Composer Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitry Shostakovich was a passionate composer who balanced between personal views and communist ideals.
Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906–1975) is one of the most important composers of the Soviet Union, whose extensive output includes symphonies, concertos, operas, ballet, chamber and piano music. In addition, Shostakovich composed suites for jazz orchestra, film music, and vocal works such as romances and poems.
Shostakovich was born into a middle-class family in St. Petersburg and began studying classical music at the age of 9 under the guidance of his mother. Later, he studied piano, composition and music history at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he composed his first symphony as a final project. With the symphony, Shostakovich immediately became one of the foremost composers in Soviet Russia.
When Joseph Stalin established his position as the leader of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Stalin transferred the arts to the Stalinist social order. The language of art had to be simple and understandable, and it could not contain avant-garde experiments. Heroism, optimism and the building of a socialist society officially emerged as the main goals of art.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Shostakovich was the target of public and fierce criticism on several occasions because his music did not correspond to the ideals of socialist realism or Stalinist music policy. In Pravda, published in 1936, his latest works were called “a mess of the status of music”. Shostakovich balanced between the party line and his individual expression until Stalin’s death, and the concept of “two Shostakoviches” was already familiar to his contemporaries.
Shostakovich’s music has been interpreted to strongly reflect not only his life situations but also the social zeitgeist. In Shostakovich’s controversial memoirs, Shostakovich was portrayed as a dissident and critic of Stalinism rather than an obedient communist. His music was credited with the ability to channel the emotions of his contemporaries, especially when it would have been dangerous to say them out loud.
The 15 symphonies written over the course of almost five decades, as well as string quartets composed towards the end of his life, are considered to be Shostakovich’s most important musical testament. Shostakovich is also remembered as a virtuoso and original pianist who passed on his skills while working as a piano and composition pedagogue at the Moscow and St. Petersburg conservatories.
Ida Henritius