schostakovich estudies

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Shostakovich Studies by David FanningReview by: John JoubertMusic & Letters, Vol. 79, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 304-306Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/854972.

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2/4

Shostakovich

tudies.Ed.

by

David

Fanning. pp.

ix

+

280.

(Cambridge

University

Press,

1995. ?37.50.

ISBN

0-521-45239-2.)

During

Shostakovich's ifetime

it

was

customary

in the West to see him as the

tragic

victim

of

the

Soviet system's tyrannically interventionist

approach

to the

arts.

After the

publication

of

Testimony

nd

Ian

MacDonald's

The

New Shostako-

vich

t

became fashionable

to hail him as a heroic

dissident whose

work contained encoded

messages

designed

to

subvert the totalitarian excesses

of

Stalinism. Richard

Taruskin,

whose

essay

on

the

Fifth

Symphony begins

this

important

collection

of

Shostakovich

tudies,

proposes

a

new,

post-glasnost'

interpretation,

ocated somewhere

between

the two

previous

extremesbut

containing

elements of both.

Taruskin's title-'Public

Lies

and Unspeakable

Truth:

Interpreting

Shostakovich's

Fifth

Sym-

phony'-boldly

maps

the

parameters

to be tra-

versed,

and

in his

telling

use of

quotations

from

Soviet sources of

this

period

he

gives

his

essay

an

authentically

Russian

perspective.

He

very

prop-

erly pours

scorn on

the crude literalism

('vile

trivialisation',

aruskin

calls

it)

of

Ian MacDonald's

approach:

no

'decoding'

was

necessary

for the

work's

irst

audience,

who

recognized

immediately

that the

powerful expression

of emotions

hitherto

thought privately-let

alone

publicly-inexpress-

ible

had made

both Soviet

and musical

history.

Their

rapturousresponse

to a work

by

a

composer

known

in advance

to

be

in bad odour

with the

authorities

must

have

given

its

reception

the

char-

acter

of

a

demonstration

against

the

regime,

and

there was

little the

regime

could

do about

it

except

to

concede,

officially

and

reluctantly,

hat the work

was

indeed

a success and

its

composer,

for

the

moment

anyway,

a reformed

character.

In

the

confusion

of claim

and

counter-claim

we cannot

even be sure

whether it was

Shostakovich

or some

Soviet

ghost-writer

who coined the

phrase

'a Soviet

artist's

practical

and

creative

answer to

just

criti-

cism',

which has

now almost

acquired

the

status

of

subtitle

to the

symphony;

nor does

Taruskin

accept

the

explanation

offered

in

Testimony

y

Shostako-

vich

himself

('Volkov's

ittle

puppet

Mitya')

of the

much-disputed

significance

of its

closing

bars.

No

wonder

myths

have accumulated

around

the cir-

cumstances

of the

work's first

performance,

myths

which continue

to

arouse

speculation

about

its

programmatic

ignificance

and,

despite (or

because

of?) its huge popularity, to cloud criticaljudge-

ment.

We turn

with relief to

the relative

certainties

of

the music

itself,

just

as

Wagner

did

when

quizzed

about the

ending

of the

Ring.

Here

Taruskin,

supported

by

music

examples,

also

has

interesting

things

to

say

about

the work's

antecedents,

namely,

Beethoven

(the

Ninth

Symphony

in

particular),

Mahler,

and

a

song

from

Shostakovich's

own col-

lection

of Pushkin

settings, Op.

46.

Mahler has

often been mentioned as a

symphonic

exemplar

for

Shostakovich, and it is of Mahler that we are

reminded in

the fusion of

song

and

symphony,

a

topic

covered

later in the

volume

by

Dorothea

Redepenning (see

below).

But

it is Beethoven

who

provides

the most

fertile

ground

for

compar-

ison,

not

only

musically

but

ideologically

too.

There was much

in common between

Beethoven's

situation

in

Metterich's

Vienna and

Shostakovich

in Stalin's Moscow.

Neither

could

entirely

avoid

being implicated

n a social

system

which

provided

them

with

both

the demand

and

the

necessary

infrastructure or

their

work,

while both

developed

strategies

for

survival

n a world

with which

they

could not

wholly identify

by

keeping

it unobtru-

sively

at

bay.

Taruskin's

opening

essay

is

perhaps

the

most

significant

n

the

collection,

but those

that

follow,

focusing

as most of

them

do

on matters

more

purely

musical,

also have

much

to offer. One

of

the most

searching

of these

is

Patrick

McCreless's

'The

Cycle

of Structure

and

the

Cycle

of

Meaning:

the

Piano Trio

in

E

minor,

Op.

67'.

The

precise

application

of the word

'cycle'

to musical

form

is

difficultto

pin

down,

but it is one that is crucialto

any

analytical

commentary

on

Shostakovich's

instrumental

works.

Like

'modernism',

it can be

used to

cover a

multitude of technical

procedures.

Those

that are

appropriate

o the work

in

question

are identified

and

closely

scrutinized

by

the

author

in an

analysis

which

sensitively

explores

the

con-

nections

between

its structure

and its

emotional

message.

The result

confirms

one's

original

mpres-

sion of

the

work as one

of Shostakovich's

inest.

A

welcome

aspect

of the

collection

is

the

amount of

space

devoted to the vocal music,

including

two

essays

on

Katerina smailova

and

one

on the

song

cycles.

Laurel

E.

Fay's

'From

Lady

Macbeth

o

Katerina:

hostakovich's

Versions

and Revisions'

s a

fascinating

study

of

the

opera's

evolution from

its earliest-if

short-lived-success

to

its

eventual incarnation

as Katerina

smailova.

Fay

makes a

convincing

case

for

the

view that

the

revisions were

motivated

by

artistic

rather

than

political

considerations

and

also

by

Shostakovich's

desire

to

reduce

the sexual

explicitness

of

the

original. It is worth noting that the process of

revision

had started

well before

the notorious

Pravda

article

which

effectively

banned

the

opera

from

further

performance

in

the

Soviet

Union.

Fay's

discoveries

deserve

attention

not

only

from

304


3/4

scholars but also from

opera managements

con-

templating

a

production.

As

in the case of

Fidelio

(whose place

in Beethoven's

oeuvre

s

comparable

with that

of

Lady

Macbeth

in

Shostakovich's),

returning

to

first versions

is

not

necessarily

going

to

do

the

composer

a

service. The

operatic

con-

tributionby the volume's editor, David Fanning,

'Leitmotif

n

Lady

Macbeth',

s more

speculative

n

approach

and

seems to have been

intended

as

such

(I

would endorse

the

question-mark

the

author

apparentlythought

of

adding

to

the

title).

Motifs

in

the

opera

there

certainly

are,

but

they

are the stuff of

symphonic

discourse,

pointing up

a

further ink

between

Fidelioand

Lady

Macbeth:

he

pre-eminence

as

symphonists

of

their

respective

composers.

Any

comparison

with

the

Wagnerian

leitmotiv,

however,

s

invalidated

by

the

associative

function

of the

latter. I would strenuouslycontest

the

statement

by

Carolyn

Abbate,

quoted by

Fanning

from

the

Cambridge

OperaJournal,

in

which

she

states

that

'Wagner's

motifs have

no

referential

meaning'. Surely

the

fact

that

they

have

both

referential

and

symphonic

meaning

is

what

differentiates

hem from

Shostakovich's?

Dorothea

Redepenning's essay,

' And

art

made

tongue-tied by

authority :

Shostakovich's

Song

Cycles',

convincingly

demonstrates the

increasing

significance

hat

text-based

works

came

to

have for

the

composer

n

his

later

years(her

title

quotes

from

Shakespeare's

onnet

No.

66,

set

by

Shostakovich n

Pasternak's

ranslation s the

fifth

of

his Six

Romances

on

Verses

by English

Poets

(1942)

and

popular

with

Moscow

audiences of

the

time

through

Pasternak's

own

public

reading

of

it).

Like

Taruskin,

Redepen-

ning

discusses

the

interpenetration

of

symphony

and

song,

particularly

vident in

the

Suite

on Verses

of

Michelangelo

uonarroti,

hich

she

amply

illus-

trates

by

means

of

music

examples.

The

Mahlerian

precedent

is

enhanced

by

Shostakovich's

wish,

as

reported

by

his

son

Maxim,

for

the

suite to

be

regarded

as his Sixteenth

Symphony.

The choice

of

texts in

this

cycle-as

in

his

other

song

cycles-

invests

hem

with

what

Redepenning

describes

as a

'moral-ethical'

message,

suggesting

an

autobio-

graphical

dimension

already

implicit

in

his

purely

instrumental

works

(for

instance

the

Piano

Trio so

ably

dealt with

by

McCreless).

Two

essays

on

the

grammar

and

syntax

of

Shostakovich's

musical

language

make for

the

toughest

reading

in

the

book.

One

can

only

applaud

Ellen

D.

Carpenter

for

the

assiduous

comprehensivenessdemonstratedin her 'Russian

Theorists

on

Modality

in

Shostakovich's

Music',

but

the

resulting prose,

in

spite

of

the

presence

of

elucidatory

tables

and

diagrams,

verges

on

the

impenetrable.

In

search

of

enlightenment

on how

(or whether)

Russian

theorists

explained

Shostako-

vich's use of

twelve-note ows

as

melodic

material,

I

was

rewarded

by

the

following:

'In

addition,

she

[V.

V.

Burda]

has

found in

the Second

CelloConcerto

a

twelve-note

bitonal

system ,

a

lowered

mode

with

different

tonics,

occurring,

as in

Bobrovsky's

approach but with more independent results,

either

simultaneously

resulting

n a

bitonal

struc-

ture)

or

consecutively

resulting

n a

permanent

modulation)'.

What

one

suspects

is

going

on

here-so

far

as one can

understand it

at all-is

an

attempt

to

interpret

one

phenomenon (serial-

ism)

in

terms of

another

(modality),

when the

two

are

really

irreconcilable.

Rather less

arduous,

and

conveying

a

similar

message,

is

Yuriy

Kholopov's

'Form

n

Shostakovich's

nstrumental

Works'.

That

Shostakovich

modelled his

structureson

Classical

prototypes s scarcelynews, but it is interestingto

learn

that

Russian

composers

still

acquired

their

early

training

in

musical form

from a

venerable,

century-old

textbook

by

Adolf

Bernhard

Marx,

no

less.

There is

no

doubt

that the

Classical

forms

were still

relevant,

ndeed a

source of

inspiration,

o

Shostakovich,

and

his

profound

respect

for

their

authority

could

account,

among

other

things,

for

his

habit of

always

punctiliously

ending

a

workin

the

key

with

which it

began-a practice

ong

since

abandoned

by

Mahler,

for

example.

In

this

way-if

in no

other-one could

compare

him

with

Cezanne,

who

strove to

attain his

intensely

per-

sonal vision

by

cultivating

he

traditional

genres

of

landscape,

portraiture

nd still

life.

The full

power

of

totalitarianism

to

suppress

truth and rewrite

history

is

particularly

well

demonstrated

n

Manashir

Yakubov's

The

Golden

Age:

the

True

Story

of the

Premiere'.

Initially

a

popular

success,

the

ballet

became victim

of

gov-

ernment

repression

in

the

early

1930s

and

was

officially

pronounced

a failure.

Yakubov

brings

plentiful

evidence to

bear

on the

enthusiastic

public

reception

of the

ballet before

it

fell

victim

to the ruthless

war

that

dictatorshipsalways

wage

on

their

hapless

subjects

in

order to

maintain

themselves

n

power.

One of

the

benefits

ofglasnost'

is that the

new

availability

of

hitherto

inaccessible

archivalmaterial

now

enables

scholars

like

Yaku-

bov to

rectify

what he calls

this

'distortion

of

the

historical

truth'.

As he

points

out,

Shostakovich's

three

ballets

(the

other two

are The

Bolt,

Op.

27,

and

The

Limpid

Stream,

Op.

39)

remain

among

his

least-known

works. The

supreme irony

surround-

ing the suppressionof The Golden

Age

is that the

scenario,

a

high-spirited

satire on

contemporary

urban

life with

a

strongly

anti-Fascist

bias,

could

hardly

have

been

more

'politically

correct'

for

its

time

and

place.

305


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schostakovich estudies