# Why do (some) people like Shostakovich?



## KenOC

To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:

- His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
- He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
- He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.
- His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
- He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.

So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


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## Lukecash12

There is a sarcastic kind of humor to some of his music, and the same five points you want us to consider, contrary to what you're implicitly suggesting in the OP, actually contribute for me towards making Shostakovich as compelling as he is.


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## Avey

KenOC said:


> ...
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


Because *D Eb C B* or *D Eb C B*...

Or, I suppose *D Eb C B*, and also *D Eb C B*

Yes, and *D Eb C B* ! And *D Eb C B* !

Don't forget *D Eb C B*, or *D Eb C B* or *D Eb C B*

*D Eb C B* *D Eb C B* *D Eb C B* *D Eb C B* *D Eb C B*


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## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
> - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.
> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.
> 
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


Except for the first - and only to an extent - I wouldn't consider any of those things reasons to like or not like a composer's music. Music either speaks to you or it doesn't, the reasons will be your own, you may or may not be able to explain them somewhat, and they may or may not be similar to other people's. If you have to use the above for reasons, you're probably not letting yourself hear the music.

I like Shostakovich when he doesn't use march rhythms and snare drums, when he isn't evoking politics and war, when he isn't imitating popular music, and when he doesn't sound terminally depressed. Moderately depressed is OK.


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## Art Rock

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.


So what? Those are not the only emotions I look for in music. Am I not supposed to like Mahler as well according to your suggestion?



> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.


I never base my preference of music on popularity, impopularity, triumphs or failures.



> - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.


Damn. Now I can't listen to Brahms anymore apparently. I don't give a hoot whether or not music is innovative.



> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.


I don't care about the background, I care for the music.



> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.


See above.


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## brotagonist

He had great ideas. I like how he put things together. While he had a habit of reusing ideas, he managed to create worthwhile new pieces out of them. He had his own sound. I've heard it said that his is a masculine music and I like that from him. I like the march rhythms and snare drums, Woodduck. They're a part of his sound. He gave us a lot of music that bears relistening: the Symphonies, String Quartets, Concerti, Sonatas and more (I need to revisit his catalogue to one of these days). Shostakovich is a major part of the Twentieth Century—aside from the Neue Wiener and Darmstadt Schulen  both of which I am passionate about.


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## KenOC

Thanks Brotagonist! Some others simply reject the excuses I offered and don't seem to want to say why they *do* like Dmitri's music. Not sure I find it easy to explain myself.


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## Lukecash12

KenOC said:


> Thanks Brotagonist! Some others simply reject the excuses I offered and don't seem to want to say why they *do* like Dmitri's music. Not sure I find it easy to explain myself.


It seems that people were confusing your implications for explications. Personally, I thought your five points were all reasonable points.


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## Sloe

He is one of those composers I never think of listening to but because he is played so much I hear him anyway and I like it. I think some people like him because they hear his music and think it is fine.


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## dgee

It's beyond me! Actually that's not fair - I can see the appeal of some of the noisy, fun Shostakovich like symphonies 5 and 9 and 10 (even parts of 13) and some of the lesser orchestral works and there's plenty of interest in The Nose and Lady Macbeth. But for the most part, for me, there's just no beauty, no drama, little contrast and just a sort of dull, empty soullessness

Edit: very little joy in making music. That's what I'm looking for. Always seems like a chore. Shosty fans - do you ever get the sense Dima loved writing the stuff?


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## LHB

Shostakovich is hit and miss, and a lot of his most popular works aren't his best, but his best pieces have great ideas that are implemented skillfully.


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## Abraham Lincoln

Because he apparently is Harry Potter.


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## brotagonist

Yes, dgee, I do feel that he enjoyed "writing the stuff." Those final two Sonatas, Violin and Viola, sound very passionate to me. That last Symphony. My absolute favourite: Stepan Razin. Some of those SQs (I don't know the whole set well, yet). It's great "stuff!" If he didn't like it, why would he have written so much?


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## KenOC

There is a family resemblance.

Oddly, the radio is playing Shostakovich's 1st Symphony right now. To quote: "This nut's a genius!"


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## Morimur

Shostakovich's potential as a composer was severely stunted by Stalin; he broke him.


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## ArtMusic

Because Shostakovich showed how to be an able composer for his society and oppressive government, and a survivor of the Second World War.


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## KenOC

Morimur said:


> Shostakovich's potential as a composer was severely stunted by Stalin; he broke him.


Probably more than half of DSCH's most popular works were written after the second Zhdanov decree...


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## dgee

KenOC said:


> Probably more than half of DSCH's most popular works were written after 1950...


Ken - you need to write some lines about how popular does not equal good :lol:


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## KenOC

I leave those to you...tell us about the preludes and fugues, the 10th Symphony and following, the cello and violin concertos, and so forth.


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## Morimur

KenOC said:


> Probably more than half of DSCH's most popular works were written after 1950...


You underestimate the trauma he suffered under Stalinism. Shostakovich was left a mess for the rest of his life. And popularity isn't a good indicator of artistic quality.


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## dgee

ArtMusic said:


> Because Shostakovich showed how to be an able composer for his society and oppressive government, and a survivor of the Second World War.


Classy Art - unlike, say, Webern, or the guys who died in the holocaust...


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## KenOC

(for Morimur) Which post-1950 works that are popular to you consider subpar quality-wise?


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## dgee

KenOC said:


> I leave those to you...tell us about the preludes and fugues, the 10th Symphony and following, the cello and violin concertos, and so forth.


But those works are programmed much less than the the Blue Danube and the Star Wars music!


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## KenOC

And much more than some of the 20th-century music that is liked here. But I won't be so impolite as to mention examples.


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## Mandryka

ArtMusic said:


> Because Shostakovich showed how to be an able composer for his society and oppressive government, and a survivor of the Second World War.


Yes I expect that that's part of the reason, especially for Americans who lived through the Cold War. With Shostakovich there's a back story which makes him part of the fight against pinko commies.


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## Morimur

KenOC said:


> (for Morimur) Which post-1950 works that are popular to you consider subpar quality-wise?


Where to start?

Symphonies nos. 10, 11, 12, 13 . . .


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## Mandryka

It would be interesting, Ken, if you had a list of the most played most recorded. 

I wonder whether it's really his music which is full of catchy tunes and strong beats. That makes an affiliation to Shostakovich part of the conservative fight against degenerate modernism, entartete Kunst, 

Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him.


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## KenOC

No rallying support, he has what he has. Shostakovich as "right-wing icon"...there's an idea that only one unripe in years could have. In his day, he was quite convincing as a commie stooge.


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## Lukecash12

Mandryka said:


> It would be interesting, Ken, if you had a list of the most played most recorded.
> 
> I wonder whether it's really his music which is full of catchy tunes and strong beats. That makes an affiliation to Shostakovich part of the conservative fight against degenerate modernism, entartete Kunst,
> 
> Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him.


Either that, or they merely *find him interesting* and *like his music*.


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## Morimur

Lukecash12 said:


> Either that, or they merely *find him interesting* and *like his music*.


Don't be ridiculous, Lukecash12. Nobody _really_ finds him interesting or likes his music.


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## dgee

So, back to why do people like Shosty? I think his music starts from a familiar place (you know what you're getting right across the career except some of the earlier stuff) it REALLY sustains a mood (you can get in a groove and stay there) and it's seldom jarring. The back story helps a bit I'm sure but, *from the outside looking in", the above points are my conjecture of where the appeal might lie


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## dgee

Lukecash12 said:


> Either that, or they merely *find him interesting* and *like his music*.


You are the WORST :lol:


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## ArtMusic

dgee said:


> Classy Art - unlike, say, Webern, or the guys who died in the holocaust...


I wasn't comparing with any others. Shostakovich was a genuine artistic survivor writing new music as recently as the late 1970's.


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## dgee

Mandryka said:


> It would be interesting, Ken, if you had a list of the most played most recorded.
> 
> I wonder whether it's really his music which is full of catchy tunes and strong beats. That makes an affiliation to Shostakovich part of the conservative fight against degenerate modernism, entartete Kunst,
> 
> Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him.


I think that's a hella interesting point - he certainly stands against the values of that pre-war music!


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## Morimur

If Shosty had gotten out of Russia we'd be talking about a completely different composer. He certainly had the tools to be a first rate composer. It's a damned shame.


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## dgee

Morimur said:


> If Shosty had gotten out of Russia we'd be talking about a completely different composer. He certainly had the tools to be a first rate composer. It's a damned shame.


I've often thought this too - more technique, a wider reference set, and probably a bit more chill environment to compose and we could have seen a different expression entirely. Would have been more interesting to me, I expect. The Prokofiev comparison may be interesting here - both compsoers, I fell, never lived up tot their early promise and almost went backwards, but SP produced masterworks


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## Nereffid

dgee said:


> It's beyond me! Actually that's not fair - I can see the appeal of some of the noisy, fun Shostakovich like symphonies 5 and 9 and 10 (even parts of 13) and some of the lesser orchestral works and there's plenty of interest in The Nose and Lady Macbeth. But for the most part, for me, there's just no beauty, no drama, little contrast and just a sort of dull, empty soullessness
> 
> Edit: very little joy in making music. That's what I'm looking for. Always seems like a chore. Shosty fans - do you ever get the sense Dima loved writing the stuff?


I always have trouble articulating why I like particular music or composers, but fortunately this reply makes it much easier!
Among the reasons I like Shostakovich's music are that there's so much beauty, so much drama, so much contrast, and just a sort of vibrant soulfulness.



Mandryka said:


> I wonder whether it's really his music which is full of catchy tunes and strong beats. That makes an affiliation to Shostakovich part of the conservative fight against degenerate modernism, entartete Kunst,
> 
> Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him.


I can't speak for anyone else, but that's hilariously far from my position. Anyway, the suggestion that people "like" so-called conservative music because it fills some ideological gap can surely be turned the other way as an explanation for why people "like" modernist music.


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## Mandryka

Lukecash12 said:


> Either that, or they merely *find him interesting* and *like his music*.


It's the "merely" here that's glib. Sure they find him interesting and they like his music, but why? There are economic, social and political relations which determine those reactions.



Nereffid said:


> Anyway, the suggestion that people "like" so-called conservative music because it fills some ideological gap can surely be turned the other way as an explanation for why people "like" modernist music.


Indeed.

Where I'm coming from is this. Likes and other affective psychological states aren't "brute" -- they are explicable, and at social - science levels.


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## Nereffid

Mandryka said:


> Where I'm coming from is this. Likes and other affective psychological states aren't "brute" -- they are explicable, and at social - science levels.


"Anti-modernism" might be a small part of it for some people, I agree, but it can't be close to the whole story.


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## Stirling

The answer is, you're wrong. Your loss, listen to music you do like.


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## Lukecash12

dgee said:


> You are the WORST :lol:


Thanks, I really do try.


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## Triplets

KenOC said:


> No rallying support, he has what he has. Shostakovich as "right-wing icon"...there's an idea that only one unripe in years could have. In his day, he was quite convincing as a commie stooge.


That is not a fair or accurate assessment. In the 1930s many Russians suffering under the regime saw him as a Composer who was able to articulate their thoughts and emotions.

It wasn't until he joined the Party in the last decade or so of his life that younger Russians viewed him as a sell out. Who knows why he did that. Perhaps to him the likes of Khrushchev really did look like an improvement after Stalin. It is not for us to judge individuals trying to survive under totalitarianism.
And if you only want "life affirming" Music, stick with Yanni. Some of us like to listen to Music that reflects despair. I'd take Wintereise over Songs of the Auvergne any time


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## Lukecash12

Mandryka said:


> It's the "merely" here that's glib. Sure they find him interesting and they like his music, but why? There are economic, social and political relations which determine those reactions.


Either that, or we don't have to invoke Freud and Marx to come up with some metanarrative explaining why people like music.



Mandryka said:


> Indeed.
> 
> Where I'm coming from is this. Likes and other affective psychological states aren't "brute" -- they are explicable, and at social - science levels.


Right...


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## Pugg

I do like the piano concerts and the cello concerto's.

The symphonies however are wasted on me, once in a while I try the 10 again but alas , no love so far.


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## Alydon

Shostakovich is certainly a heavyweigh and to have a glimmer of understanding of his music and some of his works on display in the CD cabinet marks one out as a 'serious' lover of classical music rather than a mere bystander. This composer for me had always been a struggle, and rather like Benjamin Britten his work is one I admire from afar but had never been too inclined to commit limited time in pursuit of actually listening to much of the music. 

To be frank I had always thought Shostakovich a depressive bore (even his name is off putting), and the few works I had listened to seemed to be of the variety of a deep malaise and would be the last thing I would recommend to anyone feeling under the weather. But about two months ago all changed as I was driving down the motorway and I was utterly gripped by a piece of music on the radio I had never heard before, although doing the elimination game I would have after a while put money on the fact it was by Shostakovich, and it turned out to be the 4th symphony. Since then I have revisited the 8th and 10th symphonies (as I already had them) and been exploring some of his other work. I certainly can't say I have a an understanding of his work but I'm beginning to admire the bitter irony and humour Shostakovich uses in his music and reading about his background and what he was up against as an artist and person has altered what I now know was a very narrow view of this great composer's life and work.


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## Manxfeeder

One more reason: as Solomon Volkov said, Shostakovich's music makes one think not of oneself but of other people.


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## Guest

Shostakovich said himself:

THOSE WHO HAVE EARS WILL HEAR

The true meaning of his music is clear to anyone willing to get past the cliché of "Shostakovich the broken artist crushed by Stalin" and truly listen to the music and hear what it truly means. 

Yes, it can be bitter, sarcastic, sad and depressing at time, but NO ONE captured in music the drama of war and oppression better than Shostakovich. 

Granted, not of his symphonies are equal. He was forced to write a bunch of crap to satisfy the party's demand. But his greatest symphonies are as a set among the greatest symphonies of the 20th century. If you doubt that then ask yourself why they haven't disappeared from the repertoire? This season in Montreal the two major orchestras are playing the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th symphonies. 

His string quartets are pretty close to Bartok's set for being the greatest set since Beethoven (I personally favor Bartok but not by much). 

And his 6 concerti are incredible compositions as well and are very much a core part of the modern repertoire. Take his first cello and violin concerti, for example: both works of great beauty, lyricism, darkness, irony, and personal self-expression (DSCH motif use throughout)... all melted into one. 

If his musical triumphs are as "half-heart and ambiguous" as you say, then why are played every single week throughout the world today! And don't feed us the "what is popular isn't good" as we're talking about a public of music aficionados, not pop music at large.


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> Sure they find him interesting and they like his music, but why? There are economic, social and political relations which determine those reactions.
> 
> Where I'm coming from is this. Likes and other affective psychological states aren't "brute" -- they are explicable, and at social - science levels.


Where you're coming from isn't where everyone is coming from. I defy anyone to explain my musical preferences based on, and using the tools of, the social "sciences." Shosty's personal story is interesting and sheds light on the course his music took, but it doesn't cause me to like the music more or less, much less "determine" my reactions to it. Some people are no doubt more suggestible, and their tastes more subject to extramusical associations, but we can't generalize about this.


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## Mandryka

DoReFaMi said:


> His string quartets are pretty close to Bartok's set for being the greatest set since Beethoven


I've heard this before somewhere, asserted as if it's evident.

But think of all the other exciting C20 quartet cycles: Schoenberg, Babbitt, Halffter, Xenakis, Ben Johnston, Ferneyhough . . .

Shostakovich wrote a lot of quartets certainly.


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> their tastes more subject to extramusical associations.


The question will still remain, about why your musical tastes are as they are. Why you value (eg) Shostakovich's brand of harmony. That needs explanation and my contention is that the concepts of psychology and social sciences are suitable for making an explanatory theory of preference.

I repeat, what I'm fighting against is the idea that preferences aren't interestingly explicable, they're either random and brute, or the explanations are useless because ungeneralisable (because based on an individual's neurophysiology.)


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## Mandryka

Manxfeeder said:


> One more reason: as Solomon Volkov said, Shostakovich's music makes one think not of oneself but of other people.


Can you say a bit more about this?

My claim is that Shostakovich's makes people think of Shostakovich in a way that Xenakis's music or Babbitt's doesn't make people think about Xenakis or Babbitt.


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## Becca

Mandryka said:


> The question will still remain, about why your musical tastes are as they are. Why you value (eg) Shostakovich's brand of harmony. That needs explanation and my contention is that the concepts of psychology and social sciences are suitable for making an explanatory theory of preference.
> 
> I repeat, what I'm fighting against is the idea that preferences aren't interestingly explicable, they're either random and brute, or the explanations are useless because ungeneralisable (because based on an individual's neurophysiology.)


Now this opens up a major can of worms. First of all, why do they need to be explicable? What gain is there from it? And I would argue that short of having a complete 'roadmap' of neurological function AND a total history of a person's life (e.g. childhood connections, whether good or bad), you can never get there. As to invoking social sciences to provide explanations ... well I just won't go there!


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## manyene

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.[ *not really an issue; but untrue - cf his film music, many of his ballet scores etc*
> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.* Again, not an issue: this is true of a
> lot of modern music. We don't live in triumphal times - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music. Not all great composers have been
> innovators (Bach and Mozart eg)-
> His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system. But look out for ambiguous musical references - eg finale of the 10th Symphony
> 
> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was. Very very untrue
> 
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?*


*

He speaks for our times*


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## millionrainbows

Shostakovich's appeal lies in his role as "noble outsider" trapped in a repressive, Godless system called Communism, which (sarcastically), as we all know, is evil incarnate.

This gives "cred" to the individual artist, the outsider, _which is what we all secretly desire,_ even though we have all been forced to recognize that we are not meant to be alone, but are meant to participate in the larger-than-us social world (which is usually seen as good).

This is all changing, though; more and more people are seeing the larger government as "evil" which is eroding out individual liberties; these people all want the right to carry AK-47s openly, etc.

So the "dark side" of humanity is emerging even more strongly; mass shootings are occurring more and more often, and alienated, socially maladjusted loners are asserting their "individuality" in opposition to what they see as an oppressive reality, in favor of their own, however distorted, "inner" reality.

Shostakovich's struggle with an evil, oppressive, "outer" government entity represents an ideal version of the dark, alienated artist versus an oppressive, evil outer social reality, where the individual is the "good guy" and the larger social reality is the "bad guy," and this appeals to us all in some primal way.

While the kooks with the guns can do it their way, we, of the normal, well-adjusted segment of humanity, can 'fantasize' about what it would be like to be the "good guy" fighting the good fight against those forces which would criticize our isolated individuality, which is seen as 'dark' and counter-productive.

With Shostakovich, we can play in the dark, like we've always wanted to.


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## clavichorder

Throw out all your smart sounding but ultimately stupid theories, whether they are your own or inherited from second hand knowledge about his life. And just listen.


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## mmsbls

Mandryka said:


> I wonder whether it's really his music which is full of catchy tunes and strong beats. That makes an affiliation to Shostakovich part of the conservative fight against degenerate modernism, entartete Kunst,
> 
> Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him.





Mandryka said:


> Where I'm coming from is this. Likes and other affective psychological states aren't "brute" -- they are explicable, and at social - science levels.


I agree that likes are ultimately explicable. In the future (perhaps somewhat distant future) science and social science may be able to give detailed reasons for everyone's likes. Of course that's true of all music.

But I think science and social science are hopelessly inadequate at this point in helping us understand why people like particular music. It's simple too complicated, and we know vastly too little about the brain.

You mention "catchy tunes and strong beats" but more to preface liking Shostakovich as "part of the conservative fight against degenerate modernism." You then suggest that people may like him as a right wing reactionary icon. Wouldn't it be easier to focus on the music itself? Do people like Mozart, Schumann, Lyadov, and Myaskovsky because of some social feature related to their music? Or do they like specific aspects of the music itself?

I'm just one person so we can't generalize from my experience, but I never thought of Shostakovich as writing catchy tunes. I started out thinking of him as too modern for my tastes but eventually learned to enjoy many of his works. I simply don't think of his music in terms of conservative or reactionary.

You haven't explicitly said you think Shostakovich didn't write good music, but do you think many people could simply like his music in the same way people enjoy Prokofiev, Berlioz, or Corelli?


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## clavichorder

I really don't understand why these big blankets of critical opinion are being thrown over all of Shostakovich's output so lightly. How can you do that when there are works like the 8th String Quartet? Or things so diverse as the 15th symphony and the 5th, which we can probably agree are works of great merit in very different ways. And the Violin Concerto no. 1 (that scherzo especially)is appealing in a visceral way, just like the 6th symphony(very overlooked work).


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## Headphone Hermit

dgee said:


> Shosty fans - do you ever get the sense Dima loved writing the stuff?


yes. Most certainly, I do.

I agree that there is plenty of melancholy in his music but there is also plenty of beauty too - and for those who only want jolly tunes, well there was plenty of 'light' music from those times for you to explore too - Binge, Coates, Tomlinson etc etc - there's plenty for all tastes


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## Headphone Hermit

Mandryka said:


> Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist..


Maybe, just maybe, some of us like lots of his music - the String Quartets, Songs from Jewish Folk Poetry, the 24 Preludes and Fugues, even Lady Macbeth ..... yes, perhaps some of us like much of his music


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## clavichorder

People who like Shostakovich's music are probably better equipped to understand why others might like Shostakovich's music.


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## Headphone Hermit

Morimur said:


> Don't be ridiculous, Lukecash12. Nobody _really_ finds him interesting or likes his music.


congratulations on hitting 3000 posts but ...... this ain't in the top 2999 of them :devil:


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## millionrainbows

I wonder why Stalin didn't like Shostakovich's music?


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## KenOC

It's true that many people listen to DSCH's music through filters of ideologically-driven backstories. But even those backstories change with the times. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was definitely seen as a dedicated Communist composer. And remember, from the McCarthy period forward, being a Communist was a very bad thing, in the US anyway. Early TV buzzed with propaganda programs like _I Led Three Lives_, _The FBI_, and so forth. And there were plenty of scary movies about people who looked just like us...but weren't.

Volkov's book changed all that. Whether it was true or invented makes no difference. Now for most he seems to have been the "hidden rebel," secretly hating the regime and the party apparatchiks he had to deal with, and trying to express the horrible truth of things in his music.

So maybe it's partly a matter of your age. I have a friend, a few years older than me, who enjoys classical music. But he refuses to listen to Shostakovich because he sounds "too Communist."


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## Bulldog

I liked Shostakovich's music when I was just a kid back in the late 1950's. I didn't know or care about politics or social issues back then. The music simply was fantastic for me, and it still remains so.


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## millionrainbows

Even if Shostakovich was a true Communist, now he's cool because of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

Currently, I'm arranging his Fifth Symphony for acoustic guitar and harmonica.


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> The question will still remain, about why your musical tastes are as they are. Why you value (eg) Shostakovich's brand of harmony. That needs explanation and my contention is that the concepts of psychology and social sciences are suitable for making an explanatory theory of preference.
> 
> I repeat, what I'm fighting against is the idea that preferences aren't interestingly explicable, they're either random and brute, or the explanations are useless because ungeneralisable (because based on an individual's neurophysiology.)


My first impulse is just to say: why bother? The goal of "explaining" people and everything they think, feel, and do by referring to the descriptive categories of some pseudo-science like sociology, which is so far removed from the reality of the individual human being, is unattainable. Obviously, everything has causes, and it's legitimate to explore them. But the causes of complex human characteristics and behaviors in any given individual, artistic preferences and activities among them, are located and untangled with difficulty or not at all. Isn't it just arrogant to presume otherwise? No social scientist can tell me why I like Sibelius better than Puccini - but why should he even try? All he'll do is pore over columns of statistics in order to decide what social category he thinks I represent and what socially relevant categories of music Sibelius and Puccini belong in, deciding at some point that it's impractical to break down his categories any further, and draw some kind of approximate, qualified, tentative and inaccurate conclusion about why I relate to their music in the way I do. Seems to me he could make more productive uses of his time. How about working at a food bank, or some other place where "social science" deals with actual, empirical reality and actually makes a difference?


----------



## millionrainbows

Admit it...the reason you like Shostakovich's music is because you're a* nerd!*


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## TxllxT

Shostakovich: if you can't beat 'them', join 'them'. By joining 'them' he got a nice apartment in Leningrad with always enough food & comfort during the blockade, fake photo sessions on the roof for the fire-brigade, famous radio broadcasts of the 7th symphony etc. But he also received the peace & quiet for composing. I think he choose the best of the possible worlds as any bourgeois would do, I do like his subversity! Thanks to DSCH's music we will remember the comrades.


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> Volkov's book changed all that. Whether it was true or invented makes no difference. Now for most he seems to have been the "hidden rebel," secretly hating the regime and the party apparatchiks he had to deal with, and trying to express the horrible truth of things in his music.


"Hidden rebel" is an oxymoron. One can tell when one is seeing a rebel by the fact that they rebel! More important, anyone who was not a fool already knew that Shostakovich hated the Stalin regime before Volkov's fraud hit the presses. How did they know? Because people everywhere hate those who murder their friends and collaborators. Because people everywhere hate to be told what to do and how to do it by those with inferior knowledge and skills. Because people everywhere hate to have there lives and livelihoods threatened by thugs. There are a number of similar reasons but I won't insult your intelligence.


----------



## EdwardBast

TxllxT said:


> Shostakovich: if you can't beat 'them', join 'them'. By joining 'them' he got a nice apartment in Leningrad with always enough food & comfort during the blockade, fake photo sessions on the roof for the fire-brigade, famous radio broadcasts of the 7th symphony etc. But he also received the peace & quiet for composing. I think he choose the best of the possible worlds as any bourgeois would do, I do like his subversity! Thanks to DSCH's music we will remember the comrades.


All of the things you listed happened before he "joined them." A couple of minutes on Wikipedia would have revealed this.


----------



## KenOC

An interesting summary: "Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) lived for all but the first eleven years of his life under the communist system of the Soviet Union. As such, he was seen by the outside world as the regime's musical laureate -- a composer who wrote music for Soviet public celebrations and in honour of important events in Soviet history, as well as for films which conveyed a Soviet point of view (including depictions of Stalin in heroic terms). Lavishly honoured by the Soviet system, Shostakovich held several public offices and, in 1960, joined the Communist Party. Many articles expressing views commensurate with those of the Soviet state appeared over his signature in Soviet publications during his life. He often read official speeches at Soviet cultural occasions and never expressed public disagreement with the Soviet system. On two occasions, however -- in 1936 and in 1948 -- he was publicly, and severely, reprimanded for failing to supply what was demanded of him as a Soviet composer... When Shostakovich died in 1975, he was hailed in both the USSR and the free world as a great Soviet composer, his belief in communism being scarcely doubted."

http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/deb/begin.html

I seem to remember that Shostakovich was a representative to the Russian SFSR People's Congress for many years, including during and after his 1948 denunciation. Can't find the reference to that right now.

Correction: "In 1951 the composer was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR." Coincidently, the first chairman of this Supreme Soviet in 1938 was...wait for it...Andrei Zhdanov.


----------



## ArtMusic

Mandryka said:


> Yes I expect that that's part of the reason, especially for Americans who lived through the Cold War. With Shostakovich there's a back story which makes him part of the fight against pinko commies.


Yes, a lot of history with Shostakovich. It makes him a *true* 20th century composer. I don't always enjoy his music but his biography makes interesting read.


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## Chronochromie

ArtMusic said:


> Yes, a lot of history with Shostakovich. It makes him a *true* 20th century composer. I don't always enjoy his music but his biography makes interesting read.


As opposed to a "false 20th century composer"...?


----------



## Chronochromie

Woodduck said:


> My first impulse is just to say: why bother? The goal of "explaining" people and everything they think, feel, and do by referring to the descriptive categories of some pseudo-science like sociology, which is so far removed from the reality of the individual human being, is unattainable. Obviously, everything has causes, and it's legitimate to explore them. But the causes of complex human characteristics and behaviors in any given individual, artistic preferences and activities among them, are located and untangled with difficulty or not at all. Isn't it just arrogant to presume otherwise? No social scientist can tell me why I like Sibelius better than Puccini - but why should he even try? All he'll do is pore over columns of statistics in order to decide what social category he thinks I represent and what socially relevant categories of music Sibelius and Puccini belong in, deciding at some point that it's impractical to break down his categories any further, and draw some kind of approximate, qualified, tentative and inaccurate conclusion about why I relate to their music in the way I do. Seems to me he could make more productive uses of his time. How about working at a food bank, or some other place where "social science" deals with actual, empirical reality and actually makes a difference?


More arrogant would be quickly dismissing sociology as a "pseudo-science".


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## KenOC

I'm told that Shostakovich didn't much enjoy his 1948 visit to New York. And he can still get people excited after all these years!


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## TxllxT

EdwardBast said:


> All of the things you listed happened before he "joined them." A couple of minutes on Wikipedia would have revealed this.


1934: Lady Macbeth
1936: Fourth Symphony
------------------Great Terror------------------------
1937: joining 'them': Fifth Symphony
From this time on he enjoyed the good life (while his protectors & friends disappeared in the gulag or were assassinated).


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## isorhythm

Shostakovich fans: what single work would you recommend as a gateway to enjoying Shostakovich for someone who currently doesn't?


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## KenOC

Maybe Cello Concerto #1 or the 9th Symphony. I think once you catch onto his style, the imaginative force of the music becomes a lot more apparent.

I think that for many people, his 5th Symphony is the entry point. The early Bernstein/NYPO recording is still a real grabber.


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## Crudblud

I don't like Shostakovich's music very much, I just listened to his _String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110_ again (I have heard it a few times before), was soon reminded precisely of why that is. There is little that interests me in the basic materials, and their incredibly serious and portentous presentation does little to get around that fact. As I listen I feel like I should be watching a silent feature, not only because it sounds to me like film music but also because it does not offer much of interest on its own, seeming as though it has been designed to accompany rather than to operate alone. But that's just me. I am sure the people who like Shostakovich's music like it because they have found something in it that engages their minds, their emotions, their imaginations; I am just as sure that the same is true for anyone who likes the music of any composer.


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## EdwardBast

TxllxT said:


> 1934: Lady Macbeth
> 1936: Fourth Symphony
> ------------------Great Terror------------------------
> 1937: joining 'them': Fifth Symphony
> From this time on he enjoyed the good life (while his protectors & friends disappeared in the gulag or were assassinated).


I thought you meant in some objective sense, as in joining the communist party. In what sense is the Fifth Symphony joining them?


----------



## EdwardBast

Crudblud said:


> I don't like Shostakovich's music very much, I just listened to his _String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110_ again (I have heard it a few times before), was soon reminded precisely of why that is. There is little that interests me in the basic materials, and their incredibly serious and portentous presentation does little to get around that fact. As I listen I feel like I should be watching a silent feature, not only because it sounds to me like film music but also because it does not offer much of interest on its own, seeming as though it has been designed to accompany rather than to operate alone. But that's just me. I am sure the people who like Shostakovich's music like it because they have found something in it that engages their minds, their emotions, their imaginations; I am just as sure that the same is true for anyone who likes the music of any composer.


The 8th quartet is, IMO, the least interesting of the bunch. I have no idea why so many favor that one. In my experience, those who rave about the 8th quartet tend to know few or any of the others. The Fifth is a masterpiece in the more traditional line. 11, 12 and 13 are excellent and less traditional ones. 4 and 6 are beautiful and lyrical, as is 10. If possible, hear the Borodin Quartet's (early incarnations) performances.


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## Woodduck

Chronochromie said:


> More arrogant would be quickly dismissing sociology as a "pseudo-science".


Depends on your sense of the word "science." Some people believe in "Christian science" too.


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> My first impulse is just to say: why bother?


Well, bother because reception history is as valid as any other aspect of art history. By reception history I mean explaining how a work of art has been received at various times.



Woodduck said:


> Seems to me he could make more productive uses of his time. How about working at a food bank, or some other place where "social science" deals with actual, empirical reality and actually makes a difference?


Possibly


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## KenOC

The 8th Quartet isn't a favorite of mine either. Try the 3rd! Shostakovich started writing quartets late, so these are all mature works.


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## Guest

If anyone actually believes that their musical tastes are devoid of extramusical influences, I would plainly suggest that they haven't the faintest idea of how the human brain works.


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## Lukecash12

Chronochromie said:


> More arrogant would be quickly dismissing sociology as a "pseudo-science".


Actually, there are significant movements within sociology and cultural anthropology to define the two as part of the humanities, because such distinctly unscientific methods are being used by different contributors to arrive at conclusions. The lines between phenomenon, data, theory, and opinion have become entirely too blurred to say in any coherent fashion that those disciplines follow Bacon's inductive method, the Scientific Method. "Relegating" them to the status of a humanity doesn't denigrate them though, in my mind.

Not to mention that one's musical tastes and proclivities can be *decidedly not social*.


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## Triplets

I love the Eight Quartet, and it is a seminal piece of music for me.


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## Guest

Robert Greenberg sums nicely the controversy here:






I highly recommend his course "Great Masters Shostakovich" available on Audible.


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## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
> *- He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.*
> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.
> 
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


If a composer's music is immediately recognizable across all performing forces, forms, and periods of his/her career, then (s)he is doing something significantly new technically. If people nevertheless perennially repeat that (s)he is doing nothing much that is new technically, then you can be pretty sure that what (s)he is doing is something deep and subtle enough that most listeners have trouble defining and expressing what it is. When I'm not expecting a dinner guest I might try to explain what that is.


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## trazom

Lukecash12 said:


> because such distinctly unscientific methods are being used by different contributors to arrive at conclusions. The lines between phenomenon, data, theory, and opinion have become entirely too blurred to say in any coherent fashion that those disciplines follow Bacon's inductive method, the Scientific Method. "Relegating" them to the status of a humanity doesn't denigrate them though, in my mind.


Unscientific methods and publications occur in all sciences. Someone publishing the "healing properties of crystals" under the field of Geology no more diminishes the standing of that subject as a science than pseudoscientific claims made under the subject of Sociology or anything else.


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## Chronochromie

Lukecash12 said:


> Actually, there are significant movements within sociology and cultural anthropology to define the two as part of the humanities, because such distinctly unscientific methods are being used by different contributors to arrive at conclusions. The lines between phenomenon, data, theory, and opinion have become entirely too blurred to say in any coherent fashion that those disciplines follow Bacon's inductive method, the Scientific Method. "Relegating" them to the status of a humanity doesn't denigrate them though, in my mind.
> 
> Not to mention that one's musical tastes and proclivities can be *decidedly not social*.


Right, and that supports what I said.


----------



## Woodduck

nathanb said:


> If anyone actually believes that their musical tastes are devoid of extramusical influences, I would plainly suggest that they haven't the faintest idea of how the human brain works.


Do you suppose anyone who's thought about it actually does believe that?


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> Well, bother because reception history is as valid as any other aspect of art history. By reception history I mean explaining how a work of art has been received at various times.


Reception history, though an interesting area of study, won't answer my objections.

I was contesting such statements as _"Maybe the people who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him."_ And _"Sure they find him interesting and they like his music, but why? There are economic, social and political relations which determine those reactions."_ And _"Likes and other affective psychological states aren't "brute" -- they are explicable, and at social - science levels."_And _"The question will still remain, about why your musical tastes are as they are. Why you value (eg) Shostakovich's brand of harmony. That needs explanation and my contention is that the concepts of psychology and social sciences are suitable for making an explanatory theory of preference."_

Knowing how the operas of Wagner and Puccini have been received at various times and places will not explain why Jack, 17 years old, living in 2015 in a suburb of Detroit, loves _Tristan und Isolde_ and doesn't care for _La Boheme_, while his sister Jill, 16, living in the same house, has the opposite preference. What sociological factors shall we bring to bear on the problem? The fact that Jack is male and Jill is female? Well, what if Tammy down the street loves Wagner and her brother Tommy prefers Puccini?


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## Manxfeeder

Mandryka said:


> Can you say a bit more about this?
> 
> My claim is that Shostakovich's makes people think of Shostakovich in a way that Xenakis's music or Babbitt's doesn't make people think about Xenakis or Babbitt.


My personal feeling from Volkov's statement is, Shostakovich has written some music which tells me of a world which I'm privileged not to be part of.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Do you suppose anyone who's thought about it actually does believe that?


I don't think people are _thinking_ when they make such claims, no. At least, I hope not.


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## Guest

Honesty Hour:

I like Shostakovich because I like some of his music. An extramusical element? Somehow, Shostakovich of all people gets frequently entangled in the nasty Schoenberg/Cage/Boulez/etc debate, which subtly compels me, perhaps, to speak of the aspects of Shostakovich that I dislike more frequently than the aspects that I like. It's a shame really; outside of this forum, I have no reason to defend my musical tastes, and I have no reason to do anything to Shostakovich but listen to his music on occasion.

My preference is very clearly for early Shostakovich and late Shostakovich. For instance, my liking for the 5th symphony has declined with time, with quite the opposite happening with, say, the 1st symphony, the 4th symphony, or the 13th symphony.


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## GKC

He was long seen as a toady for Stalin/Kruschev/Brezhnev by whom?


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## KenOC

GKC said:


> He was long seen as a toady for Stalin/Kruschev/Brezhnev by whom?


In the US, Shostakovich was generally seen as a pliant tool of the Party until well into the 1970s. There was really no other view. I was there.


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## ribonucleic

KenOC said:


> In the US, Shostakovich was generally seen as a pliant tool of the Party until well into the 1970s. There was really no other view. I was there.


I wasn't. But my impression was that only hidebound Cold Warriors still held that conviction.


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## KenOC

ribonucleic said:


> I wasn't. But my impression was that only hidebound Cold Warriors still held that conviction.


 I don't know anybody who still holds the view, though obviously DSCH knew which side his bread was buttered on, and was usually careful that the buttered side didn't hit the floor first (though it occasionally did). But my words, "long held" are quite accurate.

Odd story: Stalin decided that Shostakovich should join a delegation to a cultural conference being held in New York in 1949. He personally called DSCH to tell him. DSCH said, "But comrade Stalin, how can I represent the USSR if my symphonies are banned from performance here?" Stalin said, "They are? Who did that? I'll fix it." And he did, very quickly. But Shostakovich didn't get his conservatory teaching jobs back SFAIK.


----------



## ribonucleic

KenOC said:


> DSCH knew which side his bread was buttered on


In this case, the unbuttered side being death-by-forced-labor.


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## KenOC

ribonucleic said:


> In this case, the unbuttered side being death-by-forced-labor.


The only two Soviet composers I know of who were arrested were Mosolov and Weinberg. Mosolov served some labor camp time for brawling and being a general hooligan. He led the camp orchestra there. Weinberg was hauled off after the so-called doctors' plot to kill Stalin medically, evidently because he was a Jew. He was soon released when Stalin had the decency to die.

But based on the imprisonments and murders of quite a few of his artist friends and family members, DSCH certainly thought he had good reason to worry.


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## Lukecash12

KenOC said:


> He was soon released when Stalin had the decency to die.


How saintly of Stalin.


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## Morimur

Frankly I find Stalin to be infinitely more interesting than Shosty's music . . . But that's neither here nor there.


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## Guest

Bulldog said:


> I liked Shostakovich's music when I was just a kid back in the late 1950's. I didn't know or care about politics or social issues back then. The music simply was fantastic for me, and it still remains so.


Hmmm...I don't go back that far (in decades) nor can I claim to have liked DSCH since I was five, but I liked his music before I knew much about him, and I still like his music now I know more. I endorse your enthusiasm!


----------



## Bayreuth

I can see why some people don't see him as a truly original composer, but still, I believe he is the first great composer ever to effectively renconcile the grandeur of the music of the 19th Century with the innovation in the musical language that came in the first half of the 20th. In other words, I think he was the first to put together tradition and modernity in a way that was accesible to the masses


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> What sociological factors shall we bring to bear on the problem?


I'm not sure what you're saying. There's a huge amount of work on music and social identity, by serious scientists in great universities. There are papers and symposia, professors. Are you dismissing it a priori?


----------



## Lukecash12

Mandryka said:


> I'm not sure what you're saying. There's a huge amount of work on music and social identity, by serious scientists in great universities. There are papers and symposia, professors. Are you dismissing it a priori for opera fans? Surely not. That would be stupid!


You don't appear to be using the expression _a priori_ correctly. Duck's "jack and jill, tommy and tammy" objection is _a posteriori_. While you make your appeal to musical demographics and other similar observations, that kind of thinking doesn't obtain to jack and jill's situation. Forcing *everyone* into a political and social narrative is overly contrived theorizing at best.


----------



## Mandryka

Lukecash12 said:


> You don't appear to be using the expression _a priori_ correctly. Duck's "jack and jill, tommy and tammy" objection is _a posteriori_. While you make your appeal to musical demographics and other similar observations, that kind of thinking doesn't obtain to jack and jill's situation. Forcing *everyone* into a political and social narrative is overly contrived theorizing at best.


So is the idea that there are some people who are beyond the reach of the human sciences?


----------



## TxllxT

EdwardBast said:


> I thought you meant in some objective sense, as in joining the communist party. In what sense is the Fifth Symphony joining them?


There exists music that is intended for close listening: such music is Lady Macbeth & the 4th Symphony & DSCH's chamber music. There exists also music that is intended to provoke a roaring applause, stamping of feet etc.: such music is the 5th & 7th symphony. Shostakovich wrote program music that had a guaranteed success with musically insensitive party members & guaranteed him a good life. I think, that's quite a feat. I do not look down on DSCH's blockbuster music. Nowadays composers should follow DSCH's example; DSCH just followed Beethoven's 5th symphony applause drawing example.


----------



## Delicious Manager

- His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
So what? Music covers the gamut of moods and emotions. Who says it has to be jolly?

- He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
I don't understand what you mean. You would need to be specific before i could respond. Which triumphs? Why do you think they are half-hearted and/or ambiguous?

- He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.
Neither did JS Bach. Neither did Mozart. Your point is...?

- His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
The purpose for which a piece of music is irrelevant; one needs to judge it on MUSICAL terms alone. Again, you would need to specific.

- He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.
Really? What facts can you cite that support your contention? Have you ever lived under a totalitarian government in fear of your very life? No? Then I would suggest you're not qualified to comment.

So many ill-informed, vague, sweeping generalisations. This question is pretty annoying.


----------



## Guest

Mandryka said:


> Maybe *the people* who like Shostakovich like him because he's a sort of right wing reactionary icon - anti socialist and anti modernist. People who align themselves with those sort of values feel a strong pull to rally support for him.


Which people? All of the people?

And these reasons for liking - are you suggesting that even if I were to deny them, I am subconsciously supportive of his 'right wing reactionary' etc etc?


----------



## Mandryka

MacLeod said:


> Which people? All of the people?
> 
> And these reasons for liking - are you suggesting that even if I were to deny them, I am subconsciously supportive of his 'right wing reactionary' etc etc?


Oh I see. There can be many reasons for liking something. We're agreed about that.


----------



## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> So is the idea that there are some people who are beyond the reach of the human sciences? Oh I see. There can be many reasons for liking something. We're agreed about that.


If you do in fact believe this, then you should see that your statements about the "reach of the social sciences" have been too general and even grandiose. There are plenty of places - in my life and in yours, in our natures as persons, and in our artistic preferences - where the "social sciences" cannot reach and about which they had best say nothing.


----------



## Kivimees

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.


Classical music has a long history of being composed by commission. Remember exactly what kind of regime was paying the 'commission'.



> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.


And again, remember the what kind of regime he was a 'toady' to.

Some of us have direct memories of this regime - not memories at arm's length. :tiphat:


----------



## Blancrocher

Woodduck said:


> If you do in fact believe this, then you should see that your statements about the "reach of the social sciences" have been too general and even grandiose. There are plenty of places - in my life and in yours, in our natures as persons, and in our artistic preferences - where the "social sciences" cannot reach and about which they had best say nothing.


I think it could even be argued that antisocial scientists may find more sympathy with Shostakovich's music.


----------



## EdwardBast

TxllxT said:


> There exists music that is intended for close listening: such music is Lady Macbeth & the 4th Symphony & DSCH's chamber music. There exists also music that is intended to provoke a roaring applause, stamping of feet etc.: such music is the 5th & 7th symphony. Shostakovich wrote program music that had a guaranteed success with musically insensitive party members & guaranteed him a good life. I think, that's quite a feat. I do not look down on DSCH's blockbuster music. Nowadays composers should follow DSCH's example; DSCH just followed Beethoven's 5th symphony applause drawing example.


So you are claiming to know Shostakovich's intentions in composing the Fifth Symphony? And you think this can be reduced to a desire to evoke "roaring applause," the implication being that it was an artistic sell-out, that Shostakovich intentionally sacrificed that which is worthy of "close listening" for the sake of popular adulation and a venal desire for the good life? This is simplistic and ill-informed, as is the implication about the trajectory of Shostakovich's career. Do you think the Sixth Symphony was unworthy of close listening? Or the Eighth? Or the Tenth? Do you think the string quartets are? Do you find, say, the 11th, 12th and 13th quartets less challenging than the 4th Symphony?


----------



## KRoad

Chronochromie said:


> More arrogant would be quickly dismissing sociology as a "pseudo-science".


I'd just like to say: _What he said_!


----------



## Flamme

Morimur said:


> Frankly I find Stalin to be infinitely more interesting than Shosty's music . . . But that's neither here nor there.


Wow dude, pretty scary avatar...


----------



## Woodduck

KRoad said:


> I'd just like to say: _What he said_!


And I'd just like to say that pointing out that social sciences are not equivalent to true sciences is not necessarily a dismissal. Sociology has its uses. They merely do not extend to telling me why I do or don't like Shostakovich. Why are some people having trouble with this?


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> Sociology has its uses.


Maybe you'd best say what uses you think sociology has.

Even Popper, who invented the expression pseudo-science, thought religions like Christian Science had their uses! Just, according to him, maybe not very useful for explaining and predicting.


----------



## KenOC

For those who may find it difficult to discern: The five assertions in the OP were meant to be mildly provocative, but not without some element (however diluted) of truth.


----------



## Headphone Hermit

^^^^ *mildly* provocative ..... hahahaha!

Oh, very droll!


----------



## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> *Maybe you'd best say what uses you think sociology has.*
> 
> Even Popper, who invented the expression pseudo-science, thought religions like Christian Science had their uses! Just, according to him, maybe not very useful for explaining and predicting.


Why? I'm not interested in sociology or in discussing it. I'm only interested in pointing out that there are limits to the conclusions sociologists - or the practitioners of any field of study - may draw about the character and behavior of individuals. Obviously you are not persuaded that there are such limits, or you wouldn't have such a problem with being told that there are. But if you want to act as if all aspects of people's lives are fair game for your social theories, don't be surprised if some people insist that they know themselves better than you can ever know them.


----------



## Flamme

Not everything can be explained in ''objective'' and scientific terms, especially sympathies to things of culture like books, music, movies...Like the old latins once said...


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> Why? I'm not interested in sociology or in discussing it. I'm only interested in pointing out that there are limits to the conclusions sociologists - or the practitioners of any field of study - may draw about the character and behavior of individuals.


OK. I understand.

Your initial point, if I remember right (I've not gone back to check), was that Sociology is a pseudoscience, and you compared it to Christian science. People then commented that this sounded arrogant. You then responded to these criticisms by saying, in your defence, that you thought sociology had its uses. I asked for a bit more clarification, just to see whether the suggestions of arrogance were justified.


----------



## Becca

Mandryka said:


> So is the idea that there are some people who are beyond the reach of the human sciences?


Apples and oranges ... If you are referring to the hard sciences, then of course not, but until such time as the social sciences reaches the predictive power of the hard sciences, then yes. Remember that the hard sciences deals with phenomena which are amenable to mathematical description, the social sciences deal with people who are anything and differ in ways that are not trivial but essential to our humanity. Until Hari Seldon is born, consider that the philosopher Paul Feyerabend once said: _"Prayer may not be very efficient when compared to celestial mechanics, but it surely holds its own vis--vis some parts of economics."_


----------



## Becca

Mandryka said:


> Maybe you'd best say what uses you think sociology has.
> 
> Even Popper, who invented the expression pseudo-science, thought religions like Christian Science had their uses! Just, according to him, maybe not very useful for explaining and predicting.


But that is exactly what the essence of science is all about!


----------



## GKC

isorhythm said:


> Shostakovich fans: what single work would you recommend as a gateway to enjoying Shostakovich for someone who currently doesn't?


His 5th symphony.


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> [1] - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
> [2] - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
> [3] - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.
> [4] - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
> [5] - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.
> 
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


Its excellent aesthetic and technical qualities, obviously!

As for the list of objections:
1. Irrelevant
2. What is this even supposed to mean? Vague.
3. Simply wrong. Those who say this mostly lack the discernment or critical skills to grasp what is technically new about it.
4. Irrelevant
5. Irrelevant


----------



## arpeggio

In the right environment the OP may be a meaningful observation. For those who are new to Shostakovich the OP may be helpful.

Here I am not so sure. As a result of their experiences the vast majority of the members have the wherewithal to determine for themselves whether or not Shostakovich's music has any meaning for them or not.

I agree with EdwardBlast that for most of us, even those who may dislike Shostakovich, the OP is irrelevant.


----------



## KenOC

As mentioned earlier, the OP was intended to be somewhat provocative with a smidgen of truth. Few here will doubt my enjoyment of a whole lot of DSCH's music! Certainly there are some harrumphers around, though.

BTW my collection has (almost) the entire works of Shostakovich, by opus number. PM if you need "March of the Soviet Police." (That's Op. 139...)


----------



## Steatopygous

This looks like a fascinating thread, but I can't spend the time reading through nine pages. (I do have other duties and pleasures.)
Shows what happens when a) I go away for a day or two and b) when the regulars have more time on their hands than usual.


----------



## Lukecash12

Becca said:


> Apples and oranges ... If you are referring to the hard sciences, then of course not, but until such time as the social sciences reaches the predictive power of the hard sciences, then yes. Remember that the hard sciences deals with phenomena which are amenable to mathematical description, the social sciences deal with people who are anything and differ in ways that are not trivial but essential to our humanity. Until Hari Seldon is born, consider that the philosopher Paul Feyerabend once said: _"Prayer may not be very efficient when compared to celestial mechanics, but it surely holds its own vis--vis some parts of economics."_


Oh hell yeah, we've got Seldon references on TC now! God I love Isaac Asimov.


----------



## KenOC

Lukecash12 said:


> Oh hell yeah, we've got Seldon references on TC now! God I love Isaac Asimov.


Don't worry about the Mule. I'm sure Seldon took him into account...


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> My first impulse is just to say: why bother? The goal of "explaining" people and everything they think, feel, and do by referring to the descriptive categories of some pseudo-science like sociology, which is so far removed from the reality of the individual human being, is unattainable. Obviously, everything has causes, and it's legitimate to explore them. But the causes of complex human characteristics and behaviors in any given individual, artistic preferences and activities among them, are located and untangled with difficulty or not at all. Isn't it just arrogant to presume otherwise? No social scientist can tell me why I like Sibelius better than Puccini - but why should he even try? All he'll do is pore over columns of statistics in order to decide what social category he thinks I represent and what socially relevant categories of music Sibelius and Puccini belong in, deciding at some point that it's impractical to break down his categories any further, and draw some kind of approximate, qualified, tentative and inaccurate conclusion about why I relate to their music in the way I do. Seems to me he could make more productive uses of his time. How about working at a food bank, or some other place where "social science" deals with actual, empirical reality and actually makes a difference?


Just a few assumptions about social scientists as valid as assumptions about people who like Shostakovich....


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## isorhythm

OK, I've tried listening to the 5th and 9th symphonies a couple times but couldn't get very far into them at all. I just have no response to them whatsoever. It sounds like nothing. I think I finally understand what some people feel when they listen to Brahms! I'll try to be more sympathetic to those people in the future.

But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


----------



## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> OK, I've tried listening to the 5th and 9th symphonies a couple times but couldn't get very far into them at all. I just have no response to them whatsoever. It sounds like nothing. I think I finally understand what some people feel when they listen to Brahms! I'll try to be more sympathetic to those people in the future.
> 
> But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


I prefer Symphonies 4 and 14 myself as someone who likes Shostakovich more selectively than many here. I do recall that you didn't like the Fourth last time I mentioned it, though, so I don't know if that would help you find a way in.


----------



## Blancrocher

isorhythm said:


> But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


Viola Sonata, op. 147:


----------



## Flamme

Topic reaches the ''white heat'' level


----------



## Becca

isorhythm said:


> OK, I've tried listening to the 5th and 9th symphonies a couple times but couldn't get very far into them at all. I just have no response to them whatsoever. It sounds like nothing. I think I finally understand what some people feel when they listen to Brahms! I'll try to be more sympathetic to those people in the future.
> 
> But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


The piano concerti


----------



## isorhythm

Now I'm getting somewhere! I like this viola sonata. Piano concerti next.

edit: just got to the Moonlight Sonata quoting part, neat!


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## Dr Johnson

Try the first Violin Concerto.


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## Art Rock

Also try SQ8 (and after that the other SQs) and the piano quintet.


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## KenOC

There was an exchange earlier about how, years back, Shostakovich was uniformly viewed in the West as a commie stooge. I was reminded today about a popular radio show of those days, during the red scare of the '50s: _The FBI in Peace and War_. The plots generally involved finding and catching Communist spies, who seemed to be just about everywhere.

It was ironic that the theme music for the show was written by a Soviet composer: The march from Prokofiev's _Love of Three Oranges_.


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## Kivimees

KenOC said:


> There was an exchange earlier about how, years back, Shostakovich was uniformly viewed in the West as a commie stooge. I was reminded today about a popular radio show of those days, during the red scare of the '50s: _The FBI in Peace and War_. The plots generally involved finding and catching Communist spies, who appeared to be just about everywhere.


Something like this?


----------



## KenOC

Kivimees said:


> Something like this?


Thanks for the link, can't check right now -- will do so later.


----------



## Nereffid

isorhythm said:


> OK, I've tried listening to the 5th and 9th symphonies a couple times but couldn't get very far into them at all. I just have no response to them whatsoever. It sounds like nothing. I think I finally understand what some people feel when they listen to Brahms! I'll try to be more sympathetic to those people in the future.
> 
> But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


Preludes and Fugues?


----------



## EdwardBast

isorhythm said:


> OK, I've tried listening to the 5th and 9th symphonies a couple times but couldn't get very far into them at all. I just have no response to them whatsoever. It sounds like nothing. I think I finally understand what some people feel when they listen to Brahms! I'll try to be more sympathetic to those people in the future.
> 
> But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


Listen to the Fourth or Fifth or Tenth Quartets, the first Cello Concerto, and/or the Tenth Symphony. If you prefer symphonies, definitely the Tenth.

Recommendation for 1st Violin Concerto above seconded. The piano concertos I would leave to one side for a while.


----------



## millionrainbows

The 8th String Quartet (dedicated to the victims of fascism & war) was my way in. This is also available as Chamber Symphony Op. 110a, which is an expanded version.

If this piece appeals to me, it must be the specifics: a drony, bleak, minorish lament, contrasted by a spiky, angular, "evil" scherzo.

With the dedication, my mind is suggestible, and images of history are conjured up in my mind, as grainy black & white documentary film footage imagery.


----------



## KenOC

Kivimees said:


> Something like this?


Just watched this (the first part anyway). Wow! There's Joe Friday, everybody's favorite incorruptible cop, telling us why we should be afraid, very afraid, of Communist agents infiltrating our towns and cities to destroy our precious freedoms.

Youngsters probably have no idea that this sort of thing was standard fare back in the red scare days. Back then, though, nobody thought twice about it.


----------



## TurnaboutVox

KenOC said:


> In the US, Shostakovich was generally seen as a pliant tool of the Party until well into the 1970s. There was really no other view. I was there.





KenOC said:


> Wow! There's Joe Friday, everybody's favorite incorruptible cop, telling us why we should be afraid, very afraid, of Communist agents infiltrating our towns and cities to destroy our precious freedoms.
> 
> Youngsters probably have no idea that this sort of thing was standard fare back in the red scare days. *Back then, though, nobody thought* twice about it.


Wild paranoia is not apt to bring out the best in people, though, is it? It sounds like nobody very much was thinking at that time, and certainly no-one was trying to imagine what it might be like to live and work as a public figure in a murderous totalitarian regime. I can't even raise any meaningful resistance to my crazy government's actions, and we even get to vote them in and out!

Back on topic. I thought that Crudblud had it right in post #79


> "I am sure the people who like Shostakovich's music like it because they have found something in it that engages their minds, their emotions, their imaginations; I am just as sure that the same is true for anyone who likes the music of any composer."


I discovered Shostakovich at a time of serious illness and significant loss in my life, and I felt that his late songs and orchestral works, and his chamber music's despair, sadness and bleakness expressed pretty much what I was feeling at the time, which was greatly comforting.


----------



## ArtMusic

Shostakovich also received many awards, including the Order of Lenin and Order of the October Revolution. These are Soviet awards that were very significant in their own right and not ordinarily awarded.


----------



## dgee

isorhythm said:


> OK, I've tried listening to the 5th and 9th symphonies a couple times but couldn't get very far into them at all. I just have no response to them whatsoever. It sounds like nothing. I think I finally understand what some people feel when they listen to Brahms! I'll try to be more sympathetic to those people in the future.
> 
> But I'm not giving up on Shostakovich yet. What else?


I'm not a Shos fan but I enjoy The Nose and Lady MacBeth. Also the 13th symphony is awful and amazing at the same time


----------



## Chronochromie

ArtMusic said:


> Shostakovich also received many awards, including the Order of Lenin and Order of the October Revolution. These are Soviet awards that were very significant in their own right and not ordinarily awarded.


This...I don't even.....


----------



## KenOC

ArtMusic said:


> Shostakovich also received many awards, including the Order of Lenin and Order of the October Revolution. These are Soviet awards that were very significant in their own right and not ordinarily awarded.


DSCH also received no fewer than four Stalin Prizes, all while Stalin was still alive. The first, for his Piano Quintet in 1941, was accompanied by a very large monetary award. Did somebody ask a while back why Stalin didn't like his music? :lol:

In politics, he served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR from 1947 to 1962 and then in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1962 until his death.


----------



## Lukecash12

KenOC said:


> DSCH also received no fewer than four Stalin Prizes, all while Stalin was still alive. The first, for his Piano Quintet in 1941, was accompanied by a very large monetary award. Did somebody ask a while back why Stalin didn't like his music? :lol:
> 
> In politics, he served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR from 1947 to 1962 and then in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1962 until his death.


Thanks, this thread has been interesting to follow for historical information. Also, it has revealed some intriguing things about our members that have candidly shared what the music means to them, like Vox.


----------



## isorhythm

Today I discovered I really like his last string quartet in E flat minor. I notice none of the fans have mentioned this as a notable piece - does this mean I have bad taste in Shostakovich??


----------



## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> Today I discovered I really like his last string quartet in E flat minor. I notice none of the fans have mentioned this as a notable piece - does this mean I have bad taste in Shostakovich??


Just shows that DSCH covered an incredibly broad range. I've never been much of a fan of his late works (except for the 15th Symphony) but that's just my taste. Nobody ever claimed, in my hearing, that the quality of his music decreased with age!


----------



## hreichgott

I'm a fan. Of the music. (I think it is perhaps most honorable to Shostakovich's wishes to love the music and not feel required to assign political meaning to it, unless he is making a political point in that piece.)

Here are two of my favorites that haven't been mentioned as much as the symphonies.

4th Prelude and Fugue in E minor. They capture the feeling of unsettled longing so perfectly. The fugue is a wonderful double fugue, superb as a composition, slow but has a sort of restlessness to it, both hopeful and despairing. It is awkward to play because it really wants to be a Bach organ fugue with pedals and everything and the voices are very far apart on the piano. But it's my favorite one anyway.




First piano concerto. It's not a serious intellectual exercise. It's full of awesome and engaging rhythm, moments of startling beauty, send-ups of folk music and ragtime, and great argumentative drama between the piano and trumpet. What's not to love.





Also, I like all the Shostakovich string quartets and chamber music that I have heard, but I don't know any of it well. The 2nd piano trio is both scary and gorgeous.


----------



## KenOC

hreichgott said:


> 4th Prelude and Fugue in E minor. They capture the feeling of unsettled longing so perfectly. The fugue is a wonderful double fugue, superb as a composition, slow but has a sort of restlessness to it, both hopeful and despairing. It is awkward to play because it really wants to be a Bach organ fugue with pedals and everything and the voices are very far apart on the piano. But it's my favorite one anyway.


I heard this in recital a while ago, by a doctor who is an amateur (but a very good pianist). It was quite overwhelming.


----------



## Nereffid

isorhythm said:


> Today I discovered I really like his last string quartet in E flat minor. I notice none of the fans have mentioned this as a notable piece - does this mean I have bad taste in Shostakovich??


I noticed something similar in my polls: although certain works may not often get described elsewhere as favourites, they are liked. So far the polls have asked about quartets nos.3, 8, 13, 14, and 15, and at present no.15 would appear to be the most popular (in as much as these things can be compared).


----------



## Blancrocher

isorhythm said:


> Today I discovered I really like his last string quartet in E flat minor. I notice none of the fans have mentioned this as a notable piece - does this mean I have bad taste in Shostakovich??


It's a favorite work. As an aside, the 15th SQ has a recurring role in one of my favorite recent films, Leos Carax's "Holy Motors."


----------



## Fugue Meister

KenOC said:


> There is a family resemblance.
> 
> Oddly, the radio is playing Shostakovich's 1st Symphony right now. To quote: "This nut's a genius!"


If memory serves me your quote was said about Glenn Gould, and although I feel DSCH is very much a genius he wasn't a nut. He seemed to me to be more a timid, bookish type.

I came to Shostakovich entirely by accident.. I was 17 and in a Borders book store sampling music (something they used to do back in the days before streaming services or the inter-web for that matter). I had read a great deal about other famous composers post Beethoven and settled on Mahler as my next composer to get into seeing as he had written so little but was so influential and revered... so there I am in borders and in one section they had some 20 classical cd's to sample and I found one of Mahler's 5th and 9th. After 10 minutes of listening I decided, why not?, and I my purchase.

However little did I know I grabbed the wrong cd entirely and upon arriving home I pulled out a copy of Bernstein's recording of Shostakovich's 5th & 9th. At first I was upset because it wasn't easy for me to get to Borders all that often (mind you this is before the internet and Borders was the only place I could find classical music recordings at least to my stupid 17 year old self), angrily I decided to give this Shostakovich a try (whose name I proceeded to pronounce show-stock-o-vich for the next year or so)...

Anyway boy am I glad I did that recording opened my musical landscape up to massive new places. Before Shostakovich I couldn't really listen to full symphonies without skipping over the slower movements (The 5th's largo still chokes me up to this day) Shostakovich's music speaks to me on a profound and base level more so than any other composer and I think this is because I am fairly serious and look at the world through a slightly depressing filter but my sense of humor is black and extremely sardonic. All that seems to me to be DSCH's musical language. I see a few posts on this thread that seem to find nothing of interest in his music at all, what I wonder is, if you don't like his music are you an extremely optimistic or even tempered, what's your sense of humor like?


----------



## TurnaboutVox

I especially like the 3rd, 11th, 13th, 14th and 15th string quartets, somewhat in accordance with Nereffid's polls (above). But the whole cycle is worth investigating, imo.


----------



## Fugue Meister

TxllxT said:


> 1934: Lady Macbeth
> 1936: Fourth Symphony
> ------------------Great Terror------------------------
> 1937: joining 'them': Fifth Symphony
> From this time on he enjoyed the good life (while his protectors & friends disappeared in the gulag or were assassinated).


I believe this to be skewed and inaccurate. Shostakovich hardly lived the good life for his entire period in this world. Yes many of his protectors & friends disappeared and were murdered or sent off to labor camps but Shostakovich was never very far from the same fate until after Stalin died.

The only reason Stalin didn't off Shosty is because he was too beloved and with Prokofiev being absent from the country the Red's needed a huge international artist they could use for political motivations. From his 1st symphony onward Shosty enjoyed massive success in Europe & America and the Russian's needed a figure of stature to promote Russian ideals (however much I believe Shostakovich hated being a pawn I don't deny he was one but it was out of necessity for his life not to mention that of his family, even then he lost many members of his extended family, friends & colleagues).


----------



## EdwardBast

isorhythm said:


> Today I discovered I really like his last string quartet in E flat minor. I notice none of the fans have mentioned this as a notable piece - does this mean I have bad taste in Shostakovich??


I don't think so! I like all of the quartets, despite liking the 8th less than the others - the quotations of other works in it and the presumed autobiographical dimension irk me.


----------



## Fugue Meister

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Shostakovich's 4th symphony is the finest symphony of the 20th century and if not the best (to some of you people with absurd notions like DSCH's music has nothing to offer, is empty, or too dreary) it would surely make a list of the 20 best symphonies (again of the 20th century). 

I'd venture to say 3 of his symphonies are masterpieces, 5 are flawed masterpieces, 5 are decent with equal shares amazingness & not so inspired, and only two are sub-par (those being his 3rd & 12th {and even then the 12th would make excellent film music}).


----------



## HaydnBearstheClock

Fugue Meister said:


> I believe this to be skewed and inaccurate. Shostakovich hardly lived the good life for his entire period in this world. Yes many of his protectors & friends disappeared and were murdered or sent off to labor camps but Shostakovich was never very far from the same fate until after Stalin died.
> 
> The only reason Stalin didn't off Shosty is because he was too beloved and with Prokofiev being absent from the country the Red's needed a huge international artist they could use for political motivations. From his 1st symphony onward Shosty enjoyed massive success in Europe & America and the Russian's needed a figure of stature to promote Russian ideals (however much I believe Shostakovich hated being a pawn I don't deny he was one but it was out of necessity for his life not to mention that of his family, even then he lost many members of his extended family, friends & colleagues).


'Russian ideals'? And what are these?


----------



## Guest

Fugue Meister said:


> I believe this to be skewed and inaccurate. Shostakovich hardly lived the good life for his entire period in this world. Yes many of his protectors & friends disappeared and were murdered or sent off to labor camps but Shostakovich was never very far from the same fate until after Stalin died.
> 
> The only reason Stalin didn't off Shosty is because he was too beloved and with Prokofiev being absent from the country the Red's needed a huge international artist they could use for political motivations. From his 1st symphony onward Shosty enjoyed massive success in Europe & America and the Russian's needed a figure of stature to promote Russian ideals (however much I believe Shostakovich hated being a pawn I don't deny he was one but it was out of necessity for his life not to mention that of his family, even then he lost many members of his extended family, friends & colleagues).


Besides, the question is, "Why do some people like [his music]?" not, "What extra-musical reasons are there for someone to dislike his music?"


----------



## Fugue Meister

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> 'Russian ideals'? And what are these?


I don't claim to be an expert but from the few books I've read it's clear that Stalin wanted an artist of huge status to be on the side of nationalism as opposed to patriotism or "formalism", which in the view of the red regime was anti-communistic. I think if Shostakovich hadn't been as popular outside of Russia, he would have been useless to the communist cause and probably would have been carted off to the labor camps or assassinated for how "formalistic" his music was prior to 1936.

Stalin was a monster but he was a shrewd monster and knew he couldn't just get rid of the premiere soviet composer who hadn't abandoned Russia like Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, & Prokofiev (which I'm sure severely irked Stalin to no end, I'm fairly certain Prokofiev was rebuked and had to pay penance to come back when he finished globe trotting). Unfortunately for DSCH, his unwillingness to leave his home country resulted in his being used as a tool by an oppressive regime under which his art was limited and suffered but I still love his work, imperfect though it may be.


----------



## Fugue Meister

MacLeod said:


> Besides, the question is, "Why do some people like [his music]?" not, "What extra-musical reasons are there for someone to dislike his music?"


I get what the question is I answered it in my first post on this thread... Subsequent posts by me are responses to other people's which I do believe is allowable, even if I didn't answer the OP, the whole point of message boards is discourse so why are you so concerned?


----------



## Guest

Fugue Meister said:


> I get what the question is I answered it in my first post on this thread... Subsequent posts by me are responses to other people's which I do believe is allowable, even if I didn't answer the OP, the whole point of message boards is discourse so why are you so concerned?


My "Besides..." indicates that I was adding to your comment and agreeing with it - not rejecting it.


----------



## Fugue Meister

MacLeod said:


> My "Besides..." indicates that I was adding to your comment and agreeing with it - not rejecting it.


My bad friend I've been up far too long... Going to sleep before I bite anyone else's head off... Sorry..:tiphat:


----------



## KenOC

Fugue Meister said:


> Yes many of his protectors & friends disappeared and were murdered or sent off to labor camps but Shostakovich was never very far from the same fate until after Stalin died.


Hmmm... In the last 15 years of Stalin's life, Shostakovich:

- Won four Stalin prizes, including quite a bit of money
- Was awarded a professorship at the Leningrad Conservatory
- Was appointed to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR.


----------



## ArtMusic

KenOC said:


> DSCH also received no fewer than four Stalin Prizes, all while Stalin was still alive. The first, for his Piano Quintet in 1941, was accompanied by a very large monetary award. Did somebody ask a while back why Stalin didn't like his music? :lol:
> 
> In politics, he served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR from 1947 to 1962 and then in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1962 until his death.


I thought Stalin was critical of some of Shostakovich's music but not all.


----------



## KenOC

ArtMusic said:


> I thought Stalin was critical of some of Shostakovich's music but not all.


 I have never read any comment by Stalin on Shostakovich's music, although it is _speculated _that Stalin ordered the 1936 Pravda attacks on some of Shostakovich's music. Overall, Stalin seems to have been a Mozart kind of guy.

When Shostakovich told Stalin in 1949 that his symphonies had been banned from performance the previous year, Stalin seemed surprised and said he would fix that, which he did.


----------



## Lukecash12

MacLeod said:


> My "Besides..." indicates that I was adding to your comment and agreeing with it - not rejecting it.


Ah, the wonderful ambiguity of the interwebz.


----------



## ArtMusic

KenOC said:


> I have never read any comment by Stalin on Shostakovich's music, although it is _speculated _that Stalin ordered the 1936 Pravda attacks on some of Shostakovich's music. Overall, Stalin seems to have been a Mozart kind of guy.
> 
> When Shostakovich told Stalin in 1949 that his symphonies had been banned from performance the previous year, Stalin seemed surprised and said he would fix that, which he did.


Interesting. Shostakovich was one of a very limited few composers who had some support from the Soviet regime if I read correctly.


----------



## KenOC

Soviet composers made their livings through teaching, commissions, public performances, and so forth. They were not normally paid directly by the government, except for government commissions, but the government could certainly curtail their incomes by effectively banning their works.

There were lots of Soviet composers, not all of whom belonged to the Composer's Union. Here's a list of some of the more prominent ones, with links to lists of their works. Most are discussed occasionally in this forum.

http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/chron.html

See also:

http://www.sovmusic.ru/english/index.php


----------



## Sloe

KenOC said:


> Stalin seems to have been a Mozart kind of guy.


Stalin was very fond of Verdi.


----------



## Morimur

Just because Shostakovich was showered with prizes doesn't mean he was safe. Stalin terrorized _everybody_ and he was fond of praising and promoting people only to have them tortured and executed moments after the fact-that's why the 'Red Terror' was so effective-no one felt safe; everyone would lay awake late into the night wondering when the KGB would come to snatch them away.


----------



## violadude

I don't dislike Shostakovich much at all. I quite enjoy many of his works. There are merely a few things about the Shostakovich fandom that irritate me a bit, including:

-Any talk of his music HAS to involve endless speculation about secret codes and messages in his music. I get that this is a somewhat important aspect of his composition, but that kind of thing just doesn't interest me at all. It doesn't interest me when Shostakovich does it and it doesn't interest me when Berg does it either, or Schumann. 

-5th symphony and 8th string quartet are extremely overrated relative to other efforts in the respective genres, especially with regards to the latter. The other not-8th string quartets are so unfairly neglected that it amazes me how many people have listened to nothing but his 8th string quartet, which is hardly the best one in my opinion.

-Tired of hearing about Stalin all the time.

-Tired of people declaring him the last great composer or the end of Classical Music or whatever idiotic label. Not just Shostakovich though, I hate that label put on any composer because it's so incredibly ridiculous and overblown.


----------



## Morimur

violadude said:


> Tired of hearing about Stalin all the time.


Well, that's Shostakovich's fault for writing such boring music and being so inextricably linked to the _Vozhd_.

Boo-yah!


----------



## KenOC

Morimur said:


> Just because Shostakovich was showered with prizes doesn't mean he was safe.


Hmmm... Care to name a Soviet composer who Stalin had snuffed?


----------



## Dedalus

violadude said:


> -5th symphony and 8th string quartet are extremely overrated relative to other efforts in the respective genres, especially with regards to the latter. The other not-8th string quartets are so unfairly neglected that it amazes me how many people have listened to nothing but his 8th string quartet, which is hardly the best one in my opinion.


I actually listened to all of his quartets in order, and found the 8th by far the most gripping... So I hate to be one of "those people" you're tired of. But honestly, this comes from a relative newbie in classical music, and it's not that I didn't enjoy the other quartets. Just... The 8th sounds really cool to me! Sorry...


----------



## Headphone Hermit

There's an informative article published by Sarah Cunningham, "Remembering Laughter and Tears in a Drawer: Music as a Response to Soviet Repression," intersections 10, no. 2 (2009): 83-94 with a good example of how Songs from Jewish Folk Poetry was a response by Shostakovich to outside influences
https://depts.washington.edu/chid/i...emembering_Laughter_and_Tears_in_a_Drawer.pdf


----------



## Headphone Hermit

KenOC said:


> Hmmm... Care to name a Soviet composer who Stalin had snuffed?


very good question, Ken .... does anyone have a useful reference to answer this

for example, there is a detailed essay on Polish composers repressed by the Nazis at http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/journal/journalArticle/polish_composers_in_occupied_poland/ ... does something similar exist for repression in Soviet times?


----------



## dzc4627

Shosty makes for some great party music. Nothing drops the beat like a good Shostakovitch Symphony/String Quartet...


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> Hmmm... Care to name a Soviet composer who Stalin had snuffed?


I can't think of one who was snuffed, but no doubt many were not admitted to the composers' union and thus denied any chance for public performances. For a couple of years at least, Shostakovich had every reason to fear for his life because of his association with Mikhail Tukhachevsky, whose close associates were exterminated wholesale in the late 1930s. When Shostakovich was being blackballed for Lady MacBeth and the Limpid Stream, Tukhachevsky wrote a letter of support for him, using his influence to try to get him out from under. This letter alone could have been a death sentence, especially since many were killed for less intimate associations with the field marshal. And, of course, Isaac Babel, a major writer, got a bullet in the back of the head, not to mention friends and collaborators of Shostakovich like Vsevelod Meyerhold and Zinaida Raich, theater impressario and actress respectively, who were also killed. I would think living in fear of ones life day in and day out for a period of years takes its toll.


----------



## EdwardBast

violadude said:


> I don't dislike Shostakovich much at all. I quite enjoy many of his works. There are merely a few things about the Shostakovich fandom that irritate me a bit, including:
> 
> -Any talk of his music HAS to involve endless speculation about secret codes and messages in his music. I get that this is a somewhat important aspect of his composition, but that kind of thing just doesn't interest me at all. It doesn't interest me when Shostakovich does it and it doesn't interest me when Berg does it either, or Schumann.
> 
> -5th symphony and 8th string quartet are extremely overrated relative to other efforts in the respective genres, especially with regards to the latter. The other not-8th string quartets are so unfairly neglected that it amazes me how many people have listened to nothing but his 8th string quartet, which is hardly the best one in my opinion.
> 
> -Tired of hearing about Stalin all the time.
> 
> -Tired of people declaring him the last great composer or the end of Classical Music or whatever idiotic label. Not just Shostakovich though, I hate that label put on any composer because it's so incredibly ridiculous and overblown.


I like Shostakovich's music (the good stuff, that is) very much, but agree with everything you have written.


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## ArtMusic

Shostakovich passed away about forty years ago but his music has always been performed and studied, steadily increasing in popularity surpassing many of his contemporaries.


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## KenOC

Headphone Hermit said:


> very good question, Ken .... does anyone have a useful reference to answer this?


As nearly as I can figure out, no Soviet composer was ever executed. Two were arrested, but not for their music:

- Mosolov (1936), for " hooliganism," possibly a trumped-up charge. He had already been expelled from the composer's union for brawling and insulting waiters. He spent a few months in a labor camp, where he led the orchestra.

- Weinberg (1953), basically for being a Jew in the aftermath of the so-called "doctors' plot" against Stalin. He was released after a short time when Stalin died.


----------



## quack

KenOC said:


> As nearly as I can figure out, no Soviet composer was ever executed.


Millions were executed in the Soviet Union, the chances of quite a number of them being composers is quite high. The fact that they might not have achieved much in their compositional career and failed to be regarded as significant composers is because they were executed or imprisoned for years. Names like add to the tally of mostly forgotton:

Matvei Stepanovich Pavlov (1888-1963) who was locked up for 10 years for supposedly telling a joke
Vsevolod Zaderatsky (1891-1953) Who was blacklisted most of his life
Alexander Veprik (1899-1958) 4 years hard labour in the gulag

Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Repressed-Russian-Avant-Garde-1900-1929-Contributions-ebook/dp/B001BMLL18








Is a book that details the difficulty many other established composers suffered although many of them before Stalin was sole leader. Special mention should possibly be made also of: Lina Prokofiev (1897-1989) Wife of the composer who spent 8 years in the gulag.


----------



## arpeggio

*Excellent Response*



quack said:


> Millions were executed in the Soviet Union, the chances of quite a number of them being composers is quite high. The fact that they might not have achieved much in their compositional career and failed to be regarded as significant composers is because they were executed or imprisoned for years. Names like add to the tally of mostly forgotton:
> 
> Matvei Stepanovich Pavlov (1888-1963) who was locked up for 10 years for supposedly telling a joke
> Vsevolod Zaderatsky (1891-1953) Who was blacklisted most of his life
> Alexander Veprik (1899-1958) 4 years hard labour in the gulag
> 
> Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Repressed-Russian-Avant-Garde-1900-1929-Contributions-ebook/dp/B001BMLL18
> View attachment 79715
> 
> 
> Is a book that details the difficulty many other established composers suffered although many of them before Stalin was sole leader. Special mention should possibly be made also of: Lina Prokofiev (1897-1989) Wife of the composer who spent 8 years in the gulag.


Excellent response.


----------



## KenOC

The book looks interesting, although the title indicates it's about pre-1930 cases. Does it have examples of composers arrested, imprisoned, or executed for their music? BTW Lina Prokofiev's imprisonment, absurd though it may have been, had nothing to do with music (her husband's or anyone else's).

Nikolai Roslavets, a talented modernist, had his works officially suppressed from 1930 on. He died in 1944. The animus against him continues: His grave was last restored in 1990, and then destroyed again by persons unknown. Say what you want about those Russkies, they take their music seriously! :lol:


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## Lukecash12

KenOC said:


> The book looks interesting, although the title indicates it's about pre-1930 cases. Does it have examples of composers arrested, imprisoned, or executed for their music? BTW Lina Prokofiev's imprisonment, absurd though it may have been, had nothing to do with music (her husband's or anyone else's).
> 
> Nikolai Roslavets, a talented modernist, had his works officially suppressed from 1930 on. He died in 1944. The animus against him continues: His grave was last restored in 1990, and then destroyed again by persons unknown. Say what you want about those Russkies, they take their music seriously! :lol:


Those sorry sods can take his grave over here, then! If we've any sense in our heads we'll put up a monument for the man, both for his public life and for his musical genius.


----------



## Fugue Meister

Morimur said:


> Well, that's Shostakovich's fault for writing such boring music and being so inextricably linked to the _Vozhd_.
> 
> Boo-yah!


Well everyone's entitled to their opinion but not everyone has discernment, perhaps one day you'll come to acquire this quality when it comes to music. Anyone who claims to find Stalin, "infinitely more interesting than Shosty's music", strikes me as have a rather pedestrian opinion when it comes to art in general. Comparing a person to another person's art is preposterous and also serves as a clue that sheds light on your lack of acumen concerning the subject, in my opinion that is.

Like as I said we all have the comfort of our own silly opinions, I definitely find comfort in my own about yours.


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## KenOC

BBC just published an interesting story of the first performance of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, under difficult circumstances by a "starving orchestra."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34292312


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## Nereffid

KenOC said:


> BBC just published an interesting story of the first performance of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, under difficult circumstances by a "starving orchestra."
> 
> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34292312


As is noted in that article, a documentary on the topic is on BBC2 television tonight.


----------



## Jeffrey Smith

dgee said:


> It's beyond me! Actually that's not fair - I can see the appeal of some of the noisy, fun Shostakovich like symphonies 5 and 9 and 10 (even parts of 13) and some of the lesser orchestral works and there's plenty of interest in The Nose and Lady Macbeth. But for the most part, for me, there's just no beauty, no drama, little contrast and just a sort of dull, empty soullessness
> 
> Edit: very little joy in making music. That's what I'm looking for. Always seems like a chore. Shosty fans - do you ever get the sense Dima loved writing the stuff?


There is beauty in his work, sometimes, but often he purposively went for ugliness. I hear a lot of emotion and drama in his work, but often it is not happy emotion. Remember he witnessed the Revolution of 1917 and believed its promises, and was part of the uprush of modern art in the 1920s...only to see it cut off, to barely survive the purges of Stalin, to live through WWII (including part of the Siege of Leningrad), and then see the dull ossification of the post Stalin USSR. Why would he be a joyful man? But emotion is in his music. In a sense he wrote the music that expressed the 20th century.

BTW, as I write this, I am listening to his 13th Symphony.


----------



## elgar's ghost

Nereffid said:


> As is noted in that article, a documentary on the topic is on BBC2 television tonight.


Ooh, thanks - must watch that...


----------



## Open Lane

I am going to recant my previous statement as i am not complete familiar with his work. I will chime in more in a few days


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## Headphone Hermit

Open Lane said:


> I am going to recant my previous statement as i am not complete familiar with his work. I will chime in more* in a few days*


most mortals will take more than a few days to become familiar with the work of such a prolific composer


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## Open Lane

I am not planning on saying anything as an expert, just going to chime in my two cents as a newb. But with an opinion nonetheless. Have all intentions of establishing the fact i'm not an expert when i chime in. Thanks for being so welcoming :-/


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## Arsakes

Maybe because his music can be used for less masochistic/sadistic purposes comparing to his Viennese contemporaries! :devil:


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## Open Lane

Neh, i am about half way through his symphonies now so i feel like i can talk with some idea of his general direction. Understand, i am no expert and i am only familiar with the 6 or so symphonies i've heard so far. Honestly, before listening, i was a bit confused as to why this thread would exist. Now it makes sense. This music has a certain level of fluff to it, unlike a lot of the other 20th cent stuff i generally listen to. Harmonically it is less complex an utilizes less devices than i've come to expect from more modern classical music. There are definitely some exciting moments present in the stuff i've heard, moments with strong value. However, is less colorful harmonically than the schoenberg boulez set i just finished listening to.

Melodically and rhythmically, a lot of what i've heard is quite good. in fact, the mood both breathes and climaxes in ways that move me as a listener. That is where i hear most of the value, in the development and progression to climaxes. I can understand some of the controversy here as this is relatively modern music that doesn't necessarily utilize as many modern techniques much as some counterparts. I still like it.


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## Open Lane

Brotagonist--- i agree with your assesment. I've only heard some of the symphonies but i think you're on.


----------



## arpeggio

*Excellant*



Open Lane said:


> Neh, i am about half way through his symphonies now so i feel like i can talk with some idea of his general direction. Understand, i am no expert and i am only familiar with the 6 or so symphonies i've heard so far. Honestly, before listening, i was a bit confused as to why this thread would exist. Now it makes sense. This music has a certain level of fluff to it, unlike a lot of the other 20th cent stuff i generally listen to. Harmonically it is less complex an utilizes less devices than i've come to expect from more modern classical music. There are definitely some exciting moments present in the stuff i've heard, moments with strong value. However, is less colorful harmonically than the schoenberg boulez set i just finished listening to.
> 
> Melodically and rhythmically, a lot of what i've heard is quite good. in fact, the mood both breathes and climaxes in ways that move me as a listener. That is where i hear most of the value, in the development and progression to climaxes. I can understand some of the controversy here as this is relatively modern music that doesn't necessarily utilize as many modern techniques much as some counterparts. I still like it.


Although I do not agree with everything, this is quite good.


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## Open Lane

Ty arp!!!!!!!! 

Btw just finished the much acclaimed 7th. It definitely stands out as a fav, they all seem to have their "-on- moments" though.


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## EdwardBast

Open Lane said:


> Ty arp!!!!!!!!
> 
> Btw just finished the much acclaimed 7th. It definitely stands out as a fav, they all seem to have their "-on- moments" though.


In making a preliminary evaluation of Shostakovich's music, I think it makes sense to listen to the string quartets rather than the symphonies. As essays in an intimate and less public genre, they were less subject to external pressures and expectations. None of them, for example, was written for political reasons or with topical content in mind (unlike symphonies 2, 3, 7, 11, 12, 13, and, depending on whom one asks, a few others).


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## manyene

elgars ghost said:


> Ooh, thanks - must watch that...


The best during a rather thin Christmas season on the box.


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## Flamme

Tomorrows his birthday. This was filmed half a century ago


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## Arsakes




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## TxllxT

*Memorial Plague for Shostakovich's 7th Symphony*










St Petersburg - Bol'shaya Pushkárskaya ulitsa - Memorial plaque: "In this house lived and worked from 1937 to 1941, the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Here he created the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony "


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## Pat Fairlea

Why Shostakovich? For his 2nd Piano Concerto.


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## hpowders

OP: Listen to his Mahler-like Fourth Symphony-which for me is really a huge, masterful concerto for orchestra. If he wrote nothing else, I would have deemed him to be one of the greatest twentieth century composers.


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## KenOC

hpowders said:


> OP: Listen to his Mahler-like Fourth Symphony-which for me is really a huge, masterful concerto for orchestra. If he wrote nothing else, I would have deemed him to be one of the greatest twentieth century composers.


Thanks! I have several recordings of the 4th and often listen to this one.


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## OldFashionedGirl

I think that the Stalin regime somewhat restrained his creativity. Suffering between serving the regimen and stay true to himself. He composed with total inner freedom his fourth symphony, which many consider his greatest work, though he later withdrew it. Maybe without the pressure of the regime Shostakovich would be a different kind of composer. We will never know!


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## KenOC

OldFashionedGirl said:


> I think that the Stalin regime somewhat restrained his creativity. Suffering between serving the regimen and stay true to himself. He composed with total inner freedom his fourth symphony, which many consider his greatest work, though he later withdrew it. Maybe without the pressure of the regime Shostakovich would be a different kind of composer. We will never know!


 It's easy for us to forget that a Soviet composer was not expected to "be true to himself." A composer's job was to write music for the masses. So-called "autobiographical music" was condemned as formalism.

This was all clear and aboveboard, even if interpretation was difficult and the rigor of enforcement varied. Only my pig kept me sane in those years


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## Huilunsoittaja

Shostakovich wrote one of the best ballets of the 20th century, the Bolt. For those who usually think of Shostakovich as a guy who wrote symphonies, concertos, and chamber music, he did sooo much theater music too which definitely was an important part of his life. You'll see a completely different side of Shostakovich to hear his theater music:

Suite from the ballet the Bolt


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## MarkW

I haven't heard as much as maybe I should to make a considered judgment. But I first heard the 5th Symphony in a live BSO performance in the '60s, and what tickled me was how it could be simultaneously a parody of the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could like, while at the same time being exactly the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could like. Neat trick!


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## ArtMusic

TxllxT said:


> St Petersburg - Bol'shaya Pushkárskaya ulitsa - Memorial plaque: "In this house lived and worked from 1937 to 1941, the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Here he created the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony "


That's a wonderful plaque.


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## Sloe

MarkW said:


> I haven't heard as much as maybe I should to make a considered judgment. But I first heard the 5th Symphony in a live BSO performance in the '60s, and what tickled me was how it could be simultaneously a parody of the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could like, while at the same time being exactly the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could like. Neat trick!


I heard Sjostakovitj fifth symphony recently without knowing what it was and thought it was great. I can see if he made it in some sort of mockery I would say he have offended me from the grave and therefore I hope he composed it because it was music he liked himself.


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## KenOC

I think a lot of people consider Shostakovich's 5th a great symphony. If the final movement's a parody, it's one that a megalomaniac like me can like! :lol:

Petrenko's performance milks it for all it's worth. The final wrap-up takes five minutes from the beginning of the crescendo. Wow!


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## Guest

Here's a recent article on the 7th Symphony:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/20...-propaganda-behind-shostakovich-symphony-no-7


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## KenOC

TalkingHead said:


> Here's a recent article on the 7th Symphony:
> http://www.theguardian.com/music/20...-propaganda-behind-shostakovich-symphony-no-7


Thanks for that! Interesting if brief article.


----------



## MarkW

KenOC said:


> I think a lot of people consider Shostakovich's 5th a great symphony. If the final movement's a parody, it's one that a megalomaniac like me can like! :lol:
> 
> Petrenko's performance milks it for all it's worth. The final wrap-up takes five minutes from the beginning of the crescendo. Wow!


Interesting. I was all of 16 when I heard it, and even then, rather than being a somewhat overblown "Victory" symphony as some had dubbed it, the irony came through to me loud and clear. Shoshty even intimated so himself -- even though there's still question of how many words in "Testimony" are actually his.


----------



## EdwardBast

KenOC said:


> I think a lot of people consider Shostakovich's 5th a great symphony. If the final movement's a parody, it's one that a megalomaniac like me can like! :lol:
> 
> Petrenko's performance milks it for all it's worth. The final wrap-up takes five minutes from the beginning of the crescendo. Wow!





MarkW said:


> Interesting. I was all of 16 when I heard it, and even then, rather than being a somewhat overblown "Victory" symphony as some had dubbed it, the irony came through to me loud and clear. Shoshty even intimated so himself -- even though there's still question of how many words in "Testimony" are actually his.


I always wonder why people assume that the finale of the Fifth Symphony must be either sincerely triumphal or, on the other hand, ironic or a parody and, further, why they assume that Shostakovich must have intended it as one or the other. What a naive understanding of human nature and motivation this betrays! Isn't it more likely that both potential interpretations or intentions were present in varying degrees at various times and that Shostakovich was aware of both alternatives throughout the movement's composition? - and that perhaps he never decided one way or the other? Furthermore, if indeed there is an element of parody or mockery in the movement, why is it glibly assumed that the object was an external political one and not the composer himself? What if, for example, Shostakovich found himself composing the obligatory optimistic finale and, over-anxious to counteract the dark impression of the funereal slow movement (if one accepts Taruskin's reading), saw himself overdoing it? "What a toady I am," he might think, "sucking up to the powers that be. What a miserable, boot-licking worm." And then resentful: "Well then, I'll stick it in their faces and go all the way. Listen to this ridiculous coda," while at the same time secretly and cravenly hoping it will pass as an appropriate expression of socialist realism? I am not trying to push this particular scenario, of course, but only suggesting that assuming Shostakovich himself would even have a definitive answer about the intention behind this finale is naive. Human beings, especially sensitive ones under professional pressure and living in a state of continuous low level fear, are more complex than that.


----------



## MarkW

Thanks, EdwardB. Although I personally see bombast and parody in _more_ than just the last movement. That horrific march in the middle of the opening movement could, in my mind, be just as easily the Red Army marching across Red Square while Stalin looked on approvingly as it could the fight against the Nazis. And that grotesque scherzo sounds to me like mockery pure and simple. Always has. Rather than viewing it as a toadying Soviet artist "responding to just criticism," I hear in the Fifth an unrepentant Shostakovich going underground, and saying under his breathe "That's what you want, that's what you get." Nothing at all valiant about it (except for Shostakovich's sly gutsiness).


----------



## gardibolt

I find Shostakovich's music full of drama and emotion, as well as humor; I find him the closest 20th century parallel to Beethoven in that respect.


----------



## Chronochromie

gardibolt said:


> I find Ligeti's music full of drama and emotion, as well as humor; I find him the closest 20th century parallel to Beethoven in that respect.


Fixed it. 
.......


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## Nereffid

Chronochromie said:


> Fixed it.
> .......


Well, that showed him.


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## gardibolt

Ligeti's good too but I like Shosty more.


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## Chronochromie

gardibolt said:


> Shosty's good too but I like Ligeti more.


I couldn't agree more! :tiphat:


----------



## Nevum

Because his music was simply amazing and ingenius.


----------



## Couac Addict

...because he defeated Voldemort.


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## Fugue Meister

Couac Addict said:


> ...because he defeated Voldemort.


Not cool, DSCH was profoundly better than that piffle, it's not even piffle it's piffle-lite..


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## violadude

Fugue Meister said:


> Not cool, DSCH was profoundly better than that piffle, it's not even piffle it's piffle-lite..


I thought it was pretty funny...


----------



## KenOC

Yes, everybody thinks the 2nd movement of the 10th Symphony is about Stalin. It's really about Voldemort! You can hear the part where I defeat him near the end of the finale. Cheers!


----------



## Triplets

KenOC said:


> Hmmm... Care to name a Soviet composer who Stalin had snuffed?


A guy named Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote a little tome called The Gulag Archipelago. Perhaps you may have heard of it.
There is an entire chapter devoted to Composers and other Artists who were liquidated. Most of them are not famous because dying at an early age tends to blunt your claim to immortality.


----------



## Fugue Meister

violadude said:


> I thought it was pretty funny...


That was more a mock indignation it was a bit humorous but I still think that all that HP stuff is piffle.


----------



## Ilarion

Art Rock said:


> So what? Those are not the only emotions I look for in music. Am I not supposed to like Mahler as well according to your suggestion?
> 
> I never base my preference of music on popularity, impopularity, triumphs or failures.
> 
> Damn. Now I can't listen to Brahms anymore apparently. I don't give a hoot whether or not music is innovative.
> 
> I don't care about the background, I care for the music.
> 
> See above.


Dear Art Rock,

You've nailed it exactly - Thank you for expressing my thoughts with your words - I could not have said it better...:tiphat:


----------



## hpowders

Listen to the Shostakovich 4th symphony three or four times, come back and we can have a meaningful discussion.


----------



## dsphipps100

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
> - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.
> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.
> 
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


You have apparently never felt oppressed or down-trodden, and therefore have no empathy with Shostakovich's message. It is a powerful message, but one that he had to disguise behind the mask of flag-waving patriotism. It is necessary, also, to have some awareness of the many folk songs that he quotes in scattered references throughout his symphonies (especially from # 5 onward), and to have at least some knowledge of what the texts are to those songs. This is especially true with his 11th Symphony, for example. His Russian audiences most certainly did, so they understood the underlying message that he was communicating to them through the mask of flag-waving.

You might also not be aware that, at least twice in his life, he was censured by the Soviet government for "formalism", an ambiguous, double-speak charge that was wielded only when the music went over the pin-headed government officials' heads. It was a serious matter, however, that cost Shostakovich at least one job that I know of, and for a while, had him sleeping in the stairwell of his apartment building so that, when the goon squad came to take him to Siberia or Treblinka Prison (for execution), his arrest wouldn't have to disturb his family who were asleep inside his apartment.

Fortunately, he managed to weather the storm and get himself "rehabilitated" without getting arrested. Many of his fellow composers "disappeared" during the night and were never seen or heard from again, their families forced to go on as if their husband/father had never existed. The story behind the composition of his 5th Symphony is especially (in)famous regarding this matter. There is still controversy today among interpreters regarding whether or not the end of the 5th is a genuine "smile" or a forced smile.

When you understand living with that kind of fear and dread hanging over your life, then you will understand Shostakovich and why so many people find his music not just moving, but emotionally shattering. There have been many times over the years when I have been listening to one of his symphonies and was moved to tears as I considered the life he fought and struggled through while he wrote those magnificent compositions.

If you (or anybody else) needs a good recommendation for performers who would be good to try out any Shostakovich symphonies, you can't go wrong with the Kitajenko-Cologne recordings in 5.1 surround sound SACD. You can find better recordings, to be sure, of individual symphonies with a little research and investigating around, but just to keep it simple for Shostakovich novices, Kitajenko-Cologne will, at the least, guarantee you a very decent recording that will give a good representation of each symphony.

http://www.amazon.com/Shostakovich-Complete-Symphonies-Hybrid-SACD/dp/B000B8QEVA/










(It used to be that Bernard Haitink's Shostakovich cycle was the standard recommendation, but he has, I believe, been supplanted by Kitajenko.)

I hope this helps. Happy listening.


----------



## Klassic

dsphipps100, after that excellent presentation all I can say is, don't forget to listen to Pettersson.


----------



## dsphipps100

Got it, thanks.


----------



## KenOC

dsphipps100 said:


> ...Many of his fellow composers "disappeared" during the night and were never seen or heard from again, their families forced to go on as if their husband/father had never existed.


You seem to think I'm quite ignorant of those times. But regarding your comment, I must ask for...names? Which composers were 'disappeared' during the night and were never seen or heard from again, their families forced to go on as if their husband/father had never existed?


----------



## dsphipps100

KenOC said:


> You seem to think I'm quite ignorant of those times.


One can only go with the evidence at hand.....


KenOC said:


> But regarding your comment, I must ask for...names? Which composers were 'disappeared' during the night and were never seen or heard from again, their families forced to go on as if their husband/father had never existed?


They're mentioned in Solomon Volkov's "Testimony - The Memoirs of Shostakovich", among other biographical sources for Shostakovich. Unfortunately, I don't have my copy at hand since I'm out of town, but if you are truly seeking proof (instead of merely an excuse to discount everything I said), then there are copies readily available from any book seller such as Amazon.

But if you were truly informed about life in the USSR under Joseph Stalin, you wouldn't need to ask for names, because you would already know about Stalin's "purges" and the tens of thousands of Russian citizens who "disappeared" during those times.


----------



## KenOC

There are no such names in _Testimony_, which I do have at hand. You seem to be inventing things based on your imagination. I repeat: What composers were "disappeared" in Stalin's time, be it 1936 or 1948? There must be a lot, surely you remember one.

I can go on about Mosolov and Weinberg, but I suspect they won't meet your criteria.


----------



## dsphipps100

KenOC said:


> There are no such names in _Testimony_, which I do have at hand. You seem to be inventing things based on your imagination. I repeat: What composers were "disappeared" in Stalin's time, be it 1936 or 1948? There must be a lot, surely you remember one. I can go on about Mosolov and Weinberg, but I suspect they won't meet your criteria.


1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. These included his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky (shot months after his arrest); his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks (a distinguished physicist, who was eventually released but died before he got home); his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev (a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky; shot shortly after his arrest); his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhaylovna Varzar (sent to a camp in Karaganda); his friend the Marxist writer Galina Serebryakova (20 years in camps); his uncle Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed).

I realize none of those are composers, specifically, but the point in my earlier post was that people who were personal acquaintances of Shostakovich were disappearing all around him, which would cause anybody to live in constant fear and dread. This is a major factor in his symphonies from the 5th onward.


----------



## KenOC

Short on time?  BTW I said nothing about the quality of Shostakovich's music. You assumption that I dismiss it may be, once again, in error.

BTW I agree that DSCH had very good reason to be worried (Wiki snippet applies). But that has nothing to do with your original post.


----------



## dsphipps100

KenOC said:


> I said nothing about the quality of Shostakovich's music. You assumption that I dismiss it may be, once again, in error.


You _are_ the author of this thread's OP, are you not?


----------



## KenOC

Indeed I am. And? Read it again, please.


----------



## dsphipps100

KenOC said:


> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.


The fact is that several of his symphonies' premiers were met with loud standing ovations.


KenOC said:


> - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.


From the 5th onward, there is a certain amount of truth in this, especially since the Stalinist regime looked on artistic innovation with suspicion - like I said earlier in discussing "formalism". Prior to the 5th, however, he was experimenting with a style that was a sort of blend between neo-classicism and post-Mahler ambiguous tonalism.


KenOC said:


> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.


As I said earlier, you have to know how to find the embedded messages that he hid in his music, and which the rank-and-file people of Russian understood (which is why he often received standing ovations at their premiers).


KenOC said:


> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.


This is simply factually untrue. As I explained earlier, he had more than one major conflict with the USSR government, to the point that he was in fear for his life, plus he also had a number of compositions that he dared not release to the public until after Stalin died, such as his 4th Symphony, and even the ones that he did release, like the 11th Symphony, contained hidden messages that the Communists' day of reckoning would eventually arrive. That is hardly the attitude of a "toady".


----------



## Ilarion

Hi KenOC,

Howzit? I sense that you are poking, prodding, and probing to find a deeper truth. Having assembled recordings of all his music I can sit back with a snifter of Single Malt Scotch and marvel at the music I hear and enjoy it for the artwork it is. You are an intelligent soul and methinks you have a very good grip on what Shosty is all about.


----------



## KenOC

Ilarion said:


> Hi KenOC,
> 
> Howzit? I sense that you are poking, prodding, and probing to find a deeper truth.


Thanks for your comment, Ilarion. Indeed I am (poking and prodding, that is).

Actually I opened this thread to ask a question, reflected in the thread title. Why is Shostakovich so popular, specifically in the United States? Let's face it, we like our populist cowboys, pop-jazz composers, and quirky insurance salesmen. Not much room here for serious and often gloomy music from a conflicted soul -- a composer whose music seldom reflects cloudless triumphs or sends 'em home happy, Beethoven style. Not to mention, he was a pliant tool of an oppressive government whose people woke up every morning wondering what new evil they could do that day (or so our propagandists told us, and most of us are still convinced).

However, I'd judge that Shostakovich is, in the United States, the most popular composer of the 20th century. And I don't think, in this whole thread, anybody has answered the thread's question: Why?


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> However, I'd judge that Shostakovich is, in the United States, the most popular composer of the 20th century. And I don't think, in this whole thread, anybody has answered the thread's question: Why?


I don't know if he's the most popular. I suspect Philip Glass and Steve Reich are at least as popular.

But let's say he's one of the most popular...devoted classical music fans aren't really a representative subset of Americans, are they? They're less invested in the cowboys and insurance salesman stuff, I think.


----------



## violadude

isorhythm said:


> I don't know if he's the most popular. I suspect Philip Glass and Steve Reich are at least as popular.
> 
> But let's say he's one of the most popular...devoted classical music fans aren't really a representative subset of Americans, are they? They're less invested in the cowboys and insurance salesman stuff, I think.


Well, Phillip Glass was featured in a South Park episode, so maybe he IS the most popular 20th century composer, from that alone.


----------



## KenOC

isorhythm said:


> I don't know if he's the most popular. I suspect Philip Glass and Steve Reich are at least as popular.


 Certainly not per orchestral programming in the US.

Shostakovich - programmed 75 times
Glass - 10 times
Reich - 1 time.

(current season, 89 orchestras)


----------



## Oliver

Because String Quartet no. 5


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## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> Certainly not per orchestral programming in the US.
> 
> Shostakovich - programmed 75 times
> Glass - 10 times
> Reich - 1 time.
> 
> (current season, 89 orchestras)


Well, Reich doesn't write orchestral music, so it won't tell you anything in his case.

I think CD sales might be a better metric. Reich and Glass appeal to lots of people who don't go to symphony concerts. (Then again I might be pulling a "nobody I know voted for Nixon" here.)

You're certainly right that Shostakovich is very popular and that his music seems at odds with mom and apple pie American values.


----------



## dgee

KenOC said:


> Thanks for your comment, Ilarion. Indeed I am (poking and prodding, that is).
> 
> Actually I opened this thread to ask a question, reflected in the thread title. Why is Shostakovich so popular, specifically in the United States? Let's face it, we like our populist cowboys, pop-jazz composers, and quirky insurance salesmen. Not much room here for serious and often gloomy music from a conflicted soul -- a composer whose music seldom reflects cloudless triumphs or sends 'em home happy, Beethoven style. Not to mention, he was a pliant tool of an oppressive government whose people woke up every morning wondering what new evil they could do that day (or so our propagandists told us, and most of us are still convinced).
> 
> However, I'd judge that Shostakovich is, in the United States, the most popular composer of the 20th century. And I don't think, in this whole thread, anybody has answered the thread's question: Why?


Well, I think there some fairly obvious points in Shozza's favour in the popularity stakes. His harmonic and rhythmic language aren't too surprising, there's plenty of familiar styles (marches and waltzes galore) and many of his most played works have a satisfying level of seriousness and then some loud stuff at the end.

Does that sound like another symphonist who's currently highly popular?? A: Gustav Mahler . But the Shosty stuff also has the benefit of being fairly static in mood (I find at least) - he gets a groove going and tends to stay in it for a bit


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## Mahlerian

dgee said:


> Well, I think there some fairly obvious points in Shozza's favour in the popularity stakes. His harmonic and rhythmic language aren't too surprising, there's plenty of familiar styles (marches and waltzes galore) and many of his most played works have a satisfying level of seriousness and then some loud stuff at the end.
> 
> Does that sound like another symphonist who's currently highly popular?? A: Gustav Mahler . But the Shosty stuff also has the benefit of being fairly static in mood (I find at least) - he gets a groove going and tends to stay in it for a bit


He also, unlike Mahler, tends to repeat his motifs verbatim and often, in lieu of substantial development (in the popular symphonies, 5-12).

I'd call Berg's music more Mahlerian in spirit, though Shostakovich's is perhaps more Mahlerian in some outward characteristics.


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## dgee

Mahlerian said:


> He also, unlike Mahler, tends to repeat his motifs verbatim and often, in lieu of substantial development (in the popular symphonies, 5-12).
> 
> I'd call Berg's music more Mahlerian in spirit, though Shostakovich's is perhaps more Mahlerian in some outward characteristics.


Indeed - it was a very outward assessment!


----------



## Guest

dsphipps100 said:


> As I said earlier, you have to know how to find the embedded messages that he hid in his music


I don't think this is so - that is, you don't _have _to. It's difficult to _un_-know what I know of DSCH's background - not much, but the headlines - so I may be reading some of it into what I hear, but what I don't hear (wrt his symphonies) is anything that is celebratory of the Soviet regime (but I'm not a Russian or a Soviet Russian!) The fact that he survived as a composer under the regime is not, I think, reason enough to call him a compliant toady.



KenOC said:


> Why is Shostakovich so popular, specifically in the United States?


I suspect it's as important to understand "the United States" as it is to recognise something in his music, and I'm not about to advance a solid theory on the basis of two visits to the US and a lifetime of living with their presence in my media-infected home. But I might wonder whether it is not just, or not so much the music as a perception that like Solzhenitsyn, he was (and still is) _regarded _as an anti-Soviet hero (even if the truth about DSCH is more complicated than that)?


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## tdc

KenOC said:


> Certainly not per orchestral programming in the US.
> 
> Shostakovich - programmed 75 times
> Glass - 10 times
> Reich - 1 time.
> 
> (current season, 89 orchestras)


Out of curiosity - any idea what these stats are if you compared him to Rachmaninov?


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## KenOC

tdc said:


> Out of curiosity - any idea what these stats are if you compared him to Rachmaninov?


Sergei Rachmaninoff - programmed 105 times.


----------



## tdc

KenOC said:


> Sergei Rachmaninoff - programmed 105 times.


So what makes you conclude Shostakovich is the most popular 20th century composer?


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## KenOC

Well, honestly I don't see Rachmaninoff (or Mahler or Sibelius) as 20th century composers. So shoot me.

But in fact, I've referred before to the "decade game" where works from the entire 20th century were ranked, decade by decade. Shostakovich placed the highest with the mostest, easily eclipsing even those just mentioned. Check it out.

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/ama/best-works-by-decade


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## KenOC

I would ascribe DSCH's popularity to a very simple cause. Even though many listeners may find his musical style to be difficult, he is communicating something that resonates. My belief is that audiences are hungry for new music that means something to them in a way that is important. They don't care about "modern" or whether there is some "system" to the music. They simply want it to speak to them.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> I would ascribe DSCH's popularity to a very simple cause. Even though many listeners may find his musical style to be difficult, he is communicating something that resonates. My belief is that audiences are hungry for new music that means something to them in a way that is important. They don't care about "modern" or whether there is some "system" to the music. They simply want it to speak to them.


Well, fair enough as far as it goes - but that's not very far.

"Resonates" - how?
"Means something" - what?
"Speak to them" - what is it 'saying'?


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## KenOC

As often happens in music, words fail (which is a good thing). Nevertheless, I think this is the case.

If you disagree, to what do you ascribe DSCH's apparent popularity?


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## Nereffid

dgee said:


> Well, I think there some fairly obvious points in Shozza's favour in the popularity stakes. His harmonic and rhythmic language aren't too surprising, there's plenty of familiar styles (marches and waltzes galore) and many of his most played works have a satisfying level of seriousness and then some loud stuff at the end.


I think that's really the crux of it, at least in terms of the concert hall. Trying to look at it from the point of view of the "average listener" who isn't familiar with a vast array of classical music and certainly has little knowledge of the sort that might connect Mahler and Berg, it seems to me that in works like the 2nd piano concerto and 5th symphony Shostakovich wrote exactly the kind of thing such listeners think of when they think of "classical music" - essentially sounding like Mozart or Beethoven only "more modern".


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## KenOC

And several other symphonies? And the concertos? And the quartets? And the piano quintet and trio? And the Preludes and Fugues? And a dozen or so other works? That's stretching I think.

It's quite true that DSCH's "idiom" may not be all that difficult for current audiences, but that's true of a lot of other composers as well. I don't think that's a very good explanation of his popularity.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> As often happens in music, words fail (which is a good thing). Nevertheless, I think this is the case.
> 
> If you disagree, to what do you ascribe DSCH's apparent popularity?


If you're asking me (?), you've not said enough to either agree or disagree with. I've already made a suggestion in my last but one post which might shed light on what the music 'says' or how it 'resonates'...


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## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> If you're asking me (?), you've not said enough to either agree or disagree with. I've already made a suggestion in my last but one post which might shed light on what the music 'says' or how it 'resonates'...


Looked back - evidently you're saying that some of DSCH's popularity in the US is due to his status (imagined or otherwise) as a "secret rebel" within the Soviet system. I suppose that could be fact, to some extent. I tend to discount it because I give it little credibility, but you're right, others may think otherwise.


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## Guest

How about this essay...

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/9460...d-the-peace-conference?rgn=main;view=fulltext

There are plenty of snippets, but the concluding para says:



> Shostakovich's presence at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace in March 1949, and the public response to it, show that Shostakovich's music, with its appeal to a wide public regardless of its politics, is essential to understanding the enigmatic nature of his public image. He stood on the world stage again and again as a Soviet composer, and many of his audiences did not believe his words (or those of his interpreter). They believed his music. This is not a postmodern construct-it was there from the rising years of his career and remains to this day.


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## Richannes Wrahms

They probably believe in Sousa's marches too.


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## Guest

Did anyone set Motherhood and Apple Pie to music?


----------



## Nereffid

More fun figures pertaining to Shostakovich's popularity:

If we're talking about the orchestral music I think it's important to note that of the 75 Shostakovich performances you mention, a full third of them are taken up by the 1st, 5th, and 10th symphonies. Meanwhile, Prokofiev is programmed 85 times, though again 3 works - Romeo and Juliet and the 1st and 5th symphonies - take up over 40% of that. In fact, for both composers taking out their top 3 works brings the number of performances down to 48.

Comparing works by decade as you've done, Shostakovich is beaten by Bartók in the 1930s, does well in the 1940s, and is dominant in the 1950s and 1960s. This later success is surely at least partly attributable to the fact that not so many voters/listeners are on board with the more modern music of the post-WW2 period.

Looking at my own polls by decade - https://sites.google.com/site/nereffid/home/chronological-highlights/chronological-favourites - Shostakovich in fact doesn't stand out at all until the 1950s, which seems to mark a border (not a definitive Rubicon, but something still quite clear) in TC members' tastes.


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## ArtMusic

The fact that Shostakovich did not stand out until the 1950s owed *much more* to political factors in the former Soviet Union and WWII than any other true popularity measures per se.


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## Nereffid

ArtMusic said:


> The fact that Shostakovich did not stand out until the 1950s owed *much more* to political factors in the former Soviet Union and WWII than any other true popularity measures per se.


No, these are polls conducted on TC over the past 8 months. Many of his most popular works were written prior to the 1950s - but so were many other equally (or more) popular works by other composers. From the 1950s, Shostakovich's "competition" (Bartók, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Vaughan Williams) had pretty much died off. So he began to stand out as one of the few tall trees.


----------



## Mal

clavichorder said:


> I really don't understand why these big blankets of critical opinion are being thrown over all of Shostakovich's output so lightly. How can you do that when there are works like the 8th String Quartet... the Violin Concerto no. 1 (that scherzo especially)is appealing in a visceral way, just like the 6th symphony(very overlooked work).


I agree with these comments, the 8th string quartet alone makes Shostakovich essential, for me, especially as played by the Borodin Quartet. I think beginners need to approach him carefully and, especially, don't do what I did. I bought the Haitink box set of symphonies, got very bored by the fifth symphony, and gave up. Eventually I heard the works you mention, and started to give him another chance. The piano concertos and cello concerto are also, now, in my "essential" playlist. Note, for me, only the music counts. Knowing something of his background is interesting, but if it doesn't work as music, without the social context, then it doesn't get on my playlist.


----------



## isorhythm

KenOC said:


> I would ascribe DSCH's popularity to a very simple cause. Even though many listeners may find his musical style to be difficult, he is communicating something that resonates. My belief is that audiences are hungry for new music that means something to them in a way that is important. They don't care about "modern" or whether there is some "system" to the music. They simply want it to speak to them.


Of course it speaks to them. Wasn't your question _why_ it, in particular, speaks to them?


----------



## drnlaw

KenOC said:


> To people who like Shostakovich's music, I ask: Why do we like it? Consider:
> 
> - His music is hardly life-affirming or optimistic.
> - He had his musical triumphs, but they're mostly half-hearted and ambiguous.
> - He wasn't much of an innovator and brought little new, technically, in his music.
> - His "political" music--and there was a lot of it--was written for a discredited regime and political system.
> - He was long seen as a toady of an inhumane government and, frankly, he was.
> 
> So what is it that makes (some of) us listen to his music, again and again?


Mmm, good question, and any answer I would have would be purely subjective, but just two observations:

One, the Shostakovich First Symphony was one of the first pieces of music that I heard when I discovered my dad's record collection at the age of something like 11 or 12, Artur Rodzinski and the Cleveland Orchestra, and I loved it, especially the last few minutes of it. I was too young to know anything about politics, and my only distinction between one piece of music and another was whether I liked it or not. Shostakovich and Offenbach were on the same level for me - at that tender age, not now.

Secondly, I'm extremely sanguine myself, so I guess I need some serious in my music to make up for it. Mahler. Bruckner, Shostakovich - composers who wear their hearts on their shoulders.


----------



## drnlaw

Nereffid said:


> I think that's really the crux of it, at least in terms of the concert hall. Trying to look at it from the point of view of the "average listener" who isn't familiar with a vast array of classical music and certainly has little knowledge of the sort that might connect Mahler and Berg, it seems to me that in works like the 2nd piano concerto and 5th symphony Shostakovich wrote exactly the kind of thing such listeners think of when they think of "classical music" - essentially sounding like Mozart or Beethoven only "more modern".


Interesting - new member since just about an hour ago, first post (just above) outside the "what I'm listening to" thread, and I comment on my love of Mahler, and here's someone else who sort of connects the two.

And just before that, dgee comments on Shostakovich's "satisfying level of seriousness and then some loud stuff at the end."

I think I'm gonna like this place.


----------



## Ilarion

KenOC said:


> Well, honestly I don't see Rachmaninoff (or Mahler or Sibelius) as 20th century composers. So shoot me.
> 
> But in fact, I've referred before to the "decade game" where works from the entire 20th century were ranked, decade by decade. Shostakovich placed the highest with the mostest, easily eclipsing even those just mentioned. Check it out.
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/ama/best-works-by-decade


Hi KenOC,

Yes, I have failed spectacularly to answer your question as to *why* about Shosty. *Dima* Shostakovich and his music is, imo, an acquired taste. I am tantalised that so many listen to Shosty - Maybe those many are curious or maybe his music speaks to them. AFAIK, I cannot know the ulterior reason as to *why* - It is what it is. I don't even purport to own the Philosopher's Stone in re to Shosty.

Oh, and yes, I too do not consider Rach to be a 20th composer.


----------



## KenOC

Nereffid said:


> Comparing works by decade as you've done, Shostakovich is beaten by Bartók in the 1930s, does well in the 1940s, and is dominant in the 1950s and 1960s. This later success is surely at least partly attributable to the fact that not so many voters/listeners are on board with the more modern music of the post-WW2 period.


Plus, after 1950 his competition had largely died off or at least faded badly (Prokofiev). A long composing career certainly helps! In the decade games, Shostakovich placed works in the top ten of every decade from the 1920s through the 1970s -- five works through the 1940s and then eight more in his last three decades. An average of just over two works in the top ten of every decade he worked in. Amazing!


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Plus, after 1950 his competition had largely died off or at least faded badly (Prokofiev). A long composing career certainly helps! In the decade games, Shostakovich placed works in the top ten of every decade from the 1920s through the 1970s -- five works through the 1940s and then eight more in his last three decades. An average of just over two works in the top ten of every decade he worked in. Amazing!


Isn't it a bit disingenuous to repeatedly cite results that you had a decisive role in shaping?


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Isn't it a bit disingenuous to repeatedly cite results that you had a decisive role in shaping?


 I nominated and voted along with everyone else. Do you think we shouldn't be allowed to discuss past elections if we voted in them? BTW, "decisive"? Please explain.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> I nominated and voted along with everyone else. Do you think we shouldn't be allowed to discuss past elections if we voted in them? BTW, "decisive"? Please explain.


Well, in the 1960s round, for example, you nominated both of the works that made it to the top of that round, and voted nearly exclusively for Shostakovich works.

For DSCH: 8 (minus the last vote where two Shostakovich works were the only choices)

For something else: 1 (Britten's War Requiem)

Nominated:

Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor (1960)
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat major (1964)
Britten: Cello Symphony (1963)
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 2 in G major (1966)

You can't cite these results as if they were some kind of objective measurement of the taste of even that other forum, when you in fact brought them about that way. Without your fervent support of Shostakovich's works in those voting games, they would not have dominated nearly as much.

(In the interest of disclosure, I also participated, and voted as follows:

Takemitsu November Steps: 2
Messiaen Et expecto: 2
Ligeti Atmospheres: 1)


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Well, in the 1960s round, for example, you nominated both of the works that made it to the top of that round, and voted nearly exclusively for Shostakovich works.
> 
> For DSCH: 8 (minus the last vote where two Shostakovich works were the only choices)
> 
> For something else: 1 (Britten's War Requiem)
> 
> Nominated:
> 
> Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor (1960)
> Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat major (1964)
> Britten: Cello Symphony (1963)
> Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 2 in G major (1966)
> 
> You can't cite these results as if they were some kind of objective measurement of the taste of even that other forum, when you in fact brought them about that way. Without your fervent support of Shostakovich's works in those voting games, they would not have dominated nearly as much.


As you well know, it takes two nominations to get on a list of 30-50 pieces. No voter has more than a ~5% influence on game results. If I nominated works that turned out to be popular, and they were seconded, and then they were voted for (obviously by multiple players), I was doing no more nor less than any of the other players.

I don't find your analysis at all convincing, but I'm sure you're being as objective as you can be.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> As you well know, it takes two nominations to get on a list of 30-50 pieces. No voter has more than a ~5% influence on game results. If I nominated works that turned out to be popular, and they were seconded, and then they were voted for (obviously by multiple players), I was doing no more nor less than any of the other players.
> 
> I don't find your analysis at all convincing, but I'm sure you're being as objective as you can be.


Voters who voted more often, as you did, had more influence on the results. Voters who tried propping up unpopular works, as I did, had next to no influence.

Anyway, my main point is that there was a conflict of interest and you really can't cite the results of an internet game that you shaped as if they were an objective measurement of anything.


----------



## KenOC

No voting game on the Internet is "objective." I can't remember using or even implying that word.

Perhaps you remember my long-ago votes so clearly because I voted too often against your favorites?

"Voters who voted more often, as you did, had more influence on the results."

Two votes a day. Must have been exhausting! But as in presidential elections, my motto has always been "Vote early, vote often!"


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> No voting game on the Internet is "objective." I can't remember using or even implying that word.
> 
> Perhaps you remember my long-ago votes so clearly because I voted too often against your favorites?


No, because you keep bringing the games up over and over as if they were evidence of _anything whatsoever_.

Here's how the 1950s panned out:

You voted
For DSCH 10: 7
For DSCH Cello Concerto 1: 2
For anyone else: 0

And nominated
Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto in E minor, Op. 125 (1952)
Shostakovich: Festive Overture in A major for orchestra (1954)
Shostakovich: Symphony #10 in E minor (1953)
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto #1 in E-flat major (1959)

___________________________

I voted:

For Boulez Marteau: 1
For Messiaen Oiseaux exotiques: 3
For Stravinsky Agon: 1
For Ligeti Musica Ricercata: 1
For Dutilleux Symphony 2: 1
For Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra: 1


----------



## KenOC

OK, so you voted differently than I did, which renders those games totally meaningless. I get it -- I think. And I feel no responsibility for the effectiveness of your voting technique. I'm not going to discuss this with you any more.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> OK, so you voted differently than I did, which renders those games totally meaningless. I get it -- I think. I'm not going to discuss this with you any more.


Uh...how could that be what you take away from my posts? You haven't really been reading what I've said, have you?

An internet game of any kind is worthless in terms of proving anything, just as with any self-selected poll. I'd say the same if my favorites had won.


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## Nereffid

Mahlerian said:


> An internet game of any kind is worthless in terms of proving anything, just as with any self-selected poll.


It's not about _proving_, it's about _offering evidence_.

Not having participated in that game, I can't comment on it. But it shows Shostakovich to be a dominant name in favourite music of the 1950s in one group of people; my own polls show that Shostakovich is a dominant name in favourite music of the 1950s in another group; the data from the current US orchestral season show that Shostakovich is a dominant name in currently programmed music of the 1950s.
None of this _proves_ anything.


----------



## techniquest

I like Shostakovich's music - not all of it, but a lot of it. 
I'm not a snob musically, so I like what I like and really couldn't care less where it stands in the hierachy of what's supposed to be good music or not good music. I find that Shostakovich provides the excitement of what a big full orchestra can sound like at full pelt, as well as the beauty of how delicate the orchestra can be.
It is also music that speaks of the most disgusting horrors that the mid 20th century had to offer which is still able to be recalled in living memory. Perhaps in another hundred years, no one will listen to Shostakovich because much of what his music says will become irrelevant and it'll end up in the same pot as - say - Beethoven's 'Wellingtons Victory'. Who knows?


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## Fugue Meister

Nereffid said:


> It's not about _proving_, it's about _offering evidence_.
> 
> Not having participated in that game, I can't comment on it. But it shows Shostakovich to be a dominant name in favourite music of the 1950s in one group of people; my own polls show that Shostakovich is a dominant name in favourite music of the 1950s in another group; the data from the current US orchestral season show that Shostakovich is a dominant name in currently programmed music of the 1950s.
> None of this _proves_ anything.


Agreed, there's been a whole lot of nitpicking going on here.


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## Mahlerian

Nereffid said:


> It's not about _proving_, it's about _offering evidence_.
> 
> Not having participated in that game, I can't comment on it. But it shows Shostakovich to be a dominant name in favourite music of the 1950s in one group of people; my own polls show that Shostakovich is a dominant name in favourite music of the 1950s in another group; the data from the current US orchestral season show that Shostakovich is a dominant name in currently programmed music of the 1950s.
> None of this _proves_ anything.


Evidence of _what_, though? If Ken had wanted to discuss the matter, instead of launching into ad hominem attacks, maybe we could have found out what he thinks it's evidence of.


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## Blancrocher

Any other fans of the 2nd Piano Sonata?






I love its slow, dark-hued, and introspective character. It's not the same kind of technical tour de force as (say) a late sonata by Prokofiev, but I think it's valid on its own terms: sort of a Schubert to compare with Prokofiev's Chopin.

I can't speak to its originality, but it certainly sounds recognizably like Shostakovich to me.


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## EdwardBast

I think part of what makes Shostakovich popular is his complete mastery of space and time by what are often simultaneously the simplest and yet the most subtle means. While using very little of the traditional techniques for building huge crescendos employed by late romantic and post-romantic composers - that is, complex extended tertian harmony with chromatic voice-leading and the reliance on harmonic and melodic sequencing (think Wagner, Strauss, et alia) - he was yet able to incrementally increase tension over great spans, pulling the listener inexorably toward some dreadful crisis that might be five minutes in the future. This is what listeners respond to: total involvement in a process in which powerful forces are at work and in which one is denied a single free breath or moment of relaxation, in which a sense of overriding purposeful motion keeps one on the edge of ones chair. Look at the first theme group of Symphony no. 10/i (beginning with the clarinet theme at rehearsal 5 and going on unbroken for several minutes) and the whole development section of the same movement for prime examples.

But more important than this, and indeed the true mark of genius, is Shostakovich's ability to imbue the most commonplace and insignificant elements with devastating power. The relationship between two chords built on B-flat from the same movement illustrates the point. This passage in the coda is a key to the movement; If it doesn't send a chill up your spine, you haven't "gotten the movement" yet:

The last barline in each example shouldn't be a final one, sorry!









It closes a door opened by the next example (from 15 minutes earlier) and leads to disembodied echoes of the clarinet theme like a memorial for the dead. The passage that opens the door is the first harmonic change in the principal theme, which by that time has been going on as a simple lyrical tune over a tonic (E) pedal for twenty measures:









It sounds like a sweet, lovely revelation here, but it opens the door to a steadily intensifying ordeal. The long-range thinking required to turn the relationship between these two simple passages into a crux of the movement's meaning and architecture is at the essence of Shostakovich's popularity. It is this kind of planning and subtlety that enables structures that can hold an audience breathless for twenty minutes and leave them exhausted at the end.

Note to moderators: While the music is under copyright, the short passages quoted are clearly covered by any interpretation of "fair use."


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## EdwardBast

dgee said:


> Well, I think there some fairly obvious points in Shozza's favour in the popularity stakes. *His harmonic and rhythmic language aren't too surprising*, there's plenty of familiar styles (marches and waltzes galore) and many of his most played works have a satisfying level of seriousness and then some loud stuff at the end.
> 
> Does that sound like another symphonist who's currently highly popular?? A: Gustav Mahler . But the Shosty stuff also has the *benefit of being fairly static in mood (I find at least) - he gets a groove going and tends to stay in it for a bit*


I'm not sure what you intend in characterizing Shostakovich's harmonic and rhythmic language as unsurprising but, in context, it sounds like you are saying it is comfortably familiar and not too challenging, not strikingly new or innovative, and that this is a big factor in its popularity. What I would question in this view is, first, the implication that the new, the challenging, and the innovative must necessarily be uncomfortable, and second, that what audiences are responding to in the specific case of Shostakovich are the familiar stylistic features in his language in a simplistic sense. On the contrary, I think it more likely that what listeners are responding to - mostly unconsciously, no doubt - is the skill with which Shostakovich makes the seemingly familiar strange. For, in fact, there is much that is new in Shostakovich's harmonic, melodic and rhythmic language, but these new elements tend to remain unacknowledged and poorly understood because, in an age in which innovation was an aesthetic imperative and in which each decade gave birth to a new stylistic revolution, Shostakovich was guilty of the unforgivable sin of subtlety and, worse still, a subtlety whose workings are often concealed in rough gestures and beneath elemental surfaces.

What Shostakovich did, in a nut shell, is reconcile the expanded conception of tonal space created by the use of altered mediant, submediant and tritone relationships of which his Russian predecessors were so fond (and the corollary octaonic and hexatonic scales that often go with them), with a predominantly modal melodic language. I invite anyone who thinks there is nothing new or surprising about Shostakovich's language to try to explain what is going on for the first few minutes of his Tenth Symphony. It would seem to be exceedingly simple, mostly a single line using scale like materials against a sustained pitch with the occasional chord sequence thrown in. But there is a world in the details.

Shostakovich's treatment of rhythm is exceedingly subtle as well. One of the elements I love is his ability to create measures serving as "hinges," which are simultaneously weak final measures in one phrase and strong first measures of the next; This man knew his Mussorgsky and learned from him. The clearest example of this, and one of his most beautiful melodies, is the second theme of the Fifth Quartet/i.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot the second bolded passage. What you call fairly static in mood, I would call having a long attention span and being able to unfold large-scale gestures, like those mentioned in my last post.


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## dgee

EdwardBast said:


> I'm not sure what you intend in characterizing Shostakovich's harmonic and rhythmic language as unsurprising but, in context, it sounds like you are saying it is comfortably familiar and not too challenging, not strikingly new or innovative, and that this is a big factor in its popularity. What I would question in this view is, first, the implication that the new, the challenging, and the innovative must necessarily be uncomfortable, and second, that what audiences are responding to in the specific case of Shostakovich are the familiar stylistic features in his language in a simplistic sense. On the contrary, I think it more likely that what listeners are responding to - mostly unconsciously, no doubt - is the skill with which Shostakovich makes the seemingly familiar strange. For, in fact, there is much that is new in Shostakovich's harmonic, melodic and rhythmic language, but these new elements tend to remain unacknowledged and poorly understood because, in an age in which innovation was an aesthetic imperative and in which each decade gave birth to a new stylistic revolution, Shostakovich was guilty of the unforgivable sin of subtlety and, worse still, a subtlety whose workings are often concealed in rough gestures and beneath elemental surfaces.
> 
> What Shostakovich did, in a nut shell, is reconcile the expanded conception of tonal space created by the use of altered mediant, submediant and tritone relationships of which his Russian predecessors were so fond (and the corollary octaonic and hexatonic scales that often go with them), with a predominantly modal melodic language. I invite anyone who thinks there is nothing new or surprising about Shostakovich's language to try to explain what is going on for the first few minutes of his Tenth Symphony. It would seem to be exceedingly simple, mostly a single line using scale like materials against a sustained pitch with the occasional chord sequence thrown in. But there is a world in the details.
> 
> Shostakovich's treatment of rhythm is exceedingly subtle as well. One of the elements I love is his ability to create measures serving as "hinges," which are simultaneously weak final measures in one phrase and strong first measures of the next; This man knew his Mussorgsky and learned from him. The clearest example of this, and one of his most beautiful melodies, is the second theme of the Fifth Quartet/i.
> 
> Edit: Oh yeah, forgot the second bolded passage. What you call fairly static in mood, I would call having a long attention span and being able to unfold large-scale gestures, like those mentioned in my last post.


Tomayto, Tomarto. I don't think it's unfair to say the familiar sounds and comfort are part of the popularity. I mean, looks like you raise some good points and I agree Shostakovich had skill as a composer. The excerpts you've cited from S10 are nice moments - it's a piece I'm very familiar with and I think the first movement is strong on tension and interest. In my limited knowledge of Shostakovich (the rep orchestral and concerto works), it stands out. I won't even try to explain the first few minutes, and I'm sure it's clever. But overall it's still comfortable sounding!

My superficial take is that Shostakovich is a bit boring and rough. Your informed take is that it's subtle and excitingly subverts the familiar. Others' heartfelt take is that it's not too weird and has serious and loud bits in an agreeable balance that thrills (I know this - they've told me!).

Of course, I made no claims of any sort about innovation, it's desirability or otherwise: merely some personal observations on Shostakovich's music. It's funny to see that something along the lines of "Shostakovich was guilty of the unforgivable sin of subtlety" in an age obsessed with superficial innovation is coming out yet again as the stinging riposte to the imagined "modernist" tut-tutting over everyone's shoulder


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## EdwardBast

dgee said:


> Tomayto, Tomarto. I don't think it's unfair to say the familiar sounds and comfort are part of the popularity. I mean, looks like you raise some good points and I agree Shostakovich had skill as a composer. The excerpts you've cited from S10 are nice moments - it's a piece I'm very familiar with and I think the first movement is strong on tension and interest. In my limited knowledge of Shostakovich (the rep orchestral and concerto works), it stands out. I won't even try to explain the first few minutes, and I'm sure it's clever. But overall it's still comfortable sounding!


Sorry, but I have trouble getting my mind around the idea that anyone with a modicum of musical sensitivity and stylistic competence seeks out works like Shostakovich's Tenth because they are comfortable. To find them such is to misapprehend their most basic aesthetic features.



dgee said:


> My superficial take is that Shostakovich is a bit boring and rough. Your informed take is that it's subtle and excitingly subverts the familiar. Others' heartfelt take is that it's not too weird and has serious and loud bits in an agreeable balance that thrills (I know this - they've told me!).


Yes, IMO too there is a fair amount of rough music and some boring stuff in his orchestral works. There is, however, virtually none in his string quartets, the works some of us consider the centerpiece of his output.



dgee said:


> Of course, I made no claims of any sort about innovation, it's desirability or otherwise: merely some personal observations on Shostakovich's music. It's funny to see that something along the lines of "Shostakovich was guilty of the unforgivable sin of subtlety" in an age obsessed with *superficial* innovation is coming out yet again as the stinging riposte to the imagined "modernist" tut-tutting over everyone's shoulder


The tut-tutting isn't imaginary, it was a dominant mode of Shostakovich's reception in the West. Like Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, among others, Shostakovich was roundly and routinely critiqued as a conservative, backward looking sell-out for half a century! In any case, I never characterized the innovations in modern music as "superficial," that was your idea. My point was that the emergence of a radical new school, ism, or system once a decade over the twentieth century seems to have blunted sensitivity among academics and many composers to more subtle and organic transformations of musical language. In effect, Shostakovich was dismissed as conservative by folks lacking the discernment, patience or acumen to comprehend or explain what it was he was about in forming his harmonic and melodic language.


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