Symphony No. 14 (Shostakovich)

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The Symphony No. 14 (Opus 135) by Dmitri Shostakovich was completed in the spring of 1969, and was premiered later that year. It is a sombre work for soprano, bass and a small string orchestra with percussion, consisting of eleven linked settings of poems by four authors. Most of the poems deal with the theme of death, particularly that of unjust or early death. They were set in Russian, although two other versions of the work exist with the texts all back-translated from Russian either into their original languages or into German. The symphony is dedicated to Benjamin Britten.

1 Premieres
2 Forces
3 Movements
4 Criticism
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Premieres

The work received its official premiere in Leningrad on 29 September, 1969 by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under Rudolf Barshai. Four different singers were involved in the first presentations of the work: the sopranos Galina Vishnevskaya and Margarita Miroshnikova, and the basses Mark Reshetin and Yevgeny Vladimirov. An initial performance, preceding the official Moscow and Leningrad premieres, was given by Miroshnikova and Vladimirov, while sources differ as to the vocalists in the official premieres.^[1]

The pre-premiere performance was notable for the commotion caused in the audience by Pavel Apostolov, one of the composer's most vicious critics, who suffered a heart attack or stroke. He did not die during the concert, as is often claimed (Shostakovich himself thought this to be the case), but a month or so afterwards.

[edit] Forces

Besides the soloists, the symphony is scored for a chamber orchestra, including only strings and percussion. The strings are ten violins, four violas, three cellos, and two double basses, and the percussion section includes wood block, castanets, whip, soprano, alto and tenor tom-toms, xylophone, campane, vibraphone, and celesta. Interestingly, the percussion section does not include common instruments such as timpani, bass drum, cymbals, or triangle.

[edit] Movements

The work has eleven linked movements, each a setting of a poem:

Much of the setting is in a quasi-parlando style.

Adagio. De profundis (Federico García Lorca)
Allegretto. Malagueña (Federico García Lorca)
Allegro molto. Loreley (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Adagio. Le Suicidé (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Allegretto. Les Attentives I (On watch) (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Adagio. Les Attentives II (Madam, look!) (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Adagio. A la Santé (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Allegro. Réponse des Cosaques Zaporogues au Sultan de Constantinople (Guillaume Apollinaire)
Andante. O, Del'vig, Del'vig! (Wilhelm Küchelbecker)
Largo. Der Tod des Dichters (Rainer Maria Rilke)
Moderato. Schlußstück (Rainer Maria Rilke)

The opening bars of the symphony, played by the first violins.

The first movement begins with the violins playing a theme reminiscent of the Dies irae, which plays such a prominent role in the history of Russian music. Fragments of the theme are developed in various sections throughout the symphony, while it recurs in its entirety in the climactic second-last movement.

The work shows Shostakovich's willingness to adopt new techniques. All but two of the movements include themes using tone rows, which he uses to convey a sense of the abstract.^[2] He also makes dramatic use of tone clusters, such as the fortissimo chord illustrating the lily growing from the suicide's mouth in the fourth movement.

[edit] Criticism

The composer himself was initially unsure what to call the work, eventually designating it a symphony rather than a song cycle to emphasise the unity of the work musically and philosophically: most of the poems deal with the subject of mortality (he rejected the title oratorio because the work lacks a chorus).

Not all the movements are linked together; there are a few breaks between movements that effectively divide the work up into a "conventional" four-movement structure.

Many at the time (including Solzhenitsyn and Lev Lebedinsky) criticised the work as overly pessimistic; Wilson argues that on the contrary "through careful ordering of the texts [he] conveys a specific message of protest at the arbitrary power exercised by dictators in sending the innocent to their deaths" (p. 411).

[edit] Notes

^ Barshai in Wilson p. 417 states that Vishnevskaya and Reshetin gave the premiere in each city, while the MCA edition of the score attributes the Leningrad premiere to Vishnevskaya and Reshetin.
^ Huth, Andrew, Notes to performance at the Barbican Arts Centre 13 April 2006, p. vi.

[edit] References

Shostakovich, Dmitri (1970). Symphony No. 14 for soprano, bass and chamber music. MCA Music Publishing.
Shostakovich, Dmitri and Glikman, Isaak (2001). Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman. Cornell Univ Press. ISBN 0-8014-3979-5.
Wilson, Elizabeth (1994). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04465-1.