In our divided, post-Cold War, and now post-9/11 world, Russian music, formerly a quiet corner on the margins of musicology, has become a site of noisy contention. The author assesses the political and cultural stakes that attach to it in the era of Pussy Riot and renewed international tensions.

This new collection views Russian music through the Greek triad of "the Good, the True, and the Beautiful," to investigate how the idea of ¿nation' embeds itself in the public discourse about music and other arts with results at times invigorating, at times corrupting. In our divided, post cold-war, and now post-9/11 world, Russian music, formerly a quiet corner on the margins of musicology, has become a site of noisy contention. Taruskin assesses the political and cultural stakes that attach to it in the era of Pussy Riot and renewed international tensions, before turning to individual cases from the nineteenth century to the present.