"French and Soviet Musical Diplomacies in Post-War Austria, 1945-1955 investigates how promoting "national" music and musicians was used as an important asset by France and the USSR in post-Nazi Austria, covering music's role in international relations at various levels, within changing power frameworks. Bridging international relations, musical sociology, media studies, and Cold War history, four incisive chapters examine the crossroads of Soviet, French, and Austrian cultural politics and discourse-building, presented in two parts: Institutions of Musical Diplomacy: Soviet and French Cultural Diplomats in Comparison. Sounds of Music Coming to Austria: Soviet and French Musicians on Tour Using a communication- and media-oriented approach, this study casts new light firstly on the interpretative power of "receiving" publics and secondly the role of cultural transmitters at different levels. This is a valuable study for those specializing in Russian and East European music and music and politics. It will also appeal to cultural historians and all those interested in the intersections between music, international relations, and Cold War history"--
"French and Soviet Musical Diplomacies in Post-War Austria, 1945-1955 investigates how promoting "national" music and musicians was used as an important asset by France and the USSR in post-Nazi Austria, covering music's role in international relations at various levels, within changing power frameworks. Bridging international relations, musical sociology, media studies, and Cold War history, four incisive chapters examine the crossroads of Soviet, French, and Austrian cultural politics and discourse-building, presented in two parts: Institutions of Musical Diplomacy: Soviet and French Cultural Diplomats in Comparison. Sounds of Music Coming to Austria: Soviet and French Musicians on Tour Using a communication- and media-oriented approach, this study casts new light firstly on the interpretative power of "receiving" publics and secondly the role of cultural transmitters at different levels. This is a valuable study for those specializing in Russian and East European music and music and politics. It will also appeal to cultural historians and all those interested in the intersections between music, international relations, and Cold War history"--
Defence date: 11 September 2017 ; Examining Board: Professor Federico Romero, EUI; Professor Pieter M. Judson, EUI; Professor Thomas Angerer, Universität Wien; Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institut für Kriegsfolgenforschung, Graz ; Taken in their socio-political context, competitive strategies of using music as a means of asserting individual prestige have seldom been considered by historical research. This dissertation argues that the promotion of their own national music and performers was an important asset for France and the USSR. Unlike the US and the UK, the continental European Allies could claim membership of a common European musical canon, and thus legitimize their presence within Austrian soundscapes and discursive fields. Allied-occupied Austria represents a highly interesting case study, particularly due to the uniquely open forms of competition that took place between different Allies and between East and West, Austria's complex ideological and cultural history, which stretched from multinational monarchy to Nazism, and the symbolic standing of the country as the land of music, which itself informed Allied musical policies. Drawing on documentation from the Allied administrations, bilateral cultural societies, and native Austrian institutions, the dissertation investigates the design and conduct of musical diplomacies, the agency of the actors involved, and their adaptation to Austrian expectations and reactions. Emphasizing high-brow art music, both France and the USSR supported performances of French and Russian music by Austrian musicians. However, they also launched a number of important guest tours, the reverberations of which extended widely throughout Austrian society, successfully integrating folk music and dance into French and Russian musical offerings. The reception of French and Russian music in Austria is investigated through influential daily newspapers, notably in Vienna, Salzburg, and Innsbruck. Discursive constructions of musical French- and Russianness were marked by Bildungsbürgertum conservatism and nationalism, whereas high-brow elitism established common ground between the French, Soviet and Austrian actors. Pursuing their own agendas, powerful cultural journalists allotted positions of prestige to and critically engaged with French and Soviet/Russian musical exports, notably with diverging modernities. They also diversified the images of the two countries, ascribing to them a series of nationally defined musical categories, existing independently of considerations of hard power and political entanglements. An investigation of these layers of musical transfer and interpretation will contribute to our understanding of the communicative dynamics of cultural diplomacies, multifaceted national imageries, and the nexus between local, national, inter- and transnational histories of music and culture. ; Chapters 2 'Information and cultural services in the French administration : diplomatie culturelle and its application in occupied Austria' and 4 'Soviet concerts : red artists or old Russia?' of the PhD thesis draw upon an earlier version published as a chapter 'Zur Kulturpolitik der UdSSR in Österreich 1945 bis 1955 : Musik als Repräsentationsmittel und ihre Auswirkungen auf österreichische Russlandbilder' (2016) in the book 'Österreich im Kalten Krieg : neue Forschungen im internationalen Kontext'.
The following paper attempts to show how a singular event of outstanding importance can leave a lasting imprint on strategies and effects of cultural diplomacy in a specific temporal and geographic setting. Within the history of Allied occupation of early post-war Austria, cultural policies deployed by Western Europeans outside of their hard power sphere of influence, i.e. occupation zone, have been long overshadowed by the superpower standoff and, concomitantly, by the politically determined historiography of the early Cold War. Taking the case of the Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris 1953 guest tour at the Festival of Salzburg, I investigate how this momentous appearance was prepared and negotiated with Austrian and American cultural actors, situated in a particular performative situation of the closing of this year's Festspiele and interpreted by discursively powerful critics in Salzburg and the rest of Austria. Taking the approaches of dance studies, cultural diplomacy and media history, I demonstrate how Lifar's neoclassicism proved to be a touchstone of the conflict between conservatism and modernity, nationalism and transnationality, in which outward deference to an occupation power could not mask the overall rejection of Parisian aesthetic offerings, yet simultaneuously legitimising the troupe as globally relevant cultural actors. Thus, France's dance diplomacy overture was both crowned with success, showcasing French excellence in academic dance, placed itself within several prestige policies and provoked vivid debates, defying the bipolar systems of coordinates readily applied towards Cold War and offering a multidimensional reading of cultural diplomacies' varied power relations, causes and effects.
Submitted on 06-04-2017. Review date: 04-04-2017. Publication date: 29-01-2018 ; Exploring performances of Russian music at the Metropolitan Opera in New York allows observing the evolutions and paradigmatic changes in American high-brow cultural discourse and analyzing changing structures of repertoire policies and public preferences over the period that covers the entire existence of the Met between 1883 and December 2016. Using the opera's digital archive, a number of queries on leading Russian composers (Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich) were conducted in order to examine the interrelationship between cultural, political, and musical-historical factors that fed into repertoire dynamics and their reflection in the public space. Within the general operatic context, the Russians could never vie the dominating Italian and German composers. However, Russian authors have consistently taken mid-range positions and their works gained substantial public visibility. Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky emerged as leaders throughout the period of the inquiry, confirming the thesis of reductionist conservatism of the standard opera repertoire at the Met. Modern composers showed different dynamics, with Stravinsky clearly surpassing the Soviet school due to his public stature, a long period of stay in America, particular position as the doyen of 20th century music, and cultural-political involvement during cold war. Indeed, all important premieres of Prokofiev and Shostakovich fall into the period after 1991, and the critical reactions show the centrality of democracy-totalitarianism binomial in the construction of discourses on contemporary Soviet music. Economic and macro-political factors did not necessarily have a direct impact on opera performances: while the Great Depression years expectedly show an ebbing down of operatic activities, the wartime alliance did not translate in a spike in Russian performances. Favorable economic conjuncture of the post-war period and continuous media expansion of the Met ensured the growing quantity and increasing prominence of Russian works within the New York and American society, available to audiences larger than New York's educated public thanks to Met's Anglicization policy, performances at various venues at home and abroad, and radio, television, and internet broadcasts. The market made Tchaikovsky's rule supreme, otherwise leading to partial diversification of Russian repertoire, favored by growing internationalization and public stature of the Met. Overall, the transferred imageries included exoticism, high quality expectations (concomitant with growing musical prestige) and often contradictory perceptions of Russia that went beyond the immediate political agenda and fitted the globalizing patterns of "national" opera repertoire and discourse. ; Предметом исследования является динамика исполнений произведений русской музыке на сцене Метрополитан-оперы в Нью-Йорке и развитие публичного дискурса рассмотренного через призму социо-экономической истории и динамики российско- и советско-американских отношений в ХХ в. На протяжении временного периода существования Метрополитан-оперы (1883-2016 г.) анализируется история премьер, формата, частоты и распределения представлений русской оперы и балета, а также отзывов ведущих критиков, которые позволяют вычленить основные элементы восприятия русской музыки и конструкции образа России среди образованной публики Нью-Йорка, а также их трансмиссию в более широкие слои общества (публикации в газетах, теле-, радио- и интернет-трансляции в новейшее время). С помощью оцифрованного архива Метрополитан-оперы проводится количественный анализ наиболее значительных композиторов и опер "русского" репертуара и их контекстуализация как на фоне общей репертуарной политики, так и социально-политических и экономических условий основных периодов американской истории ХХ в. В частности выделены довоенный период, в особенности десятилетие между началом Великой депрессии и Второй мировой войны, годы Великой отечественной войны и советско-американского союза, Холодной войны и новейший период после 1991 г. Внимание уделяется как общей статистике, так и отдельным операм в их стилистическом ключе и общественно-политическом контексте. Также рассмотрена выборка критических отзывов ведущих журналистов США и, реже, Великобритании, опубликованных на сайте, которая подвергнута дискурсивному анализу. Новизна исследования заключается в комплексном репертуарном и дискурсивном анализе с социально-политической точки зрения. Основными выводами является ясное разделение на лидирующих композиторов - Чайковского и Мусоргского в классической музыке XIX века и Стравинского в современной академической музыке. Наряду с доминированием ограниченного числа классиков, в чём Метрополитан-опера следовала тенденциям консервативного редукционизма, характерного и для других оперных театров и усиленного рыночными тенденциями, обращает на себя внимание ясное дистанцирование от современной советской школы до окончания Холодной войны. Кратковременное сближение с Советским Союзом в годы Второй мировой войны, напротив, не привело к увеличению доли русского репертуара, в то время как экономическая конъюнктура оказывала прямое воздействие на частоту, разнообразие и общественный резонанс произведений русской музыки. В рецепции русских опер и дискурсивных практиках, конструируемых вокруг русского репертуара, прослеживаются элементы экзотицизма, культурной дистанции, однако в то же время и высокого престижа русской музыки и связанных с ним ожиданий. Антикоммунизм не привёл к негативному образу русской культуры, однако оказывал влияние на восприятие современной музыки и усиливал культурно-политическое дистанцирование по отношению к России. Системный анализ истории русской оперы в "Мет" показывает нелинеарный характер взаимодействия с экономическими, макрополитическими и социальными факторами и проливает свет на характер и динамику общественной дискуссии, в которой отношение к России и её образ преломлялись в многомерном характере восприятия русской музыки. Обогащая существующее понимание культурных трансферов из России в Соединённые Штаты, данное исследование осуществляет междисциплинарную интеграцию проблем музыковедческого характера в социальную и политическую историю, что представляет интерес для историков Соединённых Штатов, международных отношений в широком понимании, наций и национализма, а также культурных и дискурсивных процессов.
