shostakovich's risky fifth, part I
or "how to piss Stalin off"
by patricia hammond | january 1999

Actually, there are numerous examples of anger at injustice expressed through a symphonic medium, created often at the composer's peril. The majority of these works are now old, and to understand specifically what is being protested against, it is useful to explore a bit of history. But then, such is the case with Biafra and his Dead Kennedys, no?

My favorite example of musical rebellion is Shostakovich's fifth symphony, written in 1937.

If you lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930's, one thing that you did not do was displease Stalin. Stalin had a simple, suspicious, bullying nature and happened to wield inconceivable power. He had eyes everywhere, and was happier safe than sorry when it when it came to dealing with any sign of unrest or any question of his authority. Dead bodies were nothing on his conscience. It is not known exactly how many he killed. Estimates range from 20 to 50 million - more than the total casualties of World War II, including the victims of the Holocaust. Stalin once arrested a quarter of the population of Leningrad in one night.

Just one example of what Stalin liked to do happened in the mid-thirties, when he decreed that blind minstrels from all over the country attend a conference, with some vague promises of a brighter future and honours. Each one carried a wealth of regional musical and poetic tradition, centuries of culture passed down through thousands of different sources. When they were all assembled, he had them shot.

Stalin couldn't control blind minstrels. They couldn't read Pravda, the party newspaper, to see what was permitted and what wasn't, and might have sung about anything.

To Stalin, art was a very important element to keep under tight control. Anything slightly discordant, pessimistic or progressive was condemned, and the perpetrator given a warning, or simply liquidated.

In 1935, Shostakovich wrote an opera. It was to be the first in a trilogy on women trying to overcome oppressive surroundings. Called "Lady McBeth of the Mtsensk District", it deals with Katerina, who is married to a wealthy merchant and lives in stultifying, painful boredom with her husband and father-in-law.

Like many women at the time, she's never been taught to read or have hobbies, and her father-in-law is always telling her she's worthless because she hasn't produced a child. He bullies her constantly: "The fence is high, the dogs are loose, the workers trusty..." Finally, Katerina decides to take matters into her own hands. Among other colorful scenes, there is a rape on stage, and a bitingly mocking look at the workings of a police station.

The public loved the opera. Stalin did not. He despised its dissonant harmonies, and was outraged that the music should make the audience sympathize with Katerina. As far as he was concerned, she was a villain, because self-empowerment was a bad thing, as was violence against one's elders.

On the 28th of January, 1936, an article appeared in that newspaper everyone read with trepidation, Pravda, and it had the mark of Stalin all over it. Headed "Muddle Instead of Music", it called Shostakovich and composers like him degenerate, talentless, "formalistic", and enemies of the people.

This was a time when, if Stalin so much as half-frowned as he walked past you, you feared for yourself and every living friend and relative.

Immediately, Shostakovich's friends disowned him, shunning him completely. The few that did stick by him, the well-known stage director Vsevolod Meyerhold and the respected General Tukhashevsky, were immediately taken away, never to be heard from again. Shot.

From then on, Shostakovich slept in the hallway with a packed suitcase, so that when "they" came, his young children wouldn't have to see him being dragged away. He was suicidal, and remained so, on and off, for the rest of his life.

As the months wore on, he received pressure to compose something, to prove that he was capable of writing the kind of simple, happy music that the soviet people were worthy of, something cheerful and as far from his "pessimistic", "pornographic", and "anti-people" style (as Stalin-pleasing critics then described his music) as possible.

His sprawling, angry and discordant Fourth symphony, in preparation when the fateful Pravda article came out, was completely out of the question to perform now. No conductor or orchestra would touch it, anyway. It was withdrawn and had to wait three decades for a premiere.

Now, millions awaited his fifth.

Click here to go to part two.

Patricia is a classically trained mezzo who now lives and works in the UK. For more information about her, visit patriciahammond.com.