Khrennikov's Seven
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Khrennikov’s Seven (Russian: Хренниковская семёрка or Семёрка Хренникова) was a group of seven Russian Soviet composers denounced at the Sixth Congress of the Composers' Union by its leader Tikhon Khrennikov for the unapproved participation in some festivals of Soviet music in the West. Khrennikov called their music "pointlessness... and noisy mud instead of real musical innovation". The seven were listed in the following order: Elena Firsova, Dmitri Smirnov, Alexander Knayfel, Viktor Suslin, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Edison Denisov. They were put under official boycott.
The tone of the denunciation harked back to the First Congress of 1948, at which Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Myaskovsky and others were victimized. The times had changed, though, in that the lives of the Seven were never in jeopardy, only their official performances and publications.
[edit] Quotations
"In 1979, the Communist Party tried to bring these rebels [a group of younger composers known as "unofficial" composers] to heel. The egregious hack Tikhon Khrennikov, head of the Soviet Composers' Union, attacked seven of them by name in terms that were an unintended compliment: he called their music "not representative of the work Soviet composers"." (Gerard McBurney)
