The Shostakovich wars cont'd

[calimac]

This is going to become an all-music journal if I don't watch out. I hope my friends with their gardening, kitchen-remodeling, and novel-writing journals don't mind.

Anyway, I welcome auld acquaintance kip_w to my friends list, someone passionate enough about music that I'll have to keep my sweeping generalizations on their toes. Having read this post in which I wrote of "the emergence (finally) of the typescript of Shostakovich's purported posthumous memoirs, Testimony ... [which] provides devastating circumstantial evidence that the bulk of the text is a fake," K. naturally asks, "So what parts are fake?" The reply is long enough that it deserves to be a new post, not a comment appended to an old one.

The answer is: everything that's interesting.

What Solomon Volkov, the "editor", apparently did was type up a bunch of previously-published Shostakovich articles (many of them probably ghost-written) of extreme innocuousness, tell the composer he was planning to reprint them as a book, and get him to approve the typescripts by writing "OK'd" and signing his name on the first page of each.

Then Volkov threw out everything except the first pages and substituted these inflammatory memoirs of his own composition. So now he had a fake book with Shostakovich's imprimatur on the first page of each chapter, which he published, in English translation only, four years after the composer's death. All that he'd show of the typescript for years was a couple of the signed pages.

That the first pages were copies from old articles was first noticed by a music historian named Laurel Fay a year after the book was published. Volkov's defenders started claiming that it was sheer coincidence that Shostakovich happened to dictate (Volkov claimed he typed the book up from interview notes) word-for-word his old articles down to the punctuation marks, and departed from them the minute Volkov's typescript happened to get to the end of the page.

And besides, Volkov's defenders said, what about chapter 1? That begins not innocuously but with great virulence.

Well, guess what. What emerged with the display of the complete typescript is that Shostakovich didn't sign page 1 of that chapter. He signed page 2, which is - you guessed it - a word-for-word copy, down to the punctuation marks, from an old published article of extreme innocuousness. Except for a sentence whose context would have revealed that it was written in 1960, over ten years before Volkov did his "interviewing". That was typed, but it was whited-out afterwards.

If Volkov's defenders have any shame, they'll slink away in complete embarrassment. I don't think they have, though. If you want to see some pro-Volkov rantings (and they are rantings), click here. The documentary evidence for what I summarize above is in a book, A Shostakovich Casebook edited by Malcolm Hamrick Brown.

My opinion is that this is all extremely interesting but it doesn't change one note of the music. If you're curious as to what I or others might think of how it affects the way we approach the music, read my earlier post. If, like kip_w, you find Shostakovich too depressing most of the time but enjoy his more caustic moods, read my reply to K's comment there, recommending specific works.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I enjoy your music reviews. Even the ones about music unfamiliar to me--which leaves me nothing to say. But I do like reading them.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I encourage you to continue to discuss music in your journal. I never get to talk about classical music enough as most of my friends don't particularly care for it. I read music reviews regularly, and I really like what you've done so far, so carry on!

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I didn't say he was too depressing, just that his music (mostly) didn't do it for me.

On the other hand, I can't think of anything I listen to that I find depressing. Other people seem to think it's depressing, I guess, but the music I listen, I find enjoyable, and that's not depressing. Okay, I guess some opera bits are overtly depressing, because they have lyrics that describe depressing things. Maybe some of the blues stuff is overtly depressing, too. Country-Western music always seemed depressing to me when I had to listen to it on the school bus in the early 70s -- depressing and whiny, when it wasn't being overbearing and braggy. Depressing either way (but I'll take it in a Nashville minute over the "comedy" they used to play).

What is depressing music? People claim Bach is depressing; Gregorian chant is depressing; Chopin's Funeral March is depressing. Clearly, the emotional value of music is tied in with what sort of silent movies or cartoons it's been used to accompany.

Naturally, I can't find it now, or do it justice, but some writers were talking about their favorite pieces of music, and they were all sad. When it came to Robert Benchley, he unhesitatingly said his favorite song was "Tea for Two," and whenever he heard it, he pounded the table and sobbed.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You may not think that you dislike some Shostakovich because it's depressing and like other works because they're caustic, but given what you say, that's definitely how it's separating out.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Hoo, the Shostakovich wars! More fun than probably any other dispute in musicology--except the "Was Schubert gay?!!?!" argument. Volkov, Ho, Feofanov, Fanning, Laurel Fay, and the granddaddy of snarky comments, Richard Taruskin (whose scholarship in many areas is utterly excellent, but hoo boy can he be nasty).

*off to read the other posts*

*likes the 14th Symphony, original languages, best*

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Mostly it goes by without making a big impression on me. Could you give examples of music that is depressing, apart from Shostakovich? I'm thinking Ravel's "La Valse" might qualify, in terms of its overall arc -- doesn't end happy, it ends with the couples dancing into a frenzy and exploding.

I mean, if you're right, I'd like to know about it. Know myself, and all that.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Is Barber's Adagio for string quartet depressing? How about Mahler's Kindertotenlieder? Is it cheating to have it in the lyrics? Schumann's Dichterliebe has it in the lyrics, but the setting has it in the music.