Shostakovich Symphonies, Cycles & Otherwise

[Karl Henning]

For Entertainment Purposes only, an early-ish bit from Robt Layton's essay on Shostakovich in The Symphony. (Is Layton using Sibelius to do to Shostakovich, what Leibowitz tried doing to Sibelius? You make the call.)

... now, in the sixties, Shostakovich has emerged as a kind of symphonic father-figure and has almost (but not quite) come to occupy the pedestal from which Sibelius has just been toppled by the mighty young scholar-critics of the New Music Journalism.

There can, of course, be no serious contention that Shostakovich is of comparable stature, for Sibelius's roots go back to the classical symphony and his profoundly original sense of form and command of the processes of organic thinking betoken the great symphonist.  Moreover, the interest in Sibelius has never been of the merely topical kind which has befallen Shostakovich, largely because Finnish society differs less from our own than Russian.  In a sense much of the topical interest is justified, for Shostakovich is a documentary composer far more bound up with his time than, say, Miaskovsky, Prokofiev, or any other of his Soviet contemporaries.  In this lies both his strength and his weakness.  Even his most fanatical admirer will concede that only a handful of Shostakovich's works are independent of time in the sense that those of Sibelius and Debussy are.

The essay (in vol. 1 of the Pelican history) on Beethoven I have found difficult to read because of the liberal unction.  I have no objection to the essayist writing from the standpoint that Beethoven is the world's greatest symphonist:  I only desire him to discuss the music, and not rely on the basking light of the halo.  Here Layton commits an equal-and-opposite error of viewpoint.  In both cases, the writers simply reflect the consensus of their time.

[Madiel]

If there's one thing that's become abundantly clear from reading about some of the symphonies and other works along the way, it's that views of Shostakovich are far more affected by notions of the times/country he lived in than just about any other significant composer.

Which is understandable, but also a bit frustrating.

[Karl Henning]

If there's one thing that's become abundantly clear from reading about some of the symphonies and other works along the way, it's that views of Shostakovich are far more affected by notions of the times/country he lived in than just about any other significant composer.

Which is understandable, but also a bit frustrating.

Yes! The writers are fogbound, complaining about how limited the composer was ....

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[Karl Henning]

Parenthetically, a couple of essays later, Robert Layton writes very sympathetically of the symphonies of Holmboe.

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[Karl Henning]

While I do not find myself even in thought disloyal to the Максим Дмитриевич set, the Дмитрий Георгиевич is shaping up to be The Best $30 Spent in 2015.

A long time ago, I see, my survey was interrupted.  I have only today completed my reverse-chronological-order survey of the Дмитрий Георгиевич box, and it is splendidly good.

[Madiel]

Parenthetically, a couple of essays later, Robert Layton writes very sympathetically of the symphonies of Holmboe.

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If one likes certain aspects of Sibelius, one is likely to enjoy Holmboe for similar reasons. That was in fact the route I took.

On one level I can understand why Shostakovich would not rank as highly as a "symphonic" composer. He's not always going down the route of developing motivic cells in the Classical way. But then, I suspect many of the Romantic composers weren't either, it's just that not that many of them dared to write things they called symphonies.

And Shostakovich was clearly capable of that kind of writing when he wanted it. There are a some very clear sonata forms in the string quartet cycle and I'm sure I'll spot them in the symphonies as well once I know them (certainly, the Naxos notes point some out).

[Karl Henning]

While it must be true that there were critics at the time who might have furnished an essay even less favorable to Shostakovich, I find myself disappointed in Layton's Oh, all right, I'll write the essay on Shostakovich, but he's no Sibelius angle.

[Scion7]

I would say that the symphonies of Shosty are both diverse AND uneven - not every one was a winner. IMO the last truly great one was No.10.  He was the subject of a 400-level paper I wrote in college that I worked on many months just to get it down to 32 pages.  So you know I love his work. 

[Madiel]

IMO the last truly great one was No.10.

There's a great animated eyebrow-raising smiley I know from another forum. I would be using it now.

[vandermolen]

While it must be true that there were critics at the time who might have furnished an essay even less favorable to Shostakovich, I find myself disappointed in Layton's Oh, all right, I'll write the essay on Shostakovich, but he's no Sibelius angle.

And yet Robert Layton wrote one of the best booklet notes I have read for the EMI recording of Shostakovich's 8th Symphony, LSO, Previn. On the other hand he is largely to blame for the perpetuation of the 'rampant self-pity' approach to the music of Allan Pettersson.

[Christo]

If one likes certain aspects of Sibelius, one is likely to enjoy Holmboe for similar reasons. That was in fact the route I took.

I made a similar choice, especially after reading all these influential essays from Robert Simpson's guide (Simpson more or less defines the symphony in his Introduction in the Sibelian sense) 'The Symphony'  tome 2: Elgar to the Present Day' around 1982. It took me many years to accept the Mahlerian concept of the symphony ('embracing everything', as he allegedly stated in his meeting with Sibelius) when I finally succumbed to those of Shostakovich first, and Mahler himself only after that.

Before, it was Vaughan Williams (instead of Sibelius) who showed me the way and for long I had a strong preference for composers like Nielsen, Holmboe, Tubin, Honegger, who all fit in the more 'concentrated, essayistic' model: a 'severe form' and 'profound logic creating an inner connection among all of the motives',  as Sibelius answered Mahler.

[Madiel]

Indeed I very nearly said something about Shostakovich being more in the Mahler mould. The main reason I didn't is because I still don't know most of Mahler's symphonies.

[amw]

Shostakovich was heavily influenced by Mahler and is known to have admired his music greatly so yes.

I wouldn't say their music is very similar for the mooooooost part but the adagio of Mahler's 10th does lay the groundwork for a lot of Shostakovich's music tbh. Shostakovich's style is radically simplified from Mahler's though, partly because he worked so quickly, and partly because he worked so differently. (Shostakovich's "sketches" are typically reduced versions of the finished product; he almost seems to have simply transcribed compositions that came to him fully-formed in his head, if I truly believed any composer actually worked that way. Mahler worked things out in much more detail on the page.) Also, obviously, Shostakovich's music is much more modernist in many respects, because he...... lived...... at a later time........

[Karl Henning]

I made a similar choice, especially after reading all these influential essays from Robert Simpson's guide (Simpson more or less defines the symphony in his Introduction in the Sibelian sense) 'The Symphony'  tome 2: Elgar to the Present Day' around 1982. It took me many years to accept the Mahlerian concept of the symphony ('embracing everything', as he allegedly stated in his meeting with Sibelius) when I finally succumbed to those of Shostakovich first, and Mahler himself only after that.

The key, I think, is more or less defines.  When the two-volume The Symphony first landed in my mailbox, I read the intro to Vol. 2 (subheaded Stravinsky, Hindemith and others), in which Simpson defines his terms, so to speak, for purposes of editing the compilation of essays.  As with so many aspects of music, I find such definitions useful as springboards for discussion, but rather noisome as The Rules.  On one hand, an editor needs to set boundaries, sure.  On the other, the first movement of the Symphony Mathis der Maler is quite a clear sonata-allegro . . . and it begins to seem arbitrary, which Liszt passes the bar for Vol. 1 with only two works under discussion (both of which are creative stretches of what we mean by symphony), but Hindemith (e.g.) does not.

I am really just hopping around The Symphony, and finding it mixed, but generally very engaging (even when, as in Layton's half-hearted Shostakovich survey, I consider the approach somewhat wrong-headed).  I am certainly pleased that Hans Keller so perceptively endorses Tchaikovsky in, essentially, all the symphonies . . . and I wish that there had been someone of Keller's mindset to weigh in on Shostakovich.

The Fourth Symphony is, in my opinion, the greatest — and its first movement is the most complex and innovatory of the four.  The work dates from the most critical year of Tchaikovsky's life, the time of his abortive marriage, his attempted suicide, and his separation;  but also the time of the beginning of his extraordinary friendship — they never met face to face — with his rich patroness, Nadezhda von Meck.  To her inspiring influence we owe much that is profoundest in this music, but we also owe her the profoundest artistic mistake Tchaikovsky ever made:  unfortunately, he acceded to her request to provide 'a programme' of the symphony.  The result has proved noxious ever since.  On the one hand, that is to say, almost every writer on the work has welcomed the opportunity of copying this alleged programme instead of concerning himself with one of the most towering symphonic structures in our whole literature.  On the other hand, Tchaikovsky's strictly private literary attempt has been thrown back at him by sundry anti-romantic, emotion-fearing neurotics.  It would not, of course, be fair to include Alfred Einstein in this category, but the fact remains that he did allow himself  to participate in our age's collective neurosis when he remarked, in his Music in the Romantic Era, that Tchaikovsky 'filled his purely instrumental music to the brim with a programme of feeling'.  (As if feeling needed a programme — a typically contemporary fallacy!)  Einstein proceeded to quote the entire 'programme' of the fourth symphony, concluding that 'Tchaikovsky let himself be led in his creative work by melodramatic and sentimental programmes such as this . . .'  It is demonstrable that Einstein, a conscientious musicologist if ever there was one, was here inspired by a neurotic illusion — the simple fact being that Tchaikovsky never thought of the programme until he was asked for it after the event.  In the same letter to Mme. von Meck, moreover, he points out that 'by its very nature', instrumental music 'does not submit to the kind of interpretation' he himself has just given her.  Finally, in a somewhat despairing P.S., he adds:  'This is the first time in my life I have tried to transpose ideas and images into words [not, mind you, verbal ideas into music], and I have certainly not been successful.'  Far more pertinent to the spirit of this symphony is a letter he wrote to Taneyev some years later:  'It is a thousand times pleasanter to write without a programme.  In writing a programme symphony I feel as if I were a charlatan, cheating the public by giving it worthless paper instead of gold coin.'  And again to Balakirev:  'This is the real truth:  generally speaking I don't like my own programme music, as I've already told you.  I feel infinitely freer in the sphere of pure symphony . . . .'  The Fourth is a pure symphony.

I've quoted that at length, because it seems to me that Layton willingly falls into a similar error, in his downgrade of the Shostakovich Eighth, e.g.

[vandermolen]

'Despite its tranquility,however, the overall impression left by the Eighth Symphony is one of profound pessimism shot through with an abundant compassion for the appalling suffering for war-torn humanity.'

(From the end of Robert Layton's booklet note for the Previn LSO recording of Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony). I've always liked this analysis.

[Karl Henning]

'Despite its tranquility,however, the overall impression left by the Eighth Symphony is one of profound pessimism shot through with an abundant compassion for the appalling suffering for war-torn humanity.'

(From the end of Robert Layton's booklet note for the Previn LSO recording of Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony).mive always liked this analysis.

When did he write those notes, Jeffrey?

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[André]

And yet Robert Layton wrote one of the best booklet notes I have read for the EMI recording of Shostakovich's 8th Symphony, LSO, Previn. On the other hand he is largely to blame for the perpetuation of the 'rampant self-pity' approach to the music of Allan Pettersson.

As Pettersson lovers know, 'self-pity' is a blatant misinterpretation of the composer's musical thought and its translation into musical language. Rarely has an important composer been so misunderstood as Pettersson. A musical alien, nothing less.

Before him, that role was ascribed to Shostakovich, if not for his eclecticism, at least for his apparent intellectual/political circumventilations - as if one knew these days what the political climate of the 30s to 50s could bring about on an artist's motivations.

Back to DSCH: he was no Beethoven, but no R. Strauss either (the unbending vs. the great bender). As Orfeo mentions, the times/country were such that an artist in his day and country could not produce an oeuvre as singular, diverse and honest as his.

[Karl Henning]

When did he write those notes, Jeffrey?

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Wondering whether his opinion of the piece improved, or if he held back for that request for notes.

[vandermolen]

When did he write those notes, Jeffrey?

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1973 Karl. For original LP release.

[vandermolen]

As Pettersson lovers know, 'self-pity' is a blatant misinterpretation of the composer's musical thought and its translation into musical language. Rarely has an important composer been so misunderstood as Pettersson. A musical alien, nothing less.

Before him, that role was ascribed to Shostakovich, if not for his eclecticism, at least for his apparent intellectual/political circumventilations - as if one knew these days what the political climate of the 30s to 50s could bring about on an artist's motivations.

Back to DSCH: he was no Beethoven, but no R. Strauss either (the unbending vs. the great bender). As Orfeo mentions, the times/country were such that an artist in his day and country could not produce an oeuvre as singular, diverse and honest as his.

Totally agree with this.