Researching Provincial Musical Culture: The Life of Elizaveta Nilovna Shniukova (1892–after 1970) (Dr Julia Mannherz, University of Oxford)

This talk focuses on a little-known choral conductor, Elizaveta Nilovna Shniukova, who was born into a peasant family in the village of Ilenskoe, Irbitskii uezd, Permskaia guberniia in 1892, received musical training in Perm’ and Ekaterinburg at the “courses of singing literacy” run by the regional society of sobriety in the 1910s, and went on to work as church regent, rural opera impresario, and – after the revolution – as music teacher and choral conductor. Although she received a medal from Karabash municipality on the centenary of Lenin’s birth in recognition of her contribution to cultural life in the city, very few records of her life remain, and so this talk also discusses the difficulties of researching quotidian musical life outside of the cultural centres.

Biography

JULIA MANNHERZ is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Oxford and Oriel College. She obtained her PhD at Cambridge, where she was supervised by Hubertus Jahn; which is why she is particularly happy to be back at her alma mater tonight! Julia’s research focuses on nineteenth and early twentieth-century cultural history of the Russian empire and is especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches. In her book Modern Occultism in Late Imperial Russia (Northern Illinois University Press 2012), she analyses the widespread fascination with the supernatural in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia, and its role in contemporary discussions about science, folklore, literature, and theology. Julia is currently writing a book about provincial women and their engagement with music, literature, and folklore. Her talk tonight is based on that material.