On Air Now
Classic FM Drive with John Brunning 5pm - 7pm
Pussy Riot: Who is the classical equivalent?
Three members of Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed for hooliganism after they staged a guerrilla concert in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Their subsequent imprisonment has caused outrage and debate in the pop music world, but who are the classical music equivalents of this politically-driven band?
-
1. Dmitri Shostakovich - musical mockery of Stalin
Shostakovich came under fire from Stalin and the Russian press after the premiere of his Lady Macbeth, redeemed himself with the nationalistic ideals of the fifth symphony, and then mocked Stalin completely with the scherzo movement of his tenth.
-
2. Sergei Prokofiev - Decadent Formalism
Along with Shostakovich, Prokofiev was attacked by the Russian establishment for what they called 'decadent formalism', which basically meant anything that was influenced in any way by Western composition. As a result, he was forced to compose a series of state-approved works in the late '30s.
-
3. Frédéric Chopin: the Great Polish Emigration
Chopin elected, perhaps wisely, to emigrate from his native Poland just before November Uprising of 1830, and settled in Paris aged 20. Here we can see a statue erected to honour him in Warsaw, Poland.
-
4. Aram Khachaturian: "Those were tragic days for me…"
Another Soviet composer who felt the wrath of the Russian establishment, Armenian Aram Khachaturian was vocal about how he was forced to write music to please the state rather than himself: "I was clouted on the head so unjustly. My repenting speech at the First Congress was insincere. I was crushed, destroyed. I seriously considered changing professions."
-
5. Johann Sebastian Bach: productive inside?
Bach spent a short time in prison, not necessarily because he had done anything wrong, but because he wanted to leave his employer at the time. Still, he was productive while he was inside, and rattled off his book of keyboard exercises: the Orgelbuchen.
-
6. Olivier Messiaen: Prisoner of War
Messiaen was captured in 1940 during the German invasion of France and held as a prisoner of war. While he was incarcerated, he showed a fellow prisoner (and clarinettist) the sketches for his masterpiece, the 'Quartet for the End of Time'. Messiaen soon found a violinist and cellist too, and was able to put his quartet together, with himself at the piano. The premiere performance came in 1941, in front of an audience of 400 prisoners. This photo shows a US soldier examining an antique violin recovered from a German house during the war.
-
7. Michael Tippett: Conscientious Objector
Michael Tippett, like many composers, was a conscientious objector to the Second World War effort. This meant that he went to prison. Tippett was a staunch pacifist, and his spell in prison combined with what he saw as the moral injustice of war led him to compose his anti-war masterpiece, 'A Child Of Our Time'.
-
8. Arnold Schoenberg - Fleeing Nazi Germany
Not unlike Soviet composers under Stalin's rule, when the Nazi Party came to power Arnold Schoenberg's music suddenly became the enemy of the state. It was challenging and angular or, as the Nazis saw it, degenerate due to Schoenberg's belonging to the Jewish faith. He fled Germany for the USA in 1934.
-
9. Ivor Novello - Misuse of Petrol Coupons
The popular entertainer Ivor Novello spent four weeks in jail in the midst of the Second World War for misusing petrol coupons. Even though it sounds ridiculous, it was quite a serious offence in wartime Britain. Not quite on the same level as Pussy Riot, we'll concede…
-
10. Maurice Ravel - Music for a Prisoner of War
After the pianist and prisoner of war Paul Wittgenstein lost his right arm in the Second World War, he approached several well-known composers in an effort to create some new repertoire for the left hand only. Maurice Ravel was only too happy to oblige, and wrote one of the most enduring piano concertos of the 20th Century, which became known as the Concerto for the Left Hand.
