Nietzsche's Orphans: Music, Metaphysics, and the Twilight of the Russian Empire
ISBN: 9780300216493
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Russian and Slavic History;

A prevailing belief among Russia's cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating study of competing artistic and ideological visions at the close of Russia's "Silver Age," author Rebecca Mitchell interweaves cultural history, music, and philosophy to explore how "Nietzsche's orphans" strove to find in music a means to overcome the disunity of modern life in the final tumultuous years before World War I and the Communist Revolution.

Rebecca Mitchell is assistant professor of history at Middlebury College. She lives in Vermont.

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