riddle Shostakovich

[karlhenning]

Is not obvious that strong, creative minds will challenge these very concepts? And that is my point. Shostakovich, Bartok, Mussorgsky do not fit neatly into anyh category created by "experts" because, from the beginning, they challenged conventions.

So your "point" is the musicological equivalent of announcing that a wheel is round, eh? No one here --  apart from you, in the case of Shostakovich, and with your patter about "realism" -- has suggested attaching any neat label upon any of these three composers.

I have worked with many strong creative minds.  Yours seems contraindicated so far.

[Franco]

Yes, there are common labels to lump composers into a style, e.g. Baroque composers (Bach), Classical  (Mozart), Romantic (Liszt), etc - but these labels are possible and help to understand the music only when an aesthetic style dominated a period.  But the 20th century is notable precisely for a lack of a period-defining style - hence, it is my sense (and I suspect most people on this forum sense) that attempting to apply an all embracing label to 20th century composers is somewhat artificial and has much less meaning than for previous eras.

[False_Dmitry]

But the 20th century is notable precisely for a lack of a period-defining style - hence, it is my sense (and I suspect most people on this forum sense) that attempting to apply an all embracing label to 20th century composers is somewhat artificial and has much less meaning than for previous eras.

Yes, my favourite "labels" are:

• eighteenth-century composers
• nineteenth-century composers
• twentieth-century composers
• twenty-first-century composers

Mysteriously these labels are always undisputed

Seconded. That was the crowning glory of miraculous series of posts

It's quite remarkable to hear a composer who doused himself liberally with vodka as a means of blotting-out the awful reality of the world...    who was extremely proud of his symphonic scene WITCH'S SABBATH ON ST JOHN'S NIGHT (later reworked as A NIGHT ON THE BALD MOUNTAIN) could be described...

as a "realist" composer??   

[canninator]

It's quite remarkable to hear a composer who doused himself liberally with vodka as a means of blotting-out the awful reality of the world...    who was extremely proud of his symphonic scene WITCH'S SABBATH ON ST JOHN'S NIGHT (later reworked as A NIGHT ON THE BALD MOUNTAIN) could be described...

as a "realist" composer??   

Avoiding the "realist" tag here to avoid controversy but I suspect Benny was talking about the songs although he didn't make it explicit. I think Benny needs to think more carefully about how he defines realism vs other isms and some of these problems will go away.

[karlhenning]

If Benny is talking about any specific works, he is keeping it a deep, dark secret. (Hey! Maybe that's the riddle of the thread header!)

[False_Dmitry]

I suspect Benny was talking about the songs although he didn't make it explicit.

Perhaps.  I wouldn't call the texts of SONGS & DANCES OF DEATH very "realist" though. Nor in fact many of Musorsky's other songs either.

Without making a big deal of it, I'd also mention that Musorgsky's name only has one "s" in Russian, and a second one in English is probably inessential... even if it is seen in print sometimes.

[canninator]

Perhaps.  I wouldn't call the texts of SONGS & DANCES OF DEATH very "realist" though. Nor in fact many of Musorsky's other songs either.

Without making a big deal of it, I'd also mention that Musorgsky's name only has one "s" in Russian, and a second one in English is probably inessential... even if it is seen in print sometimes.

I agree, I guess my point is that Benny's notion of realism is a bit fuzzy, I was just taking a best guess at what aspect of Mus(s)orgsky he was talking about.

[Brahmsian]

Fine, if you want a label for Shostakovich, you will have it.

Awesome!  Mixed in with a bit of terrific, and a dash of magnificent.

[springrite]

Fine, if you want a label for Shostakovich, you will have it.

Awesome!  Mixed in with a bit of terrific, and a dash of magnificent.

A.T.M.

[Brahmsian]

A.T.M.

There, that will make it easy for everyone to remember.

From here on, known as the ATM, DSCH. 

[Scarpia]

Fine, if you want a label for Shostakovich, you will have it.

Awesome!  Mixed in with a bit of terrific, and a dash of magnificent.

I'm afraid there is some Overblown and Prosaic mixed in there at times. 

[Benny]

To Mr. Henning, sorry, Dr. Henning, who appears to know more about my understanding of Shostakovich than myself.

On page 77 of Ross's The Rest is Noise you will find the subheading "In Search of the Real: Janacek, Bartok, Ravel". In that section of the book, Ross addresses the question "What would it mean for music to render life "just as it is," in van Gogh's phrase? Composers had been pondering that question for centuries, and, at various times and in different ways, they had infused their work with the rhythms of everyday life."

On page 79: "Three great "realists" in early-twentieth-century music --Janacek, Bartok, and Ravel -- were born in villages or outlying towns in their respective homelands: Hukvaldy in Moravia, Nagyszentmilos in Hungary, and Ciboure in the French Basque country. Although they were trained in the cities, and remained city dwellers for most of their lives, these composers never shook the feeling that they had come from somewhere else."

Page 84: "Bartok, likewise, talked about the "highest emotions," a "great reality." Adds Ross, the artist "can stand in for all humanitiy, becoming a "metaphor for wholeness."....................

[Benny]

Bottom of page 84:
"Maurice Ravel is a special case among turn-of-the-century "realists."

I am apparently not the only one to use this concept.

On the issue of whether or not I understand Shostakovich, I am sure that you are correct in that I do not understand him like you. But Ross makes a point that irony, which Shostakovich uses a lot, cannot possibly result in a shared understanding.

Do you agree with Akhmatova that his seventh is a "kind of mad carnival"? That's her understanding. Did she get it right???

[False_Dmitry]

Do you agree with Akhmatova that his seventh is a "kind of mad carnival"? That's her understanding. Did she get it right???

Why don't you take the earplugs out of your ears, put Ross's book back on the shelf, and try listening to the music for yourself, for a change?

There is a great deal more in the 7th Symphony than most people suspect.  Shostakovich never called it "the Leningrad" - a title superimposed upon it by someone at the Council Of Composers, in time of war (DCSH agreed to the name-change in view of events which were overtaking the USSR at the time).  Shostakovich's own title for the 7th Symphony was "The Legendary".

On page 79: "Three great "realists" in early-twentieth-century music --Janacek, Bartok, and Ravel

Not Shostakovich, then?   Not Puccini, the master of verismo, who lived until 1924?  Nor Alfano, who inherited Puccini's verismo mantle?   Ross is predisposed to talk-down music written in Germany & Austria, but it's really surprising he can't find a place in his "realist" pantheon for Alban Berg, whose opera WOZZECK (1925) is the very epitome of the gritty and relentless reality that so shocked its public?  Nor for Kurt Weill, who wrote an "opera for beggars" and an opera-ballet about the "seven deadly sins of ordinary people"?   

No, Ross reserves his "realism" for Ravel (whose operas include roles for a singing teapot and vocalising pieces of furniture),  and for Bartok (whose "realism" stretches to a fantasy opera about a mythical Duke who collects sexual conquests in a castle...  and a ballet about the murder of a mandarin who then comes back from the dead?).

Janacek - a realist, a fatalist, and a pessimist.  No question there.

[Benny]

Akhmatova just turned in her grave.
So much smoke in this room! Do I gather from the last comment that "realism" does apply after all?
Berg? Absolutely!
Bartok? The previous references were to the Miraculous Mandarin and to stripping off the veneer of Romanticism from representations of folklore in classical music.
Ravel? As de Falla!

[False_Dmitry]

Do I gather from the last comment that "realism" does apply after all?

To the extent that Janacek was interested in naturalism, then yes, perhaps.   But I think you would have a hard job persuading anyone that operas about (i) a woman who has lived from the C16th until the 1920s under a sequence of pseudonyms, and seduced hundreds of men (ii) forest animals who sing and dance, have wedding ceremonies, etc...   are especially "realist".   

But why then has Ross not mentioned Shostakovich as a "realist"??

[karlhenning]

So much smoke in this room!

All of your brewing, you clown!  You don't want anyone to notice your signal lack of facts!  You wag!

Now, if Shostakovich's music is fairly to be labeled as "realism" . . . let's see, 147 opus numbers . . . what's a fair percentage?

Benny, you dawg, please list 40 works by Shostakovich which are "realist," and the musical characteristics of each which justify the label.

. . . a label which you still cannot define! High-larious!

[karlhenning]

Examples of musical stylistic terms found in the index to Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise:

aleatory music
atonality
bebop
chance music
Futurism
Gebrauchsmusik
jazz
Klangfarbenmelodie
micropolyphony
musique concrète
neoclassicism
ragtime
serialism
stochastic music
total serialism

Absent from the index (and indeed, from the book):

"realism"

[Franco]

Aside from a few operas mentioned (curiously no one has called John Adams a realist despite his Nixon in China and Death of Klinghoffer - both operas taken right out of the newspapers; although the idea of Nixon, Mao and Palestinian terrorists singing is quite unreal) there has been no indication that the label "realism" can meaningfully be applied to purely instrumental music, music with no program - abstract instrumental music.

I defy anyone to convince me otherwise.

If the term realism is to be applied to staged musical works - it really does not have much meaning since operas and oratorios from all periods could fit the bill.

But, in actuality, I find nothing at all real about any opera (no matter how gritty or historical the story), it being the most artificial of the arts - not that that makes it any less enjoyable.

[Benny]

Not from the book!! That's a blatant lie!!!!!
Dr. Henning. Anyone who owns a copy can refer to the pages I have cited. What are you doing?!