AQA_AS_Music_Chapter_12_web_ready. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D Minor. Dmitri Shostakovich, 1906-1975.
Symphony No. 5 in d, Op. 47. Completed 1937, first performance November 21, 1937, in Leningrad. Scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, 2 harps, piano, celesta, tympani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, xylophone, glockenspiel, triangle, and strings. The late 1930's were not a good time for Dmitri Shostakovich. His successful opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, was banned after Stalin saw it in 1936 and was offended by its veiled criticism of the Communist regime.
Shostakovich's next misstep came with the Fourth Symphony, which he had been composing in his mind for some time. Meanwhile, Russia was undergoing what would later be called the ``Great Terror.'' In such an atmosphere, and with a wife and two young children to worry about, it was only natural that Shostakovich would pull his head back into his shell and try to please the authorities. Explore the Score: Shostakovich- Symphony no. 5 in D minor. Welcome to a special edition of Explore the Score.
I’ve told friends for years that some day I wanted to write a book about Shostakovich 5. Here’s the short version. Dmitri Shostakovich- Symphony no. 5 in D minor opus 47 Genesis Leningrad as seen by photographer Alexey Titarenko Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony would, at first glance, seem, on purely musical grounds, to be a most unlikely work to have become possibly the most hotly debated and discussed piece of classical music written in the 20th c.. The piece was conceived under the most intense spotlight imaginable. Shostakovich before the publication of “Muddle instead of Music” by Joseph Stalin A starkly tragic masterpiece, Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony was one of his most ambitious and innovative works. Shostakovich after the publication of “Muddle instead of Music” by Joseph Stalin Shortly after the Pravda article was published, Shostakovich was summoned to a meeting with Stalin’s emissary, Platon Kerzhentsev.
Open Writing: Shostakovich's Symphony No.5. Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-75) ?
Symphony No. 5 Imagine: you? Re internationally famous. One fine morning, you open the paper. It says you? But, what is ? Let? January 1934 saw the premi? That same month Stalin? Addressing the 1935 Composers? Travelling between engagements in January 1936, Shostakovich opened a copy of Pravda. Most notably, summoned before a special conference of the Composers? Late in 1936, rehearsals of the Fourth Symphony began. Regardless of anything else (like saving his skin), this must have hurt like hell; he must have sweated blood over this complex work of massively Mahlerian proportions. Needing time to think, he kept his head down, and concentrated on eking out a living.
Mark’s notes on Shostakovich Symphony Nos. 5, 6 & 10. Shostakovich Symphonies 5, 6, 10The late 1930s The main purpose of the terror that Stalin inflicted on the Soviet people in the 1930s was simply to create fear itself.
The dictator could maintain power as long as there was no unified effort to oppose him and there would not be whilst everyone was scared not only of him but of each other too. Mistrust was created by persuading as many people as possible to denounce their fellow citizens as enemies of the state. Denouncing in fact became one of the main ways to survive. Children even denounced their parents. This was the context in which Dmitri Shostakovich read Pravda on 28th January 1936.
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op.47 Considering the circumstances, the work’s opening sense of protest is an extraordinarily brave gesture. The scherzo also opens with a protest: a protest at having to be a scherzo at all. The finale’s interruption could not be more brutal. San Francisco Symphony Keeping Score. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5: Keeping Score.
In the 1930s, the Soviet Union reeled under the purges of Joseph Stalin.
Every person knew the terror of losing a family member to the gulag, or to a death sentence. Official government decrees defined truth and beauty. Traditional composers were declared decadent and their music forbidden. Only Beethoven survived the ban.In this environment Dmitri Shostakovich, the greatest Soviet composer, found himself heavily scrutinized. Shostakovich was only 26 when he completed Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). Then Stalin himself went to a performance. Shostakovich lived in fear, sleeping in the stairwell outside his apartment to spare his family the experience of his imminent arrest. Unsure about its reception, Shostakovich rejected his own Fourth Symphony while in rehearsal. First Movement This pattern recurs throughout the symphony: assertive statement, apprehensive retraction, dead end. The next theme is derived from a folk song recognizable to the Soviet audience. Second Movement.