Peter J. Schmelz is Assistant Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. His primary area of interest is twentieth-century music (and especially music after 1945), with a focus on the music produced in the Soviet Union, including that by Shostakovich and Schnittke. He received a 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and is Chair and founder of the American Musicological Society's Cold War and Music Study Group.