Waiting for Mitya

Our chorus is fortunate to have been selected to participate in the choral symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich. The Second, a dedication to the October revolution, was less than symphonic in scope and scale. It is a one-movement piece built on incredibly complicated polyphonics- until the workers' horn sounds and the workers are called together to remember and pay tribute to the triumph of Lenin and the 1917 People's Revolution. The Third, this one a paean to the revolution of May 1905, the presentiment of the end of the tsarist autocracy. Both pieces were written after DS achieved professional acclaim. He was considered one of, if not the most important, of the young Soviet composers. The commissions of the two works were honors and testimonials to his professional stature.

Symphony No. 13, "Babiy Yar," was introduced in 1962, after the renunciation of Stalin, the purges and the terror. Nevertheless, the Communist Party did exercise control of cultural content. At that time, the party was sensitive to claims of official anti-semitism. Babiy Yar is a setting of five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the first of which, "Babiy Yar," is a meditation of the genocide of Jews during World War II but more importantly a polemic about the deeply-rooted anti-semitism in Russia and the official hypocrisy about it. The other poems, different in character, are studies of the role of morality in work and life. The symphony was controversial for the opening poem. In an coerced revision, the Nazi's genocidal sweep of Jews was extended to include Russians and Ukrainians. According to a recent biography, Shostakovich was displeased that Yevtushenko accepted the forced emendation but not enough so to join issue about it.

DS had lived through the political wars of the 1930s. His opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District, celebrated critically and popularly, had a run during two years in productions in his home town of Leningrad (fka Petrograd; fka and pka St. Petersburg) and in Moscow. The reception to this opera appears to be that of universal acclaim, ranking the work among the handful of great Russian operas. After a curtailed visit to the Bolshoy by Comrade Stalin, Pravda, the official party press organ, ran an editorial entitled Muddle Instead of Music. Although not directed solely to Lady Macbeth, the party was making it clear that Western influenced or formalistic (abstract) music and its proponents were considered disloyal. Lady Macbeth was never officially banned but it was removed from the repertory until after Stalin's death and repudiation. Henceforth, artists of all kinds were warned to hew closely to the bland but rewarding virtues of Socialist Realism - marches, patriotic songs and hymns; programmatic music in furtherance of socialist ideals.

Shostakovich initially might have embraced the values of the Revolution, as it pertains to his music. If he believed in Lenin-Marxism, he did not accept Uncle Joe's form of totalitarianism as an acceptable means to the desired end.He was first a humanist, second a patriot, third a socialist.

Shostakovich was not a martyr, however. For the rest of his life, he managed his compositions and his image carefully, staying within the official fold. His Fourth Symphony, a towering work in the great Western symphonic tradition, was withdrawn. Many reasons are given - from lack of orchestra preparedness to the lack of enthusiasm of the presenters. Shostakovich might have read from these reactions that the work would further endanger him and his family.

In 1937, Shostakovich introduced his Fifth Symphony, melodious and accessible, now a beloved part of the Western canon. He described it as the journey of man from ignominy to triumph by means of socialism. In Shostakovich's comments about the Seventh Symphony, " Siege of Leningrad," he made it clear that he opposed not only fascism but also all forms of totalitarianism. This core message can be applied as well to the Fifth Symphony. Shostakovich, clever and careful, had found a means of expressing himelf through his art while cloaking his personal meaning with the broader and protective cloak of Socialist Realism. Babi Yar's words may have gone beyond the poet's official meaning. Shostakovich, while lamenting the role of the totalitarian in censorship of art, found this no deterrence to the expression of the broader and more important statement of humanism.