dmitri şostakoviç

• muzigi ve hatta kisiligi \ eylemleri hakkinda onemli kimi isimlerin olumsuz beyanlarda bulunabildigi meshur besteci :
  
  http://ustvolskaya.org/eng/dsch.php
  
  pierre boulez, esa pekka salonen ve 'v. suslin mektubu' altbasliklari ozellikle cok ilginc.
  
  adi gecen mektubu buraya aktariyorum, sadece besteci hakkinda degil genel olarak 20. yy. muzigine iliskin de bir iki cumlelik de olsa degerlendirmeler icermesi acisindan dikkat cekici. mektubun adresi, alintinin en sonunda gorulecegi uzere yazilanlarin altina imzasini atmistir :
  
  dear galina,
  
  i would like to tell you what i think of shostakovich.
  
  when jesus told his disciples: "let your 'yes' mean 'yes,' and your 'no' mean 'no'. anything more than that comes from evil.", the word "evil" refers to a very specific character well-known to christ and not to some kind of poetic metaphor. "more," here means: "yes" or "no" at the same time, or neither "yes" nor "no", or "yes" turning into "no" or "no" turning into "yes." in short, from the evil one arose that which much later was called "dialectic" (our story has nothing to do with what greeks meant by this word, it was hegel who abused it, thus fulfilling the role of "the evil one").
  so, dmitri dmitriyevich, i think, found the philosopher's stone, allowing him to compose a great amount of very mediocre music and to appear a genius not only to others but to himself also. this opportunity was provided to him by the dialectic.
  
  it also gave him another splendid opportunity: to sign dozens of party policy articles in the central press; to sign political denunciations (sakharov in 1973); to sit next to the bandits in the presidiums, voting for any bandit proposal with alacrity worthy of shchedrin's automaton fool [suslin refers to a satirical tale of mikhail saltykov-shchedrin — translator's comment]; and at the same time to pass for a symbol of internal resistance to the regime, not only in the soviet-liberal circles, but in his own soul. i do not even refer to other countries, they understand little of our soviet-russian affairs. when i first heard the name shostakovich in 1948, i was 6 years old. i was then very surprised that the adults around me, infinitely distant from the music, endlessly argued and debated about shostakovich, prokofiev, formalism, as if in a war-torn, starving country there were no issues more important than that. it seems to me that even in those days shostakovich was only marginally less popular than stalin, and undoubtedly more popular than churchill, truman, etc.
  
  then, when i was twenty, i saw that shostakovich is enveloped by an almost religious reverence among the so-called "real musicians" (i.e. those for which, in addition to budashkin and mokrousov [soviet composers — translator's comment], there were hindemith, berg, etc.). my professor nikolai ivanovich peiko always held him up as an example of not only a musical ideal, but also a human one. he called shostakovich the musical conscience of our time. now i'm inclined to think that peiko was right in a sense: shostakovich was indeed a musical conscience of his time, a time devoid of any conscience. what time is, such is the conscience. i believe that god judges human actions and deeds rather than intentions and motivations.
  
  shostakovich's deeds are as follows:
  
  the crucified sufferer's mask shostakovich wore did not prevent him at all from doing great business according to all the rules of soviet society. he was undoubtedly the trump card of party ideology. the cynical moscow and leningrad intellectuals who "understood everything" willingly forgave him the signing of the ideological articles ("he didn't write it, he just signed","he was forced to", etc.) but the coin has another side: what should the young people of kemerovo, semipalatinsk, chelyabinsk, have been thinking while reading this rubbish? it wasn't signed by some unknown party yard dog, but by an acknowledged genius, who was, in addition, considered to be our "musical conscience". so then it can only be truth. woe to those who "cause one of these little ones".
  
  speaking of shostakovich's works, one often uses words such as "musical dramaturgy", "musical prose", etc. but no one uses the words "journalism", or "pulp fiction", although in many cases they would be quite appropriate. there's no denying that many of his works are entertaining. for example, even in the 12th symphony where the well-known trite motif of "dies irae" sticks out almost everywhere like giving you the finger, but in the pocket. dialectics!
  
  as for his acts, full of "civil courage", i've never heard from anyone that the cycle "from jewish folk poetry" or the 13th symphony are remarkable events in terms of music. even the most fanatical admirers of shostakovich are silent about them and prefer to talk big about the public response, about the courage of the author breaking social taboos. but in the same tone we can speak of "a bold article" in the "literaturnaya gazeta" ["literary newspaper" admired by soviet intellectuals — translator's comment], and not of a musical masterpiece. besides, one can draw the following conclusion from the "socially courageous" opuses of shostakovich: in stalin's russia, besides the "jewish question", there were no serious problems, and that seems to me something of an exaggeration.
  
  nobody can take away from shostakovich what god gave him: his ability to create from musical "garbage" something individual, his ease of writing, his phenomenal diligence and ear for music, his theatrical and dramaturgical ingenuity, his paradoxes. dialectics, apparently, were in his blood. they do not interfere at all with "common sense": by passing through the korsakov-steinberg training [suslin refers to nikolay rimsky-korsakov and maximilian steinberg — translator's comment] (of good quality but one-sided), and by learning that "decently orchestrated composition sounds good when performed more or less correctly and sounds amazing when performed well", shostakovich created a vast repertoire which became a real balm for the soul of conductors and musicians who neither have the time nor the inclination to rehearse. judge yourself: rhythmic difficulties are almost zero, the intonation problems are more than modest, the ensemble is simple (two-voice — tutti), and psychologically there are no issues with this music: it consists of familiar ingredients, with few exceptions. the lineup of the orchestra is extremely traditional, and the music is both entertaining and temperamental: one can show himself off effectively without undue effort.
  
  it's done well, but the question is: what is it?
  
  philip hershkowitz once called shostakovich "a slag in a trance". although it was said maliciously, it contains a certain truth. indeed, his music contains both components: slag and trance. trance is undeniable: otherwise only slag would remain, and there would be no shostakovich. he had the unique ability to fall into a trance with the help of this slag, and this elevates him above most of his soviet colleagues: they did not fall into trances, they often simply grunted. it seems to me that shostakovich fell into a trance in two situations: violence and fear. in these two cases, he approached most closely to genius and created real masterpieces (you know the examples better than i). i personally find him at his most unpleasant when he falls into "noble pathos" or becomes deeply "profound" with diminished fourths and octaves — this kind of musical chewing gum for cellos and double basses fills dozens of minutes in his symphonies.
  
  although shostakovich is more than conservative when choosing the instrumental "flesh" for his ideas (in the end, the orchestra — this mastodon of the xix century, the extinction of which was only partly delayed by composers like shostakovich), he was "a progressive" in the sense that his genesis is strongly associated with such a novelty of the 20th century as the cinema. he brought the poster from cinema to music, the inclination to modest yet publicly available symbols, the borrowed motives, allusions, exaggerated gestures.
  
  everyone can come to the cinema, and most often the audience has neither the time nor inclination to notice the musical subtleties. if music would not be blatantly, gaudy, and poster-like, it has little chance of being noticed. besides, there is no time to experiment in cinema, there is time only for banality on the highest professional level (meaning, first of all, athletic speed in writing the score, and the absence of problems with performance during recording). and these plebeian-proletarian virtues were completely transferred by shostakovich to his orchestral works. his symphonies are "publicly available pulp fiction" at a very high professional level. they are moderately entertaining, moderately boring, and moderately profound. enough for the ex-proletarian in a tie and a white collar to attest his involvement in "high culture" by attending a concert hall rather than a pub. my god, how faded with time "the great" fifth symphony!
  
  how much ink has been spilled, how many sublime words were said! some have heard in the final coda of timpani strokes a victorious step into a a brighter future, while others saw it as caricatured and forced apotheosis — like the election of boris godunov to the throne, and still others as an optimistic tragedy...
  
  and what's left? what remains is a fairly gray and mediocre music, as it gradually lost all its socio-hysterical (not historical) cock feathers, and it now appears before us in a plucked form. of course, there was an event in 1937, but in no sense a musical one.
  
  v. suslin
  
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  i, galina ustvolskaya, am in full agreement with the above article by v. suslin. 25 viii 1994 ?.
  
  �