Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Opus 47

-Soviet Union: 2 years before World War II-

The piece was conceived under the most intense spotlight imaginable. Josef Stalins public
denunciation of Shostakovichs opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in the essay Muddle instead of
Music published in Pravda on the 28
th
of January, 1936 had effectively turned Shostakovich
into a strange combination of a non-person and musical public enemy number one.
Shostakovichs denunciation could not have come at a worse time- it was the very peak of the
Stalinist Terror, and Shostakovich knew as soon as he saw the editorial that the lives of both he
and his family were in grave danger. Artistically, this blow came at a terrible moment for the
coposer. A former wunderkind who had become instantly world-famous when he published his
First Symphony at the age of 19, by 1936, when Muddle was published, Shostakovich was a
composer at the peak of his powers and early maturity, possessed of a breadth of experience to
match his talent, and with his confidence in full flower. Lady Macbeth is a work of staggering
inspiration and consummate skill, and he had already completed most of his next major work, his
Fourth Symphony.
A starkly tragic masterpiece, Shostakovichs Fourth Symphony was one of his most ambitious
and innovative works. It shows him breaking radical new ground as a post-Mahlerian symphonist,
and so it is no surprise that friends and colleagues implored Shostakovich to withdraw the work
before its scheduled premiere after Stalins rejection of Lady Macbeth. Its dark message and
comparatively modern language would have, in all likelihood, sealed Shostakovichs fate with
the authorities. There is also speculation that the philharmonic musicians refused to play music
of a formalist. Cancelling its premiere was one of the most painful decisions of Shostakovichs
professional life.
Shortly after the Pravda article was published, Shostakovich was summoned to a meeting with
Stalins emissary, Platon Kerzhentsev. Shostakovich was asked whether he fully accepted the
criticism of his work in the Pravda articles. Shostakovichs answer, according to Kerzhentsev
was that he accepts most of it, but he has not fully comprehended it all. Shostakovichs vague
answer had been carefully calculated, but was a huge risk- had he fully accepted all the criticisms,
his future music would have been judged strictly by the terms of Stalins previous criticisms. By
feigning ignorance, he was giving himself vital space to continue to create and experiment, but
had Stalin sensed his reticence to comply fully, the price would surely have meant death for
Shostakovich and his family.
Under the circumstances, Shostakovich could have been forgiven for avoiding the most public of
instrumental genres, the symphony, until the climate had improved. In fact, he would later do
exactly that- in the late 1940s when the premiere of his Ninth Symphony led to another public
shaming by the authorities, he chose to wait until after the death of Joseph Stalin four years later
to complete his Tenth Symphony, even though parts of it were sketched many years earlier.
Reception
However, in spite of the danger of further provoking the Party, Shostakovich quickly began work
on the Fifth, completing the score in July 1937. The works premiere by the St Petersburg (then
the Leningrad) Philharmonic under its music director, Yevgeny Mravinsky, was an occasion of
incredible expectation and almost unimaginable anxiety. The impact of the work on its first
audience is hard to overstate- many listeners wept openly during the elegiac slow movement. At
the end of the performance, the audience burst into an ovation so passionate and stormy that it
nearly eclipsed the 45 minute symphony in duration.
Shostakovichs public statements were a vital tool in his life-long cat and mouse game with the
authorities. As a result, one should always read anything he wrote or said about his music with
great skepticism- his audience was the Party, not posterity. Shortly after the premiere,
Shostakovich published a short, highly opaque essay called My Creative Response, from
which comes the Fifths epigraph A Soviet artists practical, creative reply to just criticism.
This title and the works traditional formal structure and direct musical language served to
placate Stalin and the Party. Shostakovich was partially rehabilitated and the piece went on to
become one of the most frequently played works in the twentieth century. Shostakovichs
contrite essay, and the official verdict of party-approved critics, especially Alexei Tolstoy,
helped set in place an official program for the work as an optimistic tragedy that would allow
it to be exploited by the state, as well as performed, but this official reading, which was never
accepted by a majority of Russian musicians or listeners, came to be uncritically accepted by
many Western commentators, leading to decades of confusion, misunderstanding, and even
misrepresentation.
Early critical reaction unanimously recognized the deeply tragic mood of the first three
movements. One writers noted that the emotional tension is at the limit: another stepand
everything will burst into a physiological howl. Another said, The passion of suffering in
several places is brought to a naturalistic screaming and howling. In some episodes, the music
can elicit an almost physical sense of pain. Given the later-day controversy about the meaning
of the Symphonys Finale, it is worth noting that the writer Alexander Fadeyev wrote after the
premiere, The end does not sound like an exit (and certainly not like a triumph or victory) but
like a punishment or a revenge on someone. Another listener compared the work with
Tchaikovskys Pathetique, the most tragic of all Russian symphonies.
Four months after Shostakovich decided to withhold the Fourth Symphony from performance, he
began his Fifth. Its completion and the successful the public reception was the most significant
turning point in the composers artistic life. His political rehabilitation was the least of it: in
1948, at the hands of Andrei Zhdanov and the Central Committee of the Communist Party,
Shostakovich was subjected to attacks far more vicious and brutish than those of 1936. (A
second rehabilitation followed in 1958.) But in 1937 Shostakovich found a language in which,
over the next three decades, he could write music whose strongest pagesin, for example, the
Seventh, (Leningrad), Eighth, Tenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth symphonies; the Third, Seventh,
Eighth, Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth string quartets; the Violin Sonata and the
Michelangelo Songsreveal his voice as one of the most eloquent in our time.
Symphony no.5 was divided into 4 movements:
First movement- Moderato
He begins his Fifth Symphony with a gesture both forceful and questioning, one whose sharply
dotted rhythm stays on to accompany the broadly lyrical melody the first violins introduce
almost immediately. (The melody itself is a variant of one in the second movement of the
Symphony No. 4.) Still later, spun across a pulsation as static as Shostakovich can make it, the
violins play a spacious, serene melody, comfortingly symmetrical (at least when it begins). With
that, we have all the material of the first movement. Yet it is an enormously varied movement,
and across its great span there take place transformations that totally detach these thematic
shapes from their original sonorities, speeds, and expression. The climax is harsh; the close,
with the gentle friction of minor (the strings) and major (the scales in the celesta), is wistfully
inconclusive and dissonances.
It seems there is a tradition in the best fifth symphonies from Beethoven to Mahler to begin with
a shocking, dramatic gesture. The almost physical impact of the beginning of Shostakovichs
Fifth slightly belies how restrained he is in using the orchestra in the symphonys opening
paragraphs. As in his Eighth and Tenth symphonies, he begins using only the strings, gradually
introducing the bassoons, flutes, oboes and clarinets, and finally, the brass and percussion.
In the late 1970s, the publication of Solomon Volkovs Testimony- The Memoirs of Dmitri
Shostakovich brought on heated debate in the West over the official program of the Fifth. A
mirror-image program, no doubt closer to the truth but still far too one-dimensional, was
suggested: that the work was a protest against the Stalinist Terror. In the ensuing decades of
often maddeningly reductionist debate, it has been easy to overlook evidence that the work has
several programs. The first of these is suggested by the first movements second theme. Soaring
and tender in its first incarnation in the violins, and more pained when repeated by the violas,
playing in an intentionally cruel register, it is a variation of the works opening theme, but also a
quote from the Habanera (Lamour, lamour) of Bizets Carmen.
Why Carmen? In 1934-5 Shostakovich had fallen in love with Elena Konstantinovskya. She had
ultimately rejected him, and married a man named Roman Carmen. As with his symphonic idol,
Mahler, Shostakovich understood that a symphony could carry a variety of messages and express
a range of programs, from the most public to the most private. This first movement of the Fifth
marks an important turning point in his development, wherein he defines and perfects his own,
very personal reworking of traditional Sonata form. By reversing the order of themes in the
recapitulation, he creates a vast arch form, building in intensity to a climax of apocalyptic
intensity, finally disintegrating into tragic resignation. The restraint with which the movement
begins and ends is matched by the near hysterical abandon of the movements climax.
Shostakovich uses tempo to intensify this arch shape, beginning the symphony very slowly,
gradually speeding up through the development and then winding down to end at very nearly the
same speed as the opening. This design was based to a large extent on the first movement of
Tchaikovskys Pathetique Symphony, and Shostakovich would use it again in the 7
th
, 8
th
and
10
th
symphonies. So convincing is the design that one can hear the movement many times without
stopping to think how original it is, a quality it shares with the first movement of Tchaikovskys
Pathetique and 1812 Overture. Shostakovich is his own best witness in confirming the
assessment of Arnold Schoenberg, not much given to praising his contemporaries and not fond
of Shostakovichs music either, but who had no doubt that his young colleague had the breath
of a symphonist.
Second Movement- Allegretto
The second movement, a rather gruff Lndler shows Shostakovich at his most Mahlerian- mixing
charm and venom, elegance and irony in equal measure. The trio begins as a study in obsequious
grace, with the solo violin playing rather flirtatiously over delicate harp and pizzicato
accompaniment, but the music repeatedly loses its cool, descending into noisy violence. The
sinister return of the Landler is surely a nod to the Scherzo of Beethovens Fifth, with its skeletal
instrumentation of staccato bassoons and pizzicato strings. One last flirtatious nod to the violin
solo, this time on solo oboe, disingenuously promises a gentle resolution of the movements
tensions, before a final angry outburst brings the movement to an abrupt close in A minor.

The scherzo is brief and functions as an oasis between the intensely serious first and third
movements. Its vein of grotesque humor owes something to Prokofiev and a lot more to Mahler,
whose music was much played and studied in Russia in the 1920s and whose work early on
defined symphonic ambition for Shostakovich.
Third Movement- Largo
The extraordinary Largo, written in just three days, is one of Shostakovichs most moving
creations. As in the opening of the first movement, Shostakovich uses the orchestra with
tremendous restraint. Again, he opens with a long paragraph for strings, only gradually and
sparingly introducing woodwinds and percussion. The brass remains silent throughout. In the
second paragraph, solo oboe, clarinet and flute each state a theme with loneliness over nearly
static string tremolo accompaniment. Then, Shostakovich begins the inexorable build up to the
anguished emotional climax of the entire symphony, a passage the great American musicologist
Michael Steinberg calls the most Tchaikovskian page in all Shostakovich.

The string scoring is unusual in that Shostakovich calls for three sections of violins rather than
the usual two and two each of violas and cellos. String sound dominates in this movement of
beautiful, long melodies, and Shostakovich inserts intermezzi for solo woodwinds with exquisite
sense of timing and form. Harp and celesta also play prominent roles here. For a moment, the
music rises to a crest of hot emotional intensity, a passage of powerful declamation for high and
low strings. After a final appearance of celesta and harps, the movement ends with the serene
sound of just two sumptuous major chords for the eight-part string orchestra.



Finale- Allegro non troppo
A dispassionate glance at the score of the Finale, a movement described by Volkov as perhaps
the most disturbing and ambivalent music of the 20
th
century. immediately reveals an important
structural tie to the first movement. In the finale, instead of ending with a marking of quarter
note= 92, the final tempo is eighth note=188, a marking that on first glance seems eccentric
enough to merit suspicion. In spite of this clear structural tempo relationship, Michael Steinberg
points out that Most of the big-name conductors seem to proceed entirely at random.
The Finale shatters the rapt stillness of the Largo with a violent and brutish march, the theme of
which integrates material from no less than three sources. The first is, again, Carmen, using the
music from the Habanera setting the words Prends garde a tois! or Beware! Beware!
Secondly, material from the theme was used again in Shostakovichs later setting of Robert
Burns poem MacPhersons Farewell, to the words Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, sae dauntingly
gaed he as the hero is led to the gallers-tree. Finally, as Gerald McBurney observed, the first
four notes (A D E F) are the same as the first four notes of Shostakovichs 1936 setting of the
Pushkin poem Rebirth, wherein the poet describes A Barbarian artist with sleepy brush, who
Blackens over a picture of genius. The parallels with Stalins obliteration of Shostakovichs
Fourth Symphony and Lady Macbeth are obvious.
In the course of the ensuing build up, there are more quotations to be found, notably from the
fourth movement of Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique and Strausss Till Eulenspiegel, both of
which, like Shostakovichs Burns setting, contain vivid musical descriptions of public
executions. In the quiet middle section, Shostakovich returns to his setting of Pushkins Rebirth
quoting his own music from the final stanzas:

But with the year, the alien paints
Flake off like old scales;
The creation of genius appears before us
In its former beauty.
Thus do delusions fall away
From my worn-out soul
And there spring up within it
Visions of original, pure days.
Confusion over the metaphysical and political meaning of the Fifth has been greatly increased
by the purely musical confusion over the final tempo, largely propagated by Leonard Bernsteins
iconic 1959 recording and his performance with the New York Philharmonic in Shostakovichs
presence that year, in which he famously more than doubled the speed from what Shostakovich
had written. Although Shostakovich later repeatedly confirmed his intention that it be played at
eighth note=188, confusion continues to this day among conductors and critics more inclined to
learn a piece through recordings than through the score. (In his defence, Bernstein, throughout
his career, was generally more scrupulous in his observance of many of the other metronome
markings in the symphony than Mravinsky, who tends to speed through the symphonys slow
music).
But what are we to make of that metronome marking? By giving the tempo in eighth notes,
Shostakovich is implying that each eighth note has its own impulse, its own emphasis, and, in
fact the entire coda has an absolutely unremitting string of continuous eight notes, all on the
pitch A, 252 in all. The brass, in note values double their original length, bring back the
opening Barbarian or Carmen theme, now in triumphant D major- Prends garde!:Beware! it
seems to bellow over and over. Through it all, the strings, woodwinds and piano continue to
repeat those As over and over. When asked by his son what all those As where meant to signify,
Shostakovich reportedly said La! La! La! La!

La is the Russian nickname for Elena, the woman who had broken his heart by marrying
Mr. Carmen

Shostakovichs archivist Manashir Yakubov calls it a cry of despair and farewell. Yet, asked
by another friend, Shostakovich replied Ya! Ya! Ya! or Me! Me! Me! This tension between
the barbarian and the genius, and between me and her continues to the final note of the piece.
Ambivalent, angry, triumphant, tortured, heartbroken, defiant, world-embracing and self-
regarding, the final page of this greatest of 20
th
century symphonies is so powerful for much the
same reason it has always been so controversial. When one is able to recognize the depth and
intensity of its countless tensions and contradictions, what listener could ever settle for
something as simplistic and straightforward as a happy, or sad, ending again?

We may not, all of us, have been convinced by the ending of the Shostakovich Fifth, but I never
knew anyone to doubt that this was a genuine attempt to write an exultant finale. Leaving aside
the issue of structure and tempo, I am convinced that the tradition of taking the coda quite fast,
sometimes with a grand rhetorical retard, is rooted in the attempt to make the ending jubilant, to
perform the apotheosis that Shostakovich did not in fact compose. Taken at the tempo in the
score, and of course without a further grandstanding retard, the close is profoundly in tune with
the grim our business is rejoicing image drawn by the man who also said, The majority of my
symphonies are tombstones.