History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800, Vol. 1 [Hardcover]

In its scope and command of primary sources and its generosity of scholarly inquiry, Nikolai Findeizen's monumental work, published in 1928 and 1929 in Soviet Russia, places the origins and development of music in Russia within the context of Russia's cultural and social history.

Volume 2 of Findeizens landmark study surveys music in court life during the reigns of Elizabeth I and Catherine II, music in Russian domestic and public life in the second half of the 18th century, and the variety and vitality of Russian music at the end of the 18th century.

[This new translation] . . . is a significant resource which exposes some fascinating episodes in Russia's musical past and which will no doubt encourage the study of early Russian music by scholars outside the country, just as the original publication stimulated studies by musicologists in Russia itself.6/2 Sept. 2009[This] work stands as an impressive testimony to a life of intensive and indefatigable research. . . [This] edition of Findeizen's History should leave music historians with no excuses for keeping Russian music outside their field of interest and inquiry.Vol. 90.4 Nov. 2009. . . Meticulously indexed, it includes relevant musical scores as appendices and is wonderfully illustrated with everything from images of instruments to skomorokhi. There are copious tables of little known musical terms, samples of chastushki, synopses of operas, lists of published works and famous musicians and composers. . . If it took place in Russia from 1 AD to the end of the 1800s and had to do with music, you are likely to find something in here about it. An invaluable reference work.Findeyzen's major work . . . remains the foundation-stone on which all later work on the history of Russian music before the 19th century has been built.Certainly, there is still much to be learnt about Russian music before Glinka, and even for those working on the music of the nineteenth, twentieth and now twenty-first centuries, Flƒ1