Claudia R. JensenMusical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia. (Russian Music Studies.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2009. Pp. xii, 359. $45.00.

Claudia R. Jensen reveals that Russian music existed long before the reign of Peter the Great and was not confined, as is so often assumed, to the church. To prove that the Russian court had more to offer than liturgical chant, she relies on published and unpublished musical manuscripts, theoretical treatises, the memoirs of singers and instrumentalists, diplomatic dispatches, and financial transaction records. The musical landscape included fanfares, organ music, domestic part-singing, and oft-repressed skomorokh (harlequin) noisemaking.

The framing metaphor of the book is the brutal murder in 1606 of Tsar Dmitrii Ivanovich, mythologized as the original pretender to the Russian throne. He was, in Jensen's telling, the author of his own demise: the protracted, debauched celebrations of his 1605 ascension alienated the masses and offended the guardians of Kremlin tradition, motivating Prince Vasilii Shuiskii to organize his assassination....