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Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, Second Edition, by Elizabeth Wilson
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Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is a unique study of the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich, based on reminiscences from his contemporaries. Elizabeth Wilson covers the composer's life from his early successes to his struggles under the Stalinist regime, and his international recognition as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. She builds up a detailed picture of Shostakovich's creative processes, how he was perceived by contemporaries, and of the increased contrast between his private life and public image as his fame increased.
This new edition, produced to coincide with the centenary of Shostakovich's birth, draws on many new writings on the composer. In doing so, it provides both a more detailed and focused image of Shostakovich's life and a wider view of his cultural background. In particular, Shostakovich's sardonic and witty sense of humor reveals itself in many of his letters to close friends. Shostakovich offers fascinating insight into the complex personality and musical life of this great composer, and examines his position as one of the major figures in the cultural life of twentieth-century Russia.
- Sales Rank: #938758 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Princeton University Press
- Published on: 2006-09-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.20" h x 1.95" w x 6.04" l, 1.93 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 600 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
Praise for the previous edition: "Elizabeth Wilson's magnificent new oral history, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, [is] the one indispensable book about the composer."--Richard Taruskin, The New York Times
Praise for the previous edition: "[Wilson] has gathered numerous recollections of Shostakovich and organized them into an enormous biography that follows every step of his life. . . . Together, these diverse sources provide a mosaic portrait of a shy, fidgety, punctilious musician."--New Yorker
"[T]he most important book ever published about the greatest Russian composer of the twentieth century. . . . For the first time, Shostakovich's anguished personality comes into focus, and his emotionally devastating encounters with the Soviet government are put into trustworthy perspective."--The New York Daily News
About the Author
Elizabeth Wilson, a cellist and Russianist, studied at the Moscow State Conservatory with Mstislav Rostropovich between 1964 and 1971. She is a teacher, writer, and performer.
Most helpful customer reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Shostakovich: `pain personified'
By Brian J. Buchanan
In 1936 Stalin walked out of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Soon an article in Pravda appeared: "Muddle Instead of Music" - inept criticism, but devastating effect. The political war for Shostakovich's soul had begun.
Performance of his Fourth Symphony was canceled. Friends avoided him. Musicians supporting him were persecuted. And as Shostakovich, one of the 20th century's greatest composers, would acknowledge much later, had it not been for the totalitarian regime under which he lived, "I would have written more pure music."
Yet this same man who suffered under Soviet communism also joined the Communist Party in 1960, even spoke or signed statements against Soviet dissidents. What are we to make of him?
In Elizabeth Wilson's artfully woven collection of reminiscences, Shostakovich (1906-75) emerges three-dimensional, fascinating, yet still enigmatic - neither Soviet cheerleader nor covert subversive, as some would have him. First published in 1994, the book is freshly augmented with new material for his centenary. The voices of family, friends, composers, conductors and other musicians make riveting reading; they document Shostakovich's struggle to balance the demands of musical genius with those of a repressive state.
Wilson's credentials are first-rate: She studied cello with the great Mstislav Rostropovich, a close friend of Shostakovich's, and attended several premieres of the composer's late work. She documents in chilling detail the fears under which Shostakovich worked, the subterfuges he used to make his music pass in a hostile climate while still mining his soul's depths.
For 1936 wasn't his last run-in with the state. His heroic Seventh Symphony, performed during the World War II siege of Leningrad, bought him credit with Stalinist authorities up to a point. But with war's end came new decrees denouncing artistic "formalism" - excess attention to aesthetics at the expense of socialist realism.
Rostropovich recalls: "For him it was a calamity that the people for whom he had written his works with his very blood, to whom he had exposed his very soul, did not understand him."
One decree came in 1948 as Shostakovich wrote his Concerto for Violin in A minor. The work could not be performed publicly till 1955, after Stalin's death. Musically, it's no proletarian picnic: a "relentlessly hard, intense piece for the soloist," Russian composer Venyamin Basner calls it. Violinist David Oistrakh even asked Shostakovich for the mercy of "letting the orchestra take over the first eight bars in the Finale so ... I can wipe the sweat off my brow."
Though her book doesn't move in a straight-line narrative, Wilson's analyses frame the oral histories - many of them from interviews she conducted - and for the most part provide adequate context. At times she fails to referee discrepancies between speakers. Laurel Fay's 2000 Shostakovich: A Life, a more traditional biography, clears up some confusions.
With Shostakovich, some matters may never be entirely clear. He gave communism lip service, but did speak out powerfully in his music. He helped innumerable repressed artists behind the scenes. Though not Jewish, he defended the Jews, affirming their culture musically.
As another composer said, the perpetually nervous, agitated Shostakovich was "pain personified," but in his music "was able to transform the pain ... into something exalted and full of light."
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Astounding, intimately clear
By A. Yen
Although not as thorough on the music of the great composer itself, this book is a must read for anyone interested in Shostakovich, or music and Soviet history in general.
Wilson lucidly supports her interviews and articles from colleagues, friends, and family of the composer with a curious detachment that serves to clarify rather than alienate the subject matter. The articles and interviews themselves are priceless artifacts, and presented here in an intelligent fashion.
Shostakovich's life is portrayed here with startling intimacy. The reader will find him or herself able to visualize the genius composer and his quirks, and those who listen to the relevant works of music will find their messages so much more meaningful.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Shostakovich and 'the scourges of a cruel age'
By Bahij Bawarshi
For anyone interested in Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) the man and his music, *Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Second Edition)* is a compelling book. In a carefully researched and organized work, cellist and author Elizabeth Wilson presents a biography of Shostakovich comprising collated reminiscences and value judgments of his contemporaries that form the bulk of 537 pages of main text, along with her own input and documentary evidence where available. The prevailing political and cultural environment of the Soviet Union at the time looms large in the background. So many names familiar and unfamiliar appear throughout the text, that 30 pages of Biographical Notes come in handy for identification and as reminders of who's who in the world of Shostakovich. The detailed Index will prove useful to the serious reader of such a large, wide-ranging book. The Acknowledgements and the Annotated List of Sources give an idea of the vast amount of study, consultation and interviews carried out by Wilson mostly in Russia, but also Switzerland, Germany, UK and USA, in what must be termed a labor of love.
His parents wanted to name him Jaroslav, but the priest who baptized him insisted on Dmitri. So begins the story of the boy prodigy, who matured into one of the most significant composers of the twentieth century. Testimonies by more than 60 contributors authenticate some of Shostakovich's personal attributes, details of his life, and the way he went about composing music under often taxing circumstances and the shadow of a political system that sought to regulate the arts -- indeed all aspects of life -- to conform to "socialist reality."
Almost from the start, the young Dmitri (Mitya to his friends) did not have an easy life; but he was highly disciplined and determined to succeed. Perfect pitch and a phenomenal memory helped to distinguish him among his fellow students at the Petrograd (Leningrad) Conservatoire. His graduation piece, the First Symphony, brought him quick fame. Already he was demonstrating an independent bent of mind and going his own way in music, to the displeasure of the Soviet authorities who eventually subjected him to harassment and humiliation. Shostakovich's sharp contradictions of character affected his behavior. He had a sense of humor and high spirits; he loved his vodka, card games -- a "poker fiend" according to one friend -- and football (soccer); yet pianist Mikhail Druskin says, "It was Shostakovich's vocation to realize the concept of tragedy, for that was how he perceived the world." His paradoxical character became painfully obvious when he joined the Communist Party in 1960, even as he detested what the system stood for and opposed it in his music. Worse yet, occasionally he appeared to be supporting official policies. In the words of soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (wife of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich), "He [Shostakovich] felt we were all participants in the farce. ... He made statements in the press and at meetings; he signed 'letters of protest' that, as he himself said, he never read. He didn't worry about what people would say of him, because he knew the time would come when the verbiage would fade away, when only his music would remain. And his music would speak more vividly than any words." It's also true that, living in fear of the authorities, he was not one to say no under pressure.
Accounts of the war on "formalism" during Stalin's regime provide real drama. According to doctrinaire officials, notably Andrei Zhdanov (infamous for his role in the 1946-1948 campaign of terror against the intelligentsia), Soviet realism dictated that music should be tuneful, uplifting, and meaningful to the masses. In their view, abstract or Western-influenced "modern" music was not. Tragic music was pessimism, not in the spirit of the Nation. The consequences on formalist composers (as they called them), prominent among them being Shostakovich and Prokofiev, were grave. They lost their main means of livelihood and many of their works were no longer performed. Rostropovich relates that the time came when Prokofiev did not have money left to buy breakfast. Actually, Shostakovich fell from grace earlier, when his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District was viciously attacked by Pravda as chaos. After that, he found it prudent to suppress his innovative Fourth Symphony and several other works until after Stalin died. The Fifth Symphony, wildly acclaimed by the public, won official if somewhat grudging acceptance. The war years offered him the opportunity to write the Seventh Symphony, on which he started working during the German siege of Leningrad. The response to it was universally electric. Luckily for him, the authorities did not suspect that Shostakovich intended the music to signify the ultimate defeat not only of fascism but of all forms of tyranny, by implication including Stalinism. For now, Shostakovich was a hero again. Yet when he wrote the Eighth Symphony, a tragic masterpiece portraying the horror of war, the authorities predictably criticized it; it was not the heroic, victorious music they expected. Shostakovich had an acerbic comment to depict the system: "Our duty is to rejoice!"
Of course, the book has more to say about the music of Shostakovich, much of which I listen to and esteem. A good part of the material covers the circumstances of the composition, rehearsals and premieres of major works, where fascinating insights into the ways and genius of the composer emerge. In a few cases Wilson includes a description of the music and some issues of interpretation. Of special interest to me are accounts of some of his splendid string quartets, where Shostakovich was at his most personal. Here and there we get a glimpse that tells us something of his attitude toward music. One of the best concerns a passage in his score for the film King Lear: "There may be few notes," he said, "but there's lots of music."
Toward the end, the seriously ill Shostakovich was preoccupied with themes of death and parting, as in the Fourteenth Symphony and the late string quartets. His last work was the Viola Sonata opus 147, of which Wilson writes, "The Viola Sonata can be regarded as a fitting requiem for a man who had lived through and chronicled the scourges of a cruel age." In and out of treatment clinics for years, his failing health finally denied him reprieve. He died in hospital on 9 August, 1975. The book ends bleakly with an extract from the diary of violinist Mark Lubotsky, describing the burial: "Hammers banged. They were nailing down the lid of the coffin. Then they moved. Then they stopped. The Soviet anthem was played. It was cold and it started to drizzle."
Why did Wilson use this ending? A few pages before, she supplies what I think would stand as a more optimistic conclusion to the book: "Undoubtedly, as the debates and arguments recede into the mists of time, the single greatest testament to Shostakovich's indomitable spirit and powers of mental discipline will remain the body of music." Very much as Shostakovich had hoped.
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