Shostakovich – Symphony #8

Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union suffered enormously under the reign of Joseph Stalin as Premier, from 1929 until his death in 1953.  After craftily working his way up within the Party’s power structure during the 1920s, he assured himself unrivaled control over the state by ordering ruthless executions, whose victims included immediate potential rivals, military leaders, and hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file party members.  He implemented an extreme socialist agenda that stifled the country’s agricultural production, plunging the nation into famine and poverty.  Soviet citizens could not be sure of the extent of the problems, since the press was also controlled by the state and communication across the vast geography of the Soviet Union was difficult and unreliable.

 

Artists and writers played a curious role in Soviet society.  Trained and employed by the state, they were cogs in Stalin’s propaganda machine, examples of how socialist society could compete with the West on an even footing when it came to personal expression and cultural achievement.  At the same time, however, Stalin kept a watchful eye on the very artists whose accomplishments he publicly lauded.  Those whose aesthetic did not please the dictator, or who addressed too sincerely the difficult conditions he created, faced censure, a forced career change, or exile.  At age 19, Shostakovich had become recognized as his country’s finest young composer almost overnight, with the intro­duction of his grad­uation piece from the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Conservatory, the Symphony #1.  During Stalin’s regime, Shostakovich constantly walked a tightrope between official praise and official condemnation, earning conspicuous notices of each depending on what the leader thought of his latest high-profile composition.  He won the Stalin Prize no fewer than thirteen times and also received other awards and titles, including “People’s Artist of the USSR.”  The censures, however, while less numerous, had a far greater impact on the composer’s life and career.

 

Conditions for the USSR only got worse with the country’s involvement in World War II.  Both intimidated and intrigued by Hilter’s growing power, Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, just nine days before Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September.  Secret details of the pact outlined the so-called “spheres of influence” that each nation would enjoy – in short, how the Soviet Union and Germany planned to divide up all of the territory that they might conquer.  The USSR joined the war in earnest three months later by attacking Finland.  But signs were already pointing toward an inevitable confrontation between Germany and the Soviet Union, even while Stalin hoped to maintain the alliance and kept his fears of a showdown with Hitler secret, leaving his military and his citizens woefully unprepared.  Hitler developed plans to invade Russia during the latter months of 1940 and finally began the attack on 22 June 1941.  Less than three months later, Nazi forces blockaded Leningrad, initiating a siege that would last for two and a half years.

 

Only Shostakovich’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were written during World War II, but all of them from the Fifth through the Twelfth are filled with psychological and visceral conflict, inviting war as a metaphor.  The Fifth (completed in 1937) is the composer’s best known work, his “Soviet artist’s reply to fair criticism” offered in the aftermath of the scathing attack leveled by Stalin against his severely pessimistic opera, Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District.  Although the Symphony #5 has its moments of dissonance and fear, its con­clusion is (at least superficially) optimistic, and the musical language is not far from the conventions of the nineteenth century.  Its war-like episodes are generic, their tone ambiguous – if one wishes, he or she can hear inspired forces charging to victory rather than bleak commentary on the inhumanity of military clashes.  The Sixth and Ninth Symphonies (1939 and 1945) are both shorter works, each with long brooding sections but undercutting any deeper message with quirky, upbeat finales.  The Symphony #7 (1941), written mainly from Leningrad during the siege (the composer was evacuated to Moscow before completing the work), made Shostakovich something of a celebrity in the United States.  It is grand, direct, and (again superficially) optimistic, with a bom­bas­tic finale culminating in a blaze of C major.  The piece was taken up quickly by Ameri­can orches­tras, the score transferred to microfilm for the journey across the Atlantic; the composer appeared on the cover of Time on 20 July 1942, wearing a fireman’s helmet, as an example of the courage Soviet citizens were showing through their resistance.  Shostakovich waited for Stalin to die before writing his Tenth Symphony (1953), which is dark and tragic but, like the Sixth and Ninth, sarcastic­ally undercut by an incongruously lighthearted finale.  The Symphonies #11 and #12 (1957 and 1961) both refer to earlier military events in Russia’s history: the revolution that began with “Bloody Sunday” in October 1905 and the Bolshevik uprising of 1917.  Both of these pieces have a somewhat dissoci­ated quality to them, reflecting not only their temporally distant subject matter but also the composer’s gradually weakening health and spirit.

 

Thus the Eighth Symphony, written while Shostakovich was face-to-face with the war and emboldened by the success of the Seventh, occupies a unique position in his output.  The writing is, at times, extraordinarily dissonant and harsh; the conclusion of the work is not flamboyant but supremely introverted.  The symphony was poorly received by nearly everyone, including some of Shostakovich’s fellow composers, and officially criticized for its “unrelieved gloom.”  Sixty years after its composition, it is still far from an audience favorite, a condition surely attributable to its unflinching pessimism and grating tonal language.  It remains particularly appealing, however, to scholars and devout fans of this composer’s work.

 

In an article published shortly after the end of the war, Shosta­kovich wrote,

 

[In the Eighth Symphony] I aimed at recreating in artistic images the inner life of man stunned by the tremendous force of the war machinery.  I wanted to tell in music of his cares, sufferings, courage and joys.  The psychic states I wanted to describe acquired particular vividness and drama because they were lit by the glare of war conflagrations….  [T]he hero of my music goes to victory by way of pain, suffering and catastrophe….  His road, naturally, is not strewn with roses and no rousing drum-beats encourage him on his way.

 

(As quoted in the preface to the complete works edition of the symphony.)  The con­flicted nature of the music is reflected by Shostakovich’s equivocal commitment to the standard expectations of symphonic form.  Although conventional formal procedures are maintained – for instance, the first movement is in a clear-cut sonata form – the dramatic flow of the symphony is out of balance, particularly because of the naïve, nearly neo­classical character of the fifth and final movement.

 

The first movement is, in many respects, similar to the equivalent movement of the Symphony #5.  Both pieces open with a dialogue between lower and upper strings, in jagged rhythms combining long notes with very short ones.  This opening soon fades into a much more serene texture, with a long, arching melody in the first violins suspended over a rudimentary accompaniment in the remaining strings.  The woodwind and brass instruments are introduced gradually as the opening section builds, only to have the momentum dissipate inconclusively.  The second theme is texturally quite similar to the first, again with long a violin melody over a simple accompaniment.  The development section of each movement features increasingly agitated march episodes that tumble into furious, percussion-driven climaxes.  The recapitulation is abbreviated in each case, and both first movements close with haunting, disintegrated fragments of their opening themes.

 

The desolation of the Eighth’s opening movement, however, goes far beyond anything in the corresponding movement of the Fifth.  In many places, meandering passages of shifting scales are used instead of material with any genuine lyricism, with unpredictable changes in the meter contributing to the feeling of aimlessness.  An interlude featuring the cellos and basses in rich, dissonant harmonies suggests a chorus of otherworldly monks, commenting on the scene without being able to provide solace.  After the last of the march sections is terminated in mid-breath by the snare drum, two trumpets struggle to project the opening melodic motive through the wall of noise generated by the rest of the orchestra.  (This moment, for those interested in such things, marks the beginning of the recapitulation.)  Following this cataclysm is a lengthy, extraordinary solo for the English horn, unrivaled in the entire symphonic literature.  The music flirts briefly with renewed hope, but it is not long before more forlorn material returns, leaving the conflicts of the movement ultimately unresolved.

 

The second movement combines elements of a march and a scherzo.  It is the least taxing on the listener psychologically and the most straightforward in its presentation.  The primary theme is ostentatious, unsophisticated, and bratty, probably representing the shortsighted arrogance of warmongers.  The contrasting secondary theme is intro­duced by the solo piccolo, quirky and busy without any sense of direction.  In an amusing transition, most of the orchestra plays a waltz rhythm while the trumpets bring back the original theme, which does not fit the meter.  Shortly thereafter, the entire string section (except for the basses) takes up the secondary theme, opposed by a propulsive rhythm in the brass and snare drum.  Again, however, this leads nowhere, and the move­ment ends abruptly after a lighthearted coda that combines both themes.

 

The third movement, another scherzo/march blend, is one of Shostakovich’s strangest creations.  Not only does the moto perpetuo (perpetual motion) effect disguise the sense of meter and confound any attempt to think of the music in “phrases,” but no accompany­ing instruments provide any harmony, resulting in a symphonic texture that is singularly sparse and unsatisfying.  The composer may have been trying to represent the brutal machines of war, with grotesque shrieks in the woodwinds providing the only contrast to the relentless drive of the strings.  As the movement progresses, the musical roles taken on by the various sections of the orchestra change around, but the general effect remains the same.  A satirical middle section, suggesting a polka or other folk dance, features a playful trumpet solo over uncomfortably fast oom-pahs in the low brass and percussion.  The folk band fades out, giving way to a return of the movement’s opening idea, but with the strings now muted to give them a more sluggish, distant color.  A furious climax – the second of three episodes of blind rage in the symphony, supporting the entire five-movement structure as iconic pillars – leads directly into the fourth movement, with a blast on the tam-tam serving as the demarcation.

 

The primitive agitation of the third movement is balanced by the cerebral serenity of the fourth.  A nine-measure melody, rhythmically simple and with only modest chromatic inflection, is played twelve consecutive times.  The first presentation begins with the full orchestra in unison, with various instruments gradually dropping out until only the first violins remain.  The next eleven identical statements of the theme are entrusted to the cellos and basses, while less tangible melodic material makes its way through muted strings and lonely wind solos.  The constant repetition of the main theme gives the movement a feeling of great stasis, as the wandering countermelodies – some of which seem to occupy a different rhythmic world – suggest someone coming to terms with the reality of his situation in the aftermath of the most recent catastrophe.  Shostakovich’s music often creates a sense of being alone with one’s thoughts, but never more effectively than is the case here.

 

A cautious harmonic progression in the clarinets (featuring an eerie chain of parallel major sevenths between the outer voices) leads directly into the fifth movement.  Like many of this composer’s symphonic finales, this one seems to lack the dramatic weight necessary to balance what has come before it, particularly the epic first movement.  In the other symphonies following this pattern, the mood of the finale is artificially upbeat.  Here, however, the character is generally pastoral and diffident, with the primary theme introduced by the awkward grace of the three bassoons.  Structurally, the movement can be considered a theme with variations, although a stormy second theme (first heard in the cellos and low woodwinds) bears no obvious relationship to the original.  The theme and variation form, with its emphasis on compositional skill and the ability to capture an array of moods without large-scale dramatic implications, was much more popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than in the middle of the twentieth; it seems that Shostakovich was, for the purpose of this finale, drawn to the form’s emotional detachment.  The second theme is allowed to accumulate more energy, in time building to the third great outburst of the symphony.  But the effect here is tired, the rage more like a memory than a genuinely new experience.  Once the tension dissipates, the remainder of the piece has a chamber-music quality, using only a handful of soloists across the orchestra and the section strings.  A few more variations of the opening theme, each more peaceful than the last, lead to a transcendent coda.  In the final measures, harp-like pizzicato notes in the violas and cellos are answered, worlds away, by the basses in their deepest register.

 

Shostakovich and his art were used in the political arena for their value as propaganda, but not just by the Soviet Union.  As the composer lived into the tensest periods of the Cold War, musicians and writers in the United States aggressively cited characteristics in his work as evidence of social­ist oppression.  It has become commonplace, in this country, to explain away every apparent triumph or moment of peace in Shostakovich’s music as ironic, a smile through clenched teeth that only a musical illiterate could misinterpret as genuine.  Given the evident misery that Shostakovich was feeling during most of his life, such a position has a certain logic to it, even while evidence in the music itself can be assessed only subjectively.

 

The most incendiary fuel for portraying Shostakovich as a cunning, two-faced subversive comes from the book Testimony, published in 1979 and billed as the composer’s memoirs as dictated to the young music journalist Solomon Volkov.  In one of the book’s most famous passages, Shostakovich is quoted as saying,

 

I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth [Symphony] … It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,” and you rise and go off muttering, “Our business is rejoicing.”

 

American musicians and Soviet expatriates, among them the great cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, quickly seized upon this and similar excerpts as providing the key to unlocking any and all interpretive mysteries in the composer’s output.  For example, Timothy Day, in his program notes for the 1983 recording of the Eighth Symphony on London/Decca, offered this take on the halcyon ending of the piece: “Horror remains, but all emo­tion is spent.”  Almost any performance of Shostakovich’s music seemed to carry with it a similar political message, especially when former Soviet citizens were promi­nent among the participants.

 

Testimony, however, was denounced as a fraud just a few years after its publi­cation.  Laurel Fay, a musicologist specializing in Shostakovich, led the way in pointing out inconsisten­cies in Volkov’s account and several apparent instances of plagiarism from earlier Shostakovich publications.  Other scholars have risen to Volkov’s defense, assert­ing that, even if errors may have been made in the process of transcribing Shosta­kovich’s words from tape-recorded interviews, the essence of the book is accurate.  The debate rages on even today, making Shostakovich one of the most controversial composers of the twentieth century.

 

In a letter to the New York Times published on 20 August 2000, the composer’s widow Irina asked that the wrestling over her husband’s soul be put to rest:

 

[N]ow Dmitri Shostakovich is gone, and anything goes.  The time has come to exploit his name, even to the point of abusing and humiliating his memory.  Things are easier [in Russia] now, and people have found their voices….  They are now recalling what happened and what didn’t and, by attributing various scandalous remarks to the great composer, are finding it easy to settle old scores, to appropriate his ideas and pass them off as their own….  These people were and are still trying, but failing, to establish their right to possess him.  And it does not matter whether they shout from the reactionary positions of party ideol­ogy or act under the avant-garde flag; the right and the left meet in the end. 

 

So far, her wishes have not been granted; Volkov followed with his own letter a week later insinuating that Irina had written hers under official duress.  Yet, while the debate over words may con­tinue, the only path that can lead to the truth about this composer lies within the notes.  What­ever we ultimately believe Shostakovich’s cause to be, the best way to cham­pion it is by performing his work and listening to his uniquely powerful voice.

 

2004-05 PCO repertoire