In another conference, Mary Remmers mentioned that Dmitri 
Shostakovich's 5th symphony is her current favorite symphony.  Imho, 
everyone should go through a phase where Shostakovich's 5th is their 
fave.  Then you should move on to the 10th, which is his masterpiece, 
then sample the 7th, which resembles the 5th a little, then try and 
tackle the 4th, etc.  Shostakovich was one of the last great 
romantic/modern symphonists.  

He sounds very Mahlerian to my ears, but for some reason I like the 
Russian version better than the Austrian one.  He's more truly modern, 
for one thing, and his sound is more focused, more professional 
sounding.  Shostakovich himself revered Mahler.  When Stravinsky went 
to Russia in the early '60s, he supposedly told Shostakovich, "But we 
must move beyond Mahler."  Shostakovich was crestfallen.  Stravinsky 
could be a dick sometimes.  

Shostakovich was cruelly persecuted by Stalin and his lackeys.  In the 
book Testimony by Shostakovich's student Solomon Volkov, Shostakovich 
is quoted as saying that many of his symphonies, including the 5th, 7th 
and 10th, have programs describing the horrors of life under Stalin.  
The famous victorious final measures of the 5th symphony, for example, 
are supposed to sound forced, as if a mass of humans were not actually 
rejoicing, but shouting "Our business is rejoicing!  Our business is 
rejoicing!"  In the 10th, composed right after Stalin's death, the 
scherzo is supposed to be a musical portrait of Stalin, and the 3rd and 
4th movements are supposed to represent the near-extinction and 
ultimate triumph of Shostakovich himself, who is represented by a 4-
note theme.

What does anyone else think of Shostakovich?  Which are your favorite 
compositions of his?

49 responses total.

Gawd, you'd be in pig's heaven discussing this with our
conductor, Michael.  He's read the same books.  When he is
trying to get a specific feel to a passage he simply tells
us some of what what going on in Shostakovich's life when
he was writing the music.  The stories are amazing.

My favorite movement in the 5th is that second movement
which is the closest thing I know of to crying clowns.
I guess Shostakovich was being ordered to write more "upbeat"
music.  The second movement was his response.

And of course the finale is gut-wrenching and very Mahleresk.
It's a technically demanding piece to play.  

((The Grexers On Stage item is not cross-posted to the Classical.cf.
  Should it be?   Mary is appearing with the Life Sciences Orchestra
  tonight at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor; see the On Stage item in 
  Agora/Music for details...))

I'm glad you inspired and started this, Michael and Mary.  Shostakovich 
is my favorite of all 20th century composers, and I'll put up an 
argument to call him the greatest composer of that century: certainly 
the greatest of symphonies after Mahler, and the greatest of string 
quartets with the possible exception of Bartok.

Neither of whom I much care for: I know that Shostakovich revered 
Mahler, and I understand the similarities, but to me their music feels 
very different.  It's a matter of personality as expressed in the 
music.  Shostakovich, even in his manic moments, has a pure sombreness 
that contrasts with Mahler's messy angst, and this is reflected in 
their structures: Shostakovich's clear and rigid, Mahler's falling all 
over the place.  Some like that; I don't.

I am highly skeptical, though not entirely disbelieving, of Volkovism.  
I am very disturbed that it's become the received wisdom, because there 
are serious questions unsolved, both about the authenticity of what 
Volkov edited, and about Shostakovich's own self-perception if the 
Volkov papers are real.  And the mickey-mousing of the (hysterically) 
pro-Volkov critic Ian MacDonald is repulsive: this moment is Stalin 
stepping before the party congress, etc.  This is a symphony, not "The 
Sorcerer's Apprentice."  The music must stand or fall as music 
regardless of what it may mean.  I liked Shostakovich back when 
everyone thought he was a Soviet hack: I still like him now that 
everyone thinks he's a secret dissident.  It's the same music.

Mary, don't be put off by the remark, "Everyone should go through a 
phase where the Fifth is their fave."  It's just that the 5th is indeed 
a great symphony (especially the third, slow movement) and as the most 
famous it's the one people hear first, and some never get beyond it.  
But there's no harm in returning to it.

More anon.

I hope Mary isn't put off by my remark that everyone should go through 
a phase when Shostakovichs 5th is their favorite symphony.  I certainly 
didn't mean it as off-putting.  All I meant was that I sincerely 
empathize with Mary's comment.  I went through the same phase when I 
was in high school.  The music is *so* dramatic.  It has an emotional 
urgency that just grabs you and won't let go.  (Btw, I took Mary to 
mean that it's currently her favorite *symphony*, period, not just her 
favorite Shostakovich symphony.)

I am a bit skeptical about Volkov, too, especially in view of 
Shostakovich's own son's criticism of Testimony.  Like you, I loved the 
5th back when I believed it really was "a Soviet artist's reply to just 
criticism."  And I will never be able to think of the "Leningrad" 
symphony as anything other than the war momument Shostakovich first 
unveiled it as.

I'm a hopeless Bartok fanatic, btw, so I will never admit that 
Shostakovich's quartet series is the equal of Bartok's, even if it's 
true.  ;-)

Some specific Shostakovich issues:

What do you think of his piano music?  His series of Preludes, which I 
haven't heard in years, knocked me sideways when I first heard it.

Do you have a favorite symphony?  A favorite symphony excerpt?  My 
favorite is the 10th.  My favorite Shostakovich moments are the buildup 
to the brutal march, and the march itself, in the 1st movt of the 5th; 
and the thermonuclear war (how did he know, back in 1930-something?) 
followed by that long, long pedal C and the beating heart that slowly 
falters and finally stops, in the last mvt of the 4th.

And I think the greatest single symphonic movement he ever wrote is the 
first movement of the 10th.  I wouldn't argue if you said it was the 
greatest symphonic movement of the 20th century.  Mahler came close, in 
the last movement of his 6th.  I'd nominate a Sibelius or a Vaughan 
Williams movement, but those are personal tastes that I doubt many 
other listeners would agree with.

I'm not all wounded by Michael's comments as he pretty much
has my experience pegged.  I'm one of those folks who started
exploring classical music when I was well into adulthood. 
I bought my first classical recording in 1981. 

I will seek out a copy of the 10th and see how it goes.
But first I'd like to tarry here, letting moments of
the 5th roll around my memory for a few more weeks.

Then I'll go back and listen to my last most favorite
symphony, Mahler's 9th.  But most of all I realize 
that calling anything a "favorite" is pure drama.

Zackly.  Nothing wrong with it, though.

Actually, I'm gonna make the shameful admission that almost the only
Shostakovich I know is his piano music.  The first time I heard his Preludes
& Fugues, I was pretty underwhelmed -- I was expecting either Bach or Bartok,
and I didn't really get much of either.  But this is a fantastic piece.  The
pretty melodies and baroque forms lull you into thinking you're listening to
something well-behaved and Classical, but there's some serious derangement
lurking under some of them.

I actually have heard little of Shostakovich's piano music.  Rather a 
gap, I admit, but I'm not a real big piano fan and I tend not to follow 
up piano music unless it struck me heavily on first listen, and 
Shostakovich's didn't.  (Prokofiev's did.)

I'll agree with the general consensus that the Tenth is his greatest 
symphony.  The greatest symphony by the (all-around) greatest 
symphonist makes it surely one of the half-dozen or so greatest 
symphonies of the 20th century.  And what's striking, given that the 
20th century in classical music was self-advertised as the infinite 
extension of complexity (Webern packing worlds into nutshells, that 
sort of thing), is - especially if you look at the score - how plain 
and simple, and devoid of that kind of analytical complexity, the Tenth 
is.  Shostakovich's greatness lies in his breadth, his wide-scale 
vision - that's what makes a great symphonist great - and in his 
emotional effects.

For a specific, watch how the DSCH motto emerges out of similar phrases 
(inversions, transpositions, etc.) earlier on in the work.  It makes 
the final motto kind of inevitable, rather than sticking out like a 
sore thumb, as many composers' special themes are.

(If anyone reading this doesn't know what the DSCH motto is, I'll 
explain on request.)

I have one very fond memory of the Tenth, and it says a lot about what 
Shostakovich means to me.  I often take my Walkman and a few classical 
CDs with me on trips.  Not too long ago I was in Hawaii, staying on 
Waikiki.  It was pleasant enough in some respects, but the endless 
Hawaiian music, nice enough in small doses, began to get on my nerves.  
Especially the hotel elevators, which had a very small repertoire 
playing constantly at high volume.

So one afternoon I drew the shades in my hotel room, doused the lights, 
put on my earphones, and listened to Shostakovich's Tenth in the dark.  
The sense of cool, clear refreshment was overwhelming.

DSCH = Dmitri SCHostakowitsch, as it's spelled by the Germans.  There 
is a German convention that allows you to spell things using musical 
notes.  D S C H would be D E-flat C B.  Those four notes appear as an 
innocuous-sounding phrase in the second theme of the 3rd movement of 
the 10th.  The phrase eventually detaches itself, and engages in a 
quarrel with a five-note horn theme that keeps reappearing, like a 
stern warning, whenever poor DSCH tries to have a little fun.  At the 
end of the 3rd movement, DSCH is reduced to a terrified whisper in the 
piccolo.  It comes back halfway through the finale, literally with a 
vengeance, when it obliterates the "Stalin" theme from the scherzo with 
a fortissimo blast by the whole orchestra.  DSCH seems a bit shocked by 
this, and takes a while to recover its composure, but eventually it 
joins a jaunty march tune and preside triumphantly over the concluding 
measures.  

It all sounds rather tedious and didactic when you spell it out like 
this.  When you listen to the symphony, it knocks you right off your 
feet.

Shostakovich used the DSCH motto in several other works, most notably 
in the 8th quartet.

Ian MacDonald, the "hysterically pro-Volkov critic", has a web site called
"Music under Soviet rule" at http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/musov.html
if anyone wants to read some of his rather caustic commentaries...

Anyone who wants to hear the DSCH motif in situ, I'd recommend you 
start with the 8th Quartet, probably his greatest, which has it even 
more conspicuously all over the place than in the 10th Symphony.

I didn't think that badly of MacDonald, even with all his mickey-
mousing interpretations, after reading his book "The New Shostakovich" 
(which, if you take it with a grain of salt or two, is actually helpful 
to understanding the works, and which takes a judicious position 
towards Volkov).  But reading his above-mentioned website caused me to 
change my mind about him.

While we're naming favorite Shostakovich symphonies, I'll put in a plug 
for the Eleventh.  The second movement depicts the 1905 Winter Palace 
massacre (or the Soviet invasion of Hungary, or whatever exercise of 
intense evil that you prefer), and is the single most hair-raising 
piece of music I've ever heard.

I've heard this symphony twice in concert, once conducted by Semyon 
Bychkov, who has a distinctive way with this music; and a third time 
under unusual circumstances.  A pair of Russian musicologists concocted 
a score for Eisenstein's (silent) "Potemkin" by stitching together 
large chunks of Shostakovich, including most of the 10th & 11th 
symphonies, parts of the 5th & 8th and a few others.  The San Francisco 
Symphony played this live to the film a few years ago.  Highly 
effective, and I hope this score is, or will be, issued with a tape or 
DVD release of the film.

However, if I were going to pick a single movement as a sample of what 
a Shostakovich symphony sounds like, I'd still go with the 3rd movement 
of the Fifth.  Any other candidates?

I find it hard to listen to the third movememnt of the 5th.  I'll hear 
the first few notes, and my mind rapidly fills in the rest of the 
movement.  Then I have to sit there and actually listen to it, in slow 
motion.  Makes me impatient.  At a performance by Bernstein and the NY 
Phil in the late 1950s (soon after his celebrated first recording of it 
came out) I saw a guy a couple of rows up doze off during the 3rd mvt.  
When the finale started, he looked like someone waking up to a bombing 
raid.  

I always had a special affection for the middle movements of 
the "Leningrad" symphony.  They're both slowsoft-fastloud-slowsoft, but 
different enough to make a nice contrast, and very, very 
Shostakovichoid.  (What's the adjective, anyway?)  

[At that same performance, a friend of mine who brought binoculars with 
her (we had student balcony passes] swore that at the stupendous climax 
of the 1st mvt, when the whole orchestra seems to scream "NOOOOOOOOO!" 
fortississimo, Bernstein threw his head back and thrust out his tongue 
straight up in the air.  I didn't notice that, but I have to say I 
never saw him work up a sweat the way he did with that piece.]

One more Shostakovich 5th anecdote, as an example of the expressive 
power of his music:  When my kids were very young we'd sometimes play 
the "happy or sad?" game with music.  My seven-year-old son and I were 
driving somewhere and the Shostakovich 5th came on.  At the beginning 
of the march section in the 1st mvt, when the horns and then the 
trumpets play the march theme at the very bottom of their ranges, I 
said, "Hey, is this happy music or sad music?"  My son listened for a 
few seconds, then said: "It's *mean* music."

"Mean" music.  Oh, that's good.  I like that passage, but I'm not sure 
I could have come up with as precise a way to characterize it.

Anyone, no matter how little they know about Volkov or the other 
evidence, can participate in the Shostakovich interpretation game by 
one simple act.  Listen to the finale of the 5th.  Do you find it 
joyous, brutal, sarcastic, forced, something else, or any combination 
of the above?  That's what the whole controversy boils down to, really.

Before Volkov, the finale was considered an attempt at joyousness that 
doesn't quite come off: a flaw in an otherwise great work.  (And a 
believable flaw, as joyous finales in minor-key symphonies have always 
been problematic.  Beethoven worked on the "Ode to Joy" of his Ninth 
for thirty years, and many people still don't think it measures up to 
the rest of the work.  Early audiences really rolled their eyes at the 
finale of Brahms's First.  And Tchaikovsky, in his Pathetique, and 
Mahler, in several works, worked themselves into contortions to avoid 
writing attempted joyous finales.)

But Volkov's Shostakovich says, "Precisely!  It's the enforced 
joyousness of a terrorized people: it's supposed to not quite come 
off."  A startling reinterpretation when first proposed, and still in 
ways difficult to wrap one's mind around.

Just purchased: Maxim S. conducts his father's 6th, Prague Symphony 
Orch.,, on Supraphon, along with suites from "The Golden Age" 
and "Katerina Izmaylova", neither of which I had.  So far I've listened 
to the 6th.  The later movements are OK, but the first is too damned 
slow and doesn't hold together.

I'm obviously in love with the 5th, having played 2 movements (1st & 
4th) starting in high school, and many years beyond, and knowing the 
entire symphony from recordings.  While the finale is great, and fun to 
play (challenging, but what the heck?! :-), I truly admire the 1st 
movement, in terms of multiple treatments of the theme.  Yes, there are 
quite nasty, jackboot overtones to the aforementioned section of the 
horns and then trumpets, which is accompanied, don't forget, by low 
piano rythmn (1 2& 3 4& etc.) to darken the mood further.  I could go 
on forever on that movement.

Another favorite work of DS for me is Festive Overture.  

As far as IS's comment to DS about moving on from Mahler, it reminds me 
acutely of me showing one of my scores to the late Prof. Bill Albright 
at UM in a composition class, to be told "we don't need another 
Mozart".  I.e. traditional, tonal music has all been done, you must 
find new ways to express yourself musically.  Of course this is a new 
point of view that would make any small town boy resist.  And it's a 
very academic position on things.  But it was all for the better:  
Having to actually write "contemporary" music gave me an important 
appreciation for other musical forms, even if I don't choose to listen 
to them often or write that way.  But it's a hoot that IS's Rite of 
Spring is considered "contemporary" to many people, even though it was 
written in 1913.  But I digress.

I have to admit that my favorite composers are Russian:  Tchaikovsky, 
Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky, Borodin, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, others.

Re "we don't need another Mozart."  Actually, in one sense, we've had 
several more Mozarts.  Mendelssohn, for one, was a Mozart: he had 
Mozart's level of fluent genius, and there's a somewhat Mozartian air 
to his music.

But I'm sure that's not what was meant.  We don't need a carbon copy of 
Mozart, to be sure, but that's because a carbon copy - of anyone - 
wouldn't be any good.  It's not the same as saying tonal music has "all 
been done" - that's nonsense.

First, tonal music thrived for a century beyond Mozart, and in fact it 
continued to thrive throughout the 20th century despite the attempts of 
certain crusty academics to pretend it didn't.  See Shostakovich, for 
one example among many.

Second, Arnold Schoenberg himself said that there's plenty of great 
music yet to be written in C Major.

Third, if we don't need another Mozart, we most certainly don't need 
another Anton Webern, and yet little mechanical Weberns is exactly what 
the music schools were trying to churn out for a while there.

Write what you want.  Be as daring, or as conservative, as fits _your_ 
soul.  Don't let anyone tell you something is obsolete.  If people want 
to write it, and listen to it, nothing is obsolete.

PS: if people still consider "Rite of Spring" to be ultra-modern, maybe 
that has something to do with the music as well as the audience?  The 
notion that the unpopularity of some modern music (not that Stravinsky 
is unpopular) was solely the result of some mysterious balking by the 
collective audiences of the world doesn't hold up.

Isn't most popular music tonal?

Re: #21: Yes, by far.  In fact, it might be hard to find something popular
that isn't tonal.  Rite of Spring has much that is "tonal" to it, but also
much that is foreign to most listeners.

Re: #19: Well, if you're in a composition class at UM, and want a good grade
(and more importantly, want to learn something new), you better not write
particularly conservative or tonal!  :-)

I read in a book on twentieth century music that there were two types of
composers - the ones who wrote original creative music that were supported
by teaching salaries and fellowships and the one that wrote tonal music that
were supported by the proceeds from their music.  The book is written by a
composer (a 20th century composer).  I suspect tonal music is more common in
the second category.

Could be.  Some of the most popular composers took occasional teaching 
jobs -- Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, e.g. -- but probably not because 
they needed the money.  Certainly not in Copland's case.  There was a 
lot of money to be made in listenable concert music.  If Samuel Barber 
had stopped composing altogether after writing the Adagio for Strings, 
he still would've been set for life.  Ditto Roy Harris and his 3rd 
symphony.  I don't think Vaughan Williams had a teaching career.  Did 
Benjamin Britten teach?  Stravinsky never held down a teaching job 
apart from a few Harvard lectures, even after he "converted" to 
serialism, despite the fact that he never made much money on The 
Firebird, Petrouchka and Le Sacre (due to lack of copyright agreements 
with the Soviets).

The serialist/aleatory/stochastic/noise crowd were mostly academics in 
this country, and their audience was and is very limited.  It got so 
bad that Milton Babbitt (who taught at Columbia University, I think) 
felt compelled to write a sour-grapish article entitled "Who Cares if 
You Listen?"  A few serialst apologists like Alfred Rosen have tried to 
make the case that serialist music does attract large audiences, but 
they're just whistling in the dark.  No orchestra will ever survive 
programming such music, because almost everyone finds it unlistenable.  
One exception that I know of is the American composer Elliott Carter, 
whose modernist credentials couldn't be more impressive, and who was 
able to live on a family fortune rather than teach.  But even his 
music, for all its difficulties, has a visceral dramatic quality that 
you don't often hear in the academic composers.  It's like serialism 
tamed, or serialism pressed into emotional duty.

Anyway, the path Shostakovich took was the one his temperament led him 
down.  He always seemed to me to be one of the most honest and direct 
of all composers.

resp: 22 - That's about what I thought.  They're less interested in 
teaching composition than in enforcing a particular style.  Part of the 
rhetoric is that tonality is old and serialism is new.  After 50 years 
of enforced serialism in the academy, and some 90 years after 
Schoenberg worked out the system, there's nothing new about serialism.

resp: 23 - This book sounds as if it's promoting a false dichotomy, 
between tonality and creativity.  Plenty of tonal music is highly 
creative, plenty of non-tonal music is completely devoid of 
imagination.  (In fact, apply the principles of serialism to all 
elements of music, as some composers do, and you can write works 
without any thinking in them at all.)

I'm not talking about dumbing-down and writing contentless pseudo-
Hollywood sludge here, but there is nothing wrong with writing music 
that some people want to listen to.  If no audiences are responding to 
your music, you have in fact failed to communicate.  (Serialists used 
to say they were writing for the future, but the millennium - long past 
their expected utopia date - has arrived, and they're less listened to 
than ever before.)  In the words of Tom Lehrer, "If you can't 
communicate, the very least you can do is shut up."

A couple of thoughts:

1) Contemporary ("20th century") music is not limited to "serial" ("12-tone")
style, by any means.

2) If a contemporary (atonal) style is the way you feel you want to express
some/all of your musical self, then all means do so, whether or not anyone
else appreciates your music or listens to it.  All I ask is that you give your
best effort to create high quality atonal music - atonal doesn't mean you can
simply do anything you want to, and it's automatically "good".  Also, just
because *you* choose to express yourself atonally, do not scoff at others who
wish to try to express themselves tonally, even if you smugly believe that
everything has already been done in the tonal arena.

Kevin, while your point no. 1 should be evident to anyone with a 
cursory knowledge of 20th century music, you might be surprised - or 
you might not - at how fiercely was being denied for a while, at least 
for post-WW2 work.  Those who persisted in writing non-serial music 
were dismissed as relics of a previous time who refused to acknowledge 
that the calendar had changed - as if it were the calendar that 
dictated the style of music - and refused "to acknowledge the necessity 
of writing serial music" (that's my best memory of an actual quote 
from, IIRC, Pierre Boulez).  Or they were ignored altogether.  This 
totalitarian attitude scared even Stravinsky and Copland into writing 
serial music, anxious to be "with it" and fearful that they'd be 
marginalized as clueless old coots.

Later there was a period when the music scene was pictured as a battle 
between the Webernian strict serialists and the Cagean anarchists, and 
anybody else - even free serialists like Elliott Carter - were depicted 
as likely to get caught in the crossfire.  Sort of like the fate of 
conventional liberals and conservatives in the 30s, when some people 
tried to force everyone to choose up sides: fascists or communists.

Those days are long since over, but they were pretty intense for a 
while there.  Look at an average academic modern-music history textbook 
from the 1970s and see who and what it discusses for post-1945 
composers.  Your point no. 2 is a direct rebuttal at these people.

I read somewhere that most composers felt obligated to base their music on
the current or immediately preceding style so that they would be accepted.

Ah, but accepted by whom?

I believe Polonius said it best:  To thine own self be true.  Of course, peer
pressure can be fierce and fearsome...

Polonius was a pompous old bore.

Re 29 - presumably by other composers following the same logic.  This sort
of logic also coerces owners of houses to only remodel them in a style that
other people are remodeling in, because it must be what everyone else wants.
We have friends who have been living with dark blue wallpaper because if they
changed it their resale value might go down.  They prefer white.

Shosty has done some other pieces ("arrangements", if you must) based on
Russian folk songs or dances.  I've played the band arrangements.  Fun to
play, great to listen to.

Would someone have a recommendation for a CD of Shosty's (love that)
10th?

I have Karajan.  It's okay, but I liked my old Ormandy/Philadelphia LP 
better.

Re 32 and earlier:
Of course, many composers (I'll cite Barber and Rachmaninoff as examples) have
been harshly criticized for not being "contemporary" enough and not following
current stylistic trends, but their music is so appreciated now (by most
people) that we're glad that they were bold enough to just write what felt
right for them and not what was bold and modern.  Thank goodness for that!

And thus we see those once accused of the greatest cowardice being 
acknowledged as the most courageous, for the courage of being willing 
to stand there and withstand being called cowards.

I'm not sure it much matters one way or the other.  Would you rather listen
to bad music from a brave composer, or good music from a coward?

No, come to think of it, that isn't a rhetorical question after all.  I'd like
to hear some answers to it.

Things like moral character, bravery, kindness and compassion don't 
seem related to musical ability.  Would Beethoven have been a better 
composer if he hadn't been an antisemite?  Somebody once remarked that 
most of Stravinsky's music sounds as if it had been written by "a 
bitter little man," which in fact is what he was.  But is it worse 
music for that?

This courage vs. conforming thing is suspect.  In response to an 
interviewer's question about his old-fashioned style, Barber once 
said, "I keep doing, as they say, my thing.  I believe this takes a 
certain courage."  That sounds very noble, but I wonder if Barber 
could've done anything other than "his thing" even if he wanted.  I 
don't think he knew how to do anything else.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss