Symphony No. 4 (Shostakovich)

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Opus 43, between September 1935 and May 1936. Halfway through its composition, he was denounced in the infamous "Pravda" editorial 'Chaos Instead of Music,' written under direct orders from Joseph Stalin.Steinberg, 541.] Despite the oppressive political climate, Shostakovich continued to plan for the symphony's premiere but changed his mind during rehearsals and withheld the work. It was finally premiered on December 30, 1961 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra led by Kyril Kondrashin.

Form

The work is approximately one hour in length, and has three movements. The term "movements," it is important to note, can seem slightly misleading. The use of traditional forms in these movements is entirely schematic. The music actually unfolds in a loose concatenation of episodes in a manner not related to conventional symphonic structure. [Maes, 269.] . To say the symphony lacks form, however, would be a misnomer. The Fourth does not lack form so much as it deliberately rejects form in favor of a free-flowing stream of music. [Scharz, 171.] The symphony resembles a volcanic eruption—the eruption of unleashed imagination, spewing forth music almost at random, without an apparent design, logic or destination. [Scharz, 170.] It relies heavily on thematic transformation and cinematographic continuity (and occasional lack of same), with tonal and formal features providing a relatively passive framework. [Fanning, 23:295.] The combination of unbridled fantasy and unconventional structure makes this symphony perhaps one of the most original post-Mahlerian symphonies in the classical repertoire. [Maes, 269.]

# Allegretto, poco moderato - Presto - Tempo 1°
#:This movement has been called "a hide and seek relationship with sonata form." There are contrasting themes as in a conventional sonata-form movement. We hear them developed and recapitulated. One key, C minor, anchors the structure. Nevertheless, proportions are unusual. The movement is roughly 25 minutes long. Only three or four minutes are exposition; even less on recapitulation. The rest is development. Older English books on music used to call the development a "free fantasia." That term is extremely apt here. It is only in the development that the despondent bassoon turns up, and the changes through which Shostakovich works his material include some extremely wild and violent discursions from the main stream of musical discourse. The most dramatic of these is a crazed, high-speed fugue for the strings. [Steinberg, 544.]
# Moderato, con moto
#:This movement, only a third as long as the preceding one, is an intermezzo where two contrasting themes appear in alternation, both being imaginatively transformed and recombined upon their variant returns. The movement ends with the tinkle of castanets, wood block and snare drum.Steinberg, 545.]
# Largo - Allegro
#:A funeral cortège highly indebted to Mahler spills into an inventive Allegro section in triple meter. The section is humorous but its tone, now high-spirited, now sardonic, is wiped away by ghosts from the first two movements. The music subsides into mutterings of cellos and bases. Timpani anchor the symphony to its initial tonality, C major. Instead of a conclusion, however, the music shifts into C minor and slowly dissipates over a C minor chord for many minutes. Trumpet and celesta offer the last glimmers of light.

Some critics have thought the final movement operates at a far deeper level than the ones which precede it, not only in range and complexity of feeling but also in quality of imagination. [Layton, 204.] While completing a symmetrical frame for the complete work, it also contains five sections, each contributing its own themes and mood to the drama at hand. [Freed, 4.] Others have not been so convinced, especially since the music moves from funeral music to unbuttoned fun, rising from comedy to a triumphant climax, only to abnegate that resolution. Music writer Hugh Ottaway called this close "a magnificent "non sequitur".Steinberg, 545.]

Orchestration

Shostakovich uses an immense orchestra in this work, numbering well over one hundred musicians. This, combined with the extreme technical and emotional demands placed on the performers, makes the "Symphony No. 4" among his least-performed scores, yet it ranks as one of his most important and personal works.

It is scored for the following instruments [cite book|last=Shostakovich |first=Dmitri |title=Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43 |publisher=Kalmus |location=New York ] :

;Woodwind::2 Piccolos:4 Flutes:4 Oboes (4th doubling on Cor anglais):1 E-flat clarinet:4 Clarinets:1 Bass clarinet:3 Bassoons:1 Contrabassoon

;Strings:2 Harps:16-20 1st Violins:14-18 2nd Violins:12-16 Violas:12-16 Violoncellos:10-14 Double basses

;Keyboard:Celesta;Brass::8 Horns:4 Trumpets:3 Trombones:2 Tubas

;Percussion::6 Timpani:Bass drum:Snare drum:Cymbals (two separate types, crash and suspended):Triangle:Wood block:Castanets:Tam-tam:Xylophone:Glockenspiel

Overview

Composition

Shostakovich was nearly 29 when he began the Fourth Symphony. His Second and Third symphonies, written six years earlier, had been patriotic works with choral finales. This work would be different. Toward the end of 1935 he told an interviewer, "I am not afraid of difficulties. It is perhaps easier, and certainly safer, to follow a beaten path, but it is also dull, uninteresting and futile." [Freed, 3.]

Difficulties began on January 28, 1936, when "Pravda" printed its editorial "Chaos Instead of Music." Attacking his internationally successful opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", the author accused the composer of missing "the demands of Soviet culture to banish crudity and wildness from every corner of Soviet life." The expressionist accrual of sex, murder and horror in the plot and underlined by the music was foreign to Stalin's tastes and led to a mixture of indignation and irritation. Its themes also ran counter to the social laws Stalin was planning to pass, including a ban on abortion, a tightening of divorce laws between Soviet citizens and a dissolution of marriages between Soviets and foreigners. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 107-109.]

The article on "Lady Macbeth" was just the first difficulty its composer was to face. On February 3, a second article about Shostakovich's music appeared in "Pravda", condemning his ballet "The Limpid Stream" as "Ballet Falsehood." A third article, on "Clear and Simple Language in Art," appeared in "Pravda" on February 13. Though this article was technically an editorial attacking Shostakovich for "formalism," it appeared in the "Press Review" section. Up to this point Shostakovich would not have been thought to have been worth three such articles in the same publication within a two and a half week period. He was not well known by the mass readership of "Pravda" in general before the articles appeared. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 109-110.] One theory is that Stalin may have singled out Shostakovich for three reasons:

* The plot and music of "Lady Macbeth" infuriated him.
* The opera contradicted Stalin's intended social and cultural direction for the nation at that period.
* Shostakovich was hailed as a genius, both in the Soviet Union and in the West. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 110.]

Despite these official protestations about his compositions, Shostakovich continued work on the symphony—though he simultaneously made the politically savvy move of refusing to allow a concert performance of the last act of "Lady Macbeth". [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 121.] He explained to a friend, "The audience, of course, will applaud—it's considered "bon ton" to be in the opposition, and then threre'll be another article with a headline like 'Incorrigible Formalist.'" ["Muzykal'naia akademiia", 4 (1997), 72.] He announced publicly that the new symphony would be his "composer's credo." [Fanning, 23:290.] Following that announcement, his musicologist friend Ivan Sollertinsky declared at a Composers' Union meeting that "Symphony No. 4" would redeem the composer and the symphony would prove to be Shostakovich's 'Eroica.'Fact|date=May 2008

An expedient work?

The personal quandary for Shostakovich was whether to submit a work true to his artistic conventions or one the authorities would find pleasing. This might mean writing a symphony that emulated the style of Nikolai Myaskovsky's socialist realist Sixteenth Symphony, "The Aviators", or Vissarion Shebalin's song-symphony "The Heroes of Perekop". Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not such a work. It contained nothing placatory at all in it, having been conceived before the "Pravda" attacks. It was easily the most extreme symphony he had written or would write. However, if Stalin was waiting to hear what Shostakovich would submit next, that work would have to at least "appear" to follow official policy. [MacDonald, 108 + ft. 1.]

Showing the new symphony to friends did not help. One asked, frightened, what Shostakovich thought the reaction from "Pravda" would be—in other words, what the reaction from Stalin would be. Shostakovich jumped up from the piano, scowling, replying sharply, "I don't write for "Pravda", but for myself." ["Muzykal'naia akademiia", 4 (1997), 74.] Solomon Volkov maintains that Shostakovich meant the Fourth Symphony, especially the finale, as his "creative reply to unjust criticism." At the same time, Shostakovich probably could not help fearing Stalin's reaction if that reply became public. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 139.]

Despite the oppressive political climate, Shostakovich continued to plan for the symphony's premiere, scheduled by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra for December 11, 1936. The orchestra's then-music director, Fritz Stiedry, was a Viennese musician active in the Soviet Union since 1933, with a reputation as an able musician.Steinberg, 541.] The composer also secured Otto Klemperer to conduct the symphony's first performance outside the U.S.S.R.

Withdrawal

What happened next remains unclear. At some point during rehearsals, Shostakovich withdrew the symphony, claiming that the finale needed reworking. The "Pravda" articles on his work may have been a major factor, with "Lady Macbeth" pulled from every major opera house in the country as a result.Steinberg, 542.] While the composer had gone unmolested in other respects, there was the potential for terrible reprisals after a second offense. Nineteen-thirty-six was also the year of the Moscow show trials, the high point of the opening phase of the Great Purge. Knowing how the government dealt with its enemies, which included people in the arts as well as politicians, could not be avoided or ignored.Steinberg, 542.] Meanwhile Stiedry, apparently terrified at the prospect of conducting any work by an enemy of the People, continued making an appalling mess of the symphony even after 10 increasingly tense rehearsals with the orchestra.MacDonald, 108.]

Another, very different explanation is that Shostakovich may have truly not been satisfied with the symphony. As late as a year and a half before his death, he said in a BBC television documentary that despite his repeated attempts at revising the Fourth Symphony, he did not think he had succeeded in getting the work right. This still does not totally rule out that even in 1974, the composer thought it best not to bring up the 1936 "Pravda" article and stay with the explanation he had given all along. It is also possible that both political expediency and musical judgment played roles in Shostakovich's decision to hide his Fourth Symphony. What cannot be determined is how much weight each of these values occupied in his decision.Steinberg, 542.]

Through the coming years, he was questioned on the absence of the Fourth Symphony and gave varying explanations as to why he had withdrawn it. In an interview during the late 1950s, Shostakovich explained that the symphony had parts he did not like and felt the work as a whole suffered from "grandiosomania," giving the impression that the piece was beyond repair.MacDonald, 108.] Recently, Shostakovich's friend Isaak Glikman stated in his book "Diary of a Friendship" that the symphony was withdrawn because of pressure exerted on the Leningrad Philharmonic's manager from party officials. He also defended Fritz Stiedry's musicianship against Shostakovich's allegations in "Testimony" of incompetence.

Regardless of the exact reasons for his doing so, Shostakovich's withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony may, at the very least, have saved his career. He lost a tremendous amount of income from the lack of performance of his works during this period but made up for at least part of it by writing film music. Thus, in official eyes, he had sacrificed his potentially "formalistic" symphony ("formalistic" meaning unneeded by the masses) and plunging into an area where his talents were needed. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 143, 145.] It did not hurt that Stalin was an avid film enthusiast, fascinated with all aspects of the industry. [Volkov, "'Shostakovich and Stalin", 130-131.]

Belated premiere

Placed in a drawer, the manuscript for the Fourth Symphony was lost during World War II. Shostakovich rewrote the work in two-piano form from his initial sketches in 1946. In the early 1960s, a librarian at the Leningrad Philharmonic found all of the instrumental parts in the orchestra's archives and the orchestral score was quickly reconstructed, note-for-note, as it stood when Shostakovich withdrew it back in 1936. "Symphony No. 4" was then entrusted to the conductor Kyril Kondrashin and finally premiered on December 30 1961 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. [MacDonald, 108 + ft. 1.] The Western premiere took place at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival.

Soviet critics were excited at the prospect of finding a major missing link in Shostakovich's creative oevre yet refrained from value-laden comparisons, placing the Fourth Symphony firmly in its chronological context and exploring its significance as an interim step to the more polished Fifth Symphony. Western critics were more overtly judgmental. Especially since the Fourth was premiered back-to-back with the Twelth Symphony at the 1962 Edinburg Festival, the critical succcess of the Fourth alongside the critical disdain of the Twelth led to speculation that Shostakovich's creative powers were on the wane. [Fay, 226.]

"Grandiosimania"

Some have surmised the Fourth Symphony portrays a personal crisis in the composer's life. Others consider it a grandiose panorama Soviet society in the making, with its gigantic crescendi as heroic and triumphant. Music writer Hugh Ottaway considered the work "on any normal reckoning greatly overscored—but there is no doubt that the effect of physical assault is deliberate." In other words, as Ian MacDonald suggests, the Fourth Symphony is to some point a work "about" "grandiosomania," rather than one which merely displays it. The work, on one level, concerns giganticism while its gigantic orchestra is in itself partly a comment on the same issue.MacDonald, 109.]

"Gigantomania" was used by economist Nicholas de Basily to describe the mood of public life in the Soviet Union during the First and Second Five Year Plans. National consciousness went from inferiority to the West to a tremendous boastfulness which quickly divorced itself from reason. Production quotas were reported "overfilled" by 10 times or more. Already ambitious estimates were inflated into, in de Basily's words, "astronomical figures and projections on a planetary scale." Eventually, this outer inflation produced correspondent inner distortions. A national taste for self-display and theatricality found new, more grandiose expression in the show trials. Similarly, a national love for the fantastic lie ("vranyo") became institutionalized in government statistics and official language; from there it blended seamlessly with the outright lie ("lozh") of conventional politics.MacDonald, 109.] In this context, physical and creative survival for the Soviet elite in the middle-to-late 1930s became a daily struggle.Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 135.]

Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was intended as a reflection of the Party's "social commission," to depict the new era in epic forms. Much attention had been paid to the problem of the Soviet symphony. The Composers' Union had held a three-day conference on the topic, in which Shostakovich had participated. Shostakovich started writing his Fourth Symphony with great hopes because its concept, language and dimensions were revolutionary—and huge—for the Russian symphony.Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 135.]

It would be easy to oversimplify the situation by reducing it to Stalin and his cultural advisors sending down instructions that the creative workers were to execute. The entire country was going through an immemse social upheaval which changed public consciousness and perception while also creating a new audience. Colossal artistic problems arose, with no suggestions on solving them. In this situation, each artist was attempting to find his or her own answers and artistic voice, just as Shostakovich was trying to do in the Fourth Symphony. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 135-136.]

Influence of Mahler

The symphony is strongly influenced by Gustav Mahler, whose symphonies Shostakovich had studied by the time he wrote his Fourth. (Friends remembered seeing Mahler's Seventh Symphony on Shostakovich's piano at that time.) The length, the huge orchestra used for giant crescendi and a persistent use of "banal" melodic material all comes from Mahler, [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 136.] and Mahler's Sixth Symphony served as a model for Shostakovich in the first movement. [Leonard, 1258.]

While the second movement is a "ländler"-like scherzo cast in a deceptively simple A-B-A-B-A form. This eerie scherzo, at times reminiscent of the "scherzi" from Mahler's Second and Seventh symphonies, the third and final movement begins with the most Mahlerian music Shostakovich would write—a funeral march in C minor reminiscent of the first two movements of Mahler's Fifth Symphony and the orchestral interlude to the final song in "Das Lied von der Erde". [Steinberg, 545.] This march becomes the dominant motif of the movement—perhaps appropriate since Shostakovich began this movement after the "Pravda" articles appeared. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 136-137.]

Encryptions

Encryption was practiced by many Soviet artists during the Great Purge. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 138.] Shostakovich was no exception. He wanted to give his listeners not only the general character of the emotions he wanted to express, but to be as specific and concrete as possible. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 137.] The best-known example in his work is his four-note theme DSCH. Part of this encryption takes the form of quotation from Shostakovkch's own music as well as that of others. Those who knew those musical works were "in the know" to what Shosatkovich was expressing. In the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, one of the repeated leitmotifs is the "police" march from "Lady Macbeth". [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 136.] The melody of the funeral march which begins the finale resembles the theme of the final song in Mahler's song cycles "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (usually rendered as 'Songs of a Wayfarer', but very literally, 'Songs of a Travelling Comrade, Companion, or Journeyman'). The text for this song contains the words, "Num hab' ich ewig Leid und Grämen!" This translates in English to "Sorrow and grief are now with me forever!"Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 137.]

At the end of the finale, Shostakovich inserts two telling quotes. The first is from the opening of Act 2 of Igor Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex". This work was well known to Shostakovich as well as his fellow Leningrad musicians. The Latin text for the musical passage he quotes is, "Gloria! Laudibus regina Iocasta in pestilentibus Thebis." This passage translates in English to, "Glory! We hail Queen Jocasta in pestilent Thebes." In other words, Shostakovich was drawing a parallel between Stalinist Russia and the plague-ridden city of Greek tragedy. This quote also draws an indiret inference to Alexander Pushkin's short play, "Pir vo vremya chumy (Пир во время чумы)"; the title of which translates in English as "A Feast During the Plague".Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 137.]

The second quotation is also from Stravinsky, this time from the finale of "The Firebird". The last moments of Stravinsky's ballet are filled with relief and triumph over the death of Kashchei the Immortal, the evil sorcerer and ruler of the Rotten Kingdom. By quoting from this music, Volkov claims, Shostakovkch was incanting, "Die, Kaschei-Stalin! Die! Be gone, Rotten Kingdom!" This could be considered the first time Shostakovich pens a musical characterization of Stalin, a practice he would practice much more fully in the Tenth Symphony. [Volkov, "Shostakovich and Stalin", 138.]

Recordings

Recordings of the work include:
*Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra/Andrey Boreyko (Hänssler Classic)
*Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra/Kyrill Kondrashin (Melodiya, Aulos)
*Staatskapelle Dresden/Kyrill Kondrashin (Profil)
*Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Kyrill Kondrashin (RCO Live)
*Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra/Gennady Rozhdestvensky (Russian Disc)
*U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra/Gennady Rozhdestvensky (Melodiya)
*Philharmonia Orchestra/Gennady Rozhdestvensky (BBC Classics; recording of the western premiere)
*Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy (Sony)
*WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne/Semyon Bychkov (Avie)
*City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (EMI)
*Kirov Orchestra/Valery Gergiev (Philips)
*Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mariss Jansons (EMI)
*Scottish National Orchestra/Neeme Jarvi (Chandos)
*Gurzenich Orchestra/Dmitri Kitaenko (Capriccio)
*Philadelphia Orchestra/Myung-Whun Chung (Deutsche Grammophon)
*BBC Phiharmonic/Vassily Sinaisky (CD from Aug. '02 issue of BBC Music Magazine Live recording at the BBC Proms, July 20th 2000)
*Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Andre Previn (EMI) 1977
*Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink (CSO Resound) 2008 includes bonus DVD
*London Philharmonic Orchestra/Bernard Haitink (Decca)
*St. Louis Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin (RCA/BMG)
*Prague Symphony Orchestra/Maxim Shostakovich (Supraphon)
*Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca)
*Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra/Herbert Kegel (Weitblick)
*Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra/Ladislav Slovák (Naxos Records)
*Colin Stone and Rustem Hayroudinoff, pianists (arrangement for two pianos) (Chandos)
*National Symphony Orchestra, Washington D.C./Mstislav Rostropovich (Teldec)
*WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne/Rudolf Barshai (Brilliant Classics, Regis)
*London Symphony Orchestra/Mstislav Rostropovich (Andante)
*Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan/Oleg Caetani (Arts)

The last two recordings also include performances of the surviving original drafts of the Fourth Symphony's first movement.

References

Bibliography

* Fay, Laurel E. "Shostakovich: A Life" (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-19-518251-0.
*Freed, Richard, Notes for RCA/BMG 60887: "Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4"; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin.
*Layton, Robert, ed. Robert Simpson, "The Symphony: Volume 2, Mahler to the Present Day" (New York: Drake Publishing, Inc., 1972). ISBN 87749-245-X.
*Leonard, James, "All Music Guide to Classical Music" (San Francisco: Backbeat books, 2005). ISBN 0-87930-865-8.
*Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, "A History of Russian Music: From "Kamarinskaya "to" Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
*Scharz, Boris, "Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia: Enlarged Edition, 1917-1981" (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). ISBN 0-253-33956-1.
*cite book | last=Spencer | first=William |title=The Fourth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich: an analysis (M.M. thesis) | location=Boston | publisher=Boston University | year=1985
*Steinberg, Michael, "The Symphony" (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). ISBN 0-19-506177-2.
*Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, "Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). ISBN 0-375-41082-1.

External links

* [http://www.sfsymphony.org/templates/pgmnote.asp?nodeid=3668&callid=792 Program Note from the San Francisco Symphony]