Shostakovich vs Stravinsky vs Rachmaninov vs Prokofiev

[mszczuj]

You don't like Shostakovich's music and you prefer him to another composer, that's fine, but don't make such silly assertions that don't do anything but reveal your lack of understanding of Shostakovich's merits as a composer. You did make a comparison between Beethoven and Shostakovich. Beethoven is one of the most revered composers in music history. I don't like a lot of Beethoven, but this is just the reality. What is also a reality is the popularity and greatness of Shostakovich whether you agree or disagree, his music is still some of the most compelling music to come out of the 20th Century. History has been very kind of Shosty and there are plenty of people who hold his music in high regard and he's still being performed in the concert halls. Not that this means he's a great composer by any stretch of the word, but merely that his importance has been evaluated and he remains a composer people are very much interested in hearing again and again. He's one of my absolute favorite composers and I think he is, indeed, one of the greatest in music history.

I told you that your lack of understanding is not sufficient reason to evaluate. So please be so nice and stop remarks as uneducated or silly. Or at least use them with any sense.

I absolutely agree with you that Shostakovich was great master. But not find him perfect and suppose that the reason for it is his acceptance of model of musical life in his country. He was still able to write some very interesting music. I  really like the 8th String Quartet, Piano Quintet or 6th Symphony. But you know within the model you just can't say everything.

[Mirror Image]

I told you that your lack of understanding is not sufficient reason to evaluate. So please be so nice and stop remarks as uneducated or silly. Or at least use them with any sense.

I absolutely agree with you that Shostakovich was great master. But not find him perfect and suppose that the reason for it is his acceptance of model of musical life in his country. He was still able to write some very interesting music. I  really like the 8th String Quartet, Piano Quintet or 6th Symphony. But you know within the model you just can't say everything.

Fine, but I still don't even know why you even brought in the Shostakovich/Beethoven analogy? I mean it just made you look ignorant, which it still does. Half of the other junk you said doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. Too much seriousness in Shostakovich's music? Have you even listened to Shostakovich's music before? Not all of his music is like this.

Anyway, I'm done trying to make you understand...

[eyeresist]

I don't give a damn if Shostakovich wrote propaganda numbers during the day, then during the night went round to the Kremlin to service Stalin sexually. It's simply not relevant to assessment of the music as music.

And BTW Prokofiev also wrote a lot of propaganda music, and pieces for state organisations (did you know that, in the USSR, every organisation was a state organisation?).

[starrynight]

Don't pretend you don't understand.  I would like to understand your line of thinking.  Simple enough?

But he might not understand that phrase.  I haven't been reading all of this, but I really don't really understand why this is getting so heated and lacking some courtesy.

[PaulR]

But he might not understand that phrase.  I haven't been reading all of this, but I really don't really understand why this is getting so heated and lacking some courtesy.

Would like to apologize for that, I sometimes get angry too quickly.

[mszczuj]

Semantics maybe.....But this is what you said:You claimed he was involved in propaganda because he wrote for State Philharmonic Orchestras, even though only 4, maybe 5, were outwardly "Progandist" (2, 3, 7, 11, 12).  Where can you say that he wrote too "serious" music just because he wrote for the LPO?  (or more specifically, Mravkinsky who prmiered 5-12?)  Instead of attacking me and my knowledge (or, in your (incorrect) view, my lack of knowledge) come with an argument that makes sense, or at least apply the same judgements to Prokofiev who wrote for the same institutions after he returned to Russia.Convenient that you have no way of measuring Naivity.  Therefore, I can claim everything Prokofiev wrote was full of said quality, (I won't say it, because it's not measurable, and not really true.)Don't pretend you don't understand.  I would like to understand your line of thinking.  Simple enough?

I'm not attacking you for your lack of knowledge. I just suppose that you have never lived in communistic country.

First I don't know if you understand that all orchestras in Soviet Union were the state orchestras. All. As String Quartets were - unless they play only at home. (Of course there were some possible exceptions with quartets made ad hoc for some performances - but it was exactly exceptions.)

So there was no possibility to make any pure art. All compositions were acts of state.

And of course I apply this some argument to the music of Prokofiev. I don't find his Soviet symphonies interesting at all.

This kind of false seriousness is not the problem of only soviet orchestras. The roots of it are in the whole organization of concert life. There is really great contradiction in the very concept of romantic symphony. Haydn and Mozart wrote symphonies which were concieved as good spiritual entertaiment. Beethoven wrote symphonies as a great spiritual events, unique revelations - but there were nothing contradictory in it as he wrote it for unique events.

Romantics struggled to write unique great spiritual achievements for weekly concerts.

It is a little ridiculous idea.

You must be naive to not see it and compose as if such affort was possible. And the naivity is the way to achieve it - if you not try to be more precise in revealing spiritual nature of universe than Schelling or Hegel (like used Beethoven to do) but only try to represent visit of tsar in Olomouc you can make weekly concert a beautiful experience.

Almost all composers between Beethoven and... well, probably Ravel, are naive. The one exception is Chopin, who was probably less naive of all. So he did not even try to write music to be performanced in weekly concerts. I suppose the second exception is Saint-Saens who was shameless in posing as naive.

to be continued, I'm sorry it is really late night in my country and I'm loosing interest in thinking about music...

[Mirror Image]

I don't give a damn if Shostakovich wrote propaganda numbers during the day, then during the night went round to the Kremlin to service Stalin sexually. It's simply not relevant to assessment of the music as music.

And BTW Prokofiev also wrote a lot of propaganda music, and pieces for state organisations (did you know that, in the USSR, every organisation was a state organisation?).

Yeah, Shostakovich could write a circus polka and I would probably enjoy it, because he had such a unique way with music. It doesn't matter that he wrote propaganda music, but given the circumstances did he have much choice? No, because Stalin would have killed him if he refused. Think about the film score The Fall of Berlin for example. This is nothing but a film about the glorification of Stalin and his winning of the war. Stalin wanted, I'm sorry ordered, Shostakovich to write the music for it. We probably would have never heard another work prior to this score if he had refused. Stalin banned Shostakovich's music after the 9th symphony and this was especially hard on Shostakovich who was stuck writing film music just to pay the bills.

[Karl Henning]

That's an idiom, and a non-native speaker would probably be apt to mistake it for a physical, geographical reference.

[nesf]

I just think that this kind of seriousness which is possible in Beethoven music was appropriate only because it was written in the very transitional period in the history of orchestra - it was not written for the institutional orchestra.

Could you elaborate on this? Why would seriousness be appropriate or inappropriate? That sounds awfully prescriptive to me.



Thread Duty:

Rachmaninov, solely because he's an old love. Piano Concerto No. 3 was my introduction to the form and left a lasting impression on me. I like the other three quite a bit so this was a hard call. I wouldn't pick him as the greatest composer of the four though.

[Karl Henning]

I don't give a damn if Shostakovich wrote propaganda numbers during the day, then during the night went round to the Kremlin to service Stalin sexually.

Dude, It's just that sort of thing which gets multiplied on the InterWebbs and eventually becomes a wiki "fact."

Just saying . . . .

[eyeresist]

Dude, It's just that sort of thing which gets multiplied on the InterWebbs and eventually becomes a wiki "fact."

Just saying . . . .

Loose lips sink ships.

Say that ten times, fast.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Proko