Talk:Dmitri Shostakovich

From Conservapedia

This is completely imbecilic. The horrendous thing about Conservapedia is that young people are being indoctrinated with creationist nonsense.

Daffodil 20:09, 15 March 2007 (EDT)

Great article!--HPalmer 19:01, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

The information in this article is woefully incorrect. A few examples of the many errors are shown below:

1. Prokoviev, not Shostakovich, wrote "The Love for Three Oranges".
2. The author correctly notes that some of Shostakovich's music was written to protest government oppression, but unaccountably fails to mention such well-known examples as the final movement of the 5th Symphony ("A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism") and the 2nd movement of the 10th Symphony (an unflattering musical portrait of Stalin).
3. Although Shostakovich did make a short trip to the United States, he did not emigrate from the Soviet Union and later return as claimed by the author of this article - rather, it was Prokoviev who emigrated and later returned.
4. Shostakovich did not write "Mars, the Bringer of War" - this is a movement from "The Planets" by Gustav Holst. Neither did he write a Piano Concerto in D Minor or the "Rituals of Springtime" - the author may be thinking of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, and "Rites of Spring" was written by Igor Stravinsky.
5. Although the author claims that Shostakovich wrote less serious music toward the end of his life, some of his most enduring symphonies (13, 14, and 15) and string quartets (12, 13, 14, and 15) date from the late 1960s and early 1970s. In addition, significant vocal works such as "Six Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva", a suite for contralto and piano, were written toward the end of his life. This is not mentioned in the article.

If the article is an attempted hoax, it's not funny - at any rate, it's wildly inaccurate, and needs to be taken down and completely rewritten. A good starting point for accurate information about Dmitri Shostakovich is Laurel Fay's 1999 book "Shostakovich: A Life", Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-513438-9. --An3206 02:12, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

The article is indeed an attempted hoax. As I said in my previous discussion contribution, which I note has been deleted, Shostakovich did NOT write a famous prelude in C-sharp Minor Op 2 No 3 (sic) - the author must have known that it was Rachmaninov that wrote a famous prelude in C-sharp Minor Op 3 No 2 (sic). It's clearly deliberate misinformation. If kids are going to use this as a resource, the it is criminal to feed them with deliberate mis-information like this. Daffodil 17:21, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

I have made a fairly major edit to the article at least to remove some of the falsehoods and trying to replace them with some reasonably accurate information. It is a long way from being up to the standard of an encyclopedia article, I'm aware - it wants citations, and could do with a lot more detail. But hopefully it's a start. I'm afraid the entire sections on emigration (he didn't) and the Tchaikovsky competition have had to be removed - I couldn't think of anything real to replace them with. Shostakovich visited America after the war, not before it. Daffodil 17:59, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

I appreciate Daffodil's effort in rewriting the article on Dmitri Shostakovich. If I'm ever able to generate some free time, I'll provide/suggest additional material.
--An3206 01:55, 26 March 2007 (EDT)

dissidence

This article really needs to mention the fact that Shostakovich inserted coded messages against the Bolsheviks in his music. And also the publishing of his memoirs, which was smuggled out to the West by Volkov and had all sorts of inside dirt on the Soviet system, especially Soviet music system, but was mocked and suppressed by Western liberals. this is probably the main reason people know of Shostakovich today. maybe I will get the Volkov book from library again and add some of the information from there. ELeger 07:23, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

I have never heard of """Testimony" being mocked and suppressed by Western liberals." I'd qualify as a liberal and I've had a copy since it was first published. And it was "liberals" like Bernstein and Britten that championed his music. As for his music not being known in the West, I remember broadcasts of each of his later symphonies being advertised on Australian public ('liberal') radio a week before they were available. A new Shosh. was a big thing. It was only ever the extreme loony left that tried any minimisation of Soviet excesses. AlanE 23:03, 18 August 2008 (EDT)

Was Shostakovich a secret dissident?

When in doubt go to a primary source. In this case, the music. I don't pretend to be an expert at "reading" his music - at understanding his musical language - but I sometimes feel that there is a sense of compassion, especially in his later stuff. There is humanity amongst the rubble. He could not have written the later chamber works and the 13th and 14th Symphonies without feeling despair, not just at the fate of the Jews at Treblinka, say, but at the plight of his own people and the evil surrounding him...and within that despair lay sympathy. I can't articulate it properly, but does anyone know what I mean? I would go so far as to say that by the end he was openly dissident - for any who wanted to hear. AlanE 18:26, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

My feelings exactly. Especially when one cross-references his most passionate works -- the First Violin Concerto, Fifth and Tenth Symphonies, Eighth String Quartet, etc. -- with the events simultaneously occurring in his life (friends getting shot, him being bullied into joining the Communist Party, etc.)

I remember also reading (I think it was even in the Fay biography) that during the first performance of the fifth symphony, in the slow movement, members of the audience were audibly and loudly heard weeping. There's something in his music that connected directly to the suffering of the people who were most affected by the regime's excesses. JDWpianist 19:25, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Wasn't the 2nd piano trio also about a friend's death?

You mean to say you don't weep during the slow movement of the 5th. You have no soul.:) For years a home-recorded cassette containing the 5th and 10th in my Walkman was my guard against travel sickness on my frequent 2 hour commutes between Hobart and Sydney. They were proof that there were people feeling more rotten than I did. That long first movement of the 6th gets to me too. AlanE 21:12, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Ahh yes, of course. I always forget the ones dearest to me. :) The second trio was dedicated to the memory of Ivan Sollertinsky, Shostakovich's closest friend, who also introduced him to Mahler. To be completely even-handed, some sources say that it was finished a month before Sollertinsky's death, and other equally credible ones say that Shostakovich got the news a few days after finishing the first movement.

Of course I weep during the slow movement, when no one's watching! What's interesting about this story was that so many people were weeping loudly during the performance that it turned into a scene. It's hard to imagine that happening in a concert hall these days. JDWpianist 18:22, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

G'morning. Dissidence in a completely different form, but still through his music - the brilliant cocking a snook at the establishment when he wrote that outwardly jaunty Ninth, when a "grand statement" of triumphant patriotic pride was expected of him. I know there's the usual under-current, but it seems so slight a work for so big an occasion. AlanE 19:08, 28 March 2009 (EDT)