Proms Extra: Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony

[mahlerei]

Years ago I might have agreed with critics of the 12th, another of Shostakovich's Cinderella symphonies, but it takes just one exceptional performance to chamge one's mind. That performance was Mark Wigglesworth's (BIS). He really does make a good case for the piece. Pale and dispiriting? Certainly not.

[BBMmk2]

Hi Mahlerei, I might just look that one up.

[Pianoman]

I think the Paavo Jarvi Leningrad is excellent, but then I like it played reasonably swiftly - which is why I always liked his dad's on Chandos, and why I didn't quite get on with Lenny's Chicago one. It also happens to be why I love the new Fischer Mahler 9 (especially the finale..)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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 in a large musical canvas. I don't believe that there is implied contempt for, or an attempt to hoodwink, listeners.
Interesting question,.

I agree entirely - and the use of Cabbages and Turnips in the "Quodlibet" of Bach's Goldberg's and the Mediaeval Mass settings using L'Homme Armé even earlier examples. I've highlighted the words that I think demonstrate the difference between use of banality as used in these works, as opposed to the bathetic banality that is the effect of the Leningrad on me.

You are absolutely right of course: DSCH was entirely capable of using banal material to create Musical Drama as part of Symphonic logic. I immediately think of the F major section in the Development section of the First Movement of the Fifth Symphony (the Poco sostenuto section at bar 188, Fig 27) where the lyrical second melody (first heard on the violins starting at bar 6) is caricatured, distorted into a grotesque goose-step; everything that was gentle and lyrical reduced to banal militarism. But this is part of a larger process of distortion and brutalisation of that original melody - AND, with its arrival at F major (the Relative of the nominal Tonic of the work) also has implications in the next movement when that key is next heard* (and never heard again) with similar orchestration (Brass presenting the theme accompanied by "oom-pah" Root-Fifth accompaniment on Timps and lower strings and prominent snare drum). It's this Musical context, this placing of banality within the Tonal and instrumental logic of a Symphonic framework that I cannot hear in the 14 minute crescendo in the Leningrad, which relies on the "story" for whatever justification for its presence. We have to rely on the events "depicted" in the Music to accommodate the banality - I am expected to "understand" this "Pines of the Nevsky Prospect" not from the Music, but from a story.

And the events of the story affects me far more deeply than the particular Music with which DSCH chose to depict them; Music which strikes me - every time I try to "hear" what jlw hears in the work - as risible.

* - starting one bar after fig54, bar 56 of the Movement; the tune on the four horns)

[Lento]

[QUOTE=Hornspieler;500582]

My favourite symphony is Nº 1.

It is short, cheerful, innovative and is the product of a young mind, uninfluenced by the composer's environment or the compositions of others.HS

I sometimes feel there was too much of the environment in later Shost.

[jayne lee wilson]

I agree entirely - and the use of Cabbages and Turnips in the "Quodlibet" of Bach's Goldberg's and the Mediaeval Mass settings using L'Homme Armé even earlier examples. I've highlighted the words that I think demonstrate the difference between use of banality as used in these works, as opposed to the bathetic banality that is the effect of the Leningrad on me.

You are absolutely right of course: DSCH was entirely capable of using banal material to create Musical Drama as part of Symphonic logic. I immediately think of the F major section in the Development section of the First Movement of the Fifth Symphony (the Poco sostenuto section at bar 188, Fig 27) where the lyrical second melody (first heard on the violins starting at bar 6) is caricatured, distorted into a grotesque goose-step; everything that was gentle and lyrical reduced to banal militarism. But this is part of a larger process of distortion and brutalisation of that original melody - AND, with its arrival at F major (the Relative of the nominal Tonic of the work) also has implications in the next movement when that key is next heard* (and never heard again) with similar orchestration (Brass presenting the theme accompanied by "oom-pah" Root-Fifth accompaniment on Timps and lower strings and prominent snare drum). It's this Musical context, this placing of banality within the Tonal and instrumental logic of a Symphonic framework that I cannot hear in the 14 minute crescendo in the Leningrad, which relies on the "story" for whatever justification for its presence. We have to rely on the events "depicted" in the Music to accommodate the banality - I am expected to "understand" this "Pines of the Nevsky Prospect" not from the Music, but from a story.

And the events of the story affects me far more deeply than the particular Music with which DSCH chose to depict them; Music which strikes me - every time I try to "hear" what jlw hears in the work - as risible.

* - starting one bar after fig54, bar 56 of the Movement; the tune on the four horns)

Evidently, fhg, you have an instinctive dislike of this piece - you wouldn't spend 4 lines (!) writing out a mocking "thumpetty thump" about it if you didn't. But when you say "we have to rely on events "depicted" in the music to accommodate the banality" who is this "we" you mention? It can't be me, and probably no-one else who loves and admires the 7th either. I never had a problem with the so-described musical banality in the first place, so I've no need to make any effort to "accommodate" it, through background study or whatever else.

When I first listened to it attentively (out of sheer curiosity following critically-misled avoidance) I only had the sketchiest idea of the background - Leningrad, Siege of, etc. Point being that the tune itself (the "Invasion" theme) never struck me as problematically banal then, nor does it now; my greater awareness of the history of the work & its creative circumstances made little difference to that response. But if another listener attacks it for those oft-repeated reasons, I try to suggest ways of perceiving it - listening to it, that may render that response less prejudicial. Hence my distinctions in earlier posts (20 & 34) between "Dramatic" and "Autobiographical" symphonies etc., open to various inflexions and alterations as they may be. But if you just hate the sound of it, well....

Or, another take on the "Dramatic Symphony" concept: blaming Shostakovich for the "banality" of this particular section of the work makes no more sense than blaming a novelist for the racism of one of her characters.

[mahlerei]

Or, another take on the "Dramatic Symphony" concept: blaming Shostakovich for the "banality" of this particular section of the work makes no more sense than blaming a novelist for the racism of one of her characters.

Quite.

[EdgeleyRob]

The very first time I heard the invasion music the word banal never entered my head,my blood ran cold.
The passage terrified me and still does to this day.

[Beef Oven!]

The very first time I heard the invasion music the word banal never entered my head,my blood ran cold.
The passage terrified me and still does to this day.

Better leave Black Sabbath's debut alone then, Rob!!!

[EdgeleyRob]

Better leave Black Sabbath's debut alone then, Rob!!!

[richardfinegold]

Better leave Black Sabbath's debut alone then, Rob!!!

Not to mention J Geils "my baby is a centerfold"

[richardfinegold]

On a more serious note...I really enjoyed the most recent posts by ferney and jlw. Regarding the Work, I have had my opinion on both sides of the divide . When I first heard the work as a College Student, in a live performance by the Leningraders, my opinion was with the naysayers, and much of the subsequent analysis that I read trashed the work. In the next few decades my exposure to it was infrequent, but my opinion of the work really changed about a decade ago, as I studied the history of the USSR and the personal story of the Composer.
The question I have is whether such extra musical content ought to influence my opinion of the work, or whether I should form an opinion on it purely as a musical statement . In this case I don't think that it is possible to separate the extra musical associations from the music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The question I have is whether such extra musical content ought to influence my opinion of the work, or whether I should form an opinion on it purely as a musical statement . In this case I don't think that it is possible to separate the extra musical associations from the music.

That is, I think, the question, The immediate answer, in this case, is that anything that takes you closer to the work and enables you to enjoy it is to be valued.

For me, extra-Musical factors are always secondary - if I love the work as a Musical statement, then any "extras" are icing on the cake; bonuses. The Eroica is a magnificent organization of Musical parameters that reveals more and more every time I listen to it - it is always "new", always astonishing. Napoleon doesn't feature much. The Second Symphony is another mind-boggling Musical achievement - the fact that the composer wrote this "sunny", life-affirming work at a time of deep personal emotional crisis adds a final cherry of astonishment to a whole list of marvels to be found in the work. It's moving (from a human level) that he wrote the Symphony at the same period that he also wrote his "Heiligenstadt Testament", but this is in addition to what makes it a great symphony - just as, if it had been written by a recently married composer whose wife had subsequently told him that they were expecting their first child, that would not have made the Symphony a "lesser" piece.

With the Leningrad, I find the history moves and unsettles me - the Music ... well, I've used the word "risible"; I hear no reason to alter that.

[Petrushka]

Agree absolutely with what you say here, FHG ... apart from the very last sentence. I'm strongly with JLW in message 51 here and ER in message 53.

I've related on here before about the 1998 Prom performance of the 7th I attended with Gergiev and the World Orchestra of Peace. I was sitting in 'O' stalls in those seats which are actually on the RAH stage so I felt as if I was in the orchestra, a feeling made stronger when Gergiev seemingly pointed straight at me as he cued in the instruments to his right. The first movement 'invasion' episode was utterly terrifying from this perspective, like being sucked into a tornado. Frightening!

[Beef Oven!]

That is, I think, the question, The immediate answer, in this case, is that anything that takes you closer to the work and enables you to enjoy it is to be valued.............................

But for me, it's an inconsistent phenomenon - with the seventh for example, I get no invading soldiers, no snipers, no shortage of food etc. But take DSCH symphony #11, which I am re-familiarising myself with, the 'programme idea' is definitely helpful in getting me closer to the work, and perhaps its 'meaning', in the mind of DSCH; the first movement's eerie chill of "palace square"; the scherzo's 'depiction' of the atrocity of the Tsarist guards and so on.

This however, for me, this only comes with a reading of the programme notes and IMV is not intrinsic to the music.