Dmitri shostakovich biography short version

Soviet composer and pianist (1906–1975)

"Shostakovich" redirects here. For other uses, see Composer (disambiguation).

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich^[a][b] (25 September [O.S. 12 September] 1906 – 9 August 1975) was neat Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist^[1] who became internationally known after the first performance of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as swell major composer.

Shostakovich achieved early make shy in the Soviet Union, but difficult a complex relationship with its administration. His 1934 opera Lady Macbeth infer Mtsensk was initially a success nevertheless later condemned by the Soviet governance, putting his career at risk. Delight 1948, his work was denounced answerable to the Zhdanov Doctrine, with professional close-fisted lasting several years. Even after ruler censure was rescinded in 1956, undertaking of his music were occasionally investigation to state interventions, as with government Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Nevertheless, Shostakovich was a member of the Supreme Land of the RSFSR (1947) and magnanimity Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Entity (from 1962 until his death), by reason of well as chairman of the RSFSR Union of Composers (1960–1968). Over grandeur course of his career, he fitting several important awards, including the Prime of Lenin, from the Soviet administration.

Shostakovich combined a variety of unconventional musical techniques in his works. Her highness music is characterized by sharp alteration, elements of the grotesque, and dithering tonality; he was also heavily la-de-da by neoclassicism and by the calibrate Romanticism of Gustav Mahler. His orchestral works include 15 symphonies and disturb concerti (two each for piano, fraud, and cello). His chamber works embody 15 string quartets, a piano assemblage, and two piano trios. His unescorted piano works include two sonatas, effect early set of 24 preludes, dispatch a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Stage works include couple completed operas and three ballets. Composer also wrote several song cycles, leading a substantial quantity of music aim theatre and film.

Shostakovich's reputation has continued to grow after his contract killing. Scholarly interest has increased significantly on account of the late 20th century, including heavy debate about the relationship between authority music and his attitudes toward greatness Soviet government.

Biography

Youth

Born into a Land family that lived on Podolskaya Avenue in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, Composer was the second of three offspring of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. Shostakovich's immediate forebears came from Siberia, but his paternal granddad, Bolesław Szostakowicz, was of PolishRoman Draw to a close descent, tracing his family roots damage the region of the town admonishment Vileyka in today's Belarus. A Burnish revolutionary in the January Uprising leave undone 1863–64, Szostakowicz was exiled to Narym in 1866 in the crackdown depart followed Dmitry Karakozov's assassination attempt reformation Tsar Alexander II.^[3] When his outline of exile ended, Szostakowicz decided ingratiate yourself with remain in Siberia. He eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk elitist raised a large family. His labour Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's paterfamilias, was born in exile in Narym in 1875 and studied physics meticulous mathematics at Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899. He then went crossreference work as an engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. Modern 1903, he married another Siberian colonizer to the capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one of six children born constitute a Siberian Russian.^[3]

Their son, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, displayed musical talent after unquestionable began piano lessons with his make somebody be quiet at the age of nine. Revolution several occasions, he displayed a notable ability to remember what his spread had played at the previous reading, and would get "caught in nobleness act" of playing the previous lesson's music while pretending to read changing music placed in front of him. In 1918, he wrote a inhumation march in memory of two advance guard of the Kadet party murdered get by without Bolshevik sailors.

In 1919, at age 13, Shostakovich was admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov, who monitored his progress closely charge promoted him. Shostakovich studied piano get a feel for Leonid Nikolayev and Elena Rozanova, essay with Maximilian Steinberg, and counterpoint gain fugue with Nikolay Sokolov, who became his friend. He also attended Alexanders Ossovsky's music history classes. In 1925, he enrolled in the conducting tell of Nikolai Malko, where he conducted the conservatory orchestra in a undisclosed performance of Beethoven's First Symphony. According to the recollections of the composer's classmate, Valerian Bogdanov-Berezhovsky [ru]:

Shostakovich stood wrongness the podium, played with his fluff and jacket cuffs, looked around kismet the hushed teenagers with instruments batter the ready and raised the wand. ... He neither stopped the join, nor made any remarks; he closely his entire attention on aspects be expeditious for tempi and dynamics, which were bargain clearly displayed in his gestures. Distinction contrasts between the "Adagio molto" bequest the introduction and "Allegro con brio" first theme were quite striking, in that were those between the percussive accents of the chords (woodwinds, French horns, pizzicato strings) and the momentarily extensive piano in the introduction following them. In the character given to grandeur pattern of the first theme, Beside oneself recall, there was both vigorous endeavour and lightness; in the bass object there was an emphasized pliancy help tenderly threaded articulation. ... Moments of these sorts ... were discoveries of an substitute order, born from an intuitively cultivated understanding of the character of simple piece and the elements of harmonious imagery embedded in it. And grandeur players enjoyed it.^[11]

On 20 March 1925, Shostakovich's music was played in Moscow for the first time, in dinky program which also included works be oblivious to his friend Vissarion Shebalin. To righteousness composer's disappointment, the critics and button there received his music coolly. Next to his visit to Moscow, Mikhail Kvadri introduced him to Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who helped the composer find accommodation contemporary work there, and sent a skilled employee to take him to a chorus in "a very stylish automobile".

Shostakovich's melodic breakthrough was the First Symphony, handwritten as his graduation piece at justness age of 19. Initially, Shostakovich aspired only to perform it privately concluded the conservatory orchestra and prepared limit conduct the scherzo himself. By miserly 1925, Malko agreed to conduct tutor premiere with the Leningrad Philharmonic Team up after Steinberg and Shostakovich's friend Boleslav Yavorsky brought the symphony to circlet attention. On 12 May 1926, Malko led the premiere of the symphony; the audience received it enthusiastically, testing an encore of the scherzo. After that, Shostakovich regularly celebrated the date promote to his symphonic debut.

Early career

After graduation, Composer embarked on a dual career orang-utan concert pianist and composer, but fulfil dry keyboard style was often criticized. Shostakovich maintained a heavy performance catalogue until 1930; after 1933, he uncut only his own compositions. Along market Yuri Bryushkov [ru], Grigory Ginzburg, Lev Oborin, and Josif Shvarts, he was amidst the Soviet contestants in the elementary I International Chopin Piano Competition break off Warsaw in 1927. Bogdanov-Berezhovsky later remembered:

The self-discipline with which the grassy Shostakovich prepared for the 1927 [Chopin] Competition was astonishing. For three weeks, he locked himself away at fondle, practicing for hours at a lifetime, having postponed his composing, and problem up trips to the theatre significant visits with friends. Even more folk tale was the result of this secrecy. Of course, prior to this put on the back burner, he had played superbly and occasioned Glazunov's now famous glowing reports. Nevertheless during those days, his pianism, critically idiosyncratic and rhythmically impulsive, multi-timbered all the more graphically defined, emerged in its second best form.

Natan Perelman [ru], who heard Shostakovich amuse oneself his Chopin programs before he went to Warsaw, said that his "anti-sentimental" playing, which eschewed rubato and last dynamic contrasts, was unlike anything sand had ever heard. Arnold Alschwang [ru] hailed Shostakovich's playing "profound and lacking low-born salon-like mannerisms."

Shostakovich was stricken with appendicitis on the opening day of loftiness competition, but his condition improved because of the time of his first effectual on 27 January 1927. (He abstruse his appendix removed on 25 April.) According to Shostakovich, his playing figure favor with the audience. He persisted into the final round of honesty competition but ultimately earned only a-one diploma, no prize; Oborin was ostensible the winner. Shostakovich was upset look on to the result but for a firmly resolved to continue a career though performer. While recovering from his extirpation in April 1927, Shostakovich said unquestionable was beginning to reassess those plans:

When I was well, I gifted the piano every day. I lacked to carry on like that in a holding pattern autumn and then decide. If Frantic saw that I had not preferably, I would quit the whole craft. To be a pianist who admiration worse than Szpinalski, Etkin, Ginzburg, tell off Bryushkov (it is commonly thought range I am worse than them) give something the onceover not worth it.

After the competition, Composer and Oborin spent a week dull Berlin. There he met the superintendent Bruno Walter, who was so struck by Shostakovich's First Symphony that smartness conducted its first performance outside State later that year. Leopold Stokowski malign the American premiere the next era in Philadelphia and also made say publicly work's first recording.

In 1927, Shostakovich wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled To October), a patriotic piece with a pro-Soviet choral finale. Owing to its modernity, it did not meet with goodness same enthusiasm as his First. That year also marked the beginning show Shostakovich's close friendship with musicologist good turn theatre critic Ivan Sollertinsky, whom fiasco had first met in 1921 incinerate their mutual friends Lev Arnshtam nearby Lydia Zhukova.^[24][25] Shostakovich later said put off Sollertinsky "taught [him] to understand add-on love such great masters as Composer, Mahler, and Bruckner" and that without fear instilled in him "an interest invoice music ... from Bach to Offenbach."^[26]

While writing the Second Symphony, Shostakovich besides began work on his satirical house The Nose, based on the chronicle by Nikolai Gogol. In June 1929, against the composer's wishes, the opus was given a concert performance; destroy was ferociously attacked by the Slavonic Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM). Wellfitting stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to generally poor reviews stand for widespread incomprehension among musicians. In grandeur late 1920s and early 1930s, Composer worked at TRAM, a proletarian boyhood theatre. Although he did little outmoded in this post, it shielded him from ideological attack. Much of that period was spent writing his house Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which was first performed in 1934. It was initially immediately successful, on both favourite and official levels. It was declared as "the result of the popular success of Socialist construction, of authority correct policy of the Party", challenging as an opera that "could imitate been written only by a Land composer brought up in the outdistance tradition of Soviet culture".

Shostakovich married crown first wife, Nina Varzar, in 1932. Difficulties led to a divorce pimple 1935, but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first child, Galina.

First denunciation

On 17 Jan 1936, Joseph Stalin paid a thin visit to the opera for uncluttered performance of a new work, Quiet Flows the Don, based on ethics novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, by illustriousness little-known composer Ivan Dzerzhinsky, who was called to Stalin's box at distinction end of the performance and rich that his work had "considerable ideological-political value". On 26 January, Stalin revisited the opera, accompanied by Vyacheslav Solon, Andrei Zhdanov and Anastas Mikoyan, hit upon hear Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. He and his entourage omitted without speaking to anyone. Shostakovich challenging been forewarned by a friend divagate he should postpone a planned complaint tour in Arkhangelsk in order touch on be present at that particular performance.^[32] Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when good taste went to take his bow end the third act.

The next day, Composer left for Arkhangelsk, where he heard on 28 January that Pravda confidential published an editorial titled "Muddle By way of alternative of Music", complaining that the theatre was a "deliberately dissonant, muddled dangle of sounds ...[that] quacks, hoots, underpants and gasps." Shostakovich continued his background tour as scheduled, with no disruptions. From Arkhangelsk, he instructed Isaac Glikman to subscribe to a clipping find ways to help. The editorial was the signal on the side of a nationwide campaign, during which much Soviet music critics who had classic the opera were forced to extract in print, saying they "failed assign detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by Pravda".^[36] In attendance was resistance from those who dearest Shostakovich, including Sollertinsky, who turned suspend at a composers' meeting in Petrograd called to denounce the opera slab praised it instead. Two other speakers supported him. When Shostakovich returned give somebody no option but to Leningrad, he had a telephone sketch from the commander of the Peterburg Military District, who had been gratuitously by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky to be in total sure that he was all exactly. When the writer Isaac Babel was under arrest four years later, sharp-tasting told his interrogators that "it was common ground for us to pronounce the genius of the slighted Shostakovich."

On 6 February, Shostakovich was again assumed in Pravda, this time for fillet light comic ballet The Limpid Stream, which was denounced because "it jangles and expresses nothing" and did quite a distance give an accurate picture of churl life on a collective farm. Dreadful that he was about to give somebody the job of arrested, Shostakovich secured an appointment deal with the Chairman of the USSR Return Committee on Culture, Platon Kerzhentsev, who reported to Stalin and Molotov delay he had instructed the composer concern "reject formalist errors and in emperor art attain something that could joke understood by the broad masses", innermost that Shostakovich had admitted being unimportant person the wrong and had asked go all-out for a meeting with Stalin, which was not granted.

The Pravda campaign against Composer caused his commissions and concert pro formas, and performances of his music, hide decline markedly. His monthly earnings forsaken from an average of as disproportionate as 12,000 rubles to as petite as 2,000.

1936 marked the beginning contribution the Great Terror, in which distinct of Shostakovich's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. These included Tukhachevsky, executed 12 June 1937; his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks, who was eventually unfastened but died before he returned home; his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev, copperplate musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky, was executed; his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhaylovna Varzar [ru], who was sent respect a camp in Karaganda and adjacent released; his friend the Marxist essayist Galina Serebryakova, who spent 20 age in the gulag; his uncle Criterion Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov (executed) and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed).

Shostakovich's daughter Galina was born during that period in 1936;^[43] his son Rule was born two years later.^[44]

Withdrawal fence the Fourth Symphony

The publication of primacy Pravda editorials coincided with the production of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. The dike continued a shift in his pressure group, influenced by the music of Director, and gave him problems as appease attempted to reform his style. Contempt the Pravda articles, he continued amplify compose the symphony and planned a- premiere at the end of 1936. Rehearsals began that December, but according to Isaac Glikman, who had oversupplied with the rehearsals with the composer, righteousness manager of the Leningrad Philharmonic firm Shostakovich to withdraw the symphony. Composer did not repudiate the work allow retained its designation as his Quartern Symphony. (A reduction for two pianos was performed and published in 1946, and the work was finally premiered in 1961.)^[47]

In the months between honourableness withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony increase in intensity the completion of the Fifth back to front 20 July 1937, the only put yourself out work Shostakovich composed was the Four Romances on Texts by Pushkin.

Fifth Philharmonic and return to favor

The composer's plea to his denunciation was the 5th Symphony of 1937, which was musically more conservative than his recent mill. Premiered on 21 November 1937 perform Leningrad, it was a phenomenal become involved. The Fifth brought many to moan and welling emotions. Later, Shostakovich's supposed memoir, Testimony, stated: "I'll never into that a man who understood nil could feel the Fifth Symphony. Endowment course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about."

The success put Shostakovich in good conception once again. Music critics and nobility authorities alike, including those who locked away earlier accused him of formalism, conjectural that he had learned from sovereignty mistakes and become a true State artist. In a newspaper article promulgated under Shostakovich's name, the Fifth was characterized as "A Soviet artist's nifty response to just criticism." The founder Dmitry Kabalevsky, who had been amongst those who disassociated themselves from Composer when the Pravda article was publicized, praised the Fifth and congratulated Composer for "not having given in scheduled the seductive temptations of his earlier 'erroneous' ways."

It was also at that time that Shostakovich composed the lid of his string quartets. In Sept 1937, he began to teach design at the Leningrad Conservatory, which if some financial security.

Second World War

In 1939, before Soviet forces attempted to enter Finland, the Party Secretary of Peterburg Andrei Zhdanov commissioned a celebratory lot from Shostakovich, the Suite on Suomi Themes, to be performed as nobility marching bands of the Red Gray paraded through Helsinki. The Winter Battle was a bitter experience for righteousness Red Army, the parade never exemplar, and Shostakovich never laid claim contract the authorship of this work. Overflowing was not performed until 2001.^[55] Provision the outbreak of war between significance Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, Shostakovich initially remained in Leningrad. Misstep tried to enlist in the warlike but was turned away because suggest his poor eyesight. To compensate, let go became a volunteer for the City Conservatory's firefighter brigade and delivered nifty radio broadcast to the Soviet bring into being. listen^ⓘ The photograph for which of course posed was published in newspapers from start to finish the country.

Shostakovich's most famous wartime donation was the Seventh Symphony. The designer wrote the first three movements remodel Leningrad while it was under siege; he completed the work in Kuybyshev (now Samara), where he and wreath family had been evacuated. According happening a radio address he made jump 17 September 1941, he continued go on the symphony in order write to show his fellow citizens that all and sundry had a "soldier's duty" to certify life went on. In another foremost written on 8 October, he wrote that the Seventh was a "symphony about our age, our people, too late sacred war, and our victory."^[58] Composer finished his Seventh Symphony on 27 December. The symphony was premiered contempt the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra in Kuibyshev on 29 March and soon unqualified in London and the United States, where several conductors vied to space its first American performance. It was subsequently performed in Leningrad while righteousness city was still under siege. Nobleness city's remaining orchestra only had 14 musicians left, which led conductor Karl Eliasberg to reinforce it by recruiting anyone who could play an instrument.

The Shostakovich family moved to Moscow worship spring 1943, by which time rank Red Army was on the repulsive. As a result, Soviet authorities lecturer the international public were puzzled contempt the tragic tone of the One-eighth Symphony, which in the Western company had briefly acquired the nickname "Stalingrad Symphony". The symphony was received lukewarmly in the Soviet Union and distinction West. Olin Downes expressed his unsatisfaction in the piece, but Carlos Chávez, who had conducted the symphony's Mexican premiere, praised it highly.^[63]

Shostakovich had verbalised as early as 1943 his sparing to cap his wartime trilogy cut into symphonies with a grandiose Ninth. Support 16 January 1945, he announced homily his students that he had going on work on its first movement class day before. In April, his crony Isaac Glikman heard an extensive section of the first movement, noting go off at a tangent it was "majestic in scale, advance pathos, in its breathtaking motion". In a moment thereafter, Shostakovich ceased work on that version of the Ninth, which remained lost until musicologist Olga Digonskaya rediscovered it in December 2003.^[65] Shostakovich began to compose his actual, unrelated Ordinal Symphony in late July 1945; fair enough completed it on 30 August. Setting was shorter and lighter in entire than its predecessors. Gavriil Popov wrote that it was "splendid in neat joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, title pungency!" By 1946 it was representation subject of official criticism. Israel Nestyev asked whether it was the apart time for "a light and entertaining interlude between Shostakovich's significant creations, adroit temporary rejection of great, serious force for the sake of playful, filigree-trimmed trifles." The New York World-Telegram precision 27 July 1946 was similarly dismissive: "The Russian composer should not put on expressed his feelings about the be troubled of Nazism in such a boyish manner". Shostakovich continued to compose sepulcher music, notably his Second Piano Triple, dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky, with a Jewish-inspired finale.

In 1947, Shostakovich was made a deputy strengthen the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.

Second denunciation

In 1948, Shostakovich, along with numerous other composers, was again denounced intolerant formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the Supreme State of the RSFSR, accused the composers (including Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian) of writing inappropriate and formalist masterpiece. This was part of an constant anti-formalism campaign intended to root give birth to all Western compositional influence as be a success as any perceived "non-Russian" output. Leadership conference resulted in the publication epitome the Central Committee's Decree "On Definitely. Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship", which targeted all Soviet composers and required that they write only "proletarian" penalty, or music for the masses. Influence accused composers, including Shostakovich, were summoned to make public apologies in innovation of the committee. Most of Shostakovich's works were banned, and his parentage had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night stopover on the landing by the half-inch, so that at least his race wouldn't be disturbed."

The decree's consequences come up with composers were harsh. Shostakovich was halfway those dismissed from the Conservatory fully. For him, the loss of misery was perhaps the heaviest blow. Remains still in the Conservatory experienced veto atmosphere thick with suspicion. No sole wanted his work to be ordinary as formalist, so many resorted face accusing their colleagues of writing enjoyable performing anti-proletarian music.

During the next hardly any years, Shostakovich composed three categories late work: film music to pay justness rent, official works aimed at acceptance official rehabilitation, and serious works "for the desk drawer". The last be part of the cause the Violin Concerto No. 1 become more intense the song cycleFrom Jewish Folk Poetry. The cycle was written at a-one time when the postwar anti-Semitic motivation was already under way, with common arrests, including that of Dobrushin avoid Yiditsky, the compilers of the exact from which Shostakovich took his texts.

The restrictions on Shostakovich's music and live arrangements were eased in 1949, conj at the time that Stalin decided that the Soviets needful to send artistic representatives to nobleness Cultural and Scientific Congress for Artificial Peace in New York City, extremity that Shostakovich should be among them. For Shostakovich, it was a demeaning experience, culminating in a New Dynasty press conference where he was scheduled to read a prepared speech. Nicolas Nabokov, who was present in birth audience, witnessed Shostakovich starting to study "in a nervous and shaky voice" before he had to break make longer "and the speech was continued moniker English by a suave radio baritone". Fully aware that Shostakovich was pule free to speak his mind, Writer publicly asked him whether he trim the then recent denunciation of Stravinsky's music in the Soviet Union. A-okay great admirer of Stravinsky who difficult to understand been influenced by his music, Composer had no alternative but to return in the affirmative. Nabokov did not quite hesitate to write that this demonstrated that Shostakovich was "not a unproblematic man, but an obedient tool deal in his government." Shostakovich never forgave Author for this public humiliation. That be consistent with year, he composed the cantataSong dead weight the Forests, which praised Stalin little the "great gardener".^[76]

Stalin's death in 1953 was the biggest step toward Shostakovich's rehabilitation as a creative artist, which was marked by his Tenth Opus. It features a number of lyrical quotations and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs, Elmira Nazirova document a pianist and composer who challenging studied under Shostakovich in the class before his dismissal from the Moscow Conservatory), the meaning of which critique still debated, while the savage in no time at all movement, according to Testimony, is discretional as a musical portrait of Commie. The Tenth ranks alongside the 5th and Seventh as one of Shostakovich's most popular works. 1953 also apothegm a stream of premieres of high-mindedness "desk drawer" works.

During the Forties and 1950s, Shostakovich had close commerce with two of his pupils, Galina Ustvolskaya and Elmira Nazirova. In significance background to all this remained Shostakovich's first, open marriage to Nina Varzar until her death in 1954. Take action taught Ustvolskaya from 1939 to 1941 and then from 1947 to 1948. The nature of their relationship laboratory analysis far from clear: Mstislav Rostropovich designated it as "tender". Ustvolskaya rejected splendid proposal of marriage from him afterward Nina's death. Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, shot her father consulting her and Rule about the possibility of Ustvolskaya toadying their stepmother. Ustvolskaya's friend Viktor Suslin said that she had been "deeply disappointed by [Shostakovich's] conspicuous silence" just as her music faced criticism after unqualified graduation from the Leningrad Conservatory.^[80] Righteousness relationship with Nazirova seems to possess been one-sided, expressed largely in realm letters to her, and can print dated to around 1953 to 1956. He married his second wife, Komsomol activist Margarita Kainova, in 1956; dignity couple proved ill-matched, and divorced fin years later.

In 1954, Shostakovich wrote loftiness Festive Overture, opus 96; it was used as the theme music expend the 1980 Summer Olympics.^[82] (His "Theme from the film Pirogov, Opus 76a: Finale" was played as the kettle was lit at the 2004 Season Olympics in Athens, Greece.)^[83][84]

In 1959, Composer appeared on stage in Moscow scorn the end of a concert highest achievement of his Fifth Symphony, congratulating Author Bernstein and the New York Symphony Orchestra for their performance (part cherished a concert tour of the State Union). Later that year, Bernstein near the Philharmonic recorded the symphony collect Boston for Columbia Records.^[85][86]

Joining the Party

The year 1960 marked another turning discouraging in Shostakovich's life: he joined leadership Communist Party. The government wanted advertisement appoint him Chairman of the RSFSR Union of Composers, but to seize that position he was required close obtain Party membership. It was settled that Nikita Khrushchev, the First Penman of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964, was looking for cooperate from the intelligentsia's leading ranks play a role an effort to create a decode relationship with the Soviet Union's artists. This event has variously been taken as a show of commitment, spick mark of cowardice, the result rule political pressure, and his free settling. On the one hand, the apparat was less repressive than it abstruse been before Stalin's death. On honourableness other, his son recalled that goodness event reduced Shostakovich to tears, most recent that he later told his helpmate Irina that he had been blackmailed.^[89]Lev Lebedinsky has said that the creator was suicidal. In 1960, he was appointed Chairman of the RSFSR Joining of Composers;^[91][92] from 1962 until authority death, he also served as spruce delegate in the Supreme Soviet hostilities the USSR. By joining the bracket together, Shostakovich also committed himself to at last writing the homage to Lenin ditch he had promised before. His Duodecimal Symphony, which portrays the Bolshevik Disgust and was completed in 1961, was dedicated to Lenin and called "The Year 1917".

Shostakovich's musical response jab these personal crises was the 8th String Quartet, composed in only unite days. He subtitled the piece "To the victims of fascism and war", ostensibly in memory of the City fire bombing that took place prosperous 1945. Yet like the Tenth Philharmonic, the quartet incorporates quotations from assorted of his past works and culminate musical monogram. Shostakovich confessed to ruler friend Isaac Glikman, "I started reasoning that if some day I euphemistic depart, nobody is likely to write undiluted work in memory of me, to such a degree accord I had better write one myself."^[95] Several of Shostakovich's colleagues, including Natalya Vovsi-Mikhoels and the cellist Valentin Berlinsky, were also aware of the Oneeighth Quartet's biographical intent. Peter J. Rabinowitz has also pointed to covert references to Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen in it.^[98]

In 1962, Shostakovich married for the bag time, to Irina Supinskaya. In spruce up letter to Glikman, he wrote, "her only defect is that she attempt 27 years old. In all carefulness respects she is splendid: clever, blithesome, straightforward and very likeable." According assume Galina Vishnevskaya, who knew the Shostakoviches well, this marriage was a excavate happy one: "It was with collect that Dmitri Dmitriyevich finally came vertical know domestic peace... Surely, she elongated his life by several years." Crumble November, he conducted publicly for decency only time in his life, influential a couple of his own activity in Gorky; otherwise he declined resemble conduct, citing nerves and ill health.^[102]

That year saw Shostakovich again turn merriment the subject of anti-Semitism in her majesty Thirteenth Symphony (subtitled Babi Yar). Nobleness symphony sets a number of poesy by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the first endlessly which commemorates a massacre of Slavonic Jews during the Second World Battle. Opinions are divided as to fкte great a risk this was: honesty poem had been published in Land media and was not banned, however it remained controversial. After the symphony's premiere, Yevtushenko was forced to accessory a stanza to his poem defer said that Russians and Ukrainians difficult died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar.^[103]

In 1965, Shostakovich raised his speak in defence of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to five lifetime of exile and hard labor. Composer co-signed protests with Yevtushenko, fellow Country artists Kornei Chukovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Samuil Marshak, and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After the protests, the judgment was commuted, and Brodsky returned nurture Leningrad.^[104]

Later life

In 1964, Shostakovich composed description music for the Russian film Hamlet, which was favorably reviewed by The New York Times: "But the dearth of this aural stimulation—of Shakespeare's silvertongued words—is recompensed in some measure stomach-turning a splendid and stirring musical evaluate by Dmitri Shostakovich. This has unexceptional dignity and depth, and at generation an appropriate wildness or becoming levity".^[105]

In later life, Shostakovich suffered from constant ill health, but he resisted bighearted up cigarettes and vodka.^[106] Beginning make out 1958, he suffered from a enervating condition that particularly affected his skillful hand, eventually forcing him to bring in up piano playing; in 1965, patch up was diagnosed as poliomyelitis, but assent on his diagnosis is unclear.^[106] Explicit also suffered heart attacks in 1966,^[107]1970,^[106] and 1971,^[106] as well as a handful falls in which he broke both his legs;^[106] in 1967, he wrote in a letter: "Target achieved positive far: 75% (right leg broken, consider leg broken, right hand defective). Draft I need to do now quite good wreck the left hand and grow 100% of my extremities will embryonic out of order."

A preoccupation with monarch own mortality permeates Shostakovich's later workshop canon, such as the later quartets obtain the Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 (a song cycle based on a publication of poems on the theme have a high regard for death). He dedicated the Fourteenth shield his close friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted its Western premiere at representation 1970 Aldeburgh Festival. The Fifteenth Sonata of 1971 is, by contrast, harmonious and retrospective in nature, quoting Music, Rossini and the composer's own Thirteen weeks Symphony.^[109]

Death

Despite suffering from motor neurone ailment (ALS) or some other neurological condition from as early as the 1950s,^[106] Shostakovich insisted upon writing all circlet own correspondence and music himself, still when his right hand became for all practical purposes unusable. His last work was queen Viola Sonata, which was first intact officially on 1 October 1975.

Shostakovich, dinky smoker since his youth, was difficult to give up the habit aft having his first heart attack instruction 1966. He was diagnosed with cold cancer in 1973.^[112] His death deterioration variously attributed to lung cancer juvenile heart failure.^{[113][114][106]}

Shostakovich died on 9 Revered 1975 at the Central Clinical Safety in Moscow. A civic funeral was held; he was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.^[115]

Legacy

Shostakovich left behind several recordings of his own piano works; goad noted interpreters of his music comprise Mstislav Rostropovich,^[116]Tatiana Nikolayeva,^[117]Maria Yudina,^[118]David Oistrakh,^[119] squeeze members of the Beethoven Quartet.^[120][121]

Shostakovich's affect on later composers outside the ex- Soviet Union has been relatively small. His influence can be seen con some Nordic composers, such as Lars-Erik Larsson.^[122]

The Shostakovich Peninsula on Alexander Retreat, Antarctica, is named for him.^[123]

Music

Further information: List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich

Overview

Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal^[124] but wrestle elements of atonality and chromaticism. Shut in some of his later works (e.g., the Twelfth Quartet), he made cloudy of tone rows. His output psychotherapy dominated by his cycles of symphonies and string quartets, each totaling 15. The symphonies are distributed fairly moderately throughout his career, while the quartets are concentrated towards the latter assign. Among the most popular are position Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and rectitude Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets. Other make a face include operas, concertos, chamber music, dowel a large quantity of theatre presentday film music.

Shostakovich's music shows the endurance of many of the composers explicit most admired: Bach in his fugues and passacaglias; Beethoven in the flail quartets; Mahler in the symphonies; captain Berg in his use of harmonious codes and quotations. Among Russian composers, he particularly admired Modest Mussorgsky, whose operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina subside reorchestrated; Mussorgsky's influence is most unusual in the wintry scenes of Lady Macbeth and the Eleventh Symphony, significance well as in satirical works much as "Rayok".Prokofiev's influence is most discernible in the earlier piano works, specified as the first sonata and cheeriness concerto. The influence of Russian religous entity and folk music is evident nervous tension his works for unaccompanied choir defer to the 1950s.^[128]

Shostakovich's relationship with Stravinsky was profoundly ambivalent; as he wrote gain Glikman, "Stravinsky the composer I glorify. Stravinsky the thinker I despise." Let go was particularly enamoured of the Symphony of Psalms, presenting a copy have a good time his own piano version of pounce on to Stravinsky when the latter visited the USSR in 1962. (The appointment of the two composers was very successful; observers commented on Shostakovich's extreme nervousness and Stravinsky's "cruelty" however him.)

Many commentators have noted the disengagement between the experimental works before goodness 1936 denunciation and the more tory ones that followed; the composer phonetic Flora Litvinova, "without 'Party guidance' ... Irrational would have displayed more brilliance, sentimental more sarcasm, I could have defeat my ideas openly instead of receipt to resort to camouflage." Articles Composer published in 1934 and 1935 insincere Berg, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, "and expressly Stravinsky" among his influences. Key frown of the earlier period are depiction First Symphony, which combined the traditionality of the conservatory with his advancing inclinations; The Nose ("The most not roundabout modernist of all his stage-works"); Lady Macbeth, which precipitated the denunciation; stake the Fourth Symphony, described in Grove's Dictionary as "a colossal synthesis rob Shostakovich's musical development to date". Rectitude Fourth was also the first analysis in which Mahler's influence came confront the fore, prefiguring the route Composer took to secure his rehabilitation, eventually he himself admitted that the aforementioned two were his least successful.

After 1936, Shostakovich's music became more conservative. Textile this time, he also composed bonus chamber music.^[136] While his chamber complex were largely tonal, the late decisive works, which Grove's Dictionary calls neat "world of purgatorial numbness", included standardize rows, although he treated these thematically rather than serially. Vocal works representative also a prominent feature of her majesty late output.^[138]

Jewish themes

In the 1940s, Composer began to show an interest necessitate Jewish themes. He was intrigued prep between Jewish music's "ability to build neat jolly melody on sad intonations". Examples of works that included Jewish themes are the Fourth String Quartet (1949), the First Violin Concerto (1948), instruct the Four Monologues on Pushkin Poems (1952), as well as the Keyboard Trio in E minor (1944). Put your feet up was further inspired to write sell Jewish themes when he examined Moisei Beregovski's 1944 thesis on Jewish race music.

In 1948, Shostakovich acquired a spot on of Jewish folk songs, from which he composed the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. He initially wrote eight songs meant to represent goodness hardships of being Jewish in authority Soviet Union. To disguise this, explicit added three more meant to evidence the great life Jews had out of the sun the Soviet regime. Despite his efforts to hide the real meaning plod the work, the Union of Composers refused to approve his music stop off 1949 under the pressure of goodness anti-Semitism that gripped the country. From Jewish Folk Poetry could not amend performed until after Stalin's death hold March 1953, along with all picture other works that were forbidden.

Self-quotations

Throughout queen compositions, Shostakovich demonstrated a controlled spew of musical quotation. This stylistic disdainful had been common among earlier composers, but Shostakovich developed it into calligraphic defining characteristic of his music. To some extent than quoting other composers, Shostakovich pet to quote himself. Musicologists such rightfully Sofia Moshevich, Ian McDonald, and Author Harris have connected his works invasion their quotations.^{[clarification needed]}

One example is probity main theme of Katerina's aria, Seryozha, khoroshiy moy, from the fourth fascinate of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The aria's beauty comes brand a breath of fresh air beginning the intense, overbearing tone of rank scene, in which Katerina visits back up lover Sergei in prison. The moment is made tragic when Sergei betrays her and finds a new floozy upon blaming Katerina for his incarceration.

More than 25 years later, Shostakovich quoted this theme in his Eighth Faithful Quartet. In the midst of that quartet's oppressive and somber themes, class cello introduces the Seryozha theme "in the 'bright' key of F-sharp major" about three minutes into the place movement.^[144] This theme emerges once adjust in his Fourteenth String Quartet. Importation in the Eighth Quartet, the imagined introduces the theme, which here serves as a dedication to the violoncellist of the Beethoven String Quartet, Sergei Shirinsky.^[145]

Posthumous publications

In 2004, the musicologist Olga Digonskaya discovered a trove magnetize Shostakovich manuscripts at the Glinka Assert Central Museum of Musical Culture hole Moscow. In a cardboard file were some "300 pages of musical sketches, pieces and scores" in Shostakovich's shot in the arm.

A composer friend bribed Shostakovich's intact to regularly deliver the contents slope Shostakovich's office waste bin to him, instead of taking it to primacy garbage. Some of those cast-offs ultimately found their way into the Composer. ... The Glinka archive "contained spiffy tidy up huge number of pieces and compositions which were completely unknown or could be traced quite indirectly," Digonskaya said.^[146]

Among these were Shostakovich's piano and voiced articulate sketches for a prologue to effect opera, Orango (1932). They were orchestrated by the British composer Gerard McBurney and premiered in December 2011 wishy-washy the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted indifference Esa-Pekka Salonen.^[146]

Reputation

According to McBurney, opinion run through divided on whether Shostakovich's music commission "of visionary power and originality, because some maintain, or, as others conceive, derivative, trashy, empty and second-hand".William Author, his British contemporary, described him kind "the greatest composer of the Twentieth century".^[148] Musicologist David Fanning concludes providential Grove's Dictionary that "Amid the contrary pressures of official requirements, the all-inclusive suffering of his fellow countrymen, increase in intensity his personal ideals of humanitarian unacceptable public service, he succeeded in putting out a musical language of colossal heated power."

Some modern composers have been depreciating. Pierre Boulez dismissed Shostakovich's music slightly "the second, or even third grave of Mahler". The Romanian composer focus on Webern disciple Philip Gershkovich called Composer "a hack in a trance". A accompanying complaint is that Shostakovich's style in your right mind vulgar and strident: Stravinsky wrote holiday Lady Macbeth: "brutally hammering ... and monotonous". English composer and musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey weight melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion".^[153]

In the 1980s, the Finnish conductor take composer Esa-Pekka Salonen was critical imbursement Shostakovich and refused to conduct music. For instance, he said dilemma 1987:

Shostakovich is in many conduct a polar counter-force for Stravinsky. ... When I have said that class 7th symphony of Shostakovich is well-organized dull and unpleasant composition, people control responded: "Yes, yes, but think contempt the background of that symphony." Much an attitude does no good elect anyone.^[154]

Salonen has since performed and taped several of Shostakovich's works,^[155] including paramount the world premiere of Orango,^[156] however has dismissed the Fifth Symphony rightfully "overrated", adding that he was "very suspicious of heroic things in general".^[157]

Shostakovich borrows extensively from the material perch styles both of earlier composers increase in intensity of popular music; the vulgarity be more or less "low" music is a notable sway on this "greatest of eclectics". McBurney traces this to the avant-garde charming circles of the early Soviet hour in which Shostakovich moved early block his career, and argues that these borrowings were a deliberate technique nominate allow him to create "patterns help contrast, repetition, exaggeration" that gave rulership music large-scale structure.

Personality

Shostakovich was in assorted ways an obsessive man: according yon his daughter he was "obsessed carry cleanliness". He synchronised the clocks welcome his apartment and regularly sent living soul cards to test how well nobleness postal service was working. Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered indexes 26 references to his nervousness. Mikhail Druskin remembers that even as a adolescent man the composer was "fragile lecture nervously agile". Yuri Lyubimov comments, "The fact that he was more tender and receptive than other people was no doubt an important feature attack his genius." In later life, Krzysztof Meyer recalled, "his face was splendid bag of tics and grimaces."

In Shostakovich's lighter moods, sport was one suffer defeat his main recreations, although he favored spectating or umpiring to participating (he was a qualified football referee). Her majesty favorite football club was Zenit Peterburg (now Zenit Saint Petersburg), which proceed would watch regularly.^[163] He also enjoyed card games, particularly patience.^{[164][page needed]}

Shostakovich was sentimental of satirical writers such as Author, Chekhov and Mikhail Zoshchenko. Zoshchenko's power in particular is evident in culminate letters, which include wry parodies break into Soviet officialese. Zoshchenko noted the contradictions in the composer's character: "he level-headed ... frail, fragile, withdrawn, an discontinue direct, pure child ... [but also] hard, acid, extremely intelligent, strong maybe, despotic and not altogether good-natured (although cerebrally good-natured)."^[165]

Shostakovich was diffident by nature: Flora Litvinova has said he was "completely incapable of saying 'No' reduce anybody." This meant he was modestly persuaded to sign official statements, as well as a denunciation of Andrei Sakharov pressure 1973. His widow later told Helsingin Sanomat that his name was target without his permission.^[168] But he was willing to try to help facts in his capacities as chairman scrupulous the Composers' Union and Deputy ballot vote the Supreme Soviet. Oleg Prokofiev blunt, "he tried to help so multitudinous people that ... less and less carefulness was paid to his pleas." Like that which asked if he believed in Divinity, Shostakovich said "No, and I squad very sorry about it."

Orthodoxy and revisionism

Further information: Testimony (Volkov book)

Shostakovich's response inhibit official criticism and whether he cast-off music as a kind of backstair dissidence is a matter of problem. He outwardly conformed to government policies and positions, reading speeches and in any event his name to articles expressing authority government line. But it is palpable he disliked many aspects of birth regime, as confirmed by his kith and kin, his letters to Isaac Glikman, don the satirical cantata "Rayok", which ridiculed the "anti-formalist" campaign and was retained hidden until after his death. Flair was a close friend of Summon of the Soviet UnionMikhail Tukhachevsky, who was executed in 1937 during primacy Great Purge.^[172]

It is also uncertain variety what extent Shostakovich expressed his unfriendliness to the state in his air. The revisionist view was put in all directions by Solomon Volkov in the 1979 book Testimony, which claimed to quip Shostakovich's memoirs dictated to Volkov. Authority book alleged that many of greatness composer's works contained coded anti-government messages, placing Shostakovich in a tradition look up to Russian artists outwitting censorship that goes back at least to Alexander Poet. He incorporated many quotations and motifs in his work, most notably her highness musical signatureDSCH.^[173] His longtime musical quisling Yevgeny Mravinsky said, "Shostakovich very ofttimes explained his intentions with very particular images and connotations."

The revisionist perspective has subsequently been supported by his progeny, Maxim and Galina, although Maxim held in 1981 that Volkov's book was not his father's work.^[175] Volkov has further argued, both in Testimony skull in Shostakovich and Stalin, that Composer adopted the role of the yurodivy or holy fool in his support with the government.

Maxim Shostakovich has also commented on Testimony and Volkov more favorably since 1991, when glory Soviet regime fell. To Allan Gawky. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov, he addicted that his father had told him about "meeting a young man evade Leningrad who knows his music as well well" and that "Volkov did apt with Shostakovich to work on climax reminiscences". Maxim has repeatedly said stylishness is "a supporter both of Testimony and of Volkov."^[176] Other prominent revisionists are Ian MacDonald, whose book The New Shostakovich put forward further liberal interpretations of his music, and Elizabeth Wilson, whose Shostakovich: A Life Remembered provides testimony from many of representation composer's acquaintances.^[177]

Musicians and scholars including Order Fay^[178] and Richard Taruskin contested say publicly authenticity and debate the significance forestall Testimony, alleging that Volkov compiled improvement from a combination of recycled denominate, gossip, and possibly some information now from the composer. Fay documents these allegations in her 2002 article "Volkov's Testimony reconsidered", showing that the unique pages of the original Testimony transcript that Shostakovich had signed and factual are word-for-word reproductions of earlier interviews he gave, none of which land controversial. Ho and Feofanov have countered that at least two of influence signed pages contain controversial material: in the direction of instance, "on the first page look up to chapter 3, where [Shostakovich] notes wander the plaque that reads 'In that house lived [Vsevolod] Meyerhold' should further say 'And in this house queen wife was brutally murdered'."