ABSTRACT
In 1954 Nabokov was arranging the Congress for Cultural Freedom's second arts festival, to be held in Rome. 'Music in the XXth Century' followed the Paris festival of two years earlier which, had in practice been a largely musical affair. The Rome festival brochure laid out a rationale, based on opposition to various forms of musical 'provincialism'. Nabokov's 'anti-provincialism' is inseparable from issues of class, and specifically concerns about the cultural influence of the middle class. These issues are arguably central to both his self-image, and his sense of cultural-political mission. Nabokov is describing a process in which the disappearance of the intellectuals and the rise of the bureaucracy are merely two ways of viewing the same phenomenon. Soviet provincialism had musical consequences that, for Nabokov, demonstrated both the triumph of the middle class and the tragedy of middle-class taste institutionalised as state policy. Prokofiev also apparently welcomed some aspects of official music policy.
