Shostakovich: which one is your favourite amongst his works?

[Nick Armstrong]

It certainly looks as if Britten has Shostakovich by the b**ls.

....and as though Dimitri is by no means averse, looked at like that

Perhaps he's saying over his shoulder: "You see, I told you... "

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Those terms are just some of the ones musicians use to explain some of the Shostakovich "fingerprints", things he does that identify him to an alert listener. If you don't know music theory probably best to just skip over them.

Did you mean "augmented Fourths and diminished Fifths", by the way? (A "diminished" Fourth being, even to the alertest of listeners - as opposed to score-readers - indistinguishable from a Major Third?)

[kea]

Just a trifle.... lopsided perhaps...

Hmm, in context it looks more like attempting to grin through a bad case of indigestion.

Hello Kea, Thank you that is much clearer.

Clearly you can choose whatever you want but I admit to being surprised that out of the many hours of Shostakovich’s wonderful music you select the Waltz No. 2 from the Jazz Suite. It's certainly a fine work but not one generally considered to be one of his most serious; possibly a middle-of-the-road piece.

Well, my overall feeling is that Shostakovich tends to be at his weakest in his more "serious" pieces—tending much more towards bluster and bombast, or lengthy passages of morose brooding that strike me as pointless note-spinning, etc—though obviously a lot of people don't share that view. I am a rather contrary sort of audience member though. It always annoys me when I'm reading a book and the author simply calls a character "intelligent" (or worse, claims the character has "intelligent eyes" :puke: ) instead of actually describing the character's thoughts and actions and allowing me to make up my own mind whether she's intelligent or not. There are, for me, a lot of moments like that in Shostakovich's more serious music—"LISTEN, A SOLO CELESTA! FEEL SAD NOW!" Look, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, the more you do that the stronger my impulse becomes to feel happy during the anguished slow movements and sad during the madcap galops. Just let the ideas speak for themselves without having to pinpoint every time how Sad or Happy or Scary or Incredibly Meaningful things are!

... Sorry. As you were.

What do you make of the Sixth Symphony? (a work which, until relatively recently, tended all too often to be somewhat overlooked)...

I'm afraid the Sixth Symphony is still somewhat overlooked, by me at least. It simply doesn't have any sort of distinct profile in my mind. I vaguely remember the last movement being another of those madcap galops, with an incipit to one of its themes that sounded like a cheeky reference to Mozart's G minor symphony, but that's about it.

(Of course its lack of memorability for me could be partially Haitink's fault as well)

It looks like it's only 30 minutes, so might be an easier listen for me than e.g. 7 or 8 or 11, but I'm not sure about that first movement. What do you make of the Sixth Symphony, that sets it apart from its neighbours?

Did you mean "augmented Fourths and diminished Fifths", by the way? (A "diminished" Fourth being, even to the alertest of listeners - as opposed to score-readers - indistinguishable from a Major Third?)

No.

DSCH does this kind of thing all the time:

and often in keys where the "fourthness" of the Eb-B interval is readily apparent, I think (e.g. the 8th Quartet)—but even in keys where normally a diminished fourth would be indistinguishable from a major third, he's careful to construct melodies such that the lowering of the fourth scale degree is apparent, as in the 2nd Piano Sonata:

While this Eb is acoustically identical to D#, I don't think we hear it that way—one doesn't need a score to tell that the key is B minor rather than major and the way the Eb is always approached from below makes it sound like a modified fourth scale degree.

This is perhaps wishful thinking but I also like to believe we can distinguish augmented fourths from diminished fifths, at least in melodic motion—compare Shostakovich 9 and Sibelius 4:




In fact, Shostakovich rarely ever seems to use the augmented fourth, at least in melodies. That may be due to the Russian partiality for octatonic scales in which the tritone is always the fifth scale degree.

For those whose eyes glazed over around the point where I started posting musical examples, this is where the technical nerd jargon part of the post ends.

[teamsaint]

here is the SQ #8 with score.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvZjZrnOvds

The diminished 4th to which Kea refers is part of the DSCH motif, which is one reason why it appear so often in his work.(across bars 2 and 3 here).
I can see what you mean about it sounding like like that rather than a major 3rd because of its context, but in this case don't we hear it like that because he is using the B natural to establish C minor, so that it is really used here, if not elsewhere, as a kind of extended minor third? (there may be a technical term for that of which I am unaware !)
Be interesting to look/listen to the cello concerto #1, for instance, and check how the motif is used within the scale and tonality there.

[kea]

Here's another of the examples—one of the most "Shostakovich" melodies around and one that uses diminished 4ths quite prominently. Note the tendency, later on, to harmonise the E-flat as though it were part of a dominant seventh. (Also a rather underrated movement; I find the other two less interesting, but some may enjoy listening to the whole piece, which is rarely heard.) http://youtu.be/hfT5I-fbqMs?t=13m10s

I've never heard the Cello Concerto No 1 as a "DSCH motive", it's more one of those major-and-minor-triads-with-a-common-third thing (in that case, E minor and E-flat major, linked by G which is—of course—an open string on the cello). Interestingly that exact harmonic progression is also very prominent in Vaughan Williams's Sixth Symphony written around the same time. Probably coincidence considering they were likely unaware of each other.

[BBMmk2]

How on earth do you write musical notation on here!?!?!?!?

Ferney, surely a diminished fourth is discernible to a major third?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

DSCH does this kind of thing all the time:

You're absolutely right, of course: I was thinking in terms of adjacencies rather than collections - which rather makes a mockery of my serialist pretentions!

and often in keys where the "fourthness" of the Eb-B interval is readily apparent, I think (e.g. the 8th Quartet)—but even in keys where normally a diminished fourth would be indistinguishable from a major third, he's careful to construct melodies such that the lowering of the fourth scale degree is apparent, as in the 2nd Piano Sonata:

While this Eb is acoustically identical to D#, I don't think we hear it that way—one doesn't need a score to tell that the key is B minor rather than major and the way the Eb is always approached from below makes it sound like a modified fourth scale degree.

Hmm. I can hear that it's perfectly possible to hear it this way, but I've always ("always", he says! I'm talking of about three performances!) heard it as a hint and then denial of a picardy third. Of course, from now on, it'll be a diminished fourth that I understand it: especially as he writes Eb and not D#.

This is perhaps wishful thinking but I also like to believe we can distinguish augmented fourths from diminished fifths, at least in melodic motion

I don't think it is "wishful thinking" - especially when we're talking about Music played by real Musical instruments and/or voices where the distinction between (for example) D# - E and Eb - D is clear. Perhaps my mishearing of the Piano Sonata passage derives from the equal-tempered tuning that the contraption cannot escape.

In fact, Shostakovich rarely ever seems to use the augmented fourth, at least in melodies. That may be due to the Russian partiality for octatonic scales in which the tritone is always the fifth scale degree.

Do you mean he avoids this aspect of the scale because it had become a cliché of "Russian" Music that he wanted to avoid whilst using other aspects of the scale more readily?

For those whose eyes glazed over around the point where I started posting musical examples, this is where the technical nerd jargon part of the post ends.

Don't be afraid that you'll lose the interest of others on the Forum by using such examples - it's a very broad church with wide intersts and enthusiasms; and many of even those of us who have little instrumental/theoretical training still enjoy and get something from such discussions/illustrations.

And belated welcome to the Forum, by the way.

[kea]

How on earth do you write musical notation on here!?!?!?!?

I'm just making mock-ups in Sibelius, exporting as graphics and uploading to Dropbox... unless the forum administrators find some way to implement musical notation support that's likely to be the only way.

Hmm. I can hear that it's perfectly possible to hear it this way, but I've always ("always", he says! I'm talking of about three performances!) heard it as a hint and then denial of a picardy third. Of course, from now on, it'll be a diminished fourth that I understand it: especially as he writes Eb and not D#.

I could be potty, since I've noticed later on Shostakovich moves the theme to F minor and writes that bit as A-Ab-G-F—the difference evidently didn't matter that much to him. Still, I think the repeated harmonisations as F#-A#-C#-Eb and similar (e.g. B-C#-Eb-G) point to it being an altered fourth rather than an altered third, at least functionally.

I suppose one gets a different perspective on a piece when one learns it by sight-reading it rather than listening to it though.

I don't think it is "wishful thinking" - especially when we're talking about Music played by real Musical instruments and/or voices where the distinction between (for example) D# - E and Eb - D is clear.

That's true as well, though even on equal-tempered instruments I think it alters the musical meaning somewhat (if not the sound) depending on where the note's approached from.

Do you mean he avoids this aspect of the scale because it had become a cliché of "Russian" Music that he wanted to avoid whilst using other aspects of the scale more readily?

I'm not sure—he seemed to really like the octatonic scale. May be more that the augmented fourth tends to call out for resolution up to the stable fifth, and DSCH preferred the "rougher" sound of thirds and thus the downward resolutions of diminished intervals, but I could be making that up.

Don't be afraid that you'll lose the interest of others on the Forum by using such examples - it's a very broad church with wide intersts and enthusiasms; and many of even those of us who have little instrumental/theoretical training still enjoy and get something from such discussions/illustrations.

No worries, and thanks.

[Stanfordian]

After much deliberation I conclude that my favourite Shostakovich works (which are the works that I play the most often) are:
Violin Concertos No's 1 & 2.
Cello Concertos No's 1 & 2.
Symphonies No's 5 & 15.
String Quartets No's 7, 8, 14, 15.

[Petrushka]

Well, my overall feeling is that Shostakovich tends to be at his weakest in his more "serious" pieces—tending much more towards bluster and bombast, or lengthy passages of morose brooding that strike me as pointless note-spinning, etc—though obviously a lot of people don't share that view.

No, they don't and as this is the second time you have made this assertion, it's about time that someone challenged it instead of losing themselves in discussion about augmented this and diminished that.

The notion that Shostakovich did not know what he was about, was influenced by friends and Party officials, is deeply demeaning and does your further arguments no credit whatsoever. The choice of the Waltz No 2 as your favourite piece of DSCH is puzzling but telling. It's a haunting little tune, to be sure, but such music was written as a 'potboiler' to keep the Party and masses happy while he got on with the serious stuff of writing symphonies and quartets.

It's clear from your comments that you don't really like Shostakovich's music very much. For me he is the 20th century equivalent of Beethoven, a composer of staggering genius who, unusually in recent times, truly connected with his audience and whose music will last as long as there are players around to play it and audiences to hear it.

[teamsaint]

After much deliberation I conclude that my favourite Shostakovich works (which are the works that I play the most often) are:
Violin Concertos No's 1 & 2.
Cello Concertos No's 1 & 2.
Symphonies No's 5 & 15.
String Quartets No's 7, 8, 14, 15.

Thats a list that would have a quite a bit in common with mine, Stan
Actually there are, as Pet suggests, just so many genuinely great works, and each return seems to pay greater dividends.
He was really the spark for me, as I think for many other people.
Of the works that get mentioned a little less often in these lists , I am always surprised that the viola sonata doesn't rate more highly.

also like Pet, I am realy surprised that the Waltx no 2 could rate as a real, all time favourite in this vast and spectacular body of work.
But then I like the Ramones too, so......

[kea]

For me he is the 20th century equivalent of Beethoven, a composer of staggering genius who, unusually in recent times, truly connected with his audience and whose music will last as long as there are players around to play it and audiences to hear it.

I think this is a perfectly viable and defensible opinion, and I'm glad you get more out of Shostakovich's music than I do—as indeed do many people.

However I don't think

The notion that Shostakovich [...] was influenced by friends and Party officials

is, in fact, equivalent to

did not know what he was about

or particularly demeaning. If one becomes familiar with Shostakovich's biography it's obvious that he was to a certain extent dependent on the opinions and approval of his friends, and often deeply affected by political criticism to the point of sleeping on the landing outside his flat at one point so that his family wouldn't be disturbed when the NKVD came to take him away. I think to a certain extent he must have felt betrayed by a system he had initially supported—much of his work is born out of a genuine desire for solidarity, connection with mass audiences, etc, writing tunes any man on the street could hum along with the more epic-scale symphonies and operas to convey the power of culture and art. In many ways, he was very suited by ideals & temperament to socialist realism, yet ended up simply being mercilessly exploited by the state organisations, promoted when it was convenient and denounced when it wasn't. A real difficulty in saying "no" didn't help—e.g. famously being pressured into joining the Communist Party in 1960, well after Stalin and his minions were gone. Hence the increasingly gnomic, impenetrable nature of the later works, a sign of his disillusionment I think.

Whilst Beethoven made a show of not caring what anyone thought of his music or bowing to contemporary trends, he is in a distinct minority among the greats—compare e.g. Brahms, Bruckner, Schumann, Chaikovsky, Mozart, etc—for all of whom the opinions of musician friends, colleagues and mentors were of highest value. The letters of Shostakovich show that he also falls into that category, & certainly his often unfairly low opinions of his own music and extreme agitation on hearing it performed suggest he may have always felt some discrepancy between his ideals and the finished products.

[ahinton]

No, they don't and as this is the second time you have made this assertion, it's about time that someone challenged it instead of losing themselves in discussion about augmented this and diminished that.

The notion that Shostakovich did not know what he was about, was influenced by friends and Party officials, is deeply demeaning and does your further arguments no credit whatsoever. The choice of the Waltz No 2 as your favourite piece of DSCH is puzzling but telling. It's a haunting little tune, to be sure, but such music was written as a 'potboiler' to keep the Party and masses happy while he got on with the serious stuff of writing symphonies and quartets.

It's clear from your comments that you don't really like Shostakovich's music very much. For me he is the 20th century equivalent of Beethoven, a composer of staggering genius who, unusually in recent times, truly connected with his audience and whose music will last as long as there are players around to play it and audiences to hear it.

I'm entirely with you here and could not have put it better myself. OK, not everyone necessarily "gets" everything DDS did or why he did it but the sheer number of people all over the world whom he moved and still does move profoundly with the best of his music is inviolable testament to the humanity in what he created and communicated; that people from such different cultural, historical, political, social &c. backgrounds continue to get so much from his work simply bolsters that evidence.

[ahinton]

If one becomes familiar with Shostakovich's biography

Which one/s?(!). We'll never really "know" Shostakovich but that ultimately doesn't matter all that much because we can at least know his music and something of him through that music.

it's obvious that he was to a certain extent dependent on the opinions and approval of his friends

I don't imagine that he was entirely alone in that...

and often deeply affected by political criticism to the point of sleeping on the landing outside his flat at one point so that his family wouldn't be disturbed when the NKVD came to take him away.

Only someone who lived as a musician through that era in that place could fully grasp every nuance of what that was all about and how it affected the musicians themselves and those closest to them, so please don't let's suggest that this might represent some kind of shortcoming on DDS's part...

I think to a certain extent he must have felt betrayed by a system he had initially supported—much of his work is born out of a genuine desire for solidarity, connection with mass audiences, etc, writing tunes any man on the street could hum along with the more epic-scale symphonies and operas to convey the power of culture and art. In many ways, he was very suited by ideals & temperament to socialist realism, yet ended up simply being mercilessly exploited by the state organisations, promoted when it was convenient and denounced when it wasn't. A real difficulty in saying "no" didn't help—e.g. famously being pressured into joining the Communist Party in 1960, well after Stalin and his minions were gone. Hence the increasingly gnomic, impenetrable nature of the later works, a sign of his disillusionment I think.

The first part of what you write here is, I think, very pertinent indeed; his older compatriot Roslavets who, unlike DDS, was to suffer the even worse fate of becoming an official "non-person" whose very name people including DDS were ordered never to utter, was a similar case - an initial enthusiast who became thoroughly let down by the system that he'd at first sought fervently to support. These two cases, to me, illustrate quite different but equally pertinent examples of the sheer political naïveté that Michael Portillo ascribes - not unreasonably, I think (albeit in a very different context) - to Wagner. I don't entirely agree with your last sentence here, however - there's a good deal more than gnomic impenetrability and manifestations of disillusion in his later works (by which I assume you to mean those from around the Second Cello Concerto onwards).

Whilst Beethoven made a show of not caring what anyone thought of his music or bowing to contemporary trends, he is in a distinct minority among the greats—compare e.g. Brahms, Bruckner, Schumann, Chaikovsky, Mozart, etc—for all of whom the opinions of musician friends, colleagues and mentors were of highest value.

I think that you risk misinterpreting and indeed misrepresenting Beethoven's attitude here; of course we all know about the "puny violin" quote and the fact that he was - especially in the last five quartets - writing music that seemed other-worldly and remote from the grasp of many of his contemporaries cannot be denied, but the sheer expressive power of that music means that it was intended nevertheless to be communicated and received by its listeners in the ways that Beethoven intended it to be when he wrote these works. That there's nothing ultimately recondite and inexpressive about any of them tells me that they were intended to be shared with whomsoever could be moved by them.

The letters of Shostakovich show that he also falls into that category, & certainly his often unfairly low opinions of his own music and extreme agitation on hearing it performed suggest he may have always felt some discrepancy between his ideals and the finished products.

I'm not so sure about all of that; Shostakovich's febrility and general nervousness did indeed affect him (even as a child in the pre-Soviet era) as is evident from recorded examples of his piano playing, but his lack of apparent confidence in some of his music was not the whle story and, in any case, he shared this to some degree with his earlier compatriot Rachmaninov and also with Elgar, among others. As a counterbalance to this attitude, it is surely worth remembering his excitement at hearing, at long last, his Fourth Symphony at its long-delayed world première and declaring it to be his best work to date, despite having by that time completed some 60 more works since completing it, including eight symphonies, three concertos, a piano quintet, his second piano trio, his first eight quartets and the 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano.

The pianist and composer Ronald Stevenson, in a penetrating essay on Shostakovich's piano music, notes his attraction towards extremes as encountered in the literature of his Russian forebears - The Government Inspector and Crime and Punishment is just one instance of this - a violent contrast that certainly finds expression in, for example, the "circus music" in the finale of the Fourth Symphony and almost all the music in his final quartet.

Yes, DDS was indeed exploited mercilessly by the authorities in Soviet Russia at least as much as he was at other times vilified and terrorised by them, but he seems nevertheless politely to have declined the "safe house" offer that his friend Benjamin Britten made to him and I'm sure that this was largely because he was, above all, a loyal Russian (as distinct from a loyal Soviet citizen).

Oh, yes - the Sixth Symphony, about which you asked. One of his better ones, I think. A logical progression from deep seriousness (though not gloom and despond) through sparkling invention to what occasionally borders on the slapstick, but without an unmemorable or second-rate idea from first bar to last; I'm unsure why it isn't more widely appreciated than it appears to be, even today.

[jayne lee wilson]

Kea's criticisms of DSCH seem to fall into two categories: that he composed much weak and secondrate music just to prepare the ground for his "great moments", or climaxes; and that DSCH was obsessed with certain intervals or phrases - sonic signatures. The latter is easily dismissed, as most composers of any significance are quickly recognisable precisely because of those signatures and obsessions: part of their greatness is the individually expressive language they have created which includes these building-blocks. But that is all they are, and far more important is the listener's ability or willingness to "get the picture", to see - and feel - the whole poetic and communicative vision of a given piece. This surely why some dismiss the 7th Symphony as bombastic, vulgar etc. etc., while others grasp that it includes expression of these things within the broader compass of a communal, socialist-realist visionary perspective of a War Symphony. It's a filmic and programmatic piece whose idiom is rhetorical and dramatic (more David Lean than Boris Pasternak), depending upon time and space - upon obsessive sequential repetition and variation to develop its huge momentum and impact. The same could be said of the 8th and 11th. To complain from what seems to be a "purist classical" perspective about how they achieve their aims seems to miss the point of these creations - to misunderstand their idiom.

But Shostakovich was quite able to be concise, non-programmatic, almost neo-classically abstract, if he wanted to be: to wit, the 1st, 6th, 9th and 15th Symphonies; the 7th, 11th, and 13th String Quartets - probably the 6th too, and the intensely expressive economies (based explicitly on classical forms) of the Piano Quintet. This is a composer who can call upon many different styles and forms to express visions both personal and political.

DSCH was under two intense pressures: a compulsive need to compose, to create; and the need to regulate that creativity under the scrutiny (both politically manifest and internalised) of a totalitarian terror of thought-control, control of allowable emotion; to regulate his musical production to avoid suppression, imprisonment and death.
So the 4th Symphony sounds as it does - and lies in the bottom drawer for nearly three decades.
Again, with this masterpiece you can't usefully critique it from the point of view of any conventional idea of unity or "coherence"; as with the 15th, it's episodic structure** follows Modernist poetic principles of juxtaposition: setting (musical) images side-by-side without comment, without narrative progression or obvious developmental links,and with a strong surrealistic vein, nightmarish images or evocations of anguish, insanity, threat and violence, of "the skull beneath the skin"...

That he could precede this with the made-to-order, pure agitprop of No.3, and follow it with a perfectly conceived and formally poised Romantic Symphony - No.5 - is one of many proofs of the astounding - and undoubted - range of his gifts; of his genius. And not least of his desperate need to adapt and survive, without usually compromising his artistic integrity.

(**Not that you can't find a sonata background in the 4th's first movement if you really want to...)