shostakovich's risky fifth, part II
the political context
by patricia hammond | february 1999
(Did you miss Part I of this story, last month? Click here.) Shostakovich, being who he was, simply couldn't write a joyful piece of music, with his friends shot, his fellow composers and artists killed and persecuted, in some cases their wives and children tortured, and people everywhere continuing to disappear. So he wrote a tragedy instead. In Russia in 1937, when smiles were mandatory and no-one shed tears in public for fear of imprisonment, to write a tragedy was a risky undertaking. And the tragic nature of this piece of music was beyond doubt.
"It's as if someone were beating you with a stick, saying 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing', and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing'."
-Dmitri Shostakovich
The tormented chords that open the first movement of Shostakovich's fifth symphony and the orchestral lament that follows are among the most soulful, deeply-felt mourning ever expressed in music. The movement builds gradually to a gut-wrenching outburst of agony, then fades into distant, helpless weeping, ending with an eerie ascending chromatic figure on the celeste.
The second movement is brief and pompous, an obvious burlesque. It is easy to visualize the rather roly-poly figure of Stalin tottering around, puffed out with the sense of his own power and perhaps a little too much vodka. But the ruthless attack of the double bass motifs and the vicious snare drums convey unmistakably the brutality of this figure.
The slow movement is wistful, melancholy, passionate and vast. It ends, after much suffering, on a resigned and peaceful note.
Rage introduces the finale, with loud pounding from the timpani. It subsides, but there is a threatening undertone that refuses to go away, even as things eventually calm down. A moment of nearly-attained happiness is reached about seven minutes in (depending on who's conducting, of course). At this moment the drums interrupt, steadily and inevitably, like an army of powerful oppressors, and there is an aural depiction of violence followed by a strong, forced dissonance which abruptly capitulates us into the key of D major.
Quite a dramatic change, after the whole symphony was in the gloomy key of D minor. One technique that composers have used for centuries to emphasize a key change was to have a cadence, going from the 'Five' (Dominant) chord of the new key to the 'One' (Tonic). For the key of D, the dominant is A. In the last one and a half minutes of the Fifth, that A is hammered out (so to speak) on the strings 132 times. It builds in intensity, the tympani brutally pounds, then like a final blow to the back of the head, the Tonic is struck, and the symphony is over.
At the premiere, people cried openly. They couldn't help it. The majority of them had friends and loved ones who had been "liquidated". They knew what the symphony was about.
The Russian soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, put it this way:
- "In that joyous, optimistic finale-- beneath the triumphant blare of the trumpets, beneath the endlessly repeated A in the violins, like nails being pounded into one's brain-- we hear a desecrated Russia, violated by her own sons, wailing and writhing in agony, nailed to the cross, bemoaning the fact she will survive her own defilement."
- "What exultation could there be? I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick, saying 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing', and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing' ".
What did Stalin think of all this? Many say that he was a simple man, not too bright. He could tell that although the symphony started in D minor; it ended in D major. It ended happily; that was important. Apparently, the symphony was given the openly sarcastic subtitle of "A Soviet Artist's Response to Justified Criticism", which would have seemed to Stalin perfectly reasonable. And a 40-minute ovation would have appeared quite fitting to acknowledge Dmitri Shostakovich's bow to greater authority. The "Great Leader and Teacher" was completely fooled.
Critics, eager to express the ideas and wishes of Stalin, called the symphony a depiction of man's struggle against fate and other obstacles, eventually emerging victorious. Strangely enough, some very recent recordings of the Fifth still paraphrase these ideas in their booklet notes!
After his Fifth, Shostakovich continued to write works of music that were equally rebellious, and that contained many very discernible messages of discontent.
Can the Fifth symphony be enjoyed without knowing all this? Certainly. The way some conductors romp happily through all the grinding, heart-rending dissonance in the finale, and waltz gaily through the grim second movement burlesque leads one to suspect that they aren't really thinking about what Shostakovich meant at its premiere. The symphony is actually kind of fun if done with enough energy and style. The Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov believes that Shostakovich's genius will only be truly understood when we have put aside all the politics associated with it, and just hear it as music.
But it's fascinating to know about that time, when the ruling powers were afraid of artists because they knew that art could move people; when greatness flourished despite horrible moral and emotional conditions. Why dismiss the past?
Some people would rather not read books either. They're within their rights of course, but that doesn't mean there aren't some great stories to be had. And certainly, we're badly off indeed if we confine our knowledge of great stories to the last five or ten years. Ronald Reagan wasn't that interesting.
For further reading:
"Hope Abandoned"
 | Patricia is a classically trained mezzo who now lives and works in the UK. For more information about her, visit patriciahammond.com. |
