Written by Anna Vorhes
BORN: September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russia
DIED: August 9, 1975, in Moscow, USSR
INSTRUMENTATION: three flutes (one doubling alto flute and one doubling piccolo) two oboes and English horn, three clarinets (one doubling E-flat clarinet) and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, four trombones and two bass trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, piano, and strings
DURATION: 80 minutes
COMPOSED: July 15-December 27, 1941, dedicated to the City of Leningrad
WORLD PREMIERE: March 5, 1942, Palace of Culture, Kuibyshev, USSR, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, Samuil Samosud, Conductor
SOMETHING INTERESTING TO LISTEN FOR: This symphony was written in a time when Europe was dealing with widespread warfare. The war had spread across the globe, involving vast numbers of people and all the resources that could be gathered. Yet this symphony calls for a very large orchestra and makes each instrument vital to an accurate performance. How could it be performed when the focus was on successful warfare? Within the work there are beautiful, lyric, strong, aggressive, and peaceful melodies. There are military sounding themes, beginning in the first movement with a sneaky snare drum quietly coming in behind the last phrases of an expressive melody. The new theme that joins the increasingly pervasive snare drum is almost childish, beginning in the strings. The flute picks up this melody, still a seemingly innocent tune. This melody will develop into something truly menacing as the movement progresses. Toward the end of the movement the calm demeanor of the beginning returns, but it does seem more troubled than before. At the very end of this first movement the snare and its invasive accompanying melody return. Is this a symbol of something beyond the music? Shostakovich later in life called it “the theme of evil.”
Each of the four movements gives the impression that there is something programmatic inspiring it. Shostakovich suggested titles for the four movements but withdrew them, indicating that he didn’t wish to interfere with the listener’s perceptions. Looking for the extramusical ideas in the music of Shostakovich is always problematic. He lived with political pitfalls as he worked to maintain his artistic and even bodily freedom in the complex world of the USSR under Stalin. Letting the music convey what it will to each listener is perhaps the best way to honor this composer who was alternately revered and reviled throughout his life by the government of his beloved homeland. All he desired was to create the music that lived in him, allowing it to express his experiences without words.
PROGRAM NOTES:
Dmitri Shostakovich grew up in St. Petersburg and was carefully taught by his parents to love his city and his Russian identity. When he was ten, he learned that the Tsar Nikolas II had abdicated and been exiled, later to be assassinated along with his entire family. This was not necessarily as devastating as it might appear. The Tsar and his family had long ignored the needs of the workers who kept the Russian economy strong. There was a sense that things would get better for the working classes. Lenin had been exiled before the Tsar’s abdication and he returned to Russia by way of Petrograd (the new name of St. Petersburg during World War I). The young Shostakovich went to see Lenin’s public return. On the 25th of October 1917, the Bolsheviks under Lenin stepped into power. After Lenin’s death in 1924 the city of St. Petersburg which became Petrograd was given the new name Leningrad honoring one of their most prominent citizens. And Stalin took over the USSR.
Shostakovich retained the love of his city and country throughout his life, though political turmoil and oppression were always present. He was a very private man, and trying to ascertain his true feelings and relationship with the powerful USSR leadership, especially Stalin, is always problematic. What is propaganda created by the Communist party? What is Shostakovich’s own propaganda trying to retain his ability to compose and remain free? What is true about his feelings and his motives? Who were the composer’s true confidantes?
This symphony, dedicated to his beloved city, is certainly an expression of his love of his home and his reaction to the city being threatened by outside forces. Both Stalin and Hitler expressed strong dislike for the city. When German forces surrounded the city, Hitler expressed a strong desire to destroy the entire city. He hoped to wipe Leningrad and Moscow off the face of the earth, sending the Russians into Siberia and taking the western part of Russia to expand Germany. His orders called for widespread execution, with only the least political being left alive. His troops besieged Leningrad for 872 days in this attempt. Shostakovich’s symphony for his beloved home was one of the reasons the siege didn’t succeed.
When the siege of Leningrad began, Shostakovich was living in the city with his family. He volunteered to join the military. He was refused due to his poor eyesight, but was accepted to join the Leningrad Conservatory Firefighting Brigade. The photograph taken of him in uniform would grace the cover of Time Magazine later in the war.
As Leningrad was surrounded and the situation became more dire, Shostakovich turned his hand to patriotic songs, writing twenty-seven anthems for voice and piano for use in front-line concerts according to Brian Moynahan in his book Leningrad: Siege and Symphony. The composer began work on his Seventh Symphony. He finished the first movement. He began work on the second movement, which would be the shortest. Some people suggest the middle of the movement mimics the sound of air raids disrupting life. Shostakovich’s wife recalled that the composer rarely reacted quickly to air raids, finishing his musical thought, letting the ink dry and taking the manuscript into the shelter with him.
By August 30 the Germans controlled all the rail lines into the city. Control of the roads would soon follow. With care, Leningraders could escape by lake to catch the railroad where freight from outside was sent in by barges. Food was shipped by old barges that had been refitted. The Germans bombed them and the barges were lost. The siege became overwhelming, with stories told of Pavlov’s famous dogs “screeching like banshees” and the zoo’s beloved elephant bellowing in pain after a mortal wound according to Moynahan. Radio Leningrad began broadcasting the sound of a metronome between programs to demonstrate the heart of the city was still beating.
The arts soldiered on in the face of the siege. Performances were accomplished, and reports were issued about how normal life remained. Again quoted by Moynahan, Shostakovich recalled people asking him for tickets to events at the Philharmonia. “These people were exhausted by sleepless nights, but they were striving for moral and aesthetic rest.” By late September, Shostakovich had begun work on the third movement. It was finished just after his thirty-fifth birthday. According to one report, he had a copy of the completed movements flown out of the city by poet Anna Akhmatova when she was evacuated. Life was so chaotic at that point that there is no proof nor disproof of the story.
On October 1 Shostakovich and his immediate family were flown out of Leningrad to Moscow. By October 22 the family had relocated farther east to Kuibyshev (now Samara). The composer could not write, thinking of how many lives were being lost. But when the Germans were turned away from Moscow, and the Americans joined the war after Pearl Harbor, Shostakovich found it in himself to continue his symphony. On December 27, 1941, he finished the work.
To aid the war effort a premiere was planned. The instrumental forces were large, and it took much effort to put the premier together. News about the symphony spread around the world. On March 5, 1942, the premiere took place. The manuscript was smuggled out of the USSR and performed with fervor around the world.
The final piece of the premiere of the Seventh Symphony was the first performance in Leningrad. That is a story in and of itself. To try to assemble a large enough group of musicians in a city that was still under siege was a monumental task. Death was so common in the city that graves were mass burial pits. Food was scarce, and the stories of how the people managed to survive are difficult to understand. The Leningrad Radio Orchestra still attempted to remain in their home city, but their last broadcast had been New Year’s Day 1942.
In March, Karl Eliasberg went searching for his orchestra. Musicians were collected to begin work on a premiere in Shostakovich’s home city. To begin rebuilding the orchestra, a group of fifteen began rehearsing on March 30. They were starving and cold. Players were pulled from the Red Army regiments around the city. On April 5 the makeshift orchestra played a concert of waltzes. On May 1 they accomplished a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Finally, rehearsals for Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony began in July.
On August 9, 1942, the Leningrad premiere took place. It was the date that Hitler had boasted he would feast in Leningrad. The Red Army worked to distract the invading forces to prevent any raids on the concert hall, a fact that didn’t become known until well after the war. The musicians and audiences were dressed as if it was winter. Their bodies had long since lost the ability to regulate their own heat due to starvation. The performance was an incredible success, though the siege went on for months and months after. The emotional impact was felt throughout the USSR and the world.
M.T. Anderson in his book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad offers this reflection:
“Years later, a German soldier told Eliasberg [conductor of the performance in Leningrad], “It had a slow but powerful effect on us. The realization began to dawn that we would never take Leningrad.” That was enough in itself. “But something else started to happen. We began to see that there was something stronger than starvation, fear and death – the will to stay human.”
Anderson further reflects:
“The symphony meant many things to many people. To many Americans, it forged strong ties of kinship and friendship. To many Russians, it sang of the hope of victory. It may have shamed some Germans into realizing that they could no longer despise the Slavs as subhumans. But for the people of Leningrad, it meant something else entirely: it gave them an identity. “We listened with such emotion, because we had lived for this moment, to come and hear this music,“ remembered a woman who was in the hall that night. “This was a real symphony which we lived. This was our symphony, Leningrad’s.”…It gave them a story to tell about themselves in which they were heroes and in which their hideous trials were a mark of pride. It transformed them from victims into the pride of Russia.”
Perhaps this is the power of music. It gives us the power to see ourselves in our own stories. For Leningrad it was a story of triumph over incredible odds and at immense cost.