SW(Final8/31) Written by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov
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456 Orlov, A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 115. 457 Testimony, p. 95. 458 Volkov, p. 67. 459 Wilson, p. 74. 134 f. Events of 1905 Orlov claims that ‘it is hard to comprehend, [on typescript] pp. 7–8, how the sight of children allegedly killed by the police in 1905 could impress Shostakovich not yet born at that time’. 460 Had he remembered the preceding paragraph in Testimony, he would have found the explanation: ‘Our family discussed the Revolution of 1905 constantly. I was born after that, but the stories deeply affected my imagination. When I was older, I read much about how it all happened’. 461 It is also significant that Shostakovich subtitled his Eleventh Symphony ‘The Year 1905’. Clearly, events before his birth, repeatedly retold to him by his family, could have an impact. g. Seventh Symphony Orlov claims that typescript page 212 includes ‘contradictory statements’ about the genesis of the Seventh Symphony: 462 ‘The 7 th was conceived before the war’ versus ‘I wanted to create an image of the country in battle’. 463 This issue is discussed at length in Shostakovich Reconsidered, pp. 150–59 (summarized on pp. 265–66 below). In addition, a wealth of new evidence further corroborates the pre-war beginning of the Seventh mentioned in Testimony: (1) Shostakovich, in an interview in December 1940 (i.e., long before 22 June 1941, when the Nazis invaded the USSR), already referred to the Seventh Symphony as a work in progress. ‘In 1941’, Shostakovich stated, ‘I hope to complete my Seventh Symphony, which I shall dedicate to the great genius of mankind — Vladimir Ilich Lenin’. 464 (2) Musicologist Lyudmila Mikheyeva, the daughter-in-law of Ivan Sollertinsky, Shostakovich’s closest friend, has recently revealed: It is unknown exactly when, but at the end of the 30s or in 1940, but in any event before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Shostakovich wrote variations on an ostinato theme — a passacaglia, similar in conception to Ravel’s Bolero [the ‘invasion’ episode — Eds.]. 465 He showed it to his junior colleagues and students (from the fall of 1937 Shostakovich taught composition and orchestration at the Leningrad Conservatory). The theme was simple, jerkingly dancing, and it 460 Orlov, A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 115. 461 Testimony, p. 8. 462 Orlov, A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 112. 463 A reference to Testimony, pp. 154–55. 464 Christopher Gibbs, in Laurel E. Fay (ed.), Shostakovich and His World, p. 107, note 21. Shostakovich’s statement was published earlier in program notes for the Cleveland Orchestra, 15 and 17 October 1942. 465 This echoes Shostakovich’s own description of the invasion episode to Aram Khachaturian (‘Forgive me, will you, if this reminds you of Ravel’s Bolero’) and to Glikman (‘Idle critics will no doubt reproach me for imitating Ravel’s Bolero’) (Wilson, p. 148). 135 developed with a background of dry sounds of snare drum and grew to tremendous strength. First it sounded harmless, and even frivolous, but then grew to a tremendous symbol of oppression. The composer set this work aside, without performing or publishing it. 466 (3) Two of Shostakovich’s pupils at the time, Revol’ Bunin and Galina Ustvol’skaya, have corroborated Sollertinskaya’s statement above. Viktor Vanslov, who studied with Bunin and was a friend during their student years at the musical college of the Moscow Conservatory (1939–40) and then at the Conservatory itself (1944–48), recalls that the latter once gave me an ironic smile upon my admiration of the depiction of war in the first movement of the Seventh Symphony and said that Shostakovich mocked those who saw there only the depiction of war. He added that Shostakovich told him that, even though he began writing the Seventh Symphony in the first days of the war, he conceptualized it before the war. 467 Ustvol’skaya adds that in 1939–40, Shostakovich . . . told me that he had almost completed his Seventh Symphony. There remained only the addition of a coda and some corrections; he mentioned that he didn’t know how best to name it: the ‘Lenin’ or the ‘Leninskaya’ [Symphony] — Dmitri Dmitrievich highly respected V. I. Lenin and always wanted to dedicate one of his works to him. 468 466 Lyudmila Mikheyeva, entry on Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, 111 Simphoniy. Spravochnik- putevoditel’ (111 Symphonies. Reference Guide), Kul’t-Inform-Press, St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 618. Also cf. Volkov, p. 171. Another friend of the young Shostakovich, A. A. Ashkenazi, told Mark Aranovsky that ‘part of the materials of the [Seventh] symphony really were composed shortly before the war. But every musician understands that “materials” are one thing, and the entire work, with its own conception, where these materials acquired their own contextual functions — is another’ (Vozvrashchaias’ k Shostakovichu, ed. by N. A. Ryzhkova, Muzizdat, Moscow, 2010, p. 29). 467 Viktor Vladimirovich Vanslov, O muzyke i muzykantakh (On Music and Musicians), Znaniye, Moscow, 2006, pp. 150–51. Bunin (1924–76) was one of Shostakovich’s favorite students at the Moscow Conservatory (1943–45) and later served as his composition assistant at the Leningrad Conservary (1947). His statement about the Seventh Symphony predates the publication of Testimony and, thus, was not influenced by it. Ustvol’skaya had lessons with Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory between 1938–47, and also did post-graduate work with him in 1950. Shostakovich even proposed marriage to her, twice (after the death of his first wife in 1957 and his divorce from his second in 1959), but was turned down. 468 O. Gladkova, Galina Ustvol’skaya — muzyka kak navazhdenie (Galina Ustvol’skaya — Music as Hallucination), Muzyka, St. Petersburg, 1999, p. 31. Transl. above by Paul Mitchinson, ‘Wishful Thinking’, The Nation, 3 May 2004; on the Internet at Download Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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