Out of harmony

The current exhibition at Tate Modern (Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism, until 17 May) is rich in cultural reference, apart from any reference to music. Here we have Popova collaborating with theatrical producers and designers, Rodchenko working alongside film-makers and poets (especially Mayakovsky), and everyone in a headlong dash away from easel work towards sculpture, and even architecture. It was a time of quite glorious redefinition of life and culture, taking in anything and everything. Why is music kept apart?

It wasn’t that the musicians themselves were silent. The new Soviet authorities had a liking for opera, hoping that such an obvious art form would appeal to the masses. Well-known operas were ridiculously recast with new libretti. Tosca, for example, with the action shifted to Paris in 1871, became The Battle for the Commune; Les Huguenots became The Decembrists (after the early 19th-century revolutionary movement); and Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar was reworked as Hammer and Sickle.