Shostakovich Studies by David FanningReview by: Arnold McMillinThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 740-741Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212265 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 03:57

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:57:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

740 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Fanning, David (ed.). Shostakovich Studies. Cambridge University Press, Cam- bridge, New York and Melbourne, I995. x + 28o pp. Notes. Index. /37.50: $59.95.

SHOSTAKOVICH was unusual amongst composers in that his death was not immediately followed by a sharp decline in his reputation; on the contrary his esteem has risen rapidly, and he is now acknowledged not only as one of the twentieth century's major composers, but also as a unique voice of moral authority in an age of hypocrisy and corruption. Not that musicologists (whom the composer liked to compare to those who neither cook nor eat an omelette but merely talk about it) have found any great measure of agreement in their assessment of this protean figure: political questions loom large, as they did for all Soviet artists, and today in music criticism, just as in literary criticism, controversy, driven largely by revisionism and counter-revisionism, continues apace. As David Fanning notes in his lively and informative Introduction, 'Shostakovich commentators begin to seem rather like libel lawyers, with a vested interest in continuing controversy. And with such a profusion of "evidence" on all sides there is every prospect of an endless cycle of appeals, new submissions and retrials' (p. 3).

Billed as the keynote contribution, Richard Taruskin's wide-ranging piece, 'Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony', is the only article to tackle politics head-on. He sums up many of the awkward questions that will always defy easy resolution yet which cannot be ducked in our approach to music and the other forms of art produced under totalitarianism. His article, rich in detailed musical illustrations, also contains some uncompromising opinions. For instance, the over-political interpretations made by Shostakovich biographer Ian MacDonald are described as 'vile trivialisation' (p. 52) and worse: 'MacDonald's description of the Fifth Symphony reads exactly like a confession State Procurator Vishinsky might have given Shostakovich to sign, had things not gone quite so well on the night of 2i November 1937. The critic's method is precisely what is known in the West as McCarthyism' (p. 53).

The two ensuing chapters are predominantly theoretical: Ellon D. Carpen- ter discusses and compares the work of Russian commentators on modality in Shostakovich's music, and Yuriy Kholopov presents form in the instrumental works as 'classical forms by means of modern harmony in an individual stylistic treatment' (p. 59). Two chapters are essentially analytical: Patrick McCreless discusses the cycle of structure and the cycle of meaning in the Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 67, and David Fanning offers a persuasive though not over-insistent analysis of leitmotifs in Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda (Op. 29).

Laurel E. Fay treats the same work, but from a historical viewpoint, tracing the versions and revisions Shostakovich made in converting this opera into Katerina Izmailova (Op. I I4).

The remaining four articles are also predominantly historical: Manashir Yakubov reviews the reception history of the ballet Zolotoi vek (not the flop that it has often been called) and Dorothea Redepenning writes of Shostakovich's song-cycles, drawing parallels with moods and periods of the composer's life, ending controversially with the suggestion that the Lebiadkin and

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:57:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 74I

Michelangelo cycles can be seen 'as a confession of aesthetic and moral sins' (p. 228). Eric Roseberry writes of Shostakovich's late-period recognition of Britten, beginning with the latter's War Requiern, and linking these two very different figures by 'their sense of realism and high-mindedness, their commitment to life in the context of a deeply tragic sense of our mortality' (p. 253). The volume is concluded by Alexander Ivashkin's 'Shostakovich and Schnittke: The Erosion of Symphonic Syntax', suggesting that they are closely. linked in the Mahlerian tradition, and that their music 'somehow intensifies all the Mahlerian contrasts and articulates the ambivalence of his music' (p. 269).

Many of the articles are profusely illustrated with musical examples, and most make very specific and valuable contributions to our.understanding of Shostakovich. Indeed, the collection is a splendid addition to literature on this composer and will doubtless be purchased by all Western music libraries. It may also be hoped that it will find its way into the hands of specialists in Russia, many of whom have a good deal to learn from the rigour of the theoretical and analytical pieces. David Fanning is to be congratulated on assembling such a distinguished and important collection.

School of Slavonic and East European Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN

University of London

Barta, G'abor. La Route qui mene a' Istanbul, I526-I528. Studia Historica, I95. Translated from the Hungarian by Julia Manyik. Akademai Kiado, Budapest, I994. 132 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. $20.00.

GABOR BARTA'S book is a diplomatic history of the two crucial years that followed the terrible Hungarian defeat at Mohacs, 29 August 1526. The purpose of the author is to examine the options open to the Hungarian leaders after their king, Lajos II, lost his life.

Despite this overwhelming disaster two centres of national life remained. One was in Transylvania where janos Zapolyai was governor. The other was at Pressburg (Bratislava) where Lajos's widowed queen Marie took refuge at the court of her brother Ferdinand of Habsburg.

Marie naturally expected Ferdinand to come to her aid. He already held Austria and would soon succeed to the throne of Bohemia. For his part Ferdinand depended on the financial support of his brother Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.

Ferdinand had every intention to succeed to the throne of Hungary and a group of nobles who accompanied the Queen to Pressburg proved willing to support him. Barta excuses their conduct from the point of view that they believed Habsburg arms alone could deliver Hungary from the Turks.

While Ferdinand delayed, Zapolyai gathered supporters around his court in Szekesfehevar. His first plan was to invite Marie to marry him, therefore healing the division between the parties. The lady refused. Further embassies to the Habsburg court could make no progress towards reconciliation.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:57:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions