to ponder as the Pussy Riot story plays out in the weeks and months ahead.
Other protest music with a classical connection
1. Giuseppe Verdi’s Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco.
This lilting chorus was premiered on March 9, 1842, at La Scala in Milan. Frequently encored at the end of the performance of the whole opera, it is believed to have been adopted as a kind of anthem by those fighting against the unification of the Italian peninsula at the time.
2. Richard Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan and Isolde.
Current music director of La Scala, Daniel Barenboim, was the first post-First World War conductor to program the music of Wagner in Israel. Barenboim, who is Jewish, wanted to separate the bugaboo of Wagner’s inexcusable anti-Semitism from his music. At a performance at the Israel Festival on July 7, 2001, Barenboim turned to his audience to engage in a dialogue. He said, “It will be democratic to play a Wagner encore for those who wish to hear it. I am turning to you now and asking whether I can play Wagner."
After half an hour of heated discussion, part of the audience left the hall but the vast majority stayed to hear Wagner’s music, which was ultimately received with thunderous applause.
3. William Byrd's motets.
English Renaissance composer William Byrd was a devout Catholic in a Protestant country. He knew the risk of outing his own faith, so he buried pro-Catholic messages in the Latin texts of the sacred motets he composed for Queen Elizabeth I. No one was the wiser, except for his own friends who were in on the secretly subversive act.
4. Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.
Tippet wrote this secular oratorio to push back against the horrible memory of the Nazi’s brutality in the Kristallnacht.
5. Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never be Defeated.
This work for solo piano is a set of variations on the Chilean protest song, "¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!"
Rzewski wrote the piece in 1975 to support Chilean citizens suffering under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Related:
Pussy Riot member released by Moscow court
Pussy Riot member fires lawyers, appeal postponed