History is not fixed and unchanging, and the way we think about the concept of nation can affect the way we talk about the past. This also applies to the history of music. Let me give you an example. In volume 2 of his seminal book on music history, The Oxford History of Western Music, the late Richard Taruskin talks about the circle of fifths, a diagram that helps you visually organize Western music theory’s 12 chromatic pitches for learning purposes. He mentions that the circle of fifths first appeared in a Russian music theory book published in Moscow in 1679, decades before Western music theorists began to talk about it. However, the book itself was not originally Russian, but was translated from Polish. Moreover, the author was a Ukrainian clergyman and singing teacher who was born in Kyiv, at that time part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with Krakow as its capital.
When Taruskin published his book in 2004, the background for the first appearance of the circle of fifths was just an interesting anecdote referring to the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Eastern Europe in the 17th century. But how can — or should — one speak of it after February 24, 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? How do you even pronounce the name of the Ukrainian cleric? Nikolai Diletsky, following the Russian form as published in the first edition, or Mykola Diletsky, in the Ukrainian form, as he was born in Kyiv and is considered part of Ukrainian music history?
By Gergely Fazekas
September 18, 2024
Intersectionality via zoom
By Yulia Gradskova on 18 September, 2024
I decided to teach free of charge a short online course on gender, intersectionality and Soviet history for students of the Russian Free University5 (Rossiiskii Svobodni Universitet). Since April 2023, the NGO-driven university has the status of an undesirable organization in Russia. More than 80 people registered for my course; however, from the beginning there was a lot of uncertainty on both sides due to fear that students could be accused by the Russian authorities of collaboration with an “undesirable organization”. In order not to be detected while participating in the online course, many students did not use their real names; some never spoke, merely writing down some comments. Indeed, the university introduced a new security protocol that allowed the students not to disclose their identity to other course participants if they did not want to.
Category: Commentaries, Features