# Mozart & Shostakovich



## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

Since I love both composers but never actually analyzed the pieces, I listened to Shostakovich mostly without paying too much attention and never took an actual history of music class, I was wondering, if and how Mozart influenced Shostakovich, other than Mozart's K. 465? The influence of the quartet on Shostakovich is still discussed. What else though? And what did Shostakovich think of Mozart? I found nothing. I found he thought highly of Beethoven. Nothing on Mozart, not negative, not positive. I know Stalin liked Mozart, so maybe he hated him? If you can, please provide examples of Mozart's pieces that were influential to him. Thanks.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I don't think it's a subject that has been dwelt much upon; I've seen Haydn as a more frequent reference in relation to Shostakovich, at least in various record liner notes. But musicologists might have some examples and suggestions.

Yudina and Barshai for example loved Mozart, being also Shosty's friends, and Yudina no doubt from an existential angle, cf. her romanticized, even agonized playing of Mozart's solo piano works ... and other musicians associated with Shosty - Richter, Britten, D.Oistrakh and so on - also loved Mozart, so the sketchy Stalin idea isn't really that valid, IMHO.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Critic Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov on Shostakovich's 9th symphony:

_Transparent. Much light and air. Marvellous tutti, fine themes (the main theme of the first movement - Mozart!). Almost literally Mozart. But, of course, everything very individual, Shostakovichian... A marvellous symphony. The finale is splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!!_


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

joen_cph said:


> I don't think it's a subject that has been dwelt much upon; I've seen Haydn as a more frequent reference in relation to Shostakovich, at least in various record liner notes.


I had no idea! That's useful. Do you have any examples? Or titles of books I can read?



joen_cph said:


> so the sketchy Stalin idea isn't really that valid, IMHO.


Good to know.


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

janxharris said:


> Critic Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov on Shostakovich's 9th symphony


I found also this and I'm watching it:






(He talks about Haydn too.)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Popov's comment dates from the premiere/Stalin years, cf the Wikipedia article. Petrenko for example has a different view on the 9th - that the quote of a favourite Stalin song, Dance of the Bones, in the Finale, is a comment on dictatorship, beneath the jolliness. But I think Haydn is often mentioned in for example comments on this symphony, including by Bernstein.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"I remember quite a few musical opinions that Glazunov gave on a variety of subjects, such as: "The finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is like the cathedral of Cologne." Honestly, to this day I can't think of a better description of that amazing music."
<Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, P. 62>


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> "I remember quite a few musical opinions that Glazunov gave on a variety of subjects, such as: "The finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is like the cathedral of Cologne." Honestly, to this day I can't think of a better description of that amazing music."
> <Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, P. 62>


The memoirs are highly sustpected to not be authentic. But those words are probably true since the
non-authenticity is suspected in the political views and the meaning of his music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Amadea said:


> The memoirs are highly sustpected to not be authentic. But those words are probably true since the
> non-authenticity is suspected in the political views and the meaning of his music.


Testimony is a fraud, certainly not the memoirs of Shostakovich.

Mozart is just at too far a remove from Shostakovich to be looking for influence. The idea of using a signature motive predates Mozart.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Concerts like to pair these two composers. It makes an interesting combination.


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> Mozart is just at too far a remove from Shostakovich to be looking for influence.


If Haydn influenced Shostakovich why not Mozart? If Mozart influenced Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and even Schoenberg ("He taught me how to write quartets"), why not Shostakovich? Why is that impossible to you? Please don't tell me "they had different personalities"...



EdwardBast said:


> The idea of using a signature motive predates Mozart.


I wasn't talking about the idea of a signature motive itself. Nevermind.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Long ago, someone on this forum said this




resembled Shostakovich

0:52




but I haven't found any evidence Shostakovich drew inspiration from the Mozart work


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

Found these in The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich (I didn't think of looking at it...):

"A sense of the young pianist's stylistic
breadth can be gained from the programmes he chose for his gradua*
tion recitals. For the first of the requisite pair of recitals (on 28 Junet
1 923), Shostakovich performed Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F sharp
minor from Book One of The Well-tempered Clavier, Beethoven's
'Waldstein' Sonata, *Mozart's Variations on 'Ah vous dirai-je, maman'*,
Chopin's Third Ballade, Schumann's Humoresque, and Liszt's Venezia
e Napoli (from the Annees de Pelerinage)."

Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich, pg. 116

"Shostakovich 's Second Piano Sonata, movement 1, opening, Allegretto

"Far more significant than these coincidences is the
first movement's opening gesture: an unaccompanied ribbon of rapid scalar
semiquavers, commencing in the soprano and dropping to the tenor
range, where it changes into a standard arpeggiated accompaniment of
the late eighteenth century (see Ex. 4.3). Evidence of this type is frequently
offered up as sufficient grounds for labelling an instrumental work as
neoclassical and gathering up all the other gestures and devices that are
consistent with eighteenth-century norms. I believe, however, that a sig*
nificant number of the first movement's defining traits are grounds for
considering the possibility of an association with a more specific compo*
ser, style and work.
*If that ribbon of notes initially calls to mind certain works of Mozart
(such as the Sonata in F, K332)*, the broad dimensions and develop*
mental coda suggest Beethoven far more strongly." The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich, pg. 118

"*Like Mozart, Shostakovich evolved a mature language in which not a
note is wasted, and every note is exposed. Like Mozart too, he excelled at
comedy and developed an essentially comic vocabulary as the basis for a
style encompassing tragedy. The opera buffa elements in Mozart's con*
certo finales, and the more generally operatic gestures· in their first and
slow movements, have long been noted. Shostakovich was a somewhat
similar case.*" Cambrigde Companion pg 133

Talking about the Cello Sonata:

"The opening theme of the finale is the nearest the sonata has got to a
*Classical formula: one could imagine it as a variation-subject for Mozart
or Beethoven.* There are many such *'Classical' allusions* in the movement;
and after the cello's restatement (itself a variation) Shostakovich takes off
in a buffo outburst of piano chords and cartwheeling cello triplet figura*
tion." Companion, pg 135

The cycle of Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, op. 87:

"The E minor Prelude supplies a calm counterpart to the manic G major
Fugue. It is laid out rather like a trio sonata, but its limpidity also *recalls
the Mozartean slow movement of Ravel's G major Piano Concerto*, offer*
ing a glimpse of a better world in the contrasting chords, which are then
beautifully integrated back into the texture. Shostakovich's performance is
considerably slower than marked and more sorrowful than might have
been predicted, but with fine flexibility in its rubato, and wonderful timing
of the chordal theme. The Fugue is a long-breathed lyrical meditation, its
sigh figures clearly derived from the Prelude;" Companion, pg. 363

Shostakovich Studies Cambridge University Press:

Form in Shostakovich's instrumental works
YURIY KHOLOPOV

"Dmitri Shostakovich is among those who represent a clearly defined and
necessary line in the evolutionary flow of twentieth-century music. The idea
of this artistic trend is fused with its e*mbodiment in the musical forms of
the classical tradition*, which externally has something in common with
neoclassicism. *The influence of neoclassicism on Shostakovich manifests
itself in his quotations of some of the idioms of the musical language of the
baroque or the Viennese classics, especially their melodies and stylistic forms*
- for example in the First Piano Concerto and the first movement of the
Sixth Symphony; and the second movement of the Second String Quartet
ends with a quotation of the standard formula for a cadence of baroque
recitative. The influence also shows in his addressing typical polyphonic
forms of the pre-classical style, in particular the fugue and passacaglia. 1
Strictly speaking this is not a neoclassical but a neobaroque attitude; but
these are frequently not differentiated. *And the influence of neoclassicism is
not contradicted by the fact that Shostakovich's thinking is firmly based on
forms which had grown up among the great Viennese classics such as
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, which in the context of the twentieth cen-
tury is not so much neoclassicism as 'classicity' or (classical) tradition.*" 
pg. 67

Shostakovich and his late-period recognition of Britten:

"Before moving on from the War Requiem, there is one further aspect of
its craftsmanship that must be considered highly relevant to Shostakovich's
aesthetic principles. This is the carefully sculpted balance, the elegant
classicism of its forms and overall conception. To refer to the War
Requiem - in view of its content - as an 'elegant' work may strike some
readers as inappropriate, but it is in keeping with what may be defined as
Britten's Mozartian aesthetic, his balancing of pleasure with pain, to find
the War Requiem immensely satisfying in this respect. *Such features are
obviously a feature of Shostakovich's own 'simple' (at the formal level)
communication with his audiences too - especially in the string quartets,
where his love and respect for the formal conventions of the Viennese
classical tradition are particularly in evidence.*" pg. 249

"In this sense the Epilogue of Peer Gynt 
has a great deal in common with the coda of Shostakovich's
Thirteenth Symphony. *The main difference between the unstructured
metamusical codas of Shostakovich and Schnittke lies in the fact that in
Shostakovich (in the same way as Mozart) the coda can occur com-
pletely independently of the rest of the material*, whereas in Schnittke (in
the same way as, say, Bach) the coda will still be latently or obviously
correlated with the basic material of the work or have something in
common with its beginning. *Not without reason did Glazunov find
elements of Mozartian talent in Shostakovich*, whereas Schnittke, in his
recent lecture to the students of the Hamburg Musikhochschule, pointed
out that he had spent his whole life engaging with Bachian techniques
and that, in his opinion, at least two centuries of European music were
'Bach-centred'." pg. 272

Shostakovich Studies 2:

Talking about the Orango:

"After depriving the bass soloist of this short but spectacular
number, he also disregards the words of the Entertainer about the distribu*
tion of 'historical' masks to the actors, and also reduced in the same part the
enumeration of the conflicts in Orango's life; he also excluded the semi*
official/stately last chorus, which ends the act with the edifying buffo tutti 'Let
us laugh, let us laugh . . . '.
But what are the reasons for these differences in Shostakovich's underlay and
the libretto? One of them must be sought in the preferences of the composer
himself. The tendency, noticeable in the music manuscript, towards reduc*
tions of verbal text, the deliberate exclusion of the Entertainer's arioso about
laughter (likened to canine barking)61 - *is that not evidence of a desire to
achieve a truly Mozartian buffo quality in swiftness of action?*" pg. 24


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Amadea said:


> The memoirs are highly sustpected to not be authentic. But those words are probably true since the
> non-authenticity is suspected in the political views and the meaning of his music.


"Testimony was partly genuine, partly a cunning fraud."
<The New Shostakovich / Ian MacDonald · 1990 / P.3>


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Soviet Literature - Issues 5-8 - Page 132
1957
"Shostakovich's talent is now in its full flower. It was of him that Alexander Glazunov, one of the greatest composers of our time, said 35 years ago: “Here is our Mozart.” The celebration of Dmitri Shostakovich's fiftieth birthday was held in a ..."

The Musical Quarterly - Volume 43 - Page 307
1957
"He was prevented from escaping simply because of his love for the man he called " the Russian Mozart ” -Shostakovich . During the famine , being condemned like Shostakovich to the so - called academic food ration , Glazunov saved ..."


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> Soviet Literature - Issues 5-8 - Page 132
> 1957
> "Shostakovich's talent is now in its full flower. It was of him that Alexander Glazunov, one of the greatest composers of our time, said 35 years ago: "Here is our Mozart." The celebration of Dmitri Shostakovich's fiftieth birthday was held in a ..."
> 
> ...


Ok but it seems they're just comparing him to Mozart, probably because he was quite young when he wrote his first symphony and had an immediate success. Did you read the excerpts I put from the Cambridge Companion?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Amadea said:


> Ok but it seems they're just comparing him to Mozart, probably because he was quite young when he wrote his first symphony and had an immediate success. Did you read the excerpts I put from the Cambridge Companion?


Yes. I'm just saying that, I think it's quite possible Glazunov did say "Mozart's K.551/iv is like the cathdral of Cologne", we just don't know for certain what Shostakovich would have thought of that opinion, (if the part of the memoirs that discusses this is fraud).


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Someone has composed music like this, can only be equal to Mozart. (I believe Glazunov said the best for Dmitri)


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

There is a sense of the spiritual in Mozart I find absent in Shostakovich. Shosty had skill certainly but his compositional personality to me is boring. I prefer Prokofiev. I find his music more colorful and imaginative.


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## 89Koechel (Nov 25, 2017)

Well, tdc, I think your opinion about Shostakovich is backed-UP, in certain ways ... through an old assessment ("Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction"/Eric Salzman, that I bought in college (maybe about 40+ years ago). To wit, Salzman concludes his section ("National Styles") like this - "His large structures, built on long, simple tonal planes, endless repetition, rhythmic and harmonic insistence, and big dramatic contrasts spaced out on a Mahlerian time scale (yeah, Mahlerian! ... my note), are not profound though they generally affect the appearance of profundity. Nevertheless they do achieve, almost by sheer force of will, a certain scope and grandeur." Well, I could hardly agree more, and a number of Shostakovich's later Symphonies (esp. 13, 14 and 15) seem almost like "last gasps" of elongated inspiration and development, but maybe without the originality of his earliest years (Symphonies 1, 2 and 3, especially). ... Some of Prokofiev seems a bit dry and/or repetitive, also, esp. in HIS later compositions, but there's NO denying the great originality of Alex. Nevsky film music, the 3rd Piano Concerto, the Scythian Suite, and much else!


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

tdc said:


> There is a sense of the spiritual in Mozart I find absent in Shostakovich. Shosty had skill certainly but his compositional personality to me is boring. I prefer Prokofiev. I find his music more colorful and imaginative.


Could you give an example of Mozart expressing the 'spiritual'? I would hazard that it's difficult to do so _explicitly_.

It's not surprising that Shostakovich avoided expressing that which he did not believe in:

"Once when Shostakovich was listening to a recording of Britten's War Requiem he was asked if he believed in God. His answer was unequivocal "No, and I am very sorry about it."
(L. Lebedinsky, 'Iz bessistemnïkh zapisey', Muzïkal'naya zhizn', (1993) 21-22; quoted in Fay, Shostakovich, p.263. fn.90)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Amadea said:


> *If Haydn influenced Shostakovich why not Mozart?* If Mozart influenced Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and even Schoenberg ("He taught me how to write quartets"), why not Shostakovich? *Why is that impossible to you?* Please don't tell me "they had different personalities"...


Sure - but I don't hear specific Haydn influence either. Stravinsky was sometimes neo-classical, so duh for him. As was Prokofiev when he wrote his first symphony. Tchaikovsky was primarily an opera composer, was closer in time to Mozart, and was clearly enamored of and influenced by Mozart. Schoenberg was always stressing his bona fides by connecting himself to earlier composers, like Brahms. I take this as PR.

Shostakovich? It's not impossible to me. I just happen to know his music and don't hear it.


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## Amadea (Apr 15, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> Sure - but I don't hear specific Haydn influence either. Stravinsky was sometimes neo-classical, so duh for him. As was Prokofiev when he wrote his first symphony. Tchaikovsky was primarily an opera composer, was closer in time to Mozart, and was clearly enamored of and influenced by Mozart. Schoenberg was always stressing his bona fides by connecting himself to earlier composers, like Brahms. I take this as PR.
> 
> Shostakovich? It's not impossible to me. I just happen to know his music and don't hear it.


In another post I wrote everything I found about Shostakovich and Mozart in Cambridge publications.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"In the second of his 1931 essays on 'National Music', *Schoenberg acknowledged Bach and Mozart as his principal teachers* and told his readers why." <PA124>
Schoenberg: *"My teachers were primarily Bach and Mozart*, and secondarily Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner." <PA173>






"Strict Serial Technique in Classical Music" by Hans Keller is an interesting read regarding this topic. ( It's only 9 pages. You can read it online for free if you register)

Here's an excerpt from the article:
"we note that K 428 in E♭ is another quartet of which the youthful Schoenberg had acquired an intimate, inside knowledge. The canonic opening of the first movement's development section (Ex. 3), which exposes the twelve notes within the narrowest space, is a mature example of strict serialism: an anti- (tri-) tonal row of three notes and its mirror forms (BS, I, R, RI) revolves both horizontally and vertically underneath the rotations of its own segmental subordinate row, which is a series in extremest miniature consisting of two notes at the interval of a minor second.








This is purest Schoenberg. In a forthcoming Mozart symposium, I am in fact trying to demonstrate that the passacaglia from the chamber-musical Pierrot lunaire is actually if unconsciously modelled on this development. At the same time, the latter's technique looks far into Schoenberg's own future, down to the (pan)tonal serial technique of the Ode to Napoleon. Beside unifying the anti-harmonic passage as such, that is to say, Mozart's strict serial method has to conduct it back into its wider, harmonic context, whence the series continue to rotate down to the perfect C minor cadence, every note of which remains serially determined."






"Schoenberg now proudly described himself as Mozart's pupil - and the final movement of the Suite, the 'Gigue', comes close to explicit homage to the G major Gigue, KV 574, in which Mozart at his most neo-Baroque and most harmonically chromatic seems almost to anticipate elements of Schoenberg's serial method." < Arnold Schoenberg, By Mark Berry, Page 135 >


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Amadea said:


> Ok but it seems they're just comparing him to Mozart, probably because he was quite young when he wrote his first symphony and had an immediate success. Did you read the excerpts I put from the Cambridge Companion?


Perhaps another reason for the comparison is that, like Mozart, Shostakovich composed in all the genres and forms of his day. I think calling Shostakovich our Mozart was probably just a general acknowledgement of this and of his importance to Russian music. As for the rest of the quotations: I never take criticism and commentary from the USSR at face value.


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## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

Some years ago I read the biography _Shostakovich: A Life Remebered_, by Elizabeth Wilson, which is almost entirely composed of letters from many people who shared their life with Shostakovich, personally or professionally.

I remember some mentions of Mozart, but my memory might be playing a trick. Anyway, here's what I recall:

Shostakovich thought highly of the Jupiter Symphony, as when one of his neighbors mentioned it as his favorite classical symphony, Shostakovich answered that it was worth the praise (maybe he was just being polite though).

Shostakovich also liked Mozart's clarinet quintet... and in the same conversation Shostakovich had mentioned his dislike Brahms' clarinet quintet. For Shostakovich, Brahms was only good for symphonies and not much else.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Shostakovich and Mozart are both great composers and favorites of mine; but they are also far apart in my opinion. Mozart is the essence of Classicism with a capital "C": always making everything sound beautiful and balanced; and with Mozart everything is about a very fine sense of craftsmanship where Mozart makes everything all smooth and seamless; and yet still contains enough of a sense of a tension that it makes the music interesting and not just pretty wall-paper music.

In this sense, Stravinsky and Prokofiev were closer than Shostakovich was to Mozart's idea; with the very long and most significant period of Stravinsky' output being identified as "Neo-Classical". While it's evident that Shostakovich was influenced by Stravinsky and Prokofiev very early on; somewhere around the time of _Lady McBeth of Mdsensk_, the _Symphony #4_ and _Symphony #5_; Shostakovich finds his own voice and it is a very powerful voice that is very expressive; and often depressing, sarcastic, ironic, and angry. Even in a big and brassy finale to a Shostakovich symphony, one is always wondering what Shostakovich is _really_ trying to say. Is this really a grand finale or is he just putting us on? What does he know that we don't know? By the that Shostakovich's humongous mammoth symphonies come along (every symphony 7-15 excepting the 9th which I'll get to later); I see Shostakovich developing along the line Mahler; Mahler who is the Red Giant to Mozart whose star would be just the right the right size and just the right place to give birth to sustain life on Earth (Webern, meanwhile, would be the White Dwarf or Neutron Star, small but so compact that one teaspoon equals the weight of 10 battleships!).

Yes, I know that Shostakovich did compose a _9th Symphony_ that alluded to Haydn; and so did Prokofiev, with his _Classical Symphony_; but where Prokofiev really does capture the spirit of Haydn's joy and exuberance; Shostakovich still cannot move beyond Shostakovich because like Mahler; his personality, his true self, his existential angst, nihilistic outlook, and his compassion for the long-suffering Russian people is too much a part of Shostakovich's musical vision.


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