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Classical music has its roots in different kinds of cultures and countries. It can however often feel very similar even if the composers come from different countries like Germany, Finland or Italy. Russian compositions however, really stand out from the rest, with some of the most influential composers in history like Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky and Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, who will be the subject of this essay. These two legendary Russian composers have a very distinguished sound and listeners can often recognize their pieces immediately when listening to them. Despite of their fame and influence, Stravinsky and Shostakovich did not meet each other until the year of 1962 when Stravinsky visited Russia to conduct 6 concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. The composers only met once and it was a rather brief and formal meeting, but it is safe to say that they pretty much only knew each other through their music despite the two of them being some of the most popular and influential classical composers of the 20th century since they lived far away from each other and there was quite an age difference between them. Stravinsky and Shostakovich had some similarities with regards to their use of instruments, they both used wind instruments to their fullest potential and some of the largest and best known bassoon solos were composed by the two of them. But what is it that separates these two Russian composers from the rest of them?
Igor Stravinsky was born in 1882 in Saint Petersburg in Russia. Stravinsky studied playing the piano from the age of 9 but his father did not want him to pursue music as a career even though he himself was an opera singer at the Mariinsky opera house. The father insisted that young Stravinsky would become a lawyer and it was not until after his fathers death that he started seriously pursuing music. Stravinsky started studying composition with Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov who was one of Russia’s most established composers. Stravinsky worked on three ballets in collaboration with Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev who was the founder of the Ballet Russes. The ballets are called The Firebird, The Rite of Spring and Petrushka. Those pieces became some of Stravinsky’s best known works and played a big role in shaping modern music today. World War I began in 1914 which completely disrupted the Ballet Russet’s work and Stravinsky could not keep working regularly with them and so he left Paris and moved to Switzerland where he stayed for most of the war. The Russian Revolution in 1917 ruled out any future plans of Stravinsky going back to his homeland. Stravinsky died in 1971 in New York, United States and was buried in the San Michele Cemetery in Venice, Italy. The Firebird is a ballet composed by Stravinsky in June 1910. It tells the story of Prince Ivan who defeats the evil sorcerer Kaschei in order to save his lost love. He does this with the help of the Firebird, a magical bird whose feather Ivan manages to obtain, giving him the ability to summon the Firebird in a time of need. He does this in the battle against Kaschei and the Firebird comes and makes Kaschei’s monsters dance until they fall down from exhaustion. Prince Ivan then kills Kaschei by breaking an egg containing his soul and simultaneously breaks the spell that hypnotized Ivan’s love and the maidens that he had held captive. The last part of the ballet is a huge wedding ceremony with a really massive celebratory movement. The premier went really well and the audience was very impressed with Stravinsky and it really put him on the map which led to high expectations from future audiences. There is a scene in the ballet where the Firebird is putting the Maidens to sleep and during this particular scene a bassoon starts playing a really beautiful and calm melody. It has this hypnotic lullaby feeling to it that really captures the listener but it also feels a bit uneasy. The soft and flowing melody is accompanied by other woodwinds, playing with a similar atmosphere, and strings playing under the melodies. The violins play some high pitched almost squeaky noises which gives it that uneasy feeling. Today The Firebird is most often played by orchestra alone since the score itself is impressive and captivating enough to stand on its own. The premier for The Rite of Spring was held in May 1913 in Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris. People came into the theatre expecting a ballet similar to the well received Firebird ballet mentioned above, but they were in for quite a shock. The piece uses a really large orchestra, containing for example 5 bassoon players. The story behind the ballet is about a human sacrifice performed by a community where they pick out a young girl who has to dance to the death so spring can come again. The final death scene is really dramatic where the orchestra is playing an intense movement with a lot of tension and difficult passages while on stage the girl dances within a circle of people until she eventually drops down dead. The music and choreography were so bizarre that the audiences, who were not used to hearing anything like it performed, nearly started a riot in the concert hall. People were outraged by the performance and had a hard time processing what they had just witnessed. There are passages purposefully written to sound harsh and ugly and there are lots of complex rhythms and time measures. Overall it is not a very peaceful and relaxing piece of music to listen to. The dancers also strayed away from traditional dance techniques where they went from good posture, pointed toes and elegant movements into having bad posture, clenched toes and stomped around the stage in a not so graceful manner. The opening to the piece is entirely a really long and difficult bassoon solo in a really uncomfortable high register. It is played before any of the dancers come on stage and is used as a kind of introduction, like the curtains being drawn revealing the stage. The bassoon player starts playing completely alone in a very exposed environment where everyone from the audience to the conductor have their undivided attention directed at them. Slowly the orchestra starts joining in one instrument at a time and the ballet finally begins. This is one of the most popular solos in bassoon repertoire today and is used in countless auditions, exams, etc. due to the high skill level needed in order to be able to play it well. When people first heard the solo at the premiere they were baffled by the high sound of the instrument and many people could not even make out which instrument was playing at first. Stravinsky got inspiration from a Lithuanian folk song named ’’Tu, manu seserele’’ Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His entire career took place in Russia and his work really shows the political struggles in the Soviet Union. He showed a lot of promise from a young age and got a lot of attention at only 19 years old when he composed his 1st symphony for his graduation from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1926. He wrote 15 symphonies in his lifetime and ended up getting in a lot of trouble with the government due to his mockery and resistance towards the Soviet Union through music. Symphonies No. 6, 8 and 9 ended up being banned in the Soviet Union for those very same reasons. Shostakovich passed away on the 9th of August 1975, in Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital due to a heart failure. Symphony nr. 9 by Dmitri Shostakovich was composed in 1945. The premiere was shortly after the Soviet’s victory over the Nazi’s in World War II so people had high expectations from the composer. It was also his 9th symphony and 9th symphonies in general had gotten a bit of a reputation for being the best ones, like Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th symphony, Gustav Mahler’s 9th symphony and Antonín Leopold Dvořák’s 9th symphony, also known as the New World Symphony. So people had high expectations and they were expecting a big orchestra and a massive piece, maybe with a choir or solo singers, but Shostakovich had other plans. Instead of pulling out all the stops and having a huge impressive orchestra, he had a normal sized orchestra and composed a really short piece lasting around 26 minutes. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin himself was in the audience during the premiere and was insulted by such a degrading piece. There is an entire movement in the 9th symphony which is completely dedicated to a bassoon solo. It is accompanied by some brass but the bassoon mostly plays alone and is completely exposed. The solo is very dramatic with the heavy brass tones playing in between phrases and it feels like a strange time-stopping moment in the symphony before it then moves on into a completely different kind of character. It is disputed whether Shostakovich was serious about this solo or if it was just a joke on his behalf to add such a weird bassoon solo in the middle of his 9th symphony, but either way it is an insanely challenging part to play considering that the solo lasts about 1⁄5 of the entire symphony. Symphony nr. 7 by Dmitri Shostakovich, also known as the Leningrad Symphony, was composed in 1949 when Shostakovich was volunteering as a fireman in Leningrad, now known as St. Petersburg. He was in the city when the Germans invaded in March 1941. There was a 900 day standoff resulting in around 1 million deaths due to bombings or caused by cold, illnesses or hunger. Shostakovich was escorted to safety out of the city with some other artists to Kuybyshev, north of the Caspian Sea. The 7th symphony premiered in Kuybyshev and got a very positive and emotional response from the audience. The first movement tells the story of the German invasion and it is very emotional once you are aware of the story behind it. The movement starts off with some beautiful and bright melodies in major that are supposed to capture the beauty of Leningrad before the war, but then it slowly fades out and a single snare drum starts playing, followed by different kinds of instruments playing a march. It feels uneasy and completely out of place compared to the music before, but it is a very effective way to symbolize the Nazis invading Leningrad. Complete chaos follows, with a long build up into a really heavy and loud section of the movement which then dies down again. Then the same melodies as before the chaos start playing but now in a dark minor. That is the basic overview of the first movement but there is an oboe solo in the major part of the movement where it plays a really beautiful melody that just feels really nice to listen to since it is a really pretty and bright sounding. But after the loud middle section of the movement, the same melody is played again but now by the bassoon in minor. Even though it is the same melody as the oboe played before, it somehow feels drastically different. It gives a gut wrenching feeling of how an event as intense as a war can completely change its surroundings. How the same exact place can completely change and feel different in only a matter of days, where one day you might be hanging up laundry in your garden and the next be scavenging for any remaining items in a destroyed home. Shostakovich beautifully captures loss in this symphony.
Russian history has a lot of pain to it and so the music mimics that, giving the compositions a real depth to them. There is always this sense of resistance and rebellion around Russian music and most of the time if you listen to classical Russian music without getting familiar with the story behind it first, it just sounds like really well written music. You only hear the surface level artistry and miss out on the subtle details and hidden meanings. Stravinsky and Shostakovich are similar in a way that they both managed to find ways to rebel through music. Stravinsky wanted to broaden audiences’ minds and get more artistic freedom, while Shostakovich fought against Russian politics and used his suffering to his advantage and managed to create something extraordinary and singular. Stravinsky and Shostakovich were both extremely opinionated men who were not afraid to voice their opinions no matter the consequences. Which goes to show that controversial actions and decisions often end up getting more recognition in the long run rather than safe choices made by people who do not have strong opinions or do not dare to voice them.
Audio Samples for the solos discussed
The Firebird: https://youtu.be/IrMGqAmjbug?t=409
The Rite of Spring: https://youtu.be/EkwqPJZe8ms?t=40
Leningrad Symphony: (Oboe solo) https://youtu.be/GB3zR_X25UU?t=195 (Bassoon solo) https://youtu.be/GB3zR_X25UU?t=1340
Symphony nr. 9: https://youtu.be/V6ptUPkPNYI?t=1
Bibliography
Hewitt, Ivan, “The riot at the Rite: the premiere of The Rite of Spring” https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/the-riot-at-the-rite-the-premiere-of-the-rite-of-spring
Ingólfsson, Árni Heimir, “Saga tónlistarinnar, Tónlist á vesturlöndum frá miðöldum til nútímans”. Forlagið, Reykjavík 2016.
Lockspeiser, Edward, “Serge Diaghilev, Russian ballet impresario” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Serge-Pavlovich-Diaghilev
Zaller, Robert, “Together at last. Stravinsky and Shostakovich at the Perelman. 2011, https://www.broadstreetreview.com/articles/stravinsky-and-shostakovich-at-the-perelman.
Information on the Firebird: https://www.abt.org/ballet/firebird-ratmansky/