Gilbert Rappaport

Degree credit. This course:

• Satisfies core curriculum requirements for an undergraduate degree with flags for Writing and for Global Cultures;
  • Satisfies the Fine Arts/General culture Area D requirement for a B.A., Plan I, as an Alternative course
  • Counts toward a major or minor in either Russian or in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
  • Can serve as an elective in any degree plan
  • Under certain conditions (consult the graduate advisor) it can count toward the M.A. degree in:
      - Slavic Languages and Cultures; or
      - Russian  East European, and Eurasian Studies

Prerequisites: Upper-Division or graduate standing.  Exceptions may be granted with permission of the instructor. No knowledge of Russian or of how to read/play music is required.

Content: The course will survey the following four general areas of music associated with Russia over the course of its history:

• Art (classical) music in Russian is widely considered to have begun with Glinka (1804‑57), but its development in the 19^th and 20^th centuries includes many great names in the history of art music, such as Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich, along with other outstanding figures and movements.  We will focus on Glinka as the pioneer, then the most Russian of the Russian composers, Mussorgsky, followed by the mystical Skriabin, Stravinsky in his Russian period, and Prokofiev and Shostakovich in the Soviet period.
• Sacred (religious, ecclesiastical) music was intimately bound up with the history and practice of Christianity in Russia, which was officially adopted from Byzantium in the tenth century. Special attention will be paid to the role of music in the religious rites practiced today (documented by the Moscow Patriarchate on its website!).
• Traditional (folk) music in Russia is extremely rich and varies greatly over the wide terrain of the country. We will sample the variety of genres and structures used in various rites of passage (especially courtship/ weddings and laments), calendar rites, work songs, lyric songs, epics, and dances. Not to mention the famous Russian chastushka, which exercises wit, linguistic invention, and competitive skills.
• We briefly illustrate the role of popular music in both Czarist and Soviet times, including the popular `romances’, the Soviet invention of the `mass song’, the `bards’ of the 60’s and 70’s, and, time-permitting, contemporary popular music.

While the course will survey of the fundamental and indispensible notions of musical structure and genre, the focus of the course is the role of music in its social and historical context. We will be particularly interested in questions of interpretation/reception  and the cultural function of music

Texts: There is no textbook for the course. There will be numerous handouts and postings on the course Blackboard site, including lecture notes, which should be kept in a loose-leaf binder. Course packets may be made available for purchase.

Course Content: This course is the fifth semester of Russian language instruction. It is a practical advanced all-round language course, based on the communicative-functional approach to language learning. We have two goals.

• Develop functional linguistic proficiency in the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Acquire practical linguo-cultural competence, encompassing both high and popular culture.

The textbook by Rifkin, a systematic review of Russian grammar, serves as a skeleton for the course structure. It will be supplemented by Paperno’s DVD course, with a plethora of multi-media materials, along with various other authentic materials determined by student interest, to develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Special attention will be paid to the contemporary mass media not only as linguistic material, but also as a point of access to Russian culture in its various forms. The course is conducted in Russian. At the end of the year (after this course and its successor Russian 325), most students should have achieved a proficiency level of 2 on the ILR scale (comparable to Advanced on the ACTFL scale).

The textbook has 25 chapters. We will cover chapters 1-12 in the fall semester, spending more time on some than on others.