Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8

What did Dmitri Shostakovich intend to portray in his music?
There is probably no more debated a question in all of 20th
century Western Classica lMusic than this one. On the surface, it
seems to have an easy answer. Shostakovich portrayed his own
thoughts and feelings in his music, just as any other composer
would. And that is certainly true. Shostakovich, above anything
else, was truly one of the great composers in history. HIs
mastery of form, meldoy, strcuture, pacing, and his ability to
find a near universal expression of grief and passion is
practically unparalelled among composers. That much is clear to
those of us who love Shostakovich’s music. But everything else,
including that thorny question of what his music MEANS, is much,
much, much less clear. Practically Shostakovich’s entire life was
lived under the shadow of Soviet Russia, and naturally his
musical career was lived under that shadow as well. This means
that a sometimes impenetrable layer of secrecy, mystery, and
doubt always lies under the surface of Shostakovich’s music.


In 1960, Kruschev, who had been loudly trumpetting Shostakovich’s
name to Western Press as an example of a free Soviet artist post
the excesses of the Stalin regime, decided that Shostakovich
should be the new head of the Russian Union of Composers. The
catch was that Shostakovich would need to join the Communist
Party in order to take the job. Shostakovich, who had long
resisted becoming a full Party member, agreed. Shostakovich was
clearly disappointed in himself, as his friend Lev Lebedinsky
wrote this: “I will never forget some of the things he said that
night [before his induction into the Party], sobbing
hysterically: ‘I’m scared to death of them.’ 


Why does all this matter? Because just a few days after joining
the Commhnist party and after meeting with his friends Isaac
Glikman and Lev Lebedinsky, Shostakovich traveled to East Germany
--  specifically to Dresden — to work on a film which would
commemorate the destruction of the city during World War II. He
was supposed to write music for this film, but instead,
Shostakovich sat down, and in THREE DAYS, he wrote his 8th string
quartet. He would later write to Glikman: “However much I’ve
tried to draft my obligations for the film, I just couldn’t do
it. Instead I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet that
nobody needs. I reflected that if I die it’s not likely anyone
will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to
write it myself. You could even write on the cover: ‘Dedicated to
the memory of the composer of this quartet.” Today on the show
we're going to explore this remarkable piece together - join us!