Music on the Move in Communist Europe

28—29 May, 2025

Department of Music, University of Bristol

Convenors: Pauline Fairclough, Mariia Romanets

Programme

 

Wednesday 28 May

Venue: Lecture Room 1, 43 Woodland Road

10.00 – 10.30 Welcome and coffee

10.30 – 12.00 Session 1 (chair: Elaine Kelly)

Bogumila Mika (University of Silesia in Katowice)

‘Vibrating strings of dark times’. Polish art music of the long 1980s in the context of social and political events.”

Jānis Kudiņš. (Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music)

“The Uniqueness of Postmodernist Localization Before the Communist Crash: Views from Outside on the Soviet Latvian Music (International) Festival in 1986”

Kevin C. Karnes (Emory University)

“The KGB, the DAAD, and (Soviet) Latvian Artists in (West) Berlin, 1977-1992”

 

12.00-1.30 LUNCH

 

13.30 – 15.00 Session Two (chair: Pauline Fairclough)

Rūta Stanevičiūtė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)

“Darmstadt Goes East: Resemantization Versus Sovietization of the Post-War Avant-garde Impulses in Soviet Lithuanian Music”

Fiona Jackson (University of Bristol)

“Incidental or consequential? Collaboration between composers and avant-garde theatre directors in the late Soviet period and its significance for British-Soviet cultural relations.”

Ivana Medic (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts)

“Chasing the avant-garde: Serbian composers in specialization across Europe during the 1960s and 1970s”

 

15.00 – 15.30 Coffee break

 

15.30 – 17.00 Session Three (chair: Mariia Romanets)

Ana Diaconu (National University of Music, Bucharest)

“The composer Mihail Andricu in correspondence with French cultural space – a case of resistance under communism through communication”

Elaine Kelly (Reid School of Music, Edinburgh University)

“The Third World in East German Popular Music”

Pauline Fairclough, University of Bristol

“From glasnost’ to the fall and beyond: late Soviet music through British ears”

 

Thursday 29 May

Venue: Victoria Rooms

10.30 – 12.30 Session Four (chair: Kevin Karnes)

Iryna Tukova (National Music Academy of Ukraine)

“Composer Agency in Soviet Ukraine: Borys Liatoshynsky’s Efforts to Have His Fourth Symphony Heard”

Maia Sigua (V. Sarajdishvili Tbilisi Conservatoire)

“Two Decades of Georgian Art and Culture in Moscow – a Tribute to…”

Mariia Romanets (University of Bristol)

“Ukrainian composers in Post-WWII Displaced Person Camps in Germany: Precarity, discrimination and national politics”

 

12.30-14.00 LUNCH

 

14.00 – 15.30 Session Five (chair: Zbigniew Wojnowski)

Leah Batstone (University of Vienna)

“A Ukrainian Choir and the ‘Russian Schoenberg’: Placing the music of Mykola Roslavets”

Gabrielle Cornish (University of Wisconsin)

“Remapping the Soviet Empire Through Song”

Rebecca Mitchell (Middlebury College)

“Negotiating Orthodox Sound in a Soviet World: Chant Revival and Georgian National Identity, 1917-2024”.

 

15.30 – 16.00 coffee break

 

16.00 – 17.30 Session Six (chair: Ivana Medic)

Nana Sharikadze (Caucasus University (affiliated))

“Notes for future historians: Georgian music and politics, a personal assessment”

Zbigniew Wojnowski (Oxford University)

“The travels of Anna German: traversing Cold War boundaries from Uzbekistan to Australia”

Peter J. Schmelz (Johns Hopkins) (via Teams)

“‘Sorceress at the Microphone’: Sainkho Namchylak’s Experimental Collaborations”

End of conference