Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this work, Peter J. Schmelz presents a thorough study of Soviet avant-garde music during the Kruschev-era thaw (1953-1974). The book focuses on six prominent “young composers” of the time: Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Arvo Part, Valentin Silvestrov, Alfred Schnittke and Andrey Volkonsky. Schmelz’s chronologically organized monograph develops an intriguing narrative of a Soviet musical underground in which composers were able to experiment with previously forbidden compositional techniques, listen to and discuss the music of contemporary composers both foreign and domestic, and perform their work to audiences of young, idealistic peers. The author argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices of this group of composers, artists, and intellectuals generated a social environment of passive opposition toward the oppressive Soviet System. The music produced by these composers parallels the evolution of the unofficial musical community. The initial period of excitement proceeding Stalin’s death in 1953 and leading into the early 1960s saw composers, eager to work with previously forbidden techniques, producing works of strict serialism and sharp abstraction. These early compositions were met with harsh criticism from officials, but rapt attention and enthusiastic support from audiences. Over time, as the thrill of change and audience members dwindled, composers began to adopt a more generally accessible approach to music, stressing dramatic effect and aleatory techniques over strict serial organization. Schmelz’s book displays a stunning calibre of research and analysis throughout its 392 pages. Within the eight chapters and epilogue, Schmelz exhibits his incredible depth of knowledge through professional yet accessible prose, engaging readers both within and outside the academic sphere.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.005 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".