To-day we present the result of a first hearing of this eighth symphony, one chosen at random from among S.'s oeuvre. We shall come back later with our impressions of up to six further hearings.

Well, no one can deny that the beginning falls into the lugubrious category. The eighth symphony begins in largo mode! Very well; there are symphonies of Beethoven and Schumann which do the same. But after five minutes of largo (actually it is marked adagio) we find ourselves becoming restless. In our seats we shift and stir a little! No first movement of any symphony by any other composer as far as we can remember is slow all the way through. It is against all human and symphonic nature. At the start of a symphony the listener wishes to be roused not bored mesmerised or drugged! But this goes on and on and on in the same tone! We can imagine the composer chuckling to himself about the meaningless ordeal through which he was putting his deluded listeners. So we are in the realm here of a very peculiar psychology indeed.

But worse still is the poor instrumentation. Even at the five-minute mark we have heard very little from the woodwind and nothing at all from the brass. The first significant thing the brass section have to play comes after thirteen interminable minutes, and it consists only of one rude repeated chord! It doesn't at all sound like a proper symphony. Had it been Sibelius we would have heard some noble and memorable motif ringing out here. Had it been a Brahms movement he would by this time have been up and away with three profound main melodies and a good deal of energetic development. Had it been Bruckner too there would have been noble themes and sequences. So S.'s continued catatonic lethargy gives us no very good impression at all! After fourteen minutes comes a loud bit with lots of wrong notes. The composer evidently does not care about what harmonises with what! On the contrary, he here again clearly delights in annoying his audience. After sixteen minutes we get some silly children's tune played very loudly on woodwind and brass. We know that style of old - we have heard it so often before. Perhaps it is all meant to "represent" something, along the lines of Beethoven's "Victory of Wellington", but if so it does not work! There is no music to it, that is why. Next we hear a long gloomy passage for the cor anglais, then more lugubrious lower strings. Twenty-four minutes and the thing is not over yet! We long for the end. But only after twenty-seven minutes does it at last fade away in an atmosphere of utter gloom, much to the relief we should think of any audience expecting a rousing symphony. S. seems to have wanted to outdo the "Pathetic" in his very first movement.

We therefore for the reasons stated mark this first movement "Very unsatisfactory. Failed."

Now what about the second movement? Well it starts off all jerky, rather like a seventh-rate imitation of Brahms. But after only thirty seconds we are back with the loud bits, wrong notes, and infantile discordant tunes. These continue for the rest of the movement. Any child composer could do better. If we heard this movement in a concert-hall we would walk out at this point. At least it is mercifully short, lasting only seven minutes. Again: "Irrelevant nonsense. Failed."

The third movement begins in a rather more original way, with a curious ostinato figure on the higher strings, interrupted by occasional shrieks sirens hooters and thuds. But the figure is developed very inadequately. Compare the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth and you will see what we mean. The episode with trumpet and drums is inutterably vulgar, and is in fact a diabolical mixture of Carmen and the Fire Dance stolen from Khachaturian's 1940 ballet Gayane. We mean - it is not even clever, is it! Soon we are back to a repetition of the original barren figure and more half-hearted pseudo-development. We reach at the forty-one minute mark a climax of discord and anti-music, after which we suddenly sink back into a resumption of the utter lugubriousness of the first movement largo!!! Oh no! We had thought it over!!! Is this a fourth movement or part of the third? we wonder. (Actually it is the fourth, but see below.)

Flutes and clarinets contribute meaningless doodles against grinding discords. Will it ever stop? No. More "satirical" nonsense from a few bassons at 52 minutes. Then more "satirical" nonsense from a flute at 53 minutes. More "satirical" nonsense from the cellos at 55 minutes. At least it is speeding up a bit. A few more bad clichés and non-harmonies from the full orchestra work up to some sort of awful climax, whereupon we actually hear two long and harmonious brass chords (at 61 minutes). They have no reference that we can hear to anything that has gone before. And then at once we are back again to the satirical nonsense on flute and bassoon. They do not hold the attention of the listener who "drifts off," and with a start of surprise realises at the 66-minute mark that it has all at last stopped.

No musical feeling, no harmony, no counterpoint, nothing of the slightest value in the whole 66-minute grotesquerie.

Some one may point out that these superficially uninteresting and unmusical movements contain motifs of a kind - one note up and one note down, that sort of thing - which return at certain points in the work. Or there may even be, we are told, significant hidden anagrams of the composer's own name. Well! That is not good enough for us! It in no way contributes to the quenching of our natural thirst for beauty! We require something musical as well. We think for instance of Brahms' Second Symphony, its initial three-note motto, and what Brahms makes of that!

In 1948 Andrey Zhdaneff singled out this eighth symphony and famously criticised it for its "extreme subjectivism" and its "unrelieved gloom." People with various agenda have done all they can to pooh-pooh Zhdaneff's criticism - in their propagandising minds an adverse but fair review was somehow magnified into a "second wave of terror against artists" - but the fact remains that this review simply stated facts; it was objective justified and true, and it confirms our own first impression. What Zhdaneff said was quite right and, at least to our own ears, obvious!

An interesting point arises here. When we look up this symphony in the "Rough Guide to Classical Music" we find the third movement described as "positively demented." They go on to say that "it culminates in a fulsomely [sic] expansive passacaglia before leading straight into a final movement in C major. Well that seemed roughly to confirm our impression, except that we had thought the passacaglia part of the fourth movement whereas they seem to consider it part of the third. But then turning to Grove we find that there are actually five movements, with no break between the third and fourth. Somehow we missed entirely the break between the fourth and the fifth. During the second hearing we shall listen out carefully! But this makes the work even more peculiar: half an hour for the first movement, and then four more movements packed into the following half hour or so. No sense of balance, no art.

It would be a good subject for a new thread then: "what constitutes a movement?" Not a preceding pause, because movements can be linked. Not a change in tempo, because movements can have introductions and episodes. Could it be a matter of the form, perhaps? The concept of separate movements does not even apply at all to certain sorts of modern music.

One more point. The admirable Mr. Lebrecht tells us that "a second movement piccolo solo represents a soldier walking off on furlough" and "a bassoon caricatures puffed-up apparatchiks." That does not interest us at all; it offends us, rather, that we are expected to listen out for stuff like that. It confirms our suspicion that it is simply Beethoven's worst work (the Victory of Wellington) all over again and ten times longer, is it not?

Now we know that living in Russia during the 1940s was not much fun; nor was it though in sixteenth-century England, and look what Tallis managed!

After this uncomfortable and indeed memorably awful hour we yearn again for the real music of Chayceffscy, Scryabine, Rachmanineff and Tyubine.

So we shall leave this question to Members as an exercise: why do people persist in listening to Shortacowitch when they could listen to Delius Elgar or Brahms?

Indeed we would encourage all the 302 other Members to follow our example - namely to take a composition which they especially like or dislike and give us a more or less detailed run-through of its qualities.

We shall in the mean-time give the work a second hearing and return in due course.

Finally it is interesting to compare this symphony with the Tenth, which is a work we do know well, since it was often played and broadcast in our youth. The Tenth begins in the same lugubrious manner, but it soon picks up speed, and there is a much better variety in the instrumentation. The whole bazaar is much more enjoyable somehow.

Sir Richard Terry, whose supreme labour was to recover and perform the older polyphonic music, has written something very pertinent and illuminating in this regard. "We may begin," he reminds us, "by disliking second-rate music, but constant repetition is bound to blunt our finer perceptions, and in some cases to convert mere toleration of it into actual liking."

Syd 

Ollie  x 100

Out-and-out incorrectly, no, perhaps not. All the same, 'Shostacowitch'?

Zhdaneff is also a transliteration of the name more normally rendered as Zhdanov that one doesn't meet with every day...

OK, Mr "Sydney Grew" (or should I say "Messrs Sydneys Grews"?) - I know that this piece was some kind of spoof, but 12 April was more than three weeks ago.

I could say a lot in response (and might even do so, were it worth the expense of time), but I will for the time being confine myself to quoting your citation of Zhdanov in 1948 who "singled out this eighth symphony and famously criticised it for its "extreme subjectivism" and its "unrelieved gloom"; Zhdanov certainly acted as something of a weapon of musical destruction in those dark Soviet days, but no extremes of subjectivity or unrelieved gloom that he could muster even in his very worst moments comes even close to your own.

"We" (that's to say we at The Sorabji Archive) also note that your supposedly informative and educative piece on this, one of Shostakovich's greatest symphonic achievements, makes no mention whatsoever of the fact that this monumental symphony was written in just three weeks - but then we would hardly expect a fact to intrude on this most unedifying of fantasies seeking to parade as a piece of music criticism, would we?...

Sydney Grew, indeed? One can only wish that he hadn't...

Best,

Alistair

Depends which 12 April, I suppose.

Inspired by Member Grew’s selflessness in tackling the Schostakowitsch Eighth Symphony and reporting his reactions we sat down with a judicious amount of fortifying beverage, Kyrill Kondrachine’s fine Moscow recording as remastered by those expert Korean artisans at the Aulos Long-Playing Record Company, and our well-thumbed copy of the Breitkopf & Härtel (Wiesbaden) pocket score. What fun!

Goodness, what a strange grinding noise down there in the bass. It rather reminded us in all its jabbing rhythms at first of one of those Baroque overtures which used to be all the rage, an impression not diluted in any way by the eventual arrival of the upper strings in a more conventional melodic register. Indeed it also reminded us of the same Comrade’s Fifth Symphony, written at a time when he was undergoing a certain amount of official disapproval. One is forced to wonder if he means anything in particular by that.

What impressive harmonies under that violin line when things finally calm down! Neapolitan, we note, but retaining the tonic note as a pedal. Very tense. We are forced to admit that this is a most enthralling opening paragraph indeed. We applaud Schostakowitsch’s judicious and unobtrusive addition of the flutes and trumpets to push the violins to just that little bit of extra intensity – a fine colouristic and yet practical touch. And now the low winds have just a moment to themselves – what a marvellously funereal snarl with all those low reeds. It really does remind us of the Baroque masters with their da caccias. And how quickly things pass to the top of the E flat clarionet! This fellow certainly is a master of the sweeping gesture when he puts his mind to it.

This would appear to be a second subject. And in quintuple time, indeed. How interesting that Comrade Schostakowitsch has chosen a more lyrical first subject (after that stabbing introduction which fools no one), to follow it with a second subject which while lyrical in itself employs a much more agitated accompaniment! The strings have launched into a sort of fugato – they really have had it all to themselves up to now, haven’t they, apart from that chorale bit? Must surely be time for the winds to have a go soon.

Hm, that fugato fizzled out rather into the quintuple time material and died down into some marking-time harmonies, but now the winds really are having a grand stab at it starting from all those low flutes. What a remarkable colour with those four low flutes in unison against the violas! And he’s doing one of those build-ups again – I say, he’s really giving the screw a jolly good turning! Not long before the brasses come in – how clever of him to save them until they’re really necessary! And putting that little rhythmic accompaniment figure to the second subject in the military drum – now that really is development, turning a harmless little accompaniment into something so nastily threatening! I say, just when one thinks the woodwinds can’t go any higher or faster they do. It’s becoming rather difficult to type.

Gracious, now that fugato in the flutes has got rather a lot faster and louder in the violins. They’re really stabbing at it now. Triplets in the horns derived from the second subject against semiquavers in the strings – what a clever way of creating rhythmic tension. And if one can tear oneself away from the excitement long enough to listen carefully one hears that everything comes from no end of deft transformations of those opening fragments from the low strings and the quintuple-time material – we remind ourselves that the little fugato the flutes started off was really just a legato version of those opening stabs in the violoncellos and contrabasses. How very symphonic of the man.

Well, we had to stop there for a bit because things were becoming all rather flustered and we were in danger of typing something we might have regretted. Things were getting terribly fast and there was a lot of very intricate rhythmic work going on - one frightfully clever moment where there was an obstinately pounding bass under a line high in the brasses, woodwinds and strings which kept changing rhythm. Those trumpets were barely holding their own against a great big battery of percussion but were sticking to the opening low string material for all they were worth. Now it’s over to an English Horn for what’s already been a very long solo. Pretty rhapsodic really but there are always little tastes of the main material coming back. Very clever of him to let the formal treatment get just a little less tight but stay coherent. Now he’s bringing in a few clarinets to supply a little bit of forte that the English Horn doesn’t quite have – another fine practical touch and most effective.  Ah, and it’s back into the Second Subject material as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Ars celare artem est, as Aunt Gladys used to say of her rice puddings and quite right too. A bit of excitement in the upper strings and then receding into the basses. And now the trumpets, muted but still really rather loud, with the opening string material, and the violins with their first subject melody – but oh my goodness, instead of the inner parts rising dissonantly against the bass, the bass line is falling against the melody – of course treating the tonic as the dominant of the subdominant is completely normal harmonic practice, isn’t it? He’s certainly found a way of shedding new light on it though. And from the Bb the bass line presses chromatically down, digging all the way down to the bottom C – that’s really very fine writing indeed. And ah! what a masterful touch – the marking-time harmonies from just before the development, insisting on having one last say. The muted trumpet refuses to be silent as well, and the violins are pressing upwards in harmonics against that very gloomy bass. What an extraordinary colour that is – and listening closely we hear a D in the violoncellos that refuses to resolve.

Well. How on earth are things going to go from here? What a lot of opposites he’s set up. I must say I’m looking forward to seeing where he takes them in the next four movements, even though that might take us a couple of days. Many thanks to Member Grew for spurring us on this little journey.

No, indeed it wasn't - and no, I can't be relied upon to type correctly; the "2" was clearly unintentional and, I hope, without it, what I wrote makes abit more sense...

Sorry about that!

Best,

Alistair

...and...(?!)...

Well, come on, Professor Barrett - don't just leave us in suspense; who do you think you are to do that? Shostakovich?? (!!)

Yes, indeed - put your pen away, Ms Wilson, lay your research / editing to one side, Mr Mc Burney (and, by the way, pop your bow and your baton down, Slava); Shostakovich scholarship has now - as you so insightfully observe - risen to a wholly new plateau, after it just Grew and Grew. Did I write "plateau"? Dammit, my typing is getting worse than ever! "Platitude" is, of course, what I meant.

The trouble with first person plural
Is - dear Syd - that it's never a cure-all,
So whenever I'm "nee-
dled" by Grew's Royal "We"
My first thought is a swift epidural.

(I'm convinced that Stephen Fry could have done much better, but it'll just have to do for now)...

Best,

Alistair