Shostakovich Symphony No. 8

Here are two statements by Dmitri Shostakovich about the same
piece, the 8th symphony that we are talking about today:


Statement No. 1, Shostakovich’s published comments about the
symphony when it was first performed in 1943: The 8th Symphony
reflects my…elevated creative mood, influenced by the joyful news
of the Red Army's victories….
"The Eighth Symphony contains tragic and dramatic inner
conflicts. But on the whole it is optimistic and life-asserting.
The first movement is a long adagio, with a dramatically tense
climax. The second movement is a march, with scherzo elements,
and the third is a dynamic march. The fourth movement, in spite
of its march form, is sad in mood. The fifth and final movement
is bright and gay, like a pastoral, with dance elements and folk
motifs.
"The philosophical conception of my new work can be summed up in
these words: life is beautiful. All that is dark and evil rots
away, and beauty triumphs."


Statement No. 2, from the disputed book Testimony, published in
the 1970s: ‘And then the war came and the sorrow became a common
one. We could talk about it, we could cry openly, cry for our
lost ones. People stopped fearing tears. Before the war there
probably wasn’t a single family who hadn’t lost someone, a
father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend.
Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently,
under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone
else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated
me too. I had to write about it. I had to write a Requiem for all
those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible
extermination machine and express protest against it. The Seventh
and Eighth Symphonies are my Requiems.


I don’t know of a more profound example of Shostakovich’s
doublespeak, or of his ability to make diametrically opposing
statements about the meaning behind his music.
 Shostakovich’s 8th symphony premiered at the height of
World War II, and it was not a hit, unlike his 7th symphony which
had swept the world with its seeming patriotic fervor and its
devastating condemnation of the Nazis. Shostakovich’s 8th is a
very different piece, darker, edgier, less catchy, less simple,
and certainly less optimistic. It was panned in the Soviet Union
by the official critics and was effectively banned from
performance in teh Soviet Union from 1948 until the late 1950s.
It was also not particularly popular outside of the Soviet Union,
as the 7th’s popularity and accessibility dwarfed the 8th, though
this equation has now flipped, with the 8th symphony now probably
becoming slightly more often played than the 7th. As always with
Shostakovich, he mixes tradition with his own Shostakovich-ian
innovations. The symphony has a Sonata Form first movement, but
that movement is longer than the following three movements
combined. It has a darkness to light theme from C Minor to C
Major, like in Beethoven’s 5th and Mahler’s 2nd, but whether the
ending is optimistic is subject to furious debate. It has not 1
but 2 scherzos, but they are among the least funny scherzos ever
written, and it has a slow movement that is surprisingly
un-emotional. The requiem Shostakovich speaks of seems to happen
slowly over the course of this 1 hour symphony. It is perhaps
Shostakovich’s most ambiguous mature symphony, and it is also
thought of as one of his greatest masterpieces. Today on this
Patreon Sponsored episode, we’ll dive into this remarkable work,
trying to create a framework to understand this huge and
demanding symphony. Join us!