On the 1st January 2001, even the purists and pedants will accept that the
20th century is finally over. For the vast majority of us, it is the only
century we have known and, because it is still so recent, it is difficult
to evaluate it objectively, although future historians will no doubt do so.
I suspect that two characteristics will stand out above all others - and
they are not unconnected; the 20th century saw unparalleled advances in
technology along with barbarism and brutality on a massive scale. It is sometimes
tempting for those more ripe in years to take a Luddite approach to technological
advance and to wish themselves back in time to a simpler age, although I
wonder whether any of us would really have enjoyed Edwardian England, Renaissance
Italy or Classical Greece or whenever quite as much as we imagine. Speaking
personally, I have, over the past two years had three eye-operations, without
which I would now be blind; I can hardly question the benefits of improved
medical techniques, at least. The tragedy of the last century was not that
technological advances took place but that they were not accompanied by moral
development, and that they were put at the service of tyranny and blinkered
ideology. The pursuit of communist, fascist and racist goals gave us the
Holocaust, Stalin's gulags, Mao's 'cultural revolution', Pol Pot's genocide
and the atrocities of Saddam Hussain and Milosevic and, indirectly, the slaughter
of the two world wars. It is indeed a grim and tragic catalogue, the more
so in that it is by no means complete.
And what of music in that troubled century so recently ended? There have
been huge developments here too, again almost certainly outstripping those
in any other. 'Classical' music has seen many remarkable composers and
performers, but a number of dead ends too. Popular music has broken free
entirely (incidentally making the epithet 'classical' a tiresome and misleading
necessity) and spawned many forms; it possibly reached its zenith with the
Beatles but has degenerated recently into a multitude of types: 'house',
'garage' &tc which I am 'hip' enough to name, but not to identify (although
even I can usually recognise the inane and anodyne computer-generated 'techno').
Jazz, originally a form of popular music, has developed beyond all recognition
and has become an increasingly esoteric pursuit and jazz clubs, like folk
clubs and festivals, in this country at least, are populated mainly by the
middle-aged. Some composers infallibly invoke certain times and places: Elgar
- Edwardian England, Gershwin - 1920s New York, Weill - 1930s Germany; and
for many of us, Lennon and McCartney were the soundtrack to the 60s. But
what of the unparalleled anguish and misery that the 20th century visited
on mankind? Did any composer put that into his music and speak up for the
countless millions butchered, bereaved, maimed and exiled over the past 100
years? Yes, I think that there is one above all others; his name - Dmitri
Dmitreievich Shostakovich.
I would not contend that Shostakovich was the greatest 20th century composer;
indeed I do not think that such an accolade can be meaningfully or objectively
awarded. Neither would he be regarded as one of the great 'movers and shakers'
of the last century; most see Schönberg and Stravinsky in these terms
- certainly most composers do, probably including Shostakovich who admired
the music of both. (He is said to have regarded Stravinsky's Symphony of
Psalms as 'one of the greatest of all works' although he did not like or
admire its creator personally.) Shostakovich's special distinction was to
express the bleakness and suffering which was the lot of so many in the 20th
century. His own background and experience equipped him to do this probably
better than any other composer except perhaps Messiaen whose Quartet for
the End of Time was famously written in a concentration camp. The Russian
Revolution occurred in his childhood and although his family were middle
class, times were very hard. With the death of his father, Shostakovich had
to take up playing as a cinema pianist to enable the family to survive. During
the thirties, one incautious move on the part of artists or musicians could
be enough to incur the displeasure of Stalin with subsequent incarceration
or worse. Shostakovich survived-just-partly through his growing reputation
abroad, and also through the infamous and grovelling subtitle he gave to
his Fifth Symphony: 'A Soviet artist's reply to just criticism'. If there
is irony in this title - if what it really means is 'A symphony that even
Stalin can understand' - this is irony that could be appreciated only
retrospectively.
At this time, and throughout his career, Shostakovich played a very canny
game with the Soviet authorities, rarely saying what he thought in public.
Aware that, as an international figure he was to some extent protected, he
did not push his luck and was never a dissident in the mould of Solzhenitsyn
or Sakharov. A deeply patriotic man (in the best sense), it is now clear
that he loathed the Soviet system, but saw compromise as the best way of
ensuring that he could continue to work. He is said to have signed articles
criticising dissidents or Western 'formalism' without reading them, presumably
taking the plausible and defensible line that no one in the Soviet Union
or elsewhere would take them seriously anyway. He also took refuge in irony;
whilst we enjoy the rumbustious Scherzo and searching Largo of the
above-mentioned Fifth Symphony, what are we to make of the swaggering Finale
(which for me always brings Boris Yeltsin to mind) and its triumphant conclusion?
Is this a celebration of the triumph of socialist realism or a an ironic
commentary on the emptiness of the reality that communism presented?
Quite possibly it was both; it depended on who was listening. To some extent,
therefore, his music needs to be decoded in that it can be understood on
several levels. If he spoke up, through his music, for the oppressed, it
was to some extent as one of their number - and he had to be careful. Possibly
he realised that it was only in later years that his music would be more
generally, if not fully, understood.
With some composers, the character of their music, along with their personality,
is evident from their appearance. The frowning intensity of Beethoven's visage
fits the vehemence and irrepressibility of his music just as the intimidating
aspect of the older Sibelius suits much of his oeuvre, and we can read the
anguished doubt of some of Mahler's music into many of the photographs of
the composer. So it is with Shostakovich. Even in the few photographs which
show him smiling there is a wariness about him; I suspect that (like me!)
he did not greatly enjoy being photographed. There is a vulnerability in
his aspect, certainly, but there is also strength - not the jaw-jutting vehemence
of Beethoven, but a quality of dogged, enduring determination to survive.
We may be right to read into the incessant hammering of his own DSCH motif
in the finale of the Tenth Symphony a weary but exultant 'I have survived;
I've been through it and I'm still here' (and if our reading of the second
movement of the same work is correct we could add ' . . . and Joe Stalin
isn't').
Even if we are right in these suppositions, we should not see Shostakovich
as egotistical or self-obsessed; there is nothing of the Also Sprach Zarathustra
about him. If he has survived it as a representative of common humanity,
special only in his ability to convey the experience in musical terms.
Indeed his ability to feel the sufferings of others was one of his most
noticeable and attractive traits. We can hear this clearly in the slow movement
of the Seventh Symphony with its stark woodwind chorales and impassioned
string writing; his identification with the anguish of his own people of
Leningrad is total. He can feel the hopes and aspirations of others too;
the reprise of the first subject in the first movement of the Seventh suggests
a faith in the power of the human spirit to overcome all the hellish chaos
of war. (This passage comes close to moving me to tears every time I hear
it.) Similarly, the ending of the Eighth Symphony conveys at once peaceful
resignation and the suggestion of hope for the distant future.
It is perhaps in the famous Eighth Quartet (surely one of the greatest to
be written in the last century) where we are most aware of Shostakovich's
ability to empathise with the sufferings of others. It was written in 1959
following his visit to Dresden where he was appalled by the destruction visited
on the city, still evident fourteen years after the end of the war; the fact
that those who had endured it were Germans was for him immaterial. What
are we to read into his use of the DSCH motif in this work? (The first movement
is a profound and sombre fugue based on the four notes.) Not so much 'I was
there' but more 'I went through it too'? Incidentally, Shostakovich, generous
in his assessment of the music of others, was unstinting in his admiration
for another war-inspired work, the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten.
Shostakovich was an early developer, producing his first symphony at the
age of 19, and an excellent and remarkably mature work it is too. Even in
this work we can hear, in the adagio, pre-echoes of the profound later work.
He flirted with atonality (as did Prokoviev) notably in the Second symphony
but abandoned it. However, throughout his career he could use harsh dissonance
to good effect, although he remained essentially a tonal composer, able to
ascribe keys to most of his fifteen symphonies and all of his fifteen string
quartets. (It was his aim to write 24 quartets, one in each of the major
and minor keys.) Some of his writing is simple and diatonic, yet even when
he combines this with dissonant passages it sounds remarkably consistent;
his music contains none of the antics of a Schnittke. He became a specialist
in the symphonic adagio, rivalling Bruckner and Mahler in this sphere, although
his work is darker than theirs and lacks the luminous expressions of faith
found in the work of the two Austrian masters. For the agnostic
Shostakovich there was no comfort to be found in religion; his work deals
with the harsh realities of 20th century experience from the purely human
perspective; the only consolation is the indomitable human spirit itself.
Perhaps his greatest symphonic construction is the first movement of the
Tenth which, although moderato rather than adagio, fulfils the function of
slow movement whilst being at the same time a vast and compelling sonata
structure. This is music which draws in the listener and holds him.
Indeed the music of Shostakovich is approachable and comprehensible and,
although often austere, it contains much humour. It is easy to understand
why there is a resurgence in its popularity at present, particularly in view
of the paucity of approachable contemporary music. His standing has not always
been unchallenged. He suffered some neglect during the 1960s, the high noon
of serialism. Boulez regarded him as a 'third-rate composer' (Shostakovich
was not exactly flattering in his assessment of Boulez either). Robert Layton,
writing in The Symphony in the late 60s, claimed that he had been unable
to trace a performance of the Seventh Symphony since the war. Times have
changed indeed and the standing of Shostakovich in the pantheon of great
twentieth century composers is now assured.
One of the formal titles bestowed on Shostakovich when he came into favour
with the Soviet authorities was 'People's Artist'. We can say with the benefit
of hindsight that, without fully realising it, on this if on not much else,
the Kremlin got it right.
This article first appeared in the Slaithwaite Philharmonic Journal
