DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Part 2 From 1936 to 1953

At the end of Part 1 we had reached Shostakovichs fall from grace and his
reply to just criticism in the form of his fifth symphony. The year was 1936 and
he was 30 years old. Around the world music was changing and so was the
mood thereof. Stravinsky was now a French citizen but not to his chagrin a
member of the Acadmie Franaise. He remained the neo-classicist par
excellence. Schoenberg was enlightened enough to have left Austria in 1934
and by 1936 had a teaching post in California earning over $5,000 dollars a
year; Aaron Copland was struggling on but somewhat less, having just written
El Salon Mexico. In England, Vaughan Williams had stunned everyone with his
vitriolic opening to his fourth symphony; William Walton had at last completed
his first symphony and followed it up with Crown Imperial in 1936 written for
the never to be coronation of Edward VIII but used for that of George VI
instead. In 1936 Francis Poulenc visited the monastery of Rocamadour, and,
converted back to Catholicism, wrote his Litanies la Virge Noire. Les Six
were no longer just the naughty boys and girl and a serious mood was taking
over. In Nazi Germany, composers were being weeded out if they possessed a
drip of Jewish blood. Paul Hindemith had fallen out of favour after Josef
Goebbels had publicly denounced him as an "atonal noisemaker. However
his answer to just criticism was by 1936 to curry favour and write more tonal
music. Hindemith settled in Switzerland in 1938 because his wife was Jewish.
Carl Orff, despite his grandfather being Jewish, managed to elude the system.
His music, especially the Carmina Burana written in 1937, became an exemplar
for the German authorities, another unfair example of musical reputations
being tarnished by a composers political leanings or of those by whom he
was engaged.
In the Soviet Union 1936 saw not only the Soviet Artists Reply to Just
Criticism but also the permanent return to Russia of Prokofiev who since 1917
had been living in the USA and then in France. It was the big event and
political catch of the year. Prokofiev had been visiting the Soviet Union since
1932 and his decision to go home was a great triumph for Soviet propaganda,
a Faustian deal if ever there was one, not that Prokofiev realized that in 1936,
the year of Peter and The Wolf. Prokofiev, who had been just been just as
modernist as Shostakovich had the knack of writing instantly appealable
music like Lieutenant Kij. Socialist realism would not have presented him
with any problem , not to begin with at any rate.
So what exactly was this Socialist Realism that I go banging on about, you
may ask? The edicts promulgating Socialist Realism in music came into being
in 1934, the year that Shostakovich was writing Lady Macbeth. Hence, he was
the first prominent composer to come into collision with its credo which is
why his name crops up all the time in most articles written on the subject. It
was at first made applicable just to writing and painting in 1932. The Bolshevik
party under Lenin had considered the arts as having a complementary role to
the aims of the newly founded state. Under Stalin there arose a movement for
socialism in one country , as opposed to Trotskys permanent revolution.
Stalins philosophy was for the state to embrace all including the arts. The
pen should not be mightier than the sword and had to be controlled. The like
with the paint brush also. These could transmit unwanted propaganda and
thoughts. It was Maxim Gorky who proposed socialist realism for regulation in
those disciplines. Gone would be the modernists and the surrealists, not
because they were modern or surreal, but because their principles were
founded by bourgeois artists before the revolution. Culture would be provided
by the state itself; it would be to depict life and not to escape from it. The
realism would be the life the proletariat would aspire to. This posed an
immediate dichotomy as the realism was that of a hoped-for future and not the
misery that was. The future would always be viewed as happy and thus art
had to depict lifes optimism. This was ultimately to be procured by the Party
which therefore needed to be shown in the best light. I liken its projected
imagery to those horrid television adverts we get now showing the eternal
fixed smiling post-Brexit family, dog and all, trampolining on a double bed but
warning one that the mattress should need changing every eight years.
In 1934 the Union of Soviet Composers was founded and strict criteria
imposed for composers who were all state employees coming under the
Commissariat of Education through whom all culture was channelled. It
became clear to the party command that the modernism which pertained to art
and writing had its counterparts in music. Opera was a half way house
containing elements of both media. In an article from 1934 the venerable
English journal, Music Times, seemed excited by this and spelt out its
priorities. The aim was to produce art readily understandable to the public, to
follow the state line; to demonstrate the heroism of the people and to ensure
optimism in their works. Nationalism by itself belonged to the previous
century.
There was a new buzz word, Formalism. Muddle Instead of Music was
strewn with critical references to it. But what did formalism actually mean?
Surely anything written according to a template, sonata form for instance,
might be described as formalism in which case the mighty Beethoven would
have been seen as the supreme formalist of all time. But no. Formalism seems
to have been attributed to any music which was unfamiliar to the audiences
and unacceptable to the masses in their factories and collective farms. So
now, in the 1930s, advanced music which broke new ground was to be
condemned as unacceptable. It was a no win situation. Formalism could be
defined quite simply as music the powers that be did not approve and best to
be avoided. The problem for the thirty year old Dmitri Shostakovich was not
how to bend his talents to the new diktats but how to combine his individual
genius with the required box ticking demanded. He tried to work round it
whilst Prokofiev, when his turn came, was downright contemptuous.
1936 was not only the year of The Soviet Artists Reply. It also marked the
intensification of the Great Purge lasting through to 1938. The purge was
Stalins means to re-enforce his supreme power and eliminate all opposition.
His authority extended to all spheres, not just political opposition, but to all
who did not toe the party line in their own particular sphere. Opponents
disappeared; writers disappeared, composers disappeared. In political circles
nearly all the old guard from Lenins time, like Kirov, a staunch Stalinist, were
removed and summarily executed. Stalins top generals were seen by him to
pose a threat and were arrested and shot, creating a monstrous hole to the
countrys military defences when it came to the Hitler invasion in 1941. There
was no hiding place for anyone. Trotsky was the arch enemy living in Mexico
and was killed by his trusted disciple driving an ice pick into his brain. I feel
particularly bad about that as I had an innocuous dog named Trotsky (as well
as a cat called Mao). Happily his end was less violent than that of his name
sake. Instead of Trotskys violent Mexit, my Trotsky ended with a very soft
Brexit administered by the vet in Lee High Road.
One can read all manner of accounts of how Shostakovich felt and reacted to
what was going on but actual first hand accounts by him are rare. Much of
what is attributed to him is spurious, derived from unreliable sources and as to
which there can be no certainty. Generally it is accepted that Shostakovich
lived in a state of terror awaiting the knock on the door for him such as
happened to his friend, the theatre producer, Meyerhold. He could not have
been unaware of friends and neighbours disappearing without anyone
knowing where to, what for, whether they were alive or not. Pravda did not
publish a Disappeared and Dispatched column. Yet people knew. Trials and
extracted confessions of being a supporter of Trotsky did get front page news.
No-one has been able to establish the total numbers for loss of life brought
about by the terror. I have read that about 500,000 were executed in 1937-39
and 3 million at that time were sent to labour camps, a good many of whom
were never to return. These figures seem plucked out of the air. What I find
odd, as Orwell described in Animal Farm, is that we put up with our
governments, support them through thick and thin and remain perversely
patriotic in the belief that all will work out well in the end. The Russian people
werent stupid. They were helpless in the face of an autocracy and patriotic at
the same time. That is how I imagine Shostakovich would have viewed it in
1936. He probably felt about Mr Stalin then somewhat like I feel about Mr
Trump right now. All I lack is a crystal ball.
One observation that I have read suggests that Shostakovich had curtailed his
output in the years from 1936 to the invasion in 1941. Not so. Having
successfully won redemption with his 5th symphony, his best route going
forward seems to have been to avoid large works which, as a matter of course,
underwent close scrutiny from the Composers Union. One needs to
appreciate also that the Soviet composer did not live off royalties and private
commissions but was a state employee with income dependent on services
required. When it came to composition those works had to pass muster. A
composer was not always in a position to pick and choose. He came under the
aegis of the Commissariat for Education. So it was in 1937 that Shostakovich,
now 30, was appointed a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. This would
have doubtless taken up a great deal of his time. He also returned to writing
film scores and there is an extraordinary amount that he wrote for the cinema
in those five years alone.
The Return of Maxim; Volochayev Days; The Vyborg Side; Friends; The
Great Citizen, first part; The Man with a Gun; The Great Citizen, second
part; The Silly Little Mouse ; The Adventures of Korzinkina,
This was not just bread and butter work for a journeyman composer.
Shostakovich was a master of film music. Stalin, who in addition to being the
great leader, the great teacher; the great philosopher you name it and he was
the great one turned out to be the great film buff. He enjoyed watching films
more than he liked opera, and he was particularly appreciative of DSs
background music. From the Shostakovich perspective, he had no need to
worry about passing the acid test for socialist realism when it came to writing
film music. It was sufficient he made a match between music and screenplay.
Film scores kept him both busy as did an operetta. He also devoted quite a bit
of 1939 to his own orchestration of Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky. Thus he
was gainfully employed whilst keeping his head down, his nose clean and
himself out of trouble
The one symphony during the period was Number six in 1939. It was originally
intended for the twentieth anniversary of the revolution and also a
commemoration of Lenin. Maybe it was just as well he did not push it as Stalin
had developed, as we have seen, a hobby of disposing of Lenin supporters.
On the whole Shostakovich was not a man to repeat himself, and each new
symphony was built on a novel architecture. Cast in three movements its
construction seems unbalanced compared with No 5. The sixth is just over
half an hour in length. The first movement is tragic in mood, very slow and
long, followed by two very short fast movements. The finale, which has already
been demonstrated by Matthew, is Shostakovich at his most boisterous,
jocular and all the fun of the fair. We know he was keen on dance music and of
football. To that might be added the circus.
It was at this time that Shostakovich began to switch his attention to chamber
music. Two works are of significance, the first in his cycle of fifteen string
quartets and his only piano quintet. It was at home in 1938 when he first
fiddled with the idea of a string quartet, never an easy medium to write for.
Perhaps he was just trying it out for size but he finished up with a work, just
fifteen minutes long, which he described as spring like. His trusted friends
from the Glazunov Quartet came to the flat to play in private which relieved
him from submitting it for scrutiny. It would not be until a further five years
had passed before he would write a second quartet which could be said to be
the real beginning of the cycle. Chamber music allowed him to remain in his
own private world, unanswerable to anyone. In contrast to Beethoven,
normally his role model, Shostakovich kept it simple, at least to begin with, no
hint of the dissonances of the earlier "enfant terrible". Absent too are those
passages which push the music to its limits, let alone beyond them.
Shostakovichs favourite ensemble, The Beethoven Quartet, gave the first
Moscow performance of the quartet and were so impressed that in 1940 they
sought from him a piano quintet. By this time the infamous Molotov/
Ribbentrop pact had already been signed and Germany were suddenly the the
good boys. This had impacted less on Shostakovich than it had on Prokofiev
whose cantata, Alexander Nevsky, had to be hurriedly withdrawn as did the
Eisenstein film for which it was written because of its anti-Teutonic posture.
The Shostakovich quintet was a great success and led to him being awarded a
Stalin prize the following year. He was definitely back in from the cold.for the
time being. The piano quintet is in five movements and can be described as
neo-baroque, a tag not associated generally with Shostakovich. Its first two
movements are a prelude and fugue. The writing is lean often without
harmonic accompaniment. At one time it was regarded as the most popular
work in the Shostakovich charts.
Stalins dalliance with Hitler did not last. Operation Barbarossa, the German
invasion of the USSR, was unleased on 22 June 1941. By September the city of
Leningrad where Shostakovich was living, teaching and composing came
under siege. It commenced on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the
city was severed. Although the Russians managed to open a narrow land
corridor to the city in January 1943, the siege was only lifted a year later in
1944, 872 days after it began. Two prominent citizens stood out. Andrei
Zhdanov had succeeded Kirov as governor of Leningrad. This was the self-
same Zhdanov who had introduced socialist realism. This was now the man
who rallied the citizens in defence. The other was Dimitri Shostakovich who
volunteered for service but whose myopia ruled him out. It did not however
prevent him from being a volunteer fireman in a city made victim to constant
bombing. He would also rally the defence and the spirits of the citizenry in a
unique way. He had set out on his symphony no 7 which became named the
Leningrad. It is in four movements and seen as the Leningrad version of the
Blitz spirit, Leningrad can take it. What gave it its renown were the conditions
under which it was written, the gathering together of the players and its
broadcast by loudspeakers inflicted on the blockaders, the smuggling out of a
photostat of the score by plane to the west. It was the Russian defiance to the
siege, the Trojan response after being threatened with death by starvation. It
is a long symphony which is inspired by the times but the question remains as
to whether indeed it is a programme symphony. It is particularly notorious for
its long repetitive section in the first movement, generally referred to as the
invasion theme. This is first stated on pizzicato strings accompanied by a
snare drum which grows and grows and grows (12 times if I am not mistaken)
until the whole orchestra is banging and crashing away. If you can imagine
Ravels bolero being part of just one movement in the middle of a first
movement of a symphony it may give you some idea. This theme almost
obliterates recall of some other wonderful moments. In particular the second
subject presents us with a reminiscence of the old Petrograd, as idyllic as The
Banks of Green Willow. After the invasion theme comes a requiem, but no
chorus. It has been likened to Stravinskys Symphony of Psalms. A later
interpretation on offer is that the invasion theme was a reference not to
Germany but to Stalins oppression. As it happens the work was likely to have
begun before the siege in which case it would not have been conceived
originally as an invasion theme. And what does it matter anyway? Having
written it there werent the available musicians around to play it and a make do
collective orchestra was gathered from the troops and anyone else capable of
having a go at an instrument. The first performance played in Leningrad by
these amateurs was blared out deafeningly through loud speakers to the
Germans laying siege to the city. Word got out. The score was microcopied
and, cloak and dagger, flew the gauntlet (excuse my mixed metaphor) via
Tehran to London to reach Sir Henry Wood whose beloved Queens Hall,
original home of the Proms, had been bombed. So it was that the Leningrad
symphony had its first performance in the West at the Royal Albert Hall. It was
sent on to the USA where Toscanini gave its first American performance a
couple of weeks later in August 1942, with 67 further performances being
played by different orchestras under different conductors in different
American cities. This was a message of mutual solidarity with our new Ruskie
friends. It made Joe Stalin, with his moustache like a badger shaving brush,
benign avuncular and our Great Friend. It also internationalized the name of
Shostakovich well beyond the boundaries of just classical music
Shostakovich had now become hot property in the Soviet war effort and before
he had started the last movement he was moved out of Leningrad to the
comparative safety of Kuybyshev where he finished the Leningrad and was
soon to start on his eighth symphony. This is cast in five movements, an hour
long, but still only three quarters the length of the Leningrad. By this time the
German forces had been held and the journalists sought to baptise the
symphony as the Stalingrad as a counterweight to that of the Leningrad. The
name however did not stick which is no surprise considering it only received
two performances before being censored out. If the Soviet authorities had
expected a triumphant expression of how the Great Patriotic War was going,
Shostakovich was not in the same mood to deliver. Based in a quiet corner of
the country, he was able to dwell on the tragedy of the war and its harrowing
effect on the population. The calm sadness which opens the work builds to a
most painful, ear-splitting protest. Unusually this symphony contains two
scherzos, both full of menace in their different ways. The second of these is
written to a motor rhythm accompaniment, la Prokofiev, at the end of which
arrives a shattering orchestral sound which continues uninterrupted into the
fourth movement. Shostakovich had overreached himself this time. The work
disappointed and he was not going to be allowed to get away with it. It did not
get its exit visa until the early sixties when the Leningrad Philharmonic came
to Paris and London under their long time conductor Evgeny Mravinsky and
gave its first UK performance at the Festival Hall. I happened to be there
sitting behind the double basses and sideways on to the brass. Mravinsky had
been their principal conductor from 1935, a position he held till his death in
1985. He had championed the music of Shostakovich and conducted the first
performances of several works including the eighth which was dedicated to
him. Like many international conductors then in the US (Toscanini, Szell,
Reiner) Mravinsky was an absolute martinet. To watch him, he looked as grim
as Stalingrad. I have an everlasting memory of the shatter at the end of that
second scherzo. Espying him through all the din and the flurry of bows,
Mravinsky seemed as if to go into levitation with his face depicting the same
ghastly terror as the music. When the work ended, Shostakovich himself was
led on stage, in total contrast a meek, shaking man who seemed almost too
embarrassed as he clapped back to acknowledge the applause.
In 1944 Solertinsky died and Shostakovich, returning to the safety of chamber
music, paid tribute to the memory of his great friend with a second piano trio.
Its last movement contained a Jewish song, the first of many that
Shostakovich would later write.
At long last, came the end of the war. The flags could come out and great
expectations for a ninth symphony. Beethoven had set the marker for all
ninths to follow and Shostakovich had let it be known first that he was working
on a great symphony and then, to whet the appetite, with a chorus to celebrate
the event. Unfortunately he was unable to bring himself to be either
triumphant or tragic. Instead he ducked out with an amusing light weight good
humoured short five movement diversion .and no chorus. For the
professional ear, it was a novel five movement neo-classical work, bursting
with humour, starting with what sounds like a penny whistle punctuated by the
trombonist who seems to poke his tongue out and only able to play the same
two notes. There are some but few serious moments which follow but they are
lightened up by a style that is the nearest that Shostakovich ever got to
Prokofievs classical symphony. Unfortunately, Stalin had been expecting
something quite different but Shostakovich had not tipped off anyone that he
had had a change of plan. As a work it is as good an example as you may find
of socialist realism but, in the light of a ninth symphony and following the
great victory, Circumstance dictated Pomp from the virtual Master of the
Kings Musick.
During the war Soviet composers might have thought the bad old days of the
thirties were well and truly over. They were all in for a shock. Stalin had had
his time cut out in running a war to think about it. Now he and Zhdanov could
pick up again where they had left off before. First came in 1946 the turn of the
writers and in 1948 the musicians were to meet with a blast of terror from
Zhdanov. The leading accused composers, including Shostakovich, Prokofiev,
Khachaturian and Myaskovsky were lined up, made to confess the errors of
their ways and to make public apologies in front of the committee of the
Composers Union. The Zhdanov doctrine was aimed to root out all American
influence and summed up by the one sentence, The only conflict that is
possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best". The world
was split into two, namely, the imperialistic led by the United States and the
democratic led by the Soviet Union. Many of Shostakovich's works got
banned, and family privileges withdrawn. He himself lost his teaching position
and returned again to writing a new wave of film scores. It is also said that
each night he waited for his arrest outside on the landing by the lift, in order
that his family wouldn't be disturbed. The NKDV did not come but
Shostakovich vowed to himself not to write another big symphony whilst
Stalin lived. It is thought however that much of what did appear after Stalins
death in 1953 might well have been written earlier and put in the storage
drawer. One of these was undoubtedly his first violin concerto which he wrote
for David Oistrakh at the time of the 1948 decree but which was not performed
till 1955. Probably, the tenth symphony was in the making well before its
premiere in 1953
1948 turned out also to be the Year of Come-Uppance for Andre Zhdanov. He
had been in the running as Stalins likely successor but after some political
back stabbing by Malenkov and Beria, Zhdanov was to suffer a heart attack,
later reported as a contrived misdiagnosis by Jewish doctors. Still, I do not
suppose Shostakovich lost any sleep that night on his landing. If he did he
would have had a smile on his face. It was at this same time that Shostakovich
wrote a song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, first with piano and then with
orchestral accompaniment. It beggars belief that he should contemplate
composing to Jewish poetry amid the Zhdanov onslaught and during a wave
of Soviet anti-Semitism which included the execution of the eight doctors
accused of seeking to turn Crimea into a Jewish state. Many other
compositions by Shostakovich would later include Jewish themes. Apart from
the piano trio and first violin concerto these would include the first cello
concerto written for Rostropovich in 1959 and some of the quartets including
the anti-fascist eighth which he enjoined to his own DSCH motto. Most
famously there will be his 13th Symphony set to poems written by
Yevtushenko. Now one thing is certain. There wasnt a drop of Jewish blood
in Shostakovichs veins but he went out of his way to identify himself with the
Jewish people, recognizing that his own fate had something in common with
theirs. The most likely source for this interest would have come from his close
friendship with the Polish born Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (also
written as Moishe Vainberg)(1919-1996) whose story is so compelling as well
as horrendous that it deserves and will get from me a separate note to itself.
Although out of favour, Shostakovich had his uses and was still sent abroad
as a cultural envoy. One such trip was to Leipzig in 1950 for a music festival
marking the bicentennial of Bach's death when he sat on the judges panel of a
Bach Competition. One of the entrants in the competition was the 26-year-old
Tatiana Nikolayeva who played the Bach 48 preludes and fugues and won the
gold medal that year. Inspired by her playing, Shostakovich composed for her
his own cycle of 24 preludes and fugues. She played the pieces as they were
written. As I understand, she came to play them at his home and he played
away at hers. Another cultural visit was in 1951 to the USA where
Shostakovich was besieged by the press. Even though not exactly his
favourite he actually quite admired Stravinsky but, faced with the press, he
found himself required to express the party line on the subject. Stravinsky
was none too pleased and never had a soft spot for Shostakovich afterwards.
Despite the disappearance of Zhdanov this period of darkness continued
through until Stalins death on 5th March 1953, just a bare fifty minutes after
that of Prokofiev. It would be another five years after that before Shostakovich
and the other band of brother composers were to be rehabilitated and restored
to favour.
Shostakovich had kept his promise to himself. No-one knew what might
happen next but Shostakovich no longer had anything to fear from the Great
Adversary. There was a brighter prospect ahead. In Britain Winston Churchill
was back as prime minister and Elizabeth II awaiting her coronation. In
America, Eisenhower had just been inaugurated for his first term. In France de
Gaulle was in hibernation and the fourth Republic had a new prime minister,
its thirteenth out of twenty two in fourteen years. In the Soviet Union, Georgy
Malenkov, now virtually forgotten, succeeded Stalin before disappearing into
nowhere - Khazakstan actually - two years later, and the unknown Nikita
Kruschev was lurking in the wings.
Most of all however, Dimitri Shostakovich was free to write his tenth
symphony.