Moscow Music Congress

Russian composers patriotically hymned Soviet heroes during World War II, and the good will they thus banked at the Kremlin gave them a brief period of postwar freedom. But by 1948, an iron hand had closed tightly around Soviet composers. The hand was that of Andrei Zhdanov, cat-cruel Politburo careerist whose ear for music had been destroyed long before by the din of dialectical crossfire. Zhdanov in effect put all Russian composers on trial, including the three modern giants--Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian. The charges: "formalism" (i.e., art for art's sake, individuality, experimentation) and lack of "socialist realism."

Last week these issues once again came to the fore when the Second Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers convened in Moscow. Zhdanov, dead these nine years, still made his presence felt. His line was upheld by the secretary-general of the Composers' Union, Tikhon Khrennikov. a writer of popular war songs and operas praising broad-backed worker heroes. He set the keynote with an attack on "formless and harmful modernism," roasted Russia's great expatriate, Igor Stravinsky, as an example of a composer who writes for the elite, not the masses.

But clearly there was also opposition to the Khrennikov line. Old Formalist Shostakovich, 50, grumbled about "dry dogmatists who apparently little know and little love music."

The New Crowd. Khachaturian, 53, was even bolder. In a blistering statement he denounced Western avant-gardism, but went on to enthusiastic praise for an unregenerate formalist, Hungary's late Bela Bartok. Continued Khachaturian: "The seeking and daring artist is worth more than the well-trained craftsman who blindly copies . . . the great past masters." What added to his statement's interest was a list of young Soviet composers Khachaturian considers promising. This gave the West virtually its first glimpse of an almost unknown younger generation of composers. Among them: P:Boris Tchaikovsky, 31, whose Slavic Rhapsody for Orchestra has stirred up much talk in Russia.

P: Alexander Arutiunian, 36, Armenian-born writer whose 1948 cantata about the Homeland won a Stalin Prize. P: Otar Taktakishvili, 32, former student at the Tiflis Conservatory and twice a Stalin Prizewinner (for his First Symphony, in 1949, and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, in 1952). P: Veli Mukhatov, 40, praised by Khachaturian for his oratorios. P: Akhmed Gadzhiev, 39, noted for a 1952 symphonic poem, Peace. Other young Russian composers, better known outside the Soviet Union: P: Karen Khachaturian, 36. Aram's nephew, whose eclectic, highly rhythmic Violin Sonata in G Minor has been recorded by Russian Virtuoso David Oistrakh. P: Andrei Volkonsky, 23, whose works hint at Hindemith; he migrated from France to Russia a few years ago, caused a stir in Moscow last year with a Piano Quintet.

Worm-eaten Met. So the younger generation would not get any too-daring ideas, former Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov, now Central Committee secretary, appeared to remind everyone of the "irreconcilable struggle against degrading musical art of the capitalist world." Shepilov praised "comradely controversy" and "respect for different views," but he also insisted that the "fundamental esthetic principles" of the Zhdanov decree are "immutable." He wound up the congress with a surefire blast at the West. Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, he remarked, is housed in an "old, dirty, worm-eaten, leaky building," dependent upon artists from West Germany, Italy and France. Furthermore, "all those insane, nervous 'boogie woogies' and 'rock 'n' roll' are like some kind of wild cavemen's orgies."

Be that as it may, Elvis Presley's records were reported to be the nonsocialist-realist craze in Leningrad and elsewhere. Disks, bootlegged from U.S. records and cut on discarded hospital X-ray plates, sell for 50 rubles ($12.50).

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