2. Historical and political sources about Shostakovich’s life and works
Insights on the historical, political, and social backgrounds of the composer’s time and life are valuable in the sense that we are like actors: in order to play the part of a character in a play one can create a background story about the character to feel closer to it, to understand it better, and to sympathize with the character’s choices, battles and fundamental moments in his/her life that form the personality of our main character: in our case the composer.
For musicians this can help to form a story of our own about the reason behind the existence, the message, or the tone of the specific composition.
Many times you will hear musicians talk about colours, landscapes, animals, specific human emotions or actions, or other imagery to explain a musical phrase to a student (“play this pesante like marching troops”). By doing this, the musician is trying to make the music less abstract and at the same time giving an extra meaning to the notes; one that can only be a personal interpretation of the musical notation or, and this becomes dangerous when transmitted as truth, a deduction based on knowledge of historical beliefs about the composer (“Bach was a very serious man, play this allegro more solemn”/”Mozart was a funny guy, these long minor legato lines should sound more jolly”). Many times of course these deductions can be right when we find letters and journals of the composers themselves explaining their reason for writing a specific piece and describing their state of mind at that time. In this case the musician is lucky to have a ‘solid’ background story to base his/her interpretation upon, and can convince audiences by declaring his background research, and so justifying his own interpretation.
What is interesting about this is the interpretation of the source: say we tell two pianists there is a newly discovered piano sonata by Shostakovich, that came with a letter by Shostakovich himself where he writes his best friend how he is terribly afraid of being declared an enemy of the people by the USSR and can only express his agony and fear of death in his 79th piano sonata. He writes it was a particularly cold winter when working on the piece and the atmosphere in Russia was frightening him. We then assure the pianists that the letter is hand written by Shostakovich himself, confirmed by Shostakovich experts. Four weeks later, we ask both pianists how they used the letter when studying the 79th piano sonata for the first time. Pianist one tells us he tried to dramatize the ice cold, hopeless feeling of the second theme by playing it in a slow tempo with a sharp attack on the melodic notes while emphasizing the narrow harmonies to create painful dissonance. Pianist two tells us that in this same theme, inspired by the fear and desperation of Shostakovich, he plays the theme as agitato as possible, while underlining five notes that could be interpreted as a motif of soldiers banging on a door.
In this made up experiment, we can see that two musicians provided with the same background source have used the information in a completely different way. While both using it to give an extra musical meaning and intention, the result is two very different interpretations. Of course the same experiment could be used to prove how a harmonic or structural analysis can differ and be prone to personal preference, and this all simply proves that an interpretation should not be seen as ‘right or wrong’ ; for it is only intended to help the artist to believe in the interpretation he/she forms in the very moment it is expressed. This belief will lead to conviction, and however difficult this is to test and to prove, it is the magical component of the romantic performing artist; to move all people present with the need to express (themselves) through their art.
We make this point to explain that we did not launch into an academic research about the background of Shostakovich’s life, we simply used historical and political knowledge to enrich our interpretation. Until now we only talked about the interpretation of an individual, but the real challenge as a chamber music ensemble is to find an unanimous interpretation. For us this meant we had to be extremely articulate about our thoughts and ideas, if we did not want to end up in endless discussions with sentences that all start with ‘I feel that this moment should be special because’. It helped a lot to do research as a group, so we experience the same process of building the foundation and adding layers to our interpretation, making it more and more unanimous and solid.
You can choose to learn more about the background of the composer, but it depends on the time, style and composer on what aspect (of his life and work) you want to focus on more.
Shostakovich is a special case, because there are many things about his life and works that you can focus on. In our case because of the extremely disputed role Shostakovich played during the Stalinist Soviet Union it was helpful to learn more about this debate so as to understand the influence the Soviet regime had on him and his works.
We know things about his character from people around him, about his work process, about important life events. But mostly, we know that since the age of eleven, he lived under the communist regime of the Soviet Union. For many decades after his death it was generally understood that he had lived and worked as a believer in communism, expressing his belief in the system, and he was acclaimed as a great Soviet composer in the free world and the USSR. His works were interpreted as “pure music” (without symbolic references, described for composers who are less politically active). From his life, we know Shostakovich joined the Communist Party in 1960 and that he signed many publications supporting Soviet press campaigns against anti-Soviet statements by his fellow compatriots. We know that he often read official speeches at cultural occasions hosted by the Soviet regime and never expressed public disagreement with the Soviet system. Almost all of his music is written for and in honour of important events during the Soviet regime, and press films released by the regime. There are two moments, however, in 1936 and 1948, where we know he was publicly and highly punished for failing to meet the expectations of the Soviet regime as a composer. After his death it was discovered that he had composed a secret satire about his public censure in 1948 called Rayok, “a manual for beginners”.
This view changed abruptly after four years after his death with the publication of Testimony, the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov. To everyone’s surprise, it seemed Shostakovich had dictated the start of a biography to Solomon Volkov, a young music journalist from Leningrad. The book was smuggled out of the country to the USA, translated, and published in 1979. In the book, Shostakovich holds a bitter monologue about a life lived in fear for the communist system. Shostakovich is portrayed as being cynical towards the regime, against Stalin, and most importantly, claiming that his compositions were filled with symbolism and hidden messages against the regime.
Volkov stated that every chapter of his book had been read and signed by Shostakovich.
With many failed attempts from the Soviet Union to prevent the book to be published, after the publication the book was met with a big Soviet campaign against it, including denunciations from Shostakovich’ son Maxim and other friends claiming the book was a big lie from beginning to end.
After the book was published, the first essays about newly analysed works by Shostakovich started being published, explaining hidden codes, symbols and programme music found in his works.
However, in 1980, American musicologist Laurel Fay publishes an essay called ‘Shostakovich versus Volkov: Whose Testimony?” In this essay, Fay points out that seven of the eight chapters start with quotations from older Shostakovich essays, thus accusing Volkov of plagiarizing earlier articles written by Shostakovich and published by the Soviet Union. Volkov never answered to these accusations, but his book and this essay set off a big debate about the interpretation of Shostakovich’ life and works. In addition to Fay’s essay, Ian McDonald added his thoughts to the debate literature by publishing “The new Shostakovich” in 1990, offering a more nuanced image about the context of the life and work of the great composer within Soviet history. He points out that Maxim Shostakovich might have denunciated the Testimony by Volkov when he was still living with his family in USSR, but after leaving the Soviet Union he stated the following in the New York Times during an interview: "The attitude of Shostakovich toward the regime [depicted in Testimony] is correct... My father hated the [Soviet] tyranny. If this book changed in any way the attitude of the public toward Shostakovich as a court musician of the Soviet government, it's very good. If it proved that Shostakovich wasn't a servant of the Communist party, then thank God."
Irina Shostakovich also made a statement saying “Everyone whom this (testimony) concerned knew about it”.
In 1998 American musicologist Allan B. Ho and Russian pianist Dmitry Feofanov published “Shostakovich Reconsidered”, a huge and very detailed analysis of the case against Testimony by Volkov, challenging Fay’s accusation of plagiarism and defending it’s authenticity.
There is much more to be said and written about the timeline and contents of the so called ‘Shostakovich Debate’, but what is clear from the many books, essays and articles written about it, is that it is simply too straight forward to claim Shostakovich was for, or against the Soviet regime. We now know how incredibly terrified and suspicious people were made of everyone around them by the Soviet system by infiltrating spies and/or implying spies were everywhere. It was absolute suicide to express any criticism towards the communist system out loud, and so everyone lived under constant fear and oppression. Such heavy psychological strains are bound to mark a person’s character.