String Quartet No. 8 (Shostakovich)

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor (Op. 110) was written in three days (July 12–14, 1960). It was premiered that year in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet.

The piece was written shortly after two traumatic events: the composer's diagnosis with polio, and his joining the Communist Party reluctantly. According to the score, it is dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war"; his son, Maxim, interprets this as a reference to the victims of all totalitarianism, while his daughter Galina says that he dedicated it to himself, and that the published dedication was imposed by the Russian authorities. Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsky, said that Shostakovich thought of the work as his epitaph and that he planned to commit suicide around this time. ^[1]

The work was written in Dresden, where Shostakovich was to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint project by Soviet and East German filmmakers about Bombing of Dresden in World War II. The quartet, extremely compact and focused, is in five interconnected movements and lasts twenty minutes:

1. Largo -
2. Allegro molto -
3. Allegretto -
4. Largo -
5. Largo

The first movement opens with the DSCH motif which was Shostakovich's musical signature. This slow, extremely sad theme can also be heard in his Cello Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 10, Violin Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 15, and Piano Sonata No. 2. The motif is used in every movement of this quartet, and is the basis of the faster theme of the third movement.

The work is filled with quotes of other pieces by Shostakovich: the first movement quotes his Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 5; the second movement uses a Jewish theme first used by Shostakovich in his Piano Trio No. 2; the third movement quotes the Cello Concerto No. 1; and the fourth movement quotes the 19th century revolutionary song "Tormented by Grievous Bondage" and the aria "Seryozha, my love" from Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The fifth contains a play upon a motive also from Lady Macbeth.

It has been transcribed by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra, in which version it is known as Chamber Symphony in C minor (Op. 110a).

In Literature

This quartet is heavily referenced in William Vollmann's novel Europe Central, and a central part of that novel discusses its writing and the composer's life under the Soviet system.

Notes

1. ^ Shostakovich, ed. Glikman; pp. 90-91.

References

• Ardov, Michael (2004); Memories of Shostakovich; Short Books. ISBN 1-904095-64-X
• Fay, Laurel (1999); Shostakovich: A Life; Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513438-9
• Shostakovich, Dmitry, ed. Glikman, Isaak (2001). Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman. Cornell Univ Press. ISBN 0-8014-3979-5.
• Yves Senden (2002); String Quartet No. 8 in c; Brilliant Classics 6898 [Rubio Quartet: "Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets"]

External Links

• Shostakovich: the string quartets