Biography
Dmitry Shostakovich stands among the foremost Russian composers of the last century, his fifteen symphonies and fifteen quartets counting as supreme achievements within those longstanding forms. His language moved from the sharp wit and exploratory daring of an opening phase, captured in the operas The Nose and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, through the inward sorrow and patriotic intensity of a middle period represented by the Symphonies No. 5 and No. 7, "Leningrad," and onward to the unyielding grimness of his closing years, shown most clearly in the Symphony No. 14 and Quartet No. 15. Early works bore the clear stamp of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, above all in the brilliant and widely hailed First Symphony. Few could match his capacity for expressing profound melancholy and raw anguish, a quality that surfaces repeatedly in his symphonies, concertos, and quartets. Solomon Volkov, in the disputed Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, reads the composer’s surface bombast as pointed mockery of Soviet pomposity, citing in particular the “forced rejoicing” that closes the Fifth Symphony. Recurrent features of his idiom are terse, repeated melodic or rhythmic cells, figures built on one or two pitches or intervals, and writing for strings that ranges from somber to frantic.
Shostakovich entered the world in St. Petersburg in 1906 and completed his studies at the Petrograd Conservatory. The biting tone of the original Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk angered Stalin, prompting official censure in the Soviet press. Worried about arrest, he withdrew the already rehearsed Fourth Symphony; its successor, the Fifth Symphony (1937), appeared with the subtitle “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.” More resourceful than most commentators have allowed, the score satisfied both the conservative demands of party censors and the expectations of discriminating listeners abroad.
The German invasion of Russia in 1941 moved the composer to write the Seventh Symphony, subtitled “Leningrad.” Its epic-heroic sweep prompted Toscanini, Koussevitzky, and Stokowski to compete for the first Western Hemisphere performance; the score had to be microfilmed, flown to Teheran, driven to Cairo, and flown onward. The work enjoyed immediate worldwide success before slipping into relative neglect, yet for a time Shostakovich became an international celebrity whose likeness appeared on the cover of Time.
Government disapproval returned in 1948 when the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a notorious decree that branded Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other leading composers with “formalist perversions.” For several years he produced chiefly music that glorified Soviet existence or history. Although artistic controls relaxed after Stalin’s death, Shostakovich continued to temper his modernist impulses until the Thirteenth Symphony, “Babi Yar,” a 1962 score drawn from poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Its opening movement, which addressed Russian oppression of the Jews, provoked intense controversy.
In 1966 Shostakovich completed his Second Cello Concerto, a work that surpasses his already substantial First yet received comparatively little attention from performers or audiences. That same year he was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. He kept composing, his textures growing leaner and his outlook darker as the subject of death moved to the foreground. The Fourteenth Symphony (1969), essentially a cycle of songs on texts by Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rilke, stands as a death-haunted score of marked dissonance that pays scant heed to the Socialist Realism the state still required. Shostakovich died on August 9, 1975.
Shostakovich entered the world in St. Petersburg in 1906 and completed his studies at the Petrograd Conservatory. The biting tone of the original Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk angered Stalin, prompting official censure in the Soviet press. Worried about arrest, he withdrew the already rehearsed Fourth Symphony; its successor, the Fifth Symphony (1937), appeared with the subtitle “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.” More resourceful than most commentators have allowed, the score satisfied both the conservative demands of party censors and the expectations of discriminating listeners abroad.
The German invasion of Russia in 1941 moved the composer to write the Seventh Symphony, subtitled “Leningrad.” Its epic-heroic sweep prompted Toscanini, Koussevitzky, and Stokowski to compete for the first Western Hemisphere performance; the score had to be microfilmed, flown to Teheran, driven to Cairo, and flown onward. The work enjoyed immediate worldwide success before slipping into relative neglect, yet for a time Shostakovich became an international celebrity whose likeness appeared on the cover of Time.
Government disapproval returned in 1948 when the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a notorious decree that branded Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and other leading composers with “formalist perversions.” For several years he produced chiefly music that glorified Soviet existence or history. Although artistic controls relaxed after Stalin’s death, Shostakovich continued to temper his modernist impulses until the Thirteenth Symphony, “Babi Yar,” a 1962 score drawn from poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Its opening movement, which addressed Russian oppression of the Jews, provoked intense controversy.
In 1966 Shostakovich completed his Second Cello Concerto, a work that surpasses his already substantial First yet received comparatively little attention from performers or audiences. That same year he was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. He kept composing, his textures growing leaner and his outlook darker as the subject of death moved to the foreground. The Fourteenth Symphony (1969), essentially a cycle of songs on texts by Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rilke, stands as a death-haunted score of marked dissonance that pays scant heed to the Socialist Realism the state still required. Shostakovich died on August 9, 1975.
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