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The team of the Centre for Contemporary Music at the Moscow Conservatory has presented the fifth issue of the almanac “Time to Hear / Hear the Time”. The new issue is devoted to non-European musical traditions and their interactions with avant-garde practices.
CONTENTS OF THE ISSUE
Theme of the issue: “The Sound of Others”
Arnold Schoenberg and the problems of folklorism. The composer Azamat Khasanshin on the problems of national schools of composition and on the justified fears of Schoenberg, who claimed that folk music and European art music “mix as badly as oil and water”.
The imaginary East: the birth of the colonial ear. The journalist Victoria Miroshnichenko on the dilemma of choosing between isolation and assimilation in the music of Southeast Asia.
Folklore is personal. The journalist Veronika Kalistratova on Russian ethno-ensembles, their experiments, and where the line lies between preserving a musical tradition and turning it into a show.
In a land far, far away. The musicologist Evgenia Lianskaya on echoes of the African continent on the Austrian music-theatre stage.
Bulat Khalilov: We are exactly as unique as everyone else. The co-founder of the Ored Recordings label, in an interview with Maria Nevidimova, on the dangers of anti-colonial nationalism, why sacralising traditional culture is harmful, and what a Swedish hipster hears in the music of the North Caucasus.
Generating the national. The researcher Ivan Nechaev turns a neural network into an ethnomusicologist and finds out exactly which sonic features make up what we call “national”.
You will understand nothing about contemporary music. The researcher Arseny Braginsky explains why traditional music cannot be understood and felt from a distance.
In pursuit of the traditional. The journalist Oleg Sobolev on exoticism at European festivals and the prospects of traditional music in the Russian context.
The Baku society for contemporary music. The musicologist Rena Fakhradova on new music in Baku, which draws 470 people to a 370-seat hall.
Brazilian special: together with the magazine “Artguide”
In 2026 Artguide, one of the oldest Russian art publications, made its debut with the printed almanac “Artguide. Brazil”. Music is also in the editors’ focus. With their permission, an online version of the journalist Alexander Glazkov’s guide to Brazilian music was published in the almanac “Time to Hear”.
Svetlana Savenko in the project “The Older Generation”
The interview marks the 80th birthday of the musicologist and singer Svetlana Ilyinichna Savenko, professor at the Moscow Conservatory. The musicologist and singer Alyona Verin-Galitskaya talked to her about Svetlana Ilyinichna’s path as a performer, Schnittke’s First Symphony, Soviet performances and the Alternativa festival.
Philosophy of new music
The publication now has a column by the philosopher, improviser and sound producer Yuri Vinogradov. In the debut pieces of this section the author discusses the philosophy of new music and how people thought about music in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Comics and Alphabets
Especially for the almanac, the composer and artist Danya Fisko has created several illustrations for Morton Feldman’s book Give My Regards to Eighth Street. The Russian translation of the collection, published in 2019 by Jaromír Hladík press, is especially topical today, in the composer’s centenary year. The artist stresses that the date is merely a formal occasion for publishing some of the illustrations, many of which we will see over the coming years.
Another piece in this section is devoted to the centenary of György Kurtág. In it the musicologist Olga Alyushina uses the signs of verbal notation to try to decipher the composer’s musical code and create her own version of “Kurtág Fragments”, as in the documentary film of the same name.
At the Studio
This section includes transcripts of public meetings and lectures held as part of the “Oikoumene. 21st Century” festival. Among the speakers are the singer and researcher of Tatar folklore Tatiana Efremova; the musicologist Fyodor Sofronov; the composer Nikifor Yakovlev (Yakutsk), author of the mono-opera “Olonkhosut”; the cellist Daria Lutsenko, producer of the mono-opera “Olonkhosut”; the arts manager Yulia Konstantinova (Cheboksary), founder of the Chuvash Biennale of Contemporary Art; the directors Alexander Shumilin and Darina Chirkova (Perm), founders of the “nmkht” theatre company; the artist, dancer, researcher and butoh practitioner Boris Borisov (Moscow); and Tufan Imamutdinov (Kazan), director of the “Alif” creative collective.
News
The almanac’s news writers – Vladimir Pechetov, Vera Esaulkova, Stanislava Vyatkina and Maria Sidorovich – report on contemporary academic music and interdisciplinary projects in Europe and in Russia’s capitals and regions.
The almanac team:
Editor-in-chief: Maria Nevidimova
Managing editor: Alina Moiseeva
Website editor: Gleb Chuchalin
Social media editor: Veronika Kalistratova
Academic consultant – Fyodor Sofronov
“Time to Hear / Hear the Time” is an educational online resource about new music that continues the traditions of the journal “Tribune of Contemporary Music” and the Stravinsky.online platform. The publication focuses on long-form material, including essays, interviews and digests offering analysis of cultural processes in the field of new music. The project was created by the Centre for Contemporary Music together with the Union of Composers of Russia, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.