Music on the Frontline: Nicolas NabokovÆs Struggle Against Communism and Middlebrow Culture

In his position as Secretary General of the CIA-financed Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), Nicholas Nabokov gave music a high profile in the work of this Cold War organisation, producing four international musical festivals under its auspices. This book reveals that Nabokov's musical involvement with the CCF was a struggle on two fronts. Apparently a defence of Western modernism against 'backward', 'provincial' Soviet music, Nabokov's writings show this to have meshed closely with the domestic concern - shared by many intellectuals - that high culture was being undermined by an increasingly culturally aware middle class.

Ian Wellens was born in 1958. He left a career in cabinet-making to study music at Dartington College of the Arts and was awarded his PhD in 1999. His time is now divided between teaching -- at Dartington and the University of Plymouth but also in further education and schools, and working as a musician and composer. Particularly interested in theatre, he has also written for dance and television and worked on community projects. Recent work has included a Year of the Artist residency and projects with Theatre Alibi and KneeHigh Theatre