Music On The Frontline Nicolas Nabokovs Struggle Against Communism And Middlebrow Culture Ian Wellens by Ian Wellens 1138277347 instant download after payment.

The story of Nicolas Nabokov's involvement with the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) is a story of the politics and sociology of culture; how music was used for political ends and how intellectual groups formed and functioned during the Cold War. The seemingly independent CCF, established to counteractA apparent Soviet successes in the fields of the arts and intellectual life, appointed Nabokov (a Russian emigre and minor composer) as its Secretary General in 1951.AOver the next ten years he gave music a high profile in theAwork of the organisation, producing four international musical festivals, the first and most ambitious of which was 1952's L'Oeuvre du XXe Siecle in Paris, an event which showcased the work of no less than 62 composers. As Ian Wellens reveals, Nabokov'sAmusical involvement with the CCF was in fact a struggle on two fronts.AApparently aAdefenceAofAWestern modernism against 'backward', 'provincial' Soviet music, Nabokov's writings show this to have meshed closely with theAdomestic concernA- shared byAmany intellectuals -Athat high culture was being undermined by an increasingly culturally aware middle class. His attacks on Soviet cultural policy, and his unflattering assessments of Shostakovich, are seen to be not merely salvos in the cold war but part of a broader campaign aimed at securing the authority and prestige ofAintellectuals."