# Shostakovich 10th Symphony - 1st movement



## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Help! Every time I listen to Shostakovich's 10th I always have a rough time getting through the first movement without my mind wandering. Its just such a long movement and there aren't a lot of details about the structure of the movement other than "its in a loose sonata form".

I really enjoy the other movements of the symphony and I don't want to just skip the first movement. Any suggestions on how to navigate this really long movement?


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

:lol: I had the same problem. I don't really have an answer for you, try reading along to the score maybe? It's a great symphony, I trust that Shostakovich knew what he was doing with the first movement.

If it's any consolation, I have the same problem but only much worse with Mahler's 3rd symphony.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

It is a while since I listened to the work but I have always thought of the first movement as containing the "substance" of the piece!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

For me, the 1st movement is so dynamic and powerful that I've always found it riveting from start to finish.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bulldog said:


> For me, the 1st movement is so dynamic and powerful that I've always found it riveting from start to finish.


I feel the same way -- it's a great arch of a movement! I particularly like the ending with its soft woodwinds in the low registers.

For me, "heavenly length" applies here.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I think it's awesome - very profound music from a very unhappy man. The best way to listen to music like this is in a room with the lights turned down and the headphones on. Close your eyes and just listen. BTW, the 2015 recording from Boston on DG is a top choice, and the Karajan is really, really good, too. Either is a great guide to this dark music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

mbhaub said:


> I think it's awesome - very profound music from a very unhappy man.


Either Shostakovich wrote the entire symphony after Stalin's death, or he finished it as early as 1951. Authorities differ! Either way, he couldn't have been too unhappy by the time it was first performed, Stalin being dead and all.

When the main theme of the furious 2nd movement, usually associated with Stalin, rears its ugly head at the climax of the finale, it's squashed like a bug with a single emphatic D-S-C-H! Or so they say.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Olias said:


> Help! Every time I listen to Shostakovich's 10th I always have a rough time getting through the first movement without my mind wandering. Its just such a long movement and there aren't a lot of details about the structure of the movement other than "its in a loose sonata form".
> 
> I really enjoy the other movements of the symphony and I don't want to just skip the first movement. Any suggestions on how to navigate this really long movement?


The first movement is a very traditional sonata form in the standard Russian variant. If you know Tchaikovsky 4 or Rachmaninoff 2, the format should be familiar. What makes the Russian variant different is that the recapitulation of the motto (intro theme) and the first theme are dovetailed into the end of the development where one hears the movement's greatest tension. As in the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, the introductory theme or motto marks the beginning of the development and the coda.

If anyone wants to pick a favorite performance of the first movement that can be heard on youtube, I will diagram the movement with time indexes to the various themes and sections, probably tomorrow.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Either Shostakovich wrote the entire symphony after Stalin's death, or he finished it as early as 1951. Authorities differ! Either way, he couldn't have been too unhappy by the time it was first performed, Stalin being dead and all.
> 
> When the main theme of the furious 2nd movement, usually associated with Stalin, rears its ugly head at the climax of the finale, it's squashed like a bug with a single emphatic D-S-C-H! Or so they say.


The claim that Shostakovich (S) completed the Tenth in 1951 comes from the pianist Tatyana Nikolayeva, who claims S played the introduction to the first movement for her and that he finished the rest of the movements that year. Contradicting this is a great body of dated manuscript pages and correspondence to various people in which S gave blow by blow accounts of the composition process as it was happening, all during the summer and fall of 1953. If it really had been finished in 1951, then S was going to an enormous amount of trouble pretending to be composing it two years later.  There is some evidence that some of the material was composed earlier. An archivist with access to S's papers, Manashyr Yakubov, claims that sketches for the first movement of an abandoned violin sonata from 1946 have a first theme similar to that of the Tenth/i and that the second theme is identical to the second theme of the Tenth/i.

The scherzo theme is squashed by the D-S-C-H for sure. Unfortunately, the connection to Stalin comes from Testimony, which is wholly unreliable. Nevertheless, there is some independent support for this interpretation. Galina Vishnevskaya, the wife of Rostropovich and a close friend of S, said that the loud statement of the signature motive in the finale was S's indictment of Stalin, although she doesn't cite a source for this.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> ...If anyone wants to pick a favorite performance of the first movement that can be heard on youtube, I will diagram the movement with time indexes to the various themes and sections, probably tomorrow.


EdwardBast, I would very much like to see your analysis. Here's a performance of just the first movement that may be good for your purposes.

Also, I just listened on headphones to the first movement, this time with your previous comments in mind. Here's what I hear: First theme group, explored at length, then the second, based on an odd irregular theme in mostly triple time with some "swing" to it. This exposition is quite long but not complex.

The first theme returns, marking the beginning of the development. After a bit it segues into the second theme, then the first and the second again, leading to a huge crescendo culminating in repeated climactic explosions.

During the climax, the first theme can be heard, now quite loud. The recap has begun. Things gradually grow quieter and soon the second theme is back with us. The volume of sound continues to fall. The coda is based entirely on the first theme. It is long and mysterious with a great beauty of sound. The entire journey has taken something less than half an hour.

In retrospect, I think it's a bit hard to "catch" the form of this movement because, although there's surprisingly little thematic material, it's presented in various ways with vastly different emotional and aesthetic charges. We hear that it all hangs together but maybe we don't easily hear why.

The iron control DSCH demonstrates over his material here suggests to me that he may have admired Mahler, but sometimes he wrote more like Sibelius.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

^I'm not sure if he's recognized as such, but it seems that Shostakovich is one of the most notably Neoclassical composers of the time. I don't know whether he admired the classical masters, it sounds like he was probably influenced by Beethoven at least, does anyone know?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

DSCH was certainly a Beethoven fan, and referred to Beethoven's music, sometimes directly, in late works. I've never read anything about his views of Haydn and Mozart.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

I'll pass, Just skimmed through Mravinsky's 10th. 
Nothing I found too interesting.,,,even slightly of interest, Though we must keep in mind, old satan was looking over his shoulder, so he could not write just anything he wanted. His creative energies were zapped terribly by Satan-lin's censure-ship.


Shostakovich may have written great material had he lived in a workable environment...But it was not meant to be. Russia is such a terrible land for creative artists.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

When I was young Shostakovich was described as a neo-Romantic with suggestions that he follows on from Mahler. That fits with the way I hear most of his music. He was contrasted with Stravinsky who clearly was a neoclassical composer (perhaps he invented the "genre"?). Recently, I have also seen Bartok referred to as neoclassical but that doesn't work for me at all. The only term that works for him (IMO) is Modernist.

I do also wonder if Shostakovich was sad when he wrote the 10th. Clearly he wasn't depressed - depression would have sapped his creativity and ability to struggle with a work to get it right - and clearly he had lived through difficult times. But I hear his music as empathetic rather than crushed.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> EdwardBast, I would very much like to see your analysis. Here's a performance of just the first movement that may be good for your purposes.
> 
> The iron control DSCH demonstrates over his material here suggests to me that he may have admired Mahler, but sometimes he wrote more like Sibelius.


I'll sketch out a formal analysis of the movement later today if I don't completely exhaust myself climbing.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

KenOC said:


> EdwardBast, I would very much like to see your analysis. Here's a performance of just the first movement that may be good for your purposes.
> 
> The iron control DSCH demonstrates over his material here suggests to me that he may have admired Mahler, but sometimes he wrote more like Sibelius.


His 10th may be very Sibelian,,which is why I don't like it. It meanders and really goes no where in particular. Shostakovich's very best syms, are not in any order, 5,7,8 and perhaps the 4th. also perhaps 11,12.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Enthusiast said:


> When I was young Shostakovich was described as a neo-Romantic with suggestions that he follows on from Mahler. That fits with the way I hear most of his music. He was contrasted with Stravinsky who clearly was a neoclassical composer (perhaps he invented the "genre"?). Recently, I have also seen Bartok referred to as neoclassical but that doesn't work for me at all. The only term that works for him (IMO) is Modernist.
> 
> I do also wonder if Shostakovich was sad when he wrote the 10th. Clearly he wasn't depressed - depression would have sapped his creativity and ability to struggle with a work to get it right - and clearly he had lived through difficult times. But I hear his music as empathetic rather than crushed.


Bartók I would say was more neo-Romantic than neoclassical, but I'd agree that he was more so neither (in maturity) and was more of a Modernist in the vein of Debussy. This is despite his cited major influences from Beethoven and Bach.

It's hard to see much of Shostakovich's works as Romantic in any meaningful way, in my own perspective. I do hear his symphonies as a continuation from Mahler's, but in the sense that Mahler was a proto-Modernist almost just as much as he was a late-Romantic. Clearly, Shostakovich has also trimmed much of the fat from Mahler's prototype. Of course, this could be to do with the way _I_ was introduced to Shostakovich when I was young. When I first heard his 8th quartet (my old orchestra director and her friends played it for us one time, masterfully), it was such a striking contrast from all other music I'd heard. To my inexperienced ears, it sounded like the last word in modernism :lol:


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Dmitri Shostakovich, the neo-realist.


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Could you give a short definition ,,I think I know what you are saying,,as his surroundings always demanded he keep his wits sharp and aware., and such terrible horrific times he lived in,,,how could he NOT write in any other manner except in such stark realism.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Plus, what with the “official” artistic style of the time being so-called Soviet/Socialist Realism and all... it would have been in his interest to play into that. Even if on a superficial level.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Below is a breakdown of the first movement. The timings refer to this performance chosen by Ken:














The most important thing to understand is that each section of the movement, the exposition, development, recap, and coda, all begin with a statement of the motto theme (*M*). The statements beginning the expo and recap are heard in the low strings, those beginning the development and coda are scored for bassoon and contrabassoon. Note: the recap of the motto is dovetailed into the development. Beginning at 16:04, the motto is heard nearly in full as the bass line while complex development continues above it.

What I would recommend for listening comprehension is to jump around to the various statements of the motto, at 0:45, 10:44, 16:04, and 22:35, before listening straight through. Those are the four gigantic pillars that ground the structure.

In addition to the motto, there are the standard two theme groups, the first in the tonic, the second in the relative major. The first begins with the entrance of clarinet, the first wind and first solo instrument to sound in the symphony. The second theme is a sinister waltz (One author called it the ghost of a Tchaikovskian waltz.) The overall layout, except for the vagaries of the development, follows almost exactly the layout of the first movements of Tchaikovsky's 4th and Rachmaninoff's 2nd. What makes it more difficult to follow is that the themes themselves are really long paragraphs with internal divisions. The motto theme, for example, breaks down into five parts: a b a' b' a". The first theme group is a huge paragraph over four minutes long. Its main idea is played twice, followed by a mini-development and climax, and ending with a final statement of the main phrases. So, roughly: a a' extension a".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

paulbest said:


> His 10th may be very Sibelian,,which is why I don't like it. *It meanders and really goes no where in particular*. Shostakovich's very best syms, are not in any order, 5,7,8 and perhaps the 4th. also perhaps 11,12.


No, you clearly haven't listened enough or understood what is going on. The movement is one of the most tightly controlled large structures in the symphonic literature. It has a point that is devastating and poignant. The first theme (*1*), the one sung by the clarinet (3:10ff), is the only personally expressive theme in the movement. It is put under tremendous stress in the development where it is virtually flayed alive by the other themes at 15:02. In the coda (24:15) it sounds ghostly and disembodied several octaves above the relentless darkness of the motto, like a memory of the dead.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast, thanks for the analysis! This is much as I heard it except that you have broken the motto theme out separately, while I considered it along with your theme 1 as part of the first theme group. Your approach seems to make abundant sense and I think it clarifies the architecture of the movement.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> No, you clearly haven't listened enough or understood what is going on. The movement is one of the most tightly controlled large structures in the symphonic literature. It has a point that is devastating and poignant...


I think the excellence of #10 is widely realized. Here's how DSCH's symphonies were ranked on another site:

1 - Symphony #10 in E minor, Op. 93 (1953)
2 - Symphony #5 in D minor, Op. 47 (1937)
3 - Symphony #4 in C minor, Op. 43 (1935-1936)
4 - Symphony #8 in C minor, Op. 65 (1943)
5 - Symphony #15 in A major, Op. 141 (1971)
6 - Symphony #6 in B minor, Op. 54 (1939)
7 - Symphony #13 in Bb minor, Op. 113 'Babi-Yar' (1962)
8 - Symphony #1 in F minor, Op. 10 (1924-1925)
9 - Symphony #11 in G minor, Op. 103 'The Year 1905' (1957)
10 - Symphony #7 in C major, Op. 60 'Leningrad' (1941)
11 - Symphony #9 in Eb major, Op. 70 (1945)
12 - Symphony #14, Op. 135 (1969)
13 - Symphony #12 in D minor, Op. 112 'The Year 1917' (1961)
14 - Symphony #2 in B major, Op. 14 'To October' (1927)
15 - Symphony #3 in Eb major, Op. 20 'The First of May '(1929)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> DSCH was certainly a Beethoven fan, and referred to Beethoven's music, sometimes directly, in late works. I've never read anything about his views of Haydn and Mozart.


The connection to Beethoven in the Tenth couldn't be stronger: It exactly follows the model of Beethoven's Fifth in several crucial ways: A theme of the scherzo, the principal theme in Shostakovich's case, derives from the symphony's opening motto, just as in Beethoven's Fifth. This theme returns as a threat in the middle of the finale, also as in Beethoven's Fifth, and is subsequently overcome. In Shostakovich's Tenth it seems to be gaining the upper hand until the composer's signature motive is sounded fff by the whole orchestra, effectively writing it out of existence.

The connection to Beethoven's heroic style is no surprise because the main ideas of Socialist Realism in symphonic music were just a rehashing of 19thc Beethoven criticism, particularly that of A. B. Marx. Symphonies were more or less required, or at least expected, to end optimistically, with a big finale in the major mode. Beethoven criticism was the only clear reference point for grounding Soviet heroism in music.



KenOC said:


> This is much as I heard it except that you have broken the motto theme out separately, while I considered it along with your theme 1 as part of the first theme group. Your approach seems to make abundant sense and I think it clarifies the architecture of the movement.


A critical thing that distinguishes the motto from the first theme group for me is that the motto is played by massed strings and seems to evoke a sense of a powerful extra-personal force, a threat. The first theme, being sung by a solo wind, strikes me as a more personal, very human statement.

Were I prone to programmatic interpretation, I would say the motto is the destructive force of the war, whereas the first theme represents the Russian people and their travails and suffering. David Fanning described the balletic second theme in G major as "the ghost of a Tchaikovskian waltz" (think of the waltz second theme in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth) but in this case, "dance" takes on the more sinister meaning of a ritual with forced steps, as in dancing with the devil or cooperation with an irresistible force. The theme of the people is crushed between the external threat and the internal political forces with which the people were made to dance. That's why the first theme is absent from the recap and why at the end of the movement it is heard as a disembodied echo in the stratosphere intoned by violins and piccolo. It is the remembrance of 20 million lost souls. Fortunately, I'm not prone to programmatic interpretation!


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

KenOC said:


> I think the excellence of #10 is widely realized. Here's how DSCH's symphonies were ranked on another site:
> 
> 1 - Symphony #10 in E minor, Op. 93 (1953)
> 2 - Symphony #5 in D minor, Op. 47 (1937)
> ...


Good to see 5,4,8 as 2nd,3rd,4th places..
I was awakened on the significance of the 4th , was Gergiev's live YT upload,,can't recall the orch,,,the finale was impressive. I had no idea the 4th had that atmosphere of tension and resolutions...

I love the 8th quite a bit,,,The 7th in 10th spot,,,hummm, i'll have to revisit that masterpiece,,,I think that is too far down in the list.

Again,,I'll have to relisten to Rozhdestvensky/Kondrashin, in the 10th/next week


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## paulbest (Apr 18, 2019)

Yep, just visited MRA's 10th,,,it was a eraly record,,,not his best,,,,this Kondrashin does it for me,,,,its been awhile since I heard it,,,now I recall, I like this sym.
The early MRA threw me off.
My bad.

There are places I slightly perffer Kond over Rozh, and viceversa,,and also with MRA, at times beats out both, if only slightly.

Rozh timings are almost always longer than Kond, but about equal to MRA
Blind testing, might be hard to decipher, which is which....I think I could grade near 90%+

Rozh are more sharp/poignant 
Kond are more *warm* with slightly quicker pace
MRV are more *mystical*, spacious, Elegant, precision, detailed (at least his mid 1960's through 1970's) his earlier are not as developed,,as witnessed in the YT upload





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