Don Satz writes:

>If any of you think that classical music fares well in a totalitatian
>state, perhaps we could enlist the aid of the scientific community to
>build a Time Machine.  You could then be transported back to the old
>USSR and have a ball."

Actually, we already enjoy something akin to the experience Don fantasizes.
Commissar Zhdanov and Secretary (of the Soviet Composers' Union) Khrennikov
sought to ban "formalism" in music, meaning any harmonically advanced
idiom, and to limit new Soviet music to easy-listening Socialist Realism.
The program directors of American FM stations demonstrably follow a similar
policy, and their ban on "formalism" is, if anything, more complete.  Of
the little 20th century music they do broadcast, none is ever more advanced
than "Appalachian Spring" or Prokoviev's 5th symphony, the latter also
a favorite of the Party's cultural specialists.  Apparently Capitalist
Realism and Socialist Realism share the same intensely diatonic musical
taste, as well as a common need for blandness and homogeneity.

Could it be that the two systems were not as far apart as advertised?
However, as Don himself has pointed out, Capitalist Realism has certainly
been the more successful of the two, at least in achieving blandness and
homogeneity of music on radio.

Jon Gallant