.

[Gurn Blanston]

Hmmm ... I've got a rateyourmusic account that I have not done much with.  Maybe I'll look into to this widget.

Thanks.

I actually make mine in CorelDraw, since I didn't know about that cool widget that Dave (and now you?) use. I'll look into it though.

[Mn Dave]

I actually make mine in CorelDraw, since I didn't know about that cool widget that Dave (and now you?) use. I'll look into it though.

Gurn, first you have to open an account and then catalog your record collection. Oh, and since yours is mostly classical, you'll have to update most of the information to the database yourself since there's not much there yet. 

[Karl Henning]

ROFL. You're just throwing hate at Shostakovich because Shostakovich, like all great artists, requires effort from his audience.  No one requires you to make the effort for any artist you do not wish, of course;  but your scorn means nothing, apart from its occasional amusement value.

Part of why your little rants about Shostakovich are so utterly droll, is that there are plenty of us who admire the great artistry of both Shostakovich and Boulez.  'Tis a tiny mind which imagines that it has got be one or the other.

[ibanezmonster]

I like Shostakovich, Boulez, and Henning.
Not sure if you are just trying to be silly/funny or not while pretending to serious...

[Brian]

Boulez - like all great artists - requires effort from his audience.

As do Shostakovich and indeed Tchaikovsky, but clearly because of the surface attractiveness you impute in their music (though there is much of Shostakovich which it would be preposterous to call attractiveness), you aren't willing to see that that effort is required. If Shostakovich failed to speak in a language which was new (a thing, again, which some of his work quite clearly disproves), not everyone needs to. Brahms, for instance, was not as harmonically daring compared to Herzogenberg and Svendsen as Boulez was compared to, say, R. Strauss or Atterberg. Would you fault Brahms, who rejected the musical "progress" of his era to write symphonies instead of Gesamtkunstwerk, for his imitation of the past and his vulgarity?

The rise of Shostakovich, in other words, is little more than an expression of the complete collapse of judgment, discrimination and taste that characterize these times - and therefore a symptom of decadence.

The rise of Dan Brown, the Black Eyed Peas, Katharine Jenkins, Stephenie Meyer, Newton Gingrich, Marine Le Pen, and fashion designers who think the '80s should come back: these, surely, are signs of decadence. Not the rise in global audience esteem of a composer who dared to write music which is both appreciated without recourse to textbooks and crafted at the highest possible level.

[bhodges]

Perhaps it is for the best mods failed to quell the outpouring of abuse exemplified on this thread; so that visitors if this site gets any see for themselves Shostakovich is not a composer who can be upheld on his merits.

The rise of Shostakovich since the 1970's is little more than a function of the rise of that new-fangled public of semi-literate listeners that occured at that time, people who come from pop and still listen mostly to pop, people who claim Star Wars as classical music, people who fail to distinguish between the imitation and the original, between vulgarity and refinement - people who settle for Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and Arvo Pärt because Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and Pärt are easy, people throw hate at Boulez because Boulez - like all great artists - requires effort from his audience. The rise of Shostakovich, in other words, is little more than an expression of the complete collapse of judgment, discrimination and taste that characterize these times - and therefore a symptom of decadence.

Uh...right.

There are too many refutable points here to make them all, but for now: just sorry you don't find spiritual nourishment in Shostakovich. In my book, the string quartet cycle alone is evidence of his brilliance.

--Bruce

[Mirror Image]

Perhaps it is for the best mods failed to quell the outpouring of abuse exemplified on this thread; so that visitors if this site gets any see for themselves Shostakovich is not a composer who can be upheld on his merits.

The rise of Shostakovich since the 1970's is little more than a function of the rise of that new-fangled public of semi-literate listeners that occured at that time, people who come from pop and still listen mostly to pop, people who claim Star Wars as classical music, people who fail to distinguish between the imitation and the original, between vulgarity and refinement - people who settle for Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and Arvo Pärt because Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich and Pärt are easy, people throw hate at Boulez because Boulez - like all great artists - requires effort from his audience. The rise of Shostakovich, in other words, is little more than an expression of the complete collapse of judgment, discrimination and taste that characterize these times - and therefore a symptom of decadence.

This is simply NOT true and only reflects poorly on you. I like Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Part, but obviously for such different reasons. Each of these composers require effort much like Schoenberg and Berg require effort. There are many people who do like Boulez's music and also like Shostakovich's music. It is very possible to like both composers. I'm not a fan of Boulez's music because I'm not attracted to the aesthetic and the kind of thought it conveys, which to me seems more caught up in the mind than in the heart, but this is just my own tastes. About as far out as I get is Schoenberg's atonal music.

People enjoy what they enjoy and it's as simple as that. Who the hell are you to make any kind of judgement on them anyway? Nobody here has anything to prove to you. You need to simply get over yourself and learn to accept that not everybody shares the same ideals as you.

Boy, now I'm in the mood for Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 for some odd reason. Oh yeah, that's right, because I LOVE Shostakovich!

[kishnevi]

Shostakovich is indeed what the Soviet authorities expected of him - a composer for the mediocrities - a composer who cannot offend the sorts of lower level bureaucrats who rose to the top under Lenin's prodding - and more recently the semi-educated public that has been brought to the Classical in the Anglo-Saxon world, by publicists misled by a wrong-headed ideology.

Josquin, you know you're not supposed to hack the accounts of other GMG members.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

- a composer who cannot offend the sorts of lower level bureaucrats who rose to the top under Lenin's prodding -

The funny thing about this statement is that one of the things Shostakovich undoubtedly did was "offend the sorts of lower level bureaucrats who rose to the top under Lenin's prodding" (and the higher-level ones too!).

Toucan, we get it - you don't like him. You don't have to say it 100 times.

[Hattoff]

I shall take Toucan's side, I like Shostakovich but why go with the herd

Dumbing down? Just listen to BBC radio 3, it's for three year olds. It's only the jazzers who talk like adults

[Geo Dude]

Josquin, you know you're not supposed to hack the accounts of other GMG members.

This also gave me that special Josquin 'vibe':

The rise of Shostakovich, in other words, is little more than an expression of the complete collapse of judgment, discrimination and taste that characterize these times - and therefore a symptom of decadence.

[TheGSMoeller]

Yes, Shostakovich's music is fading...for example the mysterious beauty of the final chord fading into silence in his symphony No.15, or the wonderful fading piano and viola in the Viola Sonata...

[Karl Henning]

Just listen to BBC radio 3, it's for three year olds.

It's all relative.  I once played Le marteau sans maître for a four-month-old (true story from Buffalo).  So a three-year-old audience is already seasoned.

[Karl Henning]

Yes, Shostakovich's music is fading...for example the mysterious beauty of the final chord fading into silence in his symphony No.15, or the wonderful fading piano and viola in the Viola Sonata...

Way to make lemonade, dude!

[jowcol]

Josquin, you know you're not supposed to hack the accounts of other GMG members.

Given the disdain for film music and non-"art music", I saw  the stylistic handiwork of another highly revered poster in this thread. 

I'm sure that McDonalds is going to offer the McShostakovich soon to finish his dissolution into meaninglessness.

Actually, to return to the topic of the thread-- it's hard to be objectively quantify this-- yes we can look at polls, best of lists, but  this creates a paradox.  If less people rate him highly, he's fading.  If more people rate him highly, he's the next Brittney Spears with KFed as a backup dancer. 

There are several works of his I've found that don't seem, to me, to justify their length-- but there is always room on my shelf for him.  (The 10th if nothing else....)

[kishnevi]

(Even as the mostly low quality of the defenses of Shostakovich provided here corroborates vindicates those who say Shostakovich is not a composer for sophisticated people)

In contrast to the views of Stalin and Zhdanov, who attacked Shostakovich because they thought his music was too sophisticated and did not have enough popular appeal.

There are a certain number of composers who produced music of such high quality that they need no defense--Byrd, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov spring to mind.  Shostakovich is a member of this group.  And indeed, attacking them (as opposed to frankly admitting you don't particularly like their style and moving on to other music) is a good sign of musical ignorance.

[Geo Dude]

Actually, to return to the topic of the thread-- it's hard to be objectively quantify this-- yes we can look at polls, best of lists, but  this creates a paradox.  If less people rate him highly, he's fading.  If more people rate him highly, he's the next Brittney Spears with KFed as a backup dancer. 

Exactly.  Toucan claims that Shostakovitch is becoming less popular because he's an inferior composer; when evidence is presented that he actually is popular, Toucan shifts gears (and the goal posts) by claiming that his popularity is evidence of his inferiority.  The argument is not quite circular, but more of a figure-8 that he can go on arguing for an eternity.  Each time evidence is presented that he's wrong about one claim, he simply jumps to the other side.

By the way, I can't help but notice that he still hasn't provided evidence that Shostakovitch is fading.

[Karl Henning]

. . . In my book, the string quartet cycle alone is evidence of his brilliance.

This recalls a point I meant to make yesterday, Bruce: the OP proposes this bizarre idea that Shostakovich's popularity is somehow a matter of "vulgarity," that it is "unsophisticated" people who admire his music.

Let's accept this quaint idea for argument's sake.  Who are some of these notably "unsophisticated" people who are foisting Shostakovich's music upon the world?

The list only begins with:  Mstislav Rostropovich, Tatiana Nikolayeva, the Juilliard String Quartet, David Oistrakh, Karel Ančerl, Kurt Masur, István Kertész, Riccardo Muti.

Obviously a rabble of light-weights . . . .

[Brian]

I'm sure that McDonalds is going to offer the McShostakovich soon to finish his dissolution into meaninglessness.

The DSCH sandwich: Dutch loaf, salami, capicola, and ham. For the lover of meaty music!

[Karl Henning]

Nothing short of catastrophic

Love it! ROFL