# Shostakovich & Mahler



## GMSS

I'm a Mahler music lover, but beside Mahler, the other composer I like is Shostakovich.
For me, the first symphony of Shostakovich I listen is his 5th. But I like the 8th most.

Shostakovich somethings very similar with Mahler. But, I think, Shostakovich's work are more darker than Mahler. Mahler's work give me a feeling like "the last hope of the world". But most of Shostakovich's works are something hight pressure with the party. Also, it's full of hollow.

For example, the first mvt of his 6th, I think it maybe a requiem. The first section are very sad with a tragic feel (but different with mahler's 6th),something sigh, a tire feel.
The second section, I'm quiet sure it's a funneral march. Beside this 2 section, a flute solo are appear after the gong sound at the end of the funneral march. I think this is the most touching part of the whole mvt.

In my mind, Shostakovich's works are the truly description of the world, not just the past, even now. This is a contrast of Mahler. Mahler's music is a description of our dream land, even some (or most) of his works are howllow, hoprless.

I hope some one can discuss here of these 2 great composer.

Finally, I must say sorry to anyone make a trable for my "rubbish" english.:tiphat:


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## StlukesguildOhio

I must say that while I am a Mahler lover, Shostakovitch's symphonies have never really enthralled me. On the other hand, I love his operas (_The Nose_ and _Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk_) as well as his Preludes and Fugues and his wonderful string quartets as well as his songs. With Mahler it is probably the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 9th symphonies I love the most... as well as the stunning _Song of the Earth_.

:tiphat:


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## emiellucifuge

i agree with you, on the surface these two composers can appear very similar, but after a long listen you realise that Mahler has given you a tour of the strongest emotions, while Shostakovich has shown you how you must become emotionless and distant to survive a stalinist regime.


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## GMSS

Shostakovich always use a military like music to description of the force of the party, 
but i don't think that his works are "emotionless".
For example, his symphony no.5's 3nd mvt, I think it's the most soft mvt that he write.
Of course, the emotion is more big pf Mahler's works. They're live in different world.


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## snowlover

Shostakoich's first violin concerto is very strong in emotion. I love it very much. but his symphonies.


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## Edward Elgar

With Mahler, there's something new every couple of seconds, wheras Shostakovich can drag the same idea out forever! I hear harmonic similarities between them sometimes, although Shostakovich can be very hollow at times (this is a good thing). That would be a good essay title: compare and contrast the symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich.


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## Delicious Manager

Shostakovich's most overtly 'Mahlerian' symphony is the huge flawed masterpiece that is the Fourth Symphony, especially the opening of the third movement.


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## kmisho

Dear Shostakovich,
I feel so bad for you being an artist under Stalin. How you could compose anything at all, much less anything any good, is beyond me. The big scandal, withdrawing the 4th for fear of...let's admit it...vanishing without a trace, and replacing it with the acceptable 5th. I can see why they would have wanted you to withdraw the 4th, for it is your greatest symphony. It bristles with original ideas from a unique musical imagination...but ideas, uniqueness, imagination were frowned upon weren't they?

Thus, how the 5th was anything but a limp-kneed capitulation is a virtual miracle. The oppressive foreboding of the 1st is exactly on target. The 2nd rings with the hollow self-important bootsteps of bureaucrat/soldiers. The 3rd, with its total lack of martial brass, weeps for Russia, weeps for Stalin's stupidity more than his cruelty. And the 4th thumbs its nose at the whole affair, and the very people it was insulting loved it! How did you create the 5th Symphony, Mr. Shostakovich? How was it you were not carted away and shot after its premier? The only answer I can come up with is that you were a hundred times the musical genius you were allowed to reveal. It is the only way I have to explain your impossible ability to be genuine and pandering at the same time. So here's to you, Shotakovich, for doing whatever it was you did. I'm still not entirely sure I grasp it. But the little pieces I see, I see clearly, and am blinded by them.


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## Meaghan

kmisho said:


> Dear Shostakovich,
> I feel so bad for you being an artist under Stalin. How you could compose anything at all, much less anything any good, is beyond me. The big scandal, withdrawing the 4th for fear of...let's admit it...vanishing without a trace, and replacing it with the acceptable 5th. I can see why they would have wanted you to withdraw the 4th, for it is your greatest symphony. It bristles with original ideas from a unique musical imagination...but ideas, uniqueness, imagination were frowned upon weren't they?
> 
> Thus, how the 5th was anything but a limp-kneed capitulation is a virtual miracle. The oppressive foreboding of the 1st is exactly on target. The 2nd rings with the hollow self-important bootsteps of bureaucrat/soldiers. The 3rd, with its total lack of martial brass, weeps for Russia, weeps for Stalin's stupidity more than his cruelty. And the 4th thumbs its nose at the whole affair, and the very people it was insulting loved it! How did you create the 5th Symphony, Mr. Shostakovich? How was it you were not carted away and shot after its premier? The only answer I can come up with is that you were a hundred times the musical genius you were allowed to reveal. It is the only way I have to explain your impossible ability to be genuine and pandering at the same time. So here's to you, Shotakovich, for doing whatever it was you did. I'm still not entirely sure I grasp it. But the little pieces I see, I see clearly, and am blinded by them.




The second movement also has so much of Mahler in it, it's a wonder that didn't get recognized and punished.


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## kmisho

Meaghan said:


> The second movement also has so much of Mahler in it, it's a wonder that didn't get recognized and punished.


Oh yes. The second is definitely a Mahlerian scherzo. Shostakovich was making no apologies for this obvious influence.


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## Moscow-Mahler

I don't think that Shostakovich's life was so awful. In fact, before Krennikov's "anti-formalistic" speech it was not so bad at all, despite Lady Macbeth' s ban.

How can Mozart stand this stupid Austrian Emperor? There were no democracy and no constitution in his country! :lol:

And in modern Russia lots of people, after leaving the Conservatory work as a clerks in some office and become *"office plankton"* (a slang term for office workers here).


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## kmisho

Depends what you mean by bad. I can't think of much worse for a real artist than to be dictated the kind of art you can make. Add to that that failure to do so could mean becoming an unperson.


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## Delicious Manager

Moscow-Mahler said:


> I don't think that Shostakovich's life was so awful. In fact, before Krennikov's "anti-formalistic" speech it was not so bad at all, despite Lady Macbeth' s ban.


I find your glib comment astonishing coming from (I presume) a fellow Russian. I can only imagine you are too young to remember what the old Soviet Union could be like. Not so awful? Shostakovich came under direct attack from Stalin himself in the _Pravda_ article denouncing _A Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk_. I don't think any music historians are in much doubt that Stalin himself penned the "chaos in stead of music" tirade. So fearful was Shostakovich of his safety, he pulled the Fourth Symphony from rehearsals, probably 'advised' to do so by the secret police. I believe that Shostakovich's very life was in jeopardy (perhaps you need to read-up on how many creative people 'disappeared' on Stalin's orders) and that he probably saved his own skin with the instant popularity of the Fifth Symphony in 1937.

In addition, it is also now known that Shostakovich kept a small, packed suitcase under his bed in case he received the middle-of-the-night 'knock on the door' to take him away as a dissident.

Finally, Shostakovich strongly contemplated suicide in 1960, having been forced to finally become a member of the Communist Party. His Eighth String Quartet was at one time intended by the composer to be his last musical utterance (hence its highly self-biographical and self-quoting nature).

Not so awful? We can't even begin to IMAGINE what it must have been like!


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## elgar's ghost

Too right - I get the impression that Shostakovich was spared mainly because of the reputation he already had in the West prior to his first falling foul of Stalin.

One only has to read what happened to theatre manager/impresario/actor Vsevelod Meyerhold, with whom DSCH's worked closely during the 20s/30s. No? Well, he was arrested, tortured and eventually shot in 1940, and so were many others from the art world who were previously close, or at least known, to the composer. Others were of course sent to the Gulag. 

There was no Bloomsbury Set-style coterie clustering around him by then - he was well and truly alone as association with him was perceived as a gilt-edged invitation for arrest and everyone concerned - DSCH included - had to retreat into their own dark corners of self-preservation. 

Stalin was eventually content to use the stick and carrot to subdue DSCH right up until the dictator's death in 1953, and I can't believe for one moment DSCH felt he could relax at all until well into Krushchev's administration (who was to say things wouldn't get even worse at the beginning of it?) - and by then his own experiences had taught him that he couldn't take anything for granted any more.


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## Delicious Manager

bygone era said:


> Shostakovich was tolerated because he was so easy
> Even a bureaucrat could follow him


Well, that's probably because he was a musician rather than a spy!


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## TxllxT

Let's not overexaggerate life inside the communist system as being that full of spies, horror & terror. I've spoken with many firsthand witnesses (Russian & Czech) to know, that in the West too many myths (à la James Bond) have been concocted. Yes, everything was a big lie and everyone lied along with the others until this system of lying suddenly collapsed. Already the fact that Shostakovich was a fertile composer of countless works speaks for itself. On the other hand life in Vienna in Mahler's days did have 'totalitarian' traits as well. Mahler converted to catholicism in order to be able to make a musical career. When one takes a closer look, the _Belle epoque_ period in which Mahler had to live was a hotbed of mental depressions.


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## Delicious Manager

TxllxT said:


> Let's not overexaggerate life inside the communist system as being that full of spies, horror & terror. I've spoken with many firsthand witnesses (Russian & Czech) to know, that in the West too many myths (à la James Bond) have been concocted.


I think it would be hard to 'exaggerate' the terror of living under a regime controlled by a maniacal despot like Stalin. If you know people who actually lived under Stalin's 'reign' they would need to be quite elderly now. And life in Czechoslovakia was never as bad as it was in Stalin's USSR.

I am lucky to be able to cite Vladimir Ashkenazy as a work colleague and someone I have spent some very pleasant time over dinner and drinks. As you know, he defected from the Soviet Union in 1963 and he has told me of some of his experiences living under such a regime. He also knew Shostakovich.

Yes, of course we shouldn't believe the _James Bond_-style spy stories. But it is so easy for us in our democratic and free countries to underestimate what it might be like to live under such a different system. One only has to read the accounts left by people like Shostakovich himself, Ashkenazy, Rostropovich and Kirill Kondrashin to learn what it was like being a musician during such times.


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## TxllxT

My wife's mother survived the siege of Leningrad. When you look for the origins of the 'secret police', I find them to be invented by the Jesuits in the Habsburg Empire. The Czechs used to be protestant and were forcefully 'reconverted'. Such a kind of unfreedom was present in the Habsburg Empire (everyone had to go to confession; the walls had ears). The communists merely copied this policing of the Jesuits for their own 'atheist' purposes. Mahler and Shostakovich lived in a society under permanent control. Gustav Mahler was born in Jihlava, on the border of Bohemia and Moravia.


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## kmisho

bygone era said:


> Shostakovich was tolerated because he was so easy
> Even a bureaucrat could follow him


Jeez. He was tolerated because bureaucrats with ZERO knowledge of music or art in general, yet were responsible for controlling it, were not capable of understanding when Shostakovich was poking fun at them.


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## kmisho

The low estimates for the number of dead in The Great Purge from 1935 to 1938 is 700,000. I can't believe anyone would say life under Stalin wasn't that bad...


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## Delicious Manager

... and remember that Shostakovich's first brush with Uncle Joe Stalin was right in the middle of the Purge in 1936.

But I'm sure these things were no more than minor inconveniences ...


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## kmisho

I can hear the pressure to conform in works like Shostakovich's and Prokofiev's fifth symphonies. But even then these two works as symphonies are absolutely top notch. It would take an artistic genius to write either of those pieces even if the composer lived in the freest most tolerant society of all time. That's why I'm not just amazed but extra-amazed by the Russian composers in the time of Stalin.


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## TxllxT

Strange but true: the majority of Soviet people adored Stalin like a Messiah. From my firsthand witnesses I heard that they found Leningrad eeriely empty of people, especially after the war. Everybody was trained not to ask, not ask deeper & further. But really and crazy: they were so pleased and happy with their Great Leader! For Czechoslovakia: do not ask about German & Jewish origins because you're bound to get into a row.


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## Delicious Manager

TxllxT said:


> Strange but true: the majority of Soviet people adored Stalin like a Messiah. From my firsthand witnesses I heard that they found Leningrad eeriely empty of people, especially after the war. Everybody was trained not to ask, not ask deeper & further. But really and crazy: they were so pleased and happy with their Great Leader! For Czechoslovakia: do not ask about German & Jewish origins because you're bound to get into a row.


Again, we in the the 'free world' can't grasp the 'cult of personality' that gained dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini the hero worship they largely enjoyed. But also, subconsciously, people are too afraid to think or feel anything else. These tyrants survive through fear and mistrust, making people scared to speak to even their closest friends and relatives, for fear they might 'inform' on them. Today (or in very recent past), even despots like Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Kim Jong Il are revered by the very people they abuse.


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## TxllxT

I hear in Shostakovich' music the grim humour of a man who tries to survive in a world where everything belonged to 'the masses'. The communist jargon (in Prague the Underground is still called MHD 'Masses Together Transport') was mindlessly intended to kill all expressions that did not fit into the mold of 'the masses'. Just hear this man call his name DSCH against this streamlining of humanity into a greyish sameness. Against this greyish background of indistinction I understand the adoration of the Great Leader as a kind of escape: at least he is still a human person (they thought), who they revered as their Holy Father etc. For Gustav Mahler the discovery of Des Knaben Wunderhorn poems meant a lot: a liberation from the doubledealings in the double-monarchy, where the idea of bureaucracy ruled inside & outside the heads of everyone.


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## kmisho

I considered arguing the philosophy of this. But then I realized all this matters not when tens of thousands of people are being arrested on trumped-up charges then vanishing into thin air. Such things tend to crowd out intellectual esoterica.


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## Moscow-Mahler

*Delicious Manager*

I will try to give you answer...

I mean that Shostakovich life wasn't really so bad by Soviet standarts. He has *a good flat *at the time when most people lived in barracks. He and other artists had *honours and privileges. * He had several *Stalin Prizes *(and Prokofiev also had). Intullectuels were still some kind of elite in the USSR. 
The main victims of stalinism were ordinary people, not them. Mostly the peasants, who died because of the hunger (the same as Indian peasants in 19 century).

In fact the only artist who decided to refuse the privileges was Mandelstamm. He wrote the anti-Stalin poem, after he had got a flat from the government.Yet, he was arrested at the second time (I mean at the second, not at the first time) not because of THAT , but because he bothered the leader or the Writer's Union with his requests and the leader of Writer's Union decided to report to NKVD. The reason was banal.

But for example, Mandelstamm's friend Anna Akhmatova used *Kremlin hospital*, then she was ill. So, she didn't refused the priveleges. But she was more a victim then Shostakovich, because her ex-husband was killed and her son arrested. Still, she used some bonuses of totalitarian system, like Kremlin hospital.

But Shostakovich's relatives weren't arrested.
So, in fact Shostakovich life wasn't so bad. A lot of people lived in much more miserable conditions. And his relatives were not repressed.

So, I don't understand why some people see him as a victim.

*BTW, have you read Sheila Fitzpatrick's "Everyday Stalinism"? - it is a very good book.* You will find that totalitarism is horrible and BANAL at the same time.

And of course, Stalin's regime was awful. But modern people forget that in the first half of XX century, only the USA, Great Britain and France were democratic. The other countries were not. Lots of people were killed by such dictators as *Augusto Pinochet*, who were widely supported. Benito Mussolini was a reasonable politician for some Europeans, but he was a dictator. So, the USSR was the worst, but not so unique.


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## Delicious Manager

Moscow-Mahler said:


> *Delicious Manager*So, I don't understand why some people see him as a victim.


Well, if you STILL don't get it, I'm not wasting my time on you any further. Have a nice weekend!


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## TxllxT

I saw a Dutch documentary on communist faking. Lenin's arrival in Sankt Petersburg was not all 'an event'. Nobody was waiting for him. Eistenstein later faked this for propaganda purposes. No shot was ever fired from the Aurora. The Pravda press was financed by German capitalist money and through this the bolsheviks got influence. Now I'm wondering whether Shostakovich ever was a member of the Leningrad Fire brigade. There is a photo with him (jampot-glasses) on the roofs: is this a fake too?


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## Moscow-Mahler

*Delicious Manager*
OK. He was a victim, but not *the main* and lots of people lived in much more bad conditions and their relatives were killed. My grandparents were killed also.

I still hope that you will read *Sheila Fitzpatrick*.

On Stalin and artists please read: *Gerald Smith "Russian poetry: the lives or the lines". *Gerald Smith also says that the main victims were not artists, but ordinary people. I hope that you know, who is Gerald Smith, he is one of the best British slavists. 
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3736730


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## Moscow-Mahler

*TxllxT* 
Some Russian capitalists also supported revolutioners. Savva Morozov, for example. This case of bolsheviks and Germany is still unclear. Some people in Russia claims that Lenin got the money from German General Staff, but there are no straight evidences.

Yes, all educated people in Russia know *that this Avrora scene was a fake! * I'm suprised, that it is still not well known in Europe.


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## Moscow-Mahler

As far as I know Shostakovich and a well-known pianist Sofronitsky were really members of a firefighters brigde during the War.


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## Huilunsoittaja

I see why people compare Shostakovich to Mahler. After all, he admired Mahler, and was influenced somewhat. But not so much. I still think he has a distinctly _Russian_ voice (besides "Soviet"). His orchestration especially is Russian, and he has that intensely cold melancholy.

Shostakovich *>* Mahler in my opinion.

And I never cared whether or not he was a Communist. What choice did have anyway? You join or die. I find it ironic that I love some of his especially Pro-Soviet music, but I still don't care. It's beautiful. It's sincere.


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## Moscow-Mahler

*Huilunsoittaja *
Thanks for returning the discussion to Mahler and Shostakovich topic. It's my fault that I provoked some debates. Could you please explain what do you mean by Russian orchestration? It very interesting. 
***
I think that Mahler' and Shostakovich' music are very different. Mahler's is more spiritual, and Shostakovich' is more nihilistic and it seems to me that Mahler still believed in some "Light", in some "Spirit". Maybe Mahler's 6th is the most Shostakovichean of his symphonies. But the Second, Third, Eight or his last symphonies are not like that.


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## nickgray

TxllxT said:


> No shot was ever fired from the Aurora


Huh? There was a shot. A blank one, but a shot nonetheless.



Huilunsoittaja said:


> And I never cared whether or not he was a Communist


Surprisingly, Soviet regime had little to do with communism or socialism. Yes, the government spoon fed the idea of communism to the public, but that was it. As for the Shostakovich conforming to the Soviet norms, well, to be honest, I have no idea how he managed to stay alive. Soviet bureaucrats demanded light-hearted, sort of "dumb" music (Dunayevsky is a very good example), while Shostakovich's music was complex, introspective, borderline (and late Shostakovich crossed that border) depressive, ironic, sarcastic and clever. While I agree that there's way too much unnecessary speculation concerning his political beliefs, it is impossible to ignore the times he lived in and the relationship between these times and his music.


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## Moscow-Mahler

Yes, there was a blank shot, indeed. Still there were lots of mythes.

*About Dunaevksy*. Yes, but so we can say that so-called Social Realism was a kind of Pop-Culture. Pop-culture won in the West with Hollywood and pop-music. Bela Bartok died in poverty, etc.

And sometimes Hollywood movies are more social-realistic than even Soviet films, esp. then they show American soldiers who say patriotical speeches. Such movie like "Rembo" and Jean-Claude van Damms' movies (it's very funny how they show Russian boxing ring with Carl Marx and Lenin images on it in that movie about Ivan Drago) are the most social-realistic movies, I suppose. Good guys vs Bad guys, etc.

So, Pop-culture won everythere, just in different forms. And even intellectual people prefer to have the image of a "simple" guy. E.g., George Bush the Elder (I mean the Elder, not his dumb son) plaing banjo, not piano during the elections. Or politicians eating in MacDonalds. The same as Lenin as Stalin pretend that they ate cabbage soup and black bread. "Are they communists?", I thought sometimes, watching the last American election company.

Certainly, no one force the artist in an open society in such way as in the USSR. So, of course, it's better to live in a democratic society.


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## nickgray

Moscow-Mahler said:


> Pop-culture won in the West


Yeah, it's kinda funny. The Soviet bureaucratically machine invested a great deal of time and energy on the whole USSR culture. Of course, in the end it all collapsed. Western "democracies", on the other hand, didn't really care (on the ideological level) about the whole culture thing since what, 70s-80s? And yet the vast majority of people still chose not to educate themselves, but to consume this pop culture. The Soviets have overrated the humanity as a whole. It's rather sad, but most of us simply don't care one way or another. You don't need to make people benign and stupid, history shows that most of us will happily slaughter a fellow human being without any good reason.


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## TxllxT

Shostakovich's 'light' music (film music from 'the Gadfly', the Jazz suites) has been taken up with great success in classical pops producers like the Dutch André Rieu (a self-stylisized Strauss). The easy-on-the-ear tunes really are quite famous now among the wider public. Perhaps the intentions of Social Realism are carried out by means of a 'capitalist' mass event organiser of parties à la Johann Strauss (he does it all over the world). I think, this was the goal of those culture apparitchiks, only the label of 'Social Realism' has fainted away.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Moscow-Mahler said:


> *Huilunsoittaja *
> Thanks for returning the discussion to Mahler and Shostakovich topic. It's my fault that I provoked some debates. Could you please explain what do you mean by Russian orchestration? It very interesting.


Oh! I didn't mean to start debate. I just notice a lot of people pair Shostakovich and Mahler together nowadays (not just here).

But this is why Shostakovich is especially "Russian." He got his orchestration/composition teaching from Glazunov and another guy named Maximillian(?) Steinberg, a spiritual heir to Glazunov. Both shared a particular tone in orchestration which Shostakovich absorbed before anything else. I hear it _all_ the time in his orchestral works.

It's probably especially apparent when Shostakovich splits up the orchestra into groups: the brass stay together in harmony choirs, woodwinds stay together in harmony choirs, and strings too. Also, putting flute and clarinet in unison for long periods of time, use of gong, pizzicato in the cellos and double basses, muted brass, and "bell" tones made by combining pizzicato and brass at same time.

And there's so much more that's hard to put in words.


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## GMSS

Edward Elgar said:


> With Mahler, there's something new every couple of seconds, wheras Shostakovich can drag the same idea out forever! I hear harmonic similarities between them sometimes, although Shostakovich can be very hollow at times (this is a good thing). That would be a good essay title: compare and contrast the symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich.


For you opinions, I don't complete agree with you.
Firtst, Mahler not always "something new every couple of seconds".
I'm not mean that Mahler were always "repeat", but it use sometings wich had his own style.
And Shostakovich, at the time period, at that country, he go to use the most "possible" (or allowens) to make his own music. 
Yes, I think Shostakovich was "repeat" more than Mahler. But, That's a must under the USSR.


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## TxllxT

Comparing Shostakovich and Mahler is comparing a composer who has covered so many genres (symphonies, concertos, chamber music, piano etc.) with a composer who apart from some Schubert reworkings has done only symphonies. Is it possible to compare Shostakovich and Bach? Yes! (Preludes & Fugues) Is it possible, is it worthwhile to compare Mahler and Bach? Hardly, I would say. Mahler's soul is wandering around in his symphonies, but Shostakovich's soul is much more at home in his string quartets. Perhaps in his symphonies Shostakovich withheld his soul or went into cover, because of ... Mahler wasn't able to do that.


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## kmisho

Moscow-Mahler said:


> Yes, there was a blank shot, indeed. Still there were lots of mythes.
> 
> *About Dunaevksy*. Yes, but so we can say that so-called Social Realism was a kind of Pop-Culture. Pop-culture won in the West with Hollywood and pop-music. Bela Bartok died in poverty, etc.
> 
> And sometimes Hollywood movies are more social-realistic than even Soviet films, esp. then they show American soldiers who say patriotical speeches. Such movie like "Rembo" and Jean-Claude van Damms' movies (it's very funny how they show Russian boxing ring with Carl Marx and Lenin images on it in that movie about Ivan Drago) are the most social-realistic movies, I suppose. Good guys vs Bad guys, etc.
> 
> So, Pop-culture won everythere, just in different forms. And even intellectual people prefer to have the image of a "simple" guy. E.g., George Bush the Elder (I mean the Elder, not his dumb son) plaing banjo, not piano during the elections. Or politicians eating in MacDonalds. The same as Lenin as Stalin pretend that they ate cabbage soup and black bread. "Are they communists?", I thought sometimes, watching the last American election company.
> 
> Certainly, no one force the artist in an open society in such way as in the USSR. So, of course, it's better to live in a democratic society.


A key difference in American "social realism" is that its stupidity is honest! There is no government agency threatening them to make bubblegum pop.

p.s. I am American.


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## kmisho

TxllxT said:


> Comparing Shostakovich and Mahler is comparing a composer who has covered so many genres (symphonies, concertos, chamber music, piano etc.) with a composer who apart from some Schubert reworkings has done only symphonies. Is it possible to compare Shostakovich and Bach? Yes! (Preludes & Fugues) Is it possible, is it worthwhile to compare Mahler and Bach? Hardly, I would say. Mahler's soul is wandering around in his symphonies, but Shostakovich's soul is much more at home in his string quartets. Perhaps in his symphonies Shostakovich withheld his soul or went into cover, because of ... Mahler wasn't able to do that.


I also don't think there can be much use in a direct comparison.


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## samurai

Mr. Shostakovich: I believe that--no matter the extreme positions taken by some in this debate--you and your family had to be in at least *some degree* of danger living under such a brutal and unstable man as Stalin must have been. The fact that you were able to persevere in spite of what must have been continuing tensions and stresses due to these conditions and produce the wonderful, endearing music you did is a remarkable accomplishment indeed! Your music will last forever--at least *IMHO.*
Thank You for making my life--and, I'm sure those of many others--more enjoyable and rewarding for having had the privilege of listening to your music. Your triumph over those who tried so hard and for so long to fetter your spirit and creativity represents a victory of and for the human spirit everywhere.

*R.I. P.*


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## Tapkaara

I was listening to our awful ocal classical station and they played the 2nd movement from Shostakovich's 5th symphony. Although I have hear this work may times, for the first time, it sounded quite a bit like Mahler to me. The influence Mahler had on this composer revealed itself as I was stuck in traffic...


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## Meaghan

Tapkaara said:


> I was listening to our awful ocal classical station and they played the 2nd movement from Shostakovich's 5th symphony. Although I have hear this work may times, for the first time, it sounded quite a bit like Mahler to me. The influence Mahler had on this composer revealed itself as I was stuck in traffic...


Yes, I hear a lot of Mahler in that movement as well. Which to me does suggest the possibility of covert nose-thumbing in the 5th Symphony, as I seem to remember that Soviet policy did not look kindly upon Mahler at the time. (Though I don't remember my source. Maybe I am making things up.)


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## World Violist

Meaghan said:


> Yes, I hear a lot of Mahler in that movement as well. Which to me does suggest the possibility of covert nose-thumbing in the 5th Symphony, as I seem to remember that Soviet policy did not look kindly upon Mahler at the time. (Though I don't remember my source. Maybe I am making things up.)


I remember hearing that Shostakovich had to smuggle/steal/something Mahler scores in order to study them, since he couldn't obtain them legally for whatever reason. So yeah, could be.


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## myaskovsky2002

I am probably not that smart. I cannot see the similarities between those two. Both are great but their music is SO different, their eras are so different, their contexts are so different. Mahler, a Jew persecuted...Shostakovich, at the beginning also persecuted but afterwards adored when he was still alive. Many Shostakovich works are clearly propaganda. E.g. the golden age, the bolt...Since he had a stroke, he started composing very depressing music, e.g. symphony # 14. I could speak about one hour about the differences rather than the similarities. "le jour et la nuit".

Martin


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## HarpsichordConcerto

I just listened to _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_ by Gustav Mahler performed live last night by the Vienna Philharmonic (who is here in Sydney). First time I listened to it performed live. Loved it. (I have a CD of it under Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, Philippe Herreweghe, that I listened to before the concert, to boost my concert experience a bit more).


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## Moscow-Mahler

Mahler (unlike Richard Strauss) was quite puritanistic person. It would impossible for him to write such an opera as _Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk_.
Mahler believed in pantheistic God and eternal life. He wrote such things as his Second and Eighth symphonies. Shostakovich was much more pessimistic the about the life after death.

Mahler admired nature. Shostakovich was totally urbanised person.


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