In this new and final collection, Richard Taruskin gathers a sweeping range of keynote speeches, reviews, and critical essays from the first twenty years of the twenty-first century. With twenty-three essays in total, this volume presents five lectures delivered in Budapest on Hungarian music and ten essays on Russian music. Reviews of contemporary work in musicology and reflections on the place of music in society showcase Taruskin’s trademark wit and breadth.
Musical Lives and Times Examined is an essential collection, a comprehensive portrait of a distinguished figure in music studies, illuminating the ideas that have transformed the discipline and will continue to do so.
Table of Content
Contents
In Lieu of Dedication: Fine Friends, Presiding Spirits—László
Somfai, Lyudmila Kovnatskaya, Richard L. Crocker
1. The Many Dangers of Music
LACI RESZE (LACI’S PART)
2. Liszt and Bad Taste
3. Goldmark’s Queen: On Signifiers
4. Why You Cannot Leave Bartók Out
5. Liszt’s Problems, Bartók’s Problems, My Problems
6. Kodály’s Pitiful Lament—and Mine
милина часть (MILA’S PART)
7. Russian Responses to Bach
8. So Much More Than a Composer
9. Rimsky-Korsakov Catches Up
10. Prokofieff’s Problems—and Ours
11. Коле посвящается (for Kolya)
12. In from the Cold
13. Flesh and Blood Juke Box
14. Tales of Push and Pull
15. Was Shostakovich a Martyr, or Is That Just Fiction?
16. How to Win a Stalin Prize: Shostakovich and His Quintet
PARS RICARDI PRIMI (RICARDUS PRIMUS’S PART)
17. Shooting a White Elephant
18. Is This a Thing?
19. Exoticism and Authenticity
20. Pathos Is Banned
21. Everybody Gotta Be Someplace: On Context
22. Alluring Failure, Exhilarating Defeat
23. Envoi: All Was Foreseen; Nothing Was Foreseen
Acknowledgments
Index
About the author
Richard Taruskin (1945–2022) was Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley, and the author of a dozen books, including The Oxford History of Western Music, major studies of Stravinsky and other topics in Russian music, and an especially influential book of essays on musical performance, Text and Act.
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