ABSTRACT
And so yet again we are to consicler the Russianness of Russian music. Isthere some peculiar shortcoming affl.icting Russian music that prevents us from discussing it except in terms of nationality? Although Richard Tamskin has asked w hy we cannot simply take Russian music out of the surrounding nationalist discourse in order to examine it per se,3 such an approach may require, even as a precondition, a radically revisionary account of the music's highly mythologised history. So much critical writing, so many articles, monographs and textbooks of the last 150 years cannot blithely be set aside: they contirrue to feed programrue and liner notes, encouraging and teinforcing audiences' fond belief in an intrinsic Russianness that mysteriously subsists beneath every note of this perennially popular repertoire.4
