riddle Shostakovich

[False_Dmitry]

Umm... That's exactly what you implied in the case of realist music -

    My rough translation - Shostakovich is not romantic, because romantic music is not realist music. The only requirement you give for romanticism is that it be excessively emotional. Ergo realist music, and Shostakovich's music, is unemotional. Right?

    Please describe the musical characteristics of realist music. You imply that each composer has his own standards of what realism is. If that is the case, than using the term as a way to describe the music is useless, since the point of a genre is to group music together according to their acoustical characteristics - if everyone can't use a term to mean roughly the same thing, than it can't be used to describe the effect of the music from a musical, acoustical, or emotional standpoint.

I wish this site had a "RECOMMEND POST" feature, because this post deserves one

[Benny]

I know what I said and it was not what you state I said. Being one among several reactions to what was then perceived as the excessively emotional nature of Romantic music, realism is thus, by its very original conception, not Romantic music.

Realism in classical music can materialize in numerous forms. For some of the more "physical" expressions, think of Mosolov's Iron Foundry or Honegger's Pacific 281. Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin speaks of urban violence! Truly, what is the appropriate label for Bartok's music, folkloric?! And yet these three works were composed well before "realism" was mandated by Soviet cultural agents of Stalin.

A lot of works inspired by war and by tyranny seek to convey realistic portrayals and emotions as opposed to great patriotic fervor and adulation of leaders. In their sincere engagement with such human tragedies, composers can be said to have composed realist music.

[False_Dmitry]

And yet these three works were composed well before "realism" was mandated by Soviet cultural agents of Stalin.

As has already mentioned, the aims of "realism" (ie the opposite of "impressionism" and "romanticism") and "socialist realism" are utterly different movements in the arts, and cannot be compared with each other.

The goal of "socialist realism" was to place the lives, dreams and hopes of ordinary people in socialist countries at the centre of focus in artistic works.   Of course we can cackle today about ballets written about attempts to beat the world cement-mixing speed record (I'm afraid I am not making this up)....  but the idea of technological progress that brought new and modern housing to people living in slum tenements,  this stuff really was more exciting than a story about a fictional young aristocrat's sexual fetish with pond aviary.

Nor is all Socialist Realist work laughable bilge (although some of it certainly is).  Rodion Schedrin's opera NOT LOVE ALONE (NE TOL'KO LIUBOV') tackled issues about the roles of women in the workplace.  Our heroine is the Manager, and she loves one of the workers...  but he won't obey the rules, he's a slacker who prefers card-games to work, and in the end she has to fire him.  It's a strong score that deserves to be heard more often - although I suspect the libretto's topic wouldn't play so well now?   There is also stupendous music in works like Prokofiev's STORY OF A REAL MAN (POVEST' NASTOYASHEGO CHELOVEKA) - a kind of Russian version of THE DOUGLAS BADER STORY,  although once again the issues that were very real after WW2 have moved on.  The moving end in which Morozov is decorated by Stalin and remembered as a hero clunks emptily in modern Russia, where the war vets are remembered on one day out of 365 per year...  and those left in wheelchairs don't even get wheeled to see the parade.  (In fact Helikon Opera in Moscow have taken the piece and controversially changed the ending, making it into a protest piece about the neglect of WW2 veterans).



But, ehem, it isn't all gloom and doom.  Shostakovich's ballet "The Bright Brook" (also translated as "The Silver Stream") is classical socialist realist codswallop, subverted into a delicious comedy that sits neatly alongside Hollywood movies of a similar vintage like HELLZAPOPPIN'!  It's a "let's do the show right here!" show-within-a-show piece.  Ballet dancers from "a big ballet theatre in Moscow" are deployed in summer to farms in Russia's south to help with the harvest (this kind of thing really used to happen).  Of course, they bring their costumes, an accordion in place of an orchestra, and whaddyaknow? We gotta show!   The neat twist is that one of the farm-girls is a former Bolshoi star who threw-over her dance career FOR THE AGRONOMIST SHE LOVED!  But she's hurt by the attraction her husband shows to the lead girl dancer in the troupe... who is, of course, her former ballet-school classmate.  The gals resolve to teach the boys a lesson, and meantime there are some silly old stick-in-the-mud locals who've been getting a bit frisky with the "actresses", and they too need a comeuppance.  It's all a huge big excuse for two solo scenes in which the Principal Ballerina dresses as a boy (for a sizzling sapphic scene which must have had brows sopping at the premiere), and of course... for the Principal Man to dress up in drag and dance a pastiche on the big scene from LES SYLPHIDES. 

Wait!? Socialist Realism?   Lesbian love-scenes? Men in drag? Hilarious comedies? Shostakovich writing tangos and foxtrots?  Pastiche Tchaikovsky?  Male dancers dancing on-point?? What the hell kind of Socialism is this? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdahDCp5uww&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJl3kXKCt6g

[Benny]

As has already mentioned, the aims of "realism" (ie the opposite of "impressionism" and "romanticism") and "socialist realism" are utterly different movements in the arts, and cannot be compared with each other.

I beg to differ because your statement is totally out of historical context. The "aim" of whatever was done in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and early 1930s are "utterly different" from what followed under the more oppressive regime of Stalin. To wrap all of that under the generic/static title of "Soviet realism" fails to take into account all the internal conflicts about, guess what?, the meaning of what is "real" to the proletariat. And these fights became really nasty when Stalin took his royal seat. The Limpid Stream is an interesting choice on your part but I would prefer to highlight Shostakovich's bombshell -- Opus 29: "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", opera in 4 acts after Leskov (1930-1932). I would think that's a more representative work of what Shostakovich himself, not your "Soviet" construct, wished to represent as realist music. But we all know what happened to that work, in 1936, don't we? Even though the general public and state officials were favorably impressed, Stalin was not pleased at all!!! From that point on, Dmitri had to walk the tight rope of what officials viewed as Soviet realism and his own sense of reality.

[False_Dmitry]

I would think that's a more representative work of what Shostakovich himself, not your "Soviet" construct, wished to represent as realist music.

I haven't a clue what you are talking about here.  Who suddenly appointed you Shostakovich's spokesperson anyhow?

[Benny]

Did I step on your toes? You appear to enjoy that role yourself!

Seduction, sex, molestation, more abuse, convicts, murders. Real stuff! What's Soviet about that?
An American music critic called it "pornophony." I'd give D. Shostakovich full credit for being way ahead of his time in projecting such realities in music. But there's nothing inherently Soviet about these themes. They're universal.

[Scarpia]

Did I step on your toes? You appear to enjoy that role yourself!

Seduction, sex, molestation, more abuse, convicts, murders. Real stuff! What's Soviet about that?
An American music critic called it "pornophony." I'd give D. Shostakovich full credit for being way ahead of his time in projecting such realities in music. But there's nothing inherently Soviet about these themes. They're universal.

Too sweeping.

(See how stupid a comment that is?)

[False_Dmitry]

Did I step on your toes? You appear to enjoy that role yourself!

No, I simply discuss more works than one.   Then you babble about "historic context".  Meaning what?  Because the only person here who understands you is you.

[Benny]

You mean yours?

[Benny]

No, I simply discuss more works than one.   Then you babble about "historic context".  Meaning what?  Because the only person here who understands you is you.

No. I assure you that major changes were occurring in the young Soviet Union after Commissar Anatolii Lunacharskii. It's two different cultural worlds. And that is where we differ. You have argued along politico-geographic lines and I am arguing along historico-cultural ones. Check out this commissar. He was quite remarkable in his openness.

[Philoctetes]

Too sweeping.

(See how stupid a comment that is?)

I like his signature though. It's very telling.

As to my man Shostakovich, I simply enjoy his irony and how his works, or the ones I've heard, have a grand element of play involved in them.

[karlhenning]

As has already mentioned, the aims of "realism" (ie the opposite of "impressionism" and "romanticism") and "socialist realism" are utterly different movements in the arts, and cannot be compared with each other.

I am surprised that you fail to realize that in music, the most abstract of the arts, there can be no such thing as realism as there is in the visual arts.

Period.  You can give it a rest now, because that line of discussion has officially gone to earth.

[Benny]

My signature:
Absolutely! There's no need to be absolutely right! And my replies are for those who state that I am "utterly" wrong. Or more diplomatically assert the same by stating, very definitively, that there can be no realism in classical music. That's when I respond, if only to show that nothing is ever absolutely true.

Of course classical music can be realist. Is not death real? It must be expressed as realistically as possible. Poetry is not a visual art either. And there's not a more realistic Soviet poet than Anna Akmatova. Oh, this one really resonated with the proletarian crowd! She must have done something right to be so influential! By the way, Shostakovich loved Akmatova...........

[kishnevi]

The goal of "socialist realism" was to place the lives, dreams and hopes of ordinary people in socialist countries at the centre of focus in artistic works.   Of course we can cackle today about ballets written about attempts to beat the world cement-mixing speed record (I'm afraid I am not making this up)....  but the idea of technological progress that brought new and modern housing to people living in slum tenements,  this stuff really was more exciting than a story about a fictional young aristocrat's sexual fetish with pond aviary.

I would suggest that even in 21st century America, "that stuff" is more exciting then any fictional aristocrat's sexual fetish, etc.

If you have a real novel in mind, could you please tell us what it is?  I want to make sure I never read it by accident.

Wait!? Socialist Realism?   Lesbian love-scenes? Men in drag? Hilarious comedies? Shostakovich writing tangos and foxtrots?  Pastiche Tchaikovsky?  Male dancers dancing on-point?? What the hell kind of Socialism is this? 

Perhaps to a Russian the effect is different, but I've found some of the things Shostakovich wrote prior to the first condemnation to have more than a touch of hilarity, as if he was trying to see how much satire he could get away with.  For instance, the episode titles for the individual sections of The Golden Age--I can't imagine anyone coming up with something like "Touching Coalition of the Classes, slightly fraudulent" for any intention other than to induce hilarity.

And later he was able (in my opinion) to subvert what became the musical conventions of "Soviet Realism"  and inform his compositions with a powerful emotional content--of which I would give the Eleventh Symphony as the best example.

[kishnevi]

My signature:
Absolutely! There's no need to be absolutely right! And my replies are for those who state that I am "utterly" wrong. Or more diplomatically assert the same by stating, very definitively, that there can be no realism in classical music. That's when I respond, if only to show that nothing is ever absolutely true.

Of course classical music can be realist. Is not death real? It must be expressed as realistically as possible. Poetry is not a visual art either. And there's not a more realistic Soviet poet than Anna Akmatova. Oh, this one really resonated with the proletarian crowd! She must have done something right to be so influential! By the way, Shostakovich loved Akmatova...........

Which shows exactly where you lose reality.  Music doesn't express anything realistically.  What it does is capture the emotional effect of an event or idea--a quite different thing.

[Benny]

Ah, yes, reality: some people know what it is and others don't. How wonderful!!

Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia Antarctica -- emotions? sure, but also ambiance, elements, struggle (is making a streneous effort an emotion?)

Previously mentioned Iron Foundry: lots of percussive, accelerating motion (is motion an emotion?)

Honegger's train music: he loved trains, that's for sure, but what did he express exactly? his emotions or his fascination with the powerful momentum of a most powerful locomotive?

Perhaps music eventually became more than the means to express emotions?
Is minimalism primarily an expression of emotions?

[Dana]

I know what I said and it was not what you state I said. Being one among several reactions to what was then perceived as the excessively emotional nature of Romantic music, realism is thus, by its very original conception, not Romantic music.

    Could you provide a definition for realism beyond "a reaction to romantic music?" Telling us what something isn't, isn't really telling us what it is. Based on what what you're saying, it sounds like you're referring largely to expressionism.

[Benny]

    Could you provide a definition for realism beyond "a reaction to romantic music?" Telling us what something isn't, isn't really telling us what it is. Based on what what you're saying, it sounds like you're referring largely to expressionism.

Correct, that is how it's been called in classical music. But, as an art movement in general, it is referred to as "Realism," beginning with literature and painting. More specifically with respect to the term "Soviet Realism" the corresponding expression outside of the USSR is "Social Realism," which has been defined as:

Social Realism developed as a reaction against idealism and the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. Consequences of the Industrial Revolution became apparent; urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes. With a new sense of social consciousness, the Social Realists pledged to "fight the beautiful art", any style which appealed to the eye or emotions. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. They recorded what they saw ("as it existed") in a dispassionate manner. The public was outraged by Social Realism, in part, because they didn't know how to look at it or what to do with it (George Shi, University of Fine Arts, Valencia)

[karlhenning]

Correct, that is how it's been called in classical music.

Strike the passive voice, which is weaselly.  Who applies the term "realism" to classical music, and in what context?  You're playing fast and loose with this, and you are conveniently "ignoring" any input in this discussion which does not serve your vague purposes.

I have never heard the term "realism" applied to classical music.  So the burden is on you to prove that this is not just some paper rabbit you're pulling from a sham hat, and identify facts to support this woolly claim of yours.

You do know what facts are? Good. Let's have some.

TIA.

[Benny]

Such a definition is more apt than "expressionism" in a thread on Shostakovich because that concept is identified in a narrow sense with Schoenberg and his followers. Moreover, "expressionism" is said "to put the emotional expression above everything else." That's not what I have been talking about here. I tend to see Bartok's Mandarin as being more representative of social realism than of "expressionism". Bartok's aspiration to strip the Romantic veneer from folkloric representation in classical music also strikes me as part of that "Realism."