Dmitri Shostakovich

15/05/2016 - Preliminary Consideration:

Please note that this project was an undergraduate assignment and therefore the scopes and resources were limited to a concrete context, not being much an ambitious work. Although the information provided is in general accurate, I am currently reviewing the scholar reception of Shostakovich as postgraduate, thus familiarized with a wider bibliography and a critical perspective and accordingly I regard my own work as lopsided, covering just one of the many points of view that have been given for this very concrete work, From Jewish Folk Poetry op.79.

May you have any kind of question or interest regarding this subject, please do not hesitate to contact me through email (in German if you prefer), which you may find in the cover page. I will be delighted to provide you with further bibliography references, answer questions or discuss any given matter.

*-*-*-*-*

Auf den folgenden Seiten werden wir über die jüdische Musik von Shostakovich sprechen, genauer gesagt, über den Zyklus Aus jiddischer Volkspoesie op.79. Dabei möchten wir die Frage beantworten warum Dmitri Shostakovich diesen Zyklus komponiert hat, einer Zeit, in der die Sowjetunion vom Antisemitismus geprägt war.

The study of musical signification constitutes an important key for the comprehension of Shostakovich's music. This becomes particularly evident when one observes that social and political background plays an important role in his compositional process through the configuration of specific musical topics on structural positions of his music. These specific topics have arisen after cultural and social events during the establishment of the Soviet Union and became typical elements of the Soviet Music. This paper aims to show the function of these elements as compositional roots in the creative concept of Shostakovich's music. The rising of the concept of musical topic after Leonard Ratner (1980) has opened new paths for a consistent comprehension of the musical discourse, identifying social and cultural signs that may articulate ideas which go beyond the music itself: ideology, criticism and politics became elements of musical expression, composing a new soundscape of music in Revolutionary Russia.

Dmitri Shostakovich's Viola Sonata op. 147 (1975) is a significant work of the viola repertoire and one of the composer’s masterpieces. It is Dimitri Shostakovich's last completed composition, often referred to as his swans-song. Due to the many references and symbols that can be found in the piece, it is often considered autobiographical.

D. Shostakovich composed the Sonata right before his death, and unfortunately, he has not heard it performed nor did he have a chance to work at it with performers, as he was used to do. The Viola Sonata was dedicated to Fyodor Druzhinin, violist of the Beethoven quartet and a close colleague and friend of the composer. He performed it two months after the composer's death, together with the pianist Mikhayl Muntyan on the 4th of October 1975 in a fully - packed hall. F. Druzhinin writes in his Memoirs:
"The Premiere of the Sonata was fixed for the 1st of October 1975, according to the tradition, in the Glinka Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. . . . [T]hey had to open the doors to the concert hall because the audience filled both the adjoining foyers. The Sonata was so powerful that it had an almost hypnotic effect on the
listeners. There was only one unoccupied seat in the hall, overflowing with flowers: Shostakovitch’s. Evgeny Aleksandrovich Mravinsky sat near it with my wife at his side. She tells me that he cried without stopping, like a child, and at the end of the sonata he was literally shaking with sobs. To speak of the sonata being a success would simply have been improper. What happened on the platform and in the hearts of the audience that night was something greater than music.
When we finished playing I held the score high over my head, directing all the applause towards the music."

I always found the relationships between composer, performer and audience in music production interesting
and important to understand. I found it extremely enriching to look at the Viola Sonata not only from the composer’s point of view but also through the eyes of Fyodor Druzhinin, its first interpreter, to form a picture of this work and the time it was written in.

In The Noise of Time (2016), Julian Barnes narrates the biography of the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Barnes presents Shostakovich as a trapped and anguished human being who needs to be understood and absolved from the accusations of his time. We can read the novel as the story of a great composer who lived his life as trauma, and carried this burden in a most Sisyphean sense. We watch him as he tries his best to save his personal integrity while undergoing severely distressing events, continuously distracted by the noise of his time as he is perseveringly composing his masterpieces despite it. This paper will illustrate how Barnes evokes sympathy for Shostakovich's traumatic life and how Shostakovich fought with trauma by the help of his ironic mode of living.

Peter Kivy has argued that scholars of the music of Dimitri Shostakovich are misguided when they make interpretations that attribute complex extra-musical content to works of his that bear no indications of such content, such as a title or an explicitly announced programme. Upon Kivy’s account, such works should rather be approached in terms of absolute music. In this paper, I show some decisive weaknesses in this critique. Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, I examine Shostakovich’s use of musical quotations—an essential feature of his compositions that Kivy ignores—and the significant role these play in constructing the extra-musical content of his works. Relying, in part, on recent research on authorial intentions, I also argue that the criteria Kivy presents for the reclassification of, seeming cases of, absolute music as programme music is too strict. Such reclassifications need not be accompanied by an explanation as to why the composer has not provided any direct public indication of the content of the work, as Kivy insists.

Noise is consistently presents in digital images during image acquisition, coding, transmission, and processing steps. The main purpose of de-noising the image is to restore the detail of original image as much as possible. Depending on the types of disturbance, the noise can affect the image to different extent. Salt and Pepper noise arises in the image because of sharp and sudden changes of image signal. Dust particles in the image acquisition source or over heated faulty components can cause this type of noise. In the field of image processing, several type of linear and non-linear filtering techniques have been proposed for reducing the noise in images. Filters like Median, Gaussian and Wiener are used to do this comparative study of different images of same type in Gray scale. The quality of the enhanced images is measured by the statistical quantity measures: Peak Signal-to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) metrics. An application specific measure for natural flower images correlation is defined and known as Deviation Measure. A Deviation Measure (DM) is obtained by the comparison of filtered and original image which shows the deviation in the images.

Esta labor nace por un requerimiento académico en el cual se nos proponía la investigación de un tema de libre elección. En mi caso, el tema sobre el que he querido realizar este trabajo ha sido una trabajo bibliográfico sobre las circunstancias que envolvían al compositor Dimitri Shostakovich durante la composición de sus primeras obras. Como bien sabemos, el compositor sufrió las consecuencias de la dura represión a la que Stalin sometía a los artistas en la Unión Soviética, y ello se puede ver reflejado en la evolución de sus composiciones.

Reseña. El violonchelista y musicólogo Carlos Prieto alterna entre el arco y la pluma para entregarnos un exquisito relato historiográfico que se convierte en una apología de la atormentada vida de Dmitri Shostakóvich, para muchos la estrella más luminosa en el firmamento musical soviético.

Статья посвящена анализу сходных композиционных приёмов в «Симфонии псалмов» Игоря Стравинского, кантате «Александр Невский» Сергея Прокофьева и Седьмой симфонии Дмитрия Шостаковича. Особенности творческого метода санкт-петербургских классиков рассмотрены на основе понятийной пары «морфема-морф». Дана характеристика морфемы «события» и её морфа молитвенного ритуала в крайних частях «Симфонии псалмов». Проведено сравнение мор-фа молитвенного ритуала с морфом вражеского нашествия в «Ледовом побоище» из «Александра Невского», в эпизо-де нашествия первой части Седьмой симфонии. Текстовая реализация морфемы «среды» в виде морфа тевтонского ига прослежена в «Крестоносцах во Пскове» из «Александра Невского». Выявлены мелодические, ритмические, фактурные средства морфной реализации морфем «пространства», «движения», «диссонанса», «януса». Морфологический анализ позволил охарактеризовать общие приёмы хорового и оркестрового письма, сходства в мелодике и ритмике, сближающие три шедевра музыкальной культуры ХХ века. Ключевые слова: Стравинский, Прокофьев, Шостакович, «Симфония псалмов», кантата «Александр Невский», Симфония № 7 «Ленинградская», морфема «среды», «события», «пространства», «движения», «диссонанса», «януса», морф тевтонского ига, морф молитвенного ритуала, морф вражеского нашествия.

This article presents an analysis of the commonalities of compositional approach in Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Sergei Prokofi ev's Alexander Nevsky cantata, and Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7. The features of the St. Petersburg classic composers' creative method are examined using the conceptual pairing of morpheme and morph. A description is provided of the morpheme of the event, and its morph of the prayer ritual, in the fi rst and third parts of Symphony of Psalms. A comparison is drawn between the morph of the prayer ritual and the morph of the enemy invasion in "The Battle on the Ice" from Alexander Nevsky and in the invasion episode from the fi rst part of Symphony No. 7. In the "The Crusaders in Pskov" section of Alexander Nevsky, the textual realization of the morpheme of the environment is traced, in the form of the morph of the Teutonic yoke. The melodic, rhythmic, and textural resources in the morphic implementation of the morphemes of space, movement, and dissonance, and the Janus morpheme, are revealed. The morphological analysis has discovered common approaches to choral and orchestral writing, similarities in melody and rhythm, which bond together these three masterpieces of 20th-century musical culture. Keywords: Stravinsky, Prokofi ev, Shostakovich, Symphony of Psalms, Alexander Nevsky cantata, Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad", morpheme of the environment, morpheme of the event, morpheme of space, morpheme of movement, morpheme of dissonance, Janus morpheme, morph of the Teutonic yoke, morph of the prayer ritual, morph of the enemy invasion.

This article tries to provide a thorough analysis of Nikolai Leskov’s rewriting of Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean character, in the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, from the perspective of Translation and Adaptation Studies. The focus will be placed on the ideology of the author who, with full knowledge, rewrites a previous work to adapt it to a specific context. Apart from Leskov’s work, attention will be also paid to two of its subsequent adaptations: Dmitri Shostakovich’s homonymous opera and William Oldroyd’s filmic version, Lady Macbeth. Finally, the importance of these processes for the development of target literary systems will be discussed and emphasized.

Symphonic music composed under Stalin presents both ethical and
aesthetic problems. Often assumed to have been composed in a compromised style by composers who were either coerced into abandoning their ‘‘real’’ modernist inclinations or who were in any case second-rate, these works have been labelled variously socialist realist, conformist, conservative, or even dissident, depending on the taste and opinion of those passing judgement. This article argues that picking and choosing which symphony is socialist realist and which is not cannot be justified either logically or historically, and that we should no longer attempt to define any non-texted or non-programmatic music in this way. The Anglophone term ‘‘middlebrow’ holds out the possibility of describing this repertoire without implying ethical or artistic compromise on the composers’ part, acknowledging that, in the absence of any elite or ‘‘highbrow’’ musical culture, composers shared the aim of reaching a mass audience.

Published in The Journal of Musicology, 35/3, 2018

The motif DSCH is an important part of the structure of Shostakovich’s compositions. The idea of constructing motives, based on the initials of the composer’s name is not something new. However, Shostakovich used motif on a larger level, using a motif in many of his composition. This paper points to the incorporation motif DSCH in the works of Shostakovich, with special emphasis on the analysis of the String Quartet No. 8 in c minor, Op. 110, in which motif DSCH represents a basic motif nucleus. Through five movement String Quartet No. 8 in c minor, Op. 110 Shostakovich motif DSCH is used by more than one hundred times, as in the original form or the melodic and rhythmic changes.

Motiv DSCH, ima značajnu strukturalnu ulogu u izgradnji kompozicija Dmitrija Dmitrijevič Šostakoviča. Sama ideja konstruisanja motiva zasnovanog na inicijalima kompozitorovog imena nije nešto što ranije nije viđeno. Međutim, Šostakovič motiv koristi na jednoj većoj razini, koristeći motiv u velikom broju djela njegova stvaralačkog opusa. Ovaj rad ukazuje na inkorporaciju motiva DSCH u djelima Šostakovičevog opusa, s posebnim
osvrtom na analizu Gudačkog kvarteta op. 110, br. 8, c-mol, u kojem motiv DSCH predstavlja osnovno motivsko jezgro. Kroz pet stavaka Gudačkog kvarteta op. 110, br. 8 c-mol Šostakovič je motiv DSCH upotrijebio više od stotinu puta, bilo u originalnom vidu ili s melodijskim i ritamskim promjenama.

As attention on the music of Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) has increased in the years after his death, so has the need for an analytical study of his musical style and language. This thesis surveys Weinberg’s changing style through a genre that spans almost his entire output: the string quartet. His close friendship and artistic affinity with Shostakovich helps make his music accessible to a wider audience, though closer examination reveals Weinberg’s individuality and a quite distinct language from that of his mentor. In support of this contention, a wide range of analytical approaches is deployed in this dissertation, along with a pragmatic methodology for presenting a holistic overview of Weinberg’s quartets.
Weinberg’s quartet cycle occupies an important place in twentieth-century music, with parallels to Shostakovich, Bartók, and other Soviet composers, including Myaskovsky, Shebalin, Levitin, and Boris Chaykovsky; correspondences and distinctiveness are explored in the second chapter. The third chapter surveys Weinberg’s musical narratives, with recourse to theories from Kofi Agawu, Boris Asafiev, and Jacques Derrida. Form is the focus of the fourth chapter, where ideas from Mark Aranovsky, and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy are deployed to highlight Weinberg’s problematising of traditional forms in his music. Chapter five explores Weinberg’s multi-faceted approach to harmony, with concepts expanded from Lev Mazel, Yury Kholopov, and the neo-Riemannian school of analysis.
The picture that emerges is of Weinberg’s individuality and distinctive voice, manifested in a controlled experimentalism and a tendency towards extended lyricism. His affinity with better-known composers may prove an approachable entry-point for wider audiences, but many of the most striking elements in his quartet cycle are of his own invention. His quartets stand as an important contextual dimension for understanding Shostakovich’s cycle, and also for appreciating the broader repertoire of Soviet chamber music. As his centenary approaches, engagement with Weinberg’s music continues to increase: this thesis provides contexts and analysis-based conclusions to complement this ongoing revival.

This study presents socio-cultural and harmonic analyses of Clare Fischer’s compositional approach. It incorporates not only the results of interviews with Fischer himself, family members and long-time colleagues, but also introduces a large collection of private letters, used exclusively in this study by permission of Fischer’s wife Donna. The harmonic component includes detailed comparative analyses of one composition and one solo piano performance, which reveal aspects of influence and considerable detail regarding Fischer’s idiosyncratic harmonic style.
Various methodological and theoretical considerations are outlined and a pragmatic approach towards the examinations of both Fischer’s socio-cultural context and distinctive harmonic process proposed. The study discusses aspects of Fischer’s status and influence within the jazz community, his stylistic network, his work in the popular music sector, the concept of emotion in his music, and his relationship in socio-cultural and musical terms with Dimitri Shostakovich and Bill Evans. The work continues with comparative examinations of harmony in Fischer’s composition ‘The Early Years’, which shows parallels to passages from Shostakovich’s first symphony and Fischer’s solo piano interpretation of the folk song ‘Du, Du liegst mir im Herzen’, which reveals significant differences from the mainstream in tonal jazz as exemplified by Bill Evans’ harmonic treatment of the folk tune ‘Danny Boy’.
A more precise definition of the relationship between Fischer’s harmonic techniques and his contextual background emerges from these analyses. The study concludes with a summary and analysis of Fischer’s harmonic choices as expressions of personal experiences and general socio-cultural matters, and offers perspectives for future investigations of jazz music utilizing interdisciplinary methodologies.

This comprehensive volume offers a wide-ranging perspective on the stories that art music has told since the start of the 20th century. Contributors challenge the broadly held opinion that the loss of tonality in some music after 1900 also meant the loss of narrative in that music. To the contrary, the editors and essayists in this book demonstrate how experiments in approaching narrative in other media, such as fiction and cinema, suggested fresh possibilities for musical narrative, which composers were quick to exploit. The new conceptions of time, narrative voice, plot, and character that accompanied these experiments also had a significant impact on contemporary music. The repertoire explored in the collection ranges across a wide variety of genres and includes composers from Charles Ives and the Pet Shop Boys to Thomas Adès and Dmitri Shostakovich.

[Table of contents etc: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?cPath=1037_5718_5753&products_id=806644 ]
[Sample chapter: http://www.academia.edu/749803/Agency_Determinism_Focal_Time_Frames_and_Narrative_in_Processive_Minimalist_Music ]

A genealogy of the keyboard prelude from its earliest mention to the present with a particular focus on its manifestation in the early Soviet Union. Attempts to situate composers of preludes in their context, beginning with Dmitri D. Shostakovich, but also including original research on lesser known figures Vsevolod P. Zaderatsky, Valery V. Zhelobinsky, and Boris G. Goltz.

O objeto do presente trabalho é a Sinfonia em Dó Maior Nº7, Op.60, de Dmitri Shostakovich, chamada doravante de Sétima. Nossa questão de pesquisa é que a Sétima foi alvo de interpretações políticas por toda a sua vida, no entanto, uma falha nessas abordagens: nenhuma delas entende a política como tendo uma dimensão macro e uma micro, aquela se referindo a partidos, representações e identidades e esta a subjetividades e devires. Historicamente, toda a sua recepção foi marcada por representações e identidades (“tema da invasão”, “pró-regime”, “anticomunista”, revisionistas e antirrevisionistas), mas este é o primeiro trabalho que levanta a hipótese da existência de uma potência revolucionária da Sétima no campo micropolítico. Trata-se de uma questão política dentro de uma obra musical. Para desenvolvê-la, temos como corpus o texto musical e a sua repercussão musicológica de Shostakovich pós-1979 (as chamadas “Shostakovich Wars”) e, como referenciais teóricos, a teoria micropolítica de Suely Rolnik (que se desdobra em psicanálise, filosofia e semiótica) e a filosofia de Gilles Deleuze e Félix Guattari. Em Mil Platôs, Deleuze e Guattari tratam de dois aspectos da forma-Estado: a máquina de guerra e o aparelho de estado. No pólo do aparelho de estado encontramos as políticas identitárias e os sistemas de representação, as semióticas significantes ou semiologias. No pólo da máquina de guerra encontram-se as semióticas assignificantes, as micropolíticas, os modos de existência ou de vida não-hegemônicos, os devires-revolucionários, aquilo que há de fresco e que ainda não foi capturado pelo aparelho do estado. Trilhando esse caminho teórico, sempre em diálogo com a obra e o autor, podemos arriscar nossas conclusões. A conclusão a que chegamos é que, tanto nas qualidades estéticas e musicais da Sétima quanto na dimensão micropolítica da obra e do modo de vida de Shostakovich, observa-se o comportamento de uma máquina de guerra.

Although there is not much known of Benjamin Britten's views on his Violin Concerto, musicology has created a complex and enthralling narrative of musical and extra-musical influences, which undoubtedly has played a valuable part in the appreciation of the work. This thesis discusses three main elements from this narrative: the Spanish Civil War, Russian composers and Alban Berg, focussing on the extent to which these separate elements are useful in understanding the concerto, as well as the relevance of these conflated narratives for music historiography regarding Benjamin Britten. It is argued that although some of these narrative elements are certainly meaningful, the coherence of these influences is not as unswerving as one would hope from a narrative perspective, rendering it musicologically problematic.

This article offers the first major investigation of the Holocaust in wartime Soviet music and its connection to questions of Soviet Jewish identity. Moving beyond the consistent focus on Shostakovich’s 1962 Babi Yar symphony, I offer an alternative locus for the beginnings of Soviet musical representation of the Nazi genocide in a now-forgotten composition by the Soviet Jewish composer Mikhail Gnesin, his 1943 piano Trio, “In Memory of Our Perished Children.” I trace the genesis of this work in Gnesin’s web of experiences before and during the war in Leningrad, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Tashkent. Using a range of Russian and Yiddish-language archival sources, I examine Gnesin’s carefully deliberate strategy of aesthetic ambiguity in depicting death, Jewish and Soviet, individual and collective.

Recapturing this forgotten cultural genealogy provides a very different kind of European historical soundtrack for the Holocaust. Instead of the categories of survivor and bystander, wartime witness and postwar remembrance, we find a more ambiguous form of early Holocaust memory. Rather than a mark of Jewish difference, Soviet music of the Holocaust emerges as an aspirational form of imperial belonging. Finally, the story of how the Holocaust first entered Soviet music challenges our contemporary assumptions about the coherence and legitimacy of “Holocaust music” as a category of cultural history and present-day performance.