SHOSTAKOVICH, DMITRI DMITRIEVICH

(1906–1975), highly controversial composer, at the same time outstanding musical representative of the Soviet Union and tragic figure in tension between acceptance and rejection of his music by the Soviet regime.

Dmitry Shostakovich's acculturation and his musical training at the Petrograd, then Leningrad, conservatory took place in the new Soviet state. Overnight Shostakovich rose to fame with a rousing performance of his first symphony in 1926. He was seen as a beacon of hope in Soviet music. The young composer succeeded in fulfilling the high-flying expectations in the following years. Over-whelming applause was given to the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District(1934). This coarsely realistic work based on a novel by Nikolay Leskov was celebrated as a first milestone in the development of a genuine Soviet musical theatre. In 1936, however, a devastating review based on ideological criteria was published in Pravda. Shostakovich was caught—after Josef Stalin had watched the opera with greatest displeasure—in the trap of the aggressive, intrigue-dominated cultural policy. The composer was branded in public as aesthetizing formalist and his work as extreme left abnormality. These typical expressions of Soviet politico-cultural discourse meant that his music was too dissonant and complicated for Party taste. Ensuing condemnations not only by the officialdom but even by previously enthusiastic fellow composers greatly worried Shostakovich, as did the arrest and execution of his friend and patron Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the course of the Great Terror in 1937.

Nonetheless, during the same year he managed to rehabilitate himself with his fifth symphony. In fact, the work signals a clear stylistic turn to a more moderate musical language, but to attribute this exclusively to political pressure seems misguided. Previous works indicate a break with aesthetic radicalism; moreover, Shostakovich practiced all his life through diverse styles of composition. He even wrote operetta-like light music, which cannot be dismissed simply as reluctantly performed commissioned work. From the end of the 1930s, however, Shostakovich successfully developed forms of musical expression that realized his aesthetical ideas and at the same time met the demands of Socialist Realism for comprehensibility and popular appeal: lending a sugar coating to the core of bleak criticism of Stalin's abuse of power and the whole "system", through satire, irony and caustic humor. His individuality and heterogeneity, his inclination toward the grotesque and sarcasm, and the profound seriousness and expressiveness of his works left the audience fascinated, but again and again provoked conflicts with the official state organs. In spite of vehement accusations in 1948, he soon was integrated again into the Soviet music elite, but only the Thaw following Stalin's death made general conditions more favorable for the composer and his oeuvre. During his last two decades he could act as a respected personality of Soviet cultural life.

Shostakovich and his work have been highly disputed and exposed to ideologically charged interpretations. Shostakovich was seen as a faithful communist,a defender of Jews, an opportunistic conformist, an outspoken critic-dissident, and an oppressed genius, all in one.

In any case, he was a Soviet citizen, who, like many others, stood by his home country but also got in trouble with its officials. Regardless of all political factors, he was one of the outstanding composers of the Soviet Union and perhaps the last great symphonist of music history.