When a man is sick, his feelings are the feelings of a child. That's the lowest level of his psyche, and a child fears danger much more than death. Suicide is a hurried escape from danger. It is the act of a child who has been scared by life.
In my unhappy life there were many sad events, but there were periods when danger gathered ominously, when it was particularly palpable, and then my fear augmented. In the period about which we were talking just now, I was near suicide. The danger horrified me and I saw no other way out.
I was completely in the thrall of fear. I was no longer the master of my life, my past was crossed out, my work, my abilities, turned out to be worthless to everyone. The future didn't look any less bleak. At that moment I desperately wanted to disappear, it was the only possible way out. I thought of the possibility with relish.
And in that critical period my familiarity with Zoshchenko's ideas helped me greatly. He didn't say that suicide was a whim but he did say that suicide was a purely infantile act. It was the mutiny of the lower level against the higher level of the psyche. Actually, it's not a mutiny, it is the victory of the lower level, complete and final victory.
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Naturally, it wasn't only Zoshchenko's thoughts that helped me in that desperate hour. But these and similar considerations kept me from making extreme decisions. I came out of the crisis stronger than I went in, more confident of my own strength. The hostile forces didn't seem so omnipotent any more and even the shameful treachery of friends and acquaintances didn't cause me as much pain as before.
The mass treachery did not concern me personally. I managed to separate myself from other people, and in that period it was my salvation.
Some of these thoughts you can find, if you wish, in my Fourth Symphony. In the last pages, it's all set out rather precisely. These thoughts were also present in my mind later, when I was writing the first part of the Sixth Symphony. But the Sixth in a way had a much happier fate than the Fourth. It was played right away and criticized moderately. The Fourth was played twenty-five years after it was written. Maybe that was for the best, I don't know. I'm not a great adherent of the . theory that musical compositions should lie in the ground waiting their time. Symphonies aren't Chinese eggs, you know.
In general, music should be played right away, and that way the audience gets pleasure in time and it's easier for the composer to tell what's what. And if he has made mistakes, he can try to correct them in the next work. Otherwise it's just nonsense, like the business with the Fourth.
Now some people say that I was to blame for the whole incident, that I stopped the performance of my symphony, that I whipped myself, like the sergeant's widow, and that I have no right to point at others. It's easy to judge from afar. But if you had been in my shoes, you'd sing a different tune.
It seemed then as if every performance of my works caused nothing but trouble. The Maly Opera Theater brought Lady Macbeth to Moscow-and there was "Muddle Instead of Music." The Bolshoi Theater staged my ballet-and there was another Pravda editorial, "Balletic Falsity." And what would have happened if the Fourth had been performed then too? Who knows, perhaps no one would have said a word, and my song would have been sung for good.
The conditions were grave, fatal. There's no point in thinking about 1 1 9
it. Besides, Stiedry's"' rehearsals weren't merely bad-they were outrageous. First of all, he was scared to death, because no one would have spared him either. In general, conductors aren't the bravest men on earth. I've had many opportunities to confirm this opinion. They're brave when it comes to yelling at an orchestra, but when someone yells at them, their knees shake.
Secondly, Stiedry didn't know or understand the score, and. he expressed no desire to grapple with it. He said so straight out. And why be shy? The composer was an exposed formalist. Why bother digging around in his score?
This wasn't the only time Stiedry behaved this way, and it wasn't only my music he treated carelessly. In his time, Stiedry truly upset Glazunov. He was supposed to conduct Glazunov's Eighth Symphony.
He came to Leningrad and then it became clear that he was confusing the Eighth with Glazunov's Fourth-quite literally, probably because they are both in the key of E fiat.
This didn't embarrass Stiedry in the least. He didn't give a damn.
As long as Glazunov sat in the auditorium, he rehearsed a little. But Glazunov had to leave, because he was called to court. He was having an argument with the tenants' committee of his building and not paying his rent. As soon as Glazunov left the auditorium, Stiedry perked up and ended the rehearsal. He said, "It'll do like this."
Someone could say to me: Why are you complaining about others?
What about you? Weren't you afraid too? I answer honestly that I was afraid. Fear was a common feeling for everyone then, and I didn't miss my share.
Then he might say: What were you afraid of? They didn't touch musicians. I'll reply: That's not true, they did touch them-and how.
The story that the musicians weren't touched is being spread by Khrennikovt and his henchmen and since men of the arts have short
*Fritz Stiedry (1883-1968), conductor, Mahler's assistant in the Vienna Opera. In 1933 he emigrated to the U.S.S.R., where he was chief conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic. He led the premiere of Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto. After the war he was one of the principal conductors of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
tTikhon Nikolaycvich Khrennikov (b. 1913), composer, head of the Composers' Union of the U.S.S.R. from the time of its First Congress (1948). He was appointed to the post by Stalin (as were leaders of the analogous unions of writers, artists, etc.). In the Stalinist years the duties of the head included approval of lists of the union's members marked for repression. Khrennikov is the only original union leader of the "creative" unions to retain his post to this day. For many years he attacked Shostakovich and Prokofiev viciously. He has received all the highest Soviet orders and prizes.
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memories, they believe him. They've already forgotten Nikolai Sergeyevich Zhilayev, a man I consider one of my teachers.
I met Zhilayev at Tukhachevsky's; the two were friends. Zhilayev taught at the Moscow Conservatory, but most of the lessons were given in his home. Whenever I was in Moscow, I dropped in on him and showed him my latest works. Zhilayev never made a comment merely to say something. By that time there was no point in showing my work to Steinberg, my teacher at the Conservatory, for he simply didn't understand the kind of music I was writing then. Zhilayev replaced my teacher as much as possible.
He had a large picture of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down. I don't know if I can explain how heroic a deed that was. How did people behave then?
As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person. If the enemy of the people wrote books, they threw away his books, if they had letters from him, they burned the letters. The mind can't grasp the number of letters and papers burned in that period, no war could ever clean out domestic archives like that. And naturally, photographs flew into the flames first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.