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Text of the page (random words):
y he enjoyed doing and had a knack for no doubt going back to his teenaged days playing a piano in a silent movie house which we think seem so at odds with his more serious works like those massive symphonies and brooding intensely personal chamber works like the string quartets and the justly famous piano quintet but about the 7th symphony he was practically loquacious much of this had to do with the propaganda value of the piece the government trotting out this shy little man to capitalize on the moment even so much as creating a photo op where they posed him in the official regalia of a fireman protecting the roof of the leningrad conservatory where he taught a photo made famous in the west for being used on the cover of time magazine see the header photo above it also depended on whom the composer was talking to he often said contradictory things statements that sounded ironical others private and confidential was he telling a would be biographer these at the end of his life to clarify his legacy in a more forgiving age or was he being controversial because who could prove this statement s veracity against that one s sometimes he seemed to enjoy being a contrarian at other times his nerves got the better of him the day of the new symphony s premiere a family friend stopped by the shostakoviches and found the composer in a highly nervous state pale and clenching his fists his wife explained he was always like this on the day of a first performance he gets terribly wrought up he is frightened it will be a flop later shostakovich told her that often before a premiere he felt physically ill to the point of nausea as if conditioned by the political trauma of the stalinist purges in the 30s which would recur only six years later in another official period of political disgrace this nervousness verged on panic i would sign anything he d told a friend regarding some of the statements released in his name by government bureaucrats even if they handed it to me upside down all i want is to be left alone sometime in 1942 having recently completed his 7th symphony and presumably before its official premiere in march shostakovich supplied these program notes my seventh symphony i began in besieged leningrad every day of the heroic defence of this great town was a new link in the sublime symphony of the fight carried on by our own people i hearkened to the life and saw the struggle of the russian people and tried to inculcate the pictures of their heroic deeds in my music the first part a symphonic allegro was inspired by the month of august in leningrad this would be between hitler s invasion in june and the start of siege the war burst into our peaceful life our people workers thinkers creators became warriors ordinary men and women became heroes the first part of the symphony has something tragic it includes a requiem it is full of grief for those who died the death of heroes on the field of battle however we are unconquerable in our great national war because ours is a righteous cause we know that hitler will be defeated and that our enemy will find his grave in russian earth therefore the general spirit of the first part is bright cheerful and life asserting i composed the second and third parts a scherzo and an adagio at a time when the dark clouds gathered over our country when every step of the retreating red army evoked a smarting and painful echo in our hearts but the soviet people knew that they were invincible the scherzo and adagio express the confidence in the near triumph of freedom justice and happiness the fourth part is to a certain extent a continuation of the first it is the finale of the symphony it too is composed in the form of a symphonic allegro and if the first part may be conditionally given the name of war the fourth part begins with the idea of the struggle for life and death the joint struggle of life and darkness grows into radiant exultation we are carrying on the offensive the fatherland is victorious my dream is to hear in the near future the production of this symphony in leningrad in my own native city which inspired me to create it i dedicate my dearest work of art to the heroic defenders of leningrad to the red army and to our victory quoted from boris schwarz s music and musical life in soviet russia 1917 1970 this was published in voks in 1942 and presumably written for them rather than for the premiere s audience schwarz calls it an inadequate english translation whose prose is artless at times naïve but somehow moving voks btw was the official ussr society for cultural relations with foreign countries so also keep in mind artless or not it is clearly meant to be propaganda whether this is entirely shostakovich s original statement how many repetitions of the word heroic were really necessary or not is unclear but shostakovich has been known on many occasions to sign off on whatever the party bureaucrats wanted him to say as other composers have done before him shostakovich intended to apply subtitles to each of the movements but then decided not to the first was to be war the second the scherzo reminiscence the third native expanse and the finale victory again keep in mind the premiere of the completed symphony took place during the darkest days of that first winter of the siege which i described in my previous post victory was by no means assured the future was by no means clear to be pessimistic would go against the policies official or otherwise of the government s approach to soviet art there is little more heroic than hope initially given the emotional baggage behind this music i wanted you to read about the background to the work what inspired it what was going on in the composer s life while he was writing it and what officially he had said about it after he d completed it it is impossible to avoid any of this and a good deal more i m leaving out so there you have it but there s one thing that s often overlooked in a purely emotional or aesthetic approach and that is the structure beneath the music that makes it work and which any conductor needs to understand to make sense out of the piece and this is true whether it s beethoven s 5th or mahler s 5th both by the way fate symphonies a composer comes up with various ideas melodies if you want to think of them that way which involve enough contrast to keep them separate and recognizable to the listener from late mozart on we usually think of them as say dramatic versus lyrical though fortunately we ve gotten beyond thinking of them as masculine versus feminine which was how i was first taught to differentiate them in the 1950s which can then be grouped in segments we label exposition where the basic material of the movement its themes its harmonic scheme are exposed development where this material is developed often in a fragmented and usually dramatic way so the conflict created by this contrast builds to a climax which then resolves to the recapitulation where this material returns much as it had been initially as a resolution of this build up of tension to create a sense of relief the key word being resolution in the seventh s first movement it appears to begin as a straight forward sonata allegro movement a first theme certainly masculine followed by a contrasting gentle second theme but when you expect the traditional development section to begin the quiet ending of the exposition leads into the quiet opening of what will become this march theme something new which will then progress for twelve variations of sorts admittedly the first time i d listened to a recording of it when i was in high school if you d told me twenty variations i d ve believed you it was interminable as this builds to its screaming climax the opening theme comes back in returns as in a recapitulation or as it being developed torn apart and tossed about by the horror of the march s build up rather than exploding into some form of resolution it subsides exhausted and it becomes this segment that becomes the cathartic climax of the movement a section he himself referred to as a funeral march or rather a requiem quoted in an article that appeared in a soviet periodical on october 9th 1941 shortly after he d been evacuated first to moscow he continued after the requiem comes an even more tragic episode i do not know how to characterize that music perhaps it is a mother s tears or even the feeling that the sorrow is so great that there are no more tears left hints of the invasion theme echo across the backdrop as the movement collapses because of the nature of its inspiration the 7th is often considered a depressing work by people who ve never listened to it it s a war symphony there s that nazi march in the first movement the destruction of the city of leningrad is a horrible moment in human history and yet the symphony s in c major considered a bright key the opening is positive happy days before the storm and the ending is positively glorious a celebration of victory that please remember was written and first heard long before the events inspiring it had been resolved it is ultimately despite the conflict we hear in the music a happy piece if you will a fate symphony with a victorious outcome much like beethoven s fifth mahler s fifth which even cribs beethoven s fate motive rhythm tchaikovsky s fourth and fifth and shostakovich s own fifth symphony with its own truckload of historical baggage tchaikovsky s sixth the famous path é tique is also a fate symphony but proving not all such works end in victory shostakovich s seventh is often derided because for one thing it s too long which only means the length of the music does not equal the depth of the material that makes up the music what that really means is the performance someone has listened to is not well thought out to make sense of its different parts the loud bits if allowed to go over the top more or less take care of themselves but still need to be controlled in relation to everything else the slower softer passages which are not as showy need to be balanced tension still needs to be maintained otherwise what s the point of the contrast and if the ending of the symphony is labeled bombastic this is bombast that works bombast that doesn t work for me is the ending of shostakovich s 12th for tchaikovsky the ending of the 4th is bombast that works the ending of his 5th is for me bombast that doesn t while faster and louder is often a conductor s mantra to bring an audience to its feet it does not always mean the faster and louder it is the better but here in the seventh shostakovich paints a picture to mix artistic metaphors of a future victory that cannot fail to inspire its listeners which explains why following its initial performances the symphony was heard round the world as soon as the soviets could transfer the score to microfilm and smuggle it out of the country first to tehran and cairo before reaching london and new york city there were sixty performances of the symphony in america alone that first season yes the soviet authorities knew they had a propaganda coup on their hands and this one piece of music by a shy little man hiding behind round glasses what a contrast with the traditional stereotype of the hero that built up more support and sympathy for their cause than any speech any politician could ve made and then as soon as the war was over and the open ended event of the siege of leningrad closed it was soon forgotten there was hardly a single performance in the west in the two decades following the war it was not only too long and too bombastic as if shostakovich had a corner on the bombastometer there was that nazi march in the first movement really critics complained twelve minutes of incessant repetition of one of the most banal tunes a composer could possibly imagine cut me a break what about that march it begins quietly in the distance just a soft snare drum before the solo flute starts the tune and builds to a relentless climax as it becomes more and more i m not sure what a good word is to describe it encrusted with textures and orchestral colors and above all a steady crescendo from almost nothing to ear shattering terror after all as shostakovich implies it represents the approaching nazi army headed for leningrad right a typical comment usually goes it reminds me of ravel s bolero which is like d uh thanks captain obvious of all the things shostakovich said about the piece we know he twice apologized to friends when he played it for them before he d finished the entire symphony if it sounded like ravel s bolero but that is how i heard the war it is relentless and it is overpowering a juggernaut how do you in the face of something like this respond in most cases this banal tune some say he based it on something from a lehar operetta the epitome of germanic decadence is referred to as the nazi march for obvious reasons i ve also heard it called hitler s bolero and the fascist fandango though really the rhythm is definitely a march not a dance if you want to bicker about facts taking it out of context as it often is anyway here is that march here the graphic calls it stalin s march the performance is with valeri gergiev and the mariinksy symphony performances of the symphony were ubiquitous on american radio that year meanwhile in a new york city hospital a hungarian composer was being treated for what would be diagnosed as leukemia and nothing annoyed him more than hearing shostakovich s 7th as if there was no escaping it while other critics have taken their stabs at the piece bela bartók came up with the most enduring of slaps when he wrote the interrupted serenade for his concerto for orchestra the parody of shostakovich s march nazi or otherwise is full out vulgar complete with fingers wagging in the ears raspberries and other examples of musical nose thumbing even a few trombone smears and circus music before returning to the gentle serenade theme a nostalgic reminder of his native hungary and his own career which had been interrupted by the fascist hoard as it spread across central europe here it is in a performance with seiji ozawa and the boston symphony throughout his life shostakovich was always cautious about how he talked about his music he learned this when stalin walked out of a performance of his highly acclaimed opera lady macbeth of the mtsensk district which resulted in a review ostensibly by or at least inspired by stalin called muddle instead of music which led to his immediate descent from golden boy to someone who almost disappeared in the stalinist purges it s a long story after riding high on his renewed popularity following his fifth and now his seventh symphonies shostakovich would experience another cycle of disapproval in 1948 which ended only with the death of stalin in 1953 banned by the government with no performances no new commissions unable to teach in short no income it was then that a new musical motif appeared in his 10th symphony bas...