This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

To be a rebel, you need a voice, and usually a loud one.

Whether you use a megaphone or a printing press, making yourself heard is typically the first step in turning protest into revolution.

But Valentin Silvestrov found another way. He rebelled with silence. Valentin was born in Kiev in 1937 when Ukraine was firmly tucked behind the iron

curtain. He didn't set out to overthrow governments. He just loved music. As a kid, he dreamed

of being a concert pianist and composer,

but as he grew up and found his own musical voice, it turned out that voice didn't exactly

harmonize with the authority's idea of approved art. In the Soviet Union, creative freedom was

well, not existent. Painters, writers, and musicians were expected to produce work that

celebrated the state. Art had to be uplifting, patriotic, and safely traditional. Anything too

experimental, too Western, or too emotionally complicated was frowned upon. Now, sometimes

frowned upon meant censored, and sometimes it meant getting thrown behind bars,

or worse, and that was a problem for Valentin.

By the 1960s, his music had become downright rebellious, inspired by modernist movements

sweeping across Europe, Valentin's compositions were confrontational, startling, and full of unexpected turns.

One moment you might hear a gentle melody. The next, a crash of dissonant chords.

It wasn't uplifting or traditional, and it definitely wasn't Soviet-approved, so pretty soon

the authorities took notice. In 1969, he crossed the line by walking out of a public event in protest of

the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The state responded swiftly, expelling him from the

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