Sounds Beyond

Arvo Pärt and the 1970s Soviet Underground

Kevin C. Karnes

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780226801902
• eBook ISBN:
  9780226815404
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Russian History

Sounds Beyond charts the origins of Arvo Pärt's most famous music, which was created in dialogue with underground creative circles in the USSR. 

In Sounds Beyond, Kevin C. Karnes studies the interconnected alternative music and art scenes in the USSR during the second half of the 1970s, revealing the audacious origins of some of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's most famous music. Karnes shows how Pärt's work was created within a vital yet forgotten culture of collective experimentation, the Soviet underground. 
 
Mining archives and oral history from across the former USSR, Sounds Beyond carefully situates modes of creative experimentation within their late socialist contexts. In documenting Pärt's work, Karnes reveals the rich creative culture that thrived covertly in the USSR and the network of figures that made underground performances possible: students, audio engineers, sympathetic administrators, star performers, and aspiring DJs. Sounds Beyond advances a new understanding of Pärt's music as an expression of the aesthetic and religious commitments shared, nurtured, and celebrated by many in Soviet underground circles. At the same time, this story attests to the lasting power of Pärt's music. Dislodging the mythology of the solitary creative genius, Karnes shows that Pärt's work would be impossible without community.

Index

Ābols, Juris, 93

abstraction, 16–17, 71–75, 77

Akvarium (band), 38

Amber Coast (radio program), 38, 103

Anderson, John, 37

Anderson, Laurie, 28

Artemyev, Eduard, 10, 92; Solaris, 149n24

Artusi, Giovanni, 100

Aurobindo, Sri, 20

avant-garde, musical, 4, 11–13, 17, 29, 36, 43, 60, 81, 98. See also experimentalism; modernism; polystylism, musical; serialism, musical

Avramecs, Boriss, 1, 5, 27, 29, 30, 43, 82–86, 89–91, 93, 97, 102, 104, 112

Axelrod, Gleb, 110

Aygi, Gennady, 5, 11

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 22–23, 49, 82–83, 101, 111

Baidin, Valery, 124–25

Balakauskas, Osvaldas, 93

Baltic capitals, distinctiveness of, 27–28, 153n80

Barthes, Roland, 11

Baušķenieks, Ingus, 133–34, 171n33

Berg, Alban, 40

Bērziņa, Aina, 39–40, 45, 102, 106

black market, 27, 38

Blyth, R. H., 20

Bogdanov, Yurii, 10, 83, 86, 99

Boiko, Juris, 32–33, 36–38, 91, 127–32. See also Lediņš, Hardijs; NSRD; Seque

Boiko, Martin, 38, 91–92, 102, 156n32, 165n52

Boomerang (band), 28, 83–84, 93

Boulez, Pierre, 40, 60

Bouteneff, Peter C., 69–70

Brezhnev, Leonid, 1, 4, 24

Brot & Salz (band), 4...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Note on Translations, Transliteration, and Pronunciation
• Note on Recordings
• List of Musical Examples and Figures
• one. Spaces Beyond: An Introduction
• two. A Beginning: The Riga Polytechnic Disco, 1974–76
• three. Tintinnabuli and the Sacred
• four. Ritual Moments: The RPI Festivals, 1976–77
• five. Tallinn 1978
• six. Aftersounds: Bolderāja, Sergiyev Posad, and a Train to Brest-Litovsk
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Key Premieres and Early Performances of Pärt’s Tintinnabuli-Style Works, 1976–78
• Notes
• Sources
• Index