shostakovich: a lesson for our time

The moral tension of life under authoritarian or totalitarian rule is vastly greater than in a democracy where everyone is free, within legislated limits, to think and do as they wish. Under punitively repressive conditions, almost every word or act becomes charged with moral significance. In a system which seeks to control the very nature of reality, truth and memory become hugely meaningful commodities. Correspondingly, social situations which lack such tensions are inevitably flabbier by comparison -- even "decadent", as the West notoriously appeared to the dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn during his exile.

http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/deb/qod1.html#ftt (long)

His Leningrad Symphony, No. 7 I believe, was supposedly about an uplifting war victory but if you listen closely he mocks Stalin over and over again. He repeated a lot of little phrases to belittle the constant barking of nationalism. I have a bio of him somewhere and it is quite interesting to read. It must have been a very difficult time for all artists but some really important music came from them even under the harsh circumstances and rules they had to live and create by.

Some of the best music he ever wrote. Those and his Violin Sonata, with its eerie "wind whistling around the gravestones of dead soldiers" effect.

Just amazing music. I do not know that Violin Sonata but you can be certain I am going to get it. Sunday I am ordering CD's of all the music for our next season and I will look for that one and order it as well. Was it Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor or No.2 in D Major?

It is one of my favorite pieces of his. Unbelievably inspired.

I love his music, so amazing. The harmonies just stun me every time I hear them. I will be certain to get it.

is pertinent for our time

of how totalitarian rule can never take someone's creativity away.

Great article, thanks for posting.

I feel sometimes about the reporting of news these days.

t has to be said that neither Shostakovich's musical genius nor his great strength of spirit were enough to save him from the ordinary human fears that filled his days and nights. He feared for the life and fate of his loved ones; he feared violence, humiliation, and torture; he feared poverty and the withdrawal of his rights. As for his expressed desire, nevertheless, to be "like everyone else" - i.e., utterly defenceless, hopelessly enslaved, hanging by a hair over a void - in this I see only his singular spiritual integrity. <39> In fact, I've been thinking about this for some time, which is why I read the following lines from Galina Vishnevskaya's memoirs with particular pleasure: "Not disposed to close his eyes on a vile reality, Shostakovich saw clearly that we were all players in a disgusting farce - and that, once you'd agreed to be a clown, you had to carry it on to the end. In that way, you took responsibility for the abomination in which you lived and which you could never openly oppose." <40>
http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/zhito/zhito2.html

conductor (New Orleans Symphony Orchestra - RIP :() for many years. I heard him conduct many of his father's works.

Composers have been encoding secret messages in their works since at least Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300 to 1377).

Biography

Guillaume de Machaut (d.1377) is one of the undisputed pinnacle geniuses of Western music, and the most famous composer of the Middle Ages. Today his four-voice Mass of Notre Dame is a textbook example for medieval counterpoint, and has served sufficiently to maintain his reputation across shifts in fashion. However Machaut's work is extensive, with his French songs & poetry dominating the fourteenth century by both their quality and volume. A series of carefully prepared illuminated manuscripts, undertaken for members of the French royalty, preserve his complete artistic output. Along with these major sources, various pieces are duplicated in scattered sources throughout Europe. His life and work are thus extremely well-preserved for the period, and his position as the most distinguished composer of the century has never wavered.

Machaut was apparently born in the vicinity of Rheims in Champagne, around the year 1300. He is first known as the secretary of John of Luxembourg in 1323, and used the position to travel extensively for various battles and political events. In approximately 1340, Machaut returned to Rheims to take up the position of canon (he had previously been an absentee office-holder) together with his brother Jean. However, he continued to serve John of Luxembourg until the latter's death at Crécy in 1346, and then served his daughter Bonne, who appears in the Remède de Fortune. The remainder of the fourteenth century was an epic of wars and plagues, and one of the few periods in which the population of Europe declined, but Machaut's reputation continued to rise. He went on to serve two kings of France, and was charged with a task as important as accompanying hostages during the English war. In 1361 the Dauphine was received in Machaut's quarters, an exceptional event. By the 1370s Machaut's name was associated with Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, thus establishing his fame nearly as far as Asia.

Machaut is frequently portrayed today as an avant garde composer, especially because of his position with regard to the early Ars Nova (a new, more detailed rhythmic notation), but one must also emphasize the masterful continuity with which he employed established forms. While using the same basic formats, he made subtle changes to meter and rhyme scheme, allowing for more personal touches and a more dramatic presentation. Indeed, Machaut's poetry is one of the most impressive French outputs of the medieval era, serving as an example even for Chaucer. The theme of courtly love dominates his writing, becoming heavily symbolized in the guises of such characters as Fortune & Love, and the personal dramas in which they act. Machaut's poetic output, and by extension the subset of texts he chose to set to music, is both personal and ritualized, lending it a timeless quality. Some of the love themes date to Ovid and beyond, from whom they had been elaborated first by the troubadours of Provence and then by the northern trouvères, and so it is truly a classical tradition to which Machaut belongs.

Machaut marks the end of the lineage of the trouvères, and with it the development of the monophonic art song in the West. This aspect of his work is found in the virelais and especially the lengthy lais. He also acted decisively to refine the emerging polyphonic song forms ballade & rondeau, and these were to become the dominant fixed forms for the following generations. What Machaut achieved so eloquently is an idiomatic and natural combination of words with music, forcefully compelling in its lyrical grace and rhythmic sophistication. His songs are immediately enjoyable, because he was able to shape the smallest melodic nuances as well as to conceive forms on a larger scale. The latter is reflected especially in his poetic-musical creations Le Remède de Fortune and Le Voir Dit, as well as in his Messe de Notre Dame. One must not lose sight of Machaut's position within the sweep of medieval history, as his great "multimedia" productions had clear precedents in the Roman de la Rose and especially the Roman de Fauvel. It is Machaut's ability to unite cogent and elegant melodic thinking with the new rhythmic possibilities of the Ars Nova which ultimately makes his musical reputation.

(snip)

:) More at:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/composers/machaut.html

eom

:D

but there was a very funny fund raiser two years ago with a take off on the Christmas Carol that just ripped the administration.

The guys from car talk were there, ed murrow, terri gross, etc.