Notes at the Front Musicians have not been spared from the criminalization of protest and expression. We also share Ilya Yashin's final words. Dissent Music War
My City Now is Drowsing A final poem by Okudzhava to close out this issue devoted to his beloved city. Music
The Song Babel’s “The Song” comes from his Red Cavalry cycle, a volume of short stories about the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921). As in many of these pieces, Babel contrasts the narrator’s intellectual, poetic outlook with the brutalities and horrors of war. Music
Rothschild's Fiddle In this, one of Chekhov's last stories, a man nears the end of his life and finds that music is one of the few things that has ever given him comfort. And he uses it to make amends. Music
Music In this short story, Nabokov’s protagonist, Victor, encounters his ex-wife at a concert. Despite his proclamation that he has “no ear for music,” the experience awakens profound memories and feelings in him, as the music acts a shield from the chaos of the everyday world. Music
The Sixth Night This selection is taken from Russian Nights (1844), a novel by Odoyevsky that probes a great number of topics, genres, and philosophical questions. Odoyevsky was a talented music critic in his own right and a huge proponent of the works of Mikhail Glinka. Music
The Resurrection of Mozart Berberova sets her haunting story in a France on the verge of invasion in 1940. The image of an unexpectedly resurrected Mozart represents the immortality of art and culture. Music
Writing About Music Any author who chooses to write about music faces an immense task. The most abstract of all arts, music forces the writer to put into words and descriptions – much more concrete things by comparison – its ephemeral nature. Writing about music is indeed a form of translation: it comes with its sacrifices, but it also opens up new perspectives that would otherwise remain undiscovered. Music
