Analysis: Shostakovich & 1984—Drawing Comparisons between abstraction and reality [1/3]

Dmitri Shostakovich very much was a Winston Smith.

The totalitarianism and censorship he faced were, and continues to be, the tale of legends, for his music & polymathic study in music proves him as a worthy successor to the greats of Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky. Even more astonishingly, this was all while he was being systematically searched and scrutinized in his very language, by none other than Big Brother Stalin himself, to weed out every last musical dialecticism & philosophical debate, very much like the Newspeak dictionary.

But it does not end there. Even after 15 symphonies, 2 denunciations, & making his way up to the Communist Party, the forever enigmatic sociopolitical position of Shostakovich has never yet shed light. This article will only begin to unravel some of the paradox and dilemma that confronts Shostakovich’s life, its near Orwellian fantasy, and why his legacy will forever influence and tarnish all those look up to and frown down at his work.

Prologue: Newspeak

According to TED-Ed, the foundation of 1984’s Oceania is to retain power by depriving every citizen’s every subconscious, nuanced thought. This is achieved through an evolution of the English language named ‘Newspeak’, where the end goal is not to encourage critical thinking & expand the vocabulary, but to do exactly the opposite. This way, even day-to-day communication would serve every interest that the state had, and its users would have zero consciousness of this even happening. Words are reduced to their bare minimums and any connotations of negativity will have disappeared: ‘bad’ will be unintelligible, only partly replaced by the passive ‘ungood’. The arts and sciences cease to exist entirely, as the state would instil its own prescription of reality for all citizens.

This is exactly what the Soviet government under Stalin wanted and aspired for their art to do: a one-sided, blatantly positive piece with no inner meaning. Just a pathetic & bawled-out shell that serves only to affirm Stalin and the message of the Communist Party. Abstraction & philosophy was prohibited; modern art was frowned upon as childish and nonsensical, staunchly communist scholars and philosophers were purged and sent to the gulags every day, and only dance medium that the bare peasantry can copy is deemed as ‘satisfactory’ and ‘socialist realist.’

This is the brutal paradox that Shostakovich faced on a daily basis. To honour the past, or to churn out blast after blast of Kafkaesque noise? To create a soundworld of intrigue & suspense or one of directionless action and metallic percussion?

Chapter 1: War is Peace

Shostakovich never peacefully coexisted with the USSR. As an artist, his primary motive would always be to express his own creed of music and his philosophy of music. At its core, this clashes with Soviet ideology, where individualism is sacrificed to serve the betterment of society. Yet, even with such constant surveillance and embitterment, art, even if transmogrified into totally alien forms, will still prevail and be heard.

Shostakovich was no stranger to the art of double entendre: his work is saturated with parody, yet always seems seconds away from total emotional heartbreak and collapse. When the USSR was still incredibly open towards diversity and actively encouraged Western influence on Russian music, young composers like Shostakovich freely experimented with avant-garde musical philosophy: the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Les Six, the cutting-edge textures of Ligeti and Bartók, twelve-tone harmony pioneered by Schönberg and Alban Berg, and most distinctly of all, veneration of the classic romantic masters of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler. Here the path diverges: under the influence of the all-knowing government, Soviet music forked itself away from that of the mainstream, and all of a sudden, the aspiring avant-garde like Shostakovich needed to find a new musical voice.

After years of being put on and off the radar, Shostakovich’s first obvious ‘failure’ is his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Op. 29. In a now exceptionally notorious anonymous editorial in the Pravda (most likely penned by Stalin himself), commented on the grossly inappropriate art as “muddle instead of music”, and claimed that “this game could end very badly,” something that, in the height of the Great Purge, must have been an extraordinarily worrying and chilling comment.

This eventually led to his first state denunciation in 1936. In such a frightening era, this would be the last step before you were sent to the gulags in Siberia. Friends and academics immediately distanced themselves from Shostakovich, and he was forced to lie low, a living unperson that has been forcibly shut from the outside world.

In an effort to not get himself tortured and killed, Shostakovich was forced to reduce his musical complexity to what was being asked of him. This ultimately shaped into his Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, exactly the Newspeak that was asked of him from Stalin, but full of many quirks and solemnity.

Right from the outset, the first movement is stark and determined, exemplified by these opening sixths:

Above: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 I. Moderato

However, the 3rd movement is incredibly soulful, immediately resonating with the people, against mass surveillance and sympathising the bitter livelihoods of the Soviet people under Stalin:

Above: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 III. Largo

And a ‘triumphant’ finale that contains 284 repetitions of the note A (yes, I counted), gloriously mocking Stalinist values of crudeness & realism whilst embodying those values at the same time.

Above: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 IV. Allegro non troppo #131

“Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth [Symphony] was about.”

― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

Shostakovich embodied these same double entendres in the finale of his Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, subtitled “Leningrad”. This work is famous for being composed in the height of the Siege of Leningrad in 1943, and over the course of 85 minutes, the gruelling symphonic argument subverts itself in Nazi martial glory and deep tragedy. This eventually culminates in a stunning climax. However, the glorious closing bars exudes shades of Stalinist over-catharsis that, obviously, would lead to great comment in later centuries:

Above: Symphony No. 7 in C major "Leningrad", Op. 60 IV. Allegro non troppo #207

This is heartbreaking when you experience it on full blast, especially in these times with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, however, these last few dissonances and a proto-Phrygian bassline adds an entirely different, much more bittersweet context to this symphonic epic. Shostakovich knew that this symphony and the next (8th) were not limited to the context of the war, but about the prevalence authoritarianism in general.

“The truth is that the war helped. The war brought great sorrow and made life very very hard. Much sorrow, many tears. But it had been even harder before the war, because then everyone was alone in his sorrow.”

― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

After the war ended in the USSR’s favour, Stalin was more than overjoyed, and Shostakovich was made to write his Symphony No. 9 in E♭ major, Op. 70. Stalin was very much aware and concerned about the lineage of the number 9 in Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler, but Shostakovich instead evaded the state model and pursued a short, humourous composition much more akin to that of Haydn. There are many farces and little witty jokes throughout the symphony, most famously this trombone call in the 1st movement:

Above: Symphony No. 9 in E♭ major, Op. 70 I. Allegro #6

If hearing this live, this will promise a grand martial entrance and tutti of the orchestra. Instead, it simply disintegrates into a frivolous tune in the piccolo, as if this has never happened at all. In the sonata form's recapitulation, he writes the same fanfare 7 times, of which the first 6 are out of place and seems to be a mockery of Stalin's over-eagerness.

(Sorry, I have to troll you with the alto clef.)

This symphony’s outlook was a little too public, however, and the Zhdanov decree was passed in 1948, denouncing Shostakovich a second time, along with fellow composers Prokofiev and Khatchaturian. Even though the Purge is by now over, Stalin was still very much watching and careful. Joseph Stalin eventually died in 1953, and Shostakovich, with his Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, sought to make peace with that. This already has a significance akin to the 5th, and he thus used this opportunity to “create a musical depiction” of the personality always unreachable:

Above: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 II. Allegro

We have by now entered Shostakovich’s middle period: Stalin was replaced by Khruschev, conscious about projecting Soviet dominance in the height of the Cold War. The music of Shostakovich now takes a turn: the Concertos (2 each for piano, violin, and cello) and the majority of the quartets were written in this period. Public scrutiny was by large over, with the more intimate & small-scale oeuvre being produced, but he still ended up joining the Communist Party in 1960 (more on this later.) One of his most compelling works to this day is his String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110, perhaps the most political of his quartets (dedicated to the victims of the Dresden firebombing) where he outwardly opens the Largo with a fugato on the “DSCH” (D - E♭- C - B♮ in German notation) motif, considered his ‘musical signature’.

Above: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 I. Largo

It then turns into this violent Klezmer danse macabre in the 2nd movement.

Above: String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 II. Allegro molto #21

Rumours alleged that Shostakovich was suicidal at the time, which is proven through his excessive use of quotation, with ‘DSCH’ appearing in every movement. He would go on to live another 15 years until 1975, but not without controversy. (See Symphony No. 13 in B♭ minor “Babi Yar”, Op. 113, a choral programmatic composition on Judaism, pogroms, and anti-Semitism that garnered loads of controversy on the decidedly secular state.) He ultimately won the battle with the party, as the USSR officially ignored all denunciations and hailed Shostakovich as a national hero of great ethic and civic contributions. However, Shostakovich still had to endure so much mental strain over a life of duckspeak or thoughtcrime, and he only cunningly did both using artistic wittiness and public pretentiousness, as proven using many examples.

The lives of Dmitri Shostakovich and the Soviet Union are unified and inseparable.

Read part 2 and 3 of this analysis here.

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Recordings:

• Symphonies Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15: Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky

• Symphony No. 9: Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein (Lecture & Analysis)

• String Quartet No. 8: Borodin Quartet

Incipits all of Shostakovich unless otherwise specified. Reduction by the author/editor.

All other images are from the public domain—no attribution is required.

Quotes sourced from Testimony: The Memoirs by Dmitri Shostakovich via GoodReads

Some analysis in this article is from the writer's personal opinion. Please feel free to interpret Dmitri Shostakovich's work and George Orwell's 1984 in a way you deem correct. Feel free to contact the author in the comments section and/or forum. If you believe there is any mistake, reach out to us and we'll fix it as soon as possible.