# Dsch and the Great Fugue



## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

The Shostakovich motif D, Eb, C, B (which spells out his name 'DSch' using German notation) is, essentially, the same as the first four notes of Beethoven's Great Fugue theme transposed. Has anyone else noticed this? It's not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Interesting. I didn't notice that. I just read in the wiki entry that 16th and 18th bars of the first violin part of Mozart's K465 plays the exact Shostakovitch motif, I didn't notice this until now either.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Yes, with a single octave displacement in the middle. I doubt that Shostakovich could write a quartet without having Beethoven at least at the back of his mind (the Eighth Quartet was, like all of Shostakovich’s quartets from the Second to the Fourteenth, first performed by the Beethoven Quartet). Late Shostakovich has other links to Beethoven as well: the Viola Sonata quotes the “Moonlight" Sonata extensively, and one of Shostakovich’s last compositions was an orchestration of Beethoven’s “Es war einmal ein König”.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Great fugue: G, G#, F, E. Transpose up a fifth and lower notes 3 and 4 by an octave: D, Eb, C, B which is the DSch motif.


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