Re: Shostakovich's 5th - Triumph or Tragedy?


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Posted by Aubrey Foard (the answer) on February 16, 2001 at 00:01:30:

In Reply to: Shostakovich's 5th - Triumph or Tragedy? posted by Aubrey Foard on February 15, 2001 at 00:02:14:

Thank you all for your wonderful responses so far. Here's the extent of my knowledge:

Then-Soviet Premiere and "noted music critic" Joseph Stalin, after having heard the premiere of Shostakovich's second opera, "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", wrote a music review two days later in the Soviet Daily, Pravda (under the heading "Chaos Instead of Music"). In it, Stalin accused the composer of "modernist formalism", described the score as "coarse, primitive, and vulgar", and arranged that he be denounced by the Soviet musical community as a whole. Shostakovich stopped the opera from running and wisely withdrew the premiere of his Fourth Symphony (it was not premiered for decades).

Shostakovich, fearing (as many Soviet citizens did) that he would be dragged away in the middle of the night and executed, then took to writing his Fifth Symphony. Following it's completion, he inscribed on the title page, "A Soviet artist's practical, creative response to just criticism."

Indeed, the symphony was premiered as a triumph and testament to the will and power of the Soviet people. After the final notes had sounded, the audience erupted into deafening applause. Many wept openly. This was the way the symphony was presented over the next 3 1/2 decades (and sometimes still is).

However, those close to Shostakovich and those who had somehow stumbled upon the truth knew very well that it was a tragedy in the most saddening, depairaging kind of way. In the early 70's, as Shostakovich's death neared, a curious European conductor sent a message to the Soviet Party's Division of Cultural Affairs. In it, he asked the composer to kindly confirm or deny his theory that the end march of the fourth movement was actually meant to be taken at half the tempo it was marked (quarter=164-188) and whether the symphony as a whole should be viewed as a tragedy. A letter was shortly mailed back with no return address. In it was a single sheet of paper, unmarked except for a single word: "Correct". Note: a march taken at half tempo has the potential to sound very sad. From then on it became clear that the final march was meant for a much slower tempo.

All along, Shostakovich had filled the music with glaring sarcasm, tragedy, and irrefutable defiance with very few people knowing. Following the affirmation of the tragedy contained within the 5th, new interpretations were formed, some filling every note with sorrow and mournful disgrace. This is why every recording pre-1975 is presented in a triumph and most recordings recorded after that are viewed in tragedy (I feel the best interpretations of this are Haitink/Royal Concertgebouw and Rostropovich/National Symphony).

But no one says it better than Shostakovich himself. In his memoirs, Shostakovich wrote, "the finale is irreperable tragedy... people who came to the premiere in the best of moods wept," then, "I think it is clear what happens in the Fifth. It is as if someone is beating you with a club, yelling 'your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you walk away saying, 'our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'"


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