Report on the Second Congress of the Russian Society for the Theory of Music

[1] The Second Congress of the Society for the Theory of Music convened at the Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory for four days, from September 26 to 29, 2015. The established theme for the Congress was "Schools and Directions in Music Scholarship, Performance and Composition." Established scholars as well as students from many parts of Russia, the US, Canada, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Denmark, Australia, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, and the former Soviet republics of central Asia read papers on a vast variety of theoretical, compositional, and pedagogical subjects. The range of these papers gave witness to a growing community of scholars interested not only in Russian music theory, but also in theoretical systems and approaches from everywhere.[2] Plenary sessions for the keynote speakers opened the first two days of the conference, followed by two triple sessions, each featuring three or four individual papers. The last two days featured three triple sessions per day. Throughout the Congress special master classes offered teaching demonstrations addressing various methods of solfeggio, multimedia composition, and other pedagogical topics. The Congress closed with a summary round-table discussion led by several of the keynote speakers. Participants were also offered free tickets to two evening concerts featuring the works of Arvo Part and Sergei Taneyev, held in the Great Hall of the Conservatory. (For more specific information about the schedule, please refer to the conference program.)[3] Among the highlights of the Congress were the keynote addresses, two delivered in English with printed Russian translations, the other two given in Russian with printed English translations. Alexander Sokolov of the Moscow Conservatory began the proceedings with a paper tracing the functional approach to musical form in Russian theoretical thought: Asafiev's triad of general functions (initium-motus-terminum, or beginning-motion-closing), Sposobin's enlarged system of functions (introduction-exposition-connection-middle section-reprise-closing), the application of the i-m-t model to Chopin by Bobrovski, as well as the extension of functional systems to expression, dramaturgy and semantics. Through references to some of the upcoming paper sessions and presenters, Sokolov's talk also served as an introduction to the Congress as a whole.[4] On the English side of things, William Caplin from McGill University delivered an excellent keynote address on thematic closure in early Romantic music, where he suggested several ways to expand the concept of cadence for the music of Schubert. The biggest hit with the Russian contingent, however, was the talk by Giorgio Sanguinetti (University of Rome-Tor Vergata) on partimenti and their relation to music theory in the 18th century; in fact, the venerable Valentina Kholopova predicted that partimenti would soon be incorporated into the curriculum at the Moscow Conservatory. Tatiana Naumenko of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music delivered the remaining keynote address, a survey of trends in Russian musical scholarship from the 1930s to the 2000s. Her data-driven presentation revealed an interesting result: although the number and subject matter of musicological dissertations changed drastically in the 1990s (with more dissertations overall, and more research on performance, on Russian music written before 1917, and on music from outside Russia), the number of dissertations in music theory remained relatively unchanged--perhaps suggesting that theory's more abstract nature was not so severely affected by the strictures of Soviet realism![5] The individual paper sessions embraced topics both conventional and unexpected. Among several sessions devoted to Russian schools of musical and pedagogical scholarship, the standout paper was by Valentina Kholopova, who (with her late brother Yuri) has been an institution at the Moscow Conservatory for half a century. Her theory of musical content has received widespread recognition in Russian theory curricula. …