Music on the Frontline: Nicolas Nabokov’s Struggle Against Communism and Middlebrow Culture

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Contents: Preface
Great books and wise men: Nabokov's road to the 1950 Berlin Congress
Waking the twilight sleepers I: on Soviet music and Shostakovich
Waking the twilight sleepers II: on provincialism and Prokofiev
A very popular fiasco : the 1952 Festival in Paris
Filling the gap: the CCF as surrogate Ministry of Culture
Paris/New York: Congress divided
One end against the middle: intellectuals behind the high culture stockade
Authority and exclusion: the Cold War and 'difficult' music
Appendix: L'Oeuvre du XXeme Siecle: list of works performed
Bibliography
Index.

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The story of Nicolas Nabokov's involvement with the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) is a story of the politics and sociology of culture; how music was used for political ends and how intellectual groups formed and functioned during the Cold War. The seemingly independent CCF, established to counteractÂ apparent Soviet successes in the fields of the arts and intellectual life, appointed Nabokov (a Russian emigre and minor composer) as its Secretary General in 1951.Â Over the next ten years he gave music a high profile in theÂ work of the organisation, producing four international musical festivals, the first and most ambitious of which was 1952's L'Oeuvre du XXe Siècle in Paris, an event which showcased the work of no less than 62 composers. As Ian Wellens reveals, Nabokov'sÂ musical involvement with the CCF was in fact a struggle on two fronts.Â Apparently aÂ defenceÂ ofÂ Western modernism against 'backward', 'provincial' Soviet music, Nabokov's writings show this to have meshed closely with theÂ domestic concernÂ - shared byÂ many intellectuals -Â that high culture was being undermined by an increasingly culturally aware middle class. His attacks on Soviet cultural policy, and his unflattering assessments of Shostakovich, are seen to be not merely salvos in the cold war but part of a broader campaign aimed at securing the authority and prestige ofÂ intellectuals.

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