I wasn't aware that the fifth symphony was generally
regarded as simply propoganda by western critics. I
thought it has always been thought of as one of his
best works. Certainly it is one of the most played.
The huge symphony # 7 (Leningrad) is more programmatic
and was part of the war effort. Western critics tend
to read into many of his symphonies veiled criticism
of the USSR. I find a lot of this pure bunkum although
certainly some of his work is satirical. There is the
element of his being sort of a court jester to Stalin
but it is exagerrated by many critics.
It is rather surprising that much of the music
most approved by the soviet censors such as the fifth
and the quintet which won the Stalin prize have stood
the test of time. The fourth symphony which was panned
and not performed for ages is not impressive and the
same is true of the 2nd symphony which combines crass
propoganda with ultra modernistic scoring.
Stalin made sure that Shostakovich got extra rations
during the siege of Leningrad. At the end of the war
parts of the Leningrad symphony were continually
played on the radio much to the annoyance of Bela
Bartok who lay sick in a hospital in the US..!
When Shostakovich was condemned by some for not
criticising Stalin during his trip to the US he noted
that his critics did not have a family in the USSR and
did not live there. Shostakovich was basically fearful
of Stalin and his henchmen in the music world. He
supported socialism and the revolution but not
Stalinism.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
--- Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/11/19/a-journey-of-dmitri-shostakovich/
>
> Despite its obvious cold war inspiration, "A Journey
> of Dmitri
> Shostakovich," directed by Okasana Dvornichenko and
> Helga Landauer,
> is an excellent introduction to the great composer's
> life and career.
> Structured around a trip by ocean liner he made to
> the USA near the
> end of his life in 1973, it blends together
> performances of his work,
> excerpts from his letters and appalling evidence of
> how he was
> hounded by Stalin and his cultural commissars.
>
> Oddly enough, despite the obvious intentions of the
> directors to cast
> the USSR as a kind of unredeemed failure, one of the
> greatest
> attractions of the film is its liberal use of Soviet
> era kitsch.
> Footage of men and women performing calisthenics
> under Stalin's gaze,
> shipboard lectures on the glories of socialism, old
> agitprop posters,
> etc., are actually the perfect visual complement to
> Shostakovich's
> music, which was not afraid to indulge in patriotic
> and socialist
> flag-waving. Indeed, this contradiction, which was
> at the heart of
> his creativity, is something that defies easy
> resolution. As much as
> the directors would like to recruit the great
> composer to a rerun of
> the cold war culture wars, he remains very much as
> part of the legacy
> of a unique experiment.
>
> We learn that Shostakovich was very much a product
> of the USSR's
> historical experience. As an 11 year old boy, he
> witnessed street
> fighting between revolutionary workers and Czarist
> cops. Only 15
> years later, he would serve as a fire warden during
> the siege of
> Leningrad. He was always torn between writing music
> for the masses
> that depicted broad social struggles using
> straightforward harmonies
> and more experimental chamber works and opera that
> were heavily
> ironic and even nihilistic. When I was first exposed
> to
> Shostakovich's music in the 1950s, I tended to
> dismiss the first kind
> of composition and rue the fact that he was
> prevented from devoting
> himself fully to the more modern works. My attitude
> was of course
> shaped by the prevailing prejudices of the time,
> which tended to
> equate artistic "difficulty" with political freedom
> and private property.
>
> It is a credit to the directors, who despite
> receiving funding from
> the Boris Yeltsin fund, that they refrain from a
> one-sided portrayal
> of Shostakovich as a prototypical dissident. His
> relationship to
> Stalin was far more complex and paradoxical,
> mirroring in some ways
> the relationship that Bukharin had to Stalin which
> alternated between
> abject worship and open defiance.
>
> In 1979, a posthumous "Testimony" by Shostakovich
> appeared in an
> edited form by Solomon Volkov, a Russian
> musicologist. Supposedly the
> composer dictated the book to him in a series of
> meetings from 1971
> to 1974. The finished work was a typical anti-Soviet
> diatribe that
> belonged on the same bookshelf as Solzhenitsyn et
> al. This was a
> typical passage:
>
> "The majority of my symphonies are tombstones. Too
> many of our people
> died and were buried in places unknown to anyone,
> not even their
> relatives. It happened to many of my friends. Where
> do you put the
> tombstones for Meyerhold or Tukhachevky? Only music
> can do that for
> them. I'm willing to write a composition for each of
> the victims, but
> that's impossible, and that's why I dedicate my
> music to them all."
>
> Eventually "Testimony" was revealed as something of
> a hoax by Laurel
> Fay, an American musicologist who discovered
> numerous flaws and
> inconsistencies in the work. You can find a complete
> account of the
> debate that raged between the supporters of Volkov
> and Fay here, part
> of a website titled "Music Under Soviet Rule". I
> personally have not
> followed this debate as closely as I probably
> should, but I tend to
> remain skeptical of the idea that the great composer
> was a secret
> dissident. Why would I hold that view? Simply
> because the works that
> were labeled simple propaganda are just too
> heart-felt to not be
> infused with a kind of belief in the power of
> socialism. If you go to
> the BBC Radio 3 archives, you can listen to
> Shostakovich's 5th
> symphony online. This is the kind of work that has
> often been
> dismissed by Western critics as second-rate musical
> propaganda,
> especially considering its origins.
>
> After Shostakovich came out with the opera "Lady
> Macbeth of Mtensk,"
> a more experimental work, he came under attack in
> Pravda. In a kind
> of apology, he subtitled the crowd-pleasing 5th
> symphony as "A Soviet
> artist's reply to just criticism." Whatever the
> circumstances of its
> origin, I agree with the composer's assessment that
> "The idea behind
> my symphony is the making of a man. I saw him, with
> all his
> experience, at the centre of the work, which is
> lyrical from
> beginning to end. The Finale brings an optimistic
> solution to the
> tragic parts of the first movement."
>
> Video interview with co-director Helga Landauer.
>
