Baz, that was a sterling piece of work, as of course have been those by Ron and Oliver which preceded it.

War is not the subject of Shostakovich's 8th symphony, it was the occasion of it. Shostakovich didn't sit down at his desk and think to himself "now let's write a piece about war", he was living in a country which was suffering both under a brutal invasion from abroad and under a brutal dictatorship at home. Sydney, it's clear that there is much you refuse to understand, but this must be simple enough even for you.

I think i read somewhere that Shostakovitch wrote it as a war symphony (it certainly contains war themes all thru) but underneath it was a veiled attack on Stalin which for obvious reasons he would deny if challenged...

We find ourselves in full agreement with Member Barrett on this point. It will perhaps be noted that our reflections on so far the first two movements of Shostakovich's op. 65 have at no point dwelt upon adduced programmatic elements. This is in no way to deny the validity of Member Baziron's fine analysis, simply to note that at the level of the 'mere notes' there is more than enough going on for what in our case has been just on 20 years of reasonably regular and attentive listening.

We would also agree with Member Pace that the 7th, 11th, 12th and 13th symphonies are a different matter in being explicitly programmatic works, with descriptive titles for the movements and in the last case also with a sung text. The wartime context is certainly an important part of the background for the 8th symphony. It is not in our opinion inherent to its material.

Perhaps a moment's reflection on Holst's The Planets (in particular Mars, of course) and Vaughan Williams' Sixth Symphony might be in order. Both exist in a wartime context. Both are also susceptible of understanding independently of it and their composers certainly preferred it that way.

Incidentally, I do hope I am not the Member Flaccid to whom Member ahinton alludes.

It may be that Member Barrett was (as tactfully as possible) qualifying the term "ignorance" so as to draw a clear distinction between on the one hand "simply not knowing", and on the other "deliberately not wanting to know".

Member Grew's logic is, as ever, entirely sound however.

Baz

Dimitry Shopstercowitz had three wives, no less. In this respect he was like Arnold Dolmetsch who also had three wives. Is there any known case of a composer having more than three wives? Surely this tells us something very important about the man and his music that has not hitherto been given the weight it should have been. Specifically we learn at once what really mattered to him in his scheme of things. We do not find him to have been a spiritual sort of person at all.

Mr Sydney Grew
I was thinking about your post while doing other things in the house.
When I read about Janacek's life I was critical of him. I thought that it was not fair of him to put his wife through so much. I really disliked Janacek as a person after reading this book.

Now after listening to COTW on radio 3 and reading how he was locked in a loveless marriage I am more sympathetic. I can not say I understand him completely, but I am not so judgmental. They also talked about Janacek affair with another woman (a singer) that was public.

I understand your point of view, but I myself am moving away from my previous opinion on this matter.
I thing Berg also was not very loyal to his wife. I think this area is very difficult. I think we are tested in this life to the limit.
With regard to Shostakovich I think that he was married twice. His first wife died. I left the Sov Union while very young, but from what I know moral was not the strong factor there and in fact it was very loose with regard to beeing faithful in marrige. In that State religion was killed and moral notions were kind of fuzzy. 

I believe a man may marry more than once and be a spiritual person.

Thank you lovedaydewfall for your post.
My computer came up with this site for Muradeli. I actually remember operetta vaguely.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/muradeli.htm
May be there was a movie made from that operetta, I am not sure. I was very little then. But I do remember an operetta Moscow Paris Moscow. May be I saw it on the tele.