When I wrote my Eighth Quartet, it was also entered in the column “Refusal of fascism.” To do this, you have to be blind and deaf, because in the quartet everything is clear as two times two. I quote Lady Macbeth, the First and Fifth Symphonies. What does fascism have to do with them? The eighth quartet is autobiographical, it quotes a song known to every Russian – “Tormented by heavy bondage.”
This quartet also contains a Jewish theme from the Piano Trio. I think that if we talk about musical impressions, Jewish folk music made the strongest impression on me. I never tire of admiring her, her versatility: she can seem joyful, being tragic. Almost always in it - laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my understanding of what music should be like in general. It should always have two layers. The Jews were tortured for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express their despair with dance music. All folk music is beautiful, but I can say that Jewish music is unique. Many composers absorbed it, including Russian composers such as Mussorgsky. He meticulously recorded Jewish folk songs. Many of my things reflect the impressions of Jewish music. This is not purely a musical but also a moral issue. I often test a person by his attitude towards the Jews. Nowadays, no person with a claim to decency has the right to be an anti-Semite. All this seems so obvious that it needs no proof, but I have been forced to defend this point of view for at least thirty years. One day, after the war, I was passing by a bookstore and saw a volume of Jewish songs. I've always been interested in Jewish folklore and I thought the book would have melodies, but it only contained lyrics. I thought that it would be possible to tell about the fate of the Jewish people by choosing a few songs and setting them to music. This seemed important to me because I saw anti-Semitism growing around me. But I couldn't play the cycle at the time, it was first played much later, and much later I did an orchestral version of the piece. My parents considered anti-Semitism a shameful relic, and in this sense I was given an exceptional upbringing. In my youth, I encountered anti-Semitism among my peers, who believed that the Jews were receiving certain advantages. They did not remember the pogroms, the ghetto, or the percentage rate. In those days, it was almost considered good manners to mock the Jews. It was a kind of opposition to the authorities. I never indulged in an anti-Semitic tone, even then, I did not retell the anti-Semitic jokes that were current in those years. But still, I was much more indulgent towards this disgusting phenomenon than I am now. Later, I broke off relations even with close friends if I noticed that they displayed some kind of anti-Semitic views. Already before the war, the attitude towards the Jews changed decisively. It turned out that we are still very far from brotherhood. The Jews turned out to be the most persecuted and defenseless people of Europe. It was a throwback to the Middle Ages. Jews have become a kind of symbol for me. All the defenselessness of mankind was concentrated in them. After the war, I tried to convey this feeling through music. It was a difficult time for the Jews. Although, to tell the truth, for them any time is difficult. Despite the fact that many Jews died in the camps, all I heard was: "The Jews fought in Tashkent." And if they saw a Jew with military awards, then they shouted after him: “The Jew, where did you buy the medals?” At that moment, I wrote the Violin Concerto, the Jewish Cycle and the Fourth Quartet. None of these things were done at that time. They were heard only after Stalin's death. I still can't get used to it. The fourth symphony was performed twenty-five years after I wrote it! There are things that have not yet been performed, and no one knows when they can be heard. That is why I was overjoyed when I read Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar", it shocked me. It shocked thousands of people. Many have heard of Babi Yar, but Yevtushenko's poems were needed for people to truly know about him. There were attempts to erase the memory of Babi Yar, first by the Germans, and then by the Ukrainian leadership. But after Yevtushenko's poems, it became clear that he would never be forgotten. Such is the power of art. People knew about Babi Yar even before Yevtushenko, but were silent. And when they read the poems, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence. Dmitri Shostakovich, 1961 The source: https://lgz.ru/article/39-6802-29-09-2021/iskusstvo-unichtozhaet-tishinu/
Text by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Transliteration and translation adopted from Valeria Vlazinskaya
Babi Yar
Over Babi Yar there are no monuments.
The steep precipice is like a crude gravestone.
I am terrified.
I am as old today
As all Jewish people.Now I imagine that I’m a Jew.
Here I wander through ancient Egypt.
And here, on the cross, crucified, I perish.
And still I have on me the marks of the nails.
I imagine myself to be Dreyfus.
The Philistine – my informer and judge.
I am behind bars. I am surrounded.
Persecuted, spat on, slandered.
And dainty ladies in Brussels frills,
Squealing, poke their parasols into my face.
I imagine myself the boy from Belostok.Blood flows, running over the floors.
The rabble-rousers in the tavern commit their outrages
Reeking of vodka and onions, half and half.Kicked by a boot, I lie helpless.
In vain I plead with the pogrom-makers.Accompanied by jeers: “Beat the Yids, save Russia!”
A grain merchant batters my mother.O my Russian people, I know you
Are innately international
But often those whose hands were vile
In vain used your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
What base lowness – without a quiver of a vein
The anti-Semites proclaimed themselves
“The Union of the Russian People!”I imagine myself as Anne Frank,
Transparent as a sprig in April,
And I love, and have no need for phrases,
But I do need for us to gaze into each other.
How little one can see, or smell!
Leaves – we cannot have,
Sky – we cannot have,
But there is so much we can have –
To embrace tenderly in a darkened room.“They’re coming!”
“Don’t be afraid, those are the booming sounds
Of Spring itself. It’s coming here.
Come to me,
Quickly, give me your lips!”“They’re breaking the door!”
“No, it’s the ice breaking…”
Over Babi Yar the wild grasses rustle.
The trees look sternly as if in judgement.
Here everything screams silently and, taking off my hat
I feel I am slowly turning grey.And I myself am one long soundless cry.
Above the thousand thousands buried here.
I am every old man here shot dead.
I am every child here shot dead.
Nothing in me will ever forget this.The “Internationale” – let it thunder
When forever will be buried
The last of the anti-Semites on earth.There is no Jewish blood in mine,
But I am adamantly hated
By all anti-Semites as if I were a Jew.That is why I am a true Russian!
Humor
Tsars, kings, emperors,
Rulers of the world,
Commanded parades
But humor – humor they could not.
To the palaces of the eminent
Who, well groomed, all day reclined.Came the vagabond Aesop
And before him all appeared impoverished.In homes where a hypocrite left traces
Of his puny feet,And this banality Hadji Nasr-ed-Din
Swept aside with his jokes like a chessboard.They wanted to buy humor.
Only he cannot be bought!
They wanted to kill humor.
But humor thumbed his nose.
To battle him is tough business.
They executed him endlessly.Humor’s severed head
Was stuck on a warrior’s pike.Just when the buffoons’ pipes
Would start their tale
He would brightly cry: “I’m here.”And would break into a dashing dance.
In a threadbare scanty coat,
Crestfallen and as if repenting,
Caught as a political prisoner
He would go to his execution.
His appearance displayed obedience,
Ready for his life hereafter,
When suddenly he would slip out of his coat
Waiving his handAnd bye-bye!
They hid humor in cells,
But like hell they succeeded.Iron bars and stone walls
He would pass right through.
Cleaning his throat from the cold,
Like an ordinary soldier
He marched as a simple ditty
With a rifle for the Winter Palace.He is used to stern glances,
But it does not hurt him.
And humor looks upon himself
At times with humor.He is everlasting.
He is smart.
And nimble.He will walk through everything and everybody.
And so, glory to humor!
He is a courageous fellow.In the Store
Some in shawls, some kerchiefs,
As if to a heroic feat or labor
Into the store one by one
Women silently enter.Oh, the clanking of the cans,
The clanging of the bottles and saucepans.
The smell of onions and cucumbers,
The smell of “Kabul” sauce.I shiver queuing for the cashier
But as I keep moving closer
From the breathing of so many women
It gets warmer in the store.They wait silently,
The family’s kind gods,
As they clutch in their hands
The hard-earned money.These are women of Russia,
They are our honor and our conscience.
They have mixed concrete
And ploughed and reaped.They have endured everything.
They will endure everything.Everything on earth is possible for them,
They have been given so much strength.It is shameful to short-change them.
It is sinful to short-weigh them.And, shoving dumplings into my pocket,
I look, solemn and quiet,
At their weary-from-shopping,
Saintly hands.Fears
In Russia fears are dying
Like the ghosts of yesteryears.
Only on church steps here and there like old women
They are begging for bread.I remember fears being in power and force
At the court of triumphant lie.
Fears like shadows slithered everywhere,
Infiltrated every floor.
Gradually they tamed the people
And on everything affixed their seal.
Where silence should be, they taught screaming,
They taught silence, where shouting would be right.
This, today, has become distant,
It is strange even to recall it now.
The secret fear at someone informing,
The secret fear at a knock at the door.
Then, a fear to speak to a foreigner;
Foreigner – nothing, even with one’s own wife.
And unaccountable fear, after marches,
To remain alone with silence, eye to eye.We did not fear to build in snowstorms,
To march into battle under fire.
But we deathly feared at times
To talk to ourselves
We did not get demoralized or corrupted,
And it is not without reason
That Russia, having conquered her own fears,
Spreads even greater fear in her enemies.I see new fears arising,
The fear of being insincere to the country,
The fear of degrading the ideas
That are truth in themselves.
The fear of bragging until stupor,
The fear of repeating someone else’s words,
The fear of belittling others with distrust
And to trust oneself excessively.In Russia fears are dying.
As I write these lines,
And at times unwittingly hurry,
I write them with the single fear
Of not writing at full speed.Career
The clergy maintained that Galileo
Was a wicked and senseless man.Galileo was senseless.
But, as time demonstrated,
He who is senseless is much wiser.
A fellow scientist of Galileo’s age
Was no less wise than Galileo.
He knew that the earth revolved.
But – he had a family.
And he, stepping into a carriage with his wife,
Having accomplished his betrayal,
Considered himself advancing his career,Whereas he undermined it,
For his assertion of our planet
Galileo faced the risk aloneAnd became truly great.
Now this
To my mind, this is a true careerist!
Thus – salute to the career!
When the career is similar
To Shakespeare and Pasteur,
Newton and Tolstoy,
And Tolstoy.Leo?
Leo!
Why was mud flung at them?
Talent is talent, brand them as one may.Those who cursed them are forgotten.
But the accursed are remembered well,
All those who yearned for the stratosphere,
The doctors who perished fighting cholera,
They were pursuing a career!I take as an example their careers.
I believe in their sacred belief.
Their belief is my courage.
I pursue my career
By not pursuing it!
Babi Yar: Adagio (15–18 minutes) In this movement, Shostakovich and Yevtushenko transform the 1941 massacre by Nazis of Jews at Babi Yar, near Kiev, into a denunciation of anti-Semitism in all its forms. (Although the Soviet government did not erect a monument at Babi Yar, it still became a place of pilgrimage for Soviet Jews.) Shostakovich sets the poem as a series of theatrical episodes — the Dreyfus affair, the Białystok pogrom and the story of Anne Frank —, extended interludes in the main theme of the poem, lending the movement the dramatic structure and theatrical imagery of opera while resorting to graphic illustration and vivid word painting. For instance, the mocking of the imprisoned Dreyfus by poking umbrellas at him through the prison bars may be in an accentuated pair of eighth notes in the brass, with the build-up of menace in the Anne Frank episode, culminating in the musical image of the breaking down of the door to the Franks’ hiding place, which underlines the hunting down of that family. The Russian people are not the anti-Semites, they are “internationals”, and the music is briefly hymn-like before dissolving into the cacophony of those who falsely claim to be working for the people.
Humour: Allegretto (8–9 minutes) Shostakovich quotes his setting of the Robert Burns poem “MacPherson Before His Execution” to colour Yevtushenko’s imagery of the spirit of mockery, endlessly murdered and endlessly resurrected, denouncing the vain attempts of tyrants to shackle wit. The movement is a Mahlerian gesture of mocking burlesque, not simply light or humorous but witty, satirical and parodistic. The irrepressible energy of the music illustrates that, just as with courage and folly, humor, even in the form of “laughing in the face of the gallows” is both irrepressible and eternal (a concept, incidentally, also present in the Burns poem). He also quotes a melody of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion by Bartók ironically, as response for the criticism toward his Symphony no. 7.
In the Store: Adagio (10–13 minutes) This movement is about the hardship of Soviet women queueing in a shop. It is also a tribute to patient endurance. This arouses Shostakovich’s compassion no less than racial prejudice and gratuitous violence. Written in the form of a lament, the chorus departs from its unison line in the music’s two concluding harmonized chords for the only time in the entire symphony, ending on a plagal cadence functioning much the same as a liturgical amen.
Fears: Largo (11–13 minutes) This movement touches on the subject of suppression in the Soviet Union and is the most elaborate musically of the symphony’s five movements, using a variety of musical ideas to stress its message, from an angry march to alternating soft and violent episodes. Notable here are the orchestral effects — the tuba, for instance, hearkening back to the “midnight arrest” section of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony — containing some of the composer’s most adventurous instrumental touches since his Modernist period. It also foresees some of Shostakovich’s later practices, such as an 11-note tone row played by the tuba as an opening motif. Harmonic ambiguity instills a deep sense of unease as the chorus intones the first lines of the poem: “Fears are dying-out in Russia.” (“Умирают в России страхи.”) Shostakovich breaks this mood only in response to Yevtushenko’s agitprop lines, “We weren’t afraid/of construction work in blizzards/or of going into battle under shell-fire,” (“Не боялись мы строить в метели, / уходить под снарядами в бой,)parodying the Soviet marching song Smelo tovarishchi v nogu (“Bravely, comrades, march to step”).
Career: Allegretto (11–13 minutes) While this movement opens with a pastoral duet by flutes over a B♭ pedal bass, giving the musical effect of sunshine after a storm, it is an ironic attack on bureaucrats, touching on cynical self-interest and robotic unanimity while also a tribute to genuine creativity. It follows in the vein of other satirical finales, especially the Eighth Symphony and the Fourth and Sixth String Quartets. The soloist comes onto equal terms with the chorus, with sarcastic commentary provided by the bassoon and other wind instruments, as well as rude squeaking from the trumpets] It also relies more than the other movements on purely orchestral passages as links between vocal statements.
