Marina Frolova-Walker

Prof. Marina Frolova-Walker
Alma mater	Moscow Conservatoire College
Occupation	Professor Researcher Lecturer Broadcaster
Employer(s)	University of Cambridge, Clare College, Gresham College
Notable work	Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics (Yale, 2016)
Spouse	Jonathan Walker
Website	https://www.marinafrolova-walker.com/

Marina Frolova-Walker FBA (Russian: Марина Фролова-Уокер;[1] born 1966)[2] is a Russian-born British musicologist and music historian, who specialises in German Romanticism, Russian and Soviet music, and nationalism in music.[3] She is Professor of Music History at the University of Cambridge and Director of Studies in Music at Clare College, Cambridge.[4] In June 2019 it was announced that she would be the 36th Professor of Music at Gresham College.[5] She has authored several books and a number of academic articles.[6]

Biography

Born in Moscow, she first attended the college (ru) of the Moscow Conservatory and then subsequently completed her graduate studies at the conservatory proper. In 1994 she defended her doctorate on the symphonies of the 19th century German composer Robert Schumann and their influence on Russian music. She moved to the United Kingdom in the same year "for personal, rather than political reasons." Between 1994 and 2000 she taught at various universities in the UK, namely at the University of Ulster, Goldsmiths, University of London, and University of Southampton. In 2000 she started teaching at the University of Cambridge.[7]

In her biography, Frolova-Walker writes that she began teaching at 19, and adds that she has given more than 100 lectures before concerts in locations ranging from Carnegie Hall to factories in Kazakhstan.[7]

In 2014, Frolova-Walker was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[8]

In 2015, Frolova-Walker was elected to professorship at the University of Cambridge.[7] She delivered her inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cambridge in October 2015.[9] Also in 2015 Frolova-Walker was awarded the Dent Medal for outstanding contribution to musicology.[10]

Frolova-Walker has appeared regularly on TV and Radio including the BBC Proms. In 2015 she appeared on BBC Radio 3 Proms Extra speaking on Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. She has also contributed to the BBC Radio 3 Stravinsky 'A to Z',[11] BBC Radio 3 Composer of the Week, and BBC Radio 3 Record Review. In 2018-19, Frolova-Walker gave a series of lectures on 'Russian Opera and the State' at Gresham College;[12] in 2019-20 her Gresham lectures will be on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.[13] Links to her radio broadcasts, filmed lectures, and selected articles can be found on Frolova-Walker's website.[14]

Works

Frolova-Walker's interest in historiography of Russian music and the nationalist/exoticist myths resulted in the book titled Russian Music and Nationalism: from Glinka to Stalin (2008),[7] which is considered her magnum opus.[15] It has received generally favourable reviews from critics.[15][16] Andrew Wachtel, although pointing out several errors and shortcomings, wrote that it "will be important for all scholars interested in manifestations of Russian nationalist thinking and/or in the process of cultural nation-building."[17]

In 2011-13 she held a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, which allowed her to pursue extensive archival research in Russia, leading to the publication of Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics (Yale University Press, 2016).[18]

Books[6][19]

• Frolova-Walker, Marina (2008). Russian Music and Nationalism: from Glinka to Stalin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300112733.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina; Walker, Jonathan (2012). Music and Soviet Power, 1917–1932. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1843837039.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina (2016). Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300208849.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina and Patrick Zuk (eds.) (2017). Russian Music Since 1917: Reappraisal and Rediscovery. Oxford University Press/British Academy. ISBN 9780197266151
• Frolova-Walker, Marina (ed.) (2018). Rimsky-Korsakov and His World. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691185514.

Selected articles[6][19]

• ""National in Form, Socialist in Content": Musical Nation-Building in the Soviet Republics'". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 52 (2): 331–371. 1998.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina (2006). "The Soviet Opera Project: Ivan Dzerzhinsky vs. Ivan Susanin". Cambridge Opera Journal. 18 (2). Cambridge University Press: 181–216. doi:10.1017/S0954586706002163. S2CID 190717242.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina (1997). "On Ruslan and Russianess". Cambridge Opera Journal. 9 (1). Cambridge University Press: 21–45. doi:10.1017/S0954586700005140.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina (2004). "Stalin and the Art of Boredom". Twentieth-Century Music. 1 (1): 101–124. doi:10.1017/S1478572204000088. S2CID 194076112.
• Frolova-Walker, Marina (2001). "From Modernism to Socialist Realism in Four Years: Myaskovsky and Asafyev". Muzikologija. 3 (3): 199–217. doi:10.2298/MUZ0303199F.
• "A Ukrainian Tune in Medieval France: Perceptions of Nationalism and Local Color in Russian Nationalism". 19th-Century Music. 35 (2). University of California Press: 115–131. 2011. doi:10.1525/ncm.2011.35.2.115.
• "Opera and Obsolescence in the Russian Culture Wars". Opera Quarterly. 2010. doi:10.1525/ncm.2011.35.2.115.
• "Against Germanic Reasoning: The Search for a Russian Style of Musical Argumentation". Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Musical Culture, 1800-1945. Cork University Press. 2001.

Awards and honors

• 2015: Dent Medal for Excellence in the field of Musicology

References

1. ""Opera Musicologica" Консультативный совет ["Opera Musicologica" Journal Advisory Board]" (in Russian). Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Retrieved 15 August 2014. Марина Фролова-Уокер
2. "Выдающиеся музыканты – выпускники теоретического отделения [Outstanding musicians – graduates of the theoretical department]" (in Russian). Academic Musical College of the Moscow State Conservatory. Retrieved 15 August 2014. ФРОЛОВА-УОЛКЕР Марина Вадимовна (р.1966)
3. "Music". Clare College, Cambridge. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
4. "Dr Marina Frolova-Walker". Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
5. "Marina Frolova-Walker, Professor of Music". www.gresham.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
6. "Publications by Marina Frolova-Walker". Academia.edu. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
7. "Dr Marina Frolova-Walker". Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. 13 September 2013. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
8. "The British Academy New Fellows 2014" (PDF).
9. "Marina Frolova Walker". Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
10. "Dr Marina Frolova-Walker". Dent Medal. Retrieved 25 November 2015.^[permanent dead link‍]
11. "D for Diaghliev". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
12. "Russian Opera and the State". Gresham College. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
13. "Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes". Gresham College. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
14. "Prof. Frolova-Walker". New Perspectives on Russian Music. 29 July 2019.
15. Carroll, Mark (Summer 2009). "Russian Music and Nationalism: From Glinka to Stalin by Marina Frolova-Walker Review by: Mark Carroll". Slavic Review. 68 (2). Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies: 449–451. doi:10.2307/27698006. JSTOR 27698006. S2CID 164853555. Frolova-Walker's magnum opus is rounded out with a glossary of terms, which is an impressive piece of scholarship in itself. While the extensive use of music examples assumes a fair degree of musical literacy on the part of the reader, the author's easy traverse of a range of sociocultural disciplines ensures that there is, as they say, something in this book for everyone.
16. Gudesblatt, Melanie (2009). "Review: Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin". Nota Bene: Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology. 2 (1).
17. "Russian Music and Nationalism: From Glinka to Stalin by Marina Frolova-Walker Review by: Andrew Wachtel". Slavic and East European Journal. 53 (1). American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages: 136–137. Spring 2009. This book is not without faults; at times it is overly polemical and reads like a dissertation (and the Yale UP copy-editor should have corrected a number of instances of Russian-inflected English); it also inexplicably fails to address and acknowledge a number of important works of relevant Western scholarship (Boris Gasparov, Caryl Emerson). Nevertheless, Frolova-Walker has assimilated an enormous amount of material and has presented it compellingly and in ways that can be appreciated by and will be important for all scholars interested in manifestations of Russian nationalist thinking and/or in the process of cultural nation-building.
18. "Stalin's Music Prize". Yale University Press. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
19. "Marina Frolova-Walker". Google Scholar. Retrieved 15 August 2014.