AFTER THE MUSIC PURGE
847
the necessary "courage" to write the kind of frightened, trivial and
provincial stuff which apparently Stalin likes.
In contrast to the incurable maladjustments of Prokofiev, Sho–
stakovitch is definitely on the road to "recovery." Not
only
has he
been sent to us on a mission; he has also been praised by the head
of the composers' union for his "successful" film music. His position
last year was grave.
As
a major offender he might easily have lost
most of his income and his apartment. Koval actually suggested at a
Composers' Union meeting as late as last October that those afflicted
with "decadent, bourgeois tendencies ... could very profitably move
out of Moscow to the periphery of the vast Soviet land and get their
inspiration from a close contact with the life of the people in the
provinces, in collective farms and factories." This of course must have
sounded ominous to Soviet composers. They, as all other Soviet citi–
zens, know much too well what a trip to the "periphery" may imply.
Happily, however, Mr. Shostakovitch encountered nothing so drastic
as forced residence on the " periphery" of the Soviet Union.
In analyzing Shostakovitch's music Mr. Koval has given us a
fairly clear picture of what kind of music Stalin expects his com–
posers to write. Defrocked from its absurd verbiage and stated in
reasonably practical terms, Soviet composers are asked to beware of:
1.
Discordant counterpoint (presumably the Hindemith style
and atonality).
2. Introducing into the "sacred soil of the pure classic Russian
tradition jazz neurosis and Stravinskyan rhythmical par–
oxysms."
3. Inability to write "singable" melodic lines.
4. Naturalistic approach to subject matter. (The love scene in
"Lady Macbeth.")
5. "Limitless adulation of a chorus of sycophants" (in other
words, success).
He can, however, be cured by the following regimen:
1.
Avoiding "dissonance."
2. Avoiding any harmonic syntax more advanced than that of
the late Sergei Rachmaninov.
3. Learning to write "easy" tunes.
4. Avoiding dependence on "abstract" instrumental and sym–
phonic forms.
