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Political Influences on the Music of Shostakovich Cory McKay Departments of Music and Computer Science University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 2W 1 As a highly successful composer who com- of Revolutionary Martyrs, all of which I pleted his musical education in the immediate wrote between the ages of nine and eleven.3 aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and con- tinued to write music in the Soviet Union up These influences were still very much pre- until his death in 1975, Dmitry Shostakovich is sent in Shostakovich‘s early symphonic compo- a very important figure in Soviet music history. sitions. The 1925 First of May Symphony relies Musical development in the USSR was strictly heavily on sounds from the urban environment monitored and controlled by the state, making and public ritual, including massed choral sing- the evolution of Shostakovich‘s music directly ing, oratorical flourishes, workers‘ songs and 4 linked to the political climate of the Soviet Un- pioneer marches. In his Second Symphony, ion, in both obvious and subtle ways. entitled Dedication to October and premiered in 1927, Shostakovich incorporated a factory whis- During the early 1920‘s, before Stalin tle into the music. fully consolidated his power, artists were given a relatively large degree of freedom in their As time went on, the political influ- work. Of course, they were usually observers or ences on Soviet composers in general began to active participants in the political events of the become something less than voluntary. Criti- time, and it is to be expected that this influence cism was increasingly mounting against com- often appeared in their work. Shostakovich was posers who wrote music appealing to —bour- certainly no exception. geois“ tastes. For example, Shostakovich‘s 1928 opera, The Nose, was criticized in the media for Although he was not especially politically its ideological flaws and esoteric style. active as a youth, Shostakovich‘s personal let- ters to Tanya Glivenko, written at a time where The political influence on music was insti- there was not yet reason to fear taking an anti- tutionalized when the RAPM (Russian Associa- Bolshevik stance if he had so chosen, reveal that tion of Proletarian Musicians) came to have an he was certainly supportive of Communism.1 As almost irresistible influence on the development 5 a young conservatory student, Shostakovich of Soviet music between 1929 and 1932. Given often volunteered to perform for Red Army sol- power by a 1928 resolution of the Central Com- diers and factory workers.2 mittee of the Communist Party, the RAPM position was very strongly anti-modern, anti- Political influences manifested themselves jazz, anti-W estern and often anti-classical. even in Shostakovich‘s earliest work. As he Composers of the old styles were denounced, himself wrote: with only Beethoven and Musorgsky being ex- empted because of their association with the Events of the First W orld W ar and the Feb- 6 revolutionary tradition. The goal of this organi- ruary and October Revolutions stirred ve- hement emotions in our family. Even what I wrote as a child in those years showed a 3 N. V. Lukyanova, Shostakovich, trans. Yu. trend to give vent to my reactions in real Shirokov (Neptune City, N. J.: Paganiniana life. My first naïve attempts at composition Publications Inc., 1984), 17. were my piano pieces Soldier, A Hymn to 4 Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich A Life (Oxford: Freedom and A Funeral March in Memory Oxford University Press, 2000), 53. 5 Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, (Bloomington: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 1983), 58. 1 Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich A Life (Oxford: 6 Richard Taruskin, "Public lies and unspeak- Oxford University Press, 2000), 36. able truth interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth 2 Ibid., 20. Symphony," Shostakovich Studies, ed. David zation was to eliminate all music that was not the demands of the RAPM. The Third Sym- directly relevant and accessible to the working phony is filled with the music of two Commu- classes. Composers were instructed to spurn all nist youth groups, the Young Pioneers and the styles that had flourished under the Tsars, and to Komsomols.9 concentrate on the march-like massovaya pes- nya, the mass song, through which proletarian Shostakovich did manage to get around the ideology could be disseminated. limitations of the RAPM at times, but only to a very limited extent. In his ballet The Golden These demands were backed by very real Age, Shostakovich based his work on the juxta- dangers to those who refused to comply. In position of music of —unearthly eroticism“ de- 1930, the magazine The Worker and the Theatre rived from W estern culture, such as the foxtrot, published announcements calling upon the Su- tango and cancan, and music of the Soviet pro- preme Court of the USSR —to give no quarter to letariat, such as marches and pioneer songs. warmongers, wreckers or counter revolutionar- This was done to contrast the —depravity“ of ies . we demand that wreckers should be bourgeois culture with the —healthiness“ of pro- shot“ alongside information about rehearsals for letariat culture. He was criticized even for this The Nose.7 Shostakovich‘s fellow composer, oblique and satirical inclusion of non- Alexander Mosolov, was branded an enemy of proletarian music, however. the people in 1929 and was finally executed in Shostakovich finally rebelled against the 1937. The effect of this on Shostakovich and limitations that were being imposed on his mu- other composers soon became apparent. Asked sic. He wrote an article in 1931 entitled —Decla- in 1930 what audience he wrote for, ration of a Composer‘s Duties“ that attacked the Shostakovich answered, —I live in the USSR, musical establishment in the theatre world. In it, work actively and count naturally on the worker he denounced all of his own theatre and film and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensi- music. He wrote in addition: ble to them I should be deported.“8 Of the eleven major scores that It is no secret to anyone that, at the four- Shostakovich wrote between 1929 and 1931, ten teenth anniversary of the October Revolu- were written for the stage or film. He had no tion, the situation on the musical front is choice in this, as the influence of the RAPM catastrophic. W e composers answer for the situation on the musical front. And I am made it impossible to make a living if one deeply convinced that it is precisely the wished to write more —serious“ art music. Like universal flight of composers into the thea- many other composers, he retreated to film and ter that has created such a situation.10 theatre music for fear of what would happen if he did not. Shostakovich continued along this vein by The content of the plays and films he criticizing the RAPM‘s position at a conference held by the cultural commissar, Andrey Bub- scored was, of course, very pro-Communist. 11 Examples of productions he wrote music for nov, in 1932. On the same day, the Commu- include The Shot, about railroad workers strug- nist Party passed a resolution entitled —On the gling against bureaucrats, Virgin Lands, about Reconstruction of Literary-Artistic Organiza- socialist collectivization of farms and The tions,“ which liquidated the RAPM. The Union Golden Mountains, which showed the progress of Soviet Composers was formed, and of an ignorant and oppressed peasant towards Shostakovich was elected to the governing class consciousness. Even the single major board of the Leningrad branch. Soviet compos- piece that he wrote in this period that was not ers were now permitted a freer reign in their for the stage or film was strongly influenced by compositions, and were once again able to write concert pieces beyond the realm of marches and mass songs. Shostakovich and his contemporar- Fanning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 19. 7 Manashir Yakubov, "The Golden Age: the true 9 N. V. Lukyanova, Shostakovich, trans. Yu. story of the premiere," Shostakovich Studies. ed. Shirokov (Neptune City, N. J.: Paganiniana David Fanning (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- Publications Inc., 1984), 67. sity Press, 1995), 199. 10 Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich A Life (Oxford: 8 Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 64. Oxford University Press, 2000), 55. 11 Ibid., 65. 2 ies were encouraged by this development, to the At the same time as our critics–including extent that both Prokofiev and Gorky soon after musical critics–swear by the name of So- decided to return to the Soviet Union. cialist Realism, in Shostakovich‘s work the stage presents us with the coarsest natural- Although Shostakovich continued to ism.13 write music that was very much in keeping with the general ideology of the Communist Party, On February 6, 1936, a second article enti- he now had a great deal more freedom in the tled —Balletic Falsity“ appeared in Pravda. This artistic content of his music. Even in terms of article attacked Shostakovich and his collabora- programmatic content, Soviet critics were some- tors for their work on The Limpid Stream. This times over-exuberant in their claims of how ballet was criticized both for its politically in- deeply these ideas were incorporated into his correct portrayal of collective farms and its music. As Shostakovich himself wrote in 1933: avoidance of folk songs and dances. These Pravda articles were milestones in W hen a critic, in Rabochiy I Teatr or Ve- chernyaya krasnaya gazeta, writes that in the development of Soviet music, and were such-and-such a symphony Soviet civil meant to be a clear indication to all composers, servants are represented by the oboe and not just Shostakovich, of what would and would the clarinet, and Red Army men by the not be acceptable in their work.

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