1905 and Now

            Having received numerous complaints and queries from members of our community regarding the Driftless Philharmonic’s upcoming performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 11: The Year 1905, I have decided to write and address these concerns as fully as I can in hopes of emphasizing the relevance and importance of the music in question. Public discourse is a welcome and necessary aspect of the musical process and it is my pleasure to see the community so excited and involved, even if much of the discussion antagonizes the Driftless Phil and our programmatic choices. I would like to make clear that we will not be altering our concert program in any way and that we will still be performing Symphony no. 11 as planned next month, but I am happy to acknowledge criticisms of its appropriateness and do my best to explain its value.

            We have received complaints regarding three broad aspects of the work and its historical context. First of these is the subject matter of the musical plot – this symphony’s subtitle, The Year 1905 refers to the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg, Russia in January of 1905, an event that helped fuel the Bolshevik uprising that dismantled the old Tsarist system and created what we remember as Soviet Russia. There is no text or visual accompaniment to Symphony no. 11, but the musical scenes of the second and third movements clearly depict the violent killing and wounding of upwards of four thousand working-class Russians. Some members of our community object to the frankness of this depiction, especially with regard to its perceived inappropriateness for younger concert-goers. I have no desire to dictate parenting methods, but pain and suffering are integral facts of artistry that are as deeply rooted in music as are joy and love. Symphony no. 11 is unambiguous, but it is far from alone in its genre. This aspect of the work is also historically significant in that the symphony premiered in 1957, a year after a violent and costly uprising in Budapest that solidified the Soviet government’s powerful grip on its constituent regions. This uprising and the violence surrounding it were so fresh in the minds of the symphony’s first listeners that connections were inevitably drawn and the music served as a new way to understand and even cope with that suffering. Today, music about pain still has an important place in culture to facilitate the comprehension of atrocity and horror, and to shield the public from that opportunity may even be considered irresponsible.

            Other objections from our community relate to Shostakovich’s public identity as a Soviet puppet. Certainly most of his large works are examples of Soviet nationalism and socialist realism, but it is unclear how Shostakovich personally felt about the regime. One of Shostakovich’s earlier works, the opera Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk Distsrict, premiered in 1932, was publicly denounced after Stalin attended a performance in 1936 (the review in question may even have been written by Stalin himself). The following year, Shostakovich premiered his fifth symphony, with the written inscription “A Soviet artist’s creative response to justify criticism.” After Stalin’s death in 1953, Schostakovich began insert variations on the musical idea D-Eb-C-B, or, in the German musical system, D-es-C-H – in other words, “D. SCH” (for D. Schostakovich). Musicologist David Fanning asserts that “through the dictator’s death [Shostakovich] could begin to assert his own identity in his work.” This specific motive happens to appear in various forms all over Symphony no. 11, and while it is far from proof of Schostakovich’s political alignment, it is at least evidence that he thought and worked as his own person, not only as a puppet for the Soviet regime.

            The most complaints we have received come from community members who find the Soviet socialist realist aspects of Symphony no. 11 distasteful, un-American, and even propagandistic. After Stalin gained power, it was mandated that Russian art satisfy the idea of “socialist realism,” i.e. Russian art should use the glorified Common Man as subject matter, should be large and grand, should make an effort to include traditional folk material, and above all depict a socialist utopia that glorifies the Russian Motherland. It is difficult to deny that, at least on the surface, Symphony no. 11 satisfies every requirement. It tells the story of the beaten, massacred working class as they became inspired to rise up against tsarist tyranny. It clocks in at about an hour long and uses the full dynamic, musical, and emotional range of the orchestra, and each movement contains substantial melodic material adapted from Russian revolutionary songs. However, the fact that the work could have been used as propaganda does not make it inherently worthless, especially since we will never know Shostakovich’s true motivations. If in fact Shostakovich was conveying some secret anti-state message with his music, then performing it creates fascinating opportunities to explore the rebellious nature of art and composer motivation, and serves as a reminder of the subversive power of music. On the other hand, if the work is purely propagandistic, it still opens up important opportunities for discussion of art and music’s place in politics and power structures.

            Regardless of Shostakovich’s intentions or of the subject matter itself, Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 11 is regarded as one of the most important (and often most beautiful) works of the twentieth century. It is enjoyable even without its controversial historical context, but even concert-goers who are aware of its place in world history have the opportunity to use this performance as a chance to open up dialogue, not stop it before it begins.