Each artist conducts a special dialogue with his time, but the nature of this dialogue largely depends on the properties of his personality.D. Shostakovich, unlike many of his contemporaries, was not afraid to get as close as possible to unsightly reality and made the creation of its merciless, accurate, generalized symbolic image the work and duty of his life as an artist. By his very nature, according to I. Sollertinsky, he was doomed to become a great “tragic poet.”

The works of domestic musicologists have repeatedly noted a high degree of conflict in Shostakovich’s works (works by M. Aranovsky, T. Leie, M. Sabinina, L. Mazel). As a component of the artistic reflection of reality, the conflict expresses the composer’s attitude towards the phenomena of the surrounding reality. L. Berezovchuk convincingly shows that in Shostakovich’s music the conflict often manifests itself through stylistic and genre interactions. Berezovchuk L. Style interactions in the work of D. Shostakovich as a way of embodying the conflict // Issues in the theory and aesthetics of music. Vol. 15. - L.: Music, 1977. - P. 95-119.. Recreated in a modern work, the signs of various musical styles and genres of the past can take part in the conflict; depending on the composer's intention, they can become symbols of a positive principle or images of evil. This is one of the options for “generalization through genre” (A. Alschwang’s term) in the music of the 20th century. In general, retrospective trends (return to the styles and genres of past eras) become leading in various author’s styles of the 20th century (the work of M. Reger, P. Hindemith , I. Stravinsky, A. Schnittke and many others)..

According to M. Aranovsky, one of the most important aspects of Shostakovich’s music was the combination of various methods of realizing an artistic idea, such as:

· direct, emotionally open statement, as if “direct musical speech”;

· visual techniques, often associated with cinematic images associated with the construction of a “symphonic plot”;

· techniques of designation or symbolization associated with the personification of the forces of “action” and “counteraction” Aranovsky M. The challenge of time and the artist’s response // Musical Academy. - M.: Music, 1997. - No. 4. - P.15 - 27..

In all these manifestations of Shostakovich's creative method, a clear reliance on genre is visible. And in the direct expression of feelings, and in visual techniques, and in the processes of symbolization - everywhere, the explicit or hidden genre basis of thematicity carries an additional semantic load.

Shostakovich's work is dominated by traditional genres - symphonies, operas, ballets, quartets, etc. Parts of the cycle also often have genre designations, for example: Scherzo, Recitative, Etude, Humoresque, Elegy, Serenade, Intermezzo, Nocturne, Funeral March. The composer also revives a number of ancient genres - chaconne, sarabande, passacaglia. The peculiarity of Shostakovich’s artistic thinking is that well-recognized genres are endowed with semantics that do not always coincide with the historical prototype. They turn into unique models - carriers of certain meanings.

According to V. Bobrovsky, passacaglia serves the purpose of expressing sublime ethical ideas Bobrovsky V. Implementation of the passacaglia genre in the sonata-symphonic cycles of D. Shostakovich // Music and modernity. Issue 1. - M., 1962; a similar role is played by the genres of chaconne and sarabande, and in chamber works of the last period - elegies. Recitative monologues are often found in Shostakovich’s works, which in the middle period serve the purpose of dramatic or pathetic-tragic expression, and in the late period acquire a generalized philosophical meaning.

The polyphonic nature of Shostakovich's thinking naturally manifested itself not only in the texture and methods of developing thematics, but also in the revival of the fugue genre, as well as the tradition of writing cycles of preludes and fugues. Moreover, polyphonic constructions have very different semantics: contrasting polyphony, as well as fugato, are often associated with a positive figurative sphere, the sphere of manifestation of a living, human principle. While the anti-human is embodied in strict canons (the “invasion episode” from the 7th symphony, sections from the development of the first movement, the main theme of the second movement of the 8th symphony) or in simple, sometimes deliberately primitive homophonic forms.

The scherzo is interpreted by Shostakovich in different ways: these are cheerful, mischievous images, and toy-puppet images, in addition, the scherzo is the composer’s favorite genre for embodying the negative forces of action, which received a predominantly grotesque image in this genre. Scherzo vocabulary, according to M. Aranovsky, created a fertile intonation environment for the deployment of the mask method, as a result of which “... the rationally comprehended was intricately intertwined with the irrational and where the line between life and absurdity was completely erased” (1, 24 ). The researcher sees in this a similarity with Zoshchenko or Kharms, and perhaps also the influence of Gogol, whose poetics the composer came into close contact with in his work on the opera “The Nose”.

B.V. Asafiev singles out the gallop genre as specific to the composer’s style: “...it is extremely characteristic that Shostakovich’s music contains a gallop rhythm, but not the naive, perky gallop of the 20-30s of the last century and not the Offenbachian scoffing cancan, but a cinematic gallop, the gallop of the final chase with all sorts of adventures. In this music there is a feeling of anxiety, and nervous shortness of breath, and daring bravado, but there is not only laughter, infectious and joyful.<…>There is trembling, convulsiveness, whimsy in them, as if obstacles are being overcome" (4, 312 ) Gallop or cancan often become the basis for Shostakovich’s “danses macabres” - peculiar dances of death (for example, in the Trio in Memory of Sollertinsky or in the III movement of the Eighth Symphony).

The composer widely uses everyday music: military and sports marches, everyday dances, urban lyrical music, etc. As is known, urban everyday music was poeticized by more than one generation of romantic composers, who saw this area of ​​creativity primarily as a “treasury of idyllic moods” (L. Berezovchuk). If in rare cases everyday genre endowed with negative, negative semantics (for example, in the works of Berlioz, Liszt, Tchaikovsky), this always increased the semantic load and distinguished this episode from the musical context. However, what was unique and unusual in the 19th century became a typical feature of the creative method for Shostakovich. His numerous marches, waltzes, polkas, gallops, two-steps, and cancans have lost their value (ethical) neutrality, clearly belonging to the negative figurative sphere.

L. Berezovchuk L. Berezovchuk. Quoted op. explains this for a number of historical reasons. The period in which the composer's talent was formed was very difficult for Soviet culture. The process of creating new values ​​in a new society was accompanied by a clash of the most contradictory trends. On the one hand, these are new methods of expression, new themes, plots. On the other hand, there is an avalanche of rollicking, hysterical and sentimental musical production that overwhelmed the average person in the 20s and 30s.

Everyday music, an integral attribute of bourgeois culture, in the 20th century for leading artists becomes a symptom of a bourgeois lifestyle, philistinism, and lack of spirituality. This sphere was perceived as a breeding ground for evil, a kingdom of base instincts that could grow into a terrible danger for others. Therefore, for the composer, the concept of Evil was combined with the sphere of “low” everyday genres. As M. Aranovsky notes, “in this Shostakovich acted as Mahler’s heir, but without his idealism” (2, 74 ). What was poeticized and exalted by romanticism becomes the object of grotesque distortion, sarcasm, and ridicule. Shostakovich was not alone in this attitude towards “urban speech.” M. Aranovsky draws parallels with the language of M. Zoshchenko, who deliberately distorted the speech of his negative characters. Examples of this are “Waltz of the Policemen” and most of the intermissions from the opera “Katerina Izmailova”, the march in “Episode of Invasion” from the Seventh Symphony, the main theme of the second movement Eighth Symphony, minuet theme from the second movement of the Fifth Symphony and much more.

The so-called “genre alloys” or “genre mixes” began to play a major role in the creative method of the mature Shostakovich. M. Sabinin in his monograph Sabinin M. Shostakovich - symphonist. - M.: Muzyka, 1976. notes that, starting with the Fourth Symphony, themes-processes in which there is a turn from capturing external events to expressing psychological states become of great importance. Shostakovich’s desire to capture and embrace a chain of phenomena in a single development process leads to the combination in one theme of the characteristics of several genres, which are revealed in the process of its unfolding. Examples of this are the main themes from the first movements of the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth Symphonies and other works.

Thus, genre models in Shostakovich’s music are very diverse: ancient and modern, academic and everyday, obvious and hidden, homogeneous and mixed. An important feature of Shostakovich’s style is the connection of certain genres with the ethical categories of Good and Evil, which, in turn, are the most important components active forces composer's symphonic concepts.

Let us consider the semantics of genre models in the music of D. Shostakovich using the example of his Eighth Symphony.

Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies are fifteen chapters in the chronicle of our time. The reference points are 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 sf. - they are close in concept (the 8th is a more grandiose version of what was in the 5th). Here is a dramatic concept of the world. Even in the 6th and 9th sf, a kind of “intermezzo” in Shostakovich’s work, there are dramatic collisions.

In the development of Shostakovich’s symphonic work, three stages can be distinguished:

1 – time of creation of 1-4 symphonies

2 – 5-10 symphonies

3 – 11-15 symphonies.

The 1st symphony (1926) was written at the age of 20, it is called “Youthful”. This graduate work Shostakovich. N. Malko, who conducted the premiere, wrote: “I just returned from a concert. I conducted the symphony of the young Leningrader Mitya Shostakovich for the first time. I have the feeling that I have opened a new page in the history of Russian music.”

The second is a symphonic dedication to October (“October”, 1927), the Third is “May Day” (1929). In them, the composer turns to the poetry of A. Bezymensky and S. Kirsanov in order to more clearly reveal the joy of revolutionary festivities. This is a kind of creative experiment, an attempt to update the musical language. The 2nd and 3rd symphonies are the most complex in musical language and rarely performed. Significance for creativity: the appeal to the “modern program” opened the way to the late symphonies - 11 (“1905”) and 12, dedicated to Lenin (“1917”).

Shostakovich’s creative maturity is evidenced by the 4th (1936) and 5th (1937) symphonies (the composer defined the idea of ​​the latter as “the formation of personality” - from gloomy thoughts through struggle to the final affirmation of life).

The 4th symphony revealed many similarities with the concept, content and scope of Mahler's symphonies.

5th symphony - Shostakovich appeared here as a mature artist, with a deeply original vision of the world. This is a non-program work, there are no hidden titles in it, but “the generation recognized itself in this symphony” (Asafiev). It is the 5th symphony that provides the cycle model characteristic of Shostakovich. It will also be characteristic of the 7th and 8th symphonies, dedicated to the tragic events of the war.

Stage 3 – from the 11th symphony. The 11th (1957) and 12th (1961) symphonies are dedicated to the Revolution of 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917, programmatic. The 11th Symphony, built on the melodies of revolutionary songs, was based on the experience of music for historical revolutionary films of the 30s. and “Ten Poems” for choir to the words of Russian revolutionary poets (1951). The program complements the basic concept with historical parallels.

Each part has its own name. From them you can clearly imagine the idea and dramaturgy of the work: “Palace Square”, “January 9”, “Eternal Memory”, “Alarm”. The symphony is permeated with the intonations of revolutionary songs: “Listen”, “Prisoner”, “You have fallen a victim”, “Rage, tyrants”, “Varshavyanka”. Visible pictures and hidden plot motives appear. At the same time, there is a skillful symphonic development of quotes. A complete symphonic canvas.

The 12th symphony is similar, dedicated to Lenin. As in the Eleventh, the program names of the parts give a completely clear idea of ​​its content: “Revolutionary Petrograd”, “Razliv”, “Aurora”, “Dawn of Humanity”.

13th symphony (1962) – Symphony-cantata to the text by Yevgeny Yevtushenko: “Babi Yar”, “Humour”, “In the store”, “Fears” and “Career”. Written for an unusual composition: a symphony orchestra, a bass choir and a bass soloist. The idea of ​​the symphony, its pathos is the denunciation of evil in the name of the fight for truth, for man.

The search for a synthesis of music and words continues in the 14th symphony (1969). This is one of the pinnacles of creativity, a symphony-cantata in 11 movements. Written to texts by Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, Rainer Maria Rilke. It was preceded by the creation of vocal cycles. This work, the prototype of which, according to the author, was Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death,” concentrated tragedy and soulful lyricism, grotesqueness and drama.

The 15th Symphony (1971) closes the evolution of Shostakovich’s late symphonism, partly echoing some of his early works. This is again a purely instrumental symphony. Modern composition techniques are used: collage method, montage (polystylistic option). The fabric of the symphony organically includes quotes from the overture to “William Tell” by Rossini (1 part, SP), the motif of fate from “The Ring of the Nibelung” and lm of languor from “Tristan and Isolde” by R. Wagner (4 hours, interst. and GP) .

The last symphonies of Prokofiev and Shostakovich are different, but there is something in common in reconciliation and a wise perception of the world.

Comparison of symphony cycles. Characteristic of Shostakovich's style are the slow dream forms of the 1st movements (5, 7 sf). They combine the dynamics of the dream form and the features of the slow parts: these are lyric reflections, philological reflections. The process of thought formation is important. Hence the large role of polyphonic presentation: the principle of the core and deployment in exp. sections. Exp. usually embody the stage of contemplation (according to Bobrovsky’s triad of contemplation-action-comprehension), images of the world, and creation.

Developments, as a rule, are a sharp breakdown into another plane: this is a world of evil, violence and destruction (//Chaik.). The climax-turning point occurs at the beginning of the dynamic reprise (5, 7 sf). The meaning of the coda is a deep philological monologue, the “crown of drama” - the stage of comprehension.

2nd hour – scherzo. The other side of the images of evil: the false underside of life. Characteristic is a grotesque distortion of everyday, “mundane” genres. Sl.3-part form.

The forms of the slow movements are similar to rondo with end-to-end symphonic development (in 5 sf - rondo + var + son. f.).

In the finals - overcoming sonatism, developmental deployment (in 5 sf - all development is determined by the GP, it subordinates the PP to itself). But the principles of development of son.f. remain.

From the notes . The work of DDS is a “cry” for the entire twentieth century and its evil. A classic of the 20th century, a tragedian, an unbending civic and social position of creativity - “the voice of the conscience of his generation.” Retains the significance of all stylistic systems of the twentieth century. The first three symphonies formed two main trends in his work: from symphony No. 1 - a 4-part cycle (No. 4-6, 14-15), the concept of “me and the world” and from No. 2, 3 to No. 7, 8, 11-13 social line.

From Sabinina.

Periodization of creativity (3 periods):

Until the 30s - the early period: the search for means to express, the formation of language - three ballets, “The Nose”, symphonies No. 1-3 (influences of Eyes, Seagulls, Scriabin, Prock, Wagner, Mahler. Not copying their language, but transformation, new light , finding your own specific techniques, methods of development. Sudden rethinking of thematics, clashes of antipodal images. Lyric images do not oppose the images of war, they are like the reverse side of the evil ones.)

The 4th symphony is a borderline position. After this, the focus moves to the principles of designing the form and developing the muses of the material. No. 5 – center and beginning: 5 – 7, 8, 9, 10.

In the third period - the search for the very interpretation of the symphony genre - 11-14. Everyone is software, but the software is implemented differently. In the 11th there is a displacement of sonatism, unification into a contrasting-composite form, in the 12th there is a return to sonatism, but the cycle is compressed. In the 13th there is rondo-likeness + features of a pure symphony, in the 14th there is sonata-ness and chamberness. The 15th is apart. Non-programmatic, traditional functions of the parts, but synthesizes elements of the middle and late periods. "Style Harmonizer" Lyrical-philosophical, suffering of spiritual enlightenment in the finale. “24 Preludes and Fugues”, “The Execution of Stepan Razin”, camera-instrument pr-niya.

Style features

RHYTHM (especially in the early period) - from the general trends of art - movement (cinema, sportiness) - effects of rhythm of acceleration, motor pumping (Honegger, Hind, Prock). Gallop, march, dance, fast tempos - already in the 1st symphony. Genre-dance rhythms. Rhythm is the most important engine of dramaturgy - but it will truly become so only in the 5th symphony.

ORCHESTRATION – I didn’t want to give up romantic tendencies (only during the intermission to “The Nose”... - there was a lot of extravagant stuff). The presentation of the theme is one-timbre, assigning the timbre to the image. This is a follower of Chaik.

HARMONY – does not come to the fore like paint, any admiration of colors is alien... Innovations are not in the field of chords, but in modal systems (minds...translation of the melodic horizontal into the chord vertical).

THEMES – large extent, including their development – ​​from Chaika. But with DDS, development often becomes more meaningful than the actual exposure (this is the antipode of Proc: with DDS it is a theme-process, with Proc it is a theme-actor - i.e., the preponderance of the analytical over the pictorial-theatrical method of thinking). Extraordinary unity of thematic material of the symphonies.

DEVELOPMENT METHODS – synthesis of Russian folk songs and Bach’s polyphony. For later pr-nii - concentration of thematicity, strengthening of intra-thematic variation, repetitions of narrow motives (in the range of intelligence 4, 5).

MELOS specific Speech, narrative intonations - especially in dramatically key moments. The melodiousness of the lyrical plan, but very specific! (objective lyrics).

POLYPHONIC! - Bah. Also from the 1st and 2nd symphonies. Two trends are manifested: the use of polyphonic genres and the polyphonization of fabric. The polyph of form is the sphere of expression of the deepest and most sublime emotions. Passacaglia - middle. thoughts + emotional expression and discipline (only in the 8th symphony there is a real passacaglia, and its “spirit” is in the 13-15th symphonies). Antischematism.

INTERPRETATION OF SONATA FORM. The conflict is not between GP and PP, but between exp and development. Therefore, there are often no modal contrasts within an exp, but only genre contrasts. Refusal to break through inside the PP (like Chaika), on the contrary, is a pastoral idyll. A characteristic technique is the crystallization of new figurative and contrasting intonations on the culmination of the GP in the exhibition. Often sonata forms of 1st movements are slow/moderate, rather than traditionally fast, due to the psychological nature of the internal conflict, rather than external action. The rondo shape is not very characteristic (except from Prok).

IDEAS, TOPICS. The author's commentary and the action itself - often these two areas collide (as in No. 5). The evil beginning is not external force, but as the reverse side of human goodness - this is the difference from Chaika. Objectification of lyrics, its intellectualization is the trend of the times. Music captures the movement of thought - hence the love for passacaglias, because there is the possibility of a long and comprehensive disclosure of the thought-state.

Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich, (1906–1975)

Shostakovich is a unique phenomenon in the history of world culture. His work, like no other artist, reflected our complex, cruel, and sometimes phantasmagoric era; the contradictory and tragic fate of humanity; the shocks that befell his contemporaries were embodied. He passed through his heart all the troubles, all the suffering that our country endured in the 20th century and embodied it in works of the highest artistic merit. Like no one else he had the right to utter words

I am every shot child here

((Thirteenth Symphony. Poems by Evg. Yevtushenko))

He experienced and endured as much as a human heart can hardly bear. That is why his path ended prematurely.

Few of his contemporaries, or indeed composers of any time, were as recognized and celebrated during their lifetime as he was. Foreign awards and diplomas were indisputable - and he was an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy, a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the GDR (East Germany), an honorary member of the national Italian Academy "Santa Cecilia", a commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters, a member of the English Royal Academy of Music, honorary doctor of the University of Oxford, laureate of the international Sibelius Prize, honorary member of the Serbian Academy of Arts, corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy fine arts, honorary doctor of Trinity College (Ireland), honorary doctor of Northwestern University (Evanston, USA), foreign member of the French Academy of Fine Arts, was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of England, the Order of the Grand Honorary Silver Badge - for services to the Republic of Austria, " Mozart Commemorative Medal.

But it was different with our own, domestic awards and insignia. It seemed that there were also more than enough of them: Laureate of the Stalin Prize, the country’s highest prize in the 30s; People's Artist of the USSR, Knight of the Order of Lenin, laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes, Hero of Socialist Labor, etc., etc., up to the title people's artist for some reason Chuvashia and Buryatia. However, these were carrots that were fully balanced by the stick: resolutions of the CPSU Central Committee and editorial articles of its central organ, the newspaper Pravda, in which Shostakovich was literally destroyed, mixed with dirt, and accused of all sins.

The composer was not left to his own devices: he was obliged to follow orders. So, after the notorious, truly historic Decree of 1948, in which his work was declared formalistic and alien to the people, he was sent on a foreign trip, and he was forced to explain to foreign journalists that criticism of his work was deserved. That he actually made mistakes and is being corrected correctly. He was forced to take part in countless forums of “defenders of peace”, and was even awarded medals and certificates for this - while he would prefer not to travel anywhere, but to create music. He was repeatedly elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR - a decorative body that rubber-stamped the decisions of the Politburo of the Communist Party, and the composer had to devote many hours to meaningless work that did not attract him in any way - instead of composing music. But this was due to his status: all the country's major artists were deputies. He was the head of the Union of Composers of Russia, although he did not strive for this at all. In addition, he was forced to join the ranks of the CPSU, and this became one of the strongest moral shocks for him and, perhaps, also shortened his life.

The main thing for Shostakovich was always composing music. He devoted all possible time to it, always composing - at his desk, on vacation, on trips, in hospitals... The composer turned to all genres. His ballets marked the path of quest of the Soviet ballet theater of the late 20-30s and remained the most striking examples these quests. Operas "The Nose" and "Lady Macbeth" Mtsensk district"opened a completely new page of this genre in Russian music. He also wrote oratorios - a tribute to the times, a concession to power, which otherwise could have crushed him into powder... But vocal cycles, piano works, quartets and other chamber ensembles entered the world treasury of musical art. However, above all, Shostakovich is a brilliant symphonist. It was in the composer's symphonies that the history of the 20th century, its tragedy, its suffering and storms was primarily embodied.

Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich was born on September 12 (25), 1906 in St. Petersburg into an intelligent family. His father, an engineer who graduated from St. Petersburg University, was an employee of the great Mendeleev. My mother had a musical education and at one time thought about devoting herself to music professionally. The boy's talent was noticed quite late, since his mother fundamentally considered it impossible to begin musical training before the age of nine. However, after the start of classes, the successes were rapid and stunning. Little Shostakovich not only mastered pianistic skills phenomenally quickly, but also showed extraordinary talent as a composer, and already at the age of 12 his unique quality manifested itself - an instant creative response to current events. Thus, one of the first plays composed by the boy were “Soldier” and “Funeral March in Memory of Shingarev and Kokoshkin” - ministers of the Provisional Government, brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

The young composer greedily perceived his surroundings and responded to them. And the time was terrible. After the October Revolution of 1917 and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, real chaos began in the city. Residents were forced to form self-defense groups to protect their homes. Food stopped flowing to large cities, and famine began. In Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was patriotically renamed after the outbreak of World War) there was not only no food, but also no fuel. And in such a situation, young Shostakovich in 1919 (he was 13 years old) entered the Petrograd Conservatory at the departments of special piano and composition.

You had to get there on foot: trams - the only surviving form of transport - rarely ran and were always overcrowded. People hung in clusters from the running boards and often fell off, and the boy preferred not to take risks. I went regularly, although many, both students and teachers, preferred to skip classes. It was a real feat to get to the conservatory, and then study hard for several hours in an unheated building. So that the fingers could move and they could study fully, “potbelly stoves” were installed in the classrooms - iron stoves that could be heated with any kind of wood chips. And they brought fuel with them - some logs, some an armful of wood chips, some a chair leg or scattered sheets of books... There was almost no food. All this led to tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands, which had to be treated for a long time, with difficulty raising money for the trips to the Black Sea necessary for treatment. There, in Crimea, in the resort village of Gaspra in 1923, Shostakovich met his first love, Muscovite Tatyana Glivenko, to whom he dedicated the piano trio he soon wrote.

Despite all the difficulties, Shostakovich graduated from the conservatory in the piano class of Professor Nikolaev in 1923, and in the composition class of Professor Steinberg in 1925. His graduation work, the First Symphony, brought the 19-year-old young man international recognition. However, he still did not know what to devote himself to - composing or performing. His success in this field was so great that in 1927 he was sent to the international Chopin competition in Warsaw. There he took fifth place and received an honorary diploma, which was regarded by many musicians and the public as a clear injustice - Shostakovich played superbly and deserved a much higher rating. The following years were marked by both quite extensive concert activity and first experiments in various genres, including theater. The Second and Third Symphonies, the ballets “The Golden Age” and “Bolt”, the opera “The Nose”, and piano works appeared.

The meeting and beginning of friendship with the outstanding cultural figure I. Sollertinsky (1902–1944), which occurred in the spring of 1927, acquired enormous significance for the young Shostakovich. Sollertinsky, in particular, introduced him to the work of Mahler and thereby determined the future path of the composer-symphonist. Acquaintance with the major theater figure, the innovative director V. Meyerhold, in whose theater Shostakovich worked for some time as head of the musical department, also played a significant role in his creative development - in search of income, the young musician had to move to Moscow for some time. The peculiarities of Meyerhold's productions were reflected in Shostakovich's theatrical works, in particular, in the structure of the opera "The Nose".

The musician and his feelings for Tatiana were drawn to Moscow, but it turned out that the young people did not unite their destinies. In 1932, Shostakovich married Nina Vasilyevna Varzar. The opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is dedicated to her - one of the most remarkable creations of music of the 20th century, which had a tragic fate. The piano concerto written in the same year is the last work, full of cheerfulness, sparkling fun and enthusiasm - qualities that, under the influence of life's realities, later left his music. The editorial article of the main party printed organ of the newspaper Pravda, “Confusion instead of music,” published in January 1936 and shamefully, vilely defamed “Lady Macbeth,” which had previously had enormous success not only in our country, but also abroad, brought charges against its author on the verge of a political denunciation, sharply turned the creative fate of Shostakovich. It was after this that the composer abandoned genres associated with words. From now on, the main place in his work is occupied by symphonies in which the composer reflects his vision of the world and destinies home country.

This began with the Fourth Symphony, unknown to the public for many years and first performed only in 1961. Its implementation then, in 1936, was impossible: it could entail not just criticism, but repression - no one was immune from them. Following this, throughout the 30s, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies were created. Works in other genres also appear, in particular, the Piano Quintet, for which Shostakovich was awarded the Stalin Prize - apparently, somewhere “at the very top” it was decided that the stick had played its role, and now it was necessary to resort to the carrot. In 1937, Shostakovich was invited to the conservatory - he became a professor of composition and orchestration classes.

In 1941, after the outbreak of World War II, Shostakovich began work on the Seventh Symphony. At this time, he already had two children - Galina and Maxim, and, worried about their safety, the composer agreed to be evacuated from the besieged city, which since 1924 has been called Leningrad. The composer finishes the symphony dedicated to the heroism of his native city in Kuibyshev (formerly and now Samara), where he was evacuated in the fall of 1941. There he is destined to stay for two years, grieving for his friends, scattered by military fate throughout the vast country. In 1943, the government provided Shostakovich with the opportunity to live in the capital - he allocated an apartment and helped with the move. The composer immediately begins to make plans on how to transfer Sollertinsky to Moscow. He was evacuated to Novosibirsk as part of the Leningrad Philharmonic, whose artistic director he was for many years. However, these plans were not destined to come true: in February 1944, Sollertinsky died suddenly, which was a terrible blow for Shostakovich. He wrote: “There is no longer a musician of enormous talent among us, there is no longer a cheerful, pure, benevolent comrade, I no longer have my closest friend...” Shostakovich dedicated the Second Piano Trio to the memory of Sollertinsky. Even before that, he created the Eighth Symphony, dedicated to the remarkable conductor, the first performer of his symphonies, starting with the Fifth, E. A. Mravinsky.

From that time on, the composer's life was connected with the capital. In addition to composing, he is engaged in pedagogy - at the Moscow Conservatory, at first he had only one graduate student - R. Bunin. To earn money to support a large family (besides his wife and children, he helps his long-widowed mother, there are au pairs in the house), he writes music for many films. Life seems to be more or less settled. But the authorities are preparing a new blow. It is necessary to suppress the freedom-loving thoughts that arose among part of the intelligentsia after the victory over fascism. After the destruction of literature in 1946 (defamation of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova), the party resolution on theater and film policy, in 1948 a resolution “On the opera “The Great Friendship” by Muradeli” appeared, which, despite the name, dealt the main blow again to Shostakovich. He is accused of formalism, of being out of touch with reality, of opposing himself to the people, and is called upon to understand his mistakes and reform. He is fired from the conservatory: an inveterate formalist cannot be trusted to educate the young generation of composers! For some time, the family lives only on the earnings of the wife, who, after many years devoted to the home and providing a creative environment for the composer, goes to work.

Literally a few months later, Shostakovich was sent, despite repeated attempts to refuse, on foreign trips as part of delegations of peace defenders. His long-term forced social activity begins. For several years he has been “rehabilitating himself” - he writes music for patriotic films (this is the main income for many years), composes the oratorio “Song of the Forests” and the cantata “The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland.” However, “for myself”, while still “on the table”, a stunning autobiographical document is being created - the First Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, which gained fame only after 1953. At the same time, in 1953, the Tenth Symphony appeared, which reflected the composer’s thoughts in the first months after Stalin’s death. And before that, a lot of attention is paid to quartets, the vocal cycle “From the Jewish folk poetry", the grandiose piano cycle Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues.

The mid-50s was a time of great personal loss for Shostakovich. In 1954, his wife, N.V. Shostakovich, died, and a year later the composer buried his mother. The children grew up, they had their own interests, and the musician felt increasingly lonely.

Gradually, after the beginning of the “thaw” - as they used to call the reign of Khrushchev, who exposed Stalin’s “cult of personality” - Shostakovich again turned to symphonic creativity. The programmatic Eleventh and Twelfth symphonies seem at first glance to be purely opportunistic. But many years later, researchers discovered that the composer put into them not only the meaning that was announced in the official program. And later large vocal symphonies with socially significant texts appeared - the Thirteenth and Fourteenth. In time, this coincides with the composer’s last marriage (before that there was a second, unsuccessful and, fortunately, short-lived) - to Irina Antonovna Supinskaya, who became the composer’s faithful friend, assistant, constant companion in last years, who managed to brighten up his difficult life.

A philologist by training, she brought into the house an interest in poetry and new literature, she stimulated Shostakovich’s attention to textual works. This is how, after the Thirteenth Symphony based on Yevtushenko’s verses, the symphonic poem “The Execution of Stepan Razin” based on his own verses appears. Then Shostakovich creates several vocal cycles - based on texts from the magazine "Crocodile" ( humor magazine Soviet times), based on poems by Sasha Cherny, Tsvetaeva, Blok, Michelangelo Buonarotti. The grandiose symphonic circle is completed again by the textless, non-programmatic (although, I think, with a hidden program) Fifteenth Symphony.

In December 1961, Shostakovich's teaching activities resumed. He teaches a class of graduate students at the Leningrad Conservatory and regularly comes to Leningrad to teach students until October 1965, when they all take their graduate exams. In recent months, they themselves have had to come to classes at the House of Creativity, located 50 kilometers from Leningrad, in Moscow, or even to a sanatorium, where their mentor must stay for health reasons. The difficult trials that befell the composer could not help but affect him. The 60s passed under the sign of a gradual deterioration in his condition. A disease of the central nervous system appears, Shostakovich suffers two heart attacks.

Increasingly, he has to spend long periods in the hospital. The composer tries to lead an active lifestyle, even traveling a lot between hospitals. This is due to the performances in many cities of the world of the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, which is now more often called “Katerina Izmailova”, and to the performances of other works, to participation in festivals, to the receipt of honorary titles and awards. But with each passing month, such travel becomes more and more tiring.

He prefers to take a break from them in the resort village of Repino near Leningrad, where the House of Composers’ Creativity is located. Music is mainly created there, since the working conditions are ideal - no one and nothing distracts from creativity. Shostakovich came to Repino for the last time in May 1975. He moves with difficulty, records music with difficulty, but continues to compose. Almost up last moment he created - he corrected the manuscript of the Sonata for viola and piano in the hospital. Death overtook the composer on August 9, 1975, in Moscow.

But even after death, the omnipotent power did not leave him alone. Contrary to the will of the composer, who wanted to find a resting place in his homeland, in Leningrad, he was buried at the “prestigious” Moscow Novodevichy Cemetery. The funeral, originally scheduled for August 13, was postponed to the 14th: foreign delegations did not have time to arrive. After all, Shostakovich was an “official” composer, and he was seen off officially - with loud speeches from representatives of the party and government, which had suffocated him for so many years.

Symphony No. 1

Symphony No. 1, F minor, op. 10 (1923–1925)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, bells, piano, strings.

History of creation

The idea of ​​a symphony, with which he was supposed to complete the conservatory composition course, arose from Shostakovich in 1923. However, the young man, who had recently lost his father (he died of pneumonia in 1922), had to earn money and entered the Light Ribbon cinema. He played to movies for several hours a day. But if this could somehow be combined with the preparation of a concert program (he wittily included excerpts from the works he was studying into his film improvisations, thus improving their technical performance), then for composing this work was deadly. It was exhausting, didn’t give me the opportunity to go to concerts, and, finally, was poorly paid. Over the next year, only individual sketches began to appear, and a general plan was thought out. However, there was still a long way to go before systematic work on it.

In the spring of 1924, composition classes were postponed indefinitely, as relations with Professor Steinberg became very difficult: a supporter of the academic direction, he was afraid of the musical “leftism” of the rapidly developing student. The disagreements were so serious that Shostakovich even had the idea of ​​transferring to the Moscow Conservatory. There were friends there who supported the work of the young composer, and there was also a teacher there - Yavorsky, who deeply understood him. Shostakovich even successfully passed the exams and was enrolled, but his mother, Sofya Vasilievna, sharply opposed his son’s departure. She was afraid of her son’s early independence, afraid that he would get married: his fiancee, Tatyana Glivenko, lived in Moscow, whom he met while undergoing treatment in the Crimea.

Under the influence of Moscow's success, the attitude of teachers in Leningrad towards Shostakovich changed, and in the fall he resumed classes. In October, the second part of the symphony, the scherzo, was written. But the writing was interrupted again: the need to earn a living by playing in cinemas remained. The service took up all my time and all my energy. At the end of December, the opportunity for creativity finally arose, and the first part of the symphony was written, and in January - February 1925 the third. I had to go to the cinema again, and the situation became more complicated again. “The finale has not been written and is not being written,” the composer said in one of his letters. - I ran out of steam with three parts. Out of grief, I sat down to orchestrate the first movement and did a decent amount of instrumentation.”

Realizing that it was impossible to combine work in cinema with composing music, Shostakovich quit the Piccadilly cinema and went to Moscow in March. There, in a circle of musician friends, he showed the three parts he had written and separate parts of the finale. The symphony made a huge impression. Muscovites, among whom were composer V. Shebalin and pianist L. Oborin, who became friends for many years, were delighted and even amazed: the young musician showed rare professional skill and genuine creative maturity. Inspired by the warm approval, Shostakovich, returning home, set about the finale with renewed vigor. It was completed in June 1925. The premiere took place on May 12, 1926, in the final concert of the season, conducted by Nikolai Malko. It was attended by relatives and friends. Tanya Glivenko arrived from Moscow. The listeners were amazed when, after a storm of applause, a young man, almost a boy with a stubborn crest on his head, came on stage to bow.

The symphony brought unprecedented success. Malko performed it in other cities of the country, and it soon became widely known abroad. In 1927, Shostakovich's First Symphony was performed in Berlin, then in Philadelphia and New York. The world's leading conductors have included it in their repertoire. This is how the nineteen-year-old boy entered the history of music.

Music

Brief original introduction It’s like lifting the curtain on a theatrical performance. The interplay of muted trumpet, bassoon, and clarinet creates an intriguing atmosphere. “This introduction immediately marks a break with the high, poetically generalized structure of content inherent in classical and romantic symphonism” (M. Sabinina). The main part of the first movement is distinguished by clear, as if chanted sounds, and a collected marching gait. At the same time, she is restless, nervous and anxious. It concludes with a familiar trumpet call from the introduction. The side note is an elegant, slightly capricious flute melody in the rhythm of a slow waltz, light and airy. In development, not without the influence of the gloomy and anxious coloring of the opening motives, the nature of the main themes changes: the main one becomes convulsive, confused, the secondary one becomes harsh and rude. At the conclusion of the movement, the melodies of the introductory section are heard, returning the listener to the initial mood.

Second part, a scherzo, takes the musical narrative to a different plane. The lively, bustling music seems to paint a picture of a noisy street with its continuous movement. This image is replaced by another - a poetic, gentle melody of flutes in the spirit of Russian folk song. A picture emerges of complete calm. But gradually the music becomes filled with anxiety. And the continuous movement and bustle return again, even more fervent than at the beginning. The development unexpectedly leads to the simultaneous contrapuntal sound of both main themes of the scherzo, but the calm, lullaby-like melody is now powerfully and loudly intoned by horns and trumpets! The complex form of the scherzo (musicologists interpret it differently - both as a sonata without development, and as a two-part with a frame, and as a three-part) is completed by a coda with sharp measured piano chords, a slow introduction theme for the strings and a trumpet signal.

Slow the third part immerses the listener in an atmosphere of reflection, concentration, and anticipation. The sounds are low, swaying, like the heavy waves of a fantastic sea. They either grow like a menacing wave, or fall. From time to time, fanfares cut through this mysterious haze. There is a feeling of wariness and apprehension. As if the air thickens before a thunderstorm, it becomes difficult to breathe. Soulful, touching, deeply humane melodies collide with the rhythm of a funeral march, creating tragic collisions. The composer repeats the form of the second movement, but its content is fundamentally different - if in the first two movements the life of the conventional hero of the symphony unfolded in apparent prosperity and carefreeness, here the antagonism of two principles is manifested - subjective and objective, forcing one to recall similar collisions of Tchaikovsky's symphonies.

Stormy dramatic the final begins with an explosion, the anticipation of which permeated the previous part. Here, in the last and largest, grandiose section of the symphony, the full intensity of the struggle unfolds. Dramatic sounds, full of enormous tension, are replaced by moments of oblivion, rest... The main part “conjures up the image of a crowd pouring in in panic at the distress signal - the signal of muted trumpets, given in the introduction to the part” (M. Sabinina). Fear and confusion appear, and the theme of rock sounds menacingly. The side party barely covers the colossal raging tutti. The solo violin intones its melody tenderly and dreamily. But during development, the side track also loses its lyrical character, it becomes involved in the general struggle, sometimes reminiscent of the theme of the funeral procession from the third part, sometimes it turns into an eerie grotesque, sometimes it sounds powerful in the brass, drowning out the sound of the entire orchestra... After the climax, which breaks the intensity of the development, again sounds soft and gentle on a solo cello with a mute. But that's not all. A new wild burst of energy occurs in the coda, where the secondary theme takes over all the upper voices of the orchestra at an extremely powerful sound. Only in the last bars of the symphony is affirmation achieved. The final conclusion is still optimistic.

Symphony No. 2

Symphony No. 2, dedication to “October” in B major, op. 14 (1927)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, factory whistle, bells, strings; in the final section there is a mixed choir.

History of creation

At the beginning of 1927, having returned from the international Chopin competition, in which he took fifth place, Shostakovich immediately went to the operating table. Actually, the appendicitis that tormented him was, along with the obvious bias of the jury, one of the reasons for the competitive failure. Immediately after the operation, the composition of piano “Aphorisms” began - the young composer missed creativity during the forced break caused by intensive preparation for competitive performances. And after the piano cycle was completed in early April, work on a completely different plan began.

The propaganda department of the State Publishing House music sector ordered Shostakovich a symphony dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The official order testified to the recognition of the creative authority of the twenty-year-old musician, and the composer accepted it with satisfaction, especially since his earnings were casual and irregular, mainly from performing activities.

While working on this symphony, Shostakovich was absolutely sincere. Let us remember: the ideas of justice, equality, and brotherhood have possessed the best minds of mankind for centuries. Many generations of Russian nobles and commoners made sacrifices at the altar of service to them. To Shostakovich, brought up in these traditions, the revolution still seemed like a cleansing whirlwind, bringing justice and happiness. He was inspired by an idea that may seem youthfully naive - to create a symphonic monument for each of the significant dates of the young state. The first such monument was the Second Symphony, which received the program name symphonic dedication to “October”.

This is a one-part work, constructed in free form. In its creation, and in the general concept of the series of “musical monuments,” the impressions of the “street” played a large role. In the first post-revolutionary years, mass propaganda art appeared. It went out onto city streets and squares. Remembering the experience of the Great French Revolution of 1789, artists, musicians, and theater workers began to create grandiose “actions” dedicated to the new Soviet holidays. For example, on November 7, 1920, a grandiose staging of “The Capture of the Winter Palace” was staged on the central squares and Neva embankments of Petrograd. The performance was attended by military units, cars, and was supervised by a combat staging staff; the design was created by prominent artists, including Shostakovich’s good friend Boris Kustodiev.

The fresco design, the flashiness of the scenes, the chanting of rally calls, various sound and noise effects - the whistle of artillery shots, the noise of car engines, the crackle of gunfire - all this was used in the productions. And Shostakovich also made extensive use of sound and noise techniques. In an effort to convey a generalized image of the people who made the revolution, he even used in the symphony such a previously unheard of “musical instrument” as a factory whistle.

He worked on the symphony in the summer. It was written very quickly - on August 21, at the invitation of the publishing house, the composer went to Moscow: “The music sector called me by telegram to demonstrate my revolutionary music,” Shostakovich wrote to Sollertinsky from Tsarskoe Selo, where he was resting in those days and where a new chapter of his personal life began - the young man met the Varzar sisters there, one of whom, Nina Vasilievna, became his wife a few years later.

Apparently the show was a success. The symphony was accepted. Its first performance took place in a solemn ceremony on the eve of Soviet holiday November 6, 1927 in Leningrad under the direction of N. Malko.

Music

Critics defined the first section of the symphony as “an alarming image of devastation, anarchy, chaos.” It begins with the dull sound of low strings, gloomy, unclear, merging into a continuous hum. It is cut through by distant fanfares, as if giving a signal to action. An energetic marching rhythm emerges. Struggle, striving forward, from darkness to light - this is the content of this section. What follows is a thirteen-voice episode, to which criticism has assigned the name fugato, although in the exact sense the rules by which fugato is written are not observed in it. There is a sequential entry of voices - solo violin, clarinet, bassoon, then sequentially other wooden and string instruments, connected with each other only metrically: there is no intonation or tonal connection between them. The meaning of this episode is a huge build-up of energy leading to the climax - the solemn fortissimo calls of four horns.

The sound of battle fades away. The instrumental part of the symphony ends with a lyrical episode with an expressive solo of clarinet and violin. The factory whistle, supported by percussion, precedes the conclusion of the symphony, in which the choir chants the slogan verses of Alexander Bezymensky:

We walked, we asked for work and bread,
Hearts were squeezed in the grip of melancholy.
Factory chimneys stretched to the sky,
Like hands powerless to clench fists.
The name of our snares was scary:
Silence, suffering, oppression...

((A. Bezymensky))

The music of this section is distinguished by a clear texture - chordal or imitative-subvocal, a clear sense of tonality. The chaos of the previous, purely orchestral sections completely disappears. Now the orchestra simply accompanies the singing. The symphony ends solemnly and affirmatively.

Symphony No. 3

Symphony No. 3, E-flat major, op. 20, Pervomayskaya (1929)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, strings; in the final section there is a mixed choir.

History of creation

In the spring of 1929, Shostakovich worked on the music for the film New Babylon, which he submitted to the film studio in March. The work done fascinated him with the unusual nature of the task: to write music for a silent film, music that would be performed instead of the usual improvisations of a pianist sitting in the cinema hall. In addition, he continued to do odd jobs, and a good fee from the film factory (as the later famous Lenfilm was called in those days) was not at all out of place. Immediately after this, the composer began creating the Third Symphony. By August it was completed, a fee was also received for it, and for the first time the composer could afford to go on vacation to the south. He visited Sevastopol, then stopped in Gudauta, from where he wrote to Sollertinsky, in particular, about his desire for Gauk to conduct the May Day Symphony.

In his own annotation, Shostakovich reported: “The May Day Symphony was composed in the summer of 1929. The symphony is part of a cycle of symphonic works dedicated to the revolutionary Red Calendar. The first part of the planned cycle is a symphonic dedication to “October”, the second part is the “May Day Symphony”. Both “October” and “May Day Symphony” are not works of a purely programmatic type. The author wanted to convey the general character of these holidays. If the dedication to “October” reflected the revolutionary struggle, then the “May Day Symphony” reflects our peaceful construction. This, however, does not mean that in the “May Day Symphony” the music is entirely of an apotheotic, festive nature. Peaceful construction is an intense struggle, with the same battles and victories as a civil war. The author was guided by such considerations when composing the “May Day Symphony.” The symphony is written in one movement. It begins with a bright, heroic melody on the clarinet, which turns into an energetically developing main part.

After a large build-up flowing into the march, the middle part of the symphony begins - the lyrical episode. The lyrical episode is followed without a break by the scherzo, which again turns into a march, only more lively than at the beginning. The episode ends with a grandiose recitative from the entire orchestra in unison. After the recitative, the finale begins, consisting of an introduction (trombone recitative) and a final chorus based on the poems of S. Kirsanov.”

The premiere of the symphony took place on November 6, 1931 in Leningrad under the baton of A. Gauk. The music was figuratively concrete and evoked direct visual associations. Contemporaries saw it as “the image of the spring awakening of nature intertwined with images of revolutionary May Days... There is an instrumental landscape that opens the symphony, and a flying rally with oratorical upbeat intonations. The symphonic movement takes on heroic character struggle..." (D. Ostretsov). It was noted that the “May Day Symphony” is “almost a single attempt to birth a symphony from the dynamics of revolutionary oratory, oratorical atmosphere, oratorical intonations” (B. Asafiev). Apparently, a significant role was played by the fact that this symphony, unlike the Second, was created after the writing of film music, after the creation of the opera “The Nose”, which was also largely “cinematic” in its techniques. Hence the entertainment, the “visibility” of the images.

Music

The symphony opens with a serenely light introduction. The duet of clarinets is permeated with clear, song-like, melodic turns. The joyful call of the trumpet leads to a quick episode that has the function of a sonata allegro. A cheerful bustle and festive ebullience begins, in which invocation, declamation, and chanting episodes are discernible. A fugato begins, almost Bachian in the precision of its imitative technique and the prominence of its theme. It leads to a climax that breaks suddenly. A marching episode begins, with the beating of the drum, the singing of horns and trumpets - as if the pioneer detachments are going out for a May rally. In the next episode, the march is performed by woodwind instruments alone, and then a lyrical fragment floats in, into which, like distant echoes, wedge the sounds of a brass band, then snatches of dances, then a waltz... This is a kind of scherzo and a slow movement within a one-movement symphony. Further musical development, active, varied, leads to an episode of a rally, where loud recitatives and “appeals” to the people are heard in the orchestra (tuba solo, trombone melody, trumpet calls), after which the choral conclusion begins on the poems of S. Kirsanov:

On the first of May
Thrown into its former glory.
Fanning the spark into the fire,
Flames covered the forest.
Ears of drooping Christmas trees
The forests listened
In May days still young
Rustles, voices...

((S. Kirsanov))

Symphony No. 4

Symphony No. 4, C minor, op. 43 (1935–1936)

Orchestra composition: 4 flutes, 2 piccolo flutes, 4 oboes, cor anglais, 4 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 trumpets, 8 horns, 3 trombones, tuba, 6 timpani, triangle, castanets , wooden block, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, xylophone, bells, celesta, 2 harps, strings.

History of creation

The fourth symphony marks a qualitatively new stage in the work of Shostakovich the symphonist. The composer began writing it on September 13, 1935, and its completion is dated May 20, 1936. Many serious events occurred between these two dates. Shostakovich has already gained worldwide fame. This was facilitated not only by numerous performances of the First Symphony abroad, the creation of the opera “The Nose” based on Gogol, but also by the staging of the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” on the stages of both capitals, which critics rightly ranked among the best creations of this genre.

On January 28, 1936, the central organ of the ruling Communist Party, the newspaper Pravda, published an editorial “Confusion Instead of Music,” in which the opera, which Stalin and his henchmen did not like, was subjected not only to devastating criticism, but to rude, obscene defamation. A few days later, on February 6, the article “Ballet Falsity” was published there - about Shostakovich’s ballet “The Bright Stream”. And the frantic persecution of the artist began.

Meetings were held in Moscow and Leningrad at which musicians criticized the composer, beat their chests and repented of their mistakes if they had previously praised him. Shostakovich was left practically alone. Only his wife and his faithful friend Sollertinsky supported him. However, it was no easier for Sollertinsky: he, a prominent musical figure, a brilliant polymath who promoted the best works of our time, was called the evil genius of Shostakovich. In the terrible conditions of the time, when there was only one step from aesthetic to political accusations, when not a single person in the country could be immune from the nightly visit of the “black raven” (as people called the gloomy closed vans in which the arrested were taken away), Shostakovich’s position was very serious. Many were simply afraid to greet him and crossed to the other side of the street if they saw him coming towards him. It is not surprising that the work turned out to be covered in the tragic breath of those days.

Something else is also important. Even before all these events, after the outwardly theatrical one-movement compositions of the Second and Third, enriched by the experience of writing his second opera, Shostakovich decided to turn to creating a philosophically significant symphonic cycle. A huge role was played by the fact that Sollertinsky, who had been the composer’s closest friend for several years, infected him with his boundless love for Mahler, a unique humanist artist who created, as he himself wrote, “worlds” in his symphonies, and did not simply embody this or that a different musical concept. Sollertinsky, back in 1935, at a conference dedicated to symphony, urged his friend to create a conceptual symphony, to move away from the methods of the two previous experiments in this genre.

According to the testimony of one of Shostakovich’s younger colleagues, composer I. Finkelstein, who was Shostakovich’s assistant at the conservatory at that time, during the composition of the Fourth, the composer’s piano always had the notes of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony on it. The influence of the great Austrian symphonist was reflected in the grandeur of the concept, and in the monumentality of forms previously unprecedented in Shostakovich, and in the heightened expression of musical language, in sudden sharp contrasts, in the mixture of “low” and “high” genres, in the close interweaving of lyricism and grotesque, even in the use of Mahler's favorite intonations.

The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Stidri was already practicing the symphony when its performance was cancelled. Previously, there was a version according to which the composer himself canceled the performance because he was not satisfied with the work of the conductor and orchestra. In recent years, another version has appeared - that the performance was prohibited “from above,” from Smolny. I. Glikman in the book “Letters to a Friend” says that, according to the composer himself, the symphony was “filmed on the urgent recommendation of Renzin (then director of the Philharmonic), who did not want to use administrative measures and begged the author to refuse to perform it himself...” It seems , in the circumstances of those years, this recommendation essentially saved Shostakovich. There were no “sanctions,” but they certainly would have been if such a symphony had sounded so soon after the ever-memorable article “Confusion Instead of Music.” And it is unknown how this could end for the composer. The premiere of the symphony was postponed for many years. This composition was first performed only on December 30, 1961, under the baton of Kirill Kondrashin.

It was a great symphony. Then, in the mid-30s, it was impossible to fully understand it. Only many decades later, having learned about the crimes of the leaders of the “party of a new type,” as the Bolsheviks called themselves; about genocide against his own people, about the triumph of lawlessness, listening again to Shostakovich’s symphonies, starting with the Fourth, we understand that he, most likely not knowing about what was happening in full, foresaw all this with the genius instinct of a musician and expressed it in his music, equal which, by the power of the embodiment of our tragedy, does not exist and, perhaps, will no longer exist.

Music

First part The symphony begins with a laconic introduction, followed by a huge main part. The hard march-like first theme is filled with evil, indomitable power. It is replaced by a more transparent episode that seems somehow unstable. March rhythms break through the vague wanderings. Gradually they conquer the entire sound space, reaching enormous intensity. The side part is deeply lyrical. The monologue of the bassoon, supported by strings, sounds restrained and mournful. The bass clarinet, solo violin, and horns enter with their “statements.” Sparing, muted colors and strict coloring give this section a slightly mysterious sound. And again, grotesque images gradually penetrate, as if a devilish obsession is replacing an enchanted silence. The huge development opens with a caricatured puppet dance, in the outlines of which the contours of the main theme are recognizable. Its middle section is a whirlwind fugato of strings, developing into the menacing tread of a rapid march. The development concludes with a fantastic waltz-like episode. In the reprise, the themes sound in the reverse order - first a secondary one, sharply intonated by the trumpet and trombone against the backdrop of clear string strikes and softened by the calm timbre of the English horn. The violin solo ends it with its leisurely lyrical melody. Then the bassoon gloomily sings the main theme, and everything fades into a wary silence, interrupted by mysterious screams and splashes.

Second part- scherzo. In moderate movement, meandering melodies flow non-stop. They have an intonation relationship with some themes of the first part. They are being rethought and re-intoned. Grotesque images, disturbing, broken motifs appear. The first theme is dance-elastic. Its presentation by the violas, intertwined with many subtle echoes, gives the music a ghostly, fantastic flavor. Its development occurs in an increasing manner to an alarming climax in the sound of the trombones. The second theme is a waltz, slightly melancholic, slightly capricious, framed by a thundering timpani solo. These two themes are repeated, thereby creating a double two-part form. In the coda, everything gradually melts away, the first theme seems to dissolve, only the ominous dry tapping of castanets can be heard.

The final. In the frame of this funeral procession, various paintings succeed one another: a heavy, sharply accented scherzo, imbued with anxiety, a pastoral scene with bird chirping and a light naive melody (also in the spirit of Mahler’s pastorals); a simple-minded waltz, rather even his village older brother Ländler; a playful polka song with a solo bassoon, accompanied by comic orchestral effects; a cheerful youthful march... After a long preparation, the tread of the majestic funeral procession returns. The march theme, sounding successively among the woodwinds, trumpets and strings, reaches an extreme level of tension and suddenly ends. The coda of the finale is an echo of what happened, a slow dissipation in a long chord of strings.

Symphony No. 5

Symphony No. 5, D minor, op. 47 (1937)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, military drum, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tam, bells, xylophone, celesta, 2 harps, piano, strings.

History of creation

In January and February 1936, the press launched an unprecedented scale of persecution of Shostakovich, then already a recognized composer of international stature. He was accused of formalism and being out of touch with the people. The seriousness of the charges was such that the composer seriously feared arrest. The fourth symphony, which he completed in the following months, remained unknown for many years - its performance was postponed for a quarter of a century.

But the composer continued to create. Along with film music, which had to be written, since this was the only source of income for the family, the next one, the Fifth Symphony, was written over the course of several weeks in 1937, the content of which largely overlapped with the Fourth. The nature of the theme was similar, and the concept was similar. But the author made a colossal step forward: the strict classicality of forms, the precision and precision of the musical language made it possible to encrypt the true meaning. The composer himself, when asked by critics what this music was about, answered that he wanted to show “how through a series of tragic conflicts, a great internal struggle, optimism is established as a worldview.”

The fifth symphony was performed for the first time on November 21 of the same year in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic under the baton of E. Mravinsky. An atmosphere of sensationalism reigned at the premiere. Everyone was worried about how the composer responded to the terrible accusations brought against him.

It is now clear how accurately the music reflected its time. A time when a huge country during the day seemed to be seething with enthusiasm under the cheerful lines “Should we stand still, in our daring we are always right,” and at night it lay awake, gripped by horror, listening to street noises, waiting every minute for footsteps on the stairs and fatal knock on the door. This is exactly what Mandelstam wrote about then:

I live on the black stairs and in the temple
A bell torn out with meat hits me,
And all night long I wait for my dear guests,
Moving the shackles of the door chains...

((Mandelshtam))

This is exactly what Shostakovich’s new symphony was about. But his music was without words, and it could be interpreted by performers and understood by listeners in different ways. Of course, when working with Mravinsky, Shostakovich, who was present at all rehearsals, strove to ensure that the music sounded “optimistic.” It probably worked. In addition, apparently, “at the top” it was decided that the punitive action against Shostakovich was temporarily over: the principle of carrots and sticks was in effect, and now it was time for carrots.

“Public recognition” was organized. It is no coincidence that articles on the Fifth Symphony were commissioned not only from musicians, in particular Mravinsky, but also from Alexei Tolstoy, officially recognized as one of the best Soviet writers, and from the famous pilot Mikhail Gromov. Of course, the latter would not speak out on the pages of his own free will. The composer himself wrote: “...The theme of my symphony is the formation of personality. It was the man with all his experiences that I saw at the center of the concept of this work, lyrical in its tone from beginning to end. The finale of the symphony resolves the tragically tense moments of the first movements in a cheerful, optimistic way. We sometimes have questions about the legitimacy of the tragedy genre itself in Soviet art. But at the same time, true tragedy is often confused with doom and pessimism. I think that Soviet tragedy as a genre has every right to exist..."

However, listen to the finale: is everything there as uniquely optimistic as the composer declared? A subtle connoisseur of music, philosopher, essayist G. Gachev writes about the Fifth: “... 1937 - to the howl of the demonstrating masses, marching and demanding the execution of the “enemies of the people”, the guillotine machine of the State tosses and turns - and this is in the finale of the Fifth Symphony...” And further: “The USSR is at a construction site - just who knows what, a happy future or the Gulag?..”

Music

First part The symphony unfolds as a narrative filled with personal pain and, at the same time, philosophical depth. The persistent “questions” of the initial bars, tense as a tense nerve, are replaced by the melody of the violins - unstable, searching, with broken, indefinite contours (researchers most often define it as Hamletian or Faustian). Next is a side part, also in the clear timbre of the violins, enlightened, chastely tender. There is no conflict yet - only different sides of an attractive and complex image. Other intonations burst into development - harsh, inhumane. At the top of the dynamic wave, a mechanical march appears. It seems that everything is suppressed by the soulless heavy movement under the harsh beat of the drum (this is how the image of an alien oppressive force, which originated in the first part of the Fourth Symphony, which will pass through practically the entire symphonic work of the composer, emerging with the greatest force in the Seventh Symphony), is for the first time powerfully manifested. But “from under it” the initial intonations and “questions” of the introduction still make their way through; they make their way in disarray, having lost their former fortitude. The reprise is overshadowed by previous events. The secondary theme no longer sounds in the violins, but in the dialogue between the flute and the horn - muffled, darkened. In conclusion, also by the flute, the first theme sounds in circulation, as if turned inside out. Its echoes go up, as if enlightened by suffering.

Second part according to the laws of the classical symphonic cycle, it temporarily removes you from the main conflict. But this is not ordinary detachment, not simple-minded fun. The humor is not as good-natured as it may initially seem. In the music of the three-movement scherzo, unsurpassed in grace and filigree skill, there is a subtle smile, irony, and sometimes some kind of mechanicalness. It seems that the sound is not an orchestra, but a giant wind-up toy. Today we would say that these are robot dances... The fun feels unreal, inhuman, and at times there are ominous notes in it. Perhaps the clearest continuity here is with Mahler’s grotesque scherzos.

The third part concentrated, detached from everything external and random. This is thinking. Deep reflection of the artist-thinker about himself, about time, about events, about people. The flow of music is calm, its development is slow. Heartfelt melodies replace one another, as if one were born from the other. Lyrical monologues and a brief chorale episode are heard. Perhaps this is a requiem for those who have already died and for those who still await death lurking in the night? Excitement, confusion, pathos appear, cries of mental pain are heard... The form of the piece is free and fluid. It interacts with various compositional principles, combines sonata, variation, and rondo features that contribute to the development of one dominant image.

The final symphonies (sonata form with an episode instead of a development) in a decisive, purposeful marching movement seem to sweep away everything unnecessary. It moves forward - faster and faster - life itself, as it is. And all that remains is to either merge with it or be swept away by it. If you wish, you can interpret this music as optimistic. It contains the noise of a street crowd, festive fanfare. But there is something feverish in this jubilation. The whirlwind movement is replaced by solemn and hymn sounds, which, however, lack genuine chant. Then there is an episode of reflection, an excited lyrical statement. Again - reflection, comprehension, departure from the environment. But we have to return to it: ominous bursts of drumming are heard from afar. And again the official fanfare begins, sounding under the ambiguous - either festive or mournful - timpani beats. The symphony ends with these hammering blows.

Symphony No. 6

Symphony No. 6, B minor, op. 54 (1939)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, military drum , triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, xylophone, celesta, harp, strings.

History of creation

In the mid-thirties, Shostakovich worked a lot. Usually - over several essays at once. Almost simultaneously, music was created for Afinogenov’s play “Salute, Spain!”, commissioned by the Pushkin Theater (former and now Alexandria), romances based on Pushkin’s poems, music for the films “Maxim’s Youth”, “The Return of Maxim”, “Vyborg Side”. Essentially, except for a few romances, everything else was done to make money, although the composer always worked very responsibly, not allowing orders to be taken lightly. The wound inflicted by the editorial article “Confusion Instead of Music,” published on January 28, 1936 in the central party organ, the Pravda newspaper, did not heal. After the defamation that Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and indeed the composer’s entire creative direction, was subjected to in the press, he was afraid to take on opera again. Various proposals appeared, he was shown the libretto, but Shostakovich invariably refused. He vowed not to write an opera until Lady Macbeth was staged again. Therefore, only instrumental genres remained accessible to him.

The First String Quartet, written throughout 1938, became an outlet among the imposed works and at the same time a test of oneself in a new genre. This was only the third, after the youthful Trio and the Sonata for cello and piano written in 1934, to turn to the chamber instrumental genre. The creation of the quartet was long and difficult. Shostakovich reported in detail about all stages of his composition in letters to his beloved friend, the outstanding musical figure Sollertinsky, who was in the hospital in those months. Only in the fall did the composer, with his characteristic humor, announce: “I finished... my quartet, the beginning of which I played for you. In the process of composing, I changed my mind on the fly. The 1st part became the last, the last - the first. There are 4 parts of all. It didn't turn out so well. But, by the way, it is difficult to compose well. You have to be able to do this."

After the end of the quartet, a new symphonic idea arose. The Sixth Symphony was created over several months in 1939. It is significant that about a year before its premiere, in newspaper interviews, Shostakovich said that he was attracted by the idea of ​​a symphony dedicated to Lenin - large-scale, using Mayakovsky’s poems and folk texts (obviously pseudo-folk, glorifying leaders, poems that were created in large quantities and were presented as folk art), with the participation of a choir and solo singers. We will no longer know whether the composer really thought about such a composition, or whether it was a kind of camouflage. Perhaps he felt it necessary to write such a symphony to confirm his loyalty: reproaches for formalism, for the alienness of his work to the people, although they were not as aggressive as two years ago, continued to appear. And the political situation in the country has not changed at all. Arrests continued in the same way, people also suddenly disappeared, including Shostakovich’s close acquaintances: the famous director Meyerhold, the famous Marshal Tukhachevsky. In this situation, the Lenin Symphony was not at all out of place, but... it didn’t work out. The new composition turned out to be a complete surprise for the listeners. Everything was unexpected - three movements instead of the usual four, the absence of a fast sonata allegro at the beginning, the second and third movements were similar in terms of images. A symphony without a head - some critics called the Sixth.

The symphony was first performed in Leningrad on November 5, 1939 under the baton of E. Mravinsky.

Music

Rich string sound at the beginning first part immerses you in the atmosphere of typically Shostakovich intense thought - inquisitive, searching. This is music of amazing beauty, purity and depth. The piccolo flute solo - a touchingly lonely melody, somehow unprotected - floats out of the general flow and goes back into it. You can hear the echoes of a funeral march... Now it seems that this is a sad, and at times tragic, attitude of a person who finds himself in unimaginable circumstances. Didn't what was happening around give grounds for such feelings? Everyone’s personal grief combined with many personal tragedies, turning into the tragic fate of the people.

Second part, the scherzo is some kind of mindless whirling of masks, not living images. The fun of the doll carnival. It seems that the bright guest from the first movement appeared for a moment (the piccolo flute reminds of her). And then - ponderous moves, fanfare sounds, timpani of the “official” holiday... The mindless whirling of deathly masks returns.

The final- This is, perhaps, a picture of life that goes on as usual, day after day in the usual routine, without giving either time or opportunity for reflection. The music, as almost always with Shostakovich, is not scary at first, almost deliberately in its slightly exaggerated joy, gradually acquires menacing features, turns into a rampant of forces - extra- and anti-human. Everything is mixed here: classicist musical themes, Haydn-Mozart-Rossini, and modern intonations of youth, cheerfully optimistic songs, and pop-dance rhythmic intonations. And all this merges into universal rejoicing, leaving no room for reflection, feeling, or manifestation of personality.

Symphony No. 7

Symphony No. 7, C major, op. 60, Leningradskaya (1941)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, alto flute, piccolo flute, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 5 timpani, triangle , tambourine, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, xylophone, 2 harps, piano, strings.

History of creation

It is not known exactly when, in the late 30s or in 1940, but in any case, even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Shostakovich wrote variations on an unchanging theme - the passacaglia, similar in concept to Ravel's Bolero. He showed it to his younger colleagues and students (since the autumn of 1937, Shostakovich taught composition and orchestration at the Leningrad Conservatory). The theme, simple, as if dancing, developed against the background of the dry knock of a snare drum and grew to enormous power. At first it sounded harmless, even somewhat frivolous, but it grew into a terrible symbol of suppression. The composer shelved this work without performing or publishing it.

On June 22, 1941, his life, like the lives of all people in our country, changed dramatically. The war began, previous plans were crossed out. Everyone began to work for the needs of the front. Shostakovich, along with everyone else, dug trenches and was on duty during air raids. He made arrangements for concert brigades sent to active units. Naturally, there were no pianos on the front lines, and he rearranged accompaniments for small ensembles and did other necessary work, as it seemed to him. But as always, this unique musician-publicist - as was the case since childhood, when momentary impressions of the turbulent revolutionary years were conveyed in music - a major symphonic plan began to mature, dedicated directly to what was happening. He began writing the Seventh Symphony. The first part was completed in the summer. He managed to show it to his closest friend I. Sollertinsky, who on August 22 was leaving for Novosibirsk with the Philharmonic, whose artistic director he had been for many years. In September, already in blockaded Leningrad, the composer created the second part and showed it to his colleagues. Started working on the third part.

On October 1, by special order of the authorities, he, his wife and two children were flown to Moscow. From there, half a month later, he traveled further east by train. Initially it was planned to go to the Urals, but Shostakovich decided to stop in Kuibyshev (as Samara was called in those years). The Bolshoi Theater was based here, there were many acquaintances who initially took the composer and his family into their home, but very quickly the city leadership allocated him a room, and in early December, a two-room apartment. It was equipped with a piano, loaned by the local music school. It was possible to continue working.

Unlike the first three parts, which were created literally in one go, work on the final progressed slowly. It was sad and anxious at heart. Mother and sister remained in besieged Leningrad, which experienced the most terrible, hungry and cold days. The pain for them did not leave for a minute. It was bad even without Sollertinsky. The composer was accustomed to the fact that a friend was always there, that one could share one’s most intimate thoughts with him - and this, in those days of universal denunciation, became the greatest value. Shostakovich wrote to him often. He reported literally everything that could be entrusted to censored mail. In particular, about the fact that the ending “is not written.” It is not surprising that the last part took a long time to come through. Shostakovich understood that in the symphony dedicated to the events of the war, everyone expected a solemn victorious apotheosis with a choir, a celebration of the coming victory. But there was no reason for this yet, and he wrote as his heart dictated. It is no coincidence that the opinion later spread that the finale was inferior in importance to the first part, that the forces of evil were embodied much stronger than the humanistic principle opposing them.

On December 27, 1941, the Seventh Symphony was completed. Of course, Shostakovich wanted it to be performed by his favorite orchestra - the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mravinsky. But he was far away, in Novosibirsk, and the authorities insisted on an urgent premiere: the performance of the symphony, which the composer called Leningrad and dedicated to the feat of his native city, was given political significance. The premiere took place in Kuibyshev on March 5, 1942. The Bolshoi Theater Orchestra conducted by Samuil Samosud played.

It is very interesting what the “official writer” of that time, Alexey Tolstoy, wrote about the symphony: “The seventh symphony is dedicated to the triumph of the human in man. Let us try (at least partially) to penetrate into the path of Shostakovich’s musical thinking - in the menacing dark nights of Leningrad, under the roar of explosions, in the glow of fires, it led him to writing this frank work.<…>The Seventh Symphony arose from the conscience of the Russian people, who without hesitation accepted mortal combat with the black forces. Written in Leningrad, it has grown to the size of great world art, understandable at all latitudes and meridians, because it tells the truth about man in an unprecedented time of his misfortunes and trials. The symphony is transparent in its enormous complexity, it is both stern and masculinely lyrical, and all flies into the future, revealing itself beyond the victory of man over the beast.

...The violins talk about stormless happiness - trouble lurks in it, it is still blind and limited, like that of that bird that “walks merrily along the path of disasters”... In this well-being, from the dark depths of unresolved contradictions, the theme of war arises - short, dry, clear , similar to a steel hook.

Let’s make a reservation: the man of the Seventh Symphony is someone typical, generalized, and someone beloved by the author. Shostakovich himself is national in the symphony, his Russian enraged conscience is national, bringing down the seventh heaven of the symphony on the heads of the destroyers.

The theme of war arises remotely and at first looks like some kind of simple and eerie dance, like learned rats dancing to the tune of the pied piper. Like a rising wind, this theme begins to sway the orchestra, it takes possession of it, grows, and becomes stronger. The rat catcher, with his iron rats, rises from behind the hill... This is war moving. She triumphs in the timpani and drums, the violins answer with a cry of pain and despair. And it seems to you, squeezing the oak railings with your fingers: is it really, really, everything has already been crushed and torn to pieces? There is confusion and chaos in the orchestra.

No. Man is stronger than the elements. The string instruments begin to struggle. The harmony of violins and human voices of bassoons is more powerful than the rumble of a donkey skin stretched over drums. With the desperate beating of your heart you help the triumph of harmony. And the violins harmonize the chaos of war, silence its cavernous roar.

The damned rat catcher is no more, he is carried away into the black abyss of time. Only the thoughtful and stern human voice of the bassoon can be heard - after so many losses and disasters. There is no return to stormless happiness. Before the gaze of a person, wise in suffering, is the path traveled, where he seeks justification for life.

Blood is shed for the beauty of the world. Beauty is not fun, not delight and not festive clothes, beauty is the re-creation and arrangement of wild nature with the hands and genius of man. The symphony seems to touch with a light breath the great heritage of the human journey, and it comes to life.

The middle (third - L.M.) part of the symphony is a renaissance, the revival of beauty from dust and ashes. It is as if before the eyes of the new Dante the shadows of great art, great goodness are evoked by the force of stern and lyrical reflection.

The final movement of the symphony flies into the future. Before the listeners... A majestic world of ideas and passions is revealed. This is worth living for and worth fighting for. The powerful theme of man now speaks not about happiness, but about happiness. Here - you are caught up in the light, you are as if in a whirlwind of it... And again you are swaying on the azure waves of the ocean of the future. With increasing tension, you wait... for the completion of a huge musical experience. The violins pick you up, you can’t breathe, as if on mountain heights, and together with the harmonic storm of the orchestra, in unimaginable tension, you rush into a breakthrough, into the future, towards the blue cities of a higher order...” (“Pravda”, 1942, February 16).

Now this insightful review is read with completely different eyes, just as the music is heard differently. “Stormless happiness”, “blind and limited” - it is very accurately said about life full of optimism on the surface, under which the GULAG archipelago is freely located. And the “pied catcher with his iron rats” is not only war.

What is this - a terrible march of fascism across Europe, or did the composer interpret his music more broadly - as an attack of totalitarianism on the individual?.. After all, this episode was written earlier! Actually, this duality of meaning can be seen in the lines of Alexei Tolstoy. One thing is clear - here, in a symphony dedicated to the hero city, the martyr city, the episode turned out to be organic. And the entire gigantic four-part symphony became a great monument to the feat of Leningrad.

After the Kuibyshev premiere, the symphonies were held in Moscow and Novosibirsk (under the baton of Mravinsky), but the most remarkable, truly heroic one took place under the baton of Carl Eliasberg in besieged Leningrad. To perform a monumental symphony with a huge orchestra, musicians were recalled from military units. Before the start of rehearsals, some had to be admitted to the hospital - fed and treated, since all ordinary residents of the city had become dystrophic. On the day the symphony was performed - August 9, 1942 - all the artillery forces of the besieged city were sent to suppress enemy firing points: nothing should have interfered with the significant premiere.

And the white-columned hall of the Philharmonic was full. Pale, exhausted Leningraders filled it to hear music dedicated to them. The speakers carried it throughout the city.

The public around the world perceived the performance of the Seventh as an event of great importance. Soon, requests began to arrive from abroad to send the score. Competition broke out between the largest orchestras in the Western Hemisphere for the right to perform the symphony first. Shostakovich's choice fell on Toscanini. A plane carrying precious microfilms flew across a war-torn world, and on July 19, 1942, the Seventh Symphony was performed in New York. Her victorious march across the globe began.

Music

First part begins in a clear, light C major with a wide, sing-song melody of an epic nature, with a pronounced Russian national flavor. It develops, grows, and is filled with more and more power. The side part is also songlike. It resembles a soft, calm lullaby. The conclusion of the exhibition sounds peaceful. Everything breathes the calm of peaceful life. But then, from somewhere far away, the beat of a drum is heard, and then a melody appears: primitive, similar to the banal couplets of a chansonette - the personification of everyday life and vulgarity. This begins the “invasion episode” (thus, the form of the first movement is a sonata with an episode instead of a development). At first the sound seems harmless. However, the theme is repeated eleven times, increasingly intensifying. It does not change melodically, only the texture becomes denser, more and more new instruments are added, then the theme is presented not in one voice, but in chord complexes. And as a result, she grows into a colossal monster - a gnashing machine of destruction that seems to erase all life. But opposition begins. After a powerful climax, the reprise comes darkened, in condensed minor colors. The melody of the side part is especially expressive, becoming melancholy and lonely. A most expressive bassoon solo is heard. It's no longer a lullaby, but rather a cry punctuated by painful spasms. Only in the coda for the first time does the main part sound in a major key, finally affirming the so hard-won overcoming of the forces of evil.

Second part- scherzo - designed in soft, chamber tones. The first theme, presented by the strings, combines light sadness and a smile, slightly noticeable humor and self-absorption. The oboe expressively performs the second theme - a romance, extended. Then other brass instruments enter. The themes alternate in a complex tripartite, creating an attractive and bright image, in which many critics see a musical picture of Leningrad with transparent white nights. Only in the middle section of the scherzo do other, harsh features appear, and a caricatured, distorted image is born, full of feverish excitement. The reprise of the scherzo sounds muffled and sad.

The third part- a majestic and soulful adagio. It opens with a choral introduction, sounding like a requiem for the dead. This is followed by a pathetic statement from the violins. The second theme is close to the violin theme, but the timbre of the flute and a more songlike character convey, in the words of the composer himself, “rapture of life, admiration for nature.” The middle episode of the part is characterized by stormy drama and romantic tension. It can be perceived as a memory of the past, a reaction to the tragic events of the first part, aggravated by the impression of enduring beauty in the second. The reprise begins with a recitative from the violins, the chorale sounds again, and everything fades into the mysteriously rumbling beats of the tom-tom and the rustling tremolo of the timpani. The transition to the last part begins.

At first finals- the same barely audible timpani tremolo, the quiet sound of muted violins, muffled signals. There is a gradual, slow gathering of strength. In the twilight darkness the main theme arises, full of indomitable energy. Its deployment is colossal in scale. This is an image of struggle, of popular anger. It is replaced by an episode in the rhythm of a saraband - sad and majestic, like a memory of the fallen. And then begins a steady ascent to the triumph of the conclusion of the symphony, where the main theme of the first movement, as a symbol of peace and impending victory, sounds dazzling from the trumpets and trombones.

Symphony No. 8

Symphony No. 8, C minor, op. 65 (1943)

Orchestra composition: 4 flutes, 2 piccolo flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, xylophone, strings.

History of creation

With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Shostakovich was evacuated to Kuibyshev - that’s what Samara was then called - a city in the Middle Volga. Enemy planes did not fly there; in October 1941, when Moscow began to face the immediate danger of invasion, all government institutions, embassies, and the Bolshoi Theater were evacuated. Shostakovich lived in Kuibyshev for almost two years, where he completed the Seventh Symphony. It was performed there for the first time by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra.

Shostakovich languished in Kuibyshev. He felt bad without friends, mainly he missed his closest friend, Sollertinsky, who, together with the Leningrad Philharmonic, of which he was the artistic director, was at that time in Novosibirsk. I also yearned for symphonic music, which was practically non-existent in the city on the Volga. The fruit of loneliness and thoughts about friends were romances based on poems by English and Scottish poets, written in 1942. The most significant of them, Shakespeare's 66th sonnet, was dedicated to Sollertinsky. The composer dedicated a piano sonata to the memory of Shostakovich's piano teacher L. Nikolaev, who died in Tashkent (the Leningrad Conservatory was temporarily located there). I began writing the opera “The Players” based on the full text of Gogol’s comedy.

At the end of 1942 he became seriously ill. He was struck down by typhoid fever. Recovery was painfully slow. In March 1943, for a final correction, he was sent to a sanatorium near Moscow. By that time, the military situation had become more favorable, and some began to return to Moscow. Shostakovich also began to think about moving to the capital for permanent residence. A little more than a month later he was already settling down in Moscow, in the apartment he had just received. There he began working on his next, the Eighth Symphony. Basically, it was created in the summer in the House of Composers' Creativity near the city of Ivanovo.

It was officially believed that its theme was a continuation of the Seventh - showing the crimes of fascism on Soviet soil. In fact, the content of the symphony is much deeper: it embodies the theme of the horrors of totalitarianism, the confrontation between man and the anti-human machine of suppression, destruction, no matter what it is called, in what guise it appears. In the Eighth Symphony, this theme is explored in a multifaceted, generalized manner, on a high philosophical level.

At the beginning of September Mravinsky arrived in Moscow from Novosibirsk. This was the conductor whom Shostakovich trusted most of all. Mravinsky performed the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies for the first time. He worked with Shostakovich’s native ensemble, the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, in direct contact with Sollertinsky, who understood his friend like no one else and helped the conductor in the correct interpretation of his works. Shostakovich showed Mravinsky the not yet fully recorded music, and the conductor was fired up with the idea of ​​immediately performing the work. At the end of October he came to the capital again. By that time the composer had completed the score. Rehearsals have begun with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra. Shostakovich was so pleased with the impeccable work of the conductor and the orchestra that he dedicated the symphony to Mravinsky. The premiere under his direction took place in Moscow on November 4, 1943.

The Eighth Symphony is the culmination of tragedy in Shostakovich's work. Its truthfulness is merciless, emotions are heated to the limit, the intensity of expressive means is truly colossal. The symphony is unusual. The usual proportions of light and shadow, tragic and optimistic images are violated in it. A harsh coloring predominates. Among the five movements of the symphony, there is not a single one that plays the role of an interlude. Each of them is deeply tragic.

Music

First part the largest one lasts about half an hour. Almost as much as the other four combined. Its content is multifaceted. This is a song about suffering. There is thought and concentration in it. The inevitability of grief. Crying for the dead - and the torment of questions. Scary questions: how? Why? how could all this happen? Creepy, nightmarish images emerge in the development, reminiscent of Goya's anti-war etchings or Picasso's paintings. Piercing exclamations of woodwind instruments, dry clicking of strings, terrible blows, as if of a hammer crushing all living things, metallic grinding. And above everything is a triumphant, ponderous march, reminiscent of the invasion march from the Seventh Symphony, but devoid of its specificity, even more terrible in its fantastic generality. The music tells the story of a terrible satanic force that brings death to all living things. But it also causes colossal opposition: a storm, a terrible tension of all forces. In the lyrics - enlightened, soulful - comes resolution from the experience.

Second part- an ominous military march-scherzo. Its main theme is based on the haunting sound of a segment of the chromatic scale.

“The brass and some of the wooden instruments respond to the heavy, victorious tread of the unison melody with loud exclamations, like a crowd shouting enthusiastically at a parade” (M. Sabinina). Its rapid movement gives way to a ghostly toy gallop (a side theme of the sonata form). Both of these images are deathly, mechanical. Their development gives the impression of an inexorably approaching catastrophe.

The third part- toccata - with a terrible movement in its inhuman inexorability, suppressing everything with its gait. This is a monstrous machine of destruction moving, mercilessly cutting up all living things. The central episode of a complex three-part form is a kind of Danse macabre with a mockingly dancing melody, an image of death dancing its terrible dance on mountains of corpses...

The culmination of the symphony is the transition to the fourth movement, a majestic and mournful passacaglia. The strict, ascetic theme, which enters after a general pause, sounds like a voice of pain and anger. It is repeated twelve times, unchanged, as if enchanted, in the low registers of the bass, and against its background other images unfold - hidden suffering, meditation, philosophical depth.

Gradually, to the beginning finals, following the passacaglia without interruption, as if pouring out of it, enlightenment occurs. It was as if, after a long and terrible night filled with nightmares, dawn had broken. In the calm strumming of the bassoon, the carefree chirping of the flute, the chant of the strings, the bright calls of the horn, a landscape is painted, filled with warm soft colors - a symbolic parallel to the rebirth of the human heart. Silence reigns on the tormented earth, in the tormented soul of man. Pictures of suffering emerge several times in the finale, as a warning, as a call: “Remember, don’t let this happen again!” The coda of the finale, written in a complex form, combining the features of a sonata and a rondo, paints a picture of the desired, hard-won peace full of high poetry.

Symphony No. 9

Symphony No. 9, E-flat major, op. 70 (1945)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bells, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, strings.

History of creation

In the first post-war months, Shostakovich worked on his new symphony. When the newspapers reported about the upcoming premiere of the Ninth, both music lovers and critics expected to hear a monumental work, written in the same plan as the two previous grandiose cycles, but full of light, glorifying victory and the victors. The premiere, which took place according to established tradition in Leningrad under the direction of Mravinsky, on November 3, 1945, surprised everyone and disappointed some. The work was presented as a miniature (less than 25 minutes long), elegant, somewhat reminiscent of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, in some ways echoing Mahler's Fourth... Outwardly unpretentious, classical in appearance - the principles of the Viennese symphony of Haydn and Mozart are clearly visible in it - it evoked the most contradictory opinions. Some believed that the new opus appeared “at the wrong time,” others - that the composer “responded to a historical victory.” Soviet people"that this is a "joyful sigh of relief." The symphony was defined as “a lyric-comedy work, not devoid of dramatic elements that highlight the main line of development” and as a “tragic-satirical pamphlet.”

The composer, who was the artistic conscience of his time, was never characterized by serene joy and joyful play of sounds. And the Ninth Symphony, with all its grace, lightness, even external brilliance, is far from a problem-free composition. Her fun is not at all simple-minded and balances on the brink of the grotesque; lyricism is intertwined with drama. It is no coincidence that the concept of the symphony, and some of its intonations, make us recall Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.

It could not be that Shostakovich, who had so recently lost his closest friend (Sollertinsky died in February 1944), did not turn to the deceased’s favorite composer, Mahler. This wonderful Austrian artist, who spent his entire life, by his own definition, writing music on the theme “how can I be happy if somewhere a living creature is suffering,” created musical worlds, in each of which he tried again and again to resolve “damned questions” : why does a person live, why does he have to suffer, what is life and death... At the turn of the century, he created the amazing Fourth, about which he later wrote: “This is a persecuted stepson who has so far seen very little joy... I know now that the humor of such of a kind, probably different from wit, a joke or a cheerful whim, is not often understood at best.” In his understanding of humor, Mahler proceeded from the teachings of the comic by Jean-Paul, who considered humor as a protective laughter: it saves a person from contradictions that he is powerless to eliminate, from the tragedies that fill his life, from the despair that inevitably overwhelms him when he looks at his surroundings seriously... The naivety of Mahler's Fourth does not come from ignorance, but from the desire to avoid “damned questions”, to be content with what we have, and not to seek or demand more. Having abandoned his characteristic monumentality and drama, Mahler in the Fourth turns to lyricism and the grotesque, with them expressing the main idea - the collision of the hero with a vulgar, and sometimes terrible, world.

All this turned out to be very close to Shostakovich. Is this where his concept of the Ninth comes from?

Music

First part outwardly simple-minded, cheerful and reminiscent of the sonata allegro of the Viennese classics. The main party is cloudless and carefree. It is quickly replaced by a secondary theme - a dancing piccolo flute theme, accompanied by pizzicato string chords, timpani and drums. It seems perky, almost buffoonish, but listen: there is a clearly noticeable kinship in it with the theme of the invasion from the Seventh! At first, it also seemed like a harmless, primitive melody. And here, in the development of the Ninth, its not at all harmless features appear! Themes are subject to grotesque distortion, the motif of the vulgar, once popular polka “Oira” invades. In the reprise, the main theme can no longer return to its former carefreeness, and the side theme is completely absent: it goes into the coda, ending the part ironically, ambiguously.

Second part- lyrical moderate. The clarinet solo sounds like a sad reflection. It is replaced by excited phrases of the strings - a secondary theme of the sonata form without development. Throughout the piece, sincere, soulful romance intonations dominate; it is laconic and collected.

In contrast to her scherzo(in the usual complex three-part form for this part) flies by like a swift whirlwind. At first carefree, with a never-ending pulsation of a clear rhythm, the music gradually changes and moves to a real revelry of whirlwind movement, which leads to the heavy-sounding Largo that enters without interruption.

Mourning intonations Largo, and especially the mournful monologue of the solo bassoon, interrupted by exclamations of the brass, remind of the tragedy that is always invisibly nearby, no matter how naive fun reigns on the surface. The fourth part is laconic - it is just a short reminder, a kind of improvisational introduction to the finale.

IN final the element of official joy reigns again. About the bassoon solo, which just in the previous movement sounded sincere and heartfelt, and now starts an awkwardly dancing theme (the main part of a sonata form with features of a rondo), I. Nestyev writes: “The fiery orator, who has just delivered a funeral speech, suddenly turns into a playfully winking, laughing comedian." More than once during the finale this image returns, and in the reprise it is no longer clear whether this is a spontaneous celebration spilling over the edge, or a triumphant mechanistic, inhuman force. At maximum volume, the coda sounds a motif almost identical to the theme of “heavenly living” - the finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.

Symphony No. 10

Symphony No. 10, E minor, op. 93 (1953)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo flute, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, xylophone, strings.

History of creation

The Tenth Symphony, one of Shostakovich's most personal, autobiographical works, was composed in 1953. The previous one, the Ninth, was created eight years ago. It was expected as the apotheosis of victory, but what they got was something strange, ambiguous, which caused bewilderment and dissatisfaction among critics. And then there was a party resolution in 1948, in which Shostakovich’s music was recognized as formalistic and harmful. They began to “re-educate” him: they “worked him through” at numerous meetings, he was fired from the conservatory - it was believed that a complete formalist could not be trusted with the education of young musicians.

For several years the composer became isolated in himself. To earn money, he wrote music for films, mainly glorifying Stalin. He composed the oratorio “Song of the Forests”, the cantata “The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland”, choral poems based on poems by revolutionary poets - works that were supposed to assure the authorities of his complete loyalty. The composer expressed his true feelings in the Violin Concerto, unique in its sincerity, depth and beauty. Its implementation was impossible for many years. The vocal cycle “From Jewish Folk Poetry” was also written “on the table” - a work completely unthinkable in the atmosphere of official anti-Semitism that prevailed after the start of the “case of murderous doctors”, inspired by the Kremlin, and the frenzied campaign against cosmopolitanism.

But March 1953 came. Stalin died. The "Doctors' Case" was terminated. Victims of repression gradually began to return from the camps. There was a whiff of something new, or at least different.

It was not yet clear to anyone what lay ahead. Shostakovich’s thoughts were probably contradictory. For so many years the country lived under the terrible heel of a tyrant. So many dead, so much violence against souls...

But there was a glimmer of hope that the terrible time was over, that changes for the better were coming. Isn’t this what the music of the symphony is about, which the composer wrote in the summer of 1953, the premiere of which took place on December 17, 1953 in Leningrad under the baton of Mravinsky?

Reflections on the past and present, sprouts of hope are at the beginning of the symphony. The subsequent parts can be perceived as an understanding of time: the terrible past in anticipation of the Gulag, and for some, the past in the Gulag itself (second); the present is a turning point, still completely unclear, standing as if on the brink of time (third); and the present, looking towards the future with hope (final). (This interpretation reveals a distant analogy with the compositional principles of Mahler’s Third Symphony.)

Music

First part It begins mournfully, sternly. The main part is extremely lengthy, in the long development of which mournful intonations are undeniable. But the gloomy thought goes away and a bright theme cautiously appears, like the first timid sprout reaching towards the sun. Gradually, the rhythm of a waltz appears - not the waltz itself, but a hint of it, like the first glimmer of hope. This is a side part of the sonata form. It is small and goes away, replaced by the development of the original - mournful, full of heavy thoughts and dramatic outbursts - thematicism. These sentiments dominate throughout the entire piece. Only in the reprise does the timid waltz return, and then it brings some enlightenment.

Second part- a scherzo not quite traditional for Shostakovich. Unlike the completely “evil” similar movements in some of the previous symphonies, it contains not only an inhuman march, fanfares, and an inexorable movement that sweeps away everything. Opposing forces also appear - struggle, resistance. It is no coincidence that the oboes and clarinets sing a melody that almost verbatim repeats the motif from the introduction to Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.” There are people alive who have had to endure so much. A fierce battle breaks out, involving all three sections of the three-part scherzo form. The incredible tension of the struggle leads to the beginning of the next part.

The third part, which seemed mysterious for many years, becomes quite logical in the proposed interpretation. This is not philosophical lyrics, not reflection, as is usual for the slow movements of previous symphonies. Its beginning is like a way out of chaos (the shape of the part is built according to the scheme A - BAC - A - B - A - A/C[development] - code). For the first time in the symphony, an autograph theme appears, based on the monogram D - Es - C - H (the initials D. Sh. in Latin transcription). These are his, the composer's, thoughts at a historical crossroads. Everything fluctuates, everything is unstable and unclear. The calls of the horns bring to mind Mahler's Second Symphony. There the author has a remark “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.” Isn't it the same here? Are these the trumpets of the Last Judgment? In any case, it is the breath of a turning point. A question of questions. The dramatic outbursts and reminiscences of the inhuman movement are not accidental. And the theme-monogram, the theme-autograph runs through everything. It is he, Shostakovich, who relives again and again, rethinks what he had previously experienced. The part ends with a lonely, abrupt repetition of D-Es - C - H, D - Es - C - H...

The final It also begins unconventionally - with deep thought. Monologues of solo wind instruments replace each other. Gradually within the slow intro a future topic finals. At first it sounds questioning and uncertain. But finally, she, having perked up, comes into her own - like an affirmative conclusion after long doubts. It could still be good. “A distant trumpet signal gives rise to the main theme of the finale, airy, light, swift, murmuring like cheerful spring streams” (G. Orlov). The lively motor theme gradually becomes more and more impersonal; the side part does not contrast with it, but continues the general flow, gaining even more power in development. The thematicism of the scherzo is woven into it. Everything ends at the climax. After a general pause, the autograph theme is heard. It no longer leaves: it sounds after the reprise - it becomes decisive and wins in the coda.

Symphony No. 11

Symphony No. 11, G minor, op. 93, "1905" (1957)

Orchestra composition: 3 flutes, piccolo flute, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum , tom-tom, xylophone, celesta, bells, harps (2–4), strings.

History of creation

In 1956, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, which reigned supreme in the country, took place. At this congress, Stalin's crimes were discussed for the first time. It seemed that now life would change. There was a breath of freedom, albeit still very relative. The attitude towards Shostakovich’s work also changed. Previously condemned, considered the pillar of anti-folk art - formalism, now it is less criticized. There is even an article that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Prominent musicologist I. Nestyev writes: “In recent years, we have had a scanty, petty-bourgeois idea of ​​​​the work of D. Shostakovich... The poor scheme looks unconvincing, according to which Shostakovich was “rebuilt” all his life, like a soldier in training: according to this scheme it turned out that the composer first fell into formalism ("The Nose", Second and Third Symphonies), then "rebuilt" (Fifth Symphony), then fell into formalism again (Eighth Symphony) and again "rebuilt" ("Song of the Forests"). Some opponents of the Tenth Symphony and the Violin Concerto were already expecting a new repetition of the usual cycle, reminiscent of the temperature curve of tropical malaria...” Fortunately, these times are over. However, writing everything that was in your heart openly and directly expressing your opinion was still dangerous. And works “with a double bottom” continued to appear, with subtext that everyone could understand differently.

The year 1957 was approaching - the fortieth anniversary of Soviet power, which had to be celebrated magnificently and solemnly. As before, official art prepared its gifts for the anniversary: ​​works that glorified the regime, glorifying the CPSU - “the guiding and directing force.” Shostakovich could not help but respond to this date: despite all the changes in domestic policy, he would not be forgiven for this. And a strange symphony appears. Having the programmatic subtitle “1905”, it was created in 1957. Formally written for the fortieth anniversary of Soviet power, it is dedicated, even in full accordance with the program title, by no means to the glorification of the “Great October”. Shostakovich addresses the same topic that has always worried him. Personality and power. Man and the anti-human forces opposing him. Grief for the innocent dead. But now, both in accordance with the program plan and under the influence of time, or rather, because time itself inspired such a plan, the symphony calls for counteraction, for the fight against the forces of evil.

Performed in Moscow on October 30, 1957 under the baton of Nathan Rakhlin, the symphony, for the first time since the First, aroused unanimous critical approval. But, apparently, it was no coincidence that foreign critics heard in it the crackle of machine guns, the roar of cannons... This did not happen on Palace Square on January 9, 1905, but it happened quite recently in Hungary, where in 1956 Soviet troops “restored order”, suppressing the impulse of the Hungarian people towards freedom. And the content of the symphony, as always with Shostakovich, turned out to be - was it unconscious? - much broader than the announced official program and, as always, deeply modern (in particular, one of the most interesting researchers of the great composer’s work, Genrikh Orlov, writes about this).

The four movements of the symphony follow one after another without interruption, each with a programmatic subtitle. The first part is “Palace Square”. The sound picture created by Shostakovich is amazingly impressive. This is a dead and soulless, government city. But this is not only Palace Square, as the program tells the listener. This is an entire huge country where freedom is stifled, life and thought are oppressed, human dignity is trampled. The second part is “The Ninth of January”. The music depicts a popular procession, prayers, lamentations, a terrible massacre... The third part - “Eternal Memory” - a requiem for the dead. The finale - “Alarm” - is a picture of popular anger. For the first time in a symphony, Shostakovich makes extensive use of quotation material, building on it a monumental symphonic canvas. It is based on revolutionary songs.

Music

First part is based on the songs “Listen” and “Prisoner”, which in the process of development are perceived as the main and secondary themes of the sonata form. However, the sonata here is conditional. Researchers find in the first part features of a concentric shape (A - B - C - B - A). In terms of its role within the cycle, it is a prologue that creates the setting of the scene of action. Even before the song's theme appears, the shackled, ominously numbing sounds create an image of suppression, of life under oppression. Against the unsteady background one can hear either church chants or dull bell strikes. Through this deathly music the melody of the song “Listen!” breaks through. (Like the matter of treason, like the conscience of a tyrant / The autumn night is dark. / Darker than that night, a prison rises from the fog / A dark vision.) It passes several times, is split up, divided into separate short motives, according to the laws of development of the composer’s own symphonic themes. It is replaced by the melody of the song “Prisoner” (The night is dark, seize the minutes). Both themes are pursued repeatedly, but everything is subordinated to the original image - suppression, oppression.

Second part becomes a battlefield. Its two main themes are melodies from choral poems written by Shostakovich several earlier on the texts of revolutionary poets - “January 9” (Goy, you, Tsar, our Father!) and the harsh, choral chant “Bare your heads!” The movement consists of two sharply contrasting episodes, vivid in their concrete visibility - the “procession scene” and the “execution scene” (as they are usually called in the literature about this symphony).

The third part- “Eternal Memory” - slow, mournful, begins with the song “You have fallen as a victim” in the stern, measured rhythm of a funeral procession, in a particularly expressive timbre of violas with mutes. Then the melodies of the songs “Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal” and “Bravely, comrades, keep up” sound. In the middle section of the complex three-part form, the lighter theme “Hello, free speech” appears. A wide movement leads to a climax, at which the “Bare your heads” motif from the previous movement appears, like an appeal. There is a turning point in development, which leads to a swift finale, like a hurricane sweeping away everything.

Fourth part- “Alarm”, written in free form, begins with the decisive phrase of the song “Rage, tyrants.” Against the background of the stormy movement of strings and woodwinds, sharp drum beats, the melodies of both the first song and the next one rush by - “Boldly, comrades, in step.” The climax is reached, at which, as in the previous part, the motive “Bare your heads” sounds. The middle section is dominated by “Varshavyanka”, which is joined by a festive, bright melody from Sviridov’s operetta “Ogonki”, intonationally akin to the themes of “Varshavyanka” and “Boldly, comrades, in step”. In the coda of the finale, powerful sounds of the alarm bell bring to the surface the theme “Hey, you, king, our father!” and “Bare your heads!”, sounding menacing and affirming.

Symphony No. 12

Symphony No. 12, D minor, op. 112, "1917" (1961)

Orchestra composition: 3 flutes, piccolo flute, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, strings.

History of creation

On September 29, 1960, speaking in the radio magazine “Musical Life of the Russian Federation,” Shostakovich spoke about his new symphony, which is dedicated to the image of Lenin. According to the composer, her idea arose many years ago. Back in the 1930s, newspaper reports appeared that Shostakovich was working on the Lenin Symphony. It was supposed to use Mayakovsky's poems. But then, instead of this programmatic one, the Sixth appeared.

The brilliant composer was completely sincere. He was a man of his time, a hereditary intellectual, brought up on the ideas of freedom, equality, and brotherhood of all people. The slogans proclaimed by the communists could not help but attract him. In those years, the name of Lenin was not yet associated with the crimes of the authorities - they were explained precisely by deviations from the Leninist line, by the “cult of personality” of Stalin. And Shostakovich, perhaps, really sought to embody the image of the “leader of the world proletariat.” But... the work did not work out. It is indicative how much the artistic nature manifested itself, in addition to conscious aspirations: for Shostakovich, an unsurpassed master of form, who was able to create canvases of colossal length that never left the listener indifferent for a moment, this symphony seems drawn out. But it is one of the shortest by the composer. It was as if the usual brilliant mastery of his art had betrayed the Master here. The superficiality of the music is also obvious. It is not for nothing that the work seemed cinematic to many, that is, illustrative. One must think that the composer himself understood that the symphony did not turn out to be fully “Leninist,” that is, embodying precisely this image as it was presented by official propaganda. That’s why its name is not “Lenin”, but “1917”.

In the mid-90s, after the fall of the communist regime, other points of view on the Twelfth Symphony emerged. Thus, the Japanese researcher of Shostakovich’s work Fumigo Hitotsunayagi believes that one of the leading motifs of the symphony contains the initials of I.V. Stalin. Composer Gennady Banshchikov points out that “several consecutive codes, absolutely identical in meaning, but different in music, in the finale of the symphony are unforgettable endless party congresses. This is how I explain dramaturgy to myself.<…>because otherwise it is absolutely impossible to understand her. Because for normal logic this is complete absurdity.”

The symphony was completed in 1961 and was first performed on October 15 of the same year in Moscow under the baton of K. Ivanov.

Music

The four movements of the symphony have programmatic subtitles.

First part- “Revolutionary Petrograd” - begins solemnly and sternly. After a short introduction, a sonata allegro full of raging energy follows. The main part is written in the character of a dynamic, energetic march, the side chant is light. Motifs of revolutionary songs are being developed. The conclusion of the movement echoes the beginning - the majestic chords of the introduction appear again. The sonority gradually subsides, silence and concentration sets in.

Second part- “Spill” - a musical landscape. The calm, unhurried movement of the low strings leads to the appearance of a melody-monologue of the violins. The solo clarinet brings new colors. In the middle section of the movement (its form combines the signs of a complex tripartite and variations), light melodies of flute and clarinet appear, giving a touch of pastoralism. Gradually the color thickens. The climax of the movement is the trombone solo.

The third part dedicated to the events of that memorable October night. The dull beats of the timpani sound warily and alarmingly. They are replaced by sharply rhythmic pizzicato strings, sonority increases and decreases again. Thematically, this part is connected with the previous ones: it first uses the motif from the middle section of “Razliv”, then appears in magnification, in the powerful sound of trombones and tuba, which are then joined by other instruments, a side theme of “Revolutionary Petrograd”. The general culmination of the entire symphony is the shot of “Aurora” - a thunderous drum solo. In the reprise of the three-part form, both of these themes are heard simultaneously.

Finale of the symphony- “The Dawn of Humanity.” Its form, free and not amenable to unambiguous interpretation, is considered by some researchers as double variations with a coda. The main theme, a solemn fanfare, is reminiscent of similar melodies from films with Shostakovich’s music, such as “The Fall of Berlin,” glorifying the victory, the leader. The second theme is waltz-like, in the transparent sound of the strings, recalling the fragile images of youth. But its outline is close to one of the themes of “Spill,” which creates figurative unity. The symphony ends with a victorious apotheosis.

M. Sabinina considers the entire cycle as a gigantically expanded three-part form, where the middle, contrasting section is “Spill,” and the third part serves as a link leading to the reprise and coda in “The Dawn of Humanity.”

Symphony No. 13

Symphony No. 13, B-flat minor, op. 113 (1962)

Performers: 2 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets, piccolo clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, castanets, tambourine , wooden block, snare drum, whip, cymbals, bass drum, tom-tom, bells, bells, xylophone, 4 harps, grand piano, strings (including five-string double basses); voices: bass solo, bass choir.

History of creation

In the mid-50s, dramatic changes occurred in the USSR. At the XX and XXII Congresses of the ruling Communist Party, the personality cult of Stalin, the tyrant who held a huge country in numb fear for several decades, was officially condemned. A period began which, according to the apt symbolic title of I. Ehrenburg’s story, began to be called the Thaw. The creative intelligentsia embraced this time with enthusiasm. It seemed that it was finally possible to write about everything that hurt, that got in the way of life. And general denunciation also interfered: they said that if three people gather, one of them will certainly turn out to be a seksot - a secret employee of the Soviet secret police; and the position of women who were “liberated” to such an extent that they found themselves employed in the most difficult jobs - in the fields, in road construction, at machines, and after a hard day of work they had to stand in endless queues at stores to get something to feed family. And another sore point is anti-Semitism, which was state policy in the last years of Stalin’s life. All this could not help but worry Shostakovich, who always responded very keenly to the events of the time.

The idea for the symphony dates back to the spring of 1962. The composer was attracted by the poems of Evg. Yevtushenko, dedicated to the tragedy of Babyn Yar. This was in September 1941. Fascist troops occupied Kyiv. A few days later, under the pretext of evacuation, all the Jews of the city were gathered on its outskirts, near a huge ravine called Babi Yar. On the first day, thirty thousand people were shot. The rest waited their turn. For several days in a row, nearby residents heard machine-gun fire. Two years later, when the time came to retreat from the captured land, the Nazis began feverishly destroying traces of the crime. Huge ditches were dug in the ravine, where corpses were dumped in stacks, several rows at a time. Bulldozers were working, hundreds of prisoners were building huge ovens where the corpses were burned. The prisoners knew that then their turn would come: what they saw was too terrible for them to be allowed to survive. Some decided on a desperately daring escape. Of the several hundred people, four or five managed to escape. They told the world about the horrors of Babyn Yar. Yevtushenko's poems are about this.

Initially, the composer intended to write a vocal-symphonic poem. Then the decision came to expand the scope of the work to a five-movement symphony. The following parts, also written on Yevtushenko’s poems, are “Humor”, “In the Store”, “Fears” and “Career”. For the first time in a symphony, the composer sought to express his idea absolutely specifically, not only with music, but also with words. The symphony was created in the summer of 1962. Its first performance took place in Moscow on December 18, 1962 under the baton of Kirill Kondrashin.

Further fate The symphony was difficult to develop. Times were changing, the peak of the “thaw” was already behind us. The authorities thought that they had given too much freedom to the people. The creeping restoration of Stalinism began, and state anti-Semitism was revived. And of course, the first part caused the displeasure of high officials. Shostakovich was asked to replace some of the most powerful lines of Babi Yar. So, instead of lines

It seems to me that now I am a Jew,
Here I am wandering through ancient Egypt,
But here I am on the cross, crucified, dying,
And I still have nail marks on me...

the poet had to offer others, much “softer”:

I’m standing here, as if at a spring,
Giving me faith in our brotherhood.
Here Russians and Ukrainians lie,
They lie with the Jews in the same land...

Another sharp spot was also replaced. Instead of lines

And I myself am like a continuous silent scream
Over thousands of thousands buried,
I am every old man here who was shot,
I am every executed child here...

the following appeared:

I think about the feat of Russia,
Fascism has blocked the way.
Until the tiniest drop of dew
Close to me with all my essence and destiny.

But despite these changes, the symphony continued to arouse suspicion from the authorities. For many years after the premiere it was not allowed to be performed. Only in our time has the unspoken ban lost its force.

Music

First part- “Babi Yar” is full of tragedy. This is a requiem for the dead. The mournful sounds in it are replaced by a wide chant, deep sadness is combined with pathos. The main theme-symbol is repeated again and again at the “junctions” of episodes, when the narrator’s narration gives way to showing vivid concrete pictures: the massacre of Dreyfus, the boy in Bialystok, Anne Frank... The musical narrative unfolds in accordance with the logic of the poetic text. The usual patterns of symphonic thinking are combined with vocal and operatic ones. The features of the sonata form can be traced, but implicitly - they are in the wave-like development, in the contrasts of the exposition of images and a certain, relatively speaking, developmental section (some researchers interpret the first movement as a rondo with three contrasting episodes). The striking result of the part is the accented words underlined by music:

There is no Jewish blood in my blood,
But hated with calloused malice
I am like a Jew to all anti-Semites,
And that’s why I’m a real Russian!

Second part- “Humor” is mocking, full of ebullient energy. This is the praise of humor, the flagellant of human vices. The images of Till Eulenspiegel, Russian buffoons, and Hadji Nasreddin come to life in it.

A somewhat ponderous scherzo, grotesqueness, sarcasm, and buffoonery dominates. Shostakovich's mastery of orchestration is revealed in all its brilliance: the solemn chords of tutti - and the "smirking" melody of the piccolo clarinet, the capriciously broken melody of the solo violin - and the ominous unison of the bass male choir and tuba; an ostinato motif of a cor anglais with a harp, creating a “horny” background on which the woodwinds imitate a whole orchestra of pipes - a folk buffoon scene. The middle episode (in part the features of a rondo sonata can be traced) is based on the music of the romance “MacPherson before his execution” with a menacing procession to the place of execution, the ominous rhythm of timpani, military signals of brass instruments, tremolos and trills of wood and strings. All this leaves no doubt about what kind of humor we are talking about. But true folk humor cannot be killed: the carefree motive of flutes and clarinets seems to slip out from under a terrifying oppression and remain undefeated.

The third part, dedicated to Russian women, is a classic slow movement of the symphony with a slowly unfolding melody, concentrated, full of nobility, and sometimes even pathetic. It consists of vocal-instrumental monologues with free development, depending on the logic of the poetic text (M. Sabinina also finds in it the features of a rondo). The main character of the sound is enlightened, lyrical, with a predominance of violin timbre. Sometimes an image of a procession appears, which is framed by the dry sounds of castanets and a whip.

Fourth part again slow, with features of a rondo and varied couplets. It’s as if Shostakovich’s usual lyrical-philosophical state “stratified.” Here, in “Fears,” there is depth of thought, concentration. The beginning is in unsteady sonority, where the dull tremolo of the timpani is superimposed on the low, barely audible notes of the strings. In the peculiar hoarse timbre of the tuba, an angular theme appears - a symbol of fear lurking in the shadows. She is answered by the psalmody of the choir: “Fears are dying in Russia...” Accompanied by the choir, in instrumental episodes - pathetic melodies of the horn, alarming trumpet fanfares, rustling strings. The character of the music gradually changes - the gloomy scenes go away, and a bright melody of violas appears, reminiscent of a cheerful marching song.

Finale of the symphony- “Career” is a lyrical-comedy rondo. It tells about career knights and true knights. The vocal stanzas sound humorous, and the instrumental episodes alternating with them are full of lyricism, grace, and sometimes pastoral. The lyrical melody flows widely throughout the coda. The crystal tints of the celesta ring, the bells vibrate, as if bright, inviting distances are opening up.

Symphony No. 14

Symphony No. 14, op. 135 (1969)

Performers: castanets, wooden block, 3 tomtoms (soprano, alto, tenor), whips, bells, vibraphone, xylophone, celesta, strings; soprano solo, bass solo.

History of creation

Shostakovich had long thought about questions of life and death, the meaning of human existence and its inevitable end - even in those years when he was young and full of strength. So in 1969 he turned to the topic of death. Not just the end of life, but a violent, premature, tragic death.

In February 1944, having received news of the sudden, in the prime of life, death of his closest friend I. Sollertinsky, the composer wrote to his widow: “Ivan Ivanovich and I talked about everything. They also talked about the inevitable that awaits us at the end of life, that is, death. We were both afraid of her and didn't want her. We loved life, but we knew that... we would have to part with it..."

Then, in the terrible thirties, they certainly talked about premature death. After all, at the same time, they gave their word to take care of their relatives - not only children and wives, but also mothers. Death walked nearby all the time, carried away loved ones and friends, could knock on their houses... Perhaps in the part of the symphony “Oh, Delvig, Delvig”, the only one where we are not talking about violence, but still so premature, unfair to talent death, Shostakovich remembers his untimely departed friend, the thought of whom, according to the testimony of the composer’s relatives, did not leave him until the last hour. “Oh, Delvig, Delvig, it’s so early...” “Talent has its delight among villains and fools...” - these words echo Shakespeare’s memorable 66th sonnet, dedicated to his beloved friend. But the conclusion now sounds brighter: “So our union, free, joyful and proud, will not die...”

The symphony was created in the hospital. The composer spent more than a month there, from January 13 to February 22. This was a “planned event” - the composer’s health condition required a periodically repeated course of treatment in a hospital, and Shostakovich went there calmly, stocking up with everything he needed - music paper, notebooks, a writing stand. I worked well and calmly in solitude. After being discharged from the hospital, the composer handed over the completely finished symphony for correspondence and study. The premiere took place in Leningrad on September 29, 1969 and was repeated in Moscow on October 6. The performers were G. Vishnevskaya, M. Reshetin and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra conducted by R. Barshai. Shostakovich dedicated the fourteenth symphony to B. Britten.

This is an amazing symphony - for soprano, bass and chamber orchestra based on poems by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker and Rainer Maria Rilke. Eleven movements - eleven scenes in the symphony: a rich, multifaceted and changeable world. Sultry Andalusia, tavern; a lonely rock in a bend of the Rhine; French prison cell; Pushkin's Petersburg; trenches over which bullets whistle... The heroes are just as diverse - Lorelei, the bishop, knights, a suicide, the Cossacks, a woman who has lost her lover, a prisoner, Death. The general mood of the music is mournful, ranging from restrained and focused to frantically, frantically tragic. Its essence is a protest against everything that breaks human destinies, souls, lives, against oppression and tyranny.

Music

The parts of the symphony follow one after another almost without interruption; they are connected by the logic of musical dramaturgy, connecting different poets, poems that differ sharply in theme, genre, and style.

The monologue “One hundred ardent lovers fell asleep in an age-old sleep” (De profundis) is lyrical and philosophical, with a lonely-sounding sad melody of violins in a high register - a kind of slow introduction to a sonata allegro.

It is opposed by the tragic dance “Malagueña”, hard, fast, with atonal harmonies. It is scherzosen, but this is only the second episode of the introduction, leading to a movement that can be considered an analogue of a sonata allegro.

It is “Lorelei” - a romantic ballad about the clash of beauty with fanaticism. The most acute conflict arises between the images of a beautiful, pure girl and a cruel bishop with his implacable guards. Beginning with the blows of a whip, the ballad includes a stormy dialogue between the bishop and Lorelei (the main part), and then - her lyrical statement (the side part), then - her condemnation, exile, fall into the waves of the Rhine - filled with drama, effective, including expressive arioso, and whirlwind five-voice fugato, and sound-depicting moments.

The mournful elegy “Suicide” is an analogue of the slow movement of the symphony, its lyrical center. This is a deeply emotional statement in which the vocal element comes to the fore. The orchestra only emphasizes the most expressive moments with the brightness of its colors. The unity of the symphonic cycle is emphasized by the similarity of the intonations of this movement with the melody of the initial section of the symphony and the figurative world of Lorelei.

The harsh grotesque march “On the Lookout” develops the darkly militant moments of “Lorelei”, echoes “Malagena”, being both in character and in meaning a scherzo symphony. In its rhythm there are clear associations with those characteristic themes of Shostakovich, the pinnacle of which was the theme of invasion from the Seventh Symphony. “This is a lively military tune, a march of “good soldiers”, and a procession and onslaught of a deadly force that plays with a person like a cat with a mouse” (M. Sabinina).

The sixth part is a bitterly ironic and sad duet “Madam, look, you have lost something. “Oh, nonsense, this is my heart...” - transition to the development of the symphony, which takes place in the following parts - “In Sante’s Prison” - the prisoner’s monologue, detailed, musically and emotionally rich, but tragically hopeless, leading to the climax - “Response of the Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan,” full of sarcasm, anger, bitterness and merciless ridicule. It is dominated by unbridled, almost spontaneous movement, harsh, chopped motifs, vocal recitation, internally excited, but not turning into genuine singing. In the orchestral interlude, a dance rhythm appears, evoking associations with “Humor” from the Thirteenth Symphony.

The artist's palette changes dramatically in the following parts. “Oh, Delvig, Delvig” is beautiful, sublimely noble music. It is somewhat stylized, absolutely devoid of an ironic attitude towards Kuchelbecker’s poems, which stand out in style from all the poetic material of the symphony. Rather, it is a longing for an irretrievably departed ideal, forever lost harmony. The melody, close to Russian romances, in their usual verse form, is at the same time free, fluid, and changeable. Unlike other parts, it is accompanied by accompaniment, and not by an independent orchestral part, figuratively independent of the text and voice. This is how the semantic center of the symphony, prepared by the previous symphonic development, is embodied - the affirmation of a high ethical principle.

“The Death of a Poet” plays the role of a reprise, a thematic and constructive return to the initial images of the symphony. It synthesizes the main thematic elements - the instrumental turns of “De profundis”, which also appear in the middle parts of the symphony, chanting recitatives from the same place, and the expressive intonations of the fourth movement.

The last part is “Conclusion” (Death is omnipotent) - an afterword that completes the moving poem about life and death, the symphonic coda of the work. A marching clear rhythm, dry beats of castanets and tomtoms, fragmented, intermittent vocal - not a line - a dotted line begin it. But then the colors change - a sublime chorale sounds, the vocal part unfolds like an endless ribbon. The code returns a hard march. The music fades away gradually, as if receding into the distance, allowing one to glimpse the majestic building of the symphony.

Symphony No. 15

Symphony No. 15, op. 141(1971)

Orchestra composition: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, castanets, wooden block, whip, tomtom (soprano), military drum, cymbals , bass drum, tom-tom, bells, celesta, xylophone, vibraphone, strings.

History of creation

After the premiere of the Fourteenth Symphony in the fall of 1969, 1970 began quite stormily for Shostakovich: on January 4, the Eighth Symphony, one of the most difficult, was performed. This was always associated with great anxiety for the composer. Then it was necessary to travel from Moscow to Leningrad several times - at Lenfilm, director Kozintsev, whose collaboration began in the 20s, worked on the film “King Lear”. Shostakovich wrote music for it. At the end of February, I had to fly to Kurgan - the city where the country-famous doctor Ilizarov worked, who treated the composer. Shostakovich spent more than three months in his hospital - until June 9. The Thirteenth Quartet was written there, similar in figurative structure to the recently created symphony. In the summer, the composer was forced to live in Moscow, as the next Tchaikovsky competition was underway, which he traditionally chaired. In the fall, he again had to undergo treatment with Ilizarov, and only at the beginning of November Shostakovich returned home. Even this year, a cycle of ballads “Fidelity” appeared on the verses of E. Dolmatovsky for an unaccompanied male choir - these were the creative results of the year, overshadowed, like all recent ones, by constant ill health. The next year, 1971, the Fifteenth Symphony appeared - the result of the creative path of the great symphonist of our days.

Shostakovich wrote it in July 1971 in the Repino House of Composers' Creativity near Leningrad - his favorite place where he always worked especially well. Here he felt at home, in the climate familiar from childhood.

In Repin, in just one month, a symphony appeared, which was destined to become the result of Shostakovich’s entire symphonic work.

The symphony is distinguished by its strict classicism, clarity, and balance. This is a story about eternal, enduring values, and at the same time - about the most intimate, deeply personal. The composer refuses in it programmaticity, from the introduction of words. Again, as was the case from Fourth to Tenth, the content of the music is, as it were, encrypted. Once again, she is most associated with Mahler's paintings.

Music

First part the composer called it “Toy Store”. Toys... Maybe puppets? The fanfare and roll of the beginning of the first movement are like before the start of the performance. Here flashed a side theme from the Ninth (subtly similar to the “invasion theme” of the Seventh!), then a melody from the piano prelude, about which Sofronitsky once said: “What soulful vulgarity!” Thus, the figurative world of the sonata allegro is quite clearly characterized. Rossini's melody - a fragment of the overture to the opera "William Tell" - is organically included in the musical fabric.

Second part opens with mournful chords and mournful sounds. The cello solo is a melody of amazing beauty, covering a colossal range. The brass choir sounds like a funeral march. The trombone, as in Berlioz's Funeral and Triumphal Symphony, performs a mournful solo. What are they burying? era? ideals? illusion?.. The march reaches a gigantic gloomy climax. And after it - wariness, concealment...

The third part- a return to the puppet theater, to the given, schematic thoughts and feelings.

Mysterious the final, opening with the doom leitmotif from Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. After the typical Shostakovich lyrical theme, as if enlightened by suffering, after the no less characteristic pastoral theme, the passacaglia unfolds. Its theme, running through the pizzicato cellos and double basses, is reminiscent of both the invasion theme and the passacaglia theme from the First Violin Concerto. (A thought arises: perhaps for the composer the strict, verified form of the passacaglia with its unchanging, steady repetition of the same melody, the form to which he turned so many times on his creative path, is a symbol of the “cage” in which he is enclosed in a totalitarian state, the human spirit? A symbol of the lack of freedom from which everyone suffered in the USSR - and the creator more than others? Is it not by chance that the melodies of these passacaglias, the symbolism of which is so exposed in the Seventh, are close?) The tension increases more and more with each performance of the melody, the passacaglia reaches a colossal level. climax. And - recession. Lightweight dance theme completes the symphony, the last bars of which are the dry clatter of a xylophone and tomtom.

Creativity D.D. Shostakovich

Shostakovich composer musical artistic

Nature endowed Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich with a character of extraordinary purity and responsiveness. The principles - creative, spiritual and moral - merged in rare harmony. The image of man coincided with the image of the creator. That painful contradiction between everyday life and the moral ideal, which Leo Tolstoy could not resolve, Shostakovich brought into unity not with declarations, but with the very experience of his life, becoming a moral beacon of effective humanism, illuminating the 20th century with an example of serving people.

He was led along the composer's path by a constant, unquenchable thirst for comprehensive coverage and renewal. Having expanded the scope of music, he introduced many new figurative layers into it, conveyed the struggle of man against evil, terrible, soulless, grandiose, thus “solving the most pressing artistic problem posed by our time. But, having solved it, he pushed the boundaries of musical art itself and created a new type of artistic thinking in the field of instrumental forms, which influenced composers different styles and capable of serving to embody not only the content that is expressed in the corresponding works of Shostakovich." Reminiscent of Mozart, who mastered both instrumental and vocal music with equal confidence, bringing their specificities closer together, he returned music to universalism.

Shostakovich's creativity embraced all forms and genres of music, combining traditional foundations with innovative discoveries. An astute connoisseur of everything that existed and appeared in the composer's work, he showed wisdom without submitting to the showiness of formal innovations. Presentation of music as an organic part of diversity artistic process allowed Shostakovich to understand the fruitfulness of modern stage combinations of different principles of compositional technique, different means of expression. Leaving nothing unattended, he found a natural place for everything in his individual creative arsenal, creating a unique Shostakovich style, in which the organization of sound material is dictated by the living process of intonation, living intonational content. He freely and boldly expanded the boundaries of the tonal system, but did not abandon it: this is how Shostakovich’s synthetic modal thinking arose and developed, his flexible modal structures corresponding to the richness of figurative content. Adhering primarily to the melodic-polyphonic style of music, he discovered and strengthened many new facets of melodic expressiveness, and became the founder of melodies of exceptional power of influence, corresponding to the extreme emotional temperature of the century. With the same courage, Shostakovich expanded the range of timbre coloring and timbre intonations, enriched the types of musical rhythm, bringing it as close as possible to the rhythm of speech and Russian folk music. A truly national composer in his perception of life, creative psychology, in many features of style, in his work, thanks to the richness, depth of content and huge range of intonation, he went beyond national borders, becoming a phenomenon of universal culture.

Shostakovich had the happiness during his lifetime to experience world fame, to hear the definition of a genius about himself, to become a recognized classic, along with Mozart, Beethoven, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky. This was firmly established in the sixties and sounded especially powerful in 1966, when the composer’s sixtieth birthday was celebrated everywhere and solemnly.

By that time, the literature on Shostakovich was quite extensive, containing monographs with biographical information, but the theoretical aspect decisively prevailed. The developing new field of musicology was affected by the lack of proper chronological distance, which helps objective historical development, and the underestimation of the influence of biographical factors on the work of Shostakovich, as well as on the work of other figures of Soviet culture.

All this prompted Shostakovich's contemporaries, even during his lifetime, to raise the question of the overdue multilateral, generalizing, documentary study. D.B. Kabalevsky pointed out: “How I would like a book to be written about Shostakovich... in which he would stand before the reader in full height creative person Shostakovich, so that no musical-analytical studies obscure in it the spiritual world of the composer, born of the polysyllabic 20th century." E.A. wrote about the same thing. Mravinsky: “Descendants will envy us that we lived at the same time as the author of the Eighth Symphony and could meet and talk with him. And they will probably complain at us for the fact that we were unable to record and preserve for the future many little things that characterize it, to see in the everyday what is unique and therefore especially dear ... " . Later V.S. Vinogradov, L.A. Mazel put forward the idea of ​​​​creating a comprehensive generalized work on Shostakovich as a task of paramount importance. It was clear that its complexity, volume, and specificity, due to the scale and greatness of Shostakovich’s personality and work, would require the efforts of many generations of musician-researchers.

The author of this monograph began his work by studying Shostakovich’s pianism - the result was the essay “Shostakovich the Pianist” (1964), followed by articles about the revolutionary traditions of his family, published in 1966-1967 in the Polish magazine “Rukh Muzychny” and the Leningrad press, documentaries essays in the books “Musicians about their art” (1967), “On music and musicians of our days” (1976), in periodicals of the USSR, GDR, Poland. At the same time, as accompanying books that summarized the material from different angles, “Stories about Shostakovich” (1976) and the local history study “Shostakovich in Petrograd-Leningrad” (1979, 2nd ed. - 1981) were published.

Such preparation helped to write a four-volume history of the life and work of D.D. Shostakovich, published in 1975-1982, consisting of the duology “The Young Years of Shostakovich”, the books “D.D. Shostakovich during the Great Patriotic War" and "Shostakovich. Thirty anniversary. 1945-1975".

Most of the research was created during the composer’s lifetime, with his help, expressed in the fact that in a special letter he authorized the use of all archival materials about him and asked for assistance in this work, in conversations and in writing he explained the questions that arose; Having familiarized himself with the dilogy in the manuscript, he gave permission for publication, and shortly before his death, in April 1975, when the first volume was published, he expressed his approval for this publication in writing.

In historical science, the most important factor determining the novelty of research is considered to be the saturation of documentary sources introduced into circulation for the first time.

The monograph was mainly based on them. In relation to Shostakovich, these sources seem truly immense; in their cohesion and gradual development, a special eloquence, strength, and evidence are revealed.

As a result of many years of research, it was possible to examine more than four thousand documents, including archival materials about the revolutionary activities of his ancestors, their connections with the Ulyanov and Chernyshevsky families, the official files of the composer’s father, D.B. Shostakovich, diaries of M.O. Steinberg, who recorded the training of D.D. Shostakovich, recordings by N.A. Malko about rehearsals and premieres of the First and Second Symphonies, an open letter to I.O. Dunaevsky about the Fifth Symphony, etc. For the first time, those associated with D.D. were fully studied and used. Shostakovich funds of special archives of art: the Central State Archive of Literature and Art - TsGALI (funds of D. D. Shostakovich, V. E. Meyerhold, M. M. Tsekhanovsky, V. Ya. Shebalin, etc.), State Central Museum of Musical Culture named after M.I. Glinka-GCMMC (funds of D.D. Shostakovich, V.L. Kubatsky, L.V. Nikolaev, G.A. Stolyarov, B.L. Yavorsky, etc.). Leningrad State Archive of Literature and Art - LGALI (funds of the State Research Institute of Theater and Music, Lenfnlm film studio, Leningrad Philharmonic, opera houses, conservatory, Department of Arts of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, Leningrad organization of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR, Drama Theater named after A. S. Pushkin), archives of the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR, Leningrad Theater Museum, Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography - LGITMiK. (funds of V. M., Bogdanov-Berezovsky, N. A. Malko, M. O. Steinberg), Leningrad Conservatory-LGK. Materials on the topic were provided by the Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee (information about the Shaposhnikov brothers from the funds of I.N., Ulyanov), the Institute of Party History under the Moscow State Committee and the Moscow Committee of the CPSU (personal file of CPSU member D.D. Shostakovich), the Central State Archive of the October Revolution and Socialist Construction - TsGAOR, Central State Historical Archive - TsGIA, Institute of Metrology named after D.I. Mendeleev, N.G. Museum Chernyshevsky in Saratov, Museum of the History of Leningrad, Library of Leningrad University, Museum “The Muses Were Not Silent”.

Shostakovich's life is a process of continuous creativity, which reflected not only the events of the time, but also the character and psychology of the composer. The introduction into the orbit of research of a rich and diverse music-autographic complex - autographs of final, secondary, dedicatory, sketches - expanded the understanding of the composer’s creative spectrum (for example, his quest in the field of historical-revolutionary opera, interest in Russian fair theater), about the incentives for creating of one or another work, revealed a number of psychological features of Shostakovich’s composer’s “laboratory” (the place and essence of the “emergency” method during long-term gestation of a plan, the difference in methods of working on autonomous and applied genres, the effectiveness of short-term sharp genre switches in the process of creating monumental forms, sudden invasions in them according to the emotional contrast of chamber works, fragments, etc.).

The study of autographs led to the introduction of unknown pages of creativity not only through analysis in a monograph, but also through publication, recording on records, editing and writing the libretto of the opera scenes “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda” (staged at the Leningrad Academic Maly Opera Theater and ballet), creation and performance of the piano suite of the same name, participation in the performance of unknown works, adaptations. Only the diverse coverage, delving into the sweaty documents “from the inside”, the combination of research and practical action illuminates Shostakovich’s personality in all its manifestations.

Consideration of the life and activities of an individual who has become ethical, social phenomenon era, which had no equal in the 20th century in terms of the versatility of the spheres of music it covered, could not but lead to the solution of some methodological issues of the biographical genre in musicology. They also touched upon the methods of search, organization, use of sources, and the very content of the genre, bringing it closer to the unique synthetic genre that is successfully developing in literary criticism, sometimes called “biography-creativity.” Its essence is comprehensive analysis all aspects of an artist's life. For this, it is the biography of Shostakovich, who combined creative genius with the beauty of his personality, that provides the greatest opportunities. It presents science with large layers of facts that were previously considered non-research, everyday, and reveals the inseparability of everyday attitudes and creative ones. It shows that the tendency of inter-genre connections, characteristic of modern music, can be fruitful for literature about it, stimulating its growth not only towards specialization, but also complex works that consider life as creativity, a process unfolding in a historical perspective, step by step, with a holistic panoramic coverage of the phenomenon. It seems that this type of research is in the traditions of Shostakovich himself, who did not divide genres into high and low and, transforming genres, merged their signs and techniques.

Studying the biography and creativity of Shostakovich in a unified system, the inseparability of the composer from Soviet music, as its truly innovative avant-garde, require the use of data, and in some cases, research techniques of historical science, musical psychology, source studies, film studies, the science of musical performance, a combination of general historical, textual, musical and analytical aspects. The elucidation of complex correlations between personality and creativity, supported by an analysis of documentary sources, should be based on a holistic analysis of the works, and taking into account the extensive experience of theoretical works on Shostakovich, using their achievements, the monograph attempts to establish by what parameters it is advisable to develop general characteristics for historical biographical narrative. Based on both factual and musical-autographic material, they include the history of the conception and creation of the work, the features of the process of working on it, the figurative structure, the first interpretations and further existence, the place in the evolution of the creator. All this constitutes the “biography” of the work - an inseparable part of the composer’s biography.

At the center of the monograph is the problem of “personality and creativity,” considered more broadly than this or that reflection of the artist’s biography in his works. The point of view on creativity as a direct biographical source and the recognition of seemingly two independent biographies - everyday and creative - seem equally erroneous. Materials from the activities of Shostakovich as a creator, teacher, head of the composer organization of the RSFSR, deputy of the Soviets of People's Deputies, revealing many psychological and ethical personality traits, show that the definition of the line of creativity has always become the definition of the line of life: Shostakovich elevated the ideals of life to the ideals of art. The internal relationship between the socio-political, aesthetic and moral-ethical principles in his life, creativity and personality was organic. He never defended himself from time, nor did he abandon self-preservation for the sake of everyday joys. The type of person, of which Shostakovich was the brightest personification, was born of the youth of the time, the spirit of revolution. The core that cements all aspects of Shostakovich’s biography is an ethics close to the ethics of all who from time immemorial have fought for human perfection, and at the same time conditioned by his personal development and the stable traditions of his family.

The importance of both immediate and more distant family origins in the formation of an artist is known: nature takes the “building material” from ancestors, and complex genetic combinations of genius are formed from centuries-old accumulations. Not always knowing why and how a powerful river suddenly arises from streams, we still know that this river was created by them, contains their contours and signs. The ascendant family of Shostakovich should begin on the paternal side with Peter and Boleslav Shostakovich, Maria Yasinskaya, Varvara Shaposhnikova, on the maternal side with Yakov and Alexandra Kokoulin. They developed the fundamental properties of the race: social sensitivity, the idea of ​​duty to people, sympathy for suffering, hatred of evil. Eleven-year-old Mitya Shostakovich was with those who met V.I. Lenin in Petrograd in April 1917 and listened to his speech. This was not a random eyewitness to the events, but a person belonging to a family associated with the families of N.G. Chernyshevsky, I.N. Ulyanov, with the liberation movement of pre-revolutionary Russia.

The process of education and training of D.D. Shostakovich, the pedagogical image and methods of his teachers A.K. Glazunova, M.O. Steinberg, L.V. Nikolaeva, I.A. Glyasser, A.A. Rozanova introduced the young musician to the traditions of the classical Russian music school and its ethics. Shostakovich began his journey with with open eyes and with an open heart, he knew what to direct himself to when, at the age of twenty, he wrote as an oath: “I will work tirelessly in the field of music, to which I will devote my whole life.”

Subsequently, creative and everyday difficulties more than once became a test of his ethics, his desire to meet the person who is the bearer of goodness and justice. Public recognition of his innovative aspirations was difficult; the materials objectively reveal the crisis moments he experienced, their influence on his appearance and music: the crisis of 1926, differences with Glazunov, Steinberg, discussions in 1936, 1948 with sharp condemnation of the composer’s creative principles.

While maintaining a “reserve” of stamina, Shostakovich did not avoid personal suffering and contradictions. The sharp contrast of his life was reflected in his character - compliant, but also unyielding, his intellect - cold and fiery, in his intransigence with kindness. Over the years, strong feelings - a sign of moral height - were always combined with ever deeper self-control. The unbridled courage of self-expression pushed aside the worries of every day. Music, as the center of being, brought joy and strengthened the will, but, devoting himself to music, he understood the return comprehensively - and ethical purpose, illuminated by the ideal, elevated his personality.

There are no documents preserved anywhere that could accurately record when and how a person’s second spiritual birth took place, but everyone who came into contact with Shostakovich’s life testifies that this happened during the creation of the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, the Fourth and Fifth symphonies: spiritual affirmation was inseparable from creative. There is a chronological boundary here: it is also adopted in the structure of this publication.

It was at that time that life acquired a stable core in clear and firm principles that could no longer be shaken by any trials. The Creator established himself in the main thing: for everything that was given to him - for talent, happiness of childhood, love - for everything he must pay, giving himself to humanity, to the Motherland. The feeling of the Motherland guides creativity, which, by its own definition, seems to be red-hot, elevated by a great sense of patriotism. Life becomes a continuous struggle for humanity. He never tired of repeating: “Love for people, the ideas of humanism have always been the main driving force of art. Only humanistic ideas created works that outlived their creators.” From now on, the will consisted in the ability to always follow the ethics of humanism. All documentary evidence shows how effective his kindness was. Everything that affected the interests of people did not leave people indifferent; wherever possible, he used his influence to raise a person: his readiness to give his time to fellow composers, helping their creativity, the benevolent breadth of good assessments, the ability to see, to find talented. The sense of duty towards each person merged with duty towards society and the struggle for the highest standards of social existence, excluding evil in any guise. Trust in justice gave birth not to humble non-resistance to evil, but to hatred of cruelty, stupidity, and prudence. All his life he straightforwardly resolved the eternal question - what is evil? He persistently returned to this in letters and autobiographical notes, as a personal problem, repeatedly defining the moral content of evil, but did not accept its justifications. The whole picture of his relationships with loved ones, the selection of friends, and those around him were determined by his conviction that duplicity, flattery, envy, arrogance, and indifference are “paralysis of the soul,” in the words of his favorite writer A.P. Chekhov, are incompatible with the appearance of a creator-artist, with true talent. The conclusion is persistent: “All the outstanding musicians with whom I had the good fortune to be acquainted, who gave me their friendship, understood very well the difference between good and evil.”

Shostakovich fought mercilessly against evil - both with the legacy of the past (the operas “The Nose”, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”), and as with the force of reality (the evil of fascism - in the Seventh, Eighth, Thirteenth Symphonies, the evil of careerism, spiritual cowardice, fear - in the Thirteenth Symphony, a lie in the Suite on poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti).

Perceiving the world as a constant drama, the composer exposed the discrepancy between moral categories of real life. Music decides and indicates what is moral every time. Over the years, Shostakovich's ethics manifests itself in his music more and more nakedly, openly, with preaching fervor. A series of essays is being created in which reflection on moral categories predominates. Everything is getting bigger. The need to sum up, which inevitably arises in every person, in Shostakovich becomes a generalization through creativity.

Without false humility, he addressed humanity, comprehending the meaning of earthly existence, raised to enormous heights: the genius spoke to millions.

The tension of passions was replaced by a deepening into the spiritual world of the individual. The highest peak of life has been determined. The man climbed, fell, got tired, got up and walked indomitably. Towards the ideal. And the music seemed to compress the main thing from the experience of life with that laconic, touching truth and simplicity that Boris Pasternak called unheard of.

Since the publication of the first edition of the monograph ended, progress has been made.

A collection of works with reference articles is being published, works that previously remained outside the field of view of performers have entered the concert repertoire and no longer require musicological “protection”, new theoretical works have appeared, articles about Shostakovich are contained in most collections on modern music, after the death of the composer, memoirs have increased literature about him. What was done for the first time and became available to the masses of readers is used in some “secondary” books and articles. There is a general turn towards detailed biographical development.

According to distant legends, the Shostakovich family can be traced back to the time of the Grand Duke Vasily III Vasilyevich, the father of Ivan the Terrible: the embassy sent by the Prince of Lithuania to the ruler of Moscow included Mikhail Shostakovich, who occupied a fairly prominent place at the Lithuanian court. However, his descendant Pyotr Mikhailovich Shostakovich, born in 1808, considered himself a peasant in his documents.

He was an extraordinary person: he was able to get an education, graduate as a volunteer from the Vilna Medical-Surgical Academy with a veterinary specialty, and was expelled for his involvement in the uprising in Poland and Lithuania in 1831.

In the forties of the 19th century, Pyotr Mikhailovich and his wife Maria-Jozefa Yasinskaya ended up in Yekaterinburg (now the city of Sverdlovsk). Here, on January 27, 1845, their son was born, named Boleslav-Arthur (later only the first name was preserved).

In Yekaterinburg P.M. Shostakovich gained some fame as a skilled and diligent veterinarian, rose to the rank of collegiate assessor, but remained poor, always living on the last penny; Boleslav took up tutoring early. The Shostakovichs spent fifteen years in this city. The work of a veterinarian, necessary for every farm, brought Pyotr Mikhailovich closer to the surrounding peasants and free hunters. The family's way of life differed little from the way of life of factory artisans and miners. Boleslav grew up in a simple, working-class environment; he studied at the district school together with the children of workers. The upbringing was harsh: knowledge was sometimes strengthened with rods. Subsequently, in his old age, in his autobiography, entitled “Notes of Neudachin,” Boleslav Shostakovich titled the first section “Rozgi.” This shameful, painful punishment aroused in him a fierce hatred for the humiliation of man for the rest of his life.

In 1858 the family moved to Kazan. Boleslav was assigned to the First Kazan Gymnasium, where he studied for four years. Active, inquisitive, easily absorbing knowledge, a faithful comrade, with strong moral concepts formed early on, he became the leader of the schoolchildren.

The new symphony was conceived in the spring of 1934. A message appeared in the press: Shostakovich plans to create a symphony on the theme of the country's defense.

The topic was relevant. The clouds of fascism were gathering over the world. “We all know that the enemy is stretching out his paw to us, the enemy wants to destroy our gains on the revolutionary front, on the cultural front, of which we are workers, on the construction front and on all the fronts and achievements of our country,” said Shostakovich, speaking to the Leningrad crowd. composers. - There cannot be different points of view on the topic that we need to be vigilant, we need to be on the alert in order to prevent the enemy from destroying the great gains that we have made from the October Revolution to the present day. Our duty, as composers, is that with our creativity we must raise the country’s defense capability, we must, with our works, songs and marches, help the soldiers of the Red Army defend us in the event of an enemy attack, and therefore we need to develop our military work in every possible way.”

To work on a military symphony, the board of the composer's organization sent Shostakovich to Kronstadt, on the cruiser Aurora. On the ship he wrote down sketches of the first part. The proposed symphonic work was included in the concert cycles of the Leningrad Philharmonic during the 1934/35 season.

However, work slowed down. The fragments did not add up. Shostakovich wrote: “This must be a monumental programmatic piece of great thoughts and great passions. And, therefore, great responsibility. I have been carrying her for many years. And yet I still haven’t found its form and “technology”. The sketches and blanks made earlier do not satisfy me. We’ll have to start from the very beginning.”1” In search of the technology for a new monumental symphony, he studied in detail G. Mahler’s Third Symphony, which was already striking with its unusual grandiose form of a six-part cycle with a total duration of one and a half hours. I.I. Sollertinsky associated the first part of the Third Symphony with a gigantic procession, “opening with a relief theme of eight horns in unison, with tragic ups, with escalations brought to climaxes of superhuman strength, with pathetic recitatives of horns or solo trombones...” . This characteristic, apparently, was close to Shostakovich. The extracts he made from G. Mahler's Third Symphony indicate that he paid attention to the features that his friend wrote about.

Soviet symphony

In the winter of 1935, Shostakovich took part in a discussion on Soviet symphonism, which took place in Moscow for three days, from February 4 to 6. This was one of the most significant performances of the young composer, outlining the direction of further work. Frankly, he emphasized the complexity of the problems at the stage of formation of the symphonic genre, the danger of solving them with standard “recipes”, and opposed exaggeration of the merits individual works, criticizing, in particular, the Third and Fifth Symphonies of L.K. Knipper for “chewed language”, wretchedness and primitiveness of style. He boldly asserted that “...Soviet symphony does not exist. We must be modest and admit that we do not yet have musical works that in a detailed form reflect the stylistic, ideological and emotional sections of our life, and reflect them in excellent form... We must admit that in our symphonic music we have only some tendencies towards the formation of a new musical thinking, timid outlines of a future style...”

Shostakovich called for the adoption of the experience and achievements of Soviet literature, where close, similar problems had already found implementation in the works of M. Gorky and other masters of words.

Considering the development of modern artistic creativity, he saw signs of a convergence of the processes of literature and music, which began in Soviet music and a steady movement towards lyrical-psychological symphonism.

For him there was no doubt that the theme and style of his Second and Third Symphonies were a passed stage not only of his own creativity, but also of Soviet symphony as a whole: the metaphorically generalized style had outlived its usefulness. Man as a symbol, a kind of abstraction, left works of art to become an individuality in new works. A deeper understanding of plot was strengthened, without the use of simplified texts of choral episodes in symphonies. The question was raised about the plot nature of “pure” symphonism. “There was a time,” Shostakovich argued, “when it (the question of plotting) was greatly simplified... Now they began to say seriously that it’s not just about the poems, but also about the music.”

Recognizing the limitations of his recent symphonic experiences, the composer advocated expanding the content and stylistic sources of Soviet symphony. To this end, he paid attention to the study of foreign symphonism and insisted on the need for musicology to identify the qualitative differences between Soviet symphonism and Western symphonism. “Of course, there is a qualitative difference, and we feel and feel it. But we do not have a clear concrete analysis in this regard... Unfortunately, we know Western symphonism very poorly.”

Starting from Mahler, he spoke of a lyrical confessional symphony with aspirations into the inner world of a contemporary. “It would be nice to write a new symphony,” he admitted. “It is true that this task is difficult, but this does not mean that it is not feasible.” Trials continued to be made. Sollertinsky, who knew better than anyone about Shostakovich’s plans, during a discussion on Soviet symphony, said: “We await with great interest the appearance of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony” and explained definitely: “... this work will be at a great distance from the three symphonies that Shostakovich wrote earlier. But the symphony is still in an embryonic state...”

Two months after the discussion, in April 1935, the composer announced: “Now I have a great work in line - the Fourth Symphony ... All the former I have musical material for this work I have now rejected it. The symphony is being written anew. Since this is an extremely difficult and responsible task for me, I want to first write several works in chamber and instrumental style.”

In the summer of 1935, Shostakovich was absolutely unable to do anything except countless chamber and symphonic excerpts, which included the music for the film “Girlfriends.”

In the autumn of the same year, he once again began writing the Fourth Symphony, firmly deciding, no matter what difficulties awaited him, to bring the work to completion, to realize the fundamental work that had been promised back in the spring as “a kind of credo of creative work.”

Having started writing the symphony on September 13, 1935, by the end of the year he had completely completed the first and mostly the second parts. He wrote quickly, sometimes even frantically, throwing out entire pages and replacing them with new ones; The handwriting of the keyboard sketches is unstable, fluent: the imagination overtook the recording, the notes were ahead of the pen, flowing like an avalanche onto the paper.

In January 1936, together with the team of the Leningrad Academic Maly opera house Shostakovich went to Moscow, where the theater showed two of its best Soviet productions - “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” and “ Quiet Don" At the same time, Lady Macbeth continued to be performed on the stage of the branch of the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR.

The responses to the Maly Opera Theater's tour that appeared in the press left no doubt about the positive assessment of the opera "Quiet Don" and the negative assessment of the opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", which was the subject of the article "Confusion Instead of Music", published on January 28, 1936. Following it (February 6, 1936), the article “Ballet Falsity” appeared, sharply criticizing the ballet “Bright Stream” and its production at the Bolshoi Theater.

Many years later, summing up the development of Soviet music in the thirties in “The History of Music of the Peoples of the USSR”, Yu.V. Keldysh wrote about these productions and the articles and speeches they provoked: “Despite a number of correct critical comments and considerations of a general principled order, the sharply categorical assessments of creative phenomena contained in these articles were unfounded and unfair.

The articles of 1936 served as a source of a narrow and one-sided understanding of such important fundamental issues of Soviet art as the question of attitude towards the classical heritage, the problem of traditions and innovation. The traditions of musical classics were considered not as a basis for further development, but as a kind of unchangeable standard, beyond which it was impossible to go beyond. Such an approach fettered innovative quests and paralyzed the creative initiative of composers...

These dogmatic attitudes could not stop the growth of Soviet musical art, but they undoubtedly complicated its development, caused a number of collisions, and led to significant shifts in assessments" 1."

The conflicts and biases in the assessment of musical phenomena were evidenced by the heated debates and discussions that unfolded at that time.

The orchestration of the Fifth Symphony is characterized, in comparison with the Fourth, by a greater balance between brass and string instruments, with an advantage in favor of the strings: in Largo there is no brass section at all. Timbre selections are subordinated to significant moments of development, they follow from them, they are dictated by them. From the irrepressible generosity of ballet scores, Shostakovich turned to saving timbres. Orchestral dramaturgy is determined by the general dramatic orientation of the form. Intonation tension is created by a combination of melodic relief and its orchestral framing. The composition of the orchestra itself is also steadily determined. Having gone through various tests (up to the quadruple composition in the Fourth Symphony), Shostakovich now stuck to the triple composition - it was established precisely from the Fifth Symphony. Both in the modal organization of the material and in the orchestration without breaking, within the framework of generally accepted compositions, the composer varied, expanded the timbre possibilities, often through solo voices, the use of piano (it is noteworthy that, having introduced it into the score of the First Symphony, Shostakovich then did without piano for Second, Third, Fourth symphonies and again included it in the score of the Fifth). At the same time, the importance of not only timbral dissection increased, but also timbral unity, the alternation of large timbral layers; in the climactic fragments, the technique of using instruments in the highest expressive registers, without bass or with insignificant bass support (there are many examples of such in the Symphony), prevailed.

Its form signified ordering, systematization of previous implementations, and the achievement of strictly logical monumentality.

Let us note the formative features typical of the Fifth Symphony, which persist and develop in Shostakovich’s further work.

The importance of the epigraph-introduction increases. In the Fourth Symphony it was a harsh, convulsive motive, here it is the harsh, majestic power of the chorus.

In the first part, the role of exposition is highlighted, its volume and emotional integrity are increased, which is also emphasized by the orchestration (the sound of strings in the exposition). The structural boundaries between the main and secondary parties are overcome; it is not so much they that are opposed, but significant sections both in the exposition and in the development." The reprise changes qualitatively, turning into the climax of dramaturgy with the continuation of thematic development: sometimes the theme acquires a new figurative meaning, which leads to a further deepening of the conflict-dramatic features of the cycle.

Development doesn't stop in code either. And here thematic transformations continue, modal transformations of themes, their dynamization by means of orchestration.

In the finale of the Fifth Symphony, the author did not give an active conflict, as in the finale of the previous Symphony. The ending was simplified. “With a great breath, Shostakovich leads us to a dazzling light in which all sorrowful experiences, all tragic conflicts of the difficult previous path disappear” (D. Kabalevsky). The conclusion sounded emphatically positive. “I put a person with all his experiences at the center of the concept of my work,” Shostakovich explained, “and the finale of the Symphony resolves the tragically tense moments of the first movements in a cheerful, optimistic way.” .

Such a ending emphasized classical origins, classical continuity; in its lapidary style the tendency was most clearly manifested: when creating a free type of interpretation of the sonata form, it did not deviate from the classical basis.

In the summer of 1937, preparations began for a decade of Soviet music to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The symphony was included in the decade program. In August, Fritz Stiedri went abroad. M. Shteiman, who replaced him, was not able to present a new complex composition at the proper level. The execution was entrusted to Evgeny Mravinsky. Shostakovich barely knew him: Mravinsky entered the conservatory in 1924, when Shostakovich was in his last year of study; Shostakovich's ballets in Leningrad and Moscow were performed under the baton of A. Gauk, P. Feldt, and Yu. Faier, and the symphonies were staged by N. Malko and A. Gauk. Mravinsky was in the shadows. His individuality was formed slowly: in 1937 he was thirty-four years old, but he did not often appear at the Philharmonic console. Closed, doubting his abilities, this time he accepted the offer to present Shostakovich’s new symphony to the public without hesitation. Remembering his unusual determination, the conductor himself could not explain it psychologically.

“I still can’t understand,” he wrote in 1966, “how I dared to accept such an offer without much hesitation and reflection. If they did it for me now, I would think for a long time, doubt and, perhaps, in the end I would not make up my mind. After all, not only my reputation was at stake, but also - and what is much more important - the fate of a new, unknown work by a composer who had recently been subjected to severe attacks for the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” and withdrew his Fourth Symphony from performance.”

For almost two years Shostakovich's music was not heard in the Great Hall. Some of the orchestra members treated her with caution. The orchestra's discipline decreased without a strong-willed chief conductor. The Philharmonic's repertoire drew criticism from the press. The leadership of the Philharmonic has changed: the young composer Mikhail Chudaki, who became the director, was just getting into business, planning to involve I.I. Sollertinsky, composing and music-performing youth.

Without hesitation M.I. Chudaki distributed responsible programs among three conductors who began active concert activity: E.A. Mravinsky, N.S. Rabinovich and K.I. Eliasberg.

Throughout September, Shostakovich lived only with the fate of the Symphony. I put off composing music for the film “Volochaevsky Days”. He refused other orders, citing being busy.

He spent most of his time at the Philharmonic. Played the Symphony. Mravinsky listened and asked.

The conductor’s agreement to make his debut with the Fifth Symphony was influenced by the hope of receiving help from the author during the performance process and relying on his knowledge and experience. However, “the first meetings with Shostakovich,” we read in Mravinsky’s memoirs, “dealt a strong blow to my hopes. No matter how much I questioned the composer, I was unable to “get” anything out of him.”2 ». The painstaking method of Mravinsky initially alarmed Shostakovich. “It seemed to me that he delved too much into details, paid too much attention to particulars, and it seemed to me that this would harm the overall plan, the overall design. Mravinsky subjected me to a genuine interrogation about every tact, about every thought, demanding from me an answer to all the doubts that arose in his mind.”

Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich is the greatest musician of the 20th century. No one in contemporary art is comparable to him in terms of the acuteness of perception of the era, responsiveness to its social, ideological and artistic processes. The strength of his music lies in its absolute truthfulness.

With unprecedented completeness and depth, this music captured folk life on turning points- the revolution of 1905 and the First World War, the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War, the formation of a socialist society, the fight against fascism in the Great Patriotic War, as well as the problems of the post-war world... Shostakovich’s work became both a chronicle and a confession of generations striving for a great future, shocked and survived tragic trials.

“Music was not a profession for him, but a need to speak out, to express what people lived in his age, in his homeland. Nature rewarded him with special sensitivity of hearing: he heard people crying, he caught the low hum of anger and the heart-cutting groan of despair. He heard the earth hum: crowds marched for justice, angry songs boiled over the suburbs, the wind carried the tunes of the outskirts, the penny accordion squealed: a revolutionary song entered the strict world of symphonies. Then the iron clanged and grinded on the bloody fields, the whistles of strikes and the sirens of war howled over Europe. He heard moaning and wheezing: a thought was muzzled, a whip cracked, the art of jumping at the boot of power was taught, begging for a handout and standing on his hind legs in front of the policeman... Once again the horsemen of the Apocalypse rode into the blazing sky. Sirens howled over the world like the trumpets of the Last Judgment... Times changed... He worked all his life.” Not only in music.