Dmitri Shostakovich: Encyclopedia II - Dmitri Shostakovich - Works

Dmitri Shostakovich - Works

For a complete list, see List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich (by Opus number). See also: Category:Compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich (thematical selection of works by Shostakovich).

Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal and in the Romantic tradition, but with elements of atonality and chromaticism. listen ▶ (help·info) 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, fifteen of each. 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 Tenth Symphonies and the Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets. Other works include the operas Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Nose and the unfinished The Gamblers; six concertos (two each for piano, violin and cello); 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 re-orchestrated; Mussorgsky's influence is most prominent in the wintry scenes of Lady Macbeth and the 12th symphony, as well as in his satirical works such as Rayok.^[12] Prokofiev's influence is most apparent in the earlier piano works, such as the first sonata and first concerto.^[13] His relationship with Stravinsky was profoundly ambivalent; as he wrote to Glikman, "Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise".^[14] 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 a great success, however; observers commented on Shostakovich's extreme nervousness and Stravinsky's "cruelty" towards him.)^[15]

Many commentators have noted the disjunction between the experimental works before the 1936 denunciation and the more conservative ones which 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".^[16] Articles published by Shostakovich in 1934 and 1935 cited Berg, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, "and especially Stravinsky" among his influences.^[17] 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"^[18] listen ▶ (help·info)); Lady Macbeth, which precipitated the denunciation; and the fourth symphony, described by Grove as, "a colossal synthesis of Shostakovich's musical development to date".^[19] The fourth symphony was also the first in which the influence of Mahler came to the fore, prefiguring the route Shotakovich was to take to secure his rehabilitation, while he himself admitted that the preceding two were his least successful.^[20]

In the years after 1936, Shostakovich's symphonic works were outwardly musically conservative, regardless of any subversive political content. However, during this time he turned increasingly to chamber works, "a field where he could compose with maximum seriousness and minimum external pressure".^[21] While these were also largely tonal, they did give Shostakovich an outlet for the darker content which was not welcomed in his more public works. This is most apparent in the late chamber works, which portray a "world of purgatorial numbness";^[22] in some of these he included the use of 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.

One prominent criticism of Shostakovich has been that his symphonic work in particular is, in the words of Shostakovich scholar Gerard McBurney, "derivative, trashy, empty and second-hand". The view has been expressed both by western figures such as Pierre Boulez ("I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third pressing of Mahler") and by Soviet figures such as Filipp Gershkovich, who called Shostakovich, "a hack in a trance". A related complaint is that he is vulgar and strident: Stravinsky wrote of Lady Macbeth being, "brutally hammering... and monotonous", while the famous Pravda editorial Muddle Instead of Music said of the same work, "All is coarse, primitive and vulgar. The music quacks, grunts and growls".^[23]

It is certainly true that Shostakovich borrows extensively from the material and styles both of earlier composers and of popular music, with the shrillness of Mahler and the vulgarity of "low" music prominent influences on this "greatest of eclectics".^[24] McBurney traces this to the avant-garde artistic circles of the early Soviet period among 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" which gave his music the large-scale structure it required.^[25]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Works", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki