Unpredictable Encounters

"A timely intervention in a critical contemporary debate." – Philip Bullock, author of Rachmaninoff and His World

"Fairclough and Schmelz present this volume as a scholarly answer to the threats to the discipline posed by recent geopolitical events, in particular in the dramatic outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine. In the introduction, they reflect on the horror of the situation, but also on the effects the conflict might have on the academic study of Russian culture. The editors contend that Russian music studies can no longer be pursued in the same way as before. . . . One can only sympathize with the heartfelt reactions to the terrible situation and with the sincere effort for responsible scholarship in the face of real-life threats. The plea for taking the politics of scholarship as a non-neutral defense of liberal and humanist values seriously will resonate with many readers who sympathize with the specific plight of Russian studies in the present circumstances." – Francis Maes, author of A History of Russian Music

"Separating a delinquent government from its dazzling, canonized cultural past is a fraught process. This welcome volume, in equal measure commemoration, scholarly sleuthing, and lament, is also a plea to decolonize that imperial bucket we know as 'Russian music' – not to cancel it, but the better to hear its many distinct and competing parts." – Caryl Emerson, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

"Unpredictable Encounters investigates how music resists, negotiates, and transforms under pressure across the twentieth- and twenty-first-century post-Soviet world. From improvisations in the Soviet underground to the cultural upheavals following 1991, it demonstrates how sound shapes memory, identity, and power – and why these unpredictable encounters remain urgent today. Combining meticulous historical research with penetrating cultural critique, this book reveals music not merely as art, but as a force that challenges authority, crosses boundaries, and illuminates the unexpected currents of human experience."—Nana Sharikadze, author of An Introduction to Georgian Art Music: Sense-Making Through Music