Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich[n 1] (25

September [O.S. 12 September] 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a
Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist. He is regarded as
one of the major composers of the 20th century and one of its
most popular composers.[1]

Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the

patronage of the Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky,
but later had a complex relationship with the government,
from which he earned state awards and privileges.
Throughout his life he participated in bureaucratic functions
and delegations, including serving in the Supreme Soviet of
the RSFSR (1947) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet
Union (from 1962 until his death).[1]

Shostakovich combined a variety of different musical

techniques into his works. His music is characterized by Shostakovich in 1950
sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque, and ambivalent
tonality; he was also heavily influenced by the neoclassical
style pioneered by Igor Stravinsky, and (especially in his
symphonies) by the late Romanticism of Gustav Mahler.

Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. His chamber output
includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and two pieces for string octet. His
solo piano works include two sonatas, an early set of 24 preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes
and fugues. Other works include three operas, three ballets, several song cycles, and a
substantial quantity of music for theatre and film. Of the latter genre, the waltz from The First
Echelon (in an alternate arrangement as the "Waltz No. 2" for the Suite for Variety Orchestra),
the suite of music extracted from The Gadfly, and the theme from the Counterplan are
especially well known.

Contents
Biography
Youth
Early career
First denunciation
Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony
Fifth Symphony and return to favor
Second World War
Second denunciation
Joining the Party
Later life, and death
Music
Overview
Jewish themes
Self-quotations
Posthumous publications
Criticism
Personality
Orthodoxy and revisionism
Recorded legacy
Awards
See also
Notes
Citations
References
External links

Biography

Youth
Born at Podolskaya Street in Saint Petersburg, Russia,
Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri
Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna
Kokoulina. Shostakovich's paternal grandfather, originally
surnamed Szostakowicz, was of Polish Roman Catholic
descent (his family roots trace to the region of the town of
Vileyka in today's Belarus), but his immediate forebears
came from Siberia.[2] A Polish revolutionary in the January
Uprising of 1863–4, Bolesław Szostakowicz was exiled to Birthplace of Shostakovich (now
Narym (near Tomsk) in 1866 in the crackdown that followed School No. 267). Commemorative
Dmitry Karakozov's assassination attempt on Tsar plaque at left
[3]
Alexander II. When his term of exile ended, Szostakowicz
decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became a
successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son Dmitri Boleslavovich
Shostakovich, the composer's father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and studied physics and
mathematics at Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899. He then went to work as an
engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg.
In 1903 he married another Siberian transplant to the capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one
of six children born to a Siberian Russian.[3]

Their son, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, displayed significant musical talent after he began
piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. On several occasions he displayed a
remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would
get "caught in the act" of playing the previous lesson's music while pretending to read different
music placed in front of him.[4] In 1918 he wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of
the Kadet party murdered by Bolshevik sailors.[5]

In 1919, at age 13,[6] Shostakovich was admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by
Alexander Glazunov, who monitored his progress closely and promoted him.[7] Shostakovich
studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev after a year in the class of Elena Rozanova, composition
with Maximilian Steinberg, and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolay Sokolov, with whom he
became friends.[8] He also attended Alexander Ossovsky's music history classes.[9] In 1925, he
enrolled in the conducting classes of Nikolai Malko.[10]

On 20 March 1925, Shostakovich's music was played in Moscow for the first time, in a program
which also included works by his friend Vissarion Shebalin. To the composer's disappointment,
the critics and public there received his music cooly. While Shostakovich visited the Russian
capital, Mikhail Kvadri introduced him to Mikhail Tukhachevsky,[11] who helped the composer
find accommodation and work in Moscow, and sent a driver around in "a very stylish
automobile" to take him to a concert.[12]

His musical breakthrough was the First Symphony, written as his graduation piece at the age of
19. At first, Shostakovich aspired only to perform it privately with the conservatory orchestra
and prepared to conduct the scherzo himself. By late 1925, Steinberg and Shostakovich's friend
Boleslav Yavorsky brought the symphony to Malko's attention, whereupon he agreed to conduct
its premiere with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra.[13] On 12 May 1926, Malko premiered
the symphony, which was received enthusiastically by the audience, who demanded an encore
of the scherzo. Thereafter, Shostakovich would celebrate the date of his symphonic debut for the
rest of his life.[14]

Early career
After graduation, Shostakovich embarked on a dual career as
concert pianist and composer, but his dry playing style was often
remarked upon negatively.[15] Shostakovich maintained a heavy
performance schedule until 1930; after 1933, he performed only his
own compositions.[16] Along with Yuri Bryushkov, Grigory
Ginzburg, Lev Oborin, and Josif Shvarts, he was among the Soviet
contestants in the inaugural I International Chopin Piano
Competition in Warsaw in 1927. According to the later
reminiscences of Valerian Bogdanov-Berezhovsky:
Shostakovich in 1925

The self-discipline with which the young Shostakovich

prepared for the 1927 [Chopin] Competition was
astonishing. For three weeks, he locked himself away at
home, practicing for hours at a time, having postponed
his composing, and given up trips to the theatre and
visits with friends. Even more startling was the result of
this seclusion. Of course, prior to this time, he had
played superbly and occasioned Glazunov's now famous
glowing reports. But during those days, his pianism,
 sharply idiosyncratic and rhythmically impulsive, multi-
timbered yet graphically defined, merged in its
concentrated form.[17]

Natan Perelman, who heard Shostakovich play his Chopin programs before he went to Warsaw,
said that his "anti-sentimental" playing, which eschewed rubato and extreme dynamic
contrasts, was unlike anything he had ever heard. Arnold Alschwang called Shostakovich's
playing "profound and lacking any salon-like mannerisms."[18]

Shostakovich was stricken with appendicitis on the opening day of the competition, but his
condition improved by the time of his first performance on 27 January 1927. (He had his
appendix removed on 25 April.) According to Shostakovich, his playing found favor with the
audience. He persisted into the final round of the competition, but ultimately earned only a
diploma, no prize; Oborin was declared the winner. Shostakovich was upset about the result,
but for a time resolved to continue a career as performer. While recovering from his
appendectomy in April 1927, Shostakovich said he was beginning to reassess those plans:

When I was well, I practiced the piano every day. I wanted to carry on like that until
autumn and then decide. If I saw that I had not improved, I would quit the whole
business. To be a pianist who is worse than Szpinalski, Etkin, Ginzburg, and
Bryushkov (it is commonly thought that I am worse than them) is not worth it.[19]

After the competition, Shostakovich and Oborin spent a week in Berlin. There he met the
conductor Bruno Walter, who was so impressed by Shostakovich's First Symphony that he
conducted its first performance outside Russia later that year. Leopold Stokowski led the
American premiere the next year in Philadelphia and also made the work's first
recording.[20][21]

In 1927 Shostakovich wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled To October), a patriotic piece with
a pro-Soviet choral finale. Owing to its experimental nature, as with the subsequent Third
Symphony, it was not critically acclaimed with the enthusiasm given to the First.[22]

1927 also marked the beginning of Shostakovich's relationship with Ivan Sollertinsky, who
remained his closest friend until the latter's death in 1944. Sollertinsky introduced the
composer to Mahler's music, which had a strong influence on Shostakovich from the Fourth
Symphony onward.[23]

While writing the Second Symphony, Shostakovich also began work on his satirical opera The
Nose, based on the story by Nikolai Gogol. In June 1929, against the composer's wishes, the
opera was given a concert performance; it was ferociously attacked by the Russian Association
of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM).[24] Its stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to
generally poor reviews and widespread incomprehension among musicians.[25]

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Shostakovich worked at TRAM, a proletarian youth theatre.
Although he did little work in this post, it shielded him from ideological attack. Much of this
period was spent writing his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which was first performed in
1934. It was immediately successful, on both popular and official levels. It was described as "the
result of the general success of Socialist construction, of the correct policy of the Party", and as
an opera that "could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best
tradition of Soviet culture".[26]

Shostakovich married his first wife, Nina Varzar, in 1932. Difficulties led to a divorce in 1935,
but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first child, Galina.[27]

First denunciation
On 17 January 1936, Joseph Stalin paid a rare visit to the opera for a performance of a new
work, Quiet Flows the Don, based on the novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, by the little-known
composer Ivan Dzerzhinsky, who was called to Stalin's box at the end of the performance and
told that his work had "considerable ideological-political value".[28] On 26 January, Stalin
revisited the opera, accompanied by Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrei Zhdanov and Anastas
Mikoyan, to hear Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. He and his entourage left without
speaking to anyone. Shostakovich had been forewarned by a friend that he should postpone a
planned concert tour in Arkhangelsk in order to be present at that particular performance.[29]
Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his
bow after the third act.[30] The next day, Shostakovich left for Arkhangelsk, where he heard on
28 January that Pravda had published an editorial titled Muddle Instead of Music, complaining
that the opera was a "deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds...[that] quacks, hoots,
pants and gasps."[31] Shostakovich continued his performance tour as scheduled, with no
disruptions. From Arkhangelsk he instructed Isaak Glikman to subscribe to a clipping
service.[32] The editorial was the signal for a nationwide campaign, during which even Soviet
music critics who had praised the opera were forced to recant in print, saying they "failed to
detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by Pravda".[33] There was resistance
from those who admired Shostakovich, including Sollertinsky, who turned up at a composers'
meeting in Leningrad called to denounce the opera and praised it instead. Two other speakers
supported him. When Shostakovich returned to Leningrad, he had a telephone call from the
commander of the Leningrad Military District, who had been asked by Marshal Mikhail
Tukhachevsky to make sure that he was all right. When the writer Isaac Babel was under arrest
four years later, he told his interrogators that "it was common ground for us to proclaim the
genius of the slighted Shostakovich."[34]

On 6 February, Shostakovich was again attacked in Pravda, this time for his light comic ballet
The Limpid Stream, which was denounced because "it jangles and expresses nothing" and did
not give an accurate picture of peasant life on a collective farm.[35] Fearful that he was about to
be arrested, Shostakovich secured an appointment with the Chairman of the USSR State
Committee on Culture, Platon Kerzhentsev, who reported to Stalin and Molotov that he had
instructed the composer to "reject formalist errors and in his art attain something that could be
understood by the broad masses", and that Shostakovich had admitted being in the wrong and
had asked for a meeting with Stalin, which was not granted.[36]

The Pravda campaign against Shostakovich caused his commissions, concert appearances, and
performances of his music to decline markedly. His monthly earnings dropped from an average
of as much as 12,000 rubles to as little as 2,000.[37]

Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, which had been scheduled to be premiered on 11 December

1936, was withdrawn and remained unperformed in its orchestral guise until 1961. Lady
Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was also suppressed. In the mid-1950s, Shostakovich
composed a revised version with a new title, Katerina Izmailova, which premiered on 8
January 1963. More widely, 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of
Shostakovich's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. These included Tukhachevsky,
executed 12 June 1937; his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks, who was eventually released, but
died before he returned home; his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev, a musicologist who had taught
Tukhachevsky; his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhaylovna Varzar,[38] who was sent
to a camp in Karaganda; his friend the Marxist writer Galina Serebryakova, who spent 20 years
in the gulag; his uncle Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian
Piotrovsky (executed).[39]

Shostakovich's daughter Galina was born during this period in 1936;[40] his son Maxim was
born two years later.[41]

Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony

The publication of the Pravda editorials coincided with the composition of Shostakovich's
Fourth Symphony. The work continued a shift in his style, owing to the influence of Mahler. The
symphony gave Shostakovich compositional trouble, as he attempted to reform his style into a
new idiom. He was well into the work when the Pravda article appeared. He continued to
compose the symphony and planned a premiere at the end of 1936. Rehearsals began that
December, but after a number of rehearsals, Shostakovich decided to withdraw the symphony
from performance. According to Isaac Glikman, who had attended the rehearsals with the
composer, the manager of the Leningrad Philharmonic persuaded Shostakovich to withdraw the
symphony.[42] Shostakovich did not repudiate the work and retained its designation as his
Fourth Symphony. A reduction for two pianos was performed and published in 1946,[43] and
the work was finally premiered in 1961.[44]

In the months between the withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony and the completion of the Fifth
on 20 July 1937, the only concert work Shostakovich composed was the Four Romances on
Texts by Pushkin.[45]

Fifth Symphony and return to favor

The composer's response to his denunciation was the Fifth Symphony of 1937, which was
musically more conservative than his earlier works. Premiered on 21 November 1937 in
Leningrad, it was a phenomenal success. The Fifth brought many to tears and welling
emotions.[46] Later, Shostakovich's purported memoir, Testimony, stated: "I'll never believe
that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood,
they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was
about."[47]

The success put Shostakovich in good standing once again. Music critics and the authorities
alike, including those who had earlier accused him of formalism, claimed that he had learned
from his mistakes and become a true Soviet artist. In a newspaper article published under
Shostakovich's name, the Fifth was characterized as "A Soviet artist's creative response to just
criticism."[48] The composer Dmitry Kabalevsky, who had been among those who disassociated
themselves from Shostakovich when the Pravda article was published, praised the Fifth and
congratulated Shostakovich for "not having given in to the seductive temptations of his previous
'erroneous' ways."[49]
It was also at this time that Shostakovich composed the first of his string quartets. His chamber
works allowed him to experiment and express ideas that would have been unacceptable in his
more public symphonies. In September 1937 he began to teach composition at the Leningrad
Conservatory, which provided some financial security.[50]

Second World War

In 1939, before Soviet forces attempted to invade Finland, the Party Secretary of Leningrad
Andrei Zhdanov commissioned a celebratory piece from Shostakovich, the Suite on Finnish
Themes, to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army paraded through Helsinki.
The Winter War was a bitter experience for the Red Army, the parade never happened, and
Shostakovich never laid claim to the authorship of this work.[51] It was not performed until
2001.[52] After the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941,
Shostakovich initially remained in Leningrad. He tried to enlist in the military but was turned
away because of his poor eyesight. To compensate, he became a volunteer for the Leningrad
Conservatory's firefighter brigade and delivered a radio broadcast to the Soviet people. listen
The photograph for which he posed was published in newspapers throughout the country.[53]

His most famous wartime contribution was the Seventh Symphony. The composer wrote the
first three movements in Leningrad and completed the work in Kuybyshev (now Samara),
where he and his family had been evacuated. It remains unclear whether Shostakovich really
conceived the idea of the symphony with the siege of Leningrad in mind. It was officially
claimed as a representation of the people of Leningrad's brave resistance to the German
invaders and an authentic piece of patriotic art at a time when morale needed boosting. The
symphony was first premiered by the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra in Kuibyshev and was soon
performed abroad in London and the United States. It was subsequently performed in
Leningrad while the city was still under siege. The orchestra had only 14 musicians left, so the
conductor Karl Eliasberg was forced to recruit anyone who could play an instrument as
reinforcements.[54]

The family moved to Moscow in spring 1943. At the time of the Eighth Symphony's premiere,
the tide had turned for the Red Army. As a consequence, the public, and most importantly the
authorities, wanted another triumphant piece from the composer. Instead, they got the Eighth
Symphony, perhaps the ultimate in sombre and violent expression in Shostakovich's output. To
preserve Shostakovich's image (a vital bridge to the people of the Union and to the West), the
government assigned the name "Stalingrad" to the symphony, giving it the appearance of
mourning of the dead in the bloody Battle of Stalingrad. But the piece did not escape criticism.
Its composer is reported to have said: "When the Eighth was performed, it was openly declared
counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet. They said, 'Why did Shostakovich write an optimistic
symphony at the beginning of the war and a tragic one now? At the beginning, we were
retreating and now we're attacking, destroying the Fascists. And Shostakovich is acting tragic,
that means he's on the side of the fascists.'"[55] The work was unofficially but effectively banned
until 1956.[56]

The Ninth Symphony (1945), in contrast, was much lighter in tone. Gavriil Popov wrote that it
was "splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!"[57] But by 1946 it too was
the subject of criticism. Israel Nestyev asked whether it was the right time for "a light and
amusing interlude between Shostakovich's significant creations, a temporary rejection of great,
serious problems for the sake of playful, filigree-trimmed trifles."[58] The New York World-
Telegram of 27 July 1946 was similarly dismissive: "The Russian composer should not have
expressed his feelings about the defeat of Nazism in such a childish manner". Shostakovich
continued to compose chamber music, notably his Second Piano Trio (Op. 67), dedicated to the
memory of Sollertinsky, with a bittersweet, Jewish-themed totentanz finale. In 1947, the
composer was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.[59]

Second denunciation
In 1948, Shostakovich, along with many other composers,
was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree.
Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the
RSFSR, accused the composers (including Sergei Prokofiev
and Aram Khachaturian) of writing inappropriate and
formalist music. This was part of an ongoing anti-formalism
campaign intended to root out all Western compositional
influence as well as any perceived "non-Russian" output.
The conference resulted in the publication of the Central Left to right, 4 October 1946: Sergei
Committee's Decree "On V. Muradeli's opera The Great Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Aram
Friendship", which targeted all Soviet composers and Khachaturian
demanded that they write only "proletarian" music, or music
for the masses. The accused composers, including
Shostakovich, were summoned to make public apologies in front of the committee.[60] Most of
Shostakovich's works were banned, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov
says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at
least his family wouldn't be disturbed."[61]

The decree's consequences for composers were harsh. Shostakovich was among those dismissed
from the Conservatory altogether. For him, the loss of money was perhaps the largest blow.
Others still in the Conservatory experienced an atmosphere thick with suspicion. No one
wanted his work to be understood as formalist, so many resorted to accusing their colleagues of
writing or performing anti-proletarian music.[62]

During the next few years Shostakovich composed three categories of work: film music to pay
the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation, and serious works "for the desk
drawer". The latter included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk
Poetry. The cycle was written at a time when the postwar anti-Semitic campaign was already
under way, with widespread arrests, including that of Dobrushin and Yiditsky, the compilers of
the book from which Shostakovich took his texts.[63]

The restrictions on Shostakovich's music and living arrangements were eased in 1949, when
Stalin decided that the Soviets needed to send artistic representatives to the Cultural and
Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York City, and that Shostakovich should be among
them. For Shostakovich, it was a humiliating experience, culminating in a New York press
conference where he was expected to read a prepared speech. Nicolas Nabokov, who was
present in the audience, witnessed Shostakovich starting to read "in a nervous and shaky voice"
before he had to break off "and the speech was continued in English by a suave radio
baritone".[64] Fully aware that Shostakovich was not free to speak his mind, Nabokov publicly
asked him whether he supported the then recent denunciation of Stravinsky's music in the
Soviet Union. A great admirer of Stravinsky who had been influenced by his music,
Shostakovich had no alternative but to answer in the affirmative. Nabokov did not hesitate to
write that this demonstrated that Shostakovich was "not a free man, but an obedient tool of his
government."[65] Shostakovich never forgave Nabokov for this public humiliation.[66] That
same year he was obliged to compose the cantata Song of the Forests, which praised Stalin as
the "great gardener".[67]

Stalin's death in 1953 was the biggest step toward Shostakovich's rehabilitation as a creative
artist, which was marked by his Tenth Symphony. It features a number of musical quotations
and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs, Elmira Nazirova being a pianist and composer
who had studied under Shostakovich in the year before his dismissal from the Moscow
Conservatory),[68] the meaning of which is still debated, while the savage second movement,
according to Testimony, is intended as a musical portrait of Stalin. The Tenth ranks alongside
the Fifth and Seventh as one of Shostakovich's most popular works. 1953 also saw a stream of
premieres of the "desk drawer" works.

During the forties and fifties, Shostakovich had close relationships with two of his pupils, Galina
Ustvolskaya and Elmira Nazirova. In the background to all this remained Shostakovich's first,
open marriage to Nina Varzar until her death in 1954. He taught Ustvolskaya from 1939 to 1941
and then from 1947 to 1948. The nature of their relationship is far from clear: Mstislav
Rostropovich described it as "tender". Ustvolskaya rejected a proposal of marriage from him
after Nina's death.[69] Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, recalled her father consulting her and
Maxim about the possibility of Ustvolskaya becoming their stepmother.[69][70] Ustvolskaya's
friend Viktor Suslin said that she had been "deeply disappointed" in Shostakovich by the time of
her graduation in 1947. The relationship with Nazirova seems to have been one-sided, expressed
largely in his letters to her, and can be dated to around 1953 to 1956. He married his second
wife, Komsomol activist Margarita Kainova, in 1956; the couple proved ill-matched, and
divorced five years later.[71]

In 1954, Shostakovich wrote the Festive Overture, opus 96; it was used as the theme music for
the 1980 Summer Olympics.[72] (His '"Theme from the film Pirogov, Opus 76a: Finale" was
played as the cauldron was lit at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.)[73][74]

In 1959, Shostakovich appeared on stage in Moscow at the end of a concert performance of his
Fifth Symphony, congratulating Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra
for their performance (part of a concert tour of the Soviet Union). Later that year, Bernstein and
the Philharmonic recorded the symphony in Boston for Columbia Records.[75][76]

Joining the Party

The year 1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: he joined the Communist
Party. The government wanted to appoint him General Secretary of the Composers' Union, but
to hold that position he was required to attain Party membership. It was understood that Nikita
Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964, was looking for
support from the intelligentsia's leading ranks in an effort to create a better relationship with
the Soviet Union's artists.[77] This event has variously been interpreted as a show of
commitment, a mark of cowardice, the result of political pressure, or his free decision. On the
one hand, the apparat was undoubtedly less repressive than it had been before Stalin's death.
On the other, his son recalled that the event reduced Shostakovich to tears,[78] and that he later
told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed.[79] Lev Lebedinsky has said that the composer
was suicidal.[80] From 1962, he served as a delegate in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.[81]
Once he joined the Party, several articles he did not write denouncing individualism in music
were published under his name in Pravda. By joining the party, Shostakovich also committed
himself to finally writing the homage to Lenin that he had promised before. His Twelfth
Symphony, which portrays the Bolshevik Revolution and was completed in 1961, was dedicated
to Lenin and called "The Year 1917".[82] Around this time, his health began to deteriorate.

Shostakovich's musical response to these personal crises was the

Eighth String Quartet, composed in only three days. He subtitled
the piece "To the victims of fascism and war",[83] ostensibly in
memory of the Dresden fire bombing that took place in 1945. Yet
like the Tenth Symphony, the quartet incorporates quotations from
several of his past works and his musical monogram. Shostakovich
confessed to his friend Isaak Glikman, "I started thinking that if
some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so
I had better write one myself."[84] Several of Shostakovich's
colleagues, including Natalya Vovsi-Mikhoels[85] and the cellist
Valentin Berlinsky,[86] were also aware of the Eighth Quartet's
biographical intent. Peter J. Rabinowitz has also pointed to covert
references to Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen in it.[87]

In 1962 Shostakovich married for the third time, to Irina Shostakovich in 1950
Supinskaya. In a letter to Glikman, he wrote, "her only defect is that
she is 27 years old. In all other respects she is splendid: clever,
cheerful, straightforward and very likeable."[88] According to Galina Vishnevskaya, who knew
the Shostakoviches well, this marriage was a very happy one: "It was with her that Dmitri
Dmitriyevich finally came to know domestic peace... Surely, she prolonged his life by several
years."[89] In November he made his only venture into conducting, conducting a couple of his
own works in Gorky;[90] otherwise he declined to conduct, citing nerves and ill health.

That year saw Shostakovich again turn to the subject of anti-Semitism in his Thirteenth
Symphony (subtitled Babi Yar). The symphony sets a number of poems by Yevgeny
Yevtushenko, the first of which commemorates a massacre of Ukrainian Jews during the Second
World War. Opinions are divided as to how great a risk this was: the poem had been published
in Soviet media, and was not banned, but remained controversial. After the symphony's
premiere, Yevtushenko was forced to add a stanza to his poem that said that Russians and
Ukrainians had died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar.[91]

In 1965 Shostakovich raised his voice in defence of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to
five years of exile and hard labor. Shostakovich co-signed protests with Yevtushenko, fellow
Soviet artists Kornei Chukovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Samuil Marshak, and the French
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After the protests the sentence was commuted, and Brodsky
returned to Leningrad.[92]

Later life, and death

In 1964 Shostakovich composed the music for the Russian film Hamlet, which was favorably
reviewed by The New York Times: "But the lack of this aural stimulation—of Shakespeare's
eloquent words—is recompensed in some measure by a splendid and stirring musical score by
Dmitri Shostakovich. This has great dignity and depth, and at times an appropriate wildness or
becoming levity".[93]
In later life, Shostakovich suffered from chronic ill health, but he resisted giving up cigarettes
and vodka. Beginning in 1958 he suffered from a debilitating condition that particularly affected
his right hand, eventually forcing him to give up piano playing; in 1965 it was diagnosed as
poliomyelitis. He also suffered heart attacks the following year and again in 1971, and several
falls in which he broke both his legs; in 1967 he wrote in a letter: "Target achieved so far: 75%
(right leg broken, left leg broken, right hand defective). All I need to do now is wreck the left
hand and then 100% of my extremities will be out of order."[94]

A preoccupation with his own mortality permeates Shostakovich's later works, such as the later
quartets and the Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 (a song cycle based on a number of poems on
the theme of death). This piece also finds Shostakovich at his most extreme with musical
language, with 12-tone themes and dense polyphony throughout. He dedicated the Fourteenth
to his close friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted its Western premiere at the 1970
Aldeburgh Festival. The Fifteenth Symphony of 1971 is, by contrast, melodic and retrospective
in nature, quoting Wagner, Rossini and the composer's own Fourth Symphony.[95]

Shostakovich died of heart failure on 9 August 1975. A civic funeral was held; he was interred in
Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.[96] Even before his death he had been commemorated with
the naming of the Shostakovich Peninsula on Alexander Island, Antarctica.[97] Despite suffering
from Motor Neurone Disease (or ALS) from as early as the 1960s, Shostakovich insisted upon
writing all his own correspondence and music himself, even when his right hand was virtually
unusable.

Shostakovich himself left behind several recordings of his

own piano works; other noted interpreters of his music
include Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich, Tatiana
Nikolayeva, Maria Yudina, David Oistrakh, and members of
the Beethoven Quartet.[98]

His last work was his Viola Sonata, which was first
performed officially on 1 October 1975.[99]
Shostakovich voting in the election of
Shostakovich's musical influence on later composers outside
the Council of Administration of
the former Soviet Union has been relatively slight, although Soviet Musicians in Moscow in 1974
Alfred Schnittke took up his eclecticism and his contrasts
between the dynamic and the static, and some of André
Previn's music shows clear links to Shostakovich's style of orchestration. His influence can also
be seen in some Nordic composers, such as Lars-Erik Larsson.[100] Many of his Russian
contemporaries, and his pupils at the Leningrad Conservatory were strongly influenced by his
style (including German Okunev, Sergei Slonimsky, and Boris Tishchenko, whose 5th
Symphony of 1978 is dedicated to Shostakovich's memory). Shostakovich's conservative idiom
has grown increasingly popular with audiences both within and outside Russia, as the avant-
garde has declined in influence and debate about his political views has developed.

Music

Overview
Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal and in the Romantic tradition, but with elements of
atonality and chromaticism. In some of his later works (e.g., the Twelfth Quartet), he made use
of tone rows. His output is dominated by his cycles of symphonies and string quartets, each
totaling 15. The symphonies are distributed fairly evenly throughout his career, while the
quartets are concentrated towards the latter part. Among the most popular are the Fifth and
Seventh Symphonies and the Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets. Other works include the operas
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Nose and the unfinished The Gamblers, based on the comedy by
Gogol; six concertos (two each for piano, violin and cello); two piano trios; and a large quantity
of film music.

Shostakovich's music shows the influence of many of the composers he most admired: Bach in
his fugues and passacaglias; Beethoven in the late quartets; Mahler in the symphonies; and Berg
in his use of musical codes and quotations. Among Russian composers, he particularly admired
Modest Mussorgsky, whose operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina he reorchestrated;
Mussorgsky's influence is most prominent in the wintry scenes of Lady Macbeth and the
Eleventh Symphony, as well as in satirical works such as "Rayok".[101] Prokofiev's influence is
most apparent in the earlier piano works, such as the first sonata and first concerto.[102] The
influence of Russian church and folk music is evident in his works for unaccompanied choir of
the 1950s.[103]

Shostakovich's relationship with Stravinsky was profoundly ambivalent; as he wrote to

Glikman, "Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise."[104] He was
particularly enamoured of the Symphony of Psalms, presenting a copy of his own piano version
of it to Stravinsky when the latter visited the USSR in 1962. (The meeting of the two composers
was not very successful; observers commented on Shostakovich's extreme nervousness and
Stravinsky's "cruelty" to him.)[105]

Many commentators have noted the disjunction between the experimental works before the
1936 denunciation and the more conservative ones that followed; the composer told Flora
Litvinova, "without 'Party guidance' ... I would have displayed more brilliance, used more
sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage."[106]
Articles Shostakovich published in 1934 and 1935 cited Berg, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith,
"and especially Stravinsky" among his influences.[107] Key works of the earlier period are the
First Symphony, which combined the academicism of the conservatory with his progressive
inclinations; The Nose ("The most uncompromisingly modernist of all his stage-works"[108]);
Lady Macbeth, which precipitated the denunciation; and the Fourth Symphony, described in
Grove's Dictionary as "a colossal synthesis of Shostakovich's musical development to date".[109]
The Fourth was also the first piece in which Mahler's influence came to the fore, prefiguring the
route Shostakovich took to secure his rehabilitation, while he himself admitted that the
preceding two were his least successful.[110]

In the years after 1936, Shostakovich's symphonic works were outwardly musically
conservative, regardless of any subversive political content. During this time he turned
increasingly to chamber works, a field that allowed him to explore different and often darker
ideas without scrutiny.[111] While his chamber works were largely tonal, they gave Shostakovich
an outlet for sombre reflection not welcomed in his more public works. This is most apparent in
the late chamber works, which portray what Grove's Dictionary calls "world of purgatorial
numbness";[112] in some of these he included tone rows, although he treated these as melodic
themes rather than serially. Vocal works are also a prominent feature of his late output, setting
texts often concerned with love, death and art.[113]
Jewish themes
Even before the alleged Stalinist anti-Semitic campaigns in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
Shostakovich showed an interest in Jewish themes. He was intrigued by Jewish music's "ability
to build a jolly melody on sad intonations".[114] Examples of works that included Jewish themes
are the Fourth String Quartet (1949), the First Violin Concerto (1948), and the Four
Monologues on Pushkin Poems (1952), as well as the Piano Trio in E minor (1944). He was
further inspired to write with Jewish themes when he examined Moisei Beregovski's 1944 thesis
on Jewish folk music.[115]

In 1948, Shostakovich acquired a book of Jewish folk songs, from which he composed the song
cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. He initially wrote eight songs meant to represent the hardships
of being Jewish in the Soviet Union. To disguise this, he added three more meant to
demonstrate the great life Jews had under the Soviet regime. Despite his efforts to hide the real
meaning in the work, the Union of Composers refused to approve his music in 1949 under the
pressure of the anti-Semitism that gripped the country. From Jewish Folk Poetry could not be
performed until after Stalin's death in March 1953, along with all the other works that were
forbidden.[116]

Self-quotations
Throughout his compositions, Shostakovich demonstrated a controlled use of musical
quotation. This stylistic choice had been common among earlier composers, but Shostakovich
developed it into a defining characteristic of his music. Rather than quoting other composers,
Shostakovich preferred to quote himself. Musicologists such as Sofia Moshevich, Ian McDonald,
and Stephen Harris have connected his works through their quotations.[117]

One example is the main theme of Katerina's aria, Seryozha, khoroshiy moy, from the fourth
act of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. It accompanies Katerina as she reunites with her
lover Sergei. The aria's beauty comes as a breath of fresh air in the intense, overbearing tone of
the scene. This goes well with the dialogue, as Katerina visits her lover in prison. The theme is
made tragic when Sergei betrays her and finds a new lover upon blaming Katerina for his
incarceration.[118]

More than 25 years later, Shostakovich quoted this theme in his eighth string quartet. In the
midst of this quartet's oppressive and somber themes, the only light and cheerful moment is
when the cello introduces the Seryozha theme about three minutes into the fourth movement.
The quotation uses Katerina's hope amid misery as a means to demonstrate the hope of those
oppressed by fascists.[119]

This theme emerges once again in his 14th string quartet. As in the eighth, the cello introduces
the theme, but for an entirely different purpose. The last in Shostakovich's "quartet of quartets",
the fourteenth serves to honor the cellist of the Beethoven String Quartet, Sergei Shirinsky.
Rather than reflecting the original theme's intentions, the quotation serves as a dedication to
Shirinsky.[120]

Posthumous publications
In 2004, the musicologist Olga Digonskaya discovered a trove of Shostakovich manuscripts at
the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow. In a cardboard file were some
"300 pages of musical sketches, pieces and scores" in Shostakovich's hand. "A composer friend
bribed Shostakovich's housemaid to regularly deliver the contents of Shostakovich's office waste
bin to him, instead of taking it to the garbage. Some of those cast-offs eventually found their
way into the Glinka. ... The Glinka archive 'contained a huge number of pieces and compositions
which were completely unknown or could be traced quite indirectly,' Digonskaya said."[121]

Among these were Shostakovich's piano and vocal sketches for a prologue to an opera, Orango
(1932). They were orchestrated by the British composer Gerard McBurney and premiered in
December 2011 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.[121][122][123][124][125]

Criticism
According to McBurney, opinion is divided on whether Shostakovich's music is "of visionary
power and originality, as some maintain, or, as others think, derivative, trashy, empty and
second-hand".[126] William Walton, his British contemporary, described him as "the greatest
composer of the 20th century".[127] Musicologist David Fanning concludes in Grove's Dictionary
that "Amid the conflicting pressures of official requirements, the mass suffering of his fellow
countrymen, and his personal ideals of humanitarian and public service, he succeeded in
forging a musical language of colossal emotional power."[128]

Some modern composers have been critical. Pierre Boulez dismissed Shostakovich's music as
"the second, or even third pressing of Mahler".[129] The Romanian composer and Webern
disciple Philip Gershkovich called Shostakovich "a hack in a trance".[130] A related complaint is
that Shostakovich's style is vulgar and strident: Stravinsky wrote of Lady Macbeth: "brutally
hammering ... and monotonous".[131] English composer and musicologist Robin Holloway
described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure;
in content all rhetoric and coercion."[132]

In the 1980s, the Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen was critical of
Shostakovich and refused to conduct his music. For instance, he said in 1987:

Shostakovich is in many ways a polar counter-force for Stravinsky. [...] When I have
said that the 7th symphony of Shostakovich is a dull and unpleasant composition,
people have responded: "Yes, yes, but think of the background of that symphony."
Such an attitude does no good to anyone.[133]

Salonen has since performed and recorded several of Shostakovich's works,[134] including
leading the world premiere of Orango,[135] but has dismissed the Fifth Symphony as
"overrated," adding that he was "very suspicious of heroic things in general."[136]

Shostakovich borrows extensively from the material and styles both of earlier composers and of
popular music; the vulgarity of "low" music is a notable influence on this "greatest of
eclectics".[137] McBurney traces this to the avant-garde artistic circles of the early Soviet period
in which Shostakovich moved early in his career, and argues that these borrowings were a
deliberate technique to allow him to create "patterns of contrast, repetition, exaggeration" that
gave his music large-scale structure.[138]
Personality
Shostakovich was in many ways an obsessive man: according to his daughter he was "obsessed
with cleanliness".[139] He synchronised the clocks in his apartment and regularly sent himself
cards to test how well the postal service was working. Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life
Remembered indexes 26 references to his nervousness. Mikhail Druskin remembers that even
as a young man the composer was "fragile and nervously agile".[140] Yuri Lyubimov comments,
"The fact that he was more vulnerable and receptive than other people was no doubt an
important feature of his genius."[61] In later life, Krzysztof Meyer recalled, "his face was a bag of
tics and grimaces."[141]

In Shostakovich's lighter moods, sport was one of his main recreations, although he preferred
spectating or umpiring to participating (he was a qualified football referee). His favorite football
club was Zenit Leningrad (now Zenit Saint Petersburg), which he would watch regularly.[142] He
also enjoyed card games, particularly patience.[99]

Shostakovich was fond of satirical writers such as Gogol, Chekhov and Mikhail Zoshchenko.
Zoshchenko's influence in particular is evident in his letters, which include wry parodies of
Soviet officialese. Zoshchenko noted the contradictions in the composer's character: "he is ...
frail, fragile, withdrawn, an infinitely direct, pure child ... [but also] hard, acid, extremely
intelligent, strong perhaps, despotic and not altogether good-natured (although cerebrally
good-natured)."[143]

Shostakovich was diffident by nature: Flora Litvinova has said he was "completely incapable of
saying 'No' to anybody."[144] This meant he was easily persuaded to sign official statements,
including a denunciation of Andrei Sakharov in 1973.[145] His widow later told Helsingin
Sanomat that his name was included without his permission.[146] But he was willing to try to
help constituents in his capacities as chairman of the Composers' Union and Deputy to the
Supreme Soviet. Oleg Prokofiev said, "he tried to help so many people that ... less and less
attention was paid to his pleas."[147][145] When asked if he believed in God, Shostakovich said
"No, and I am very sorry about it."[145]

Orthodoxy and revisionism

Shostakovich's response to official criticism and whether he
used music as a kind of covert dissidence is a matter of
dispute. He outwardly conformed to government policies
and positions, reading speeches and putting his name to
articles expressing the government line.[148] But it is evident
he disliked many aspects of the regime, as confirmed by his
family, his letters to Isaak Glikman, and the satirical cantata Shostakovich represented himself in
"Rayok", which ridiculed the "anti-formalist" campaign and some works with the DSCH motif,
was kept hidden until after his death.[149] He was a close consisting of D-E!-C-B.
friend of Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail
Tukhachevsky, who was executed in 1937 during the Great
Purge.[150]
It is also uncertain to what extent Shostakovich expressed his opposition to the state in his
music. The revisionist view was put forth by Solomon Volkov in the 1979 book Testimony,
which claimed to be Shostakovich's memoirs dictated to Volkov. The book alleged that many of
the composer's works contained coded anti-government messages, placing Shostakovich in a
tradition of Russian artists outwitting censorship that goes back at least to Alexander Pushkin.
He incorporated many quotations and motifs in his work, most notably his musical signature
DSCH.[151] His longtime musical collaborator Yevgeny Mravinsky said, "Shostakovich very often
explained his intentions with very specific images and connotations."[152]

The revisionist perspective has subsequently been supported by his children, Maxim and
Galina, although Maxim said in 1981 that Volkov's book was not his father's work.[153] Volkov
has further argued, both in Testimony and in Shostakovich and Stalin, that Shostakovich
adopted the role of the yurodivy or holy fool in his relations with the government. Other
prominent revisionists are Ian MacDonald, whose book The New Shostakovich put forward
further revisionist interpretations of his music, and Elizabeth Wilson, whose Shostakovich: A
Life Remembered provides testimony from many of the composer's acquaintances.[154]

Musicians and scholars including Laurel Fay[155] and Richard Taruskin contest the authenticity
and debate the significance of Testimony, alleging that Volkov compiled it from a combination
of recycled articles, gossip, and possibly some information directly from the composer. Fay
documents these allegations in her 2002 article 'Volkov's Testimony reconsidered',[156] showing
that the only pages of the original Testimony manuscript that Shostakovich had signed and
verified are word-for-word reproductions of earlier interviews he gave, none of which are
controversial. Against this, Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov have pointed out that at least two
of the signed pages contain controversial material: for instance, "on the first page of chapter 3,
where [Shostakovich] notes that the plaque that reads 'In this house lived [Vsevolod]
Meyerhold' should also say 'And in this house his wife was brutally murdered'."[157]

Recorded legacy
In May 1958, during a visit to Paris, Shostakovich recorded
his two piano concertos with André Cluytens, as well as
some short piano works. These were issued on LP by EMI
and later reissued on CD. Shostakovich recorded the two
concertos in stereo in Moscow for Melodiya. Shostakovich
also played the piano solos in recordings of the Cello Sonata,
Op. 40 with cellist Daniil Shafran and also with Mstislav
Rostropovich; the Violin Sonata, Op. 134, in a private
recording made with violinist David Oistrakh; and the Piano A Russian stamp in Shostakovich's
Trio, Op. 67 with violinist David Oistrakh and cellist Miloš memory, published in 2000
Sádlo. There is also a short newsreel of Shostakovich as
soloist in a 1930s concert performance of the closing
moments of his first piano concerto. A color film of Shostakovich supervising the Soviet revival
of The Nose in 1974 was also made.[158]

Awards
Belgium: Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium (1960)[159]
Denmark: Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1973)[160]

Finland: Wihuri Sibelius Prize (1958)[161]

Soviet Union:

Hero of Socialist Labour (1966)[162]

Order of Lenin (1946, 1956, 1966)[163]
Order of the October Revolution (1971)[164]
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1940)[165]
People's Artist of the USSR (1954)[166]
People's Artist of the RSFSR (1948)[59]
International Peace Prize (1954)[166]
Lenin Prize (1958 – for the 11th symphony "1905")[161]
Stalin Prize (1941 – for Piano Quintet; 1942 – for the 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony; 1946 –
for Piano Trio no. 2; 1950 – for Song of the Forests and The Fall of Berlin; 1952 – for 10
poems for chorus)[167]
USSR State Prize (1968 – for the poem "The Execution of Stepan Razin" for bass, chorus
and orchestra)[168]
Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR (1974 – for the 14th string quartet and choral cycle
"Fidelity")[164]
Shevchenko National Prize (1976 (posthumously)) – for opera "Katerina Izmailova"

United Kingdom: Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1966)[169]

In 1962, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture for
Khovanshchina (1959).[170]

See also
Music written in all major and/or minor keys
Sinyavsky–Daniel trial
The Noise of Time – a novel concerning Shostakovich by English author Julian Barnes.

Notes
1. Russian: Дми́трий Дми́триевич Шостако́вич, tr. Dmitriy Dmitrievich Shostakovich,
Russian: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪjɪvʲɪtɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪtɕ] ( listen)

Citations
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30 April 2014.
2. Fay (2000), p. 7.
3. Wilson (2006), p. 4.
4. Fay (2000), p. 9.
 4. Fay (2000), p. 9.
5. Fay (2000), p. 12.
6. Fay (2000), p. 14.
7. Fay (2000), p. 17.
8. Fay (2000), p. 18.
9. Fairclough & Fanning (2008), p. 73.
10. Fay (2000), pp. 29–30.
11. Fay (2000), p. 27.
12. McSmith (2015), p. 171.
13. Fay (2000), p. 30.
14. Fay (2000), p. 32.
15. Moshevich, Sofia (2004). Dmitri Shostakovich, Pianist. Montreal: Mc Gill-Queen's University
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16. Moshevich (2004), p. 3.
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20. Hulme (2010), p. 19.
21. Hulme (2010), p. 20.
22. Meyer (1995), p. 143.
23. Ivashkin (2016), p. 20.
24. Wilson (2006), p. 84.
25. Wilson (2006), p. 85.
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94. Shostakovich & Glikman (2001), p. 147.
95. Service, Tom (23 September 2013). "Symphony guide: Shostakovich's 15th" (https://www.th
eguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2013/sep/23/symphony-guide-shostakovich-15-tom-s
ervice). The Guardian. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
96. "Dmitri Shostakovich Dead at 68 After Hospitalization in Moscow" (https://www.nytimes.com
/1975/08/11/archives/dmitri-shostakovich-dead-at-68-after-hospitalization-in-moscow.html).
The New York Times. 11 August 1975. ISSN 0362-4331 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0362
-4331).
97. Shostakovich Peninsula (https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=gnispq:5:0::NO::P5_ANTAR_
ID:13773) USGS 01-JAN-75
98. "Квартет им. Бетховена исполняет квартеты Бетховена (8 CD)" (https://melody.su/en/c
atalog/classic/41751/). Firma Melodiya (in Russian). Retrieved 2 February 2021.
99. Wilson (2011)
100. Lars-Erik Larsson. (http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Aug03/Larsson_c
oncertinos.htm) Musicweb International. Retrieved 18 November 2005.
101. Fay (2000), pp. 119, 165, 224.
102. The New Grove (2001), pp. 288, 290.
103. Green, Jonathan D. (1999). A Conductor's Guide to Choral-Orchestral Works, Twentieth
Century, Part II (https://books.google.com/books?id=RKY3SELbc7gC&q=russian+church+in
fluence+shostakovich+choral&pg=PA5). Scarecrow Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8108-3376-0.
104. Shostakovich & Glikman (2001), p. 181.
105. Wilson (1994), pp. 375–7.
106. Wilson (1994), p. 426.
107. Fay (2000), p. 88.
108. The New Grove (2001), p. 289.
109. The New Grove (2001), p. 290.
110. Shostakovich & Glikman (2001), p. 315.
111. See also The New Grove (2001), p. 294.
112. The New Grove (2001), p. 300.
113. Woodstra, Chris, ed. (2005). All Music Guide to Classical Music: The Definitive Guide to
Classical Music. Backbeat Books. p. 1262. ISBN 978-0-87930-865-0.
114. Wilson (1994), p. 268.
115. Tentser (2014), p. 5.
116. Wilson (1994), pp. 267–9.
117. Moshevich, Sofia, Dmitri Shostakovich, Pianist (Montréal: McGill-Queen's Press, 2004),
176. ISBN 978-0-7735-2581-8, 9780773525818; see next paragraphs for more.
118. MacDonald (2006), p. 88.
119. Harris, Stephen (9 April 2016). "Quartet No. 8" (http://www.quartets.de/compositions/ssq08.
html). Shostakovich: The String Quartets. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
120. Harris, Stephen (24 August 2015). "Quartet No. 14" (http://www.quartets.de/compositions/ss
q14.html). Shostakovich: The String Quartets. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
121. Loiko, Sergei L.; Johnson, Reed (27 November 2011). "Shostakovich's 'Orango' found,
finished, set for Disney Hall" (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/27/entertainment/la-ca-ora
ngo-opera-20111127). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
122. Ayala, Ted (7 December 2011). "No Monkey Business with LAPO's World Premiere of
Shostakovich's 'Orango' " (https://www.crescentavalleyweekly.com/leisure/12/07/2011/no-m
onkey-business-with-lapo%e2%80%99s-world-premiere-of-shostakovich%e2%80%99s-%e
2%80%98orango%e2%80%99/). Crescenta Valley Weekly. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
123. Sirén, Vesa (6 April 2009). "Šostakovitšin apinaooppera löytyi" (https://web.archive.org/web/
20090408124116/http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/artikkeli/%C5%A0ostakovit%C5%A1in+kadonnut
+apina-ooppera+kes%C3%A4ll%C3%A4+esityskuntoon/1135244971728) [The ape opera
by Shostakovich was found]. Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish). Helsinki: Sanoma Oy. pp. C1.
Archived from the original (http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/artikkeli/%C5%A0ostakovit%C5%A1in+k
adonnut+apina-ooppera+kes%C3%A4ll%C3%A4+esityskuntoon/1135244971728) on 8 April
2009. Retrieved 6 April 2009.
124. "Unknown Shostakovich Opera Discovered" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090903111745/
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2009/03/unknown_shostak.shtml). Artsjournal. 21
March 2009. Archived from the original (http://www.artsjournal.com/artsjournal1/2009/03/un
known_shostak.shtml) on 3 September 2009. Retrieved 5 April 2009 – via Le Devoir.
125. Philadelphia Orchestra program, 27 October 2011
126. McBurney (2002), p. 283.
127. British Composers in Interview by R Murray Schafer (Faber 1960).
128. The New Grove (2001), p. 280.
129. McBurney (2002), p. 288.
130. McBurney (2002), p. 290.
131. McBurney (2002), p. 286.
132. Holloway, Robin (26 August 2000). "Shostakovich horrors" (http://archive.spectator.co.uk/arti
cle/26th-august-2000/41/music). The Spectator: 41. Retrieved 29 June 2015.
133. Salonen, Esa-Pekka & Otonkoski, Lauri: Kirja – puhetta musiikitta, p. 73. Helsinki: Tammi.
ISBN 978-951-30-6599-7
134. Brown, Ismene (17 August 2011). "BBC Proms: Batiashvili, Philharmonia Orchestra,
Salonen" (https://theartsdesk.com/node/4355/view). theartsdesk.com. Esher: The Arts Desk
Ltd. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
135. OCLC 809867885 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/809867885)
136. "Facing the music: Esa-Pekka Salonen: The conductor and composer on lighting, left arms,
Berg and Björk" (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/23/esa-pekka-salonen-cond
uctor-composer-facing-the-music). The Guardian. 23 November 2015. Retrieved
8 September 2020.
137. Haas, Shostakovich's Eighth: C minor Symphony against the Grain p. 125.
138. McBurney (2002), p. 295.
139. Ardov (2004), p. 139.
140. Wilson (1994), pp. 41–5.
141. Wilson (1994), p. 462.
142. Mentioned in his personal correspondence (Shostakovich, tr. Phillips (2001)), as well as
other sources.
143. Quoted in Fay (2000), p. 121
144. Wilson (1994), p. 162.
145. Fay (2000), p. 263.
146. Vesa Sirén: "Mitä setämies sai sanoa Neuvostoliitossa?" in Helsingin Sanomat on page A 6,
2 November 2018
147. Wilson (1994), p. 40.
148. Wilson (2006), pp. 369–370.
149. Wilson (2006), p. 336.
150. Mc Granahan, William J. (1978). "The Fall and Rise of Marshal Tukhachevsky" (https://apps
.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a510945.pdf) (PDF). Parameters, Journal of the US Army War
College. VIII (4): 63.
151. This appears in several of his works, including the Pushkin Monologues, Symphony No. 10,
and String Quartets Nos 5, 8 & 11.
152. Wilson (1994), p. 139.
153. "Shostakovich's son says moves against artists led to defection" (https://www.nytimes.com/1
981/05/14/world/shostakovich-s-son-says-moves-against-artists-led-to-defection.html). The
New York Times. New York. 14 May 1981. Retrieved 31 March 2017. "Asked about the
authenticity of a book published in the West after his father's death, and described as his
memoirs, Mr. Shostakovich replied: These are not my father's memoirs. This is a book by
Solomon Volkov. Mr. Volkov should reveal how the book was written. Mr. Shostakovich said
language in the book attributed to his father, as well as several contradictions and
inaccuracies, led him to doubt the book's authenticity."
154. Gerstel, Jennifer (1999). "Irony, Deception, and Political Culture in the Works of Dmitri
Shostakovich". Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal. University of Manitoba. 32 (4):
38. JSTOR 44029848 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/44029848).
155. Fay (2000), p. 4 "Whether Testimony faithfully reproduces Shostakovich's confidences ... in
a form and context he would have recognized and approved for publication remains
doubtful. Yet even were [its] claim to authenticity not in doubt, it would still furnish a poor
source for the serious biographer."
156. Fay (2002).
157. Ho & Feofanov (1998), p. 211.
158. "Dmitri Shostakovich filmed in 1975 during rehearsals" (https://web.archive.org/web/201406
158. "Dmitri Shostakovich filmed in 1975 during rehearsals" (https://web.archive.org/web/201406
26062332/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5P4x2POjSM). YouTube. 9 January 2008.
Archived from the original (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5P4x2POjSM) on 26 June
2014. Retrieved 7 November 2011.
159. Index biographique des membres et associés de l'Académie royale de Belgique (1769–
2005). (in French)
160. "Léonie Sonning Prize 1973 Dmitri Sjostakovitj" (http://www.sonningmusic.org/the-music-pri
ze/1973-dmitrij-sjostakovitj.aspx). sonningmusic.org. The Léonie Sonning Music
Foundation. 2019. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
161. Hulme (2010), p. xxvi.
162. Fay (2000), p. 249.
163. Fay (2000), pp. 153, 198, 249.
164. Hulme (2010), p. xxix.
165. Hulme (2010), p. xxii.
166. Hulme (2010), p. xxv.
167. Hulme (2010), pp. xxiii–xxv.
168. Hulme (2010), p. xxviii.
169. Dmitry Shostakovich (https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541847) at the
Encyclopædia Britannica
170. "The 34th Academy Awards: 1962" (https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1962).
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 19 December 2021.

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details/musicofdmitrisho0000blok). The great composers. Associated Univ Press.
ISBN 978-0-8386-1948-3.
Edwards, Robert (2006). White Death: Russia's War on Finland 1939–40. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-84630-7.
Fairclough, Pauline; Fanning, David, eds. (November 2008). The Cambridge Companion to
Shostakovich. Cambridge Companions to Music (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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(eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). Macmillan.
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Fay, Laurel (2002). "Volkov's Testimony Reconsidered" (https://books.google.com/books?id
=-bn4yMWnpOAC&pg=PA22). In Hamrick Brown, Malcolm (ed.). A Shostakovich Casebook.
Indiana University Press. pp. 22–66. ISBN 978-0-253-21823-0.
Haas, David. "Shostakovich's Eighth: C minor Symphony against the Grain". In Bartlett,
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0-907689-56-0.
Hulme, Derek C. (2010) [2002]. Dmitri Shostakovich Catalogue: The First Hundred Years
and Beyond (4th ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-7264-6.
Ivashkin, Alexander (2016). "Shostakovich, Old Believers and New Minimalists" (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=MCspDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA20). In Kirkman, Andrew; Ivashkin,
Alexander (eds.). Contemplating Shostakovich: Life, Music and Film. Routledge. ISBN 978-
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Kovnatskaya, Liudmila, ed. (1996). D. D. Shostakovich: Collections to the 90th anniversary.
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Documents. Articles. Publications. St Petersburg: Kompozitor.
MacDonald, Ian (2006) [1990]. The New Shostakovich. Pimlico. ISBN 978-1-84595-064-4.
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McBurney, Gerard (2002). "Whose Shostakovich?". In Hamrick Brown, Malcolm (ed.). A
Shostakovich Casebook. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21823-0.
McSmith, Andy (2015). Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, the Russian Masters – from
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Press. ISBN 978-1-62097-079-9.
Meyer, Krzysztof (1995). Schostakowitsch – Sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Zeit (in German).
Bergisch Gladbach: Gustav Lübbe Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7857-0772-2. [Orig. in Polish 1973.]
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p://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/shosopus/shosopus.htm). Shostakovich & Other Soviet
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External links
Free scores by Dmitri Shostakovich at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
Dmitri Shostakovich (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006291/) at IMDb
Complete catalogue of works, with many additional comments (http://www.sikorski.de/media
/files/1/12/190/249/336/8953/schostakowitsch_werkverzeichnis.pdf) by Sikorski
The Shostakovich Debate: Interpreting the composer's life and music (http://www.siue.edu/~
aho/musov/deb/deb.html)
Dmitry Shostakovich about Iosif Andriasov (http://arshakandriasov.com/dmitry-shostakovich-
about-iosif-andriasov/)
"Discovering Shostakovich" (http://bbc.co.uk/shostakovich). BBC Radio 3.
University of Houston Moderated Discussion List: Dmitri Shostakovich and other Russian
Composers (http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/dsch-l.html)

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