Where is Eric-2022.04

Given the news these days, I’m finding it hard to come up with some light-hearted bit of trivia, so this month’s missive will be a bit of a downer as I muse briefly about the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.  For those of you unfamiliar with him, Shostakovich is considered by many folks to be one of, if not the, greatest composer(s) of the 20th century.  But Shostakovich had the misfortune of living during the terror reign of Stalin.

Numerous biographies (and historical fiction novels) have been written about Shostokovish, so I’ll give the bare outline along with several details that jump out at me.   Shostakovich was recognized early on as a musical genius and in the 1920s and early 1930s his works were performed worldwide to great acclaim.  But his troubles started in the mid 1930s with the release of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mstensk District.  The opera was performed numerous times bioth in Russia and internationally, but is very dark and the music is most definitiely not easy listening.  The turning point came in January 1936 when Stalin himself attended a performance of the opera – and Stalin walked out in the middle of the performance.  Uh-oh.  Several days later, he was denounced in Pravda; the article (possibly written by Stalin himself) said that the opera “ignored the demand of Soviet culture that all courseness and savagery be abolished from every corner of Soviet life”.  

From that moment on, Shostakovich was a marked man living in fear for his life.  For the next few years, he was convinced that he would be either sent to Siberia or executed.   He kept a suitcase packed with warm clothes and slept outside his apartment so that when the KGB came for him they wouldn’t disturb his family.  However, Shostakovich was too famous & important to be “disappeared”.  Long story short, he was given a chance to make amends and he composed a simple tuneful symphony (his 5th) which was sub-titled A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.  Dang – talk about groveling.  Of course this is a condensed version of events.  There’s a pretty good outline here if you’re curious.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in a society where a bad review could get you sent to prison or executed.  Living here in America, the worst thing that could happen to me if I got a bad review is my feelings might get hurt.   That said, even here in America if you write the wrong music it can land you in prison.

I think about these things in part because the New York Composer’s Circle (of which I’m a member) has been co-hosting concerts with a counterpart organization in Moscow – we put on a concert of their compositions here in New York and they hold a concert of our compositions Back in the USSR.  Here is their performance of my Divertimento for Violin & Viola a la Bartok a few years ago.   NYCC is currently attempting to hold another concert exchange in the fall.  So far, Putin has not shown any significant interest in controlling Russian music, but given the current situation there’s no telling what will happen in the future.

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