Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Another posting in the Kharkiv Opera genre — as in my 3/9 posting “The dandelion caper”, where I described the genre as “a pleasant, playful, or joyous event staged in the face of terrible times” (from my 3/2/25 posting “Three men walk into bar”). That day’s pleasure was the enjoyment of the plants and flowers around us; today I bring you a mixture of pleasure, playfulness, and joy, along with some weirdness, but with an alarming sting in its tail. All from the music that played during my sleep time the night before last (7:30 pm to 4:15 am, with brief waking moments roughly every hour during the night for a whizz — hey, my kidney disease has been brought to a standstill for the moment, and my whizz regimen is the price I pay for that), so that I had ten moments of nighttime music, from the final “Ode to Joy” movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (yes, I can drop off to sleep during the “Ode to Joy”, with its cascade of musical climaxes), to waking with Dvořák songs for violin.

In between there was an extraordinary grab-bag of musical works, listed below, followed by comments on two of the items.

The 3/9-10 lineup:

— Beethoven, Symphony #9, 4th movement (“Ode to Joy”)
— Corigliano Symphony #1
— Shostakovich: symphonies, The Song of the Forests
— Donnacha Dennehy music
— Handel, Dettingen Anthem
— variations on America and The Star-Spangled Banner (by various hands)
— Drei Groschen Oper (in German)
— violinist Joseph Suk: Brahms violin and piano sonatas; Dvořák songs for violin

No, I have no idea how these tracks came to be in this sequence. Looks like sunspots to me.

I’ve posted at least a bit on most of these compositions, but here I’m picking out the two items I think are the weirdest: the concert-noise music (I really don’t know how to describe it) of Donnacha Dennehy and Shostakovich’s oratorio The Song of the Forests (very pleasant Russian-folkish music paired with a lot of really cringeworthy poetry, and, since this is Shostakovich, there is some mournful, and especially in the current state of the world, alarming, backstory).

Donnacha Dennehy. From my 12/22/16 posting “Morning music”:

A few days ago I awoke to the music of Ignaz Moscheles (part of the bridge between music of the classical period and music of the romantic period). Yesterday it was another composer with an interesting name, Donnacha Dennehy, also in a zone between genres: this time, between contemporary concert music and performance art. I awoke early on during his 1997 composition Junk Box Fraud, an intriguing title (which, as far as I can tell, Dennehy has never been willing to explain).

You can watch a performance by Crash Ensemble on video here. Just over 13 minutes, described as electro-acoustic and mixed media, for two singers/speakers and a chamber ensemble, plus visuals on a screen. Fascinating sonic texture, with outbursts of profanity (the piece begins with “Fuck you” from one of the women) and vocal play that reminds me of George Crumb. If you’re listening for melodies, Dennehy’s not your man, but the piece is riveting, assaultive, playful, and funny.

Plus more on the composer, his name, and his music.

Dmitri Shostakovich. From Wikipedia:

The Song of the Forests (Песнь о лесах), Op. 81, is an oratorio by Dmitri Shostakovich composed in the summer of 1949. It was written to celebrate the forestation of the Russian steppes (Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature) following the end of World War II. The composition originally included texts by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky praising Joseph Stalin as the “great gardener”; these references were eliminated after his death. Premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 15 November 1949, the work was well received by the government, earning the composer a Stalin Prize the following year.

Compared to most of Shostakovich’s other output, especially several of his symphonies, it is all too easy to consider The Song of the Forests a simplistic and overtly accessible “official” piece without remembering the context of the time in which it was written. In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Simplistic and overtly accessible compositions was exactly what the Party demanded. Shostakovich was not the only one writing “safe” pieces at this time. Prokofiev composed his oratorio On Guard for Peace and Myaskovsky wrote his 27th Symphony. Even so, Soviet attacks on composers were both arbitrary and unpredictable, due in no small part to vagueness surrounding the theory of socialist realism in music and how it should be applied. Marina Frolova-Walker stated the situation this way:

‘Socialist Realism’ was never worked out as a coherent theory, although enormous efforts were expended in attempting to create the illusion of one. Rather, it amounted only to a range of slogans with obscure gray valleys between them. In truth, officials found this vagueness and lack of cohesion far too useful to be sacrificed, for it allowed them unlimited flexibility in manipulating artists. Given two works of similar character, one might be praised and the other condemned, according to some momentary official whim. Attacks on composers were sometimes based on nothing more than fear that the absence of criticism might attract unwelcome attention to the critic concerned: no one wanted to march out of step.

For Shostakovich the story of 1936 was repeated, only this time he was not alone. Most of his works were banned, he was forced to publicly repent, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time “he waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn’t be disturbed”. [AZ: If that doesn’t move you, you have a heart of stone.] In the next few years Shostakovich divided his compositions into film music to pay the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation, and serious works “for the desk drawer”. The latter included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry.

For practical reasons (not to mention those of personal survival), Shostakovich began using two distinct musical idioms in which to compose. The first was more simplified and accessible to comply with Party guidelines. The second was more complex and abstract to fulfill himself artistically. The Song of the Forests belongs in the first category. In his “official” style he set a text by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky, a poet high in Party favor. Dolmatovsky had seen the then-new forest plantations and shared his experiences with the composer.

Shostakovich creates an arc from the opening evocation of vastness of the Russian steppes with a dark, almost Mussorgskian recollection of the devastation of the war just past, to a closing fugue of vigor and affirmation. In between these two points are a series of choral songs encouraging the planting of trees. While composing this piece, Shostakovich read an article in his daughter’s school newspaper about groups of “Pioneers” — the Soviet youth movement—becoming involved in the planting project. He asked Dolmatovsky to supply additional lines for children’s chorus to represent the Pioneers’ efforts. A lyrical movement just before the finale is reminiscent of the recently castigated Eighth Symphony, though more “accessible” to avoid censure. The final fugue, Shostakovich felt, was a risk since fugues were considered formalistic. By using a Russian folk song as the basis for the movement and the potential of citing Glinka as a model, he felt he reduced the risk factor substantially.

While The Song of the Forests has been considered neither the best nor the most popular of Shostakovich’s oeuvre, it continues to be performed and recorded because it is an attractive musical pastiche. Reminiscences of the boys’ chorus from Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame rub shoulders with Glinka and even Mussorgsky. There is additionally a direct influence of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, especially the introspective third and fourth movements. Shostakovich hints at this in the similarity of titles between the two compositions. The propaganda value of The Song of the Forests may have been purely superficial, but it was enough to satisfy Party ideologues.

The composer considered this oratorio a shameful work. Before the work’s premiere, Isaak Glikman told Shostakovich, “It would be so good if instead of Stalin you had, say, the queen of the Netherlands — she’s a big fan of reforestation. The composer replied, ‘That would be wonderful! I take responsibility for the music, but as for the words….'”

But as for the words, indeed. I haven’t found a translation of Dolmatovsky’s lumpish socialist poetry in Russian, but you can get a pretty good feel for its painful embarrassments from the titles of the 7 sections of the oratorio:

Когда окончилась война – When the War Ended
Оденем Родину в леса – We will clothe the Motherland with forests
Воспоминание о прошлом – Memories of the Past
Пионеры сажают леса – The Pioneers Plant the Forests
Комсомольцы выходят вперед – The Young Communists go forth
Будущая прогулка – A Walk into the Future
Слава – Glory

My fantasy is that some vocal group specializing in wordless singing will take on the oratorio. Scat singing would probably be too jarring stylistically, but how about a group like Manhattan Transfer, or even better, the Swingle Singers / the Swingles, who are already adept at classical forms and could take on “an attractive musical pastiche”. Junk Dolmatovsky, enjoy Shostakovich.

But go back and look at Shostakovich’s life — I’ve left out some of the worst stuff; go look at what happened to his father  — and contemplate this person of enormous talent, a clear moral vision, and, alas, a deep love of his country, who stuck it out through the whims and slings of the wicked mass murderer Josef Stalin. Picture him on the landing by the lift in his building, waiting to be disappeared, tortured, sent to a gulag, or shot. And listen to his string quartets, many of them grating with pain, despair, and anxiety. He spoke as clearly as he was able to.

This entry was posted on March 11, 2025 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Language in politics, Music, My life, Russian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.