Monday, January 10, 2005
Shostakovich and Stalin
It's impossible to listen to Shostakovich without feeling some of his overwhelming sense of pain and despair. The formative years of his life were scarred by Stalinism, which he feared and hated; the government constantly sought to restrain his music with criticism and forced public apologies, not to mention the threats of Siberia and death. Reportedly, he slept on a cot outside his apartment with a packed suitcase next to him---in case the authorities came for him in the middle of the night, he didn't want his children to see.
His music became steeped in bitterness, cynicism, and irony. Sarcastic figures floated around at will, dissonances appeared in every motive, and angry outbursts were commonplace. Especially in his string quartets, the colors he used evoke scenes of decaying, filthy cities suffocating in clouds of ash and smog, of vast expanses of rotting tree stumps and sawdust, and of calm, beautiful lakes filled with poisoned fish. Who could blame him?
Yet, as the preeminent composer of the time, he set the direction of classical music for a quarter-century after his death. When Ravel, Rachmaninov, Mahler, and Respighi had passed on, there was literally no-one left to follow except Shostakovich. Except no-one understood suffering like Shostakovich did, and no new genius dared to break the trend, so people could not help but produce atonal drivel.
Only a new generation of Chinese, Latino, and African composers has rescued classical music from the stake---to start making it interesting again to the public by reintroducing themes and tonality from their own distinct cultures. Curiously, that's one of the directions Ravel was trying to take classical music back in the 20's. His Rhapsodie Espagnole naturally relies heavily on Spanish themes; his Tzigane is a masterful summary of gypsy music; the third movement of his Piano Trio sounds like an old Chinese man playing the flute. This exploration might have continued, and classical music might have enjoyed a substantial place next to jazz in record collections. Instead, the meddlesome interference of one man resulted in a half-century of artistic casualties.
I wish Stalin had never been born.
His music became steeped in bitterness, cynicism, and irony. Sarcastic figures floated around at will, dissonances appeared in every motive, and angry outbursts were commonplace. Especially in his string quartets, the colors he used evoke scenes of decaying, filthy cities suffocating in clouds of ash and smog, of vast expanses of rotting tree stumps and sawdust, and of calm, beautiful lakes filled with poisoned fish. Who could blame him?
Yet, as the preeminent composer of the time, he set the direction of classical music for a quarter-century after his death. When Ravel, Rachmaninov, Mahler, and Respighi had passed on, there was literally no-one left to follow except Shostakovich. Except no-one understood suffering like Shostakovich did, and no new genius dared to break the trend, so people could not help but produce atonal drivel.
Only a new generation of Chinese, Latino, and African composers has rescued classical music from the stake---to start making it interesting again to the public by reintroducing themes and tonality from their own distinct cultures. Curiously, that's one of the directions Ravel was trying to take classical music back in the 20's. His Rhapsodie Espagnole naturally relies heavily on Spanish themes; his Tzigane is a masterful summary of gypsy music; the third movement of his Piano Trio sounds like an old Chinese man playing the flute. This exploration might have continued, and classical music might have enjoyed a substantial place next to jazz in record collections. Instead, the meddlesome interference of one man resulted in a half-century of artistic casualties.
I wish Stalin had never been born.
Comments:
But while I recognise that Stalin was not the greatest - if not Stalin then where the enviroment to create all this pain, suffering and creativity ?
# posted by 
: 10:11 PM
: 10:11 PM
While I won't deny that pain and suffering have produced great works of art, the future of classical music was tremendously fragile near the time of the second world war. Other styles of music drew away many talented people and the coincidental death of several composers near that time meant that Shostakovich had a disproportionate amount of influence in the classical musical world. If there was ever a time for pain and suffering to be reflected in classical music, this wasn't it.
I don't doubt that the literary and other forms of art flourished, in a manner of speaking, under Stalin. However, if fewer tales of sadness and despair had been written at that time, I doubt many of us would be pining for more. Furthermore, oppression appears without encouragement in many places of the globe, and great authors and artists are often on hand to experience it. Great classical composers are rarer birds.
I don't doubt that the literary and other forms of art flourished, in a manner of speaking, under Stalin. However, if fewer tales of sadness and despair had been written at that time, I doubt many of us would be pining for more. Furthermore, oppression appears without encouragement in many places of the globe, and great authors and artists are often on hand to experience it. Great classical composers are rarer birds.
The dissent of classical music into "atonal drivel" could also simply have been a part of the larger artistic trend that reduced painting to amorphous collections of lines and architecture to glass boxes. Both also examples of trends started by masters that no one dared break.
Cameron
Cameron
# posted by : 5:03 PM
: 5:03 PM
Without a doubt, many rules of art form during that time period were broken with unaesthetic results. I fibbed a little when I said that Shostakovich was the only great composer at the time, since Schoenberg (the real father of atonality and the twelve-tone row) was also respected. However, in other branches of art, there were significant pockets of resistance to abstractionism: writers still wrote romances, artists still painted portraits, and woodworkers still carved figurines. In classical music, Shostakovich and Schoenberg were revolutionists, whose compositions broke completely with traditional styles; there remained no prominent people composing neoclassical or culturally influenced works, which consequently fell out of fashion for new composers. So, I'm not blaming Stalin for the presence of atonal works, but simply for the absence of tonal music.
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