Music
The music collection reflects the important role played by music
in Russian and Soviet culture. It offers a wide range of recordings,
printed scores, and books about music and musicians, including
many that are difficult to obtain elsewhere. This is a reference
collection open to specialists and performers on a research basis.
The extensive recordings collection includes folk music from
different ethnic groups and former Soviet republics, popular music
and romances, and works from 19th and 20th-century Russian and
Soviet composers. Alongside the classics are little known works
by famous composers, as well as lesser known composers from the
former Soviet republics. Recordings are predominantly on vinyl.
The music scores range from Agafonov to Shostakovich. The Soviet
Union published many scores but print-runs were often small and
few copies exported. The Society is fortunate to hold some rare
items. As some of this music has not been recorded, the collection
offers a unique opportunity to discover unknown gems - from operas
and symphonic works to chamber and vocal pieces.
The book collection covers the history of Russian and Soviet
music, theatre music, music criticism (Stasov, Asafiev and others),
music dictionaries, musical education and theory, as well as biographies
of composers and performers.
Selected Titles
Muzyka posle Oktyabrya (L Sabaneev, Rabochnik Prosveshcheniya,
Moscow, 1926)
Letopis': Zhizn' i tvorchestvo MP Mussorgskogo (Georgi
Orlov, Muzguz, Moscow-Leningrad 1940)
Music in the Soviet Union: Two lectures given by Alan Bush,
BMus, FRAM (Workers' Music Association, London, 1940s)
Selected Essays on Music (Vladimir Stasov, translated
by Florence Jonas, Barrie and Rockliff, The Crescent Press, London
1968)
MI Glinka (ed A Rozanov, Muzyka, Moscow, 1987)
Dance
The small dance collection covers Russian and Soviet ballet and
folk dance. It includes books on the history of dance, encyclopaedias,
memoires and biographies, and is of interest to general readers
and dance researchers.
The 150 titles that make up the collection form part of the loan
library and are predominantly in English. They are supplemented
by a large photographic collection going back to the earliest
days of Russian ballet (held in the photo
library).
Selected Titles
Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet (Alexandre Benois,
Putnam, London, 1945)
Soviet Ballet (Iris Morley, Collins, London, 1945)
Memoirs of a Ballet Master (M Fokine, Constable, London,
1961)
Days with Ulanova (Albert E Kahn, Simon and Schuster,
New York, 1962)
Movement and Dance (Gordon Craig, Dance Books, London,
1977)
Early Memoirs of Bronislava Nijinska (Faber and Faber,
London, 1981)
Balet entsiklopediya (Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, Moscow,
1981)
Lydia Lopokova (edited by Milo Keynes, Weidenfeld &
Nicholson, London, 1983)
Soviet Choreography in the 1920s (Elizabeth Souritz,
Dance Books, USA & London, 1990)
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