This book explores how, amid the final tumultuous years of the Russian empire, music was viewed as a powerful force with the ability to overcome the social, political, and ethnic divisions that, it was feared, were tearing the empire asunder. Drawing on German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s description of music as the “Dionysian” force and the “primal unity” that underpinned reality itself, Russian cultural elites (philosophers, historians, musicians and writers) argued that music promised an important means through which to forge a unified Russian identity within a society increasingly thr ... More

This book explores how, amid the final tumultuous years of the Russian empire, music was viewed as a powerful force with the ability to overcome the social, political, and ethnic divisions that, it was feared, were tearing the empire asunder. Drawing on German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s description of music as the “Dionysian” force and the “primal unity” that underpinned reality itself, Russian cultural elites (philosophers, historians, musicians and writers) argued that music promised an important means through which to forge a unified Russian identity within a society increasingly threatened by social discord, revolutionary upheaval, and growing nationalism. In this context of perceived modern disintegration and national uncertainty, music offered both a symbol of a transformed society (marked by social unity, spiritual depth, and cultural richness) and a means through which to achieve this transfiguration. This book offers a detailed examination of the philosophical claims surrounding music given voice by Russian cultural elites (“Nietzsche’s orphans”) with particular analysis of three Russian composers: Aleksandr Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Though internally divided in their individual assessments of each composer’s significance, Nietzsche’s orphans sought in these musical figures a possible theurgic artist (or latter-day “Orpheus”) whose music would have the power to reunify society. This worldview of “musical metaphysics” ultimately proved incapable of reuniting Russian society, however, as music and philosophy both took on an increasingly nationalistic meaning in the cataclysm of the Great War, undermining the very unity that had been sought.