SHOSTAKOVICH

Dmitry Shostakovich was a leading composer of the Soviet Union, and also one of the towering figures of 20th-century music. He was born in the Tsarist capital of St. Petersburg on September 25, 1906. In 1919, two years after the Bolshevik Revolution, he entered the Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) Conservatory. Times were very hard in the aftermath of the 1917 Revolution, with strict food rationing, but the young Shostakovich was given extra food as a reward for his exceptional talents. He repaid this faith in him in 1925, when at age 19 he graduated from the conservatory with a symphony that was soon hailed all over the world as a masterpiece.

Throughout the remainder of the 1920s and into the 1930s, official Soviet attitudes toward the arts remained relatively liberal, allowing composers, writers, and artists some degree of creative freedom. The young Shostakovich took full advantage of this in such wildly “modern” and experimental works as his Symphony No. 2 (“To October,” 1927), which celebrates the tenth anniversary of the revolution. But, as Joseph Stalin tightened the grip of the state on all aspects of Soviet life and became a hard-line dictator, the whole social and artistic climate changed.

CHAOS INSTEAD OF MUSIC

The turning point for Shostakovich’s career came in 1936, when Stalin himself attended a performance of Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Stalin disliked the opera, and the government newspaper Pravda predictably attacked the piece under the headline “Chaos Instead of Music.” Shostakovich was in political disgrace. He reacted by writing his Symphony No. 5 (1937), which was described as “a Soviet artist’s practical creative reply to just criticism,” although this epithet did not originate from the composer himself. This critical success restored Shostakovich to favour, and indeed the symphony, dramatic and suitably triumphant by turns, has since become the most popular of all his works, though many commentators now claim that behind his show of contrition and obedience, Shostakovich was secretly mocking Stalin himself. Whatever the case with Symphony No. 5, as long as Stalin lived, Shostakovich continued to be in and out of trouble, although his Piano Quintet (1940) won him a Stalin Prize.

WORLD WAR II

Shostakovich became a hero during World War II, when he was a firefighter in the defence of Leningrad (formerly Petrograd and now St. Petersburg) against the German invasion. He then wrote his patriotic Symphony No. 7 (“Leningrad,” 1941) which was flown in microfilm form to the U.S. where it had its first performance there under the baton of Arturo TOSCANINI. During the war years, this symphony was performed many times in America and in other Western countries, becoming symbolic of the heroic resistance to fascism.

Later in the war, Shostakovich was appointed professor of composition at the prestigious Moscow Conservatory. But he fell into official disfavour again in 1948, together with eminent colleagues such as Sergey PROKOFIEV, when the authorities accused him of “formalism.” This was an odd political term that referred to writing music that did not have mass appeal, and therefore sinned against Soviet artistic policy. As a result, Shostakovich was dismissed from his post at the Moscow Conservatory. He reacted to this censorship by splitting his musical personality to produce some acceptable, simpler works, while continuing to write more adventurous pieces to satisfy himself, including the Violin Concerto No. 1, the String Quartet No. 4, and the song-cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry (1948), which would have been unacceptable in the anti-Semitic attitude prevailing under Stalin.

The Russian Dmitry Shostakovich is widely regarded as the greatest symphonist of the mid-20th century.

LIBERATION FROM CENSORSHIP

Stalin died in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev eventually became premier. Life for the composer, as for others in the Soviet Union, gradually became easier. Several earlier works which he had withdrawn from publication and performance for fear of political attack, were now given a hearing. Shostakovich quickly finished his immensely powerful Symphony No. 10, and in 1959 composed another of his most inspired concert works, the Cello Concerto No. 1.

In some ways, Shostakovich reacted to this liberalism with suspicion. His Symphonies No. 11 (“The Year 1905”) and No. 12 (“To the Memory of Lenin”) are an almost nostalgic look back at the early days of Bolshevism: the composer who had been a boy in the revolution could not betray those principles. But it was always in his chamber works that he allowed himself to write in a more personal style and with exciting new textures.

Shostakovich received further high honours. He was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1956, and was the first musician to receive the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. He was also free to travel abroad, back to the United States (which he had first visited as part of a delegation in 1949, at the beginning of the Cold War), and to Britain, where he struck up a warm friendship with the English composer Benjamin BRITTEN. And he continued to compose prolifically, even after a serious heart attack. His Symphony No. 15 (1971) is one of his most original and enigmatic works. His last piece, in 1975, was a viola sonata in three movements. The first two movements are serene and lyrical, while the final adagio, which is the longest, is more melancholy in tone. Shostakovich died at age 69 in a Moscow hospital on August 9, 1975.

STYLE AND TECHNIQUE

Shostakovich’s musical output was shaped by a number of contrasting and sometimes conflicting influences. To begin with, he was a Soviet artist, and a servant of the state. In that capacity, he was expected to write music that praised government achievements and lifted the morale of the people with the same intent as all those paintings of heroic but joyful workers toiling in factories or fields. In contrast to this official optimism, he lived through some of the most grim and traumatic events in modern history. Shostakovich’s personality was also a shaping factor: he had something of the same temperament as his great Russian predecessor Tchaikovsky, swinging between emotional extremes. He also shared Gustav MAHLER’S taste for composition on an epic scale, and struggled to reconcile all these pressures, impressions and impulses in his music.

After his early experimental period, Shostakovich settled for a generally conservative mode of expression. He chose to write much of his music in the long-established forms of the symphony and the string quartet (15 examples of each), using fairly familiar patterns of harmony and rhythm. But, at its best, his music carries tremendous power and conviction, ranging from tenderness and pity, through irony and satire, to blackest doom and tragedy. It adds up to a mighty testimony to a tumultuous age.

One unique feature of the music is Shostakovich’s use of the four notes D, E flat, C, and B natural. In German notation, the notes are DSCH, and he made them stand for the initials of his own name. They run throughout his compositions, like a defiant gesture in the face of hardship and catastrophe.

Richard Trombley

SUGGESTED LISTENING

Cello Concerto No. 1; Piano Concerto No. 1;

Piano Quintet; String Quartets Nos. 8 and 11;

Symphony No. 1; Symphony No. 2 (“To October”);

Symphony No. 5; Symphony No. 7 (“Leningrad”);

Symphony No. 9; Symphony No. 10;

Symphony No. 11 (“The Year 1905”);

Symphony No. 13 (“Babi-Yar”);

Symphony No. 15.