Music and Change in the Eastern Baltics before and after 1989

This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musical cultures in the Eastern Baltics―Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia―at the end of the Cold War and in the early post-Communist period. Throughout the book, the contributors explore and conceptualize transnational musical collaboration and the diffusion of information, people, and ideas focusing on musical activity which shaped the moral and artistic outlook of several generations. The volume sheds light on the transformative power of politically and socially engaged music and offers a deeper understanding of the artistic potential of societies and its impact on social and political change.

Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz is a music theorist, head of the Department of Theory and Interpretation of Musical Work at Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music, Krakow, a member of the editorial board of the journal Theory of Music, and professor at the Academy of Music, Krakow. She is the author of Vytautas Bacevićius i jego idee muzyki kosmicznej (2001) and Poetyka muzyczna Karola Szymanowskiego. Studia i interpretacje (2013).

Rūta Stanevičiūtė is a musicologist, director of the Research Centre at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and a chief-editor of the journal Lithuanian Musicology. She is the author of The Figures of Modernity: The International Society for Contemporary Music and the Spread of Musical Modernism in Lithuania (VDA, 2015), and the co-author of Nylon Curtain: Cold War, International Exchange and Lithuanian Music (LMTA, 2018), and Sound Utopias: Lithuanian Music Modernization in Context (2021).