Proms Extra: Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony

[Simon B]

Mostly what I hear is thumpetty Thump Etty thumpetty thump; thumpetty Thump Etty thumpetty thump;

... and you have inadvertently revealed the source of your problem. You're listening to the wrong piece since this isn't the rhythm of the Shostakovich 7 ostinato .

[BBMmk2]

I love this work. Thump thump etty thump thump thump, thump thump etty thump thump(I think? :) )

[Simon B]

I never knew there were all these arrangements in 7/8, 9/8 and a bit etc - Shostakovich arr Ives...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I never knew there were all these arrangements in 7/8, 9/8 and a bit etc - Shostakovich arr Ives...

If only!

You're quite right in #16; I made the snare drum rhythm of the Ibizagrad Symphony a little more interesting than Dmitri did. (No doubt diluting the sense of ominous encroaching menace in the process. Apologies.)

[jayne lee wilson]

Once I'd belatedly got to know it (having been discouraged from even listening to it by critical dismissal when I was first traversing the cycle in the 1970s) I was puzzled at all the comments about "banality" and "repetitiveness". This is, in the technical sense, a Dramatic Symphony; the themes are musical dramatis personae in a series of cinematographic tableaux depicting A Country at War - a happy peaceful country, an invasion, the agony of the people & their love for their land, the final battle and triumph - exhausting, laborious or agonised as it may be. So to judge the "quality" of the music itself by any classical conventions of "taste", economy of means or structure, has always seemed misplaced.

With the first-movement march-variations, Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" always comes to my mind: a war machine is banal, evil - and also very, very repetitive, wearing human beings down, destroying souls and bodies. I don't think it matters greatly whether you see the opening as the primary-coloured Socialist-Realist picture of a contented land, or a parody of the same; you still have to take the symphony's narrative of war as a coherent vision - or not take it at all. So for me the various quotations, references and allusions don't ultimately make a lot of difference to how I experience it through the story, or shape outlined above (As an emotional, sonic narrative - I don't usually imagine visual scenes to this or any music...).
Any deeper layers of - Shostakovich's personal meanings, doubts, ambiguities or political disbelief can be teased out afterwards, perhaps endlessly. They may enrich the experience or lead you to question it, but do they really alter it profoundly? Not for me at least. As for various comments attributed to the composer... as D.H.Lawrence said: "never trust the artist, trust the tale"....
(On another level, any work of art may accrete meanings as it lives through history and performance...)

Of course it helps that I've always responded instinctively to the music itself, compelled-to-attention from the very opening by its memorable, often hauntingly beautiful, melodies and rhythms, its fulfilling harmonic power. Yes, I begin to drift away a little in the finale's first part, but feel dragged back, almost painfully against my will, into the hushed tension and drama of the ending. For me though, it's those firebird-like fanfares, rising twice against frantic string figurations as the dynamic levels rise, that thrill me most; after those - so often in my head somewhere - the thunderous coda is almost a mere rounding off!

Bartok? Oh, I don't know... maybe he liked the tune and wanted to have a bit of fun with it...

[richardfinegold]

Once I'd belatedly got to know it (having been discouraged from even listening to it by critical dismissal when I was first traversing the cycle in the 1970s) I was puzzled at all the comments about "banality" and "repetitiveness". This is, in the technical sense, a Dramatic Symphony; the themes are musical dramatis personae in a series of cinematographic tableaux depicting A Country at War - a happy peaceful country, an invasion, the agony of the people & their love for their land, the final battle and triumph - exhausting, laborious or agonised as it may be. So to judge the "quality" of the music itself by any classical conventions of "taste", economy of means or structure, has always seemed misplaced.

With the first-movement march-variations, Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" always comes to my mind: a war machine is banal, evil - and also very, very repetitive, wearing human beings down, destroying souls and bodies. I don't think it matters greatly whether you see the opening as the primary-coloured Socialist-Realist picture of a contented land, or a parody of the same; you still have to take the symphony's narrative of war as a coherent vision - or not take it at all. So for me the various quotations, references and allusions don't ultimately make a lot of difference to how I experience it through the story, or shape outlined above (As an emotional, sonic narrative - I don't usually imagine visual scenes to this or any music...).
Any deeper layers of - Shostakovich's personal meanings, doubts, ambiguities or political disbelief can be teased out afterwards, perhaps endlessly. They may enrich the experience or lead you to question it, but do they really alter it profoundly? Not for me at least. As for various comments attributed to the composer... as D.H.Lawrence said: "never trust the artist, trust the tale"....
(On another level, any work of art may accrete meanings as it lives through history and performance...)

Of course it helps that I've always responded instinctively to the music itself, compelled-to-attention from the very opening by its memorable, often hauntingly beautiful, melodies and rhythms, its fulfilling harmonic power. Yes, I begin to drift away a little in the finale's first part, but feel dragged back, almost painfully against my will, into the hushed tension and drama of the ending. For me though, it's those firebird-like fanfares, rising twice against frantic string figurations as the dynamic levels rise, that thrill me most; after those - so often in my head somewhere - the thunderous coda is almost a mere rounding off!

Bartok? Oh, I don't know... maybe he liked the tune and wanted to have a bit of fun with it...

Per your usual, jlw, a wonderful encapsulation of the work.
Reading your post made me realize how put off I was by Criticism of this work for years, and how it is only in the last decade or so I've perceived the point that the evil is deliberately banal. Perhaps this work was a victim of the hype that surrounded it's premiere, and the charges of banality and triviality were the consequence of uncomprehending critics whose xpectations were raised and then to their way of thinking, not fulfilled.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

jlw and rfg seem to be making a point that Gerard McBurney made many years ago (about Tchaikovsky, IIRC) that - rather than arguing that the material isn't banal - the banality is so obviously there that the composer himself must have been aware of it and, indeed, deliberately intended that (some of) the Music be banal.

I may have misunderstood all three - but, if I haven't, does this mean that banality is not merely acceptable, but commendable when it is deliberately employed? In which case, doesn't the Music itself take second place to the extra-Musical programme that requires banality? And does that mean that, if a long-lost letter from a very young William McGonagall (as an example) should ever emerge in somebody's attic in which he said something to the effect that he was going to devote his career to writing deliberate doggerel in order to point out the hypocritical sentimentality at the root of Victorian Art, we need to completely re-appraise his work?

If we have to trust an Artist's intentions as much as what they create, where does that leave Lawrence's "Never trust the teller, trust the tale" - and the immediately following statement in that quotation: "The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the Artist who created it"?

[EdgeleyRob]

Thank you Jayne for that marvellous summing up.
I was never put off listening by the criticism but,as I have stated in a previous post,had the feeling of 'well I think it's a masterpiece,not sure why the experts don't think the same,it must be me'.
Ferney has put me right on that.

I have a few notes saved re this work,not sure where this came from,but it makes my spine tingle.

The most extraordinary performance of all, of course, was the one that took place in Leningrad itself. With the city still under siege, only 14 members of the Radio Orchestra were still alive and yet they decided to mount a performance of this monumental work. Posters were put up ordering every available musician to turn up for rehearsals. When this didn’t produce enough players, any soldier who could play an instrument was ordered back from the front line to join the orchestra. Such importance was attached to this symbol of resistance that the players were even given extra rations. For the performance itself, the army arranged a diversion to silence the enemy guns. The concert was broadcast live on the radio and all those who heard it were inspired to continue their defiance of the Nazis. Even a German General sat in his trenches listening. He later remarked: ‘When it finished I realized that never ever shall we be able to enter Leningrad. It is not a city that can be conquered.’

[richardfinegold]

Ferney

Banality in music didn't start with Shostakovich. Mahler employed it many times to make an effect, I think most ominously in 9/3, where the simple Austrian dance acquires a snarling menace that seems to predict 20 th century catastrophes (wonder if Ravel knew Mahler's music?).
Beethoven's Diabelli Variations delights in twisting and permuting a banal tune into uncharted territory. Mozart and Haydn delighted in inserting banalities for effect.
In all these cases, I think the Composer is using banalaty as a tool in a large musical canvas. I don't believe that there is implied contempt for, or an attempt to hoodwink, listeners.
Interesting question,.

[richardfinegold]

Thank you Jayne for that marvellous summing up.
I was never put off listening by the criticism but,as I have stated in a previous post,had the feeling of 'well I think it's a masterpiece,not sure why the experts don't think the same,it must be me'.
Ferney has put me right on that.

I have a few notes saved re this work,not sure where this came from,but it makes my spine tingle.

ER

It has been estimated that perhaps 1 million Leningraders died of starvation during the siege. Yes, the Soviets won the battle, and the War. There were, however, an awful lot of losers

[Bryn]

To try and get back to my original intent in starting this thread, the parody of Lehar's "Da geh' ich zu Maxim" used in both the Leningrad and the Bartok Concerto for Orcheatra was said to be of a song much favoured by Adolph Hitler. I note that the most recent version of the Wikipedia article on the Concerto for orchestra addresses the question of the parody. What surprised me was that a Prom Extra feature should totally ignore the origin of the theme. Both Service and Fanning must be fully aware of its source, yet chose to treat it as if it was an original theme by Shostakovich. To me that is, at best, slipshod. That Frolova-Walker also failed to contextualise the theme is even more bizarre.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Apologies, Bryn - I'd got my Threads muddled and thought this was the general concert discussion. I also missed the Proms Extra, so can't really comment on what was (not) said by whom, but I thought Pet's comment in #2 about the theme being a family pun most interesting - turning the work from a War symphony to a sort of Sinfonia Domestica.

The phrase that DSCH uses is the consequent of the theme - it omits the "daah - dee di dit - dit daah dee di dot - dot daah - dee di dit - dit" antecedent, which isn't from Lehar (and which isn't in the Bartok, which may further suggest that DSCH wasn't Bartok's [?only?] "target" - the accompaniment to the Bartok parody is also closer to Lehar's than to DSCH's). Is this antecedent phrase entirely of DSCH's making?

But it is "slipshod" to ignore the origins & intentions of the theme - was the Feature broadcast Live, or might it have been edited? - if only to mention the fact that the Maxim's song begins with a verse to the words "What has happened to my Fatherland?" (Or "My poor fatherland" depending on which translation) which might have some pertinence to the programme of the Symphony.



(Perhaps a kind host might shift the "banality" discussion to a suitably-titled dedicated Thread - rfg has made some very pertinent comments that I'd like to address: I think it's a worthy topic in its own right.)

[umslopogaas]

With respect to the presenters' apparent ignorance of Lehar as a source, I didnt know that, so looked it up in my books on Shostakovich.

MacDonald does mention the Merry Widow as a source, as stated by Bryn in #26.

Norris (ed.) has a two page discussion of the symphony, but makes no mention of the Merry Widow.

Brown (ed.) ditto

Wilson makes no mention in two 2 page discussions.

Volkov makes no mention.

None of these authors has an index reference to Lehar.

My point is only that this may not be such a well known fact as some suppose. And while I certainly expect professional R3 presenters to know more than me, I can forgive them either for not knowing it, or not thinking it sufficiently important to mention, given that there is a lot of other dramatic context to this work to put over in a short introduction.

[Beef Oven!]

My point is only that this may not be such a well known fact as some suppose. And while I certainly expect professional R3 presenters to know more than me, I can forgive them either for not knowing it, or not thinking it sufficiently important to mention, given that there is a lot of other dramatic context to this work to put over in a short introduction.

[ahinton]

Because 4 is his best symphony. You're not wrong, you just didn't realise. Happens a lot.

Absolutely correct! And to tower above the others, given the many virtues among them, is an astonishing achievement even for Shostakovich! The composer is said to have exclaimed to Isaak Glikman immediately after its much-delayed première that he considered it to be his finest work - and by that time he had a dozen symphonies (and much else besides) to his credit. And who's for no. 12 as his worst? - though why it should have to have been so when one thinks of what he'd been writing in the years immediately preceding it - as well as what he was to go on to do - I have no idea.