# What do I make of this seemingly technical statement from a review?



## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

I was reading a review of a performance of Shostakovitch's first violin concerto. At one point it says that the finale "cleverly answers all the questions posed in the earlier movements, quoting various themes from them." As a lay listener who does not play an instrument, I find this to be a pretty opaque statement. When I read things like this I become curious. In this case, what are the "questions" being referred to? How are they "cleverly answered"? Does it even matter to most listeners? Maybe if I was listening again and paying attention I might notice the themes being quoted, but right now I don't know what the reviewer is talking about (even though I like the work).


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

It's a roundabout and overly literary way of stating that in the reviewer's opinion the composer rounds out the work to completion nicely. It also uses up words and makes the reviewer think he sounds knowledgable. (None of which is to say that the reviewer isn't absolutely accurate in his judgment -- but just remember: as with that of anyone on this forum, it's just one person's judgment. And he's just fortunate enough to get paid for expressing it.)


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## adamrowe (Mar 19, 2018)

I immediately looked up the definition for the word question, which I found to be: _a sentence worded or expressed so as to elicit information_. I think it's safe to say that you can ask a question in music by this definition. For example: _do re mi fa sol la ti..._







Now I have to listen to that concerto.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

There is an abundance of silliness in classical music reviews. Here's a segment from a recent one:
_
'This was an evening of transcending syntax to make the inaccessible accessible. James Clarke addressed that issue in his program note for "Untitled No. 5" by saying he avoids giving his pieces titles or providing descriptions to guide the listener. He trusts an audience's powers of perception. My sense of his piece was of low notes and midrange sonorous chords opening up, spilling their insides like buds releasing seeds dancing into the wind, with a harmonically (in some way) filigrees in Hodges' dancing right hand.'
_


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

DaveM said:


> There is an abundance of silliness in classical music reviews. Here's a segment from a recent one:
> _
> 'This was an evening of transcending syntax to make the inaccessible accessible. James Clarke addressed that issue in his program note for "Untitled No. 5" by saying he avoids giving his pieces titles or providing descriptions to guide the listener. He trusts an audience's powers of perception. My sense of his piece was of low notes and midrange sonorous chords opening up, spilling their insides like buds releasing seeds dancing into the wind, with a harmonically (in some way) filigrees in Hodges' dancing right hand.'
> _


Silly indeed. That was written by L.A. Times critic Mark Swed who is a clown.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Haydn70 said:


> Silly indeed. That was written by L.A. Times critic Mark Swed who is a clown.


You would be correct on both counts.

But there's more:

_When it came to Brian Ferneyhough's obscurely complex "Lemma-Icon-Epigram," Hodges' sheer determinacy proved gripping. You sense there may be language underneath as cogent as Davis' "We will have to destroy the American capitalist system," it's just that the voice is taken away._


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Tremendous performance of the Shostakovich VC No 1. Standing ovation.


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## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

Indeed, she is awesome. Going to hear her play that next month.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

fliege said:


> I was reading a review of a performance of Shostakovitch's first violin concerto. At one point it says that the finale "cleverly answers all the questions posed in the earlier movements, quoting various themes from them." As a lay listener who does not play an instrument, I find this to be a pretty opaque statement. When I read things like this I become curious. In this case, what are the "questions" being referred to? How are they "cleverly answered"? Does it even matter to most listeners? Maybe if I was listening again and paying attention I might notice the themes being quoted, but right now I don't know what the reviewer is talking about (even though I like the work).


As a non-musician I always ignore such analyses. But I assume they mean something to people with an interest in technical aspects of composing (structure, key progressions - is that the right term?! - etc.). So I just feel unqualified to evaluate the analysis and whether or not it actually says anything interesting. I do sometimes wish these analyses were linked to the emotional impact of the piece or at least some historical significance but mostly I just ignore such material (record liner notes and booklets are often filled with this sort of thing), feeling it is not intended for people like me.


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Please link to the original article, then we can see the context. Is it the following?

https://bachtrack.com/review-shosta...-orchestra-southbank-centre-london-april-2018

I don't think the reviewer is being technical here, I think he's talking about the emotional impact. He says things like:

"Every expressive detail of this great score was presented with clarity and flair, both by Ehnes and by the Philharmonia under the wise direction of Ashkenazy. The purity of tone achieved in the first movement was impressive indeed, leading to a Scherzo which danced with a menacing edge."

By mentioning things like "expressive detail" and "menacing edge" I think he's talking about emotions.

Imagine you're living under the thumb of Stalin, wondering if he's going to send you to the Gulag on a trumped up charge, how would you feel? This feeling would involve a lot of questioning, associated with a great deal of angst and fear. ("Will Stalin kill me? How do I survive?...)

In Shostakovich I'd be looking for that kind of emotion being generated by the music. Now imagine these questions being "answered". Maybe there will be a stoic answer, "If he kills me, he kills me." and pragmatic solutions, "I'll just carry on working, doing good work, but not work that's obviously against Stalin, so I survive." Now imagine the emotion associated with these "answers" - felling of relief and composure perhaps. So the music should generate feelings of relief and composure.

Now this is only my interpretation of this article, from a position of no great musical or historical knowledge. It is a rather vague article that doesn't make explicit what he is trying to say. Others more expert than me may shoot down my interpretation, please do, I might learn something!

I'm a non-musician, and often ignore the booklets, or skim the technicalities, but I'm trying to decipher them more these days - you can get a long way with a good music dictionary! I'm finding it can give me some insight into works I find difficult to appreciate.

Now Ill go listen to the Shostakovich VC No 1 in post #6 and listen out for questions and answers...


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

... what a performance! Deserved the standing ovation. 

In the first movement I felt the deep melancholy and sadness in DSCH, in the second his incredible frustration, and intermittent anger, at Russian state bureaucracy. Then the third movement answers the questions about how to deal with these negative states - it opens with the orchestra generating a great feeling of stoic resolve, taken up by the soloist repeating the theme of the first movement but with optimism and hope at overcoming these sad states of mind (perhaps, partly, through the process of continuing to write such beautiful music!) This segues into a variation on the second movement theme which takes the frustration and uses its energy for positive, energetic, change (perhaps through writing *lots* of great music!)

So I do think the article was making a useful point about "questions" and "answers", at the emotional level, and you don't need a music degree to get what he was talking about.


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## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

Yes, that's it. Sorry for not linking.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Why do conversations about Shostakovich's music always involve mention of his alleged, assumed or even inevitable feelings about Stalin and his state apparatus? Surely he is bigger and encompasses more than that? It is fair enough to include it in an understanding but we don't always mention - although we could - the "official" restrictions that Mozart or Haydn or Schubert or Beethoven composed under. Also, strangely, it is fairly certain that it was Shostakovich's response to state restrictions - ensuring that his music was accessible etc. - that is behind his popularity with many of us.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Like Mai, I wouldn't call this description technical—but I wouldn't describe it as specifically about emotion either. I think MarkW is right that it conveys the reviewer's sense that the finale is an apt conclusion tying together threads from the rest of the work. But whether this observation is backed up by any technical analysis, presumably of the work's thematic processes, or is just a vague intuition is anyone's guess. There just isn't room to get technical in your average review.


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> Why do conversations about Shostakovich's music always involve mention of his alleged, assumed or even inevitable feelings about Stalin and his state apparatus? Surely he is bigger and encompasses more than that?


Yes the feelings his music generates could be about, say, mourning the loss of a loved child combined with a (very) pronounced genetic tendency for depression, or feeling frustrated in a (very) frustrating job, combined with a very frustrating marriage, with some more frustrations thrown in. But it's difficult to see how such intense emotions could be generated without something really-really bad going on his life, so I think it really helps to know he was living under an extremely malign system.


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> Like Mai, I wouldn't call this description technical-but I wouldn't describe it as specifically about emotion either. I think MarkW is right that it conveys the reviewer's sense that the finale is an apt conclusion tying together threads from the rest of the work. But whether this observation is backed up by any technical analysis, presumably of the work's thematic processes, or is just a vague intuition is anyone's guess. There just isn't room to get technical in your average review.


Fair enough, I guess it has to be tied together at the technical level as well. The plumbing has to work before the water can flow. But I'm not a plumber so I can't really comment on that. Still, I think the article was useful to me, it had me looking for questions and answers at the emotional level, helping me see the water flow.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mal said:


> Yes the feelings his music generates could be about, say, mourning the loss of a loved child combined with a (very) pronounced genetic tendency for depression, or feeling frustrated in a (very) frustrating job, combined with a very frustrating marriage, with some more frustrations thrown in. But it's difficult to see how such intense emotions could be generated without something really-really bad going on his life, so I think it really helps to know he was living under an extremely malign system.


Why not "merely" psychological (inner) factors? No doubt he reacted to the events and environment of his life but this may not have been very conscious or specific. I do find it hard to think of Shostakovich as being overtly political or his music as being limited to merely being a reaction to a political system.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mal said:


> Yes the feelings his music generates could be about, say, mourning the loss of a loved child combined with a (very) pronounced genetic tendency for depression, or feeling frustrated in a (very) frustrating job, combined with a very frustrating marriage, with some more frustrations thrown in. *But it's difficult to see how such intense emotions could be generated without something really-really bad going on his life, so I think it really helps to know he was living under an extremely malign system*.


Shostakovich wasn't generating emotions, he was generating music. There is no reason to connect the expressive properties of the concerto to anything specific in Shostakovich's personal experience, any more than one would attribute the emotions of Ivan Karamazov to Dostoyevsky or Anna Karenina to Tolstoy. As Edward T. Cone suggested in _The Composer's Voice_, the emotions of musical works should, in general, be attributed to fictional personae in the music, not to their composers. Musical works, by and large, are works of expressive fiction. This is pretty much the same argument Wimsatt and Beardsley made for poetry in "The Intentional Fallacy." Just as happy authors know how to create anguished characters in their novels, happy composers know how to make depressing music-and depressed ones know how to write happy symphonies. It's a basic skill in composition.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

fliege said:


> I was reading a review of a performance of Shostakovitch's first violin concerto. At one point it says that the finale "cleverly answers all the questions posed in the earlier movements, quoting various themes from them." As a lay listener who does not play an instrument, I find this to be a pretty opaque statement. When I read things like this I become curious. In this case, what are the "questions" being referred to? How are they "cleverly answered"? Does it even matter to most listeners? Maybe if I was listening again and paying attention I might notice the themes being quoted, but right now I don't know what the reviewer is talking about (even though I like the work).


I believe there are much better descriptions of these four movements than what the above referred-to critic wrote. I personally find it very difficult to recognize earlier themes within this Concerto that come together in the fourth-and I've tried. (Perhaps with more listenings.) But the last movement is a great release of pentup energy and is in great contrast to the restraint exercised in the first and third movements, and in that sense might be considered an "answer" to the seeming questions, probings, and intense reserve of those movements.



> Boris Schwarz, who was not only a leading scholar in the field of Soviet music, but was himself a violinist and author of a book on his instrument and its legendary champions, wrote of the Concerto's "exciting contrasts":
> 
> The [first movement] Nocturne is contemplative and ethereal, the Scherzo is sparkling, with a rough-hewn middle section suggesting a Jewish folk dance. Since the Concerto was composed at almost the same time as the cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, it may well be that Shostakovich's imagination veered in that direction. [David Oistrakh, who wrote of the work's difficulty, described the Scherzo as "evil, demonic, prickly," and noted how the very light use of the orchestral violins in this movement enables the solo instrument to stand out more vividly in its discourse with the woodwinds.] There follows a Passacaglia, one of Shostakovich's favorite compositional devices, a movement of lapidary grandeur, while the final Burlesca has a devil-may-care abandon. The Concerto does not aim at easy effectiveness; there are no memorable, ingratiating melodies nor virtuoso pyrotechnics designed for immediate audience response. Just as its first performer, David Oistrakh, admitted that he had to "live with" the work for some time until he penetrated its meaning, so the listener must exert some patience and intellectual effort to grasp its full message. [unquote]
> 
> http://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/composition/2068


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Schwartz appears to miss what the Rough Guide calls a "desperately mournful lament". I like Oistrakhs's description of the Scherzo as "evil, demonic, prickly," and the description of the Passacaglia as "a movement of lapidary grandeur" and the final Burlesca having "a devil-may-care abandon" but I think the point in the original article adds something to these observations; that the "grandeur" and the "devil may care" attitude are providing solutions to the desperation and frustration in the earlier movements, providing some light in the darkness. But as the Rough Guide says this is a "multifaceted work of great difficulty" and I guess we are seeing different facets. Still I hope we all agree that this is a great work.


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> There is no reason to connect the expressive properties of the concerto to anything specific in Shostakovich's personal experience...


I agree there is no need to know about Shostakovich's personal experiences , the work can be appreciated without reference to Russian politics or biography. But I still think it's fairly interesting to know something about the politics and personal background, although this is very much secondary to experiencing the work. It's like knowing something about how the meal you are eating was prepared, this probably does nothing to enhance your direct gastronomical experience, but it's of interest in the way that gaining any general knowledge about the world is of interest. Also, it isn't necessary to know the technicalities of the music making, that would be like knowing how to cook the meal. Again you don't need to know this to fully enjoy the meal.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

About thematic connections in the Shostakovich concerto: I haven't looked at a score for a long time, but the principal theme of the first movement returns in the passacaglia and has more covert relationships to the scherzo theme (in diminution) and the finale. The cadenza has parts of all of the principal themes. Appreciation of the overall structure is enhanced by hearing these connections.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> About thematic connections in the Shostakovich concerto: I haven't looked at a score for a long time, but the principal theme of the first movement returns in the passacaglia and has more covert relationships to the scherzo theme (in diminution) and the finale. The cadenza has parts of all of the principal themes. Appreciation of the overall structure is enhanced by hearing these connections.


Thank you. Very helpful. But I don't think noticing those thematic relationships is obvious to most listeners. Maybe after many repeated hearings.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Question and answer melodies: Mary Had A Little Lamb is an example. The first half is left 'hanging,' and is then answered by the ending.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> Question and answer melodies: Mary Had A Little Lamb is an example. The first half is left 'hanging,' and is then answered by the ending.


You mean the 'Boy was she surprised.'


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## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

I agree, I find the themes recurring not obvious and it's hard to remember themes from several minutes ago when new material has been presented in the intervening period.


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## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

Mal said:


> Then the third movement answers the questions about how to deal with these negative states - it opens with the orchestra generating a great feeling of stoic resolve, taken up by the soloist repeating the theme of the first movement but with optimism and hope at overcoming these sad states of mind (perhaps, partly, through the process of continuing to write such beautiful music!) This segues into a variation on the second movement theme which takes the frustration and uses its energy for positive, energetic, change (perhaps through writing *lots* of great music!)


Just got around to to listening to it again. Thanks -- I hadn't noticed that the theme in the third movement was pretty much the same as the first. In the first movement it sounds weary and broken. I find it harder to describe in the third movement: I see why you say "optimism" but it's also very sad and lost. At the end of the cadenza I hear snippets of earlier themes being forcibly expelled and almost mangled in the process. I see the relationship between the scherzo and the burlesque but I wouldn't have noticed the latter as a variation of the former.


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