Symphony No. 11 (Shostakovich)

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The Symphony No. 11 in G minor (Opus 103; subtitled The Year 1905) by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1957 and premiered by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin on 30 October 1957.

The symphony has four movements played without break:

Adagio (Palace Square)
Allegro (9 January)
Adagio (In Memoriam)
Allegro non troppo (Tocsin)

Total timing: approx. 60 minutes.

The title, The Year 1905, recalls the start of the first Russian Revolution of 1905, which was partially fired by the events on January 9th (January 9 by the Julian calendar still in use in Russia at the time, modern date of 22 January 1905) date of that year. Western critics called it something to the effect of overblown film music, while the Soviet government praised it as and awarded it a Lenin Prize. Many now consider the work to carry a much more reflective attitude, one which looks at Russian history as a whole from the standpoint of 1957, four years after the death of Joseph Stalin. Another common interpretation is that the symphony is a response to the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; it was composed immediately after the uprising, and his widow Irina has said that he had it "in mind" during composition (DSCH Journal, No. 12 p. 72). The revolutionary song quotations in the work itself can support many interpretations: the first movement quotes a song, "Slushay!" ("Listen!") with the text "The autumn night is...black as the tyrant's conscience", while the final movement refers to one including the words "shame on you tyrants." Volkov compares this movement's juxtaposition of revolutionary songs to a cinematic montage, while quoting Anna Akhmatova's description of it as "white birds against a black sky."

The Eleventh is sometimes dubbed "a film score without the film". The musical images are indeed of an immediacy and simplicity unusual even for Shostakovitch the epic symphonist, and an additional thread is provided by the nine revolutionary songs quoted during the course of the work.

Palace Square: The first movement is cold, quiet, and somewhat menacing, with transparent strings and distant though ominous timpani motifs. This is underscored with brass calls, also as though from a great distance.

9 January: The second movement consists of two major sections. The first section likely depicts the petitioners of 9 January, 1905, in the city of St Petersburg, in which crowds descended on the Winter Palace to complain about the government's increased inefficiency, corruption, and harsh ways. This first section is busy and constantly moves forward. It builds to two steep climaxes, then recedes into a steep, frozen calm in the prolonged piccolo and flute molodies, underscored again with distant brass.

Suddenly, in a burst from the snare drum like gunfire and fugal strings, troops descend on the crowd. This breaks out into an intense section of relentless strings, and trombone and tuba glissandos procure a nauseating sound underneath the panic and the troop's advance on the crowd. Then comes a section of mechanical, heavily repetitive snare drum, bass drum, timpani, and tam-tam solo before the entire percussion sections breaks off at once. Numbness sets in with a section reminiscent of the first movement.

In Memoriam: The third movement is a lament on the violence, based on the revolutionary funeral march "You Fell as Victims". Toward the end, there is one more outbreak, where material from the second movement is represented.

Tocsin: The finale begins with a march, followed by a haunting cor anglais melody. After the extended solo, the bass clarinet returns to the earlier violence, and the orchestra launches into a march once again. The march builds to a climax with snare drum and chimes in which the tocsin rings out in a resilient G minor, while the orchestra insists a G major.

[edit] Further reading

Volkov, Solomon (2004). Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-41082-1.