Shostakovich

Shostakovich
Author: Elizabeth Wilson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 550
Release: 1994
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780691029719

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is a unique study of the great composer Dimitri Shostakovich drawn from the reminiscences and reflections of his contemporaries. Using much material never previously published in English, as well as personal accounts from interviews and specially commissioned articles, Elizabeth Wilson has built up a fascinating chronicle of Shostakovich's life. Elizabeth Wilson sheds light on the composer's creative process and his working life in music, and examines the enormous and enduring influence that Shostakovich has had on Soviet musical life. Essential reading for anyone interested in the composer, the book also offers a fascinating perspective on the social and political history of Soviet Russia.

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered
Author: Elizabeth Wilson
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 612
Release: 2011-03-03
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0571261159

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is a unique study of the great composer, drawn from the reminiscences and reflections of his contemporaries. Elizabeth Wilson sheds light on the composer's creative process and his working life in music, and examines the enormous and enduring influence that Shostakovich has had on Soviet musical life.'The one indispensable book about the composer.' New York Times

Shostakovich and Stalin

Shostakovich and Stalin
Author: Solomon Volkov
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307427722

“Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that.” So said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose first compositions in the 1920s identified him as an avant-garde wunderkind. But that same singularity became a liability a decade later under the totalitarian rule of Stalin, with his unpredictable grounds for the persecution of artists. Solomon Volkov—who cowrote Shostakovich’s controversial 1979 memoir, Testimony—describes how this lethal uncertainty affected the composer’s life and work. Volkov, an authority on Soviet Russian culture, shows us the “holy fool” in Shostakovich: the truth speaker who dared to challenge the supreme powers. We see how Shostakovich struggled to remain faithful to himself in his music and how Stalin fueled that struggle: one minute banning his work, the next encouraging it. We see how some of Shostakovich’s contemporaries—Mandelstam, Bulgakov, and Pasternak among them—fell victim to Stalin’s manipulations and how Shostakovich barely avoided the same fate. And we see the psychological price he paid for what some perceived as self-serving aloofness and others saw as rightfully defended individuality. This is a revelatory account of the relationship between one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers and one of its most infamous tyrants.

The New Shostakovich

The New Shostakovich
Author: Ian MacDonald
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2006
Genre: Music
ISBN: 184595064X

Since the posthumous publication in 1979 of alleged memoirs by Shostakovich, the controversy about the composer and his music has escalated. This book presents the case for the dissident view, arguing that the meaning of the composer's music cannot be appreciated without a knowledge of the terrible times he lived through under Soviet Communism.

A Shostakovich Casebook

A Shostakovich Casebook
Author: Malcolm Hamrick Brown
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 025305625X

A collection of writings analyzing the controversial 1979 posthumous memoirs of the great Russian composer at their significance. In 1979, the alleged memoirs of legendary composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) were published as Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitry Shostakovich As Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov. Since its appearance, however, Testimony has been the focus of controversy in Shostakovich studies as doubts were raised concerning its authenticity and the role of its editor, Volkov, in creating the book. A Shostakovich Casebook presents twenty-five essays, interviews, newspaper articles, and reviews—many newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union—that review the “case” of Shostakovich. In addition to authoritatively reassessing Testimony’s genesis and reception, the authors in this book address issues of political influence on musical creativity and the role of the artist within a totalitarian society. Internationally known contributors include Richard Taruskin, Laurel E. Fay, and Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, the composer’s widow. This volume combines a balanced reconsideration of the Testimony controversy with an examination of what the controversy signifies for all music historians, performers, and thoughtful listeners. Praise for A Shostakovich Casebook “A major event . . . This Casebook is not only about Volkov’s Testimony, it is about music old and new in the 20th century, about the cultural legacy of one of that century’s most extravagant social experiments, and what we have to learn from them, not only what they ought to learn from us.” —Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Charles Ives Remembered

Charles Ives Remembered
Author: Vivian Perlis
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780252070785

Through their reminiscences, Ives's relatives, friends, colleagues, and associates reveal aspects of his life, character, and personality, as well as his musical activities.

Shostakovich, the Man and His Music

Shostakovich, the Man and His Music
Author: Christopher Norris
Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1982
Genre: Music
ISBN:

This volume of essays by musicians, composers and critics embraces all his principal works, and discusses the historical circumstances and the political and cultural atmosphere of their composition. Among the contributors, Christopher Rowland and Alan George of the Fitzwilliam Quartet, whose recordings of Shostakovich's fifteen quartets have been widely praised, provide a unique, intimate guide to them, based on the Quartet's close personal collaboration with the composer. The pianist and composer Ronald Stephenson [Stevenson] writes on the piano music; Geoffrey Norris analyses the operas, discussing the libretti as well as the music and aspects of the production; Malcolm MacDonald concentrates on the vocal settings, focusing in particular on the late symphonies and song cycles; and Bernard Stevens discusses the influence of Shostakovich, particularly on British composers.

Story of a Friendship

Story of a Friendship
Author: Dmitriĭ Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2001
Genre: Composers
ISBN: 9780801439797

This choice by the composer's close friend Isaak Glikman brought the tormented feelings of the musical genius into public view. Now those feelings resound in the first substantial collection of Shostakovich's letters to appear in English.

Testimony

Testimony
Author: Dmitriĭ Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2005-07-01
Genre: Composers
ISBN: 9780571227921

With the composer's consent, the manuscript was smuggled out of Soviet Russia - but Shostakovich, fearing reprisals, stipulated that the book should not appear until after his death. Ever since its publication in 1979 it has been the subject of controversy, some suggesting that Volkov invented parts of it, but most affirming that it revealed a profoundly ambivalent Shostakovich which the world had never seen before - his life at once triumphant and tragic. Either way, it remains indispensable to an understanding of Shostakovich's life and work. Testimony is intense and fiercely ironic, both plain-spoken and outspoken.

Symphony for the City of the Dead

Symphony for the City of the Dead
Author: M.T. Anderson
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0763691003

Originally published: Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2015.