Shostakovich and His World

Laurel E. Fay, Laurel E. Fay

• Editorial: Princeton University Press
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780691232195
• Categoría: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Categoría: Storia e critica della musica

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) has a reputation as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. But the story of his controversial role in history is still being told, and his full measure as a musician still being taken. This collection of essays goes far in expanding the traditional purview of Shostakovich's world, exploring the composer's creativity and art in terms of the expectations--historical, cultural, and political--that forged them.
The collection contains documents that appear for the first time in English. Letters that young "Miti" wrote to his mother offer a glimpse into his dreams and ambitions at the outset of his career. Shostakovich's answers to a 1927 questionnaire reveal much about his formative tastes in the arts and the way he experienced the creative process. His previously unknown letters to Stalin shed new light on Shostakovich's position within the Soviet artistic elite.
The essays delve into neglected aspects of Shostakovich's formidable legacy. Simon Morrison provides an in-depth examination of the choreography, costumes, décor, and music of his ballet The Bolt and Gerard McBurney of the musical references, parodies, and quotations in his operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki. David Fanning looks at Shostakovich's activities as a pedagogue and the mark they left on his students' and his own music. Peter J. Schmelz explores the composer's late-period adoption of twelve-tone writing in the context of the distinctively "Soviet" practice of serialism. Other contributors include Caryl Emerson, Christopher H. Gibbs, Levon Hakobian, Leonid Maximenkov, and Rosa Sadykhova. In a provocative concluding essay, Leon Botstein reflects on the different ways listeners approach the music of Shostakovich.

PART I

DOCUMENTS

Shostakovich:
Letters to His Mother, 1923-1927

SELECTED BY DMITRII FREDERIKS AND ROSA SADYKHOVA INTRODUCED, AND WITH COMMENTARY, BY ROSA SADYKHOVA TRANSLATED BY ROLANDA NORTON

From their first parting in 1923, Dmitrii Shostakovich corresponded with his mother for almost thirty years. Sofia Vasilevna Shostakovich kept her son’s letters and even the short postcards he sent her from here and there on his travels. After her death in 1955, Sofia Vasilevna’s personal archive remained in the family of her eldest daughter, Mariia Dmitrievna Shostakovich, and then of Mariia’s son, Dmitrii Vsevolodovich Frederiks.

In 1981, an exhibition was organized by the Leningrad Philharmonic with the participation of the Leningrad Museum of Theatre and Music to mark Shostakovich’s seventy-fifth birthday; during the creation of this exhibition Dmitrii Frederiks established a partnership with the museum. A few years later Sofia Vasilevna’s personal archive—containing albums of family and theater photographs, several documents and musical autographs, and also letters—was handed over to the museum; the letters, however, were placed under the conditions of a private archive.

Several of the letters, dating from 1923 to 1927, were published in a somewhat abridged form in the journal Neva (1986, no. 9). Dmitrii Frederiks and I then chose the letters that we considered necessary to introduce into academic circles and that, it seemed to us, would be of interest to the general public. These letters are published here in their unabridged form for the first time.

The period of 1923-27 was one of unusually intense spiritual and creative growth for Shostakovich. Let us recall: in 1923 Shostakovich was seventeen; he was studying in two classes at the Petrograd Conservatory (piano and composition); he was a favored pupil, arousing the boldest predictions for his future; and he was already the author of several works that were striking in their originality, freshness, and clearly outlined individuality. By 1927 he was a famous composer and the diplomate of an international piano competition; his name was at the center of the most interesting musical discussions of the 1920s; and he was the author of the famous First Symphony and First Piano Sonata in which his not insignificant spiritual experience was already formed. In a few years he had traveled an enormous distance. Only a few of these events are reflected in these published letters. Of particular interest to researchers will be the letters in which Shostakovich tells of his links with composers in Moscow during those years. His letters both embellish and clarify existing factual material.

Because these letters are addressed to the composer’s mother, they contain many domestic details that give a flavor of the family’s daily life and the relationships therein. In 1922, when the composer’s father, Dmitrii Boleslavovich Shostakovich, died, the family was left with no income. Sofia Vasilevna attempted to work; her eldest daughter Mariia, also a student at the conservatory, started giving music lessons; the youngest daughter, fourteen-year-old Zoya, was still at school. In 1924, while continuing his study at the conservatory, Dmitrii Shostakovich started working as a piano accompanist in the cinema, which had a bad effect on his health. As is apparent from his letters, both his friends and the teachers at the conservatory tried to help him. It is well-known, for example, that the rector of the Petrograd Conservatory, Aleksandr Glazunov, obtained a personal stipend for Shostakovich and additional rations. However, the family was always desperately short of money.

Shostakovich was particularly close to his mother at this time. He thought of himself as her principal support and shared the family’s concerns with her. Directed by Sofia Vasilevna’s advice he began to conduct his affairs with the seriousness of an adult. “Mitka is displaying great efficiency in administrative affairs and does not allow himself to be swindled,” the composer Mikhail Kvadri wrote to her from Moscow. “Everywhere he goes he talks with self-respect and above all he is adored by everyone” (17 January 1927).

It must be said that Shostakovich’s relationship with his mother was never idyllic. Sofia Vasilevna had a powerful and difficult nature. Loving her son as she did unreservedly and believing absolutely in his genius, she tried to be his “leader” in life, and, as often happens with frenzied parents, was somewhat overbearing. As a result their relationship sometimes had dramatic moments, but even in his young years, when they were closest, Shostakovich both missed his home and was constantly striving to leave it. Yet whenever he did go away, he wrote tender letters home, giving detailed, diary-like accounts, warmly sharing the joys of his first successes—so sacred to a musician who is just starting his career—knowing how his mother looked forward to receiving them. Shostakovich’s letters to his mother are so sincere and contain so much direct perception of life that they give us a sufficiently full picture of the character of the young composer.

Koreiz,¹ 3 September 1923

Dearest Mother,

I am terribly bored here so far from Piter² and can’t wait till we get home. I never thought I would be so homesick. My darlings, one day I will see you and embrace you again. Little Zoya—she’s so good, so lovely. What is she up to? I guess her lessons have already begun in school? Really, Zoya is a wonderful person. Here I spend all my time in the sanatorium and I get terribly bored. I suppose it is fall in Petrograd now. I expect it’s drizzling and the wind is bracing. Oh, dear Petrograd weather! Here all the really splendid people have gone their separate ways; there remain only rather dry, erudite fellows. The weather is still fine, thank goodness. It’s as if the sun senses that it has to heal my lump and it is shining with all its might. Recently I caught sight of myself—it’s terrible how I have tanned—I’m so brown. Incidentally, there are often big fires at the moment between Alupka and Simeiz. Fire is even threatening Ai-Petri. It is a huge natural disaster. The day before yesterday a singer, Epaneshnikova, gave a recital. She is amazing. Her voice is crystal clear. I’m not much of a fan of the voice and chamber singing, but she sang so well that I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I just can’t tell you how I’m longing to go to the Mariinsky Theatre and hear Kitezh, The Queen of Spades, Coppelia, and The Nutcracker. On the whole it’s awfully boring here. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Maksimilian Oseevich?³ What’s up with him? Why hasn’t he replied to my letter? And Leonid Nikolaev⁴ too. It’s pig-headed of them. I warned both of them that I cannot and do not enjoy writing letters, yet when I left they still both asked for a letter from me and now they haven’t replied. I just don’t know what’s the matter with them. Epaneshnikova has just arrived; she’s going to sing. She sang well. Mariia, Oleg, Galia, and I went off to the tower (we have a tower here in Gaspra) to look at the fire. It’s a terrible sight, but beautiful. Purple smoke is rising above Ai-Petri and has surrounded all of the left-hand side. I didn’t like Alupka much. True, where it flattens out down at the bottom it is very beautiful, but in the town it’s horrible. Mother dear, don’t send us any more money as we have easily enough. I’ve just come back from the sea: there were some people there with a life belt. I put it on, you know, but although I didn’t sink I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t even move! So I suppose learning to swim will just have to remain a dream. But for the moment I just can’t wait till I get to Petrograd and see you and our apartment, and the dog. . . . Oh yes! In your last letter you said the kitten has been given away. That’s a real pity—he was so splendid. Well, good-bye. All the best. It won’t be long now till we see each other.

D. Shostakovich.

1. In the spring of 1923 Shostakovich was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the lymph glands. After an operation the doctors insistently recommended spending his convalescence in the Crimea. Sofia Vasilevna sold certain items, even a grand piano, leaving her children without an instrument, in order to send Dmitrii and Mariia there for the summer. This was Shostakovich’s first reasonably prolonged separation from his family.

2. Piter is a nickname for St. Petersburg/ Petrograd/Leningrad. Trans.

3. Maksimilian Oseevich Shteinberg (1883-1946), composer, professor at the Petrograd Conservatory. Shostakovich studied composition in Shteinberg’s class from 1919 to 1925.

4. Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolaev (1878— 1942), pianist, professor at the Petrograd Conservatory. Shostakovich completed Nikolaev’s piano class in 1923.

Koreiz, 3 August 1923

Dearest Mother,

I have just read your seventh letter. My health, thank goodness, is now good. The lump is almost completely gone. Well, it’s very tiny. I’ve had my thirtieth injection of arsenic and (don’t tell Anna Vladimirovna) it doesn’t hurt at all. There is a nurse in the sanatorium, Liubov Sergeevna, and she makes a fine art of administering injections. What’s more, the day before yesterday Elena Nikolaevna, the doctor here, prescribed sunbathing for me. Yesterday I sunbathed for twenty minutes. Before I was only exposing my lump to the sun but now I can expose my whole body. I really didn’t expect it to disappear so quickly. I have written to Viktor Grigorevich,¹ Maks. Oseev., and Leon. Vlad.²—all on the twenty-ninth. Moreover, I also wrote to you and Zoya and Val. Mikh.³ on that day. You write that I should be careful and not throw myself into the whirlpool.⁴ I would like to philosophize a little about this. Sheer bestial love (as when a man experiences desire for love—you can’t even call it love—and he goes to a brothel and pays for a woman, etc.) is so disgusting that it’s not even worth talking about. I presume you don’t think I am like that. That kind of man is no different from an animal. Now, if, let us suppose, a married woman falls out of love with her husband and gives herself to another man whom she loves, and without regard for social prejudices they begin to live openly together, there is nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, it is even good when Love is truly free. Promises made at the altar are the worst thing about religion. Love can’t last forever. Of course the best thing imaginable would be a total abolition of marriage, of all fetters and duties in the face of love. But that is utopian, of course. Without marriage there can be no family, and that really does spell disaster. But at any rate that love should be free—that much is indisputable. And Mother dear, I want to warn you that if I ever fall in love, maybe I won’t want to marry. But if I did get married and if my wife ever fell in love with another man, I wouldn’t say a word; and if she wanted a divorce I would give her one and I would blame only myself. (If that didn’t seem right, for example, if the man she loved was married and his wife had prejudices, then I would handle the situation differently; and if she was afraid of social prejudice she would have to keep living at my address.) But at the same time there exists the sacred calling of a mother and father. So you see, when I really start thinking about it my head starts spinning. Anyhow, love is free!

Forgive me, Mother, for writing to you in this way. I am talking to you about all this not as your son, but as if we were two philosophers. I have wanted to talk to you about it for a long time but I was held back by some kind of false shame. Dearest Mother, I am completely pure and I expect I will remain so for a long time yet. If I fall in love I will do so in a way that I consider pure. There is no such thing as impure love, but there is filthy debauchery. I would like it very much if you would write a few words to me about it all. Debauchery is when a man buys a woman for money. But apart from that there is free love and depraved violation.

A big hug,
Your loving son, Mitia.

1. Viktor Grigorevich Valter (1865–1935), violinist, prominent figure in music. From 1918 he was secretary for the State Opera Council and other musical and concert organizations.

2. Maksimilian Shteinberg and Leonid Nikolaev, see notes 3 and 4 in preceding letter.

3. Valerian Mikhailovich Bogdanov-Berezovsk...