Talk:Dmitri Shostakovich/Archive 1

message: zhongwen doesnt work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.53.194.251 (talk) 08:57, 2 October 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Initial comment

message: famous Pravda editorial Muddle Instead of Music said of the same work, "All is coarse, primitive and vulgar. 
 The music quacks, grunts and growls".[24]
This sentence is disgusting -- at least the social context of this quotation from 1936 should be explained. As it is now, the quotation seems to presented as if it were from some respected source, whereas in fact it only reflects Stalin's personal opinion. An encyclopedia article should be neutral and not express the author's personal likings and dislikings -- if the author is a convinced Stalinist, then he should perhaps consider not writing here. 217.159.162.230 13:05, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Stalin was a respected source in Stalinist Russia! Shostakovich did join Stalin's party after all; this has nothing to do with the "personal likings and dislikings" of the author, but rather of Stalin. It is a clear historical, attested & sourced fact. It is you omitted it which represents a non-neutral point of view opinion, not the author of that entry into the article! 67.5.159.97 23:16, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Primitive style 

message: I've done version 1.0 of a rewrite: some NPOVing, cutting the rather ejaculatory account of the cello concerto, and expanding and (hopefully) clarifying the Testimony/revisionism section.   I have a few hundred pages of stuff to work through on that, so more to come. I'll keep it concise.  :) Markalexander100 05:08, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite

message: The article should mention his 9th symphony, which, published in 1945, was meant to be a bombastic triumph symphony for the red army by the authorities, but in fact was rather mocking. It added very much their disliking Shostakovich. Malbi 13:25, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Symphony No. 9 (Shostakovich) does mention that; it's not in the main article because it wasn't one of the works that marked a turning point in his life (since he was already in disfavour because of number 8). Markalexander100 03:09, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  9th symphony 

message: I have always been interested what the origins of Shosatkovich`s surname are. They are neither Russian nor Jewish, are they? Does anybody know anything about it?
:It is a Belarusian surname (Шастаковіч, od Šastakovič). Šastak is something related to a person who builds fences, i guess, and -ovič is a common Slavonic surname ending, especially whide spread in the Balkans and in Belarus--Czalex 06:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins of his surname 

message: Shostakovich had a secret love affair with Galina Ustvolskaya
"Shostakovich proposed to her 'during the Fifties', ... she refused him"
http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/ust/ust.html
also
"Mstislav Rostropovich knew both of them around 1948 and records of Ustvolskaya that "she certainly regarded Shostakovich very highly, and indeed there was a very 'tender' relationship between them." Rostropovich further notes that Ustvolskaya was one of the close friends who gave Shostakovich emotional support during the aftermath of the Zhdanov Decree"
see also http://www.ce-review.org/99/2/music2_horton.html
Do you think this is worth mentioning?
:Done. Markalexander100 03:48, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Galina Ustvolskaya 

message: The discussion in this article about whether Shostakovich had polio is sort of inconsistent. "Poliomyelitis" and "myelitis" are not necessarily the same disease. Therefore, if he was indeed diagnosed with poliomyelitis, it would be inaccurate to later say his "myelitis continued to worsen," and there wouldn't have been a controversy about whether he had polio. (There is no "rare" form of polio... there are only three strains, and all were more or less equally common.) My guess is that he was probably initally diagnosed as having some form of myelitis, but only later would it have been suspected to be polio. I think this is something that needs further research (by someone other than myself; I know a lot more about polio than I do about Shostakovich!). -- Elizabeyth 20:30, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I'll look into it. Mark1 09:16, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Polio?

message: I'm surprised that it's so weak on his music. There's no serious attempt to define his style in relation to other 20th-century composers, or to trace its evolution through his career. I'm not expecting a hugely technical exposé, but there needs to be some technical information. 
The article could be longer.
Tony 10:20, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's on my list for a clean-up.  Give me a little while... Mark1 01:49, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Source? Mark1 05:36, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

text: In Italian, but this article is in English. Mark1 05:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I've done some work reorganising.  I'll be in the library next month fixing the style section.  It would be nice to know exactly what you think is missing, other than a mention of his influence on later composers (not much).   I'm puzzled by the concept of a technical description of a composer's style as opposed to analysis of a particular work.  Do you have any examples of what you have in mind? Mark1 05:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

text: It's perhaps worth emphasising here that this article is not a home for everything we have to say about Shostakovich.  Since we have articles on most of his major works, including all the symphonies, that's where we put the musical material and anything specific to those works (such as Stalin's portrait).   I'm quite pleased that you think the portrayal of his style is negative, because I tend to worry that it's overly glowing (that maybe depends on whether one thinks being influenced by Mahler is negative.   If anyone can find a source claiming that he wasn't influenced by Mahler then we can include it; FWIW Grove says (I paraphrase) Mahler was the most important influence on S's symphonic career.)   I'm spending my days in the library at the moment, so if there's something in particular you want researched, just shout.Mark1 19:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's a bit rough of me simply to criticise without offering anything more constructive.  Let me cogitate and come back to you.  I think the article can definitely be improved, but at the moment I am unsure the best way to proceed. Two additional comments: the article seems to have been influenced by Wilson's memoir more than the attentive study of Fay. Second, my point about being influenced by Mahler was not to contest that.  Rather, that should be like saying Brahms was influenced by Beethoven, which is simple pedigree. Eusebeus 10:57, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Drawing mainly on Wilson was deliberate, since everyone seems to like that book (the one thing Fay and Macdonald agreed on!).   I didn't want to rely on Fay on one side or Macdonald/Volkov on the other, because they are all considered in some quarters to be a bit dodgy as sources.   Fay's article in Grove seems better than her Life, though, and I'm doing some rejigging on the basis of that. Mark1 14:16, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this ''really'' a featured article? 

message: I am scratching my comments above.  I waded in without first really thinking over the problems.  I think the article reflects - appropriately enough - the problem of writing about Shostakovich: the different stages of his career, the Testimony controversy, the transition from Socialist apologist to subversive dissident, etc etc... and the many critical issues and scholarly/artistic debates that this has spawned.  But in an encycopedic article, such controversies need to be separated from the facts of his life and compositions.  I have a variety of reactions to this article, but I'll start with a couple.  
The critical debates somehow come too much to the fore, over a straightforward NPOV synopsis of facts.   Examples:
:Laurel Fay concludes in Grove that Amid the conflicting pressures of official requirements, the mass suffering of his fellow countrymen, and his personal ideals of humanitarian and public service, he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power." (p. 280)''
:The Fifth Symphony of 1937 seems something of a compromise: it is not overtly political, either for or against the regime, and it is musically conservative without being simplistic...
:There is some dispute over whether he realised the dangers of writing the latter. Laurel Fay has argued etc...
:Interpretation of the Eleventh Symphony of 1956–7 is disputed: it can be seen as referring to the attempted Russian Revolution of 1905, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution or both.
:1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: his joining of the Communist Party. This event has been interpreted variously as a show of commitment, a mark of cowardice, or as having been forced. On the one hand, the apparat was undoubtedly less repressive than it had been prior to Stalin's death. On the other, his son recalled that the event reduced Shostakovich to tears (Ho, p. 390), and he later told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed (Manashir Yakubov, programme notes for the 1998 Shostakovich seasons at the Barbican, London). Lev Lebedinsky has said that the composer was suicidal (Wilson, p. 340). 
:Opinions are divided as to how great a risk this was: the poem had been published in Soviet media, and was not banned, but it remained controversial.
:They have attracted much critical favour in the west, as they do not pose the same problems of interpretation as the earlier, more public pieces.
:His conservative idiom has however grown increasingly popular with audiences, as the avant-garde has declined in influence and information about his political views has come out. According to Grove, he has now become, "the most popular composer of serious art music of the middle years of the 20th century". (300).
I am not sure such text should be included in the biographical treatment. I won't get into the works & criticism sections, since they are more appropriate venues for a discussion of the different viewpoints surrounding his work.
I think further there are some questionable descriptions: the description of Shostakovich as a romantic composer, for example.  Tonal certainly.  But romantic?  I think the label is a stretch for the much of his serious postwar output.  Certainly the quartet cycle, the quintet, the late symphonies, etc... seem hard to characterise in this way.  This is noted as such in the existing article's text, and therefore I think the description (often used pejoratively by post-war avant garde composers and theorists) can be nuanced.  
The bottom line is that Shostakovich is (I believe) the most widely recorded classical composer contained by the 20th century, a towering achievement which predominates (or should I think) much else.  Somehow, that does not come through in this treatment, which seems to have been sidetracked by the ongoing debates. Eusebeus 15:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm with you regarding the comments on the fifth and 11th symphonies- I've changed those bits.   The other reported comments are on the politics of his situation rather than on the works themselves; since politics was a rather huge part of the life of a composer in the USSR we can hardly ignore it, but since opinions are divided we can 't just make our own assertions.  Hence the quoting of others.   Regarding Romanticism, the article never (unless I've missed it) says that he was a Romantic composer.  "In the Romantic idiom/tradition", yes, but that's not at all the same thing as being Romantic yourself.   Regarding his achievement, it's in the nature of criticism that it's easier to say why something is bad than to say why it's good.   If a work is poor then you can say where and how the composer has made mistakes, but if it's good then you can't really go beyond "I find it moving" (or intellectually stimulating etc., but Shostakovich fans tend to go for the emotional content).   Mark1 01:37, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts on the Article 

message: Shostakovich never signed the Sakharov denunciation.  According to Irina Shostakovich, his signiture was used in Pravda without his permission. D SCH
:Do you have a reference for that?  Wilson contains several statements that he did sign it.  She reports Irina saying that he didn't sign a letter about Theodorakis, but that was a different affair. Mark1 11:29, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sakharov Denunciation

message: There should be a mention of metal sliver in shostakovich's brain, as described by the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks in this article:
http://www.acamedia.info/sciences/sciliterature/remini.htm
68.6.190.89 10:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Brain

message: I think there ought to be something said about Shostakovich's friendship with Britten, but I'm not certain of where to put it. Suggestions? Wspencer11 14:33, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had the same problem. :)   The problem is that the musical effect on DS from Britten wasn't that great, so it's really a human interest point rather than something that really has to be there. And it's not as if they were best friends- I'm sure he was closer to a dozen Russians than he was to Britten.  They first met in 1960, so maybe a mention between the 8th quartet and meeting Irina? HenryFlower 14:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Friendship with Britten 

message: Due to the size of this (brilliant) article, it may be nominated by some to be split. Especially if new material is added. Could anyone envisage how this would be done, whilst continuing a suitablte flow? (of course, Part 1+2 is a little boring). 
82.40.75.55 23:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would deal with the issue by disembowelling anyone who proposed it.   It's actually a fairly modest length for an FA. HenryFlower 08:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'd have to agree, Henry. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines  How are policies enforced? by disembowelment!, though rarely enforced (some would say not often enough), would probably be appropriate in this case. Large subjects demand large articles. --Rizzleboffin 13:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Size 

message: One of the things about Shostakovich's music that very few people have pointed out is its obvious kinship with the later symphonies of Carl Nielsen. Or am I just hearing things? The Eighth Symphony's development section in particular sound like it was written with the first movement of Carl Nielsen's Sinfonia Semplice in mind. So too does the Fifteenth Symphony which begins in a similar fashion to Nielsen's Sixth. Interestingly enough, Nielsen and Shostakovich both said of their final symphonies that they intended to write joyful works yet the result was music of a much more grim and darker character (Nielsen to his daughter, Anne-Marie: "[The Sixth Symphony was to be] of a completely idyllic character;" Nielsen quoted in the Danish newspaper, Politiken: "In the first and third movements there are more serious, problematical things, but as a whole I have tried to make the symphony as lively and gay as possible;" Shostakovich in a radio interview in the early 70's in America: "I myself said that the first [movement] is as if played in a toy store, I myself said that. But to consider this precise and exact, I myself said it but maybe it didn't turn out quite that way."). In Boris Schwarz's Music Under Soviet Rule, there's a mention of Shostakovich having told the conductor Ole Schmidt rather cryptically that he was "familiar" with Nielsen's music but said nothing more. Anybody know of any other references to Nielsen's music by Shostakovich? El Chileno Chido 00:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't remember that remark in the Schwarz book, but I'll try to look it up later on. I must admit that although I have often thought there were some very interesting parallels between some Nielsen and some Shostakovich, the likelihood of DSCH knowing CN's music seemed pretty remote to me. I think those similarities are coincidental, myself. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 16:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shostakovich and Carl Nielsen 

message: I don't think this can be a featured article since it has been written without using the main reference on Shostakovich: . See also . --BMF81 10:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Featured, miss ref to main book

message: I deleted the musical example with the following caption:
"Shostakovich made great use of accidentals, both for chromatic effect and (as here) to denote keys."
This is utterly meaningless: **Every** single western composer who uses standard notation "made great use of accidentals, both for chromatic effect and (as here) to denote keys."  Moreover, the example is not even from Shostakovitch's own work, as far as I can tell. The example adds nothing, and indeed looks like it was added just to make the article look silly.  If a musical example is wanted, please use one from S's own music, that says something distinctive about it.
Whoever restored the example after I first deleted it should explain what it is supposed to add.
:I agree that it is a meaningless example.  At the very least it needs musical context:  clefs (essential!  it means nothing without them), bar lines, bar numbers from the original.  I think the point trying to be made is that Shostakovich often preferred to notate with accidentals rather than key changes, i.e. he could have used six flats here but didn't.  Antandrus  (talk) 14:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  inappropriate musical example 

message: He nevertheless won an "honorable mention" at the 1927 Warsaw International Piano Competition.
Is this the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition? Maybe this should be corrected and link added?--Zeisseng 17:11, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1927 Warsaw International Piano Competition 

message: The first mention of this student of his is here: "his Tenth Symphony...features a number of musical quotations and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs)." The DSCH one gets a link, at least, but there is no explanation whatsoever of who Elmira is or what the motif is. Eventually we learn a tiny bit about who Elmira was but there has to be a better way to organize and introduce this material. I don't know about it so I can't do so, but surely someone can! --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 17:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elmira...? 

message: Heya Shostakovich fans, I wanna contribute here with a self-made Piano sonata. I just wonder how to create an .ogg file. --Walter Humala - Emperor of West Wikipedia |wanna Talk? 02:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Try Acoustic Labs Audio Editor or Audacity + Ceoil 09:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  MEDIA FILE OPUS ??? 

message: Were have most of images gone??? --Walter Humala - Emperor of West Wikipedia |wanna Talk? 02:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  images 

message: I take the credit of my dad's piano play. -- Walter Humala - Emperor of West Wikipedia|wanna Talk? 19:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Media file uploaded 

message: Volkov's Testimony says that the premiere was in 1925, not 1926, as the article suggests. I'm going to change it, unless anyone objects.
:It was premiered at Philharmonic Bol'shoy Hall in Leningrad on 12 May 1926, by the Leningrad Philharmonic under the direction of N. Malko.  Where in Testimony is the 1925 reference?  I've looked up every reference in my copy and I don't see it.  The symphony was composed in 1924-25 (as given in the timeline at the end, p. 277 in my edition).  Antandrus  (talk) 02:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Premiere of First Symphony 

message: Why link to him, when they have different names and all?--Wormsie 15:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would think so that if someone puts in just "Shostakovich" as a search term, they would know there is a choice of which one. But I could be wrong, too... --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 15:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  With reservations, I put the link in for that very reason. M. Shostakovich is notable in his own right.  Anyone who frequents classical music shops can attest to this as he has conducted numerous internationally released recordings.  Certainly not as famous as his father, but the link is consistant with other Wikipedia references of people with same last names of the more prominant person.  Heck, look at Michael Jackson (sadly, arguably more famous than D. Shostakovich).  There's a link to the Michael Jackson disambiguation page which includes much lesseer known M. Jacksons, like legendary radio personality Michael Jackson (radio commentator). --Oakshade 17:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding link to Maxim Shostakovich 

message: I am no Russian language scholar at all, but I have always understood that the "Chaos" translation of the 1936 Pravda article title was a better rendering of the original Russian. The recent edit on this item may need to be discussed more before a final version is put out there. Thoughts? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 19:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Something instead of Music 

message: The main picture for this article was deleted from commons. Someone should find an alternative to use on the top of the artcle. Rettetast 11:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main Picture 

message: I can't believe no one has mentioned the Jazz Suite!
"This is Shostakovich at his most accessible."
Continuing from a review at Amazon.com...
It's all jazzy, tuneful, interestingly orchestrated (he does things with the xylophone that he must have picked up from watching cartoons with music by Carl Stallings--do you suppose?). And there are some saxophone licks that couldn't have been composed by anyone but a Russian (although, the idea came to me after imagining in my mind's ear the saxophone solos in Musorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' and the most familiar orchestration of THAT is by a Frenchman, Ravel--oh, well, the TUNE is Russian).
This is, in fact, music that Shostakovich wrote in imitation of American popular music. [In fact, 'Tahiti Trot' is his take of Vincent Youmans's 'Tea for Two.'] There's even a Sousa march in the first Jazz Suite. And he gets it all almost right and inimitably Shostakovian as well. It's right enough that American listeners will probably be fooled--if they listen to it without knowing the composer--into believingt it had to be by someone like Ferde Grofe or Gershwin or even Leroy Anderson.
My point is this: this is Shostakovich's happiest, bounciest, most accessible music. And on top of that it's beautifully written and performed. I don't know what you're waiting for. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.91.5.172 (talk) 20:43, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No discussion of his Jazz suite? 

message: So, apparently a little clean-up of the section that mentions the "musical quotations and codes" used in Shostakovich's 10th Symphony is required.  There was some earlier discussion as to the Elmira motif and its origins, which are explained on the main page for the symphony - "Symphony No. 10 (Shostakovich)".  Also, the DSCH motif has its own page, which explains the concept succinctly.  So why is it listed on this page that the meanings of the motifs are "still debated"?  Is there a significant amount of debate?  Is there evidence disproving the accepted meanings of the motifs?  Is the evidence supporting them scant?  If so, why are the meanings posted as general knowledge (NPOV) elsewhere, but omitted here, as if unverifiable?  I think a simple line explaining that they were name-based musical motifs that held personal significance to Shostakovich would suffice.  Comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Eganio 00:27, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Musical motifs