9th Symphony (Shostakovich)

The 9th Symphony in E flat major , Op. 70 by Dmitri Shostakovich was composed in 1944 and 1945 . It is a five-movement symphony in classic sonata form .

Emergence

Shostakovich developed plans for a ninth symphony as early as the spring of 1944. Originally, it should not only be orchestral , but also include a choir . With the victory of the Red Army over Hitler Germany in May 1945, the pressure on Shostakovich to compose a victory symphony after his two war symphonies, the 7th and the 8th, increased. In addition, the personality cult around Stalin increased again after the end of the fighting and he was now expecting a heroic work. The number 9, which since Beethoven's ninth symphony required a special claim, increased the pressure on Shostakovich even more. A work was expected that would surpass anything that had been done before. Shostakovich's response to these expectations was surprising; the political reactions led to a long pause in Shostakovich's symphonic work, who did not write his next symphony until after Stalin's death.

Characteristic

With his symphony Shostakovich offended the leadership of the Soviet Union in many ways. With the use of the key of E flat major, on the one hand, he took up the required heroic character of a victory symphony, but on the other hand reduced the expectations associated with this key to absurdity. The means to achieve this were, on the one hand, the strict form, which had already dissolved since Beethoven and was extremely unusual in the music of the 20th century. Furthermore, the symphony is extremely short compared to its predecessors. The textbook-like application of a strict form is paired with the use of downright stupid musical means, apparently senseless runs and sarcastically exaggerated Allegri. Shostakovich increases this musical means in the course of the symphony to a circus march at the point where a heroic finale should be. Despite all the apparent superficiality and stupidity, there are also classic motifs that Shostakovich used again and again in the time of the Stalinist terror, such as the representation of overwhelming threats with the help of primitive chords and a violent aesthetic of the music.

Analysis of the sentences

1st movement (Allegro)

The first movement is in the basic key of E flat major, which offers two possibilities for interpretation. On the one hand, E-flat major can be an allusion to the personality cult of Stalin after the victory of the Red Army due to the historical predicament by Beethoven and references to Napoleon , on the other hand, the first movement misses the key of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in D minor by a half tone and pulls thus the demands placed on the symphony by the Soviet leadership into the absurd. The first sentence is emphatically unimaginative. A dialogical structure determined by strings and flutes is dominant. Characteristic are the resolute fourth leaps, which anticipate the grotesque heroism of circus music, but are also reminiscent of the Leningrad Symphony , in which these fourth leaps represent a symbol of violence. Formally, the first movement follows the structure of a classical sonata main movement in an extremely orthodox manner . So far, however, it has not been recognized that Shostakovich is quoting the song Praise of the High Mind from Gustav Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn , in which the donkey decides that the cuckoo sings more beautifully than the nightingale. The article by Jakob Knaus in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of October 29, 2016 under the title The Secret of Shostakovich's 9th Symphony: The wisest of the wise - a donkey? . After the end of the Second World War, Stalin had been described as the great victor and the “wisest of the wise”.

2nd movement (Moderato)

The second movement also adapts to the structure of a classical symphony. In this, however, nothing of the grotesque or absurd can be felt. Rather, it is determined by threatening and plaintive motives. Two plaintive motifs are developed, both of which are characterized by muted woodwinds. A third joins this in bar 99, which uses threatening motifs often used in Shostakovich. Here it is chromatically ascending strings that are embedded in an elongated crescendo . This third motif can be seen as a sarabande . Shostakovich used baroque forms in the previous two war symphonies as a means of expressing suffering, grief, violence and brutality. In general, the second movement is characterized by a deep seriousness that contrasts the first very strongly. This approach, often found in Shostakovich, is due to the need to contrast the grief and suffering of ordinary people with the triggering violence of the rulers.

3rd movement (Presto)

The scherzo of the third movement contrasts the second very strongly. It is in three parts, two main movements embed a trio in the middle of the scherzo. The trio is again like a march. Interesting in this march is the initial key of F sharp minor, which was considered the key of death in Romanticism . The movement ends in a mood that strongly contradicts the Scherzo character, leading to the fourth movement.

4th movement (Largo)

The fourth movement dialectically processes the two aspects of war. A martial fanfare theme opens the movement and is contrasted in bar 10 after a cymbal strike by a strongly melodious and very intimate theme, which is performed by only one bassoon . The dialogical structure of the only moderately varying fanfare theme and the bassoon melody continues throughout the movement. The different treatment of dynamics is striking. While the fanfare theme is largely uniform in fortissimo , the bassoon theme has a broader spectrum. The movement ends with a decrescendo reminiscent of suffocation.

5th movement (Allegretto)

The fifth movement, which follows the fourth attacca , is introduced with the bassoon part of the fourth movement, which has changed in character. The movement develops three themes and is again in the starting key of E flat major. A march-like characteristic appears quite early. All three topics are developed in the implementation . It serves to increase and compact the material. The climax is found in the recapitulation (from bar 288), in which the material is heightened to a grotesque circus march in the “heroic” key of E flat major. Formally, the last sentence is also extremely unimaginative, it still corresponds to the textbook form.

Follow the symphony

With his Ninth Symphony, Shostakovich may have exceeded the provocations found in many of his works from the Stalin era. It was ostracized by the cultural policy of the Soviet Union and, at the latest, after the Zhdanov reports in 1948, renewed persecution. After the ninth symphony, Shostakovich took a long break in his symphonic work. A major exception is the 1st Violin Concerto, Op. 77, which is often referred to as a symphony with a solo violin part , which deals with the situation of the Jews in the Soviet Union after the end of the Second World War and the anti-Semitic mood that set in. Due to the political situation, the concert was premiered two years after Stalin's death. The 10th symphony , which is linked to the violin concerto in the use of the DSCH motif , only followed after Stalin's death and is considered a settlement with the dictator.

literature

• Wolfgang Osthoff : Symphonies at the end of the war - Stravinsky, Frommel, Shostakovich. in Acta Musicologica 1988, pp. 62-104.
• Heinz Alfred Brockhaus: The Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich , Diss. Berlin 1962.
• Lutz-Werner Hesse : Schostakowitsch and Mahler , in: Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, Vsevolod Zaderackij (ed.), Internationales Dmitri-Shostakowitsch-Symposium Cologne 1985, Regensburg 1986, pp. 327-335.
• Karen Kopp: Form and content of the symphonies of Dmitrij Schostakowitsch , Bonn 1990.
• Dorothea Redepennig: Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz - Music against violence and war , in: Osteuropa 4–6 / 2005, pp. 281–307.
• Solomon Wolkow (ed.): The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich , Munich 2000.
• Solomon Volkov: Stalin and Shostakovich , Berlin 2004.
• Michael Koball: Pathos and the grotesque. The German tradition in the symphonic work of Dmitri Schostakowitsch. Kuhn, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-928864-50-5 (out of print in bookshops, can be obtained from the author).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jakob Knaus: The wisest of the wise - a donkey? A courageous secret in the 9th Symphony by Dimitri Schostakowitsch. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 29, 2016, p. 26.