ABSTRACT
The core of the avant-garde movement in the Soviet Union of the 1960–1980s was formed by Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke and Sofiya Gubaydulina, all educated and active in Moscow. In 1950, Volkonsky entered Shaporin’s composition class at the Moscow Conservatoire and soon produced the cantatas Russia after a passage from Gogol’s The Dead Souls and The Image of the World to pacifist poetry by Paul Eluard. When in the early 1960s Musica stricta and the Suite of Mirrors got a chance to be presented to Moscow audiences, the critical reaction was violent. In 1953 Alemdar Karamanov entered the Moscow Conservatoire, where his composition teacher was Semen Bogatirev; in 1958–1963, as a post-graduate student, he attended the classes of Kabalevsky and Khrennikov. In 1950, Edison Denisov ventured to send some of his manuscripts to Moscow to Shostakovich, who in response encouraged the young provincial and advised him to join Shebalin’s class at the Moscow Conservatoire.
