ABSTRACT
The initially paradoxical attitude of the Russian authorities towards music is symptomatic of an interesting contradiction within Marxist thought, that is, the contradiction between dialectic, and a 'scientific' or deterministic and materialist approach to the social process. When Joseph Stalin had succeeded V. L. Lenin, the progressive Association of Contemporary Musicians was absorbed by the more reactionary Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. The attempt to establish in academic language that reality as embodied in the non-verbal and 'non-rational' mode of music is equal and coextensive with that embodied in language is inherently contradictory. The separation of the objective from the subjective that is typical of highly literate society has resulted in two basically different approaches to writing about music. The first is the descriptive or analytic, which seeks to explain precisely what happens in the music. The second approach recognises the emotional, psychological and subjective in music and seeks to underline the experience for the listener by means of words.
