Perspectives - by CH Loh
|
|
For decades since its conception, the 7th Symphony (Leningrad) has been considered one of the most audacious depictions of war ever encapsulated in the genre of symphony. The infamous "invasion theme" has since been the subject of ridicule, the fate of the symphony sealed by Bartok's mockery of the incessantly repetitive theme in his own Concerto For Orchestra.
And its reputation as a patriotic call to the defence of freedom from Fascists has forever been cast in stone by the significant role in which the symphony played in the war propaganda. In the 40s it was heroic. After the war it became a dated piece of poster music.
Generations later listeners like myself have approached the work with little more than curiosity and a full measure of cynicism. Richard Taruskin's commentary in Bartlett puts it in a nutshell when he described the Leningrad thus: "This hulking programmatic symphony, this bombastic anachronism replete with omomatopoetical battle music and cyclic thematic dramaturgy, emerged like some sort of woolly mammoth out of the Stalinist deep freeze. Its rhetoric was shamelessly inflated .... the crass methods by which its message was mongered assaulted fastidious tastes just as brutishly as the invaders could be heard assaulting Russia with a mind-numbing march that brazenly appropriated the surefire formula of Bolero ... the very cynosure of the middlebrow. .... The war. This debasement of musical values was being carried out in the name of the same holy humanitarian cause that dominated the daily headlines."
Until the appearance of Testimony and Ian MacDonald's own re-interpretation of the work, the enduring view of this woolly mammoth has prevented us from properly understanding and appreciating this work for its full worth. Bartok's contemptuously sniggering trombones would forever play in the back of our minds.
And while passages in Testimony try to set the record straight, the bitter row over its authenticity has made it even more difficult to re-assess the work without incurring the indignation of those who insist that since Testimony was an unreliable source, nothing in it could be taken seriously. The woolly mammoth thus remains buried under a permafrost of preconception and an equally impenetrable crust of misunderstanding.
Is it possible to rehabilitate the Leningrad without involving Testimony? Today, with the wealth of information that has emerged from Russia, there is a distinct possibility. The biggest crack in the ice may be a recent article by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in the DSCH Journal (Spring 2001), where the poet quotes Shostakovich as saying: "One of my pre-war symphonies was about our own native fears, arrests. And "they" began to interpret my music, putting all the emphasis on Hitler's Germany."
The key word here is "pre-war symphony". Authors of Shostakovich Reconsidered, Allan Ho and Dmitry Feofanov, have argued extensively on the premise that the Leningrad was indeed conceived before the war, even if it was penned shortly after the onset of Hitler's attack. Here Yevtushenko provides a quote from the composer essentially saying the very same thing.
The composer in his conversations with the poet refers to a "pre-war" symphony as having been unwittingly attributed to Hitler's Germany. That can only point to one symphony - the 7th. Neither the 5th nor 6th has ever attracted connections of this sort.
What can this mean? That the dates of composition are wrong, or that the ageing composer had gotten his facts mixed up? A third possibility emerges, one that reveals the composer's impression of one of his most extensive symphonies, as it appears in his mind. To the composer, whose great love for the symphony can be seen in the account of how it was one of the few things he took with him as he fled the city (see Wilson), the Leningrad was about the Great Terror, and possibly dedicated to the memory of those who were lost to its madness.
Such a strong impression that persists late in life offers a strong clue to the intent in which the symphony was conceived, and from the possibility that a significant part of the work was indeed worked out in his head before war broke out. There is no contradiction in the facts, neither with the dates of composition nor with the circumstances of war that poignantly surrounds the birth of the work as a completed score.
It is without doubt the war had a profound impact on the completed symphony. Accounts in Wilson can show this. But the most dramatic portrayal of invasion that scholars claim so obviously portrays the war now seems to have been sketched in 1939. At any rate, looking at the chronology, this movement was completed even before Leningrad was besieged (Hitler's troops surrounded Leningrad only in October). Therefore it might be possible to argue that the real impact of the war may not have sufficiently hit the composer at the time when he so eloquently portrayed the city's invasion and devastation.
That is not to say the war had nothing to do with the symphony or vice versa, what is more fundamental to scholars and to listeners alike is what the composer set out to say when he conceived the work in his mind. This surely is the key that will unlock the symphony's deepest secrets. It is indeed a puzzle why scholars so fear trying out this key to see if it fits the lock, fearful perhaps that it might unlock the doors to an entirely new meaning to a work they thought they had understood all too well.
But if we are interested in the work of Shostakovich at all, we should want to understand why the composer clutched so tightly to this woolly mammoth as he boarded the train out of a Leningrad under siege. To do so we must re-examine our assessment of the work's musical worth. It meant a great deal to the composer, it must certainly represent a whole lot more than "defence music" (as Shostakovich put it to Levitin), surely?
Conceived before the war? >> for more, see Collected Commentary
Further Testimonies:
What does the work mean? >> for more, see Collected Commentary
Yuri Levitin recounted by Leo Mazel (Sovetskaya Muzyka 1991) - "I met Shostakovich in Leningrad in Aug 1941 and he told me, 'you know, I've just written some defence music....' DD invited me to his home and played me the newly completed first movement...."
Flora Litvinova - Shostakovich told her "this music is about terror, slavery, the bondage of spirit." Says Litvinova, "later when he started to trust me, he told me straight out that the 7th was not just about Fascism, but also about our system, about any tyranny and totalitarianism in general." (Wilson)
Aram Khatchaturian - In Oct 1941 Shostakovich played the work to his fellow composer and remarked, "Forgive me, will you, if this reminds you of Ravel's Bolero," (Wilson)
Isaak Glikman - "..at the beginning of August, Shostakovich telephoned me and asked me to come to his apartment ... sat down at the piano and played the magnificent, noble exposition of the Seventh Symphony..... We sat on, plunged in silence, broken at last by Shostakovich with these words (I have them written down): 'I don't know what the fate of this piece will be.' After a further pause, he added: 'I suppose that critics with nothing better to do will damn me for copying Ravel's Bolero. Well, let them. That is how I hear war.' I believe that on that memorable August day Shostakovich was still unaware of the titanic scale of his symphony, for which a fate unique in the history of music was already in preparation. Parting, we embraced and kissed, not suspecting that before us lay a prolonged separation."
(Glikman, Pisma k dugu)
Leo Mazel - (on the Litvinova testimony, "here, three decades before
Shostakovich talks with Volkov, everything is said. One cannot add anything:
the invasion episode possesses an antifascist, antitotalitarian character in
a wider sense ..." and later talks of a "typical Shostakovich sequence ,,, V-VI-V-VII-V
in natural minor. Depending on the context it can express grief, darkness or
pathetic fury ,,,, in Katerina Ismailova's aria, the climax of the first movement
of the 5th symphony [and briefly in the Finale in the bass - CH]; at
the beginning of the second of the Romances on Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva, and
in the main theme of the finale of the 7th [notable in the final 'victorious'
bars- CH]. ... Mravinsky didn't understand the finales of the 5th and the
7th, thinking the composer's intention had been to express exultation"
(Leo Mazel - Sovetskaya Muzyka 1991, reproduced in Shostakovich Reconsidered)
Yevgeny Yevtushenko - While discussing the composition of Babi Yar Shostakovich
tells him, "One of my pre-war symphonies was about
our own native fears, arrests. And "they" began to interpret my music, putting
all the emphasis on Hitler's Germany. Do you have any other poems.... about
fears? For me this is a unique opportunity to speak my mind ..... then no one
will be able to ascribe a different meaning to my music."
(DSCH Journal Summer 2001)
|
26/6/39 |
Sketch of invasion theme bears this date |
| -/8/1939 |
Soviet Union and Germany sign a non-agression pact |
|
-/10/1939 |
Completes 6th Symphony, begins work on Boris Godunov (cpte Jun 40) |
| -/12/1939 |
Meyerhold dies in prison |
|
31/5/41 |
Meeting on the programme for the 41-42 season of Leningrad Phil decides to include 7th Symphony. In May Yuly Vankop also reports some news of the composing of the 7th Symphony |
|
22/6/41 |
Hitler launches surprise attack |
|
19/7/41 |
Work begins on the Symphony |
|
29/8 - Ist Mvt completed |
|
|
17/9 - 2nd & 3rd Mvts completed |
|
| -/9/41 | Leningrad is besieged by German forces |
|
1/10/41 |
Shostakovich evacuates Leningrad |
|
27/12/41 |
The finale is completed in Kuibyshev and played to friends, incl Litvinova |
|
5/3/42 |
Symphony receives premiere |
(sources: Wilson, Ho/Feofanov, MacDonald, Fay)