Part of the Rest Is Noise Audio Guide
Shostakovich. From the Library of Congress.
Note: The first page number is for the hardback edition, the second number is for the paperback.
At the heart of The Rest Is Noise is a trio of chapters examining relationships between composers and the state in the 1930s and 1940s: "The Art of Fear" (music in Stalin's Russia), "Music for All" (music in FDR's America), and "Death Fugue" (music in Hitler's Germany).
In the years before Stalin consolidated his hold on power, Soviet artists enjoyed, or at least were allowed, a fair degree of freedom to experiment. Composers mimicked the sounds of machines or incorporated machine noises. the better to suggest the might of the new Communist state (see p. 219 / p. 239 of The Rest is Noise). Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry was exemplary:
Yevgeny Svetanov conducting the USSR Symphony Orchestra, Melodiya 74321-56263-2.
The young Dmitri Shostakovich, enfant terrible of Soviet composition in the late 1920s and early 1930s, opened his Second Symphony, "To October" (p. 223 / p. 243) with music of extraordinary rhythmic complexity and harmonic density, suggesting the chaos of Russia before the Revolution:
Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Decca 436762.
When taking on Western bourgeois values, the young composer often fell into a deliciously sardonic mood, both mocking and mimicking the styles of the twenties. An excerpt from his film score New Babylon (p. 224 / p. 244), a socialist drama set against the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71:
Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting the USSR Ministry of Culture Orchestra, Russian Disc 11064.
In film footage from the period 1934-35, Shostakovich plays his own First Piano Concerto:
SHOSTAKOVICH AND THE TERROR
The major work of Shostakovich's early years is the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (pp. 225-26 / pp. 246-47), which initially met with success and then drew forth an extraordinary denunciation in the pages of the Party organ Pravda in January 1936, shortly after Stalin went to see the opera. (The image above is of the Pravda article, "Muddle Instead of Music.") Among other things, it would seem that officialdom was offended by the salacious sounds, complete with glissandos of detumescence, that accompanied the lovemaking of Katerina and Sergei in Act I:
Far more serious in tone is the great Passacaglia interlude that plays in the orchestra in the wake of the death of the kulak Boris:
Myung Whun-Chung conducting the Bastille Opera Orchestra, DG 000677002.
The industrial-strength opening of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, written shortly before the Pravda episode began:
Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic, London 421 348-2.
At the climax of the Fourth, Shostakovich significantly alludes to the "Gloria" from Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, in which the chorus hails Jocasta as the queen of "disease-ridden Thebes" (p. 233 / p. 254). Here is Stravinsky:
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Swedish Radio Chorus, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sony SK 48057.
And here is Shostakovich:
Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic, London 421 348-2.
Voices crying in the Largo of the mighty Fifth Symphony (pp. 233-36 / p. 255-58):
The opening of the final merciless movement:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 61841.
In the finale, Shostakovich quotes from his Pushkin setting "Regeneration" (p. 235 / p. 257). The final two lines are "And in their place visions arise / Of pure, original days":
Sergei Leiferkus, baritone, with Neeme Järvi conducting the Gothenburg Symphony, Decca 000677002.
Here is the corresponding passage in the Fifth, with the quiet, ominous return of the martial main theme:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 61841.
Bernstein conducts the entire finale, live with the Philharmonic in 1979:
PROKOFIEV
Prokofiev in New York, 1918. From the Library of Congress.
The pages of the Prokofiev Society include back issues of the Three Oranges Journal. Princeton University has an informative site devoted to Simon Morrison's reconstruction of Prokofiev's ballet Pas d'acier. There is a parallel site for Morrison's reconstructions of the unrealized Meyerhold collaboration Boris Godunov.
The ferocious young Prokofiev, borrowing from Stravinsky's Rite in the Scythian Suite:
Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Philips 473600.
Prokofiev's lyric side blossoms fragrantly in the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet (p. 241 / p. 263):
Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Philips 464726.
After returning to the Soviet Union, Prokofiev struggled mightily to write propaganda music, with limited success. Zdravitsa, or Toast to Stalin (p. 242 / p. 264), romanticizes the icy leader of the state with much the same musical palette as the above scene in Romeo:
Valery Polyansky conducting the Russian State Symphony, Chandos 10056.
Perhaps the happiest experience of Prokofiev's ill-starred Soviet period was his collaboration with Sergei Eisenstein on the films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible parts I and II (pp. 242-43, 249 / pp. 265, 272). The "Battle on the Ice" sequence from Nevsky, with chanting chorus and trudging orchestra, is imitated at least three times each summer in big-budget Hollywood action films:
Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Philips 473600.
WORLD WAR II AND STALIN'S LAST YEARS
Nevsky Prospekt under fire during the siege of Leningrad.
Shostakovich responded to the German invasion of Russia and the siege of his home city of Leningrad with a huge four-movement symphony, his Seventh, entitled Leningrad (pp. 245-48 / pp. 267-71). The Germans are represented by an endlessly repeated little ditty that Shostakovich seems to have taken from Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, known to be Hitler's favorite operetta. Here is Lehár's "Da geh' ich zu Maxim":
John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, with Boje Skovhus as Danilo; DG 439911.
And here is Shostakovich, toward the beginning of the variation sequence (compare the descending figure at 0:17 with the Lehár above):
The march becomes ever more vehement as it goes along:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony, DG 427632.
Prokofiev set to work on an epic operatic setting of Tolstoy's War and Peace (pp. 248-49 / p. 271), lavishing particular care on the lavish ball scenes that precede the outbreak of Napoleon's invasion of Russia:
Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Philips 434097.
He never saw War and Peace produced, but he did preside over a triumphant premiere of his Fifth Symphony, in which he matched Shostakovich in Beethovenian eloquence (p. 250 / p. 273). As with Shostakovich's Fifth, the ending seems ambiguous:
Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, DG 437253.
The final movement of Prokofiev's Sixth is unambiguously tragic in tone (p. 252 / p. 275).
All Soviet composers once again had to engage in an orgy of self-criticism in 1948, when the Zhdanov Decree was handed down and many significant works were banned. Shostakovich took to parodying the ending of his Fifth Symphony in works such as The Sun Shines Over the Motherland and Song of the Forests:
Alexander Yurlov conducting the USSR Symphony and the Yurlov Russian Choir, Russian Disc 11 048.
Compare the very end of the Fifth:
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Sony 61841.
In his Tenth Symphony, written after Stalin's death, Shostakovich makes use of a musical motif based on the letters of his own name in German musical notation: D-S-C-H, or D-E-flat-C-B-natural. In the final measures these notes are blasted out with sardonic force, the underlying message radically ambiguous to the end:
Evgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic, Erato 45753.
