I think that work on these compositions had a positive effect, and I fear death less now; or rather, I'm used to the idea of an inevitable end and treat it as such. After all, it's the law of nature and no one has ever eluded it. I'm all for a rational approach toward death. We should think more about it and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it.
I don't feel that writing and thinking about death are symptomatic of illness and I don't think that writing about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner they'd make fewer foolish mistakes. Somehow it's considered improper for young people to write about death. Why? When you ponder and write about death, you make some gains. First, you have time to think through things that are related to death and you lose the panicky fear. And second, you try to make fewer mistakes. That's why I'm not very concerned about what they'll say about the Fourteenth, even though I heard more attacks on the Fourteenth than on any of my other symphonies.
People might say, how can that be? What about Lady Macbeth?
And the Eighth Symphony? And so many other works? I don't think I have any compositions that weren't criticized, but that was a different sort of criticism. Here the criticism came from people who claimed to be my friends. That's another matter entirely, that kind of criticism hurts.
They read this idea in the Fourteenth Symphony: "Death is allpowerful." They wanted the finale to be comforting, to say that death 1 8 1
is only the beginning. But it's not a beginning, it's the real end, there will be nothing afterward, nothing.
I feel that you must look truth right in the eyes. Often composers haven't had the courage for that, even the greatest ones, like Tchaikovsky or Verdi. Just think of The Queen of Spades. Gherman dies and then comes music which was described by the old cynic Asafiev as "the image of a loving Liza hovering over the corpse." What is that? The corpse is just that, and Liza has nothing to do with it. It doesn't matter to the corpse whose image hovers over it.
Tchaikovsky gave in to the seduction of solace-you know, the best of everything in this best of all possible worlds. Something will hover over your corpse too. Liza's image or some banners. This was a cowardly act on Tchaikovsky's part.
And Verdi did exactly the same thing in Otello. Richard Strauss entitled one of his tone poems Death and Transfiguration. Even Mussorgsky, certainly a just and courageous man, was afraid to look truth in the face. After Boris's death in Boris Godunov, the music moves to such a major key that you can't be any more major.
To deny death and its power is useless. Deny it or not, you'll die anyway. But understanding that is not tantamount to bowing to death.
I don't make a cult of death, l don't praise it. Mussorgsky didn't sing the praises of death either. Death in his song cycles looks horrible, and most important, it comes before it should.
It's stupid to protest death as such, but you can and must protest violent death. It's bad when people die before their time from disease or poverty, but it's worse when a man is killed by another man. I thought about all this when I orchestrated Songs and Dances of Death, and these thoughts also found reflection in the Fourteenth Symphony.
I don't protest against death in it, I protest against those butchers who execute people.
That's why I chose Apollinaire's "The Zaporozhian Cossacks' Answer to the Turkish Sultan" for my Fourteenth. Everyone immediately thinks of Repin's famous painting* and smiles happily. But my music
*This painting by Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1 930), which depicts a picturesque group of Zaporozhian Cossacks writing an insulting letter to Sultan Mahmud IV, is an "icon" of contemporary Russian mass culture. It is interesting to observe ·how Apollinaire (a French poet of Polish extraction) took his departure point from Repin's painting (as researchers suppose) and created his poem, which in tum inspired Shostakovich (a Russian composer of Polish extraction).
1 82
I n 1949 under pressure from Stalin, Shostako ich came to New York to attend the Cultural and Scientific Con ference for World Peace. He had very unplea ant memorie of the trip, especially the aggressi eness of American reporter .
From the left: the political head of the So iet delegation, the writer Alexander Fadeyev; Norman Mailer· Shostakovich ; Arthur Miller: Dr. William Olaf Stapledon of England.
(Wide World.)
December 1 5 , 1949 : Shostakovich
and his wife Nina in a box at the
Leningrad Philharmonic at the first
performance of his oratorio Song of
the Forests. Twenty-three years earlier,
the triumphant premiere of the
nineteen-year-old composer's First
Symphony had taken place here.
The conductor's wife, Mme.
M ravinsk y, is at the right.
With his mother, Sofiya Vasilyevna,
in 195 1 . She died four years later, saying:
"I have discharged my not-so-eas
duties as a mother."
In the dressing room of his son,
Maxim, a conductor, after a
concert. Maxim remembered
his father's words: ''An artist on
stage is a soldier in combat. No
matter how hard it is, you can't
retreat." Moscow, 1965.
Paul Robeson with Jewish
actor Solomon Mikhoels
in Moscow. Mikhoels,
killed on Stalin's orders in
1948, was an active defender
of Shostakovich's music.
Jr_.,J
vvri.,.,
1111.,, .
£ li'1'1"1'' ·;i .. �n·• ·n i;:n
c-:"·. ·i:c�,., .'li
Title page of a collection of songs in
Yiddish, published in Moscow in 1970,
and edited and introduced by Shostako ich.
The introduction reflected
his delight in Jewish folk music.
Shostakovich
accom panying a performance
of his vocal
cycle From
Jewish Folk
Poetry.
Leningrad ,
1956.
Shostako ich at work: he did not
need any special conditions to
compose music. E en noise did not
distract him.
With his third
wife, I rina.
( H is second
marriage was
unhappy and
short-lived.)
Listening to folk
musicians in the
Kirghiz Republic in
1963. To the left of