The context of the creation of the 5th was the condemnation of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Joseph Stalin visited a performance of the opera on January 26, 1936, and was visibly unhappy with the loudness and dissonance, as well as the love-making scenes; he left before the end. Pravda then published a review on the 28th, entitled “Muddle Instead of Music”. This was at the height of the mid-30s Stalin purges.
As a result of the ongoing pressure, months later Shostakovich withdrew his rehearsals for his 4th symphony, and devoted his efforts to the 5th. (Note that the 4th was not performed until 1961, with Stalin safely dead.) When his 5th was finally performed in November 1937, it was a great success, not only publicly and in the music subculture, but within Stalin’s world as well. Its premiere was accompanied by a published article which contained the statement, supposedly from Shostakovich: “A Soviet artist’s creative response to just criticism.”
The question must be asked, what was Shostakovich trying to convey in the 5th? Were there hidden, cryptic, subversive messages? That of course leads to a more basic question: can Shostakovich’s music be considered without reference to historical and personal context. And if history needs to be considered, then whose history?
Clearly, as a result of the information obtained from dissidents and exiles – the most important undoubtedly being the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn – there is no doubt of the murderous, totalitarian regime under which Shostakovich lived from the time he was 11 years old.
However, in the West prior to his death and knowledge of Solzhenitsyn’s works, there were misgivings about his relationship to the regime. Perhaps the majority opinion was that he to some degree supported the rule of Stalin. After all, it was known that he had become a member of the Communist party. Yet on at least two occasions – 1936 and again and 1948 – his music had been denounced as not serving the Proletariat; it was too modern and dissonant, too Western. He was fortunate to escape with his life; many others did not.
A few years after his death, a book came out, purported to be his memoirs. From Wikipedia:
Testimony is a book that was published in October 1979 by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. He claimed that it was the memoirs of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich. From its publication, its portrayal of the composer and his views was controversial: the Shostakovich of the book was sometimes critical of fellow composers, and most notably was strongly anti-Soviet in his views. The book also contained comments on his own music, indicating that it was intended as veiled criticism of the Soviet authorities and support for the dissident movement. The authenticity of the book is still very much disputed.
With the publication of Testimony, the analyses of Shostakovich’s musical output (as well as his private life) became a source of great controversy. Some musicologists began to explore hidden meanings is his music, and concluded that he was in fact a subversive, while at the same time giving lip service to the regime, to stay alive. Others however denigrated Volkov’s book as inauthentic, and essentially rendering Shostakovich’s life to the view held prior to Testimony.
An obvious example of Shostakovich using codes within the music to convey political messages is found in his 10th symphony, as described here.
An important area of controversy has to do with the conclusion of his 5th symphony, the Coda at the end of the 4th movement. When the Coda is reached, there is a switch from D minor to D major, followed by what might appear as a triumphal ending. Or is it? Key to this question is the metronome setting in the score are the beginning of Coda. Some versions of the score have it as a quarter note at 188, while others have it as an eighth note.
What’s the difference? If it’s a quarter note, then the ending is very fast, and it indeed comes across as triumphant. Leonard Bernstein (in-?) famously directed it that way. Conversely, if it’s an eighth note, then the ending is slow, suggesting a forced march of triumph: compelled, and not from the heart. If the latter is the case, then it’s Shostakovich, the subversive. If the former, then he’s a puppet of the regime, attempting to save his skin.
Here are two contrasting examples of the Coda:
Leonard Bernstein – Boston Symphony – 1989 (fast)
Myung-Whun Chung – Tokyo Philharmonic – 2005 (slow)
Ignat Solzhenitsyn supports the eighth-note designation as valid in his discussion here: Shostakovich, the subversive.
The controversy over Shostakovich continues. In 1990, English music journalist Ian MacDonald published a book, The New Shostakovich (out of print), essentially supporting Volkov’s Testimony. However, an extensive 1998 interview of MacDonald reveals the ongoing strong differences of opinion. A second edition of MacDonald’s book was released in 2006, three years after his death. Significant changes were made in the edition by English pianist Raymond Clarke, which were apparently very necessary, according to this review of the 2006 edition.
In 2006, a documentary film was released dealing with the life and context of Shostakovich, including comments from Solomon Volkov and surviving Shostakovich family members. Here is the YouTube description of the film:
Humor, sarcasm, grotesqueness – and not least an overriding pessimism – are characteristics not only found in Shostakovich himself but also in his music. The film intends to be as authentic as possible in portraying the composer, neither denouncing him as an opportunist nor praising him as a dissident. The seven chapters rather try to reconstruct how the young star composer, who renouncing the traditional was known for his grotesque distortions, became the stiff state composer most of whose life is still shrouded in mystery.
It’s fair to say that the controversy concerning Shostakovich the person continues to this day, although the power and reach of his music is more widely and uniformly applauded.