Start with the map. What we call ‘Russia’ is a geographically vast territory: one set of borders looks to an unambiguously Western world, the world of (often militant) Latin Christianity; another towards the self-contained cultural world of China. South-westwards lie the Balkans and what was once the ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’, as Dimitri Obolensky called the cluster of states and peoples sharing a broadly Greek Christian heritage; south-eastwards, the tribal cultures and Turkic languages of Central Asia. Russian identity has been moulded in response to – sometimes violent reaction to – all these environments, and its complexities reflect the way in which these diverse contacts and conflicts have impressed themselves on Russia’s sense of itself and its destiny.

Schoenberg and Stravinsky: compare and contrast. Setting aside the surfeit of binary logic which might threaten to engulf the proposition, geographical point/counterpoint in this instance began in two locations – Leopoldstadt, Vienna and Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), St Petersburg – separated by almost 1,900 kilometres. By 1941, when Stravinsky took up residence in Los Angeles at 1260 North Wetherley Drive, West Hollywood, nine miles east of Schoenberg’s home at 116 North Rockingham Avenue, Brentwood, physical proximity would do little to alter the prevailing impression of their remaining not just words but also culturally segregated worlds apart. Schoenberg and Stravinsky went on to spend the remainder of their lives domiciled in the United States, and as naturalised American citizens. Moreover, creative priorities eventually turned out to dictate an altogether extraordinary point of convergence when in the early 1950s, but following Schoenberg’s death, Stravinsky began to compose using serial principles.