The work of Dmitry Shostakovich, the great Soviet musical and public figure, composer, pianist and teacher, is summarized in this article.

Shostakovich's work briefly

Dmitri Shostakovich's music is diverse and multifaceted in genres. It has become a classic of the Soviet and world musical culture XX century. The significance of the composer as a symphonist is enormous. He created 15 symphonies with deep philosophical concepts, the most complex world of human experiences, tragic and acute conflicts. The works are permeated with the voice of a humanist artist fighting against evil and social injustice. His unique individual style imitated the best traditions of Russian and foreign music (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Bach, Mahler). In the First Symphony of 1925, best features style of Dmitry Shostakovich:

• texture polyphonization
• development dynamics
• piece of humor and irony
• subtle lyrics
• figurative reincarnations
• thematism
• contrast

The first symphony brought him fame. In the future, he learned to combine styles and sounds. By the way, Dmitri Shostakovich imitated the sound of artillery cannonade in his 9th symphony, dedicated to the siege of Leningrad. What instruments do you think Dmitri Shostakovich used to imitate this sound? He did this with the help of timpani.

In the 10th symphony, the composer introduced the techniques of song intonations and deployment. The next 2 works were marked by an appeal to programming.

In addition, Shostakovich contributed to the development of musical theater. True, his activities were limited to editorial articles in newspapers. Shostakovich's opera The Nose was a truly original musical embodiment of Gogol's story. It was distinguished by complex means of composing technique, ensemble and mass scenes, multifaceted and contrapuntal change of episodes. An important landmark in the work of Dmitry Shostakovich was the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. It was distinguished by satirical poignancy in the nature of negative characters, spiritualized lyrics, harsh and sublime tragedy.

Mussorgsky also had an influence on the work of Shostakovich. This is evidenced by the truthfulness and richness of musical portraits, psychological depth, generalization of song and folk intonations. All this manifested itself in the vocal-symphonic poem "The Execution of Stepan Razin", in a vocal cycle called "From Jewish Folk Poetry". Dmitry Shostakovich has an important merit in the orchestral version of Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov, orchestration of Mussorgsky's vocal cycle Songs and Dances of Death.

For the musical life of the Soviet Union, major events were the appearance of concertos for piano, violin and cello with orchestra, chamber works written by Shostakovich. These include 15 string quartets, fugues and 24 piano preludes, memory trio, piano quintet, romance cycles.

Works by Dmitri Shostakovich- "Players", "Nose", "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", "Golden Age", "Bright Stream", "Song of the Forests", "Moscow - Cheryomushki", "Poem about the Motherland", "The Execution of Stepan Razin", "Hymn to Moscow", "Festive Overture", "October".

As you know, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich in his work turned to all major musical genres. His creative heritage includes symphonies, operas, ballets, sonatas for solo musical instruments (piano, violin, viola, cello), romances and songs, music for films and drama performances, piano pieces, etc. However, despite the wide genre range of the composer's work, most of the research is devoted to the study of symphonic and theatrical music. "Shostakovich - composer - symphonist": such a phrase can be found in many textbooks and monographs. shostakovich music symphony composer

Undoubtedly, for Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich, the symphony is the main genre. It is here that the main ideas of his work are deeply embodied. Undoubtedly, the symphony genre is the mouthpiece of the most daring and daring thoughts of the composer, understandable to every person. the globe. So, the Seventh "Leningrad Symphony" tells about one of the most terrible events in the history of the twentieth century - the "Great Patriotic War"; The thirteenth symphony on the verses of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, preaches the "theme of civil morality." The fourteenth symphony touches on the theme of life and death, and is, according to the composer, a continuation of the vocal cycle of M.P. Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. It is also necessary to recall the Fifth Symphony - "Symphony of the greatness of the human spirit", which was an important landmark work in the composer's work.

But no less important area of ​​D.D. Shostakovich is chamber instrumental music. The legacy of the composer in chamber music is extensive and rich. He created fifteen string quartets (the composer planned to write a cycle of 24 quartets), two trios for piano, violin and cello, sonatas for violin, viola and cello, etc.

The pinnacles of chamber instrumental music by D.D. Shostakovich are Piano Quintet, Trio in memory of I.I. Sollertinsky, the Eighth Quartet and the last work of the composer - viola sonata.

Chamber works were created by Shostakovich for forty years, starting from the 30s of the XX century. In the early period of creativity, the genre of chamber instrumental ensemble almost did not attract the attention of the composer. During these years he wrote only Two Pieces for an octet (1925).

At this time, D.D. Shostakovich are directly related to cooperation with the Drama Theater Vs. Meyerhold and the Theater of Working Youth (TRAM). The composer works a lot on creating music for dramatic performances, composing the opera The Nose, the ballets Bolt, The Golden Age. The completion and culmination of this period was the opera "Katerina Izmailova", in which, according to V. Bobrovsky, "for the first time, the main aspects of Shostakovich's work were fully revealed - lyrical-tragic, epic and grotesque-satirical" V. Bobrovsky. Instrumental Ensembles Shostakovich / D. Shostakovich: Articles and materials, comp. G.M. Schneerson, M., "Soviet Composer", 1976, p.193..

The first major work in the genre of chamber instrumental music was the Sonata for Cello and Piano (1934). Many researchers of the composer's work agree that the cello sonata contains features that anticipate the features of the composer's mature style.

Full disclosure of the chamber-instrumental style of D.D. Shostakovich takes place already in his First Quartet. (1935-1938). The composer's memories of him have come down to us: “I started writing it without any special thoughts and feelings, I thought that nothing would work out. After all, the Quartet is one of the most difficult musical genres. I wrote the first page as a kind of exercise in quartet form, without ever thinking of completing it. But then the work on the quartet really fascinated me, and I wrote it extremely quickly.” New works by composer D. Shostakovich. - News, 1938, September 20. .

The year of creation of this work is an important date in his biography. This is the beginning of a new line of the composer's work: from now on, the quartet will become the leading genre in instrumental and ensemble music.

“While composing my First String Quartet, I tried to convey in it images of childhood, somewhat naive, bright spring moods.” There.

The work is distinguished by a light tone, simplicity and sincerity of intonations. According to I.I. Martynova: “immediacy and poetic naivety give the music of the Quartet a special charm… The music is illuminated by a soft diffused light, full of restraint and elegance of expression” Martynov I.I. Dmitri Shostakovich, p. 54. .

Echoes of such festivities can be heard in the Third Symphony (“May Day”) or in the kaleidoscope of carnival episodes of the Fourth finale (after the initial tragically developed funeral march and before the coda), etc. And to the intonation and rhythm of the old revolutionary and new, youth songs of Shostakovich applied repeatedly; among the most striking examples are the Eleventh Symphony, Ten Poems for mixed choir a cappella, op. 88, the famous "Song of the Counter", or the cantata "The sun is shining over our Motherland", op. 90.

There was another branch of the festive element in his work. It is also associated with the impressions of mass spectacles in the open air: this time we are talking about sports. Shostakovich, especially before the war, often visited them, was a passionate football fan. (He carefully compiled annual comparative tables of such matches, entered into communication with famous football players.) Did such festive spectacles, for example, find reflections in the finale of the Sixth Symphony?
Excitement is in the blood of Shostakovich, although he himself did not participate in any, even chess games. "Gambling" - in the rapidly pulsating dynamics, in the nervous rhythms that spur the movement. Even the pace of the specific manner of everyday speech he learned, chanted staccato marcaio, was accelerated!
This is a special area of ​​the many-sided music of Shostakovich. Here the individual traits of his personality crossed with a sensitive liking. A lazy rapid run of time, which gave rise to an original fusion of artistic revelations. It is not difficult to "notice that the spasmodic, also impetuous gallop rhythm plays a significant role in the nature of such music. "Gallopes" are often found in Shostakovich's works, and in theatrical ones - in ballet scores or about the opera "Katerina Izmailova" (see symphonic intermission between the sixth and seventh scenes).Echoes of Offenbach's trap, whose music he loved, are sometimes heard (for example, in the scene in the police station from the named opera).
The theater attracted Shostakovich. This began in the early days of his activity, when small mobile agitation troupes spread everywhere, performing on variety venues in the city with songs, dances and satirical scenes on the topic of the day. Members of such ensembles "were called" blue blouses "according to their traditional production clothes. Theaters of working youth arose in direct dependence on them. Shostakovich willingly supplied them with music - he attracted the spirit of cheerful cheerfulness that reigned in these ensembles. (Later he warmly recalled the director, leader Leningrad TRAM M. Sokolovsky). - the basis of Shostakovich's symphonic dramaturgy, its deeply hidden "theatrical" core.
(However, in the noted kaleidoscopic action of the Third and the finale of the Sixth Symphony, or in the “invasion episodes”—the development of the Seventh or in the third part of the Eighth, the second part of the Eleventh, the first part of the Thirteenth, etc.—there are also elements of seemingly visible theatricality.)
It is difficult to say in what way Shostakovich's contribution to world musical culture is more significant - in the field of musical theater or instrumental music, symphonic music in the first place. It's hard to say and - in relation to Tchaikovsky; where is it greater—in opera, ballet, symphony? But the working conditions in the theater favored him, which cannot be said about Shostakovich. It is impossible to count how many unfinished opera projects he went through, but, unfortunately, the obstructions of an objective and subjective order that relentlessly erected in front of him prevented their implementation. In music for concert halls, especially without text, such obstacles were more easily overcome. That is why the author of 15 symphonies, 6 recitals with orchestra, 15 string quartets and other instrumental compositions has created so few works for the musical theater, including such masterpieces as the operas The Nose and Katerina Izmailova (and three of her ballets should be forgotten). , ID including the “Golden Age” revived to a new life). But “all this is the creation of the young Shostakovich.

His closer rapprochement with the theater occurred after a creative meeting with Meyerhold: in early 1928, he even briefly worked in the theater group of a brilliant director as a pianist, a year later he wrote music for the production of Mayakovsky's play "The Bedbug", and met with Meyerhold's performances earlier - isoemozhi- y, since 1925. (It is unlikely that in November 1918 he saw the sensational production of Mayakovsky's Mystery Buff in Petrograd with scenography by K. Malevich; three performances took place in the Great Hall of the Conservatory, but only a year later the young Shostakovich became her student.)
Meyerhold's method of stage fragmentation of a play into episodes, like "shots" of a movie, was innovative. So, > in the 1924 production of Ostrovsky's "Forest", the play was shown in 33 episodes (later their number was reduced to 26, then to 16), It was also "storyboarded" into episodes. that production affected the stage concept of the opera The Nose). In the same place, at Meyerhold's, Shostakovich saw other performances - in particular, "D. E." (1924, premiered in Leningrad), which stands for "Give Europe", is a kind of political review based on a bizarre mixture of plots from two novels: "Trust D. E." Ilya Ehrenburg and "The Tunnel" by Bernhard Kellermann. Further - "The Mandate" by I. Erdman (1925) and the mentioned play by Mayakovsky "The Bedbug".

I have singled out these productions because they correspond to some of the important guardians of the young Shostakovich's work. It would be reckless to say that it was these performances that had a direct impact on the composer's artistic quest. The range of such influences is wider - it includes the stories of M. Zoshchenko, and the early stories of M. Bulgakov, and, finally, reality itself foretold the emergence of such artistic incarnations.
The 1920s were full of contradictions: old ideas about moral principles and behavior, everyday life - and in its worst form - came into direct conflict with the new worldview. Gone are the years of economic ruin caused by civil war and foreign intervention, but despite the need, hunger, cold, epidemics, these years are inspired by the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. During the NEP period, in some sections of society, a spirit of unbridled entrepreneurship, wingless philistinism, and well-fed complacency manifested itself.
Exposing the social essence of philistinism - it is embodied
in the image of Prisypkin from Mayakovsky's "Bedbug" became one
of the characteristic themes of Soviet art of that time. With his usual enthusiasm, Shostakovich joined this stream of denunciation,
It is not easy, however, to draw a line in his music between actually cheerful, eccentric and satirical, accusatory:
and here and there common means of expression - appeal for the sake of
grotesque refraction to the banal element of everyday music. But the angle of such a refraction is essential. For example, in the orchestral transcription of the popular Nesi and V. Humeps "Tahiti-Trott", as well as in many "galopades", Shostakovich did not pursue accusatory goals. A different attitude to the banal arises when the composer seeks to convey the ugly in life, both morally and socially: such is the popular vulgar motif on which the variations of the first part of the Seventh Symphony are built (the motif from the operetta The Merry Widow by Lehar is used; echoes of the same melody in the fourth movement of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra); such is the second movement - the March-scherzo of the Eighth Symphony, but here the reason for the denunciation is not so much the motive as the very genre of the pompous militant march; such is the tragic-grotesque refraction of everyday musical material in the finale of the Piano Trio, in the scherzo of the First Violin Concerto, in the galloping theme of the trumpet solo in the third movement of the same Eighth, etc.

I once suggested that Shostakovich often uses "werewolf themes" in his music; in the process of development, their semantic meaning is radically transformed, acquiring the opposite meaning. In turning to the banal, to which the young Shostakovich paid a generous tribute, for which - for the difference in style - he was often reproached by musical criticism, which did not understand the essence of this device, he developed a method of such reincarnations. Vulgar, self-satisfied, "ceremonially prosperous does not seem to portend danger, but at any moment it can turn into evil, cruelty, brutal violence. None of the composers of the 20th century was able to feel this danger so sharply and convey aggressiveness in music with such expressive power evil forces, like Shostakovich.Their onslaught is resisted by fortitude, and in this context, slowly unfolding, emotionally direct lyrical revelations are endowed with a high moral meaning.
Such an interpretation of tragic concepts is the most significant artistic achievement of Shostakovich. Throughout the 1920s, he persistently sought ways to implement it, occasionally strayed from the chosen path, but intuitively groped for it, and by the turn of the 1930s, fully armed with mastery, he entered the second period of creative maturity. He was helped by his acquaintance with new modern music.

The panorama of new music in Petrograd-Leningrad in the mid-twenties is wide. Bela Bartok, Paul Hindemith (twice), Darrshos Millau, Arthur Honeggsr, Alfredo Casella came here on tour; in 1927 Albai Berg also came to the premiere of Wozzeck; in the same year, the tour of Sergei Prokofiev was marked by a stunning triumph. Here you could hear the best artists of the West, conductors and soloists - Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Herman Abeidroth, Ernest Ansermet, Pierre Monteux, Arthur Schnabel, Egosh Petri, Josef Szigeti and many others. Operas by contemporary foreign composers were staged in the theaters: Strauss's Salome and The Rosenkavalier, Berg's Wozzeck, Krzhenek's Leap Through the Shadow and Johnny Plays, Schreker's The Distant Ringing, etc. Very widely, in cycles of concerts , the 100th anniversaries of the deaths of Beethoven (1927) and Schubert (1928) were celebrated.
If we take into account that after the death of Scriabin (1915), during the years of the war and "war communism" (1918-1920), the listener's musical experience was not sufficiently enriched, it becomes clearer how strong these new artistic impressions were. Of course, Shostakovich also took them up, and here he showed individual independence, and in some ways clairvoyance.
I cannot now recall his judgments about what I heard, and these judgments could have been accidental. Therefore, I will state something hypothetically, based more on what affected the work of Shostakovich in those years than on how he reacted to what he heard.
Undoubtedly, one of the strongest impressions is associated with Wozzeck and a fleeting personal meeting with its author. Less significant, but still effective, could be an acquaintance with the music of Hindemith - attracted by its stormy dynamic character. Bartok, perhaps, did not make the proper impression, and interest in Milhaud soon faded. (Later more attracted
Honegger, especially his Liturgical Symphony.) In general, Shostakovich is indifferent to the French music of the 20th century: Debussy seemed too spicy. Ravel is overly dressy. I don’t dare to say, but Richard Strauss was not very interested in probability, while he treated Johann Strauss with sympathy and valued him on a par with Offenbach, for he rightly believed that genuine art does not know the division into “high” and “low” genres.

I have forgotten his reaction to the fashionable operas of Schreker and Krzhenek in those years. I only remember that Shostakovich did not share the enthusiasm of his peers for the foxtrot from "Shadow Jump", various kinds of pieces in the spirit of jazz, and unlike, for example, from Stravinsky or Milhaud, the techniques and techniques of jazz practice had very little influence on him - so insignificant that when writing a Suite for a jazz ensemble in the NS, he failed.
The main focus of Shostakovich's attention is Igor Stravinsky; this was the case in the 1920s, and this continued later. He highly revered the brilliant Russian master, but accepting, however, the impressionistic “painterliness” of The Firebird, the “barbarisms” of The Rite of Spring and not understanding the late Stravinsky’s appeal to the twelve-tone technique, which Shostakovich rejected. (His negative attitude towards Schoenberg is also known.)
One of the first strong impressions was the Petrushka fairgrounds; their influence can be traced in various works by Shostakovich. He had his greatest creative contact with the neoclassical Stravinsky. Shostakovich was fond of the music of Pulcinella, Mavra, the Piano Concerto (after I performed it with an orchestra in Leningrad in 1932, Shostakovich told I. I. Sollertipsky that when he listened to the Concerto, it seemed to him that he, Shostakovich , composed it himself); He transcribed the Symphony of Psalms for pianoforte four hands and at the end of the 1930s he often played with his students in class jams2; admired the Persephone, the Mass, etc.
In the embodiment of the grotesque in music, Stravinsky is exceptionally resourceful. This was a revelation for Shostakovich and, in its individual, sharply characteristic refraction, accompanied his further creative activity. In particular, two of Stravinsky's suites for small orchestras enjoyed great success at that time. The second (1921) closes the gallop. Isn't this the reason for the "gallops" in Shostakovich's music?

Prokofiev is less close to him, although in youth was very fond of him; echoes of his music sometimes appeared in the early Shostakovich. Over time, however, this infatuation has faded. (Of Prokofiev's operas, he probably valued Betrothal in a Monastery most of all.) Restraint in relation to such a great master requires clarification. It's not about the hard-to-surmount fifteen-year age limit - the differences in temperament, life and cultural experience, and creative method are more significant. For example, in Prokofiev exposition prevails over development, while for Shostakovich the main thing is development; hence, for Prokofiev, the measure of artistic value is melodic completeness, integrity, characteristic, while for Shostakovich, a short motive, not in itself valuable in itself, but containing the potential for development, could serve as an impulse for the development of musical thought; different was the different understanding of the national origins of music; finally, other aspects of life - brighter, more harmonious in Prokofiev, "shadow", tragic, disharmonious in Shostakovich - were reflected in their work. Each created his own tradition in Soviet music.

Roman Nasonov
Ph.D. in History of Arts

Shostakovich

And it's all about him

Great Soviet composer, pianist, teacher and public figure. People's Artist of the USSR, Doctor of Arts, Hero of Socialist Labor, Secretary of the Union of Composers of the USSR, Deputy of the Supreme Soviets of the RSFSR and the USSR, Honorary Doctor of Oxford University (an honor that was awarded to only a very few, the greatest musicians), an honorary member of innumerable foreign academies of music. Member of the Soviet and World Committees for the Protection of Peace, the Slavic Committee of the USSR. A faithful son of the CPSU and an irreplaceable mouthpiece of Soviet propaganda in the West. A secret anti-Soviet who hated and despised the totalitarian system. A mortally intimidated introverted pessimist with a broken nervous system. Unusually friendly and generous towards colleagues and their work. Opportunist, author of opportunistic works, marked by Stalin Prizes. The highest moral authority of the intelligentsia Soviet period. Holy sufferer, passion-bearer, the voice of Russia crucified by the Bolsheviks, who expressed what others could not express - poets, writers and artists, in a terrible time. Russian patriot, fighter against fascism, singer and defender of the Jewish people. A brilliant successor to the romantic and realistic traditions of music of the 19th century, who proved the possibility of their creative development in modern musical times. A bold avant-garde artist and experimenter at the beginning of his career. The greatest symphonist of the 20th century, the last composer who managed to create in music large-scale tragic concepts of enormous power of influence.

Some kind of confusion instead of a creative and human portrait. Here it is necessary to understand. Separate false judgments from true ones in order to eventually develop an “objective point of view”. And even better - subjective. And immediately everything will become clear and easy.

But how to understand yourself and your past? After all, Shostakovich's music, like no other, is about us, Soviet (post-Soviet) people. The others are yet to be seen. They will grow up and sort it out - with us, with Shostakovich, with his music.

With us, a fairly simple and honest understanding. To the best of our ability, we will try to follow the artist along his life path, once again plunging into those experiences into which his music imperiously plunges us.

Brilliant young man Dmitri Shostakovich

A musical prodigy and an ordinary city boy. Born in 1906 in a family of hereditary Polish revolutionary democrats, fighters against the Russian tsarist regime for the independence of their homeland (however, neither D. Shostakovich's father Dmitry Boleslavovich, a chemical engineer, nor his mother Sofya Vasilyevna had a direct relationship to the revolutionary movement). Studying music from the age of nine (at first under the supervision of his mother, then children's teachers), he impressed everyone with his brilliant abilities: excellent musical memory, absolute pitch, amazing freedom of reading music from a sheet.

On the theme of the First World War, he wrote a piano poem “Soldier”, with many verbal explanations like “A soldier shot at this place”. revolutionary events dedicated the Hymn of Freedom, the Funeral March to the memory of the victims of the revolution, the Little Revolutionary Symphony. He was noticed by the director of the Petrograd Conservatory A.K. Glazunov, an outstanding composer, one of the last representatives of the great Russian musical tradition of the 19th century, who took the boy under constant guardianship. In the autumn of 1919 (at the age of thirteen!) he became a full student at the conservatory. Glazunov did not like Mitya's music (“Disgusting! This is the first music I don't hear when reading the score”), but he understood that the future lay behind it.

Post-revolutionary Petrograd. Ruin. Hunger. Poverty, extremely exhausting work as a pianist in cinema halls, dirty, stuffy, stinking (for meager pay). Father's death in 1922. Mother is fired from her job; the family exists to earn money older sister Marousi. In 1923 - an operation due to tuberculosis of the bronchi and lymph nodes and - a short happy respite: a trip with Marusya to the Crimea for rehabilitation (I had to sell the piano and get into debt).

The conservatory was inert, the hardships of existence did not at all contribute to the formation of an optimistic outlook on life and the development of talents. But still. Thanks to Glazunov and other conservatory teachers, the young composer was deeply imbued with the best classical traditions of Russian music: from the lyrical-dramatic, subjective-psychological symphonism of P.I. Tchaikovsky to the folk tragedies and satires of M.P. Accompanying silent films on the piano, Shostakovich not only developed his art of improvisation and mastered the field of light, applied music, but also in practice comprehended the innovative, “montage” way of organizing time, characteristic of early cinema (when contrasting frames and episodes kaleidoscopically, without transitions replace each other). Breaking out to concerts and to the opera house, the young man gradually got acquainted with the work of the greatest masters of the 20th century, which is usually condemned in conservatory circles. The music of Schoenberg and Hindemith, and especially Mahler and Stravinsky, inspired the search for new paths; the Leningrad premiere of the opera - one of the first in the world - A. Berg's "Wozzeck" made a huge, stunning impression on the young man: even later, not in best years, speaking with a duty condemnation of Western "formalism", Shostakovich paid tribute to this work and its author.

A real revelation for the public was the First Symphony (in 4 parts), written by the end of the conservatory (at the age of 19!) The listeners fell in love with this “spring” symphony for its youthful optimism and freshness of sound, only with time it became noticeable that the music is not cloudless, that, in essence, it is a deep and complex psychological drama.

Judging by the surviving memoirs and photographs, this brilliant young man was not at all the embodiment of world sorrow. Apparently, it was destined so that the tragic Russian (Soviet) history of the twentieth century. had his own artist, able to fit her terrible experience into his heart and tell about the experience with amazing truth and sincerity.

risky experiments

Surprisingly, worldwide recognition did not bring real satisfaction to the author of the First Symphony. Not everything was said in this vivid essay. The search for its own, modern musical language, new, relevant figurative spheres open up. The search went on literally in all musical genres: from the piano cycle of miniatures (“Aphorisms”, the bold harmonic language and texture of which reveal the well-known influence of composers of the Novovensk school; 1927) to opera, ballets, symphonies. And all this - against the backdrop of amazingly fruitful work in the field of music for theater and cinema.

Composing for the cinema has always remained the most profitable business for Soviet composers, but Shostakovich, the author of music for several dozen films, did not experience much joy from such work (“No matter how I tried to complete the tasks for the film (“5 days, 5 nights.”) R.N.), could not yet. Instead, he wrote an unnecessary and ideologically vicious (8th. - R.N.) quartet, ”we read in one of the surviving letters of 1960.

And yet, cooperation with some theater groups in the late 20s and early 30s, primarily such as the V. Meyerhold Theater (music for V. Mayakovsky’s play “The Bedbug”) and the Leningrad Theater of Working Youth (TRAM), did not pass without a trace for the young composer. The avant-garde ideas of these theaters, publicistically addressed to the general public, stimulated the creation of a number of desperately innovative compositions in which the use of individual, extraordinarily bold and unconventional techniques was paradoxically combined with the general lapidary-simplified, sometimes poster-like nature of musical imagery and expressive means.

In the field of symphonic music, these are primarily the 2nd (“Dedication to October”, 1927) and 3rd (“May Day”, 1929) symphonies, which are a musical portrait of workers' meetings and demonstrations. The first of these symphonies, more solid in concept and successful in music, demonstrates the formation of “proletarian consciousness”: from the complete sound chaos of the initial bars (perhaps unprecedented in the world musical literature of that time), through the angry trumpet replicas, to the primitive (but to his convincing) chorus of workers to the bad poems of A. Bezymensky in the finale (the choice of text was determined by the state order). Impressed by this choir, P. Filonov depicted in the film “Heads. Symphony of Shostakovich” a lot of identical, “stamped” faces against the background of geometric figures.

The 3rd symphony, also built according to the montage principle (“It would be interesting to write a symphony where not a single theme is repeated ...”), depicts the May Day procession of workers, also with a choir at the end. In the music of this work (not always successful: when it was performed abroad, the final chorus was sometimes simply ignored), a whole series of marching and scherzo episodes strikes in the range from humor to open grotesque - here you have it. Holy holiday!

And that's what! The opera The Nose (1927–1928) based on the plot of N.V. Gogol, created by the unkindly cheerful twenty-two-year-old composer literally on a binge (the first act was written in one month; the second - within two weeks) became a real feast of the musical grotesque and theater of the absurd. !). "The Nose" is an evil and terrible parody of the stupidity and vulgarity of philistine, petty-bourgeois life, of boundless police arbitrariness. It is also a parody of classical opera and operatic forms: the sublime heroes were replaced by a gray, absolutely faceless mass. Instead of the protagonist's exit aria, the awakening of state councilor Kovalev is depicted in a naturalistic way; The "octet of janitors" in a newspaper expedition senselessly bawls a lot of ridiculous announcements at the same time, so that it is impossible to make out the words. The police are pitiful and terrible at the same time: Kvartalny sings in falsetto like a eunuch, but when in the intermission before the second picture (in which this image is symphonically generalized) we hear the rumble of a whole battery of percussion instruments (one of the world's first compositions for one percussion ), we are terrified. Never again will Shostakovich be able to tell with such frankness and directness how terrible and inhuman the power of nonentities!

And also - the ballets "The Golden Age" (1930) and "Bolt" (1931). Extremely primitive plots imposed on the author from outside (the adventures of a Soviet football team in a hostile capitalist environment and sabotage by "pests" - drunkards with a priest - of socialist production) did not prevent the composer from writing bright, avant-garde music for them, including both popular dances in the spirit of Western pop music (with with brilliance and not without ecstasy Shostakovich depicts the “decaying” mass bourgeois culture, in the atmosphere of which the action of the “Golden Age” unfolds), as well as grotesque numbers (marches, gallops); completely new, unlike smooth movements classical dance was the choreography of these ballets. Individual dances, and above all the extremely effective orchestral arrangement of the Tahiti Trot foxtrot, became real hits of their time - much to the displeasure of the Soviet authorities.

On the "reforging"

Shostakovich sold out: even the most “ideologically sustained” plots could not stop him. But by the beginning of the 30s, the authorities were already quite capable of stopping any "presumptuous" artist. Shostakovich was "lucky", they decided to "re-educate" him. The 3rd symphony and ballets were sharply criticized, and the composer had to publicly justify himself: to talk about the superiority of “Soviet physical education” over “Western eroticism”, to appeal to the “organs” with a call to ban the printing and performance of all compositions of the “light genre”, as if competing in obscurantism with obscurantist critics. Since then, all Shostakovich's public statements have become ambiguous, many of them are made to please the authorities. The composer gradually turns into a highly professional underground conspirator. His personal letters become a kind of cipher. Here are just a few comments by ID Glikman, a close friend of Shostakovich, to the composer's letters that he has preserved. Let's say the wording “I live well. Healthy. Tomorrow I will be 40 years old, in 10 years it will be already 50 ”- means that the composer has a severe depression, and he watches with horror how the years of his life pass. And the message “... we had a plenum of the Organizing Committee of the SSK (Union of Soviet Composers. - R.N.) ... The first meetings were interesting” was supposed to tell the musician’s friends about the stupid and senseless nature of the official event, the opening of which was timed to coincide with the persecution of Shostakovich in the press for his 9th symphony. Based on the valuable remarks of the addressee of the letters, everyone can try to guess what Shostakovich meant when he told the same ID Glikman in 1943: “I regret that you did not hear my 8th symphony. I am very glad how it went… It was to be discussed at the Union of Soviet Composers, which was postponed due to my illness. Now this discussion will take place, and I have no doubt that valuable critical remarks will be made at it, which will inspire me to further creativity, in which I will review all my previous work and, instead of stepping back, I will take a step forward ... ”It only remains to add that already in 1955, after the death of his dearest and most trusted person, his mother, Shostakovich destroyed all his letters to her.

To scoff at the musical authorities, pouring out the bitterness of the soul, was possible only in private correspondence, and then on the sly. In music, the composer had to desperately demonstrate how diligently he shuts his own mouth, steps on the throat of his own song, taking a step forward after two steps back. In the 40-50s. this meant, first of all, the composer's conscious division of his work into two categories: for the soul and for the party. In the 30s. Shostakovich apparently still hoped to combine these two incompatible kinds of music composition. And it is hardly possible to explain these illusions only by the inexperience of life at that time, still a very young man. It seemed that there really was an objective platform for bringing the positions of the artist and the authorities closer.

What did official Soviet criticism demand from Shostakovich? First, to strengthen the "folk" principle in music, to increase the role of extended song melodies of the folk style. Secondly, to return to the “classical” traditions: to abandon the most acute episodes, to rely on more harmonious, traditional forms. Finally, create more “optimistic”, cheerful and life-affirming music, or at least complete your compositions with bright, positive images.

Surprisingly, it is a fact: all this partly at least did not contradict the musician's convictions. Indeed, Shostakovich had great sympathy for the music of various peoples, including melodic Russian and Ukrainian songs; even his praise of I.I. Dzerzhinsky’s opera “ Quiet Don”, which official criticism proclaimed the standard of the Soviet “song” opera, do not look like pure hypocrisy. Shostakovich also had nothing against optimism - naturally, sincere and hard-won optimism, and not official. Finally, the composer himself obviously felt the need, after a bright series of avant-garde, experimental compositions, to create music of great generalizing power, including a variety of images and feelings. Therefore, it was not a lie for him to meet the demands of criticism in the hope that this would be duly appreciated by both the authorities and the public.

The first work of this kind was the second opera by Shostakovich - "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (or "Katerina Izmailova", 1932), based on the story of the same name by N. Leskov, deeply rethought in the opera. Instead of a criminal story that realistically depicts the base morals of the inhabitants of the Russian provinces, Shostakovich has a high tragedy with many grotesque, satirical scenes. The philistine world is depicted as a whole the same as in the opera The Nose: gray, insignificant, filled with violence. However, this is already a real opera, and not an evil parody of it, primarily thanks to the heroine, Katerina Lvovna, who challenges the hopeless life around her - Shostakovich created this image with love and great sympathy. But how different the new heroine is from the traditional “romantic” opera heroines! Her deeds are criminal (the murder of her father-in-law and her husband), her goals are illusory (the beloved, for whom Katerina commits a crime, turns out to be a vulgar vulgar thing) ... In his printed speeches, Shostakovich promised his listeners to sing the best Dneprostroy concrete worker Zhenya Romanko, but artistic truth forced him to create human types, horribly deformed. Only Berg's Wozzeck was a partial analogue of Katerina in world musical literature (for all the enormous difference in the psychological characteristics of these characters!). And just as Berg in his opera responds to the hero’s death with a sublimely tragic requiem in the orchestra, Shostakovich places in the intermission between the 4th and 5th acts of “Lady Macbeth” (after the scene of the poisoning of Boris Timofeevich’s father-in-law) an orchestral passacaglia, sustained in character gloomy procession; since then, the genre of the passacaglia has become for Shostakovich a way of musical generalization of the most tragic, painful and gloomy thoughts and feelings.

The opera was an honest and meaningful step towards classical art, addressed to a wide range of listeners. Her characters (even the most repulsive ones) are psychologically individual and multidimensional (they are no longer stamped heads and grotesque caricatures); throughout the opera one can feel a powerful symphonic development of the main musical ideas (based, in particular, on the use of leitmotifs - this method was developed back in the era of romanticism, and above all by Wagner); traditional operatic genres are represented by numerous ariosos, choirs and ensembles. Finally, detailed melodies in the spirit of folk songs are organically introduced into the opera, the vocal parts are very melodic (especially in comparison with the author's previous compositions); The scene of the procession to hard labor shocked contemporaries with enormous force of artistic influence: the mournful, monumental and expressive choirs of convicts - for the first time in the work of Shostakovich, the image of a suffering people unfolds here.

It is not surprising that the opera was warmly received by the Soviet and foreign audiences. Its premieres were held with great success in Leningrad and Moscow, Buenos Aires, Zurich and Stockholm, at the famous New York Metropolitan Opera. It seemed that this was the final and irrevocable recognition of the work of the young composer ... And so it seemed exactly until January 28, 1936, when Shostakovich bought the newspaper Pravda at the station in Arkhangelsk, in which he discovered an anonymous (that is, reflecting official point view) article "Muddle instead of music". With sadistic pleasure, exposing the naturalistic effects in the frankly sensual music of the young and "talented" composer, the authors of the article brought deadly accusations against him of being apolitical and pandering to the base tastes of the bourgeois public. But Shostakovich was, in addition, a close friend of such people as M.N. Tukhachevsky and V.E. Meyerhold, over whom clouds were already gathering with might and main at that time.

They say that the article was directly inspired by I.V. Stalin, who watched “Katerina Izmailova” from the government box with unkind amusement and, apparently, was sincerely indignant at the frankly erotic scenes of the opera accompanied by a savory symphony orchestra. Stalin was the Chief Critic of the USSR, and henceforth Shostakovich (and other Soviet composers along with him) was strictly forbidden to demonstrate in music the base, vulgar aspects of life and to deviate towards tragedy. An unprecedented campaign of persecution was launched against the composer; he could have been arrested, killed, but in the end he was spared. However, the opportunity to compose boldly - what you want and how you feel - he was deprived for a long time. The 4th symphony was withdrawn from the performance (supposedly at the author's request) - a large-scale, unusually deep in thought and complex in form composition, full of sharp contrasts, sharp conflicts, grotesque images, with a tragic denouement (a funeral march, which is the main theme of the finale). The symphony was created during the persecution of the composer and was his last attempt at direct and sincere expression. Under great pressure, Shostakovich was forced to actually renounce his own offspring: the intelligentsia's warm reception of the persecuted composer's music could only provoke the authorities to even harsher measures against him. The 4th symphony was then not performed for more than two decades, but by 1937 Shostakovich wrote the Fifth - excellent music, also full of dramatic conflicts and “Hamletian” questions, but with a significantly lesser role of grotesque images, with a radiantly optimistic denouement in the final section (code) of the finale, more compact and solid in form and economical in terms of the use of musical expressiveness than the Fourth Symphony. The public enthusiastically greeted the new creation of the genius, and official criticism noted obvious positive shifts in the author's worldview and assessed the symphony as a major achievement of socialist art - a classic example of the symphonic genre in the USSR.

Down and Out trouble started. There was no room for maneuver, and the composer had to rebuild his lyre according to the "requirements of the party." And the grandiose D-major (tone of the finale of Beethoven's 9th symphony) coda eventually began to produce no less terrible impression than the footage of mass Soviet rallies of the same time: with joyful enthusiasm, the working trials of "enemies of the people" (including close friends of Shostakovich) ...

War and freedom

Events 1936–1937 for a long time they repulsed the composer's desire to compose music on a verbal text. Lady Macbeth was Shostakovich's last opera; only during the years of the Khrushchev “thaw” will he get the opportunity to create vocal and instrumental works not “on the occasion”, not to please the authorities. Literally devoid of words, the composer concentrates his creative efforts in the field of instrumental music, discovering, in particular, the genres of chamber instrumental music-making: the 1st string quartet (1938; a total of 15 compositions will be created in this genre), the piano quintet (1940). He tries to express all the deepest, personal feelings and thoughts in the genre of a symphony.

The appearance of each Shostakovich symphony became a huge event in the life of the Soviet intelligentsia, who expected these works as a genuine spiritual revelation against the backdrop of a wretched semi-official culture crushed by the ideological oppression. The broad mass of Soviet people, the Soviet people knew Shostakovich's music, of course, much worse and were hardly able to fully understand many of the composer's works (that's why they "worked through" Shostakovich at numerous meetings, plenums and meetings for the "overcomplexity" of the musical language) - and this despite that reflections on the historical tragedy of the Russian people were one of the central themes in the artist's work. Nevertheless, it seems that none of the Soviet composers could express the feelings of his contemporaries so deeply and passionately, literally merge with their fate, as Shostakovich did in his Seventh Symphony.

Despite insistent proposals to evacuate, Shostakovich remains in besieged Leningrad, repeatedly asks to enroll him in the people's militia. Finally enrolled in the fire brigade of the air defense troops, he contributed to the defense of his native city.

The 7th symphony, completed already in the evacuation, in Kuibyshev, and performed there for the first time, immediately became a symbol of the resistance of the Soviet people to the fascist aggressors and faith in the coming victory over the enemy. This is how she was perceived not only at home, but also in many countries of the world. For the first performance of the symphony in besieged Leningrad, the commander of the Leningrad Front, L.A. Govorov, ordered to suppress enemy artillery with a fire strike so that the cannonade would not interfere with listening to Shostakovich's music. And the music deserved it. The ingenious “invasion episode”, the courageous and strong-willed themes of resistance, the mournful monologue of the bassoon (“requiem for the victims of the war”), for all their publicism and poster-like simplicity of the musical language, really have a huge artistic impact.

The “Episode of the Invasion”, which lives, as it were, a life separate from other sections of the symphony, for all the caricature, satirical sharpness of the image, is not at all so simple. At the level of concrete figurativeness, Shostakovich depicts in it, of course, the fascist military machine that invaded the peaceful life of the Soviet people. But Shostakovich's music, deeply generalized, with merciless directness and captivating consistency, shows how an empty, soulless nonentity acquires monstrous power, trampling on everything human around. A similar transformation of grotesque images: from vulgar vulgarity to cruel overwhelming violence - is found more than once in the works of Shostakovich, for example, in the same opera The Nose. In the fascist invasion, the composer learned, felt something dear and familiar - something about which he had long been forced to remain silent. When he found out, with all his fervor he raised his voice against the anti-human forces in the world around him ... Speaking out against non-humans in fascist uniforms, Shostakovich indirectly painted a portrait of his acquaintances from the NKVD, long years who seemed to hold him in mortal fear. The war with its strange freedom allowed the artist to say the forbidden. And this inspired further revelations.

Soon after the end of the 7th Symphony, Shostakovich created two masterpieces in the field of instrumental music, deeply tragic in nature: the Eighth Symphony (1943) and the piano trio in memory of I.I. Sollertinsky (1944) - a music critic, one of the composer's closest friends, like no one else who understood, supported and promoted his music. In many respects, these works will remain unsurpassed peaks in the composer's work.

Thus, the Eighth Symphony is clearly superior to the textbook Fifth. It is believed that this work is dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War and is at the center of the so-called "triad of military symphonies" by Shostakovich (7th, 8th and 9th symphonies). However, as we have just seen in the case of the 7th symphony, in the work of such a subjective, intelligent composer as Shostakovich was, even “poster” ones, equipped with an unambiguous verbal “program” (which Shostakovich was, by the way, musicologists, no matter how hard they tried, could not extract from him a single word clarifying the imagery of his own music) the works are mysterious from the point of view of their specific content and do not lend themselves to a superficial figurative and illustrative description. What can we say about the 8th symphony - a work of a philosophical nature, which still amazes with the greatness of thought and feeling.

The public and official critics at first accepted the work quite benevolently (largely in the wake of the ongoing triumphal procession of the 7th symphony around the concert venues of the world). However, a harsh retribution awaited the daring composer.

Everything happened outwardly as if by chance and absurdly. In 1947, the aging leader and Chief Critic of the Soviet Union I.V. Stalin, together with Zhdanov and other comrades, deigned to listen to the last achievement of multinational Soviet art at a closed performance - Vano Muradeli's opera “The Great Friendship”, successfully staged by that time in several cities of the country . The opera was, admittedly, very mediocre, the plot - extremely ideological; in general, lezginka seemed very unnatural to Comrade Stalin (and the Kremlin Highlander knew a lot about lezginka). As a result, on February 10, 1948, a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was issued, in which, after a harsh condemnation of the ill-fated opera, the best Soviet composers were declared "formalist perverts", alien the Soviet people and his culture. The resolution directly referred to the odious articles of Pravda in 1936 as the fundamental document of the party's policy in the field of musical art. Is it any wonder that the name of Shostakovich was at the head of the list of “formalists”?

Six months of incessant abuse, in which everyone excelled in their own way. Condemnation and actual prohibition of the best compositions (and above all the brilliant Eighth Symphony). heavy blow to nervous system, and without that not very stable. Deep depression. The composer was broken.

And they lifted him up: to the very pinnacle of semi-official Soviet art. In 1949, against the will of the composer, he was literally pushed out as part of the Soviet delegation to the All-American Congress of Scientists and Cultural Figures in Defense of Peace - on behalf of Soviet music to make fiery speeches condemning American imperialism. It turned out quite well. Since then, Shostakovich has been appointed as the “front facade” of Soviet musical culture and masters a difficult and unpleasant craft: to travel around the most different countries reading pre-prepared propaganda texts. He could no longer refuse - his spirit was completely broken. The capitulation was secured by the creation of appropriate musical works - no longer just compromise, but completely contrary to the artistic vocation of the artist. The greatest success among these handicrafts - to the horror of the author - was won by the oratorio "The Song of the Forests" (to the text of the poet Dolmatovsky), glorifying Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature. He was literally overwhelmed by the rave reviews from his colleagues and the generous rain of money that fell on him as soon as he presented the oratorio to the public.

The ambiguity of the position of the composer was that, using the name and skill of Shostakovich for propaganda purposes, the authorities on occasion did not forget to remind him that no one canceled the 1948 decree. The whip organically complemented the gingerbread. Humiliated and enslaved, the composer almost abandoned genuine creativity: in the most important genre for him, the symphony, there is an eight-year-long caesura (just between the end of the war in 1945 and Stalin's death in 1953).

With the creation of the Tenth Symphony (1953), Shostakovich summed up not only the era of Stalinism, but also a long period in his own work, marked primarily by non-programmed instrumental compositions (symphonies, quartets, trios, etc.). In this symphony - consisting of a slow, pessimistically self-deepening first movement (sounding over 20 minutes) and three subsequent scherzos (one of which, with a very rigid orchestration and aggressive rhythms, is supposedly a kind of portrait of a hated tyrant who has just died) - as in no other on the other, a completely individual, unlike anything else, interpretation by the composer of the traditional model of the sonata-symphony cycle was revealed.

The destruction by Shostakovich of the sacred classical canons was carried out not out of malicious intent, not for the sake of a modernist experiment. Very conservative in his approach to the musical form, the composer could not help but destroy it: his worldview is too far from the classical one. The son of his time and his country, Shostakovich was shaken to the depths of his heart by the inhuman image of the world that appeared to him and, unable to do anything about it, plunged into gloomy reflections. Here is the hidden dramatic spring of his best, honest, philosophically generalizing works: he would like to go against himself (say, joyfully reconcile with the surrounding reality), but the “vicious” inside takes its toll. Everywhere the composer sees banal evil - ugliness, absurdity, lies and impersonality, unable to oppose him with anything but his own pain and sorrow. The endless, forced imitation of a life-affirming worldview only undermined strength and devastated the soul, simply killed. It's good that the tyrant died and Khrushchev came. The "thaw" has come - it's time for relatively free creativity.

Hopes of the Sixties

A return to the verbal text, programmatic, open, journalistic nature of the statement are the main signs of a new period in the work of Shostakovich. The resolution of 1948 was partially revised, ideological studies were suspended. Hopes were fed not only by young men - the younger generation of the “sixties”. Wise with life, beaten-killed - there is no living place left! – the composer was also no stranger to the illusions of his time: naive and unsuccessful attempts to change the atmosphere in the Union of Composers, the “revolutionary” 11th and 12th symphonies, illustrating the events of two Russian revolutions at the beginning of the century, glorifying V.I. Lenin. Probably, in his “anti-Sovietism” of that time, Shostakovich, like many Soviet people, remained captive to other ideological myths. The return to Leninist norms, to the precepts of October, proclaimed with all sincerity by Khrushchev, aroused warm sympathy in the most diverse sections of Soviet society.

Shostakovich did not believe in the party and its leaders, but, like many generations of Russian intellectuals, he idealized the Russian people. Emphasizing in his new writings the popular character of the revolution, depicting the unity of the party and the people during the years of the revolutionary struggle, he certainly created a utopia. It is difficult to say how much the artist believed in the reality of such unity. However, understanding Russian history in a revolutionary populist spirit (this is where family traditions manifested themselves!) as a tragedy of a people deceived and trampled upon by the authorities, he could not but call for an end to this tragedy. The authorities are to blame for all the troubles of Russian history; the people are the bearers of its profound truth. This naive, in the spirit of the 19th century, historiosophical conception also determined the stylistic features of Shostakovich's new works - an epic warehouse, clear, sometimes deliberately simplified, and at the same time sharply expressive in language. It is no coincidence that during this period he turned to Mussorgsky's music, editing and re-orchestrating his operas Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov. Trying to continue and develop the traditions of Mussorgsky, he comes to a strange symbiosis of archaic, outdated musical techniques and unique individual expression, thanks to which Shostakovich cannot be confused with any of the composers.

Among the publicistic works of Shostakovich during the “thaw” period, the greatest public resonance was the music based on the verses of E. Yevtushenko: the 13th symphony and the poem “The Execution of Stepan Razin” (somewhat straightforward and naive, as it is now seen, depicting the tragedy of the deceived and seeing Russian people). The undoubted musical merits of the innovative 13th symphony in the minds of contemporaries receded before the breathtaking boldness of its design. Although the texts of all five parts of the work are marked by free-thinking, the first part, “Babi Yar”, in the atmosphere of silent suppression of the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Second World War, caused a real scandal. Enormous pressure was exerted on the performers of the symphony in order to disrupt the premiere of the work. Thanks to the perseverance of Shostakovich, the premiere nevertheless took place (K. Kondrashin conducted), but Yevtushenko's poems were forbidden to be printed in the program.

The events surrounding the performance of the 13th symphony (and, in part, The Execution of Stepan Razin) were the composer's last open clash with the authorities. An attempt to win him over to his side in the fight against the state regime was made by Solzhenitsyn (well aware of the degree of opposition of Shostakovich to the authorities of the CPSU) - but to no avail. Forces left the artist. In 1966, during the magnificent celebrations on the occasion of the composer's 60th birthday, he had a heart attack. Shostakovich's health was gradually deteriorating (despite periods of temporary improvement), it only remained to sum up his life.

Death without enlightenment

“Perhaps you will be interested in why I suddenly decided to pay so much attention to such a cruel and terrible phenomenon as death. Not because I am already many years old, and not because around me, in the language of an artilleryman, shells are falling and I am losing my friends, relatives ... I am partly trying to argue with the great classics who touched on the theme of death in their work ... Let's remember death Boris Godunov: when Boris Godunov, then, died, then there comes some kind of enlightenment. Let us recall Verdi's Otello: when the whole tragedy ends and Desdemona and Othello perish, there is also a wonderful reassurance... All this comes, it seems to me, from all sorts of religious teachings that suggested that life, so to speak, could be bad, but when you die, everything will be fine and you will find complete peace there. It seems to me that I am partly, perhaps, following in the footsteps of the great Russian composer Mussorgsky. His cycle “Songs and Dances of Death”, perhaps not all, but “The Commander”, for example, is a great protest against death and a reminder that you need to live your life honestly, nobly, decently ... Because, alas, it won't be long before our scientists think of immortality. It's waiting for all of us. I don’t see anything good in such an end of our life and I try to tell about it in this work, ”said Shostakovich in 1969, at a rehearsal of the 14th symphony - an essay on the text of eleven poems (F. Lorca, G. Apollinaire, V .Küchelbecker and R.Rilke), united by the common theme of death. The music of the symphony, chamber in composition and character of sound, is marked by flashes of heightened expression, dynamic contrasts, the use of elements of dodecaphony (consecutive holding of all twelve tones of the musical scale without repetitions). A vivid example of the late style in Shostakovich's work, it evokes clear associations with one of the composer's favorite works - G. Mahler's vocal symphony "Song of the Earth" (Shostakovich once admitted that he would like to listen to this work in the last hour of his life). Deciding to tell about the most intimate, Shostakovich saturated his music with musical symbols. So, in the music for one of Apollinaire's poems, he includes his own sound monogram DSCH (the first letters of the composer's name and surname on German; in musical notation, they denote the sounds of re-mi-flat-do-si) - first before the words “No, I am not the same as before, I am a prisoner, and this is the end of hope”, and then inside the phrase “Tear off the crown of thorns from me (DSCH) - otherwise he will yell into my brain.

This monogram was already found in Shostakovich's 10th symphony and especially in the autobiographical 8th string quartet, saturated with many quotations from the composer's own music, in works that summed up the tragic pages of the artist's life and work in the era of Stalinism. Now, saying goodbye to life, he again uses this monogram, as if trying to hide, to encrypt the personal nature of the work from extraneous immodest eyes. Quietly, avoiding publicity, Shostakovich says that the meaning of his life was to endure suffering for the people (Russian, Jewish, and who knows what else, if he suddenly found himself in trouble). Faith in this helps him find peace in the face of approaching death.

Still alive, he seems to be crossing the line that separates him from this world. As if music coming from another world, immersed in death, the composer’s last works sound: the 15th symphony (in which - why? why? - there are themes from the music of Wagner and Rossini, a quasi-quotation of the “invasion episode” from his own 7th symphony) and the 15th string quartet, Suite on verses by Michelangelo, Sonata for Viola and Piano (the final Adagio of the viola sonata - a sublime meditation on death and eternity - is based on the music of the 1st movement " moonlight sonata"Beethoven). Work on the sonata, accompanied by severe bouts of illness, was completed on August 4, 1975. Five days later, Shostakovich died.

Dates of life and creativity

On September 2 (25), 1906, Dmitry Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg.
1915 - the beginning of regular piano lessons.
1919 - entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in piano and composition.
1923 - graduated from the conservatory in piano.
1925 - graduated from the conservatory in the composition class, presenting as thesis 1st symphony.
1927 - Diploma winner of the first International Piano Competition in Warsaw; premiere of the 2nd symphony.
1928 - acquaintance and the beginning of cooperation with V.E. Meyerhold.
1929 - acquaintance with V.V. Mayakovsky, creation of music for the play "The Bedbug".
1930 - premiere of the opera "The Nose", the ballet "The Golden Age" and the 3rd symphony.
1932 - marriage to Nina Vasilievna Vazar.
1934 - premiere of the opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District".
1936 - the appearance in the newspaper "Pravda" of the articles "Muddle instead of music" and "Ballet falsity", the beginning of the campaign of persecution of the composer; the birth of a daughter, Galina; the end of the 4th symphony and the forced abandonment of its performance.
1937 - premiere of the 5th symphony performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by E.A. Mravinsky; the beginning of a creative community.
1938 - the birth of the son of Maxim.
1941 - Stalin Prize (for piano quintet); the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, work on the 7th symphony.
1942 - premiere of the 7th symphony, awarded the Stalin Prize.
1943 - premiere of the 8th symphony.
1944 - premiere of the piano trio in memory of I. I. Sollertinsky.
1945 - premiere of the 9th symphony.
1946 - Stalin Prize for piano trio.
1948 - Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the opera “Great Friendship” by V. Muradeli”, a campaign against musical “formalists”, received the title of “People's Artist of the RSFSR”.
1949 - a trip as part of the Soviet delegation to the All-American Congress of Scientists and Cultural Figures.
1950 - Stalin Prize for the oratorio "Song of the Forests" and music for the film "The Fall of Berlin".
1952 - Stalin Prize for "Ten Poems" for mixed choir.
1953 - premiere of the 10th symphony.
1954 - awarding the title "People's Artist of the USSR" and the International Lenin Peace Prize; wife's death.
1958 - Lenin Prize for the 11th symphony ("1905"); Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU “On Correcting Mistakes in Evaluating the Operas “The Great Friendship”, “Bogdan Khmelnitsky” and “From the Heart””; was elected an honorary member of the Santa Cecilia Academy (Rome) and an honorary doctor of music from the University of Oxford.
1960 - elected first secretary of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR; premiere of the 8th string quartet.
1961 - premieres of the 12th symphony (“1917”, dedicated to the memory of V.I. Lenin) and the 4th symphony.
1962 - participation in the theater and music festival in Edinburgh, dedicated to the work of Shostakovich; premiere of the 13th symphony; marriage with Irina Antonovna Supinskaya.
1964 - premiere of the poem "The Execution of Stepan Razin".
1966 - celebration of the 60th anniversary; heart attack; received the title of "Hero of Socialist Labor" (the first among musicians).
1969 - premiere of the 14th symphony.
1972 - premiere of the 15th symphony.
On August 9, 1975, Dmitri Shostakovich died and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

September 25 marks 110 years since the birth of Dmitri Shostakovich- the great Russian composer, musical innovator and author of many symphonies, chamber works and operas. Celebrating the anniversary Sounds publish stories of musicians and composers about the fate and music of Shostakovich, and note how the music of the Soviet genius today gives the most unexpected shoots on the basis of theater, music and views on Russian history of the 20th century.

Maxim Shostakovich, conductor, son of Dmitry Shostakovich

It seems to me that one composer with such a surname is quite enough. And then, I remember the words of my father, who said that you need to write music when you cannot help but write it. And if you can't write, don't write. Still, there is something in this.
I have a feeling that music is created by God, and great composers are prophets. They record music already composed by God. By the way, this is in my father's letters. He writes: “I slept at night and heard part of the symphony. I got up in the morning and wrote it down. How can this be explained, tell me please? This, of course, is the highest omen.
Someone once asked me how much money my dad got for a symphony? Seeing how my father works and what art means to him, I replied: "Yes, if he was told that, on the contrary, he should pay, he would pay." He couldn't stop writing. I would have taken a job as a janitor to earn money and buy myself the right to write. He wrote music in any environment, nothing interfered with him. He did not stop writing the music that he heard inside. Even if we children were noisy. But there was never a cult of the father in the family. He was a wonderful father.
I consider it my duty to play my father's music. In every concert I insert his work. This is my filial duty. I can't live without it. On September 25, I always conduct in the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

Anton Batagov

When I was 15, I had a desk. On it was a portrait of Shostakovich. It was my favorite composer. Music written before the 20th century did not really interest me then, but the concept of the 20th century was for me practically equal to the concept of Shostakovich. It was Shostakovich who became the X-ray machine that captured the 20th century with the utmost certainty, detail and inexorable force. Fear, death and enthusiasm, from which the victorious building of so-called communism was built, is only one layer of this image. This music is much more than just a Soviet chronicle. Here we have been living in the 21st century for a long time, and we are watching how the world, which has not learned the lessons of the 20th century, is following the same rake, which is now hitting much harder. And hardly anything written in the 20th century can become a more accurate soundtrack for this procession than the music of Shostakovich.

Angelo Badalamenti

Once upon a time in elementary school high school I went to Manhattan to buy some classic records. I bought various recordings of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich and listened to them to holes. Later, already at a conscious age - when we started working with David Lynch on Blue Velvet, he told me: "We need a main theme with a Russian sound." He had an idea to use "Fifth Symphony" Shostakovich - the rights to use it were not very expensive. Then he asked: "Maybe you can write something similar?". I say: "It's about Shostakovich, my favorite composer. And although I'm not even half as good as he is, I can write music in this style." I flew to Los Angeles and wrote the main theme of the film. It turned out a strange, beautiful melody with a Russian spirit.

Pavel Karmanov

Shostakovich - in Soviet music is about the same as Mahler - in Western European. For many people, it is Shostakovich's music that is associated with the Soviet regime, Stalin's repressions, the Gulag. It was Shostakovich, by virtue of his outstanding genius, who, better than anyone, managed to convey in music the atmosphere of Soviet Russia at the beginning of the century, the subsequent war and the difficulty of restoring society and life from devastation.

Bernard Haitink, Grammy-winning conductor

Shostakovich's 4th symphony is an incredible monster: they are massive, technically complex, and the first movement in it lasts about half an hour. There are huge chunks of incredible musical tension, and then all of a sudden everything calms down and the music gives way to melancholic brooding passages - no louder chamber orchestra. When I told Shostakovich about this (the conductor and the composer met in Amsterdam in 1975 - approx. Sounds), he said that he did not think that this part turned out so well. For all the melancholy that permeates the finale of this symphony, it is not a reflection of Shostakovich's personality. He is too great a musician to be unhappy. Sometimes his music is depressing and evokes sadness, but Shostakovich looked at the world with sarcasm and his own special sense of humor, hiding his true self.

Isabelle Karajan, daughter of conductor Herbert von Karajan

I have always known and loved Shostakovich's symphonies. Especially, of course, those that my father regularly performed. He was a very important figure for his father. Dad even once said: "If I wrote music, I would write like Shostakovich." I think that they were united by such internal tension, almost a spasm, and a kind of spiritual split that Shostakovich overcame by creating music, and his father conducting. By the way, their admiration was mutual. It seems to me that the essence of the Shostakovich phenomenon is that incredible strength and resilience that allowed him to fulfill his destiny, no matter what. He said exactly what he wanted to say. And if he sometimes had to hide or encrypt other treasures of his creative genius, then the listener's duty is to give himself the trouble to understand them.

Valery Gergiev

Many people think that it is possible to cross out the Soviet reality, but it is absolutely clear to me that this cannot be done. Those great symphonies that were written in the Soviet Union, whether someone likes it or not, they still sound. Ballets or operas or even just editions too. "Lady Macbeth" is the 30s, and the performance of "Katerina Izmailova" is the 60s. A huge distance - thirty years - separates these two events: the very successful premiere of "Lady Macbeth", the attack on Shostakovich that followed, and then the very wise and balanced position of the master, mature, great, already with a perfectly sharpened pen.