Zemtsovsky Music & Marx ch 08 2002

I must admit that it was difficult for me to agree to the proposal by the editor of this unusual book that I write an article on my "Marxist experience" and my understanding of

Event: American Musicological Society Meeting, Vancouver BC, Fall 2016, Panel on Historical Materialism and Music, 2016

International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 2017

This essay gives a sympathetic critique of several of the Marxist writings of the American music theorist Henry Klumpenhouwer ("Late Capitalism, Late Marxism, and the Study of Music," "Post-structuralism and issues of Music Theory," and "Commodity Form, Disavowal, and the Practices of Music Theory"). This critique is then used as a springboard for launching some programmatic suggestions about future Marxist music scholarship.

Socialism and Music Conference, 2017

2024

Comment on "Development of Marxist philosophical thoughts on music education" Comment Comment on "Development of marxist philosophiCal thoughts on musiC eDuCation" 1

Studies in East European Thought, 2020

This article explores the continuities and discontinuities of pre-Revolutionary intellectual traditions in 1920s Soviet culture and the Stalin-era cultural revolution. Through examination of the pre-revolutionary philosophical legacy underpinning Soviet musicological theory, I demonstrate that there are decisive features, such as Soviet Prometheanism, that characterize the musicology of the 1920s that both underline and differ from the pre-revolutionary philosophy of music and the musicology of the 1930s. I offer the basic outlines of a Soviet cultural theory of music formulated by Russian music critic, historian, composer and musicologist Boris Asafiev (1884-1949) in the 1920s. Explaining and describing what I mean by a particular cultural theory of music in the Soviet context forms the core issue of my article.

Antheil and Musical Wholeness in the Work of A. B. Marx, 2021

A major theme in Adolf Bernhard Marx’s work is the idea that music has sense only to one who “participates” in it. According to Marx, musical Antheil – i.e. participatory belonging-to – is at the foundation of every musical activity, such as composing, performing, or listening (including listening analytically and critically), in its authenticity. The German word “Ant(h)eil” reflects on the participatory nature of this relation – the person or I, who relates to music, “has a part” in music, is fundamentally partial to it. In Marx’s thought, musical Antheil embraces both the spiritual and the sensual part of the person, i.e. it engages the totality of the person. Conversely, music also has an “inner”, spiritual side, its content or Idee, and an “outer”, sensual side, its form. The musical whole is, according to Marx, the unity of musical content and form, which, however, always involves the Antheil of the I to this given whole. Thus, Antheil is a fundamental aspect of musical wholeness itself – it is only within the I, which participates in music and is “partial” to it, that music can be “whole”. Thus, Marx’s account of musical Antheil is arguably a reflection of what in the following text is called musical identification – the living, immediate state of identification between the I and music. Musical identification is a primary condition for understanding musical content and, by extension, musical form. Musical wholeness is not just a characteristic of music itself, but a characteristic of the relation between the I and music.

Slavic Review, 2019

A detailed account of the statements specifically about music in writings of Marx and Engels, including references to Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Donizetti, Adam, Liszt, Wagner etc.