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The Shostakovich wars
So I posted a couple days ago about Alex Ross's latest article on the interpretation of the music of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Ross has been exemplary in trying to rise above the flamewars that have been consuming this subject for the last 25 years: his best article on it is here, in which he points out that however you interpret it, the music remains the same. I'll go along with that. I liked Shostakovich's music when everybody thought he was a Soviet lackey, and I still liked it when everybody thought he was a secret dissident. All that's changed is the extramusical context we put it in, and context while interesting and informative is not music.
The latest twist is the emergence (finally) of the typescript of Shostakovich's purported posthumous memoirs, Testimony, the book whose publication in 1979 set this off. The typescript provides devastating circumstantial evidence that the bulk of the text is a fake. The "editor," Solomon Volkov, a then-young music journalist who glommed on to Shostakovich in his last years, put a big one over on the entire music world, and tried to hide it by not letting anyone see the whole typescript. He's the reincarnation of Anton Schindler, the glutinous creep who made himself useful as Beethoven's lackey in his last years, then issued a spurious memoir as soon as the great man was dead. (Have you ever read that the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth are supposed to be "fate knocking at the door"? Beethoven never said that. Schindler made it up.) Further comparisons to Walter Hooper (of C.S. Lewis posthumiana fame), Ralph Schoenman (who tried to take over for Bertrand Russell while he was still alive, but was found out and given the boot) and even Robert Craft (who made up some of his conversations with Stravinsky) at no extra charge.
But Volkov's fakery has been suspected from the beginning, because his story never quite hung together. The question is where does this leave Testimony's main claim: that Shostakovich was himself putting one over on the Soviet authorities, posing as a good Communist but secretly thumbing his nose and encoding this in his music? Ross's argument in his older article is that it doesn't matter what the composer intended, because the music remains the same; but others think it does matter. Volkov's defenders began by saying that the text of Testimony might be a fake but its portrait of the composer was real: this was Ian MacDonald's position in his 1990 book The New Shostakovich, and he backed it up with affadavits from people who knew the composer. The need for deception in the Soviet system explained a lot. Now Ross is saying that you can't back up truth with a lie (fiction writers might disagree with that), and others are offering affadavits from some of the same people saying they don't believe Testimony is Shostakovich at all. I'm confused.
Meanwhile, under the influence of a couple of belligerent trolls named Ho and Feofanov, MacDonald recanted his doubts about Volkov's honesty, and started issuing flames himself. What I didn't know until I read Ross's new article was that MacDonald committed suicide last year. Maybe the pressure got to him? (Yes, this is the same Ian MacDonald who wrote Revolution in the Head, an alternately insightful and vacuous song-by-song study of the Beatles.) The Volkovist camp claims that their opponents are trying to reduce Shostakovich to pure Communist lackey again for unfathomable reasons of their own: Norman Lebrecht makes that argument here. A stunningly foolish piece of invective, I thought. If Lebrecht honestly doesn't know what motivates the anti-Volkovites, he could start with this article (registration required, alas) by their leading figure Richard Taruskin, which not only says that it's the other side that's reducing the composer to pure dissident, but movingly puts the case that what makes Shostakovich important is that he was both dissident and lackey at once.
Do you want to judge for yourself? Get a recording of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony (1937), one of his finest works. Listen to the whole thing, but pay particular attention to the finale, with its mighty conclusion in a shining D Major. What does it sound like to you?
1) A triumphal rejoicing after struggle, which is what the composer publicly, and Soviet critics generally, said;
2) An unsuccessful attempt to depict triumphal rejoicing, a blemish on an otherwise fine symphony, which is what pre-Volkov Western critics said;
3) A person pretending to rejoice because the government stuck a gun to his head and said "Your business is rejoicing," which is what Volkov's Testimony says;
4) Just an exciting finale in D Major, never mind what the composer intended, which is what Alex Ross says;
5) All of these at once, which is what Richard Taruskin says.
Ross has been exemplary in trying to rise above the flamewars that have been consuming this subject for the last 25 years: his best article on it is here, in which he points out that however you interpret it, the music remains the same. I'll go along with that. I liked Shostakovich's music when everybody thought he was a Soviet lackey, and I still liked it when everybody thought he was a secret dissident. All that's changed is the extramusical context we put it in, and context while interesting and informative is not music.
The latest twist is the emergence (finally) of the typescript of Shostakovich's purported posthumous memoirs, Testimony, the book whose publication in 1979 set this off. The typescript provides devastating circumstantial evidence that the bulk of the text is a fake. The "editor," Solomon Volkov, a then-young music journalist who glommed on to Shostakovich in his last years, put a big one over on the entire music world, and tried to hide it by not letting anyone see the whole typescript. He's the reincarnation of Anton Schindler, the glutinous creep who made himself useful as Beethoven's lackey in his last years, then issued a spurious memoir as soon as the great man was dead. (Have you ever read that the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth are supposed to be "fate knocking at the door"? Beethoven never said that. Schindler made it up.) Further comparisons to Walter Hooper (of C.S. Lewis posthumiana fame), Ralph Schoenman (who tried to take over for Bertrand Russell while he was still alive, but was found out and given the boot) and even Robert Craft (who made up some of his conversations with Stravinsky) at no extra charge.
But Volkov's fakery has been suspected from the beginning, because his story never quite hung together. The question is where does this leave Testimony's main claim: that Shostakovich was himself putting one over on the Soviet authorities, posing as a good Communist but secretly thumbing his nose and encoding this in his music? Ross's argument in his older article is that it doesn't matter what the composer intended, because the music remains the same; but others think it does matter. Volkov's defenders began by saying that the text of Testimony might be a fake but its portrait of the composer was real: this was Ian MacDonald's position in his 1990 book The New Shostakovich, and he backed it up with affadavits from people who knew the composer. The need for deception in the Soviet system explained a lot. Now Ross is saying that you can't back up truth with a lie (fiction writers might disagree with that), and others are offering affadavits from some of the same people saying they don't believe Testimony is Shostakovich at all. I'm confused.
Meanwhile, under the influence of a couple of belligerent trolls named Ho and Feofanov, MacDonald recanted his doubts about Volkov's honesty, and started issuing flames himself. What I didn't know until I read Ross's new article was that MacDonald committed suicide last year. Maybe the pressure got to him? (Yes, this is the same Ian MacDonald who wrote Revolution in the Head, an alternately insightful and vacuous song-by-song study of the Beatles.) The Volkovist camp claims that their opponents are trying to reduce Shostakovich to pure Communist lackey again for unfathomable reasons of their own: Norman Lebrecht makes that argument here. A stunningly foolish piece of invective, I thought. If Lebrecht honestly doesn't know what motivates the anti-Volkovites, he could start with this article (registration required, alas) by their leading figure Richard Taruskin, which not only says that it's the other side that's reducing the composer to pure dissident, but movingly puts the case that what makes Shostakovich important is that he was both dissident and lackey at once.
Do you want to judge for yourself? Get a recording of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony (1937), one of his finest works. Listen to the whole thing, but pay particular attention to the finale, with its mighty conclusion in a shining D Major. What does it sound like to you?
1) A triumphal rejoicing after struggle, which is what the composer publicly, and Soviet critics generally, said;
2) An unsuccessful attempt to depict triumphal rejoicing, a blemish on an otherwise fine symphony, which is what pre-Volkov Western critics said;
3) A person pretending to rejoice because the government stuck a gun to his head and said "Your business is rejoicing," which is what Volkov's Testimony says;
4) Just an exciting finale in D Major, never mind what the composer intended, which is what Alex Ross says;
5) All of these at once, which is what Richard Taruskin says.
no subject
As you've seen me say elsewhere, the book formed much of my opinion of Shostakovich when it came out, but it was his music that convinced me I wasn't much interested in him. I still love that first Piano Concerto, but I have yet to find another piece of his that I like anywhere near as much. The second Piano Concerto is okay, but so are a lot of things that I don't find compelling. Limited as my time is, I'll probably use it to firm up my Prokofiev-Q.
no subject
Everything that's interesting.
Any elaboration would be so long I'm writing it up as a new post.
The First Piano Concerto is early Shostakovich, before he had his artistic crisis in 1936. I suggest you try other works of that period, which can be extremely experimental, even beyond Prokofiev's "wild-man" period of pre-WW1.
Listen to his ballets Bolt and Age of Gold; try the First and Fourth Symphonies. (And for a truly weird Twenties Modernist experience, the little-played Second and Third Symphonies can't be beat.) Try also the Ninth Symphony: it's later but has that impish spirit. See if you can find his early piano music, the Preludes Op. 34 and the Aphorisms. Don't forget "Tahiti Trot", which he wrote as a student on a bet: orchestrate "Tea for Two" in under an hour.
Avoid his string quartets; they're all depressing. No, wait: try the Seventh Quartet. It's short, cute, and lighter than the others.
no subject
Of course I'm familiar with the funny polka from Age of Gold. Dad used to quote one of the (purposely) inane motifs from it. I bought a piano reduction of the piece years ago, but haven't touched it in a decade or two. "Tahiti Trot" I've heard too. For some reason, there's an organ version of it out there now, presumably based on his orchestration, but it seems like an exercise of some sort.
The piano music I've heard by him went in one ear. I didn't notice where it went out.
no subject
That would be the Second.
When I first started listening to classical, I was afraid of symphonies. Now I listen to hardly anything else.
Of course there's not time for everything. Mark Manning was speechless when he found out how many famous foreign films I'd not seen. (I've not watched a single movie in Italian in my entire life.) But film is not my art.
You don't have to rush out and get them. But I think you'd like the First and Ninth Symphonies, so if you happen to run across them some time, just remember that and I think you'll be in for a treat.
no subject
That said, I do like some symphonies. Leaving aside the ones I listen to in piano transcription or other reduced-forces format, I always liked Franck's (which I now tend to listen to in a pipe organ arrangment, but I listened to the original version before that). Prokofiev's Fifth is a great favorite, and Ives' Fourth is one I listen to nowadays for comfort food.
Chances are my tastes are starting to solidify now, after some forty years of hearing classical music, and about thirty years in which I have let it take over the spot in my heart that popular music used to occupy (a generality: I still listen to some). I just prefer things that are, at least theoretically, possible for me to play. And apart from stuff like Ives and the music on the far side of him, I can at least sit down and work out individual pages or measures of just about everything I own, even the barn-burners like Schulz-Evler's "Blue Danube" arabesques or Tausig's gratuitously gnarly take on Bach's Toccata & Fugue in d-minor. Not up to speed, I hasten to add, although I sometimes surprise myself.
no subject