“Contemporariety”: A Label or an Experience of Self-Identification?

Main Article Content

Tamara N. Levaya

Abstract

The article is an attempt to reveal the meaning of the concept “Сontemporaneity”, which entered the cultural usage of the twentieth century together with the activities of the Contemporary Music Association (1924–1931). Referring to the Association program documents, the author comments on the direction of its members’ activities and the stylistic “slice” of the composers’ creativity, demonstrating a generalized image of the young Soviet avant-garde. The article also talks about the fate of this association, which was forced to cease its activities in the early 1930s in a situation of harsh ideological dictates and a change of course in the field of state cultural policy. The spirit of “Сontemporaneity” was revived decades later, when in the era of “perestroika” a new version of the composer’s association – AСM-2 appeared instead of the defeated AСM. The new AСM inherited the main slogans of the previous one, while pursuing the goal of restoring the connection of times and making up for the “memory failure” that happened in the national cultural history.


In the stylistic sense, ACM-2 developed both the principles of the early Soviet avant-garde and the experience of the “thaw” and late Soviet years, having accumulated an impressive creative store by the time of its official formation.


Last years, the Association made itself known more as the main center of composer professionalism than as a purely innovative, “alternative” project. Accordingly, the slogan of “contemporaneity” was losing its former relevance, remaining for the music creators only an internal insurance against “conservatism and academism”.


Keywords: “modernism”, “new sound perception”, Association of Contemporary Music, AСM-2, failure of historical memory, avant-garde as a tradition.

Article Details

How to Cite
Levaya Т. Н. (2022). “Contemporariety”: A Label or an Experience of Self-Identification?. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 46(1), 87–96. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1341
Section
Music of the 20th Century
Author Biography

Tamara N. Levaya, Nizhny Novgorod State M. I. Glinka Conservatory, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Tamara N. Levaya, DrSci (Arts), Professor, Head of Music History Department