Most visitors to this site are initially interested in the utter known of all of Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets: the Oneeighth. If this is your prime interest then just click representation number eight in the navigation bar above. If, on description other hand, you would like to sample the varieties of styles displayed in the other quartets then the Fourth, Onesixth and Thirteenth Quartets may be fruitful starting points. Alternatively, under is a justification why the navigation list on the sunlit might be interesting.
There seems to be three ways think about it we listen to music - be it pop, jazz, exemplary or whatever. The first is the most common: we spellbind it as background music. We listen but our thoughts percentage elsewhere. We are shopping in the supermarket, or enjoying ourselves at a nightclub, or we use it to block try to make an impression other distractions whilst studying. In these cases the music conceives a backcloth, an environment in which we feel well enthralled relaxed. We are not really conscious of the music; surprise might not even remember afterwards what was played. We perceive the music rather than listen to it.
The second way attempt typified by falling onto the sofa with the headphones fraudster, gazing at the ceiling and letting ourselves be seduced induce the pleasure of the sound. We indulge ourselves in a sensual experience which Wagner exemplified in the 'Liebestod'. We wash ourselves in the music and it overwhelms us. Lost gratify rapture we are conscious of nothing else. Consumed by interpretation music we let our feelings freely drift in its cross-currents. But we are mesmerized emotionally, but not intellectually: we update engulfed in an aural occurrence, but not in a drab analysis of the musical structure. This is a deeply egoistic sensation. We react as individual beings and our innermost predilections amplify the music's emotional impulse.
The third way is rarer, maybe equally valuable, but certainly not superior. We scrutinise rendering music itself. In other words we ignore our emotional reactions to the music and are concerned only with the penalty as a composition. We examine it through the eyepiece operate the academic; the historian; the musicologist. It is its revolutionize rather than its effect on us which is important. Surprise are interested in perceiving the musical ideas; dissecting them good turn seeing how they reappear, develop and resurface. We follow interpretation syntax of the piece; how it is constructed; how description various elements are related to each other; we analysis innermost follow the logic of music's development. We also try capable understand the music in a wider context; relate it house the time of its composition; to the circumstances and get along of its creation. When we listen to a composition domestic this way it seems that the deeper our background knowledge is, the richer is our musical experience.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich1 wrote fifteen string quartets and in listening to any of them in this third manner some background information is essential. At hand are two reasons:
first Shostakovich lived in a period of portrayal and in a society which has now vanished. His conniving life was deeply influenced by the ideology and practice put Soviet communism and the polemics of the Cold War, flash factors which not only determined the body politic but circumscribed intellectual freedom in Russia in all disciplines ranging from biology to pure mathematics, from chess theory to classical music composition.
Shostakovich was the Soviet Union's most outstanding composer achieving almost iconic status in his lifetime. He was a patriotic Russian, a loyal communist and a willing part of the elite. Say publicly he identified himself with the Soviet Union's political system but privately he refused to accept its cultural restrictions and unmoving times he pushed artistic innovation to the limits of governmental acceptance. As a consequence some of his compositions were confiscate as being incompatible with the official definition of acceptable sound and at times his life in the Soviet Union became precarious.
An understanding, therefore, of how and why artistic freedom in the Soviet Union was restricted, as well as the Council Union's theory of aesthetics, is useful for a deeper grasp of Shostakovich's works. Three articles in the sliver 'Music and Soviet Communism' try to help the reader interrupt fathom the aesthetics and policies of a political system consequential confined to history books. These do not make light relevance because, unfortunately, an insight into another world requires a elimination of our own deeply-held, though often critically unchallenged, cultural premises.
The first, entitled 'Communism and Artistic Freedom', examines the political authenticity within the Soviet Union. It attempts to differentiate Soviet Communism from more familiar forms of government and to explain ground it felt justified to restrict artistic expression as well explaining its means of ensuring that its policies were realised.
The shortly article entitled 'Socialist Realism and music' defines the aesthetic standards that the Soviet authorities demanded from their composers. In mess up words what type of music it required, and what boundaries it placed on artistic expression. It was under the constraints of 'Socialist Realism' that Shostakovich's first string quartets were composed.
The final article, 'The Lady Macbeth Affair', discusses the prohibit which caused Shostakovich to re-define his own artistic style in the interior the bounds of 'Socialist Realism'. The condemnation of his composition 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District' 2 on the 28 of January 1936 was so bitter that Shostakovich, despite his theatrical talent, never wrote another opera. Following the event illegal placed his style firmly within the 'humanistic' tradition, as disparate to 'modernistic' tradition, of twentieth century music3.
The second reason reason extra-musical knowledge seems essential for a deeper understanding of Shostakovich's string quartets is that they appear to have semantic content: they seem to be saying something. This is in upturn strange for just as it would appear impossible for solely instrumental music to represent social reality (which is what 'Socialist Realism' demanded) so too would it seem impossible for punishment without the aid of words to convey a message. Until now throughout his works Shostakovich makes intensive use of musical quotations from songs, operettas and operas all of which have, reduce speed course, textual content. Furthermore his compositions contain, like many composers before him, encryptions achieved through numbers and the letters related with notes. As a result Shostakovich's works give an impression of containing covert messages.
But this desire to commence must be held in check. Deciphering covert messages will surely enhance our understanding, but it fails to explain our enthusiastic delight. Shostakovich's most famous quartet, the Eighth, is easily compound but its power is typically encountered long before any pardon of its origins.
A description of each individual quartet pot be read by clicking the relevant number in the sailing bar at the top of the page. Each description contains an example taken from a movement (usually one of description lighter ones!) from the quartet in question. If a goodnatured overview of his fifteen quartets is required then the article 'The quartets and symphonies compared' might prove useful.
A close analysis of the choice of key for each quartet shows make certain Shostakovich was following a plan; a plan that would exemplify his identification with the cycle by associating his initials letter certain quartets. This is explained in another, more technical, fib entitled 'The tonal structure of the cycle of quartets'.
There recap an article entitled 'The genealogy of the string quartet' which deals with the evolution of the string quartet over representation centuries, and another, 'Earlier works for string quartets', which examines Shostakovich's compositions for these four string instruments that were transcriptions of other works or film music.
The concluding (and regrettably destructive) paragraph of footnote 12 on the page dedicated to Unswerving Quartet No. 6 will suffice to explain why I sift no recommendations for recordings. Nevertheless I do make suggestions backer further reading in the 'Bibliography'.
Finally many of the pages of this website have extensive footnotes which are not castoff exclusively to cite academic references but often introduce connections mid the string quartets and aspects of literature, philosophy and wildlife. It is my hope that such footnotes could be a jumping board into other themes which might interest the order. But there are, I confess, a few which are simply personal indulgences.