And now the story takes wing to the heavenly heights-a lackey's dream. Supposedly, Stalin rejected this mishmash with Caucasian wines, the menu displeased him. He had a taste for something · different, something more exalted; instead of the Caucasian wines he wanted the Caucasian mountains. Stalin crossed out the swans and eagles and instead wrote in one composition: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Embrace, millions! He wrote it himself! With his own hand! The lackey's breath stops! How happy he made us, our benefactor! He made us happy! He made Beethoven happy!
I don't believe it for a minute. It's all lies.
First of all, no one has ever told me precisely at which congress it was that they ended with the Beethoven. Everyone gives me a different number.
Secondly, why was Beethoven given such honors only at this con-1 27
gress? Why did they dance and sing at the others? And they didn't sing "Millions embrace" either. They sang about Stalin the eagle, for there were always more than enough songs on that eternally fresh and captivating theme. I think there must have been some twenty thousand, maybe more. It would be interesting to work out how much money our leader paid out for songs about our leader.
Finally, even if this dubious fact of the Ninth Symphony did occur, it still doesn't prove anything, least of all Stalin's love of Beethoven.
Should we consider the production of The Valkyrie at the Bolshoi, done before the war on Stalin's direct order, to be proof of his love of Wagner? Rather it was a declaration of his love for Hitler.
This story about The Valkyrie is so shameful that it's worth telling.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was in force. We were supposed to love Fascists. We loved belatedly, but as a result with greater passion, the way a middle-aged widow loves her husky young neighbor.
They were pushing Jews out of the more important positions so that they wouldn't irritate German eyes. Litvinov was removed from his position as People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, for instance. But these were negative actions, so to speak, and positive actions were called for. Well, they gave Hitler several hundred German anti-Fascists and German Jews who were seeking asylum in the Soviet Union.
But that was too modest, nothing on a grand scale, no publicity or fanfare. Just a business favor. And what was wanted were fanfares and a passionate Caucasian love. High emotions, "beautiful tea, and beautiful candy," as the poet said.* They remembered Wagner.
Funny things happen with Wagner in Russia. At first the Russian musicians got into fights with one another over him. Then they stopped fighting and learned from him. But this at least remained within the boundaries of a small group of professionals. Suddenly Wagner became popular. This was before World War I. The tsar, you see, ordered the production of The Ring of the Nibelung at the Imperial Maryinsky Theater. The court, the officers, and the clerks all fell in love with Wagner. And then suddenly the war came! A relative, you might say, and picking a fight. It hurt, it really did. Savages usually
•Shostakovich is quoting a popular line from the ironic poem by Nikolai Makarovich Oleinikov (1898-1942), who died in the Stalinist terror. He was one of Shostakovich's favorite poets.
His collected works have not been published in the Soviet Union.
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whip their graven images in these situations. In Russia they decided to whip Wagner. And he was thrown out of the repertory of the Imperial Maryinsky Theater.
After the Revolution they remembered Wagner again, because they needed an opera repertory that was commensurate with the epoch.
The revolutionary operatic repertoire was limited. You couldn't permit tsars or boyars onstage, or "fancied-up ladies," as they used to call Tatiana from Eugene Onegin in those days. They decided that Western operas held less danger for the Revolution. They tried to learn William Tell, Fiorella, and Le Prophete. And they pulled out Wagner's Rienzi.
Meyerhold began staging Rienzi. He told me that for some purely internal theatrical reason, he didn't see the production through to the end. He always regretted it. I think the problem was money. Meyerhold told me about his conception, which was very interesting and had nothing to do with the music.
Finally, another director produced Rienzi. I don't like the opera very much, I find it pompous and overblown. The conception is not capable of standing alone and the music is mediocre. The plot is good for a revolutionary play, but that's not a primary prerequisite for an opera.
I felt differently toward Wagner at different stages of my life. He wrote some pages of genius, and a lot of very good music, and a lot of average music. But Wagner knew how to peddle his goods. The composer-publicity man is a type I found alien; it is certainly not in the tradition of Russian music. That may be the reason why Russian music is not as popular in the West as it should be. Glinka, our first professional composer, was also the first to say, replying to Meyerbeer, "I do not hawk my own works." And that was so. Not like Meyerbeer.
And then there was Mussorgsky, who refused to go to see Liszt despite all his invitations. Liszt planned to give him marvelous publicity, but Mussorgsky pref erred to remain in Russia and compose. He was not a practical man.
There is one more example-Rimsky-Korsakov. Diaghilev was dragging him to one of his earliest concerts of Russian music in Paris.
They were talking about Sadko. Diaghilev demanded cuts from Rimsky-Korsakov. He insisted that the French were incapable of lis-1 29
tening to an opera from eight until midnight. Diaghilev said that the French couldn't even hear Pelleas to the end and fled in large crowds after eleven, creating a "murderous impression" (Diaghilev's words).
Korsakov replied thus: "I'm totally indifferent to the tastes of the French." And added, "If the weak-willed French audiences in tail coats, who drop in at the opera and who listen to the bought press and to claques, find it too difficult to hear the full Sadko, it shouldn't be offered to them." Not badly said.
After some clever maneuvering, Diaghilev managed to dig Korsakov out and drag him to Paris. Korsakov sent Diaghilev a postcard with his agreement, which said, "If we're going, then let's go, as the parrot said to the cat that was dragging him by the tail down the stairs."
Of the major Russian composers, only two have known how to sell themselves, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. But it's no accident that both are composers of a new era, and in a sense children, even though adoptive ones, of Western culture. Their love and taste for publicity, I feel, keep Stravinsky and Prokofiev from being thoroughly Russian composers. There's some flaw in their personalities, a loss of some very important moral principles.
Both took several lessons from the West too much to heart, lessons that perhaps should not have been learned at all. And in winning popularity they lost something just as valuable.
It's difficult for me to talk about this, I have to be very careful not to insult a man undeservedly. For Stravinsky, for example, may be the most brilliant composer of the twentieth century. But he always spoke only for himself, while Mussorgsky spoke for himself and for his country. But on the other hand, Mussorgsky didn't have a good publicity machine. Not at all.
Now, I hope, you'll see why I have ambivalent feelings towards Wagner. Russian composers learned a new way to orchestrate from him and not how to create publicity on a wide scale or to intrigue and infight. The forging of the sword in the first act of Siegfried is a moment of genius. But why mobilize an army of your proponents against Brahms? Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one.