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Looking again at Shostakovich4

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Hugh Ottaway
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Extract

When this article was first mooted, Shostakovich wasalive and working—on a Sixteenth Symphony. Quiteapart from one's personal feelings about the man,the death of such an artist is bound to affect one'srelationship with his work. At its simplest, this isthe end of the line, the closing of the frontier;the knowledge that the old will not again be‘modified’ by the new. For the first time, there isthe possibility of seeing the work as a whole.However, so far as I am aware, the principal way inwhich the new situation has a bearing on thisarticle is entirely non-productive: I find myselfwondering in a rather different way how much weshall ever know of the discussions andheart-searching that preceded the withdrawal of theFourth Symphony and the composition of the Fifth.Did Shostakovich leave any diaries, or a personalmemoir, or …? But my intentions are strictlyfactual; as factual, that is, as critical scrutinycan make them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 115 , December 1975 , pp. 14 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 The Fourth Symphony, op. 43 was withdrawn after ten rehearsals in December 1936, and the Fifth, op. 47, was first performed in October 1937.

2 See pp. 673–4: within the space of four lines Abraham gives this misinformation and two incorrect dates!

3 Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–70, (Barrie and Jenkins, 1972)Google Scholar.

4 Martynov, Ivan (trans. Guralsky, ), Dinitri Shostakovich: the Man and hit Work, (2nd edn., Greenwood Press, 1964 Google Scholar).

5 For a fuller study, see Lawson, Peter, ‘Shostakovich's Second Symphony’ (TEMPO 91, Winter 1969–1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The largest required by any Shostakovich symphony: quadruple woodwind, with the addition (non-doubling) of 2 piccolos, an E flat clarinet and a bass clarinet; 8 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas; 2 sets of timpani and a large percussion group; 2 harps and strings (up to 84. recommended).

7 See Shostakovich, O.U.P., 1971, pp. 23–2. In this passage on the Fourth, much is garbled; it seems that the writer was in a very great hurry.

8 Martynov, , op. cit., p. 35 Google Scholar.

9 See Souster, Tim, ‘Shostakovich at the Crossroads’, (TEMPO, 78, Autumn 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.