Седьмая симфония шостаковича как пишется

Д.Д. Шостакович «Ленинградская симфония»

Седьмая симфония Шостаковича (Ленинградская) – это великое произведение, отражающее не только волю к победе, но и непреодолимую силу духа русского народа. Музыка представляет собой хронику военных лет, в каждом звуке слышен след истории. Грандиозная по масштабу композиция подарила надежду и веру не только людям, находящимся в блокадном Ленинграде, но и всему Советскому народу.

Историю создания Симфонии №7 Шостаковича, имеющей название «Ленинградская», содержание и множество интересных фактов о произведении читайте на нашей странице.

История создания «Ленинградской симфонии»

Дмитрий Шостакович всегда был очень чувствительным человеком, он как будто предвосхитил начало сложного исторического события. Так еще в 1935 году композитор начинает сочинять вариации в жанре пассакалья. Стоит отметить, что данный жанр представляет собой траурное шествие, распространенное на территории Испании. По замыслу сочинение должно было повторить принцип варьирования, используемый Морисом Равелем в «Болеро». Наброски даже были показаны студентам консерватории, в которой преподавал гениальный музыкант. Тема пассакальи была достаточно простой, но ее развитие создавалось благодаря сухому барабанному стуку. Постепенно динамика нарастала до огромной мощи, что демонстрировало символ страха и ужаса. Композитор был утомлен работой над произведением и отложил его.

Война пробудила в Шостаковиче желание закончить произведение и привести его к торжествующему и победному финалу. Композитор решил использовать ранее начатую пассакалью в симфонии, она стала большим эпизодом, который строился на вариациях, и заменял разработку. Летом 1941 года первая часть была полностью готова. Тогда композитор начал работу над средними частями, которые были закончены композитором еще до эвакуации из Ленинграда.

Автор вспоминал о собственной работе над произведением: «Я писал ее быстрее, чем предыдущие произведения. Я не мог поступить по-другому, и не сочинять ее. Вокруг шла страшная война. Я всего лишь хотел запечатлеть образ нашей страны, которая так отчаянно сражается в собственной музыке. В первый день войны я уже принялся за работу. Тогда я проживал в консерватории, как и многие мои знакомые музыканты. Я являлся бойцом противовоздушной обороны. Я не спал, и не ел и отрывался от сочинения только, когда дежурил или при возникновении воздушных тревог».

Четвертая часть давалась сложнее всего, так как должна была являться торжеством добра над злом. Композитор ощущал тревогу, война очень серьезно повлияла на его моральное состояние. Его мать и сестра не были эвакуированы из города, и Шостакович очень переживал за них. Боль терзала его душу, он не мог ни о чем думать. Рядом не было никого, кто мог бы вдохновлять его на героический финал произведения, но, тем не менее, композитор собрался духом и завершил произведение в самом оптимистичном духе. За несколько дней до наступления 1942 года, произведение было полностью сочинено.

Исполнение симфонии №7

Впервые произведение было исполнено в Куйбышеве весной 1942. Дирижировал премьерой Самуил Самосуд. Примечательно, что на исполнение в небольшой город приехали корреспонденты из разных стран. Оценка слушателей была дана более чем высокая, сразу несколько стран захотели исполнить симфонию в известнейших филармониях мира, стали поступать просьбы об отправке партитуры. Право первым исполнить сочинение за пределами страны, было поручено знаменитому дирижеру Тосканини. Летом 1942 года произведение было исполнено в Нью-Йорке и имело огромный успех. Музыка разлетелась по всему миру.

Но ни одно исполнение на западных сценах не могло сравниться с масштабами премьеры в блокадном Ленинграде. 9 августа 1942 года, в день, когда по плану Гитлера город должен был пасть от блокады, прозвучала музыка Шостаковича. Все четыре части были проиграны в исполнении дирижера Карла Элиасберга. Произведение звучало в каждом доме, на улицах, так как трансляция велась по радио и через уличные громкоговорители. Немцы были в изумлении – это был настоящий подвиг, показывающий силу Советского народа.

Интересные факты о симфонии №7 Шостаковича

• Название «Ленинградская» произведение получило от знаменитой поэтессы Анны Ахматовой.
• С момента написания Симфония №7 Шостаковича стала одним из самых политизированных произведений за всю историю классической музыки. Так, дата премьеры симфонического произведения в Ленинграде была выбрана не случайно. Полная расправа над городом, построенным Петром Великим, была по плану немцев назначена именно на девятое августа. Главнокомандующим раздавались специальные пригласительные билеты в популярный в то время ресторан «Астория». Они хотели праздновать победу над осажденными в городе. Билеты на премьеру симфонии раздавались блокадникам бесплатно. Немцы обо всем знали и стали невольными слушателями произведения. В день премьеры стало понятно, кто победит в битве за город.
• В день премьеры весь город наполнялся музыкой Шостаковича. Симфония транслировалась по радио, а также из городских уличных громкоговорителей. Люди слушали и не могли скрыть собственные эмоции. Многие плакали от переполнения чувством гордости за страну.

• Музыка первой части симфонии стала основой балета под названием «Ленинградская симфония».
• Знаменитый писатель Алексей Толстой написал статью о «Ленинградской» симфонии, в которой не только обозначил сочинение, как торжество мысли о человеческом в человеке, но и разобрал произведение с музыкальной точки зрения.
• Большинство музыкантов вывезли из города еще вначале блокады, поэтому возникли сложности в том, чтобы собрать целый оркестр. Но все-таки он был собран, и произведение разучено буквально за несколько недель. Дирижировал ленинградской премьерой известный дирижер немецкого происхождения Элиасберг. Таким образом, подчеркивалось, что вне зависимости от национальной принадлежности каждый человек стремится к миру.

• Симфонию можно услышать в знаменитой компьютерной игре под названием «Антанта».
• В 2015 году произведение было исполнено в филармонии города Донецк. Премьера состоялась в рамках специального проекта.
• Поэт и друг Александр Петрович Межиров посвятил данному произведению стихи.
• Один из немцев после победы СССР над нацисткой Германией признался: «Именно в день премьеры «Ленинградской» симфонии, мы поняли, что проиграем не только битву, но и всю войну. Тогда мы почувствовали силу русского народа, которая могла преодолеть все, и голод и смерть.
• Сам Шостакович хотел, чтобы симфония в Ленинграде была исполнена его любимым оркестром Ленинградской филармонии, которым управлял гениальный Мравинский. Но подобного не могло произойти, так как оркестр находился в Новосибирске, перевоз музыкантов стал бы слишком затруднителен и мог привести к трагедии, так как город находился в блокаде, поэтому оркестр пришлось сформировать из людей, находившихся в городе. Многие были музыкантами военных оркестров, многие были приглашены из соседних городов, но в итоге оркестр был собран и исполнил произведение.

• Во время исполнения симфонии была успешно проведена секретная операция «Шквал». Позже участник данной операции напишет стихотворение, посвященное Шостаковичу и самой операции.
• Сохранилась рецензия журналиста из английского журнала «Time», которого специально отправили в СССР на премьеру в Куйбышеве. Корреспондент тогда написал, что произведение наполнено необычайной нервозностью, он отметил яркость и выразительность мелодий. По его мнению, симфония обязательно должна была прозвучать в Великобритании и по всему миру.

• Музыка связана с еще одним военным событием, которое произошло уже в наши дни. 21 августа 2008 года произведение было исполнено в Цхинвале. Дирижировал симфонией один из лучших дирижеров современности Валерий Гергиев. Исполнение транслировалось на ведущих каналах России, трансляция также была проведена на радиостанциях.
• На здании Санкт-Петербургской филармонии можно увидеть мемориальную доску, посвященную премьере симфонии.
• После подписания капитуляции в одном из новостных выпусков в Европе репортер сказал: «Разве можно победить страну, в которой во время столь ужасных военных действий, блокад и смерти, разрушений и голода люди умудряются написать столь сильное произведение и исполнить его в блокадном городе? Мне, думается, что нет. Это неповторимый подвиг».

Содержание «Ленинградской симфонии»

Седьмая симфония представляет собой одно из произведений, написанных на исторической основе. Великая Отечественная война пробудила в Шостаковиче желание создать сочиненте, помогающее человеку обрести веру в победу и обретение мирной жизни. Героическое содержание, торжество справедливости, борьба света с тьмой – вот, что отражается в сочинении.

Симфония имеет классическую 4-х частную структуру. Каждая часть имеет собственную роль в плане развития драматургии:

• I часть написана в сонатной форме без разработки. Роль части – экспозиция двух полярных миров, а именно главная партия представляет собой мир спокойствия, величия, строящийся на русских интонациях, побочная партия дополняет главную партию, но в то же время меняет характер, и напоминает колыбельную. Новый музыкальный материал, носящий название «эпизод нашествия» — это мир войны, гнева и смерти. Примитивная мелодия в сопровождении ударных инструментов проводится 11 раз. Кульминация отражает борьбу главной партии и «эпизода нашествия». Из коды становится понятно, что главная партия одержала победу.
• II часть представляет собой скерцо. Музыка содержит в себе образы Ленинграда в мирное время с нотками сожаления о былом спокойствии.
• III часть является адажио, написанное в жанре реквиема по погибшим людям. Война унесла их навсегда, музыка трагична и печальна.
• Финал продолжает борьбу света со тьмой, главная партия набирается энергии сил и побеждает «эпизод нашествия». Тема сарабанды воспевает всех, кто погиб в борьбе за мир, а затем происходит утверждение главной партии. Музыка звучит как настоящий символ светлого будущего.

Тональность до мажор выбрана не случайно. Дело в том, что данная тональность является символом чистого листа, на котором пишется история, и куда она повернет решает только человек. Также до мажор предоставляет множество возможностей для дальнейших модуляций, как в бемольном, так и диезном направлении.

Использование музыки Симфонии №7 в кинофильмах

На сегодняшний день «Ленинградская симфония» достаточно редко используется в кинематографе, но этот факт не уменьшает исторической значимости произведения. Ниже приведены фильмы и сериалы, в которых можно услышать фрагменты знаменитейшего сочинения ХХ века:

• «1871» (1990);
• «Военно-полевой роман» (1983);
• «Ленинградская симфония» (1958).

«Ленинградская симфония» Дмитрия Дмитриевича Шостаковича является грандиозным произведением, воспевающим силу и непобедимость русского народа. Это не просто сочинение, это история, рассказывающая о подвиге, о победе добра над злом. И пока торжественно звучит седьмая симфония Шостаковича, весь мир будет помнить о победе над фашизмом, и о том, сколько людей положили собственные жизни, чтобы мы сегодня имели светлое небо над головой.

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Дмитрий Шостакович «Ленинградская симфония»

9 августа 1942 года в осажденном Ленинграде впервые прозвучала Седьмая симфония Дмитрия Шостаковича, посвященная борьбе блокадного города. В этот день «Известия» вспоминают историю создания одного из самых величественных и трагичных произведений музыкальной культуры человечества.

Многие считали Шостаковича композитором «не от мира сего». Но он точнее многих понимал, что такое нацизм — разрушительная сила, которая хочет разделить человечество на хищников и жертв. И боролся с ним сознательно, без сомнений и иллюзий.

Когда началась Великая Отечественная — композитору Дмитрию Шостаковичу шел 35-й год. Он уже стал живым классиком, но рвался на фронт — необученным добровольцем. Подал заявление в ленинградский военкомат: «Я иду защищать свою страну и готов, не щадя ни жизни, ни сил, выполнить любое задание, которое мне поручат. И если понадобится, то в любой момент — с оружием в руках или с заостренным творческим пером — я отдам всего себя для защиты нашей великой Родины, для разгрома врага, для нашей победы». Конечно, композитору объяснили, что он нужнее в тылу, что и армии, и народу необходима его музыка.

Он поступил в добровольную пожарную команду. Научился ловко действовать тяжелыми щипцами, сбрасывая немецкие «зажигалки». Вместе с тысячами таких же необученных, вооружившись лопатой, выкапывал противотанковые рвы.

«Посвящается городу Ленинграду»

В первые дни войны Шостакович написал несколько песен, в том числе — величавую «Клятву наркому», под звуки которой уходили на фронт ленинградские новобранцы. Он понимал: пришло время песен, многие из которых тут же подхватывали миллионы людей на фронте и в тылу.

Но Шостакович верил и в необходимость симфонической музыки. Ведь только она способна передать эпическую глубину ленинградской трагедии и подвига. И он сочинял симфонию — иногда урывками, между дежурствами на крышах прифронтового города. Иногда — дни и ночи напролет, закрывшись в своей квартире на Большой Пушкарской улице. На титульном листе партитуры значилась надпись: «Посвящается городу Ленинграду. Дмитрий Шостакович». На полях нотных страниц частит пометка — ВТ, воздушная тревога.

Первую часть симфонии он завершил в начале сентября, а вскоре вокруг Ленинграда замкнулось кольцо. В середине сентября в городе уже считали каждую крошку хлеба, а Шостакович по радио объявил: «Два часа назад я окончил две первые части симфонического произведения. Для чего я сообщаю об этом? Я сообщаю об этом для того, чтобы радиослушатели, которые слушают меня сейчас, знали, что жизнь нашего города идет нормально. Все мы несем сейчас боевую вахту». Выступление композитора попало в газеты всех стран, объединившихся против фашизма.

Наконец наступило время, когда композитор мог дома, за роялем, показать своим друзьям готовые фрагменты симфонии. В дневнике жены Шостаковича, Нины Васильевны, появились строки: «Вчера, под грохот зениток, в небольшой компании композиторов Митя… сыграл две первые части 7-й симфонии… Как я молю Бога, чтоб он сохранил его жизнь».

Эвакуационная премьера

Ленинград перешел на осадное положение. Угроза штурма оставалась реальной. Ленинград уже покинули профессора консерватории — все, кроме Шостаковича. Композитор не собирался покидать родной город, не собирался отрываться от симфонии, которую писал каждый день, но пришлось подчиниться постановлению горкома. Вместе с семьей Шостаковича вывезли в Москву, а оттуда их путь лежал в Куйбышев (ныне Самара). Там он вернулся к работе над симфонией. Оставалось написать одну часть.

Наконец, 5 марта 1942 года, в куйбышевском Театре оперы и балета, состоялась премьера симфонии. Ее исполнил оркестр Большого театра под управлением знаменитого Самуила Самосуда. «Мы испытали огромную гордость за то, что в нашей стране нашелся художник, сумевший в трудные дни с такой убеждающей силой и вдохновением откликнуться на грозные события войны… музыка Шостаковича прозвучала как пророческое утверждение победы над фашизмом», — писал скрипач Давид Ойстрах, побывавший на премьере.

Найти музыкантов

Это был триумф. Но Шостакович говорил: «Моя мечта — чтобы Седьмая симфония прозвучала в моем родном городе, которому я ее посвящаю». Это казалось чем-то из области фантастики. Ведь в Ленинграде почти не осталось музыкантов, а оставшиеся — голодали. Но 2 июля 1942 года летчик Василий Литвинов, несмотря на ранение, привез в блокадный город несколько коробок с лекарствами и четыре нотные тетради с партитурой. Руководство Ленинграда отнеслось к этой задаче как к государственному делу. Миссию поручили Карлу Ильичу Элиасбергу. Он руководил оркестром радиокомитета, в котором осталось всего лишь восемь музыкантов, способных держать в руках инструменты. 27 человек умерли, остальные страдали от дистрофии. А требовалось сто оркестрантов.

Шостакович создал грандиозную музыкальную панораму, для исполнения которой требовался большой оркестр. Композитор оставил строгую ремарку на страницах партитуры: «Участие этих инструментов в исполнении симфонии обязательно».

Как разыскать столько первоклассных музыкантов в голодающем, изможденном городе? Элиасберг находил в себе силы объезжать на велосипеде знакомых музыкантов, многие из которых уже по много месяцев не прикасались к своим инструментам. Он имел право передвигаться по городу и его предместьям даже во время воздушной тревоги. Элиасберг забирал людей из воинских частей, из госпиталей, а ударника Жаудата Айдарова нашел, когда его везли в морг, заметив, что пальцы музыканта, которого считали мертвым, слегка шевельнулись. Именно в этой симфонии Шостакович отводил ритмической основе ключевую роль в развитии темы.

Первая репетиция показала, что оркестранты почти не держатся на ногах. Они даже не смогли подняться на четвертый этаж, в зал. Играли в холле. Им увеличили паек. От недоедания даже летом прохлада воспринимается как зимний мороз. Пианист Александр Каменский просил ставить рядом с роялем раскаленные кирпичи. Пальцы коченели, он не мог играть. А на долгие репетиции времени не было: премьеру назначили на 9 августа. И не случайно. Ленинградцы знали, что именно на этот день гитлеровцы запланировали взятие города и даже распечатали пригласительные билеты на праздничный прием в ресторане гостиницы «Астории». Но Северная столица оставалась неприступной для врагов.

Концерт непобедимых

И концерт состоялся — в тот самый день. Шостакович рвался в Ленинград, но не получил разрешения прилететь в город. Композитор только добавил к партитуре свое посвящение, напечатанное в газетах и на программках: «Нашей борьбе с фашизмом, нашей грядущей победе, моему родному городу — Ленинграду — я посвящаю свою 7-ю симфонию». Всю жизнь после этого Шостаковичу было неловко, что в тот день он отсутствовал в Ленинграде…

По приказу генерала-лейтенанта (будущего маршала) Леонида Говорова, командующего Ленинградским фронтом, артиллерия в день концерта открыла по агрессору упредительный шквальный огонь. На три часа немецкие орудия умолкли и ни один вражеский самолет не сумел подняться в воздух — как раз за это время ленинградцы успели дойти до филармонии, прослушать симфонию и вернуться домой. Впервые за блокадные дни в Большом зале филармонии на полную мощь горели люстры.

Зал заполнили защитники и жители города, впервые за много дней надевшие свои выходные платья и костюмы, которые всем оказались велики… И черный фрак Элиасберга висел на нем мешковато. Накануне он сумел добыть картофелину, чтобы накрахмалить воротник и манжеты. Многие музыканты сидели на сцене в валенках. Для ног, опухших от голода, другая обувь противопоказана. Какие уж тут концертные туфли! Но разве это главное? Ленинградцы истосковались по музыке, по филармоническим премьерам. А тут — еще и музыка, рожденная в блокадном городе.

На слушателей надвинулась война — механическим ритмом литавр и барабанов. Казалось, ничто не способно остановить эту отлаженную силу. Траурное соло фагота оплакивало павших героев. Но вот скрипки начинали звучать менее отчаянно. Их звуки уже напоминали не вопль, а призыв к сопротивлению. Быть может, никогда в музыке так явственно не ощущалась поступь истории. И вера в Победу. Музыканты признавались, что, когда они исполняли последнюю часть симфонии, многим казалось, что немцы уже отброшены от Ленинграда и война позади. А ведь предстояло еще 33 месяца великого противостояния и полтора года блокады.

После последних аккордов зал поднялся с мест. Обессиленные люди опирались на спинки кресел и аплодировали стоя. На слезы не хватало сил. Но зал ахнул, когда к Элиасбергу подошла девочка с букетом самых настоящих живых цветов. Сложную симфонию музыканты сыграли безупречно. «Нашим первым днем Победы» назвала этот концерт поэтесса Ольга Берггольц, проведшая в Ленинграде всю блокаду. За кулисами музыканты обнимали друг друга. «Всё-таки мы совершили чудо», — вспоминала гобоистка Ксения Матус, участница того концерта.

Через громкоговорители концерт транслировали по всему Ленинграду. Нет, это был не реквием по великому городу. Как бы ни был грозен враг, самоотверженность защитников города сильнее его, — так воспринимали симфонию ленинградцы. И она прозвучала на весь мир.

Музыку слышали и немцы на своих позициях. Для многих из них, считавших, что город умирает, это стало потрясением. «Именно тогда, 9 августа 1942 года, стало ясно, что война нами проиграна. Мы ощутили вашу силу, способную преодолеть голод, страх, даже смерть», — вспоминал годы спустя бывший офицер вермахта.

В Великобритании и Америке симфонию несломленного Ленинграда сразу объявили гениальной. Нью-йоркской премьерой симфонии дирижировал великий Артуро Тосканини, убежденный антифашист, покинувший муссолиниевскую Италию.

Забвению не подлежат

Поэт Александр Межиров в 1942-м сражался на Ленинградском фронте. После войны он написал стихи, в которых приравнял подвиг музыкантов к героизму защитников Родины:

Какая музыка была!
Какая музыка играла,
Когда и души и тела
Война проклятая попрала…
Стенали яростно, навзрыд,
Одной, единой страсти ради
На полустанке — инвалид,
И Шостакович — в Ленинграде.

Блокадный город остался непобедимым. И трудно что-то добавить к словам Алексея Толстого — одного из первых слушателей Ленинградской: «Седьмая симфония возникла из совести русского народа, принявшего без колебания смертный бой с черными силами». А тот блокадный концерт стал одной из самых героических страниц обороны великого города. О Карле Элиасберге и о Седьмой симфонии Шостаковича и в наше время снимают не только документальные, но и художественные фильмы. Ведь и Ленинградская симфония, и тот августовский концерт — это подвиги, которые иногда свершаются не только на полях сражений, но и в искусстве. Забвению они не подлежат.

Автор — заместитель главного редактора журнала «Историк»

«Грядущей победе я посвящаю произведение» — именно так резюмировал окончание работы над Седьмой симфонией композитор Дмитрий Шостакович. Без лишней скромности, эта мелодия стала настоящим моральным гимном будущего разгрома немецких войск. Накануне 80-летия исполнения симфонии в блокадном Ленинграде вспоминаем историю ее создания и другие интересные факты о музыкальном произведении.

Работа над симфонией стартовала с началом войны

Первые партии Дмитрий Шостакович начал писать буквально с первых дней вторжения Германии в СССР. Три части композитор создал еще в Ленинграде, в перерывах между работой над симфонией спасаясь от авианалетов. Как вспоминала позднее Анна Ахматова, музыкант сочинял музыку даже во время бомбежек, когда его дом на Каменноостровском проспекте «ходил ходуном» от взрывных волн.

Стоит отметить, что сам Шостакович отчаянно рвался на фронт. Однако, учитывая статус композитора, военные комиссары отказывали ему во вступлении в ополчение или регулярную армию. Тем не менее настойчивый Дмитрий Дмитриевич своего так или иначе добился: был принят в пожарную команду при войсках ПВО. В его задачу входило тушение загоревшихся домов. Сохранилось несколько фото, где великий композитор облачен в боевку и каску.

Произведение из четырех частей

Но вернемся к симфонии. Как вспоминал сам Шостакович, работа шла очень быстро. Три части были готовы к 29 сентября. А уже 1 октября музыканта вместе с семьей эвакуировали в Куйбышев (ныне Самару), где к концу декабря 1941-го он записал финальный аккорд.

Впрочем, есть мнение, что первую часть симфонии Шостакович написал еще за несколько лет до Великой Отечественной. Однако точного подтверждения этой информации нет.

Ленинградская премьера 9 августа 1942-го состоялась не случайно

Настоящей мечтой Шостаковича была премьера именно в Ленинграде. И он приложил все усилия, чтобы она осуществилась. Дату — 9 августа 1942 года — выбрали не случайно. Дело в том, что по планам немецкого командования именно в этот день осажденный город должен был окончательно пасть. Шутка ли: фашистские генералы даже назначили на этот вечер банкет и, по слухам, даже продумывали меню торжественного ужина.

Стоит отметить, что все же формально премьера состоялась 5 марта того же года в Куйбышеве. Однако концерт в Ленинграде имел колоссальное символическое значение как для советских людей, так и для всего мира в целом.

Ноты доставили в Ленинград самолетом

Подготовка к концерту была тщательной. Ноты в осажденный город доставили по воздуху — специальным, как бы сейчас сказали, литерным рейсом. Дирижировать оркестром доверили Карлу Элиасбергу. Однако исполнителей для него еще предстояло собрать. Многие музыканты, оставив любимое ремесло, отправились на фронт или обеспечивали армию, работая в тылу. Людей искали буквально повсюду: на фронте, в больницах, цехах… Но и это было даже не половиной задачи.

Те, кого удавалось найти, были не в лучшем физическом состоянии, не имея сил даже удержать в руках инструмент. Сказывался скудный паек (те самые зимние 125 граммов хлеба) и почти круглосуточный труд на благо фронта. Так, дирижера на первую репетицию привезли на санях — настолько человек был ослаблен. К счастью, нашлась возможность снабдить оркестрантов усиленным пайком, и относительно быстро они смогли приступить к репетициям, после которых отправлялись на свою прежнюю работу. Правда, несколько музыкантов до премьеры так и не дожили — фатальное недоедание сделало свое черное дело, а полноценное питание запоздало.

Во время премьеры начался «Шквал»

Именно так советское командование назвало операцию по нейтрализации огня противника.

Аккурат со звучанием первых нот Седьмой симфонии 9 августа 1942 года вовсю заработала советская артиллерия. Огонь был таким, что за время концерта на Ленинград не упала ни одна немецкая бомба. А чтобы окончательно деморализовать противника, симфонию транслировали из всех приемников и громкоговорителей как символ непокоренного города. Сами же ленинградцы будто собрались всем городом ­у филармонии, которая была заполнена битком, и стояли возле здания, чтобы услышать симфонию вживую.

Эту премьеру образно еще называют «великим дуэтом». Дуэтом симфонической музыки и орудий. Он послужил моральным переломом для выживших измученных ленинградцев. Они убедились в скорой окончательной победе над фашизмом и деблокаде Ленинграда.

Симфония стала гимном сопротивления

По сути, произведение Шостаковича стало музыкальным олицетворением борьбы ленинградцев за жизнь — свою и родного города. Говорят, что когда немецкие войска услышали симфонию, они едва ли не обезумели. До этого командование вермахта считало Ленинград мертвым городом.

Существуют свидетельства о том, уже после войны несколько бывших немецких солдат при встрече с дирижером Карлом Элиасбергом сказали: услышав симфонию, они поняли, что проиграли войну.

Бессмертное произведение

Седьмая симфония Шостаковича исполнялась в лучших концертных залах планеты. Премьера за границей состоялась спустя год после начала Великой Отечественной войны — 22 июня 1942-го, полутора месяцами ранее, чем в Ленинграде. Ноты, как и в осажденный город на Неве, доставляли тайно специальными самолетами.

Седьмая симфония, прозвучавшая в 65 городах мира, актуальна и сегодня. Эту музыку называют откровением ХХ века. Ежегодно ее исполняют в день снятия блокады Ленинграда.

| Александр НОВОХРОСТ, фото из открытых интернет-источников.

ПЕРЕПЕЧАТКА ДАННОГО МАТЕРИАЛА (ПОЛНОСТЬЮ ИЛИ ЧАСТИЧНО) ИЛИ ИНОЕ ЕГО ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ ЗАПРЕЩЕНЫ

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Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad, was begun in Leningrad, completed in the city of Samara (then known as Kuybyshev) in December 1941, and premiered in that city on March 5, 1942. At first dedicated to Lenin, it was eventually submitted in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played under dire circumstances on August 9, 1942, nearly a year into the siege by German forces.^[1][2] The performance was broadcast by loudspeaker throughout the city and to the German forces in a show of resilience and defiance. The Leningrad soon became popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to fascism and totalitarianism, thanks in part to the composer’s microfilming of the score in Samara and its clandestine delivery, via Tehran and Cairo, to New York, where Arturo Toscanini led a broadcast performance (July 19, 1942) and Time magazine placed Shostakovich on its cover.^[3] That popularity faded somewhat after 1945, but the work is still regarded as a major musical testament to the 27 million Soviet people who lost their lives in World War II, and it is often played at Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried.^[4]

Length and form[edit]

Shostakovich’s longest symphony typically takes approximately 80 minutes to perform.^[5] The work has four movements. Shostakovich at first gave them titles^[6][7]—»War», «Reminiscence», «Home Expanses», and «Victory»—but he soon withdrew these and left the movements with their tempo markings alone.

I. Allegretto[edit]

This is in modified sonata form and lasts for around half an hour; there are the usual two contrasting subjects, but no development section, this being replaced by the ‘invasion’ theme. It begins with a rousing, majestic theme played by all the strings and later echoed by the woodwinds. The theme rises in pitch through the first moments of the piece, with octave-long runs in the strings. This is followed by a slower, more tranquil section driven by flutes and lower strings, which peters out only to be replaced by the «invasion» march: a 22-bar, snare-drum-led ostinato that will pervade much of the movement. It resembles Ravel’s Boléro, but the march is derived from «Da geh’ ich zu Maxim» from Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow for its latter half^{[8][better source needed]} and a theme from Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the work for which the composer suffered his first official denunciation in 1936.^[9] The prominent sequence of six descending notes in the seventh bar, from Lehár, has been said by the musicologist Ian MacDonald to bear a «passing resemblance to the third bar of [the «Deutschlandlied»].^{[8][better source needed]} The march is repeated twelve times, incrementally gaining in volume and orchestral mass. At the end of the twelfth repetition, the brass interject very loudly with a new, more frantic theme, announcing the arrival of the invaders.^{[citation needed]} The passage has rising and falling scales, one after the other. The snare drum beats at an increased rate, and several exchanges between the brass occur, with dramatic minor sweeping movements in the trombones and horns resembling danger sirens. This climaxes in a somewhat slower, but loud and chaotic passage driven by competing blaring brass and frantic strings. A slower, two-part section follows: a very prominent bassoon solo (introduced by a solo clarinet), then a soft, moving recapitulation of the first theme played by the strings. The short coda presents the invasion theme one last time, played by a solo trumpet and percussion.

II. Moderato (poco allegretto)[edit]

This is the symphony’s shortest movement. Shostakovich referred to it as both a scherzo and a lyric intermezzo. It begins in the latter vein with a quiet, playful theme in the strings. Some aspects of the interplay of the violins are evocative of a fugue. Moments later, a solo oboe plays a high variation on the tune. Other instruments continue with tunes of their own for several moments. Then, in the middle of the movement, woodwinds interject with a brash, shrill theme, followed by brass, then strings, then woodwinds. This eventually leads to a quick, majestic passage that is another ostinato, but different from the invasion theme in the first movement. The remaining third of the movement is much like the beginning of the second movement.^[10]

III. Adagio[edit]

The third movement (15–20 minutes) is structured much like the second, with a slow initial theme, a faster middle section that evokes the first movement, and a recapitulation of the initial theme. Shostakovich stated elsewhere that he had hoped to portray Leningrad by twilight, its streets and the embankments of the Neva River suspended in stillness. Woodwinds begin with slow, sustained notes, accentuated by the horns. This simple theme cadences, and is followed by a declamatory theme played by violins. Winds and brass repeat the string theme, which the strings take over with another brief variation. This transitions directly into a faster and fiercer passage. The violins return with the opening theme of the movement. This builds into a somewhat frantic passage underlaid by an ostinato in the lower strings (a deliberately awkward «oomph-pah» motif). This leads into a loud development section evoking the first movement. However, the passage ends quickly, with the woodwinds bringing back the original theme, again echoed by the strings, just as in the beginning. The final third of the movement continues in this vein.^[11]

IV. Allegro non troppo[edit]

This begins with a quiet, searching melody in the strings that slowly rises in pitch. The high strings hold the high notes, and are joined briefly by woodwinds. The low strings suddenly begin a quick march-like tune that is answered by increasingly frantic violins and point-like interjections from the rest of the orchestra. This section gathers frenzy for several minutes. A brief break comes in the form of a transition passage with repetitive three-note figures played by high strings, accented by slap pizzicati in the cellos and basses. A slower and sharply accented section follows. Several minutes of quiet foreboding occur from this point, with themes from earlier movements, particularly the first. Woodwinds build on one of these until violins take over with another familiar theme that builds to the ferocious climax. The symphony ends in the key of C major, and by no means joyously. (The tremendous coda bears some resemblance to the equally colossal ending to Symphony No. 8 by Anton Bruckner, and the opening theme from that symphony is even quoted here.) Near the conclusion, there is a piercing interjection of repetitive statements. Previous themes return, only this time laboriously augmented, and the colossal C-major finish is ambiguous if not blatantly ironic, though triumphantly cathartic.

Instrumentation[edit]

The work is written for a large orchestra consisting of:

Overview[edit]

Composition[edit]

«Music about terror»[edit]

There are conflicting accounts as to when Shostakovich began the symphony. Officially, he was said to have composed it in response to the German invasion. Others, such as Rostislav Dubinsky, say that he had already completed the first movement a year earlier. The composer stated, according to Testimony, that he had planned the symphony before the German attack and that he had «other enemies of humanity» in mind when he composed the «invasion theme» of the first movement.^[12] He had no problem calling the work the «Leningrad» Symphony. «Which Leningrad?» became the question after the publication of Testimony in the West. The Leningrad that Shostakovich reportedly had in mind was not the one that withstood the German siege. Rather, it was the one «that Stalin destroyed and Hitler merely finished off.»^[13] However, the authenticity of the US-published book is very much disputed.

The Leningrad Symphony Orchestra announced the premiere of the Seventh Symphony for its 1941–1942 season. The fact this announcement was made before the German invasion would seem to confirm the statement in Testimony. Shostakovich did not like talking about what he called «creative plans,» preferring to announce his works once they were completed.^[14] He did like to say, «I think slowly but I write fast.» In practice this meant that Shostakovich usually had a work completed in his head before he began writing it down.^[15] The Leningrad Symphony would not have made its announcement without the composer’s consent, so Shostakovich likely had a clear idea at that time of what his Seventh Symphony would portray.^[14]

Soviet music critic Lev Lebedinsky, a friend of the composer’s for many years, confirmed after the dawn of glasnost («openness») under Mikhail Gorbachev that Shostakovich had conceived the Seventh Symphony before Hitler invaded Russia:

The famous theme in the first movement Shostakovich had first as the Stalin theme (which close friends of the composer knew). Right after the war started, the composer called it the anti-Hitler theme. Later Shostakovich referred to that «German» theme as the «theme of evil,» which was absolutely true, since the theme was just as much anti-Hitler as it was anti-Stalin, even though the world music community fixed on only the first of the two definitions.^[16]

Another important witness was the daughter-in-law of Maxim Litvinov, the man who served as Soviet foreign minister before the war, then was dismissed by Stalin. She heard Shostakovich play the Seventh Symphony on the piano in a private home during the war. The guests later discussed the music:

And then Shostakovich said meditatively: of course, it’s about fascism, but music, real music is never literally tied to a theme. Fascism is not simply National Socialism, and this is music about terror, slavery, and oppression of the spirit. Later, when Shostakovich got used to me and came to trust me, he said openly that the Seventh (and the Fifth as well) was not only about fascism but about our country and generally about all tyranny and totalitarianism.^[17]

While Shostakovich could speak like this only in a very narrow circle of friends, it did not stop him from hinting to the Soviet Press about a hidden agenda for the Seventh Symphony.^[18] He insisted, for instance, that the «central place» of the first movement was not the «invasion section» (the part journalists usually asked about first). Rather, the movement’s core was the tragic music which followed the invasion section, which the composer described as «a funeral march or, rather, a requiem.» He continued, «After the requiem comes an even more tragic episode. I do not know how to characterize that music. Perhaps it is a mother’s tears or even the feeling that the sorrow is so great that there are no more tears left.»^[19]

«Inquisition for blood»[edit]

Regardless of when Shostakovich initially conceived the symphony, the Nazi attack and consequent relaxing of Soviet censorship gave Shostakovich the hope of writing the work for a mass audience. A model on how to do this was Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Stravinsky’s compositions held considerable influence over Shostakovich^[20] and he had been deeply impressed with this particular work.^[21] Moreover, Stravinsky had initially set the Russian text of the Psalms, only later switching to Latin.^[22] As soon as Shostakovich received the score, he transcribed it for piano four-hands. He often performed this arrangement with students in his composition class at Leningrad Conservatory.^[20]

Shostakovich’s plan was for a single-movement symphony, including a chorus and a requiem-like passage for a vocal soloist, with a text taken from the Psalms of David. With the help of his best friend, critic Ivan Sollertinsky, who was knowledgeable about the Bible, he selected excerpts from the Ninth Psalm. The idea of individual suffering became interwoven in Shostakovich’s mind with the Lord God’s vengeance for the taking of innocent blood (Verse 12, New King James Version).^[21] The theme not only conveyed his outrage over Stalin’s oppression,^[23] but also may have inspired him to write the Seventh Symphony in the first place.^[24] «I began writing it having been deeply moved by the Psalms of David; the symphony deals with more than that, but the Psalms were the impetus,» the composer said. «David has some marvelous words on blood, that God takes revenge for blood, He doesn’t forget the cries of victims, and so on. When I think of the Psalms, I become agitated.»^[24]

A public performance of a work with such a text would have been impossible before the German invasion. Now it was feasible, at least in theory, with the reference to «blood» applied at least officially to Hitler. With Stalin appealing to the Soviets’ patriotic and religious sentiments, the authorities were no longer suppressing Orthodox themes or images.^[25] Yet for all the importance he placed on them, Shostakovich may have been right in writing the symphony without a text, in view of the censorship that would eventually be reimposed.^[21]

«Invasion» theme[edit]

Something else Shostakovich played for his composition students were the 12 variations of what later became known as the «invasion» theme. This has been taken historically, especially in the West, as portraying the invading Wehrmacht, and was listed as such in the official program. For many years this was considered irrefutable. New information now casts some doubt. For instance, musicologist Ludmila Mikheyeva (who is also Ivan Sollertinsky’s daughter in law) maintains that Shostakovich played the theme and its variations for his students before the war with Germany began.^[26]

While the word «invasion» was used by commentators in numerous articles and reviews, Shostakovich never used it to describe the episode or theme. He tried to evade the point in his author’s note for the premiere. «I did not set myself the goal of a naturalistic depiction of military action (the roar of planes, the crash of tanks, cannon fire). I did not compose so-called battle music. I wanted to convey the context of grim events.»^[27] The only «grim events» which would be depicted in 1941 by a Soviet author other than the war would be the mass purges preceding it.^[15]

According to Testimony, the composer expounded much later on what he meant:

Even before the war, there probably wasn’t a single family who hadn’t lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated me, too. I had to write about it, I felt it was my responsibility, my duty. I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it.^[28]

One very important point was that when Hitler attacked Russia, he did so with his entire military might. Practically everyone who lived through it remembered the event as an instantaneous shock of tremendous power. None of this comes out in the symphony. The «invasion» theme begins very softly in the strings, pianissimo. It eventually becomes a howling monster, but only gradually. If this music portrays an invasion, it is not depicting a sudden one. It is an incremental takeover, one which could easily seem to come from within.^[29]

Neither does the theme itself sound threatening, at least at first. For its latter half, Shostakovich quotes Graf Danilo’s entrance song, «Da geh’ ich zu Maxim,» from Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow. The Merry Widow was also Hitler’s favorite operetta, which played well with Soviet propagandists writing about the symphony. A version of this song may have already existed in Russia. Set to the words, «I’ll go and see Maxim,» it was reportedly sung jokingly in the Shostakovich household to the composer’s son.^[8] Arthur Lourié called the theme a «trite, intentionally silly motif,» adding, «This tune can be whistled by any Soviet man on the street. …»^[30] (Coincidentally, Conductor Evgeny Mravinsky echoed Lourié when he called it a generalized image of spreading stupidity and triteness.^[31] Added to this musical quotation was a prominent sequence of six descending notes in the seventh of the theme’s 22 bars—a sequence in which MacDonald sees a passing resemblance to the third bar of Deutschland Über Alles.^[8]

MacDonald maintains that the simplest explanation for Shostakovich using these two quotations, which could be heard interchangeably as Russian or German, is that they allow the march, «like the rest of the symphony, [to function as] two things at once: superficially an image of the Nazi invasion; more fundamentally a satirical picture of Stalinist society in the thirties.»^[32] A third, more personal quotation adds additional subtext. In the opening half of the march, Shostakovich inserts a theme from his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the work for which the composer suffered his first official denunciation in 1936.^[9] The quotation itself was used in passages of the libretto that describe the way we suffer from tyranny.^[9]

Shostakovich saves what some would call his boldest stroke with the «invasion» theme for a point near the episode’s climax. With the music at tremendous volume and following a six-bar trill across most of the woodwind section, the composer modulates the march into E-flat minor. The six-note descending figure that sounded from Deutschland Über Alles suddenly reveals itself as the six descending notes from the «motto» or «fate» theme of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. This is a delayed revelation along the lines of Richard Strauss’s later use of the Eroica Symphony in his Metamorphosen.^[33]

Tchaikovsky actually derived his «fate» theme from a passage in Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar—significantly, a passage in the libretto using the words «turn not into sorrow.» Shostakovich heightens its appearance by quoting it not in its initial tonality but in the key of its heroic triumph at the symphony’s conclusion. This gesture shows the march, at the peak of hysteria, as Russian rather than German. It also shows Shostakovich has controlled the march’s ambiguity all along.^[33][34]

Tensions not resolved[edit]

Two weeks before he planned to complete the symphony-requiem, Shostakovich played what he had finished to date for Sollertinsky, who was being evacuated with the Leningrad Philharmonic. While playing the music, Shostakovich realized that what he had written was not a complete work in itself but actually the beginning of something much larger, since the tensions brought up in the symphony-requiem had not been resolved.^[10] The question now became whether to stay in the city to continue working or to evacuate and resume the work after a long hiatus. By the time he decided to evacuate, it was too late—the Germans had cut off the rail link to the city. He and his family were trapped.

On 2 September, the day the Germans began bombarding the city, Shostakovich began the second movement. Working at high intensity in between sprints to the nearest bomb shelter, he completed it within two weeks. Within hours he accepted a request to speak on Radio Leningrad to address the city. Adopting a matter-of-fact tone, he attempted to assure his fellow Leningraders that for him it was business as usual:

An hour ago I finished the score of two movements of a large symphonic composition. If I succeed in carrying it off, if I manage to complete the third and fourth movements, then perhaps I’ll be able to call it my Seventh Symphony. Why am I telling you this? So that the radio listeners who are listening to me now will know that life in our city is proceeding normally.

That evening he played what he had written so far to a small group of Leningrad musicians. After Shostakovich finished the first movement, there was a long silence. An air-raid warning sounded. No one moved. Everyone wanted to hear the piece again. The composer excused himself to take his family to the nearest air-raid shelter. When he returned, he repeated the first movement, which then was followed by the next movement for his guests.^[35] Their reaction encouraged him to start that night on the Adagio. He completed this movement on 29 September in the city. Shostakovich and his family were then evacuated to Moscow on 1 October 1941. They moved to Kuybyshev (now Samara) on 22 October, where the symphony was finally completed.

Premières[edit]

The world première was held in Kuybyshev on 5 March 1942. The Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, conducted by Samuil Samosud, gave a rousing performance that was broadcast across the Soviet Union and later in the West as well. The Moscow première took place on 29 March 1942 in the Columned Hall of the House of Unions, by a joined orchestra of the Bolshoi Orchestra and the All-Union Radio Orchestra.

The microfilmed score was flown to Tehran and travelled to the West in April 1942. The symphony received its broadcast première in Europe by Sir Henry J. Wood and the London Philharmonic Orchestra on 22 June 1942 in London, and concert première at a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The première in North America took place in New York City on 19 July 1942, by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini in a concert broadcast nationwide on the NBC radio network. This performance was originally released on LP by RCA Victor in 1967.

Much had to be done before the Leningrad première could take place. The Leningrad Radio Orchestra under Karl Eliasberg was the only remaining symphonic ensemble. The orchestra had survived—barely—but it had not been playing and musical broadcasts had ceased. Music was not considered a priority by Party officials. Political appeals took a significant part of the broadcast time. Even then, there were hours of silence because of the lack of agitators.^[36] As for the city itself, Leningrad surrounded by the Nazis had become a living hell, with eyewitness reports of people who had died of cold and starvation lying in doorways in stairwells.^[37][38] «They lay there because people dropped them there, the way newborn infants used to be left. Janitors swept them away in the morning like rubbish. Funerals, graves, coffins were long forgotten. It was a flood of death that could not be managed. Entire families vanished, entire apartments with their collective families. Houses, streets and neighborhoods vanished.»^[39]

The official hiatus on musical broadcasts had to end before the symphony could be performed. This happened quickly, with a complete about-face by Party authorities. Next was reforming the orchestra. Only 15 members were still available; the others had either starved to death or left to fight the enemy.^[40] Posters went up, requesting all Leningrad musicians to report to the Radio Committee. Efforts were also made to seek out those musicians who could not come. «My God, how thin many of them were,» one of the organizers of the performance remembered. «How those people livened up when we started to ferret them out of their dark apartments. We were moved to tears when they brought out their concert clothes, their violins and cellos and flutes, and rehearsals began under the icy canopy of the studio.»^[41] Orchestral players were given additional rations.^[15]

Before they tackled Shostakovich’s work, Eliasberg had the players go through pieces from the standard repertoire—Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov—which they also performed for broadcast. Because the city was still blockaded at the time, the score was flown by night in early July for rehearsal. A team of copyists worked for days to prepare the parts despite shortages of materials.^[42] At rehearsal, some musicians protested, not wanting to waste their little strength on an intricate and not very accessible work. Eliasberg threatened to hold back the additional rations, quelling any dissent.^[43]

The concert was given on 9 August 1942. Whether this date was chosen intentionally, it was the day Hitler had chosen previously to celebrate the fall of Leningrad with a lavish banquet at the Astoria Hotel.^[44] Loudspeakers broadcast the performance throughout the city as well as to the German forces in a move of psychological warfare.^[42] The Soviet commander of the Leningrad front, General Govorov, ordered a bombardment of German artillery positions in advance to ensure their silence during the performance of the symphony; a special operation, code-named «Squall,» was executed for precisely this purpose.^[41] Three thousand high-caliber shells were lobbed onto the enemy.^[45]

Unsurprisingly, the work was not premiered in Germany until after the war. It took place in Berlin on 22 December 1946, with Sergiu Celibidache conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker.^[46]

Reception[edit]

In the Soviet Union[edit]

At the first hearings of the Seventh, most listeners wept.^[47] This was true even when Shostakovich played the piece on the piano for friends. The requiem pages of the first movement made a special impression, much as the Largo of his Fifth Symphony had done. Some scholars^[who?] believe that, as he had done in the Fifth, Shostakovich gave his audience a chance to express thoughts and suffering that, in the context of the Great Purges, had remained hidden and accumulated over many years. Because these previously hidden emotions were expressed with such power and passion, the Seventh became a major public event. Alexei Tolstoy, who played a pivotal role in the life of the Fifth Symphony, was the first to note the significance of the spontaneous reaction to the Seventh. After hearing an orchestral rehearsal of it, Tolstoy wrote a highly positive review of the work for Pravda.^[48]

Tolstoy’s actions became instrumental in the life of the Seventh. Stalin read Pravda closely and he generally trusted Tolstoy’s comments.^{[citation needed]} He remained highly suspicious of spontaneous outpourings of mass enthusiasm both before and after the war, seeing them as veiled instances of oppositionist feelings.^{[citation needed]} However, he also realized squelching such mass expressions in wartime could be unwise^{[citation needed]}, and he had Tolstoy’s comments to give them credence in the case of the Seventh Symphony. Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Seventh, in fact, lined up with Stalin’s stated support of nationalism and patriotism.^[49] At least as important was that without the help of the United States and the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union would not overcome Nazi Germany. The Soviets had been seen not long ago in the Western press as godless villains and barbarians. Now the Americans and British had to believe that the Soviet Union was helping protect the values those countries cherished from fascism for the Soviets to continue receiving those countries’ support.^[45]

Stalin therefore took the approach of, «If you can’t beat them, join them» when it came to the Seventh Symphony, approving a propaganda campaign centered around the work.^{[citation needed]} It was performed and broadcast all over the Soviet Union. Magazines and newspapers continued printing stories about it. The piece continued having enormous success. People still wept at concerts. They often rose from their seats during the finale and applauded thunderously afterwards. The difference now was that they were now aiding a potent propaganda campaign.^[50]

In the West[edit]

Shostakovich had been known in the West before the war. When news of the Seventh quickly spread in the British and American press, the composer’s popularity soared.^[51] During the war, the work was very popular both in the West and in the Soviet Union as the embodiment of the fighting Russian spirit. The American premiere, in July 1942, was by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini, broadcast on radio by NBC and preserved on transcription discs; RCA issued the recording on LP in 1967 and later reissued it on CD. The symphony was played 62 times in the United States in the 1942–43 season.

Shostakovich’s contemporaries were dismayed, even angered by its lack of subtlety, crudity, and overblown dramatics. Virgil Thomson wrote that, «It seems to have been written for the slow-witted, the not very musical and the distracted,» adding that if Shostakovich continued writing in this manner, it might «eventually disqualify him for consideration as a serious composer.^[52] Sergei Rachmaninoff’s only comment after hearing the American premiere on the radio was a grim «Well, and now let’s have some tea.»^[53]

Disdainful remarks about the symphony being nothing more than a bombastic accompaniment for a bad war movie were voiced immediately after the London and New York premieres. However, in the cultural and political ear of the period, they had no effect. The American public-relations machine had joined the Soviet propaganda arm in portraying the Seventh as a symbol of cooperation and spiritual unity of both peoples in their fight against the Nazis.^[54]

Decline in appreciation[edit]

Once the novelty of the Seventh Symphony had worn away, audience interest in the West quickly dissipated. One reason may have been the work’s length. At about 70 minutes, it was longer than any previous Shostakovich symphony. While it could be argued that he could have made the symphony 30 minutes shorter by condensing his message, the long passages of sparsely accompanied solos for wind instruments present listeners with the opportunity to study them, appreciate the inner character of the music as each instrument soliloquises on a given mood. To utilize this to the extent that Shostakovich did, combined with a wordless narrative style of mood-painting, necessitated an expansive time frame. Even so, this extended time span may have seemed excessive to some critics, especially since Western critics were unaware of the anti-Stalinist subtext hidden in the work.^{[citation needed]} Hearing it only in the context of wartime propaganda, Western critics dismissed the symphony as a series of bombastic platitudes, and as such not worth serious consideration.^[55] The critic Ernest Newman famously remarked that, to find its place on the musical map, one should look along the seventieth degree of longitude and the last degree of platitude.^[56]

The Seventh Symphony was actually a convenient target from the start for Western critics. It was considered a strange, ungainly hybrid of Mahler and Stravinsky—too long, too broad-gestured in narrative and overly emotional in tone.^[54] Shostakovich placed the work’s emphasis on the effect of musical images rather than on symphonic coherence. Those images—stylized fanfares, march rhythms, ostinati, folkloric themes and pastoral episodes—could easily be considered^{[by whom?]} models of socialist realism. Because of his emphasis on these images, Shostakovich can be said to have allowed the work’s message to outweigh its craftsmanship.^[57] For all these reasons, the music was considered both naïve and calculated in the West.^[54]

Soviet audiences did not come to the music with the same expectations as Western listeners. What mattered to Soviet listeners was the message and its serious moral content. The Seventh maintained its position with that audience because its content was so momentous.^[58] Nevertheless, as early as 1943 Soviet critics claimed the «exultation» of the Seventh’s finale was unconvincing, pointing out that the part of the symphony they found most effective—the march in the opening movement—represented not the defending Red Army but the Nazi invaders. They believed that Shostakovich’s pessimism had short-circuited what might have otherwise been a masterpiece in the vein of the 1812 Overture. The tragic mood of Shostakovich’s next symphony, the Eighth, intensified the critical discord.^[59] Later, negative views from the West prejudiced the thinking of the Soviet elite toward the Seventh.^[60]

Re-evaluation[edit]

When Testimony was published in the West in 1979, Shostakovich’s overall anti-Stalinist tone and specific comments about the anti-totalitarian content hidden in the Fifth, Seventh and Eleventh Symphonies were held suspect initially. They were in some ways a complete about-face from the comments the West had received over the years, many times in the composer’s words. Questions also arose over Solomon Volkov’s role—to what degree he was a compiler of previously written material, a transcriber of the composer’s actual words from interviews, or an author essentially putting words into the composer’s mouth.

Two things happened. First was the composer’s son Maxim’s view on the accuracy of Testimony. He initially stated to the Sunday Times, after his defection to the West in 1981, that it was a book «about my father, not by him».^[61] Later, though, he reversed his position. In a BBC television interview with composer Michael Berkeley on 27 September 1986, Maxim admitted, «It’s true. It’s accurate. … The basis of the book is correct.»^[62] Second, with the dawning of glasnost, those who were still alive and had known Shostakovich when he had written the Leningrad Symphony could now share their own stories with impunity. By doing so, they helped corroborate what had appeared in Testimony, allowing the West to reevaluate the symphony in light of their statements.

In recent years the Seventh Symphony has again become more popular, along with the rest of Shostakovich’s work.

Legacy[edit]

It has been alleged^{[by whom?]} that Béla Bartók quoted the march theme of the first movement in the «Intermezzo Interotto» of his Concerto for Orchestra in response to the Hungarian composer’s frustration about the positive reception of the piece. The quotation is clearly the «invasion» theme, and Bartók interjects his very romantic and lyrical melody in the movement with a much slower interpretation of Shostakovich’s invasion ostinato. The resemblance has been variously interpreted by later commentators as an accusation of tastelessness, as a commentary on the symphony’s over-popularity in Bartók’s eyes, and as an acknowledgement of the position of the artist in a totalitarian society. However, it is much more likely that Bartók (as his pianist friend György Sándor has said)^[63] was, like Shostakovich, parodying the very popular Lehár theme directly. This view has been confirmed by Bartók’s son Peter, in his book «My father»: Bartók had respect and admiration for Shostakovich’s works, and was mocking Lehár’s music and behind it the Nazis.

Janet Sobel’s painting «Music» was inspired by the symphony. She told Sidney Janis that the painting was her impression of the music that Shostakovich created in wartime: «Shostakovich has captured the power of the Russian people and by his music has given them strength. His music has so stimulated me, and I have tried to present these feelings in my picture.»^[64]

In the Ken Russell film Billion Dollar Brain (1967), music from the Leningrad Symphony accompanies the failed military invasion of the then Latvian Soviet Republic by Texas millionaire Midwinter (a pivotal scene reflecting the Battle of the Neva from Aleksandr Nevsky). Incidentally, earlier on, Michael Caine as Harry Palmer attends the end of a concert of what is claimed to be the Leningrad Symphony, whereas in fact the finale from Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony is heard.

American rock band Fall Out Boy also used elements of Symphony No. 7 in their song «The Phoenix» from their 2013 album Save Rock and Roll. The same sample had been used by the German hip hop artist Peter Fox in his song «Alles neu» in 2008, and by Plan B in «Ill Manors» in 2012.

Film version[edit]

On 31 January 2005 a film version of the Symphony was premiered in St. Petersburg, with the St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Shostakovich’s son Maxim Shostakovich accompanying a film directed by Georgy Paradzhanov, constructed from documentary materials, including film of the siege of Leningrad. Many survivors of the siege were guests at the performance. The composer’s widow Irina acted as script consultant to the project, and its musical advisors included Rudolf Barshai and Boris Tishchenko. The film and performance were repeated, with the same artists, in London on 9 May 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall.

Notable recordings[edit]

Recordings of this symphony include:

Orchestra	Conductor	Record Company	Year of Recording	Format
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra	Yevgeny Mravinsky	Melodiya	1953	LP
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra	Kirill Kondrashin	Melodiya	1976	LP
London Philharmonic Orchestra	Bernard Haitink	Decca	1979	LP/CD
Chicago Symphony Orchestra	Leonard Bernstein	DG	1989	CD
Concertgebouw Orchestra	Mariss Jansons	RCO Live	2006 (live recording)	SACD
New York Philharmonic	Kurt Masur	Teldec	2013	CD
Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra	Emil Tabakov	Gega	2015	CD
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra	Vasily Petrenko	Naxos	2015	CD
Russian National Orchestra	Paavo Järvi	Pentatone	2015	CD
London Symphony Orchestra	Gianandrea Noseda	LSO Live	2022	CD

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Barnes, Julian, ‘The Noise of Time’, Vintage 2016 [ISBN 978-1-78470-332-5]
• Blokker, Roy, with Robert Dearling, The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1979). ISBN 0-8386-1948-7.
• Dubinsky, Rostislav (1989). Stormy Applause. Hill & Wang 1989. ISBN 0-8090-8895-9.
• Programme note for the Symphony for performance by the London Shostakovich Orchestra
• Fay, Laurel, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 1989). ISBN 0-19-513438-9.
• Geiger, Friedrich, notes for Teldec 21467: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 «Lenningrad»; New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur.
• MacDonald, Ian, The New Shostakovich (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). ISBN 1-55553-089-3.
• Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
• Moynahan, Brian, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony. (Eastbourne, UK: Quercus Publishing, 2013) ISBN 978-0-85738-300-6
• Sollertinsky, Dmitri & Ludmilla, tr. Graham Hobbs & Charles Midgley, Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980). ISBN 0-15-170730-8.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: Harper & Row, 1979.). ISBN 0-06-014476-9.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1995). ISBN 0-02-874052-1.
• Volkov, Solomon (2004). Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-41082-1.
• Wilson, Elizabeth (1994). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04465-1.
• Ed Vulliamy, «Orchestral manoeuvres (part one)». The Guardian, 25 November 2001.
• Ed Vulliamy, «Orchestral maneouvres [sic] (part two)». The Guardian, 25 November 2001.
• Review of film version of the Symphony, St. Petersburg, 31 January 2005
• Programme, Shostakovich 7th Symphony/Cinemaphonia, Albert Hall, London May 9, 2005.

External links[edit]

• Full orchestral score from the New York Philharmonic’s archives

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad, was begun in Leningrad, completed in the city of Samara (then known as Kuybyshev) in December 1941, and premiered in that city on March 5, 1942. At first dedicated to Lenin, it was eventually submitted in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played under dire circumstances on August 9, 1942, nearly a year into the siege by German forces.^[1][2] The performance was broadcast by loudspeaker throughout the city and to the German forces in a show of resilience and defiance. The Leningrad soon became popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to fascism and totalitarianism, thanks in part to the composer’s microfilming of the score in Samara and its clandestine delivery, via Tehran and Cairo, to New York, where Arturo Toscanini led a broadcast performance (July 19, 1942) and Time magazine placed Shostakovich on its cover.^[3] That popularity faded somewhat after 1945, but the work is still regarded as a major musical testament to the 27 million Soviet people who lost their lives in World War II, and it is often played at Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried.^[4]

Length and form[edit]

Shostakovich’s longest symphony typically takes approximately 80 minutes to perform.^[5] The work has four movements. Shostakovich at first gave them titles^[6][7]—»War», «Reminiscence», «Home Expanses», and «Victory»—but he soon withdrew these and left the movements with their tempo markings alone.

I. Allegretto[edit]

This is in modified sonata form and lasts for around half an hour; there are the usual two contrasting subjects, but no development section, this being replaced by the ‘invasion’ theme. It begins with a rousing, majestic theme played by all the strings and later echoed by the woodwinds. The theme rises in pitch through the first moments of the piece, with octave-long runs in the strings. This is followed by a slower, more tranquil section driven by flutes and lower strings, which peters out only to be replaced by the «invasion» march: a 22-bar, snare-drum-led ostinato that will pervade much of the movement. It resembles Ravel’s Boléro, but the march is derived from «Da geh’ ich zu Maxim» from Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow for its latter half^{[8][better source needed]} and a theme from Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the work for which the composer suffered his first official denunciation in 1936.^[9] The prominent sequence of six descending notes in the seventh bar, from Lehár, has been said by the musicologist Ian MacDonald to bear a «passing resemblance to the third bar of [the «Deutschlandlied»].^{[8][better source needed]} The march is repeated twelve times, incrementally gaining in volume and orchestral mass. At the end of the twelfth repetition, the brass interject very loudly with a new, more frantic theme, announcing the arrival of the invaders.^{[citation needed]} The passage has rising and falling scales, one after the other. The snare drum beats at an increased rate, and several exchanges between the brass occur, with dramatic minor sweeping movements in the trombones and horns resembling danger sirens. This climaxes in a somewhat slower, but loud and chaotic passage driven by competing blaring brass and frantic strings. A slower, two-part section follows: a very prominent bassoon solo (introduced by a solo clarinet), then a soft, moving recapitulation of the first theme played by the strings. The short coda presents the invasion theme one last time, played by a solo trumpet and percussion.

II. Moderato (poco allegretto)[edit]

This is the symphony’s shortest movement. Shostakovich referred to it as both a scherzo and a lyric intermezzo. It begins in the latter vein with a quiet, playful theme in the strings. Some aspects of the interplay of the violins are evocative of a fugue. Moments later, a solo oboe plays a high variation on the tune. Other instruments continue with tunes of their own for several moments. Then, in the middle of the movement, woodwinds interject with a brash, shrill theme, followed by brass, then strings, then woodwinds. This eventually leads to a quick, majestic passage that is another ostinato, but different from the invasion theme in the first movement. The remaining third of the movement is much like the beginning of the second movement.^[10]

III. Adagio[edit]

The third movement (15–20 minutes) is structured much like the second, with a slow initial theme, a faster middle section that evokes the first movement, and a recapitulation of the initial theme. Shostakovich stated elsewhere that he had hoped to portray Leningrad by twilight, its streets and the embankments of the Neva River suspended in stillness. Woodwinds begin with slow, sustained notes, accentuated by the horns. This simple theme cadences, and is followed by a declamatory theme played by violins. Winds and brass repeat the string theme, which the strings take over with another brief variation. This transitions directly into a faster and fiercer passage. The violins return with the opening theme of the movement. This builds into a somewhat frantic passage underlaid by an ostinato in the lower strings (a deliberately awkward «oomph-pah» motif). This leads into a loud development section evoking the first movement. However, the passage ends quickly, with the woodwinds bringing back the original theme, again echoed by the strings, just as in the beginning. The final third of the movement continues in this vein.^[11]

IV. Allegro non troppo[edit]

This begins with a quiet, searching melody in the strings that slowly rises in pitch. The high strings hold the high notes, and are joined briefly by woodwinds. The low strings suddenly begin a quick march-like tune that is answered by increasingly frantic violins and point-like interjections from the rest of the orchestra. This section gathers frenzy for several minutes. A brief break comes in the form of a transition passage with repetitive three-note figures played by high strings, accented by slap pizzicati in the cellos and basses. A slower and sharply accented section follows. Several minutes of quiet foreboding occur from this point, with themes from earlier movements, particularly the first. Woodwinds build on one of these until violins take over with another familiar theme that builds to the ferocious climax. The symphony ends in the key of C major, and by no means joyously. (The tremendous coda bears some resemblance to the equally colossal ending to Symphony No. 8 by Anton Bruckner, and the opening theme from that symphony is even quoted here.) Near the conclusion, there is a piercing interjection of repetitive statements. Previous themes return, only this time laboriously augmented, and the colossal C-major finish is ambiguous if not blatantly ironic, though triumphantly cathartic.

Instrumentation[edit]

The work is written for a large orchestra consisting of:

Overview[edit]

Composition[edit]

«Music about terror»[edit]

There are conflicting accounts as to when Shostakovich began the symphony. Officially, he was said to have composed it in response to the German invasion. Others, such as Rostislav Dubinsky, say that he had already completed the first movement a year earlier. The composer stated, according to Testimony, that he had planned the symphony before the German attack and that he had «other enemies of humanity» in mind when he composed the «invasion theme» of the first movement.^[12] He had no problem calling the work the «Leningrad» Symphony. «Which Leningrad?» became the question after the publication of Testimony in the West. The Leningrad that Shostakovich reportedly had in mind was not the one that withstood the German siege. Rather, it was the one «that Stalin destroyed and Hitler merely finished off.»^[13] However, the authenticity of the US-published book is very much disputed.

The Leningrad Symphony Orchestra announced the premiere of the Seventh Symphony for its 1941–1942 season. The fact this announcement was made before the German invasion would seem to confirm the statement in Testimony. Shostakovich did not like talking about what he called «creative plans,» preferring to announce his works once they were completed.^[14] He did like to say, «I think slowly but I write fast.» In practice this meant that Shostakovich usually had a work completed in his head before he began writing it down.^[15] The Leningrad Symphony would not have made its announcement without the composer’s consent, so Shostakovich likely had a clear idea at that time of what his Seventh Symphony would portray.^[14]

Soviet music critic Lev Lebedinsky, a friend of the composer’s for many years, confirmed after the dawn of glasnost («openness») under Mikhail Gorbachev that Shostakovich had conceived the Seventh Symphony before Hitler invaded Russia:

The famous theme in the first movement Shostakovich had first as the Stalin theme (which close friends of the composer knew). Right after the war started, the composer called it the anti-Hitler theme. Later Shostakovich referred to that «German» theme as the «theme of evil,» which was absolutely true, since the theme was just as much anti-Hitler as it was anti-Stalin, even though the world music community fixed on only the first of the two definitions.^[16]

Another important witness was the daughter-in-law of Maxim Litvinov, the man who served as Soviet foreign minister before the war, then was dismissed by Stalin. She heard Shostakovich play the Seventh Symphony on the piano in a private home during the war. The guests later discussed the music:

And then Shostakovich said meditatively: of course, it’s about fascism, but music, real music is never literally tied to a theme. Fascism is not simply National Socialism, and this is music about terror, slavery, and oppression of the spirit. Later, when Shostakovich got used to me and came to trust me, he said openly that the Seventh (and the Fifth as well) was not only about fascism but about our country and generally about all tyranny and totalitarianism.^[17]

While Shostakovich could speak like this only in a very narrow circle of friends, it did not stop him from hinting to the Soviet Press about a hidden agenda for the Seventh Symphony.^[18] He insisted, for instance, that the «central place» of the first movement was not the «invasion section» (the part journalists usually asked about first). Rather, the movement’s core was the tragic music which followed the invasion section, which the composer described as «a funeral march or, rather, a requiem.» He continued, «After the requiem comes an even more tragic episode. I do not know how to characterize that music. Perhaps it is a mother’s tears or even the feeling that the sorrow is so great that there are no more tears left.»^[19]

«Inquisition for blood»[edit]

Regardless of when Shostakovich initially conceived the symphony, the Nazi attack and consequent relaxing of Soviet censorship gave Shostakovich the hope of writing the work for a mass audience. A model on how to do this was Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Stravinsky’s compositions held considerable influence over Shostakovich^[20] and he had been deeply impressed with this particular work.^[21] Moreover, Stravinsky had initially set the Russian text of the Psalms, only later switching to Latin.^[22] As soon as Shostakovich received the score, he transcribed it for piano four-hands. He often performed this arrangement with students in his composition class at Leningrad Conservatory.^[20]

Shostakovich’s plan was for a single-movement symphony, including a chorus and a requiem-like passage for a vocal soloist, with a text taken from the Psalms of David. With the help of his best friend, critic Ivan Sollertinsky, who was knowledgeable about the Bible, he selected excerpts from the Ninth Psalm. The idea of individual suffering became interwoven in Shostakovich’s mind with the Lord God’s vengeance for the taking of innocent blood (Verse 12, New King James Version).^[21] The theme not only conveyed his outrage over Stalin’s oppression,^[23] but also may have inspired him to write the Seventh Symphony in the first place.^[24] «I began writing it having been deeply moved by the Psalms of David; the symphony deals with more than that, but the Psalms were the impetus,» the composer said. «David has some marvelous words on blood, that God takes revenge for blood, He doesn’t forget the cries of victims, and so on. When I think of the Psalms, I become agitated.»^[24]

A public performance of a work with such a text would have been impossible before the German invasion. Now it was feasible, at least in theory, with the reference to «blood» applied at least officially to Hitler. With Stalin appealing to the Soviets’ patriotic and religious sentiments, the authorities were no longer suppressing Orthodox themes or images.^[25] Yet for all the importance he placed on them, Shostakovich may have been right in writing the symphony without a text, in view of the censorship that would eventually be reimposed.^[21]

«Invasion» theme[edit]

Something else Shostakovich played for his composition students were the 12 variations of what later became known as the «invasion» theme. This has been taken historically, especially in the West, as portraying the invading Wehrmacht, and was listed as such in the official program. For many years this was considered irrefutable. New information now casts some doubt. For instance, musicologist Ludmila Mikheyeva (who is also Ivan Sollertinsky’s daughter in law) maintains that Shostakovich played the theme and its variations for his students before the war with Germany began.^[26]

While the word «invasion» was used by commentators in numerous articles and reviews, Shostakovich never used it to describe the episode or theme. He tried to evade the point in his author’s note for the premiere. «I did not set myself the goal of a naturalistic depiction of military action (the roar of planes, the crash of tanks, cannon fire). I did not compose so-called battle music. I wanted to convey the context of grim events.»^[27] The only «grim events» which would be depicted in 1941 by a Soviet author other than the war would be the mass purges preceding it.^[15]

According to Testimony, the composer expounded much later on what he meant:

Even before the war, there probably wasn’t a single family who hadn’t lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated me, too. I had to write about it, I felt it was my responsibility, my duty. I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it.^[28]

One very important point was that when Hitler attacked Russia, he did so with his entire military might. Practically everyone who lived through it remembered the event as an instantaneous shock of tremendous power. None of this comes out in the symphony. The «invasion» theme begins very softly in the strings, pianissimo. It eventually becomes a howling monster, but only gradually. If this music portrays an invasion, it is not depicting a sudden one. It is an incremental takeover, one which could easily seem to come from within.^[29]

Neither does the theme itself sound threatening, at least at first. For its latter half, Shostakovich quotes Graf Danilo’s entrance song, «Da geh’ ich zu Maxim,» from Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow. The Merry Widow was also Hitler’s favorite operetta, which played well with Soviet propagandists writing about the symphony. A version of this song may have already existed in Russia. Set to the words, «I’ll go and see Maxim,» it was reportedly sung jokingly in the Shostakovich household to the composer’s son.^[8] Arthur Lourié called the theme a «trite, intentionally silly motif,» adding, «This tune can be whistled by any Soviet man on the street. …»^[30] (Coincidentally, Conductor Evgeny Mravinsky echoed Lourié when he called it a generalized image of spreading stupidity and triteness.^[31] Added to this musical quotation was a prominent sequence of six descending notes in the seventh of the theme’s 22 bars—a sequence in which MacDonald sees a passing resemblance to the third bar of Deutschland Über Alles.^[8]

MacDonald maintains that the simplest explanation for Shostakovich using these two quotations, which could be heard interchangeably as Russian or German, is that they allow the march, «like the rest of the symphony, [to function as] two things at once: superficially an image of the Nazi invasion; more fundamentally a satirical picture of Stalinist society in the thirties.»^[32] A third, more personal quotation adds additional subtext. In the opening half of the march, Shostakovich inserts a theme from his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the work for which the composer suffered his first official denunciation in 1936.^[9] The quotation itself was used in passages of the libretto that describe the way we suffer from tyranny.^[9]

Shostakovich saves what some would call his boldest stroke with the «invasion» theme for a point near the episode’s climax. With the music at tremendous volume and following a six-bar trill across most of the woodwind section, the composer modulates the march into E-flat minor. The six-note descending figure that sounded from Deutschland Über Alles suddenly reveals itself as the six descending notes from the «motto» or «fate» theme of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. This is a delayed revelation along the lines of Richard Strauss’s later use of the Eroica Symphony in his Metamorphosen.^[33]

Tchaikovsky actually derived his «fate» theme from a passage in Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar—significantly, a passage in the libretto using the words «turn not into sorrow.» Shostakovich heightens its appearance by quoting it not in its initial tonality but in the key of its heroic triumph at the symphony’s conclusion. This gesture shows the march, at the peak of hysteria, as Russian rather than German. It also shows Shostakovich has controlled the march’s ambiguity all along.^[33][34]

Tensions not resolved[edit]

Two weeks before he planned to complete the symphony-requiem, Shostakovich played what he had finished to date for Sollertinsky, who was being evacuated with the Leningrad Philharmonic. While playing the music, Shostakovich realized that what he had written was not a complete work in itself but actually the beginning of something much larger, since the tensions brought up in the symphony-requiem had not been resolved.^[10] The question now became whether to stay in the city to continue working or to evacuate and resume the work after a long hiatus. By the time he decided to evacuate, it was too late—the Germans had cut off the rail link to the city. He and his family were trapped.

On 2 September, the day the Germans began bombarding the city, Shostakovich began the second movement. Working at high intensity in between sprints to the nearest bomb shelter, he completed it within two weeks. Within hours he accepted a request to speak on Radio Leningrad to address the city. Adopting a matter-of-fact tone, he attempted to assure his fellow Leningraders that for him it was business as usual:

An hour ago I finished the score of two movements of a large symphonic composition. If I succeed in carrying it off, if I manage to complete the third and fourth movements, then perhaps I’ll be able to call it my Seventh Symphony. Why am I telling you this? So that the radio listeners who are listening to me now will know that life in our city is proceeding normally.

That evening he played what he had written so far to a small group of Leningrad musicians. After Shostakovich finished the first movement, there was a long silence. An air-raid warning sounded. No one moved. Everyone wanted to hear the piece again. The composer excused himself to take his family to the nearest air-raid shelter. When he returned, he repeated the first movement, which then was followed by the next movement for his guests.^[35] Their reaction encouraged him to start that night on the Adagio. He completed this movement on 29 September in the city. Shostakovich and his family were then evacuated to Moscow on 1 October 1941. They moved to Kuybyshev (now Samara) on 22 October, where the symphony was finally completed.

Premières[edit]

The world première was held in Kuybyshev on 5 March 1942. The Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, conducted by Samuil Samosud, gave a rousing performance that was broadcast across the Soviet Union and later in the West as well. The Moscow première took place on 29 March 1942 in the Columned Hall of the House of Unions, by a joined orchestra of the Bolshoi Orchestra and the All-Union Radio Orchestra.

The microfilmed score was flown to Tehran and travelled to the West in April 1942. The symphony received its broadcast première in Europe by Sir Henry J. Wood and the London Philharmonic Orchestra on 22 June 1942 in London, and concert première at a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The première in North America took place in New York City on 19 July 1942, by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini in a concert broadcast nationwide on the NBC radio network. This performance was originally released on LP by RCA Victor in 1967.

Much had to be done before the Leningrad première could take place. The Leningrad Radio Orchestra under Karl Eliasberg was the only remaining symphonic ensemble. The orchestra had survived—barely—but it had not been playing and musical broadcasts had ceased. Music was not considered a priority by Party officials. Political appeals took a significant part of the broadcast time. Even then, there were hours of silence because of the lack of agitators.^[36] As for the city itself, Leningrad surrounded by the Nazis had become a living hell, with eyewitness reports of people who had died of cold and starvation lying in doorways in stairwells.^[37][38] «They lay there because people dropped them there, the way newborn infants used to be left. Janitors swept them away in the morning like rubbish. Funerals, graves, coffins were long forgotten. It was a flood of death that could not be managed. Entire families vanished, entire apartments with their collective families. Houses, streets and neighborhoods vanished.»^[39]

The official hiatus on musical broadcasts had to end before the symphony could be performed. This happened quickly, with a complete about-face by Party authorities. Next was reforming the orchestra. Only 15 members were still available; the others had either starved to death or left to fight the enemy.^[40] Posters went up, requesting all Leningrad musicians to report to the Radio Committee. Efforts were also made to seek out those musicians who could not come. «My God, how thin many of them were,» one of the organizers of the performance remembered. «How those people livened up when we started to ferret them out of their dark apartments. We were moved to tears when they brought out their concert clothes, their violins and cellos and flutes, and rehearsals began under the icy canopy of the studio.»^[41] Orchestral players were given additional rations.^[15]

Before they tackled Shostakovich’s work, Eliasberg had the players go through pieces from the standard repertoire—Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov—which they also performed for broadcast. Because the city was still blockaded at the time, the score was flown by night in early July for rehearsal. A team of copyists worked for days to prepare the parts despite shortages of materials.^[42] At rehearsal, some musicians protested, not wanting to waste their little strength on an intricate and not very accessible work. Eliasberg threatened to hold back the additional rations, quelling any dissent.^[43]

The concert was given on 9 August 1942. Whether this date was chosen intentionally, it was the day Hitler had chosen previously to celebrate the fall of Leningrad with a lavish banquet at the Astoria Hotel.^[44] Loudspeakers broadcast the performance throughout the city as well as to the German forces in a move of psychological warfare.^[42] The Soviet commander of the Leningrad front, General Govorov, ordered a bombardment of German artillery positions in advance to ensure their silence during the performance of the symphony; a special operation, code-named «Squall,» was executed for precisely this purpose.^[41] Three thousand high-caliber shells were lobbed onto the enemy.^[45]

Unsurprisingly, the work was not premiered in Germany until after the war. It took place in Berlin on 22 December 1946, with Sergiu Celibidache conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker.^[46]

Reception[edit]

In the Soviet Union[edit]

At the first hearings of the Seventh, most listeners wept.^[47] This was true even when Shostakovich played the piece on the piano for friends. The requiem pages of the first movement made a special impression, much as the Largo of his Fifth Symphony had done. Some scholars^[who?] believe that, as he had done in the Fifth, Shostakovich gave his audience a chance to express thoughts and suffering that, in the context of the Great Purges, had remained hidden and accumulated over many years. Because these previously hidden emotions were expressed with such power and passion, the Seventh became a major public event. Alexei Tolstoy, who played a pivotal role in the life of the Fifth Symphony, was the first to note the significance of the spontaneous reaction to the Seventh. After hearing an orchestral rehearsal of it, Tolstoy wrote a highly positive review of the work for Pravda.^[48]

Tolstoy’s actions became instrumental in the life of the Seventh. Stalin read Pravda closely and he generally trusted Tolstoy’s comments.^{[citation needed]} He remained highly suspicious of spontaneous outpourings of mass enthusiasm both before and after the war, seeing them as veiled instances of oppositionist feelings.^{[citation needed]} However, he also realized squelching such mass expressions in wartime could be unwise^{[citation needed]}, and he had Tolstoy’s comments to give them credence in the case of the Seventh Symphony. Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Seventh, in fact, lined up with Stalin’s stated support of nationalism and patriotism.^[49] At least as important was that without the help of the United States and the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union would not overcome Nazi Germany. The Soviets had been seen not long ago in the Western press as godless villains and barbarians. Now the Americans and British had to believe that the Soviet Union was helping protect the values those countries cherished from fascism for the Soviets to continue receiving those countries’ support.^[45]

Stalin therefore took the approach of, «If you can’t beat them, join them» when it came to the Seventh Symphony, approving a propaganda campaign centered around the work.^{[citation needed]} It was performed and broadcast all over the Soviet Union. Magazines and newspapers continued printing stories about it. The piece continued having enormous success. People still wept at concerts. They often rose from their seats during the finale and applauded thunderously afterwards. The difference now was that they were now aiding a potent propaganda campaign.^[50]

In the West[edit]

Shostakovich had been known in the West before the war. When news of the Seventh quickly spread in the British and American press, the composer’s popularity soared.^[51] During the war, the work was very popular both in the West and in the Soviet Union as the embodiment of the fighting Russian spirit. The American premiere, in July 1942, was by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini, broadcast on radio by NBC and preserved on transcription discs; RCA issued the recording on LP in 1967 and later reissued it on CD. The symphony was played 62 times in the United States in the 1942–43 season.

Shostakovich’s contemporaries were dismayed, even angered by its lack of subtlety, crudity, and overblown dramatics. Virgil Thomson wrote that, «It seems to have been written for the slow-witted, the not very musical and the distracted,» adding that if Shostakovich continued writing in this manner, it might «eventually disqualify him for consideration as a serious composer.^[52] Sergei Rachmaninoff’s only comment after hearing the American premiere on the radio was a grim «Well, and now let’s have some tea.»^[53]

Disdainful remarks about the symphony being nothing more than a bombastic accompaniment for a bad war movie were voiced immediately after the London and New York premieres. However, in the cultural and political ear of the period, they had no effect. The American public-relations machine had joined the Soviet propaganda arm in portraying the Seventh as a symbol of cooperation and spiritual unity of both peoples in their fight against the Nazis.^[54]

Decline in appreciation[edit]

Once the novelty of the Seventh Symphony had worn away, audience interest in the West quickly dissipated. One reason may have been the work’s length. At about 70 minutes, it was longer than any previous Shostakovich symphony. While it could be argued that he could have made the symphony 30 minutes shorter by condensing his message, the long passages of sparsely accompanied solos for wind instruments present listeners with the opportunity to study them, appreciate the inner character of the music as each instrument soliloquises on a given mood. To utilize this to the extent that Shostakovich did, combined with a wordless narrative style of mood-painting, necessitated an expansive time frame. Even so, this extended time span may have seemed excessive to some critics, especially since Western critics were unaware of the anti-Stalinist subtext hidden in the work.^{[citation needed]} Hearing it only in the context of wartime propaganda, Western critics dismissed the symphony as a series of bombastic platitudes, and as such not worth serious consideration.^[55] The critic Ernest Newman famously remarked that, to find its place on the musical map, one should look along the seventieth degree of longitude and the last degree of platitude.^[56]

The Seventh Symphony was actually a convenient target from the start for Western critics. It was considered a strange, ungainly hybrid of Mahler and Stravinsky—too long, too broad-gestured in narrative and overly emotional in tone.^[54] Shostakovich placed the work’s emphasis on the effect of musical images rather than on symphonic coherence. Those images—stylized fanfares, march rhythms, ostinati, folkloric themes and pastoral episodes—could easily be considered^{[by whom?]} models of socialist realism. Because of his emphasis on these images, Shostakovich can be said to have allowed the work’s message to outweigh its craftsmanship.^[57] For all these reasons, the music was considered both naïve and calculated in the West.^[54]

Soviet audiences did not come to the music with the same expectations as Western listeners. What mattered to Soviet listeners was the message and its serious moral content. The Seventh maintained its position with that audience because its content was so momentous.^[58] Nevertheless, as early as 1943 Soviet critics claimed the «exultation» of the Seventh’s finale was unconvincing, pointing out that the part of the symphony they found most effective—the march in the opening movement—represented not the defending Red Army but the Nazi invaders. They believed that Shostakovich’s pessimism had short-circuited what might have otherwise been a masterpiece in the vein of the 1812 Overture. The tragic mood of Shostakovich’s next symphony, the Eighth, intensified the critical discord.^[59] Later, negative views from the West prejudiced the thinking of the Soviet elite toward the Seventh.^[60]

Re-evaluation[edit]

When Testimony was published in the West in 1979, Shostakovich’s overall anti-Stalinist tone and specific comments about the anti-totalitarian content hidden in the Fifth, Seventh and Eleventh Symphonies were held suspect initially. They were in some ways a complete about-face from the comments the West had received over the years, many times in the composer’s words. Questions also arose over Solomon Volkov’s role—to what degree he was a compiler of previously written material, a transcriber of the composer’s actual words from interviews, or an author essentially putting words into the composer’s mouth.

Two things happened. First was the composer’s son Maxim’s view on the accuracy of Testimony. He initially stated to the Sunday Times, after his defection to the West in 1981, that it was a book «about my father, not by him».^[61] Later, though, he reversed his position. In a BBC television interview with composer Michael Berkeley on 27 September 1986, Maxim admitted, «It’s true. It’s accurate. … The basis of the book is correct.»^[62] Second, with the dawning of glasnost, those who were still alive and had known Shostakovich when he had written the Leningrad Symphony could now share their own stories with impunity. By doing so, they helped corroborate what had appeared in Testimony, allowing the West to reevaluate the symphony in light of their statements.

In recent years the Seventh Symphony has again become more popular, along with the rest of Shostakovich’s work.

Legacy[edit]

It has been alleged^{[by whom?]} that Béla Bartók quoted the march theme of the first movement in the «Intermezzo Interotto» of his Concerto for Orchestra in response to the Hungarian composer’s frustration about the positive reception of the piece. The quotation is clearly the «invasion» theme, and Bartók interjects his very romantic and lyrical melody in the movement with a much slower interpretation of Shostakovich’s invasion ostinato. The resemblance has been variously interpreted by later commentators as an accusation of tastelessness, as a commentary on the symphony’s over-popularity in Bartók’s eyes, and as an acknowledgement of the position of the artist in a totalitarian society. However, it is much more likely that Bartók (as his pianist friend György Sándor has said)^[63] was, like Shostakovich, parodying the very popular Lehár theme directly. This view has been confirmed by Bartók’s son Peter, in his book «My father»: Bartók had respect and admiration for Shostakovich’s works, and was mocking Lehár’s music and behind it the Nazis.

Janet Sobel’s painting «Music» was inspired by the symphony. She told Sidney Janis that the painting was her impression of the music that Shostakovich created in wartime: «Shostakovich has captured the power of the Russian people and by his music has given them strength. His music has so stimulated me, and I have tried to present these feelings in my picture.»^[64]

In the Ken Russell film Billion Dollar Brain (1967), music from the Leningrad Symphony accompanies the failed military invasion of the then Latvian Soviet Republic by Texas millionaire Midwinter (a pivotal scene reflecting the Battle of the Neva from Aleksandr Nevsky). Incidentally, earlier on, Michael Caine as Harry Palmer attends the end of a concert of what is claimed to be the Leningrad Symphony, whereas in fact the finale from Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony is heard.

American rock band Fall Out Boy also used elements of Symphony No. 7 in their song «The Phoenix» from their 2013 album Save Rock and Roll. The same sample had been used by the German hip hop artist Peter Fox in his song «Alles neu» in 2008, and by Plan B in «Ill Manors» in 2012.

Film version[edit]

On 31 January 2005 a film version of the Symphony was premiered in St. Petersburg, with the St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Shostakovich’s son Maxim Shostakovich accompanying a film directed by Georgy Paradzhanov, constructed from documentary materials, including film of the siege of Leningrad. Many survivors of the siege were guests at the performance. The composer’s widow Irina acted as script consultant to the project, and its musical advisors included Rudolf Barshai and Boris Tishchenko. The film and performance were repeated, with the same artists, in London on 9 May 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall.

Notable recordings[edit]

Recordings of this symphony include:

Orchestra	Conductor	Record Company	Year of Recording	Format
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra	Yevgeny Mravinsky	Melodiya	1953	LP
Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra	Kirill Kondrashin	Melodiya	1976	LP
London Philharmonic Orchestra	Bernard Haitink	Decca	1979	LP/CD
Chicago Symphony Orchestra	Leonard Bernstein	DG	1989	CD
Concertgebouw Orchestra	Mariss Jansons	RCO Live	2006 (live recording)	SACD
New York Philharmonic	Kurt Masur	Teldec	2013	CD
Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra	Emil Tabakov	Gega	2015	CD
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra	Vasily Petrenko	Naxos	2015	CD
Russian National Orchestra	Paavo Järvi	Pentatone	2015	CD
London Symphony Orchestra	Gianandrea Noseda	LSO Live	2022	CD

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Barnes, Julian, ‘The Noise of Time’, Vintage 2016 [ISBN 978-1-78470-332-5]
• Blokker, Roy, with Robert Dearling, The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1979). ISBN 0-8386-1948-7.
• Dubinsky, Rostislav (1989). Stormy Applause. Hill & Wang 1989. ISBN 0-8090-8895-9.
• Programme note for the Symphony for performance by the London Shostakovich Orchestra
• Fay, Laurel, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 1989). ISBN 0-19-513438-9.
• Geiger, Friedrich, notes for Teldec 21467: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 «Lenningrad»; New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur.
• MacDonald, Ian, The New Shostakovich (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). ISBN 1-55553-089-3.
• Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
• Moynahan, Brian, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony. (Eastbourne, UK: Quercus Publishing, 2013) ISBN 978-0-85738-300-6
• Sollertinsky, Dmitri & Ludmilla, tr. Graham Hobbs & Charles Midgley, Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980). ISBN 0-15-170730-8.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: Harper & Row, 1979.). ISBN 0-06-014476-9.
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1995). ISBN 0-02-874052-1.
• Volkov, Solomon (2004). Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-41082-1.
• Wilson, Elizabeth (1994). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04465-1.
• Ed Vulliamy, «Orchestral manoeuvres (part one)». The Guardian, 25 November 2001.
• Ed Vulliamy, «Orchestral maneouvres [sic] (part two)». The Guardian, 25 November 2001.
• Review of film version of the Symphony, St. Petersburg, 31 January 2005
• Programme, Shostakovich 7th Symphony/Cinemaphonia, Albert Hall, London May 9, 2005.

External links[edit]

• Full orchestral score from the New York Philharmonic’s archives

В 1935 году Дмитрий Шостакович начал работу над вариациями в жанре пассакалья, распространенном в Испании. Жанр имеет торжественно-трагический характер. Достаточно простая тема развивается на фоне сухого стука барабана, динамика нарастает и доходит до огромной мощи, олицетворяя страх и ужас. Свои наброски композитор даже показывал студентам, но работу над произведением отложил.

В 1941 году жизнь Шостаковича, как и всех людей страны, резко изменилась. Началась война. Первые месяцы композитор жил в Ленинграде. События побудили его вернуться к ранее начатой пассакалье. Так началась работа над Седьмой симфонией.

«Я писал ее быстрее, чем предыдущие произведения. Я не мог поступить по-другому, и не сочинять ее. Вокруг шла страшная война. Я всего лишь хотел запечатлеть образ нашей страны, которая так отчаянно сражается в собственной музыке. В первый день войны я уже принялся за работу. Тогда я проживал в консерватории, как и многие мои знакомые музыканты. Я являлся бойцом противовоздушной обороны. Я не спал, и не ел и отрывался от сочинения только, когда дежурил или при возникновении воздушных тревог».

До эвакуации Шостаковича в октябре были написаны первые три части симфонии. Финал дался композитору сложнее всего. Влияла, конечно, война и её последствия. Мама и сестра Дмитрия Дмитриевича не были эвакуированы из города, и он очень переживал за них.

Четвертая часть симфонии была завершена уже в Куйбышеве (нынешняя Самара). И там же она прозвучала впервые. 5 марта 1942 года её исполнил оркестр Большого театра под управлением Самуила Самосуда.

На премьеру приехали корреспонденты из разных стран, симфонию захотели исполнить в известнейших филармониях мира. Из статьи газеты «Известия» стало понятно чего хочет Шостакович больше всего: «Моя мечта, чтобы Седьмая симфония в недалеком будущем была исполнена в Ленинграде, в родном моем городе, который вдохновил меня на ее создание».

Его мечта сбылась 9 августа 1942 года. В день, который немецкое командование объявило датой вступления в Ленинград. Симфонию исполнил Большой симфонический оркестр Ленинградского радиокомитета (нынешний Академический симфонический оркестр Петербургской филармонии) под управлением Карла Элиасберга. К коллективу присоединились фронтовые музыканты, так как требовался расширенный состав.

«Перед концертом… наверху установили прожекторы, чтобы согреть сцену, чтоб воздух был потеплее. Когда же мы вышли к своим пультам, прожекторы погасили. Едва показался Карл Ильич, раздались оглушительные аплодисменты, весь зал встал, чтобы его приветствовать… И когда мы отыграли, нам аплодировали тоже стоя… Откуда-то вдруг появилась девочка с букетиком живых цветов. Это было настолько удивительно!.. За кулисами все бросились обниматься друг с другом, целоваться. Это был великий праздник. Все-таки мы сотворили чудо. Вот так наша жизнь и стала продолжаться. Мы воскресли», – из воспоминаний участницы премьеры Ксении Матус.

Симфония звучала во всём городе. Велась трансляция по радио и через уличные громкоговорители. Многие не скрывали слёз от чувства гордости за свою страну! О дне блокадной премьеры также написал создатель музея Седьмой симфонии Еагений Линд:

«Произошло небывалое, не значащееся ни в истории войн, ни в истории искусства, – “дуэт” симфонического оркестра и артиллерийской симфонии. Грозные контрбатарейные орудия прикрывали собой не менее грозное оружие – музыку Шостаковича. Ни один снаряд не упал на Площадь Искусств, но зато на головы врага из радиоприемников, репродукторов потрясающим всепобеждающим потоком обрушилась лавина звуков, доказав, что дух – первичен. Это были первые залпы по Рейхстагу!».

Седьмая симфония Шостаковича, или «знаменитая ленинградская» как назвала её Анна Ахматова, — это великое произведение. Оно отражает необъятную силу духа всего русского народа. Оно подарило надежду и веру как блокадникам, так и всему Советскому народу.

Алексей Толстой писал:

«Седьмая симфония посвящена тор­жеству человеческого в человеке. Постараемся (хотя бы отчасти) проникнуть в путь музыкального мышления Шостаковича — в грозные темные ночи Ленинграда, под грохот разрывов, в зареве пожаров, оно привело его к написанию этого откровенного произведения».

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