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Editorial Review Product Description
Until the publication of "Testimony", the memoirs he dictated to journalist Solomon Volkov, few doubted that Dmitri Shostakovich was a son of the Russian Revolution, whose music celebrated its triumphs, and who devoted his life to the ideals of socialist humanism and internationalism. This biography of Shostakovich repudiates reservations about the precise nature of Volkov's book, to reveal a "new Shostakovich" - a man who had no sympathy with Communism and was forced to build subtle or coded communication into his music to defy the artistic conventions of the Stalinist state. In addition to presenting this new view of the composer, the book also encourages a reappraisal of his music in the light of its new-found meaning and the manner of its creation. ... Read more Customer Reviews (5) 
Building on sand
This is a passionate and powerful book, which has won Shostakovich's music many new admirers; but has it served the cause of truth? MacDonald takes the presentation of Shostakovich in Volkov's Testimony as Gospel Truth and extends to the main body of the composer's work Volkov's contention that even Shostakovich's most seemingly conformist works contain a secret anti-Stalin and indeed anti-Soviet code. But this is building on sand, since Volkov's work is of more than dubious authenticity (see now Richard Taruskin, On Russian Music, 318-21). Moreover, MacDonald's translation of Shostakovich scores into detailed political messages is not only fanciful but misunderstands the very nature of music, with its lack of specific and univocal reference (except, by and large, when setting a text). Another flaw is that MacDonald follows Volkov into describing Shostakovich as a 'holy fool', which is entirely to misunderstand both: holy fools, while remaining entirely orthodox in their inner beliefs (as least according to their biographers), behaved shockingly in public in order to mock society and to win abuse and maltreatment for themselves. Shostakovich, in contrast, became disillusioned with the Soviet system in private, but acted on the surface as an obedient servant of the regime -- a compromise that he shared with the great majority of the Russian population. One can appreciate the depth and eloquence of his music without trying to turn him into a hero or prophet.
An enduring look into terrible times and the double entendre of Shostakovich's music
British musicologist Ian MacDonald's The New Shostakovich first appeared around 1990 and was revised this decade with Frank Clarke's additional material, footnoted and corrected information, and other extras that help you understand the history, times and music of Soviet composer Dmitri Shotakovich (1906-75), whose dark and despairing music hides its messages better than Solomon Volkov told you in Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (Limelight), the mind-bending biography from Shostakovich that turned everyone's ideas about the man and his music upside down in 1975.
To this end, it is actually two different books; MacDonald did not survive to make the 2006 revisions. While much of the content is the same, the original edition questions the authenticity of Testimony and takes issue with its characterization of the composer and his work. The later account turns 180 degrees and credits Testimony as a potent and accurate account of the composer's life, beliefs and feelings during his days as the Soviet Union's greatest composer. For this reason, it is important that purchasers buy the later edition, which my review covers.
The book is divided into the sections of the composer's life, from his earliest family life and influences to his years in academy, the great Stalin purge of the 1930s, his isolation in the post-Stalin years and his assertive period at the end of his life. What best characterizes MacDonald's book is the way he dissects the composer's music, both musicologically and sociologically, and explains the meanings that come through under the guise of masterful counterpoint and training. While many of these messages were made clear by the composer himself in "Testimony", there is secondary evidence here that, using native folk tunes and other devices that deliver subliminal messages, Shostakovich was clearly a dissident voice in the Soviet Union going back at least as far as the composition of the Symphony No. 4 in the early 1930s.
Here is an overview of what MacDonald tells you about the 15 symphonies:
No. 1 -- this is the youthful composer's graduation exercise from the Soviet music academy. He uses subtle tactics from Stravinsky with fateful themes from Tchaikovsky to create one of the greatest first symphonies ever written.
Nos. 2 and 3 -- laboring under the heavy hammer of totalitarian, Shostakovich created nonsensical music dedicated to the revolution. This pair of symphonies should be abandoned by anyone with serious interest in this composer.
No. 4 -- this is Shostakovich spreading his wings, mimicking his admired Mahler, and beginning to tell you how horrible things were for him in the USSR. The cacophonous sections of the first movement are a musical expression for those what awaited a nighttime visit by the secret police, who were then taken off to the gulag for imagined crimes. Shostakovich himself feared such an event, sometimes sleeping in the hallway of his apartment to spare his family the torment of seeing him taken away.
No. 5 -- Shostakovich's famous response to "just criticism", this is the second of what MacDonald calls the "terror" symphonies -- those written during Stalin's regin of terror from the early 1930s until his death in 1953. A seeming paean to Soviet greatness, it's hidden message was explained eloquently by the composer in 'Testimony.' The famous ending, with what the composer called its forced rejoicing, was described by Galina Vishnevskaya as an expression of the sons and daughters of Russia being torn from its soil by Stalin. The composer described it this way: "...what exultation could there be? I think it is clear what happens in the Fifth," he said in 'Testimony.' "The rejoicing is forced, created under a threat...It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing' and you rise, shakily, and go marching off muttering, 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing,'" a capsulized comment on the goals of Socialist realism in USSR art.
No. 6 -- an intense, dramatic three movement edifice that heralds the platform of both the Violin Concerto No. 1 and Cello Concerto No. 1, it again calls forth the exegises of Soviet totalitarianism. Its lighter, later momments call forth Shostakovich as yurodivy, the clown price whose light message hides much darker secrets.
No. 7 -- written as the Nazis approached Leningrad and given worldwide recognition, MacDonald expounds on the composer's admission in "Testimony" that he was thinking about "other enemies of mankind" besides the Nazis when he wrote this, namely Stalin.
No. 8 -- the first great masterpiece symphony, MacDonaled explains that this is indeed about totalitarianism and the terror, with its unrelenting darkness and drive today better understood in these terms than during the war years.
No. 9 -- the yurodivy masterpiece, the absurd celebration of success in World War II with the section of Stalin puffing himself up like a frog, that Shostakovich survived over Stalin's disappointment.
No. 10 -- perhaps his greatest symphonic edifice, this music is a characterization of Stalin and his times with the second movement a caricature of the dictator.
No. 11 -- renewing the composer's comments in "Testimony", MacDonald further explains the parallel's between the Russian 1905 pre-revolution of the score and the Soviet military flattening of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
No. 12 -- written ostensibly to fete Lenin, this is more a bombshell dropped on the shortcomings of the revolutionary hero, with its underground message about repression carried forth from 1917 throughout Shostakovich's life.
No. 13 -- Baba yir is a selection of poems about Jewish represssion the composer set to music during the first thaw under Kruschev. While poet Yevtushenko was forced to rewrite some of his harsher rhetoric -- the Soviet state officially believed there was no ill treatment of Jews -- this is a dissident landmark for Shostakovich, who sympathized with Jews as a repressed minority.
No. 14 -- the songs of death hold numerous keys to second messages in one of the most fascinating sections of the entire book.
No. 15 -- while on its face this is about Shostakovich fiddling with favored music and expanding into serialism under Brezhnev, MacDonald tells you how this is a hidden expression of the composer's anger at the end of his creative life, having lived through the Stalin terror, seeing hundreds of his friends and intellectual equals disappear in the night, and being disappointed by two subsequent dictators, especially the echt-Stalinist Brehznev.
And this without citing a word about MacDonald's discussion of the composer's second-greatest group of compositions -- the string quartets -- and what he had to say about Soviet society in his vocal music. Appendices tell you about the 1948 musical denunication, the relative closeness to real Soviet society depicted in George Orwell's "1984", and other interesting and important slices from Shostakovich's life under the iron fist of Soviet rule. MacDonald skillfully merges musicology with history to give you a three-dimensional view of the composer's life and times, and how the two resulted in his musical visions.
While MacDonald's prose can sometimes be heavy seas on the eyes and mind, the discoveries awaiting the interested reader are worth the occasional literary mudslide. This isn't easy reading and it becomes a trial for a non-musician to understand in some sections, but it builds as it goes on and helps delineate the complex creations of the 20th century's greatest symphonist. Anyone investing in this little book will be rewarded with new understanding, even if they've read Testimony countless times.
A Disturbing Journey That Needs ToBe Taken
Unfortunately, when dealing with Shostakovich, politics becomes inextricably bound up with the fact of his survival and the shape his career took by that very act of surviving. After the hot breath of official reprimand by Stalin no less, Shostakovich's sarcastic edge and spontaneity became blunted by an internalised self consciousness. The sarcasm was still there, but not on obvious display, it had been encoded, otherwise he would not have survived. The plea for less politicisation of music is a worthy one but with composers from the Soviet Union during the first half of the twentieth century, this is virtually impossible when narrating their achievements. Even a strenuously apolitical composer such as Prokofiev was constantly caught up in the political quagmire much to his disillusionment. This is a music biography from a political perspective that helps decode some of Shostakovich's perplexing and ambiguous music, enabling us to enter more deeply into his disturbing yet very moving soundscape, loaded as it is with irony and emotion: Highly recommended!
If you like classical or contemporary music, please listen and stop reading
I frankly don't understand the political exploitation of Shostakovich's work in this country (USA). It is almost as bad as the very core of the Communist deal that all these books (Volkov in primis) try to undo or reveal. There is no Shostakovich's performance that does not have at least 80% of the notes describing how he was writing this music to mock Stalin; out of fear; because of pressure; because he wanted to try the regime's limits, etc. There is very little, in concert notes as well as in this book, about MUSIC. Was he a great composer? Do we like his music only because his life stirred so many opposite feelings? Do we care to analyze his relationship with Mahler's music, his many different styles (so Mahler cannot be the whole story!), the fact that he was married three times, that his son Maxim is also a conductor but not a composer (how could he with this load of genius in the background?). There is very little in these books about the structure of his (DHS's) work, besides of the usual cliché of the 4th symphony (try the regime's limits), the Fifth (Regime 1:DHS 0), etc. There is also little concerning the most of his opus, the wonderful chamber music and solo instrument music. This book barely mentions the music of the piano Trios (one short, one long, both incredible capolavori!). Maybe Leonard Bernstein was right: we often confuse music with literature and film, we are predominantly visual animals with an appetite for alphabets and grammar, and when it comes to C sharp we think about seeing an optometrist! If you like classical or contemporary music, please listen and stop reading these fake "biographies"! The author of the one I am reviewing here concludes that basically there is a "high probability" that Volkov was right, that if one "imagines" what was going through DHS's mind one can see his anti-whatever stance, etc. People who are egocentric to the point of having their head publicly examined write books, not symphonies!
A spirited reinterpretation of the Music of Remembrance
The Solomon Volkov revision or reinterpretation of Shostakovich's musicisfollowed here by MacDonald. He too sees Shostakovich as onewhoopposed the Soviet System and Stalin,while seeming to be a part of it. He outlines how Shostakovich's tragic and comic senses worked together to give his music layers of complexity and double- meaning. He too relates this toShostakovich'ssympathy for Jewish suffering, and his sense ofhow Jewish folk music mixed sadness and humor together.
MacDonald explores Shostakovich's life and career in relation to others , who suffered from the Soviet Regime,Babel, Akhmatova, Osip and Nadezhda Mandelshtam,Zamyatin, Pilnyak, Tsvetayeva. His knowledge of music is the music is great, and he provides interpretations of it which connect with the whole life- struggle of Shostakovich.
Here is one passage from the book which gives a sense of its flavor, and showsimmediately why it is such an outstanding work
"Conscience depends on memory. So relentlessly have Lenin's heirs striven to wipe the slate cleanthe national memory- first by shooting millions of Russians through the brain- stem, later by denying that such things ever happened- that almost all the creative energy of the country's artists and intellectuals since 1917 has gone into thegenre of the memoir. Plays, novels, poems- the majority of these too, are memoirs in disguise. Shostakovich's music is no different.Remembrance is his theme , and if he tells the same story over and over again it is because for him , as for every other Russian, there is no other story to tell.... Notwithstanding their mutual suspicion ,Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovich were co- workers in a massive effort to keep memory alive in Russia through mid twentieth century. Obsessed by the monstrous genocidal injustice of their country's political system, they return time and again in their works to the scene of the crime to paint its horror from a different angle or to bring fresh wreaths for those tens of millionsof graves."
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Laughable, yet cruel