American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Essays on Russian and East European Music by Gerald AbrahamReview by: Truman BullardThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 340-341Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/308914 .

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340 Slavic and East European Journal

According to Limon, it familiarized "foreign" actors with Italian staging techniques and pro- vided them with "an important theatrical experience, not without relevance to their future fortunes" (140).

Limon's book is an indispensable source of information about English acting companies in Central and Eastern Europe between 1590 and 1660, a period traditionally limited to these troupes' activities in Germany. It is a stimulating account of the interplay between the traditions of English theatre and the theatre on the continent which English players shaped. Gentlemen of a Company will be useful to scholars trying to find answers concerning the nature of English and continental theatre and the forces which shaped it in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Michal Kobialka, Kent State University

Gerald Abraham. Essays on Russian and East European Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. viii, 193 pp., $24.95 (cloth).

The scholar and prolific author Gerald Abraham has been the leader in the field of Russian music research in English for several decades. This marvelous anthology of essays will join Abraham's earlier books at the foundation of our acquaintence with and understanding of Slavic music and art. The topics addressed are neither historically nor systematically selected and arranged. This is as it should be, for the reader is invited to share on a "dip in" basis some of the discoveries of a lifetime devoted to studying and hearing (albeit at times with the inner ear only, we must sadly suppose) a vast array of important and little known music.

The anthology begins auspiciously with a sweeping survey of the Russian art song from the eighteenth century through the enormous output of the Romantic age to the depleted styles of Soviet composers. The frustration one feels upon reading Abraham's brief evaluation of title after title arises from the fact that so few Russian art songs are heard in concert or on record- ings. His tastes are certainly to be respected and trusted, but his necessarily cursory judgments should encourage other scholars and singers to tackle this repertoire in smaller more manage- able parcels and should expose poetry and music lovers to the rich literature of Russian song.

Students of Russian music come to know Aleksandr Serov only as the friend-become-foe of the more famous and historically important V. V. Stasov. Serov's career as a remarkably successful opera composer in the late nineteenth century is described and a clear linkage of his music to Meyerbeer corrects the notion that Serov, who was an ardent Wagnerite in prose, might have fashioned his own operas after that musical colossus.

In a companion article Abraham describes in very interesting detail the musical values and accomplishments of Cesar Cui, the least important and consequently least well known of the five Kuekists, by analyzing his opera in German, William Ratcliff based on Heine's tragedy. Cui's reputation as a composer is built upon his cultivation of rather artificial if elegant songs, but Abraham argues that this opera, if revived, might show him to have had genuine talent for large scale composition.

Two essays devoted to Rimskij Korsakov's operas Pskovitjanka and Zolotoj Petusok will serve as brilliant introductions to future stagings of these works. There is plenty of confusion about the textual backgrounds to both operas, and an investigation of the sources and their evolution is crucial to the understanding and enjoyment of the universal themes and character- izations in the composer's musical treatment.

Interest in the life and work of Vladimir Vasilevi6 Stasov grows all the time, and Abraham knows the full scope of his activities and achievements in all the arts. He brings a very needed balance to the portrait of Stasov as the spokesman of the Mighty Five in the 1860s and later.

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Reviews 341

This portrait of Stasov makes a perfect and concise preface to Yuri Olkhovsky's full length book Vladimir Stasov and Russian National Culture (1983).

Three essays on Polish music (symphonies, operas, and songs, resp.) take the author into a literature about which English-speaking people know deplorably little. It is probable that Abraham himself has had very few opportunities to hear the music he describes so penetrat- ingly in live performance, and he must wish for the day that the contemporaries and successors of Frederic Chopin will share a fraction of his universal fame.

Having begun with a study of the Russian Song, Abraham concludes this book with a short survey of the song in Czechoslovakia in which Antonin Dvofik and Bedfich Smetana dominate the history. This collection of essays will interest all who wish to learn historical and technical details about twelve important topics in Russian and East European music and esthetics. The trails that Gerald Abraham has enthusiastically and eloquently blazed for scholars, performers, and music lovers in the land of Russian culture will serve for further exploration and sharing in years to come.

Truman Bullard, Dickinson College

B. M. KeApoB. 1986. HaMRnmHble KHU3JCHbie &ambl. M.: KHHra, 1986. 288 cTp., lp. 40K.

Book-collecting in old Russia was largely in the hands of a special few who, in some cases, helped lay the foundations for what eventually became major library collections. For example, such avid book enthusiasts as P. P. Dubrovskij and Count N. P. Rumjaniev were ultimately instrumental in establishing respectively what are now known as the M. E. Saltykov-?6edrin Library in Leningrad and the Lenin State Library in Moscow. By contrast, bibliophily in the USSR has become today less an avocation than a large-scale mass pursuit, one in which the lines separating the serious book collector from the amateur often are not clearly drawn and one which, if present trends continue, shows no evidence of slackening: VOK, the All-Union Society of Bibliophiles founded in 1974, could, by 1979, boast nine million members, a figure which since then has probably increased considerably. Seen negatively, bibliophily, not to mention bibliomania, has created yet another outlet for black-marketeering in the USSR; this, in turn, has resulted in thefts from private and public libraries. The literary figure of the book thief (cf. I. Grekova's Kafedra [1981]) is no accident or mere product of the imagination but solidly grounded in reality. On the positive side, the current rage has spurred the production of books catering to this intense demand, with especial attention to facsimiles and the eagerly sought after (and frequently traded) miniature editions. A spate of journals (e.g., V mire knig, Poligrafi ja), almanacs (Iskusstvo knigi, Almanax bibliofila), and weeklies (Knifnoe obozrenie) is also aimed at this market.

The present volume, printed in an edition of 50,000 copies, is part of an ongoing annual series launched in 1981 by a publishing house known, as its name indicates, for its attention to books. The main thrust of Pamjatnye kni2nye daty is, quite predictably, directed at an out- stretched bibliophilic target, and is concerned with individual books and their world-wide creators, be they political figures, scientists, literary personages or publishers, whose birth or publicational anniversaries in 1986 happily end in zero or five. The oldest "anniversary article" offered here is that of the Roman poet Horace (2050 years); the youngest marks the publication of goloxov's Sud'ba deloveka (30 years). As in preceding issues, the work is divided into six main sections: "Politika i publicistika," "Nauka i prosve?lenie," "Oteiestvennaja dorevoljuci- onnaja literatura," "Zarubeinaja literatura," "Sovetskaja literatura," "Kniinoe delo," "Iskusstvo knigi." Altogether 101 articles are given in two columns. On the average, there are 14 articles in each section except that for pre-revolutionary literature, which contains 25. The presenta-

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