ABSTRACT
Model examples of ‘weak style’ are the one-movement First String Quartet and especially the voluminous collection of Quiet Songs for voice and piano to verses by classical Russian, Ukrainian and English poets. Silvestrov ‘weak style’ can make an impression of a very slightly modernized imitation of 19th-century clichés, sometimes bordering on kitsc, though in most cases fashioned delicately and with taste. The common consciousness of Soviet people saw in the three Baltic republics, annexed by Stalin’s regime in 1940, a blessed island of relative freedom, of an almost uncorrupted European culture and mentality. Consequently, the development of new music in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania took a special course, leaving virtually no room for the controversy between ‘conformists’ and the ‘avant-garde’, which has so considerably influenced the situation in Russia and Ukraine.
