Further Notable Shostakwotables

More remarks by Shostakovich excerpted by Laurel Fay that have stuck with me since I read her fine biography of the composer. These come from some pre-performance words about the dark tone of his Fourteenth Symphony, which sets a number of disparate poems on the subject of death:

It is not because I am rather old and not because -- as an artilleryman would put it -- shells are bursting all around me and I am losing my friends and relatives. I should like to recall the words of that remarkable Soviet writer Ostrovsky, who said that life is given to us only once, so we should live it honestly and handsomely in all respects and never commit base acts. In part, I am trying to polemicize with the great classics who touched upon the theme of death in their work. Remember the death of Boris Godunov. When Boris Godunov has died, a kind of brightening sets in. Remember Verdi's Otello. When the whole tragedy ends and Desdemona and Otello die, we also experience a beauteous serenity. Remember Aida. When the tragic demise of the hero and heroine occurs, it is assuaged by radiant music. I think that even among our contemporaries ... take for instance the outstanding English composer, Benjamin Britten. I would also fault him in his War Requiem....

It seems to me that all this stems from various kinds of religious teachings that have suggested that as bad as life might be, when you die everything will be fine; what awaits you there is absolute peace. So it seems to me that perhaps, in part, I am following in the footsteps of the great Russian composer Musorgsky. His cycle Songs and Dances of Death -- maybe not all of it, but at least "The Field Marshal" -- is a great protest against death and a reminder to live one's life honestly, nobly, decently, never committing base acts.... [Death] awaits all of us. I don't see anything good about such an end to our lives and this is what I am trying to convey in this work.

Some of the fanboyish gleam has come off of my Shostakovich boosterism since my teenage years but I can still say without qualification that D.D.S. is my favorite atheist composer. Much of why I've been able to maintain a deep interest in his music -- and become increasingly partial to his later vocal and chamber music -- is that his ideas mortality maps closely onto what turned out to be my own thoughts on the subject, at least through my twenties: Great value in the works of one's life, not so much in death.