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Papa,
what if they hang you for this? Vladimir
Ashkenazy
When Stalin denounced Shostakovich in 1936, was the composer in danger of being sent to the Gulag? Had he not appeared to comply with the Party's directive to write only music acceptable to the masses, the answer would certainly have been "yes" - and, even more certainly "yes" had he talked freely about the inner content of his music. Ironically, such was the arbitrariness of communist power that, even as a "good boy", Shostakovich might still have perished along with tens of millions of innocent Soviet citizens caught in the greatest terror history has ever known. But Stalin evidently decided otherwise: to use the already famous composer as a vehicle for Soviet cultural propaganda aimed at the naive West. Some Western musicologists have persuaded themselves that, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Shostakovich was "perhaps Soviet Russia's most loyal musical son" - a claim (proposed by the American scholar Richard Taruskin) for which there is no proof. Yet Shostakovich must have sensed that it would be dangerous to go against "proletarian musical ideology" (my term), and that, in order to be able to function as a composer, he must to some extent be seen to pay his dues - something he did by composing his two "Party Symphonies", No. 2, To October (1927), and No. 3, The First of May (1930). However, starting with the Fifth Symphony of 1937 (entitled, on the "suggestion" of an anonymous journalist, "A Soviet Artist's Constructive Reply to Just Criticism"), Shostakovich developed an uncannily efficient system of alternating pieces of music for official consumption with music which spoke from his inner being, occasionally combining the two in a highly creative musical code. Meanwhile, Western opinion formed an unflattering image of Shostakovich as a conformist, a civil servant eager to please the authorities. Even his great symphonies came in for condescending comments. Such epithets as "crass", "vulgar", and "old-fashioned" prevailed in Western musicology - a negative attitude reinforced by the post-war trend in music championed by certain composers who tended to deny the priority of the artist's inner world. Now, twenty-five years after Shostakovich's death, the debate about his image - and, consequently, about the message that his music contained - is gradually dying down. Nevertheless, I find it fascinating to trace its origins and directions. Had the West, guided by Soviet propaganda, not thought of Shostakovich as a "loyal son" of the Soviet Union, this controversy would never have arisen. We who lived in the USSR knew beyond doubt what Shostakovich had to do in order to survive and to compose his great music. When, in 1979, a book was published by a young Russian musicologist - Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitry Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov - we all believed that at last the world would understand the true state of affairs. But we were too optimistic. Many Western "experts" rejected the new image presented in this book, of a man deeply contemptuous of the Soviet system, most of whose life was a constant tug-of-war with the Soviet State. Whatever their real reasons may be, some of these experts self-righteously persist in holding on to the "loyal son" concept to this day. At the same time, their superficial knowledge of the Soviet Union, and consequent failure to understand how the Soviet system worked, undermine their credibility. To be more specific: the first Western article denouncing Testimony
and its Ms. Fay confirms her lack of understanding of Soviet reality by writing that it was Shostakovich's "rotten luck" that he picked "the 'wrong' folk" as his inspiration for the song-cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry (1948). Does she really imagine that Shostakovich could have been stupid enough to write this cycle in the midst of an horrendous wave of anti-Semitism (initiated from the top of the Soviet power structure) without knowing precisely what he was doing? Using a folk text was his only possible public way to support the oppressed. (Speaking from my own experience: during that time I was told in my music school that I would be excluded from a school concert unless I added to my usual surname my ethnic Russian mother's maiden name; hence I played under the name of Ashkenazy-Plotnov. Such was the depth of official anti-Semitism.) Laurel Fay is not alone in misunderstanding the reality of the conditions under which Shostakovich lived. Richard Taruskin claims that the composer took no risks in his Thirteenth Symphony, citing the fact that Shostakovich used the already printed poems of Yevtushenko. Does he not remember that the great conductor Mravinsky feared to conduct this work and that, under official pressure, two successive soloists dropped out before the first performance? Only the firm stance of Kirill Kondrashin (against the wishes of the Central Committee) saved the première, which he was able to conduct, having had the foresight to prepare another bass-baritone as understudy. Does Professor Taruskin have to be reminded that the poem Babi Yar had been denounced in the Soviet press in 1961 - shortly before Shostakovich used it in this symphony? In any case, it was the power of its music which made the Thirteenth one of the strongest indictments of the Soviet system - and that was the real risk Shostakovich took. Do we still need to remind the comfortable and gullible West what our life in the USSR was really like? We had to control our every move, watch every word we said. We had no recourse to justice, even in the 1960s and 1970s. We had no right to foreign travel. Had the great Solzhenitsyn publicly stood up against the Soviet State in the 1930s or 1940s he would have been quickly eliminated. Instead, in 1974, he was simply thrown out of the country. I myself was coerced by the KGB into informing on foreign students at the Moscow Conservatory. Pretending to be unable to carry out this task to their satisfaction, I was soon dismissed. (I was also officially threatened with a total end to my career, unless my Icelandic-born wife - read "capitalist" in Soviet parlance - took up Soviet citizenship.) Fortunately for Shostakovich, his medium was not words but music - the only art form which could make it possible for him to express his message publicly. Even so he had to constantly defend himself against possible retributions from the authorities. When, at a press conference at the Edinburgh Festival in 1962, a Western journalist asked him if it was true that the Party's criticisms had helped him, he nervously replied, "Yes, yes, yes, the Party always helped me - it was always right, it was always right". When the journalist left, Shostakovich turned to Rostropovich, who was present, and said, "Son of a bitch! Doesn't he know he shouldn't ask me such questions - what can I possibly say?" The need to protect oneself was something all of us who had to survive in the Soviet Union understood. Such understanding is rare among Western musicologists. Professor Taruskin, for example, asserts that Shostakovich is unworthy to be considered as a dissident compared with Solzhenitsyn, who (claims Taruskin) "despised" him. When I told Solzhenitsyn this, he was "indignant" and authorised me to publish the following statement: "I never despised Shostakovich - on the contrary, I understand that he had to make compromises with the Soviet authorities in order to save his art. I admire many of his symphonies, in particular Nos. 5, 7, 8, and 9." Rostropovich, too, recently told me that he had no doubt that Shostakovich hated the Soviet system. Rudolf Barshai, conductor of the first performance of the Fourteenth Symphony, stated that Volkov's Testimony should be considered 100% correct. The composer's son Maxim has likewise endorsed it as true and accurate, and his sister Galina agrees. This is only the tip of the iceberg - dozens of testimonies from the Soviet Union confirm the authenticity and veracity of Volkov's book (and, consequently, the view of the composer as something quite the opposite of a "loyal son"). Thus the pendulum of credibility inevitably swings towards those who knew Shostakovich well and who, in their own lives, experienced similar pressures. But there are also voices of a deeper perception in the West that I do not wish to ignore. The British journalist Ian MacDonald's book, The New Shostakovich, contains a stimulating and inspiring view of Shostakovich's life and work, written by someone who seems able to identify with the composer as if he himself had lived in the USSR. In her substantial and well-researched Shostakovich: A life Remembered, Elizabeth Wilson presents the reminiscences of Shostakovich's important contemporaries, reaffirming the validity of Testimony's view of him. What of the music itself? I would like to quote from the British philosopher J. W. Sullivan's great study of Beethoven: "The most valuable states [of consciousness]... that music arouses are those that spring from the richest and deepest spiritual context. We are immediately aware, with great compositions of this kind, that the state of consciousness expressed by the composer is the result of certain perceptions and experiences. So far as we can recognise the emotion communicated to us, we can say something of the conditions it, as it were, presupposes... Such states... are the fruits of countless experiences as realised and coordinated by the artist, and they enter into the very texture of his spiritual being". This is the most convincing formulation of what music means to me - and it is my deep belief and conviction that Shostakovich, in his spiritual context, delivered to us his experience of a life of anguish and despair. Shostakovich did not want to be what is commonly understood as a hero. Had he been openly heroic, he would sooner or later have perished. Yet he was well aware of the risks he faced. I asked Maxim Shostakovich if it was true that he had whispered to his father during the rehearsals of the subversive Eleventh Symphony, "Papa, what if they hang you for this?" He confirmed that this was so. All the more appalling that, in The New York Times, a certain critic recently called Shostakovich a "mediocre human being", dismissing the Eleventh Symphony as "pure patriotism and storytelling". This shows, yet again, the inability (or reluctance) of so many Western commentators to understand what Shostakovich saw as his mission in life. In fact, Shostakovich acted heroically within his chosen medium, saying in music what was then absolutely unthinkable to say in words and managing, against all the odds, not only to survive but to leave for posterity great music of shattering intensity and quintessential spiritual and musical validity. We do not have to infuse every note of Shostakovich's music with extra-musical connotations, but we need to understand what he endured in his life - the inhumanity, moral depravity, and hopelessness which the Soviet system inflicted - all of which he amalgamated into the spiritual context of his music (along with, need it be said, a good measure of irony and black humour). As with the Eroica, in which Beethoven gives us an expression of eternal value based to a great extent on his own personal crisis, Shostakovich sublimated his personal experience to the level of universality. For that, we should be eternally grateful to him.
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