# Music Under Stalin

- Institution: Gresham College
- Speaker: Professor Marina Frolova-Walker
- Year: 2021
- Level: For everyone
- Language: English
- Subjects: History, Music
- Source: [Gresham College](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/series/music-stalin)
- Licence: [Educational use (Gresham College's terms)](https://www.gresham.ac.uk/terms-and-conditions)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

The most outrageous Russian modernist composers of the 1920s were Dmitry Shostakovich in Leningrad, and Alexander Mosolov in Moscow. They were not merely following European avant-garde trends, and their work was genuinely pioneering. Russian culture was undergoing a vigorous renewal at the time, and these composers worked across several arts: Shostakovich’s absurdist opera The Nose extends the theatrical innovations of the celebrated theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, while Mosolov’s 'machine music' embodies many constructivist ideas of visual artists and filmmakers.

## Lectures

1. [Modernism Rampant: Shostakovich and Mosolov](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/gresham/series-music-stalin/e0b43cf57c72) (YouTube)
2. [How can music be “Socialist Realist”?](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/gresham/series-music-stalin/c1e33a80e1fe) (YouTube)
3. [Shostakovich on Trial: from Lady Macbeth to the Fifth Symphony](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/gresham/series-music-stalin/c84eaf14a48f) (YouTube)
4. [Prokofiev the Soviet Artist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/gresham/series-music-stalin/c40ab2ce633d) (YouTube)
5. [Soviet Music in World War II](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/gresham/series-music-stalin/dee9a25e9793) (YouTube)
6. [The Year 1948 in Soviet Music](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/gresham/series-music-stalin/56f1ca4cefc6) (YouTube)