“Beethoven and Shostakovich – Composers of Revolution” by Alan Woods, 2006
This handy pamphlet challenges the idea that art is a
purely ‘aesthetic’ or static experience, dedicated only to entertainment,
comfort or blissful repose. Woods shows how the French Revolution influenced
Beethoven ‘til the end, and the Bolshevik Revolution influenced Shostakovich up
to his death in 1975. Woods puts these
composers into the context of history, as no one escapes from history, much as
they pretend to.
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| Shostakovich & Beethoven |
Beethoven
Beethoven lived as a working-class Bohemian all his life.
Stravinsky called him a “plebian genius.” He broke with his mentor Haydn and the
influence of Mozart and Bach to create a music less aristocratic, courtly and
more energetic, violent and dissonant.
He once broke the strings on a piano he was playing he hit the keys so
hard. He expanded the sonata form from
its staid roots, creating music that Woods calls a dynamic ‘dialectic’ of
opposing sounds, not just harmonies, giving birth to the romantic style that
influenced Wagner.
This was under the impact of the French Revolution
according to Woods, a period Beethoven lived through and was closely acquainted
with: “…it is only with Beethoven that the spirit of the French Revolution
finds its true expression in music.” Beethoven had distain for royalty and
thought the Austrians would never make revolution. He said: “As
long as the Austrians have their brown beer and little sausages, they will
never revolt.” In the U.S. we might
substitute yellow beer and hamburgers. He admired Napoleon until Napoleon
became Emperor and betrayed the populist thrust of the French Revolution. This action by Napoleon has come down in
history as ‘Bonapartism’ – the hijacking of a revolution in the interests of
reaction. Beethoven was disgusted by it.
 |
| Napoleon crowns himself Emperor, with the Pope's blessing |
Beethoven’s first symphony, the Pathetique, is sunny, but also agitated, dissonant and mysterious -
breaking with the template. The 3rd
symphony, the Eroica, was to be dedicated
to Napoleon, but after Napoleon’s crowning and concordat with the Pope,
Beethoven changed the dedication to an unknown martyr of the Revolution. This symphony contained more dissonance and
violence, a picture of musical struggle, a “musical
cavalry charge” and a ‘funeral march.’ The Fifth
Symphony opens with the musical hammer blows of the most famous classical ‘riff’
in history – “Da da da daaa, Da da da duuu…”
and from there the symphony progressed from minor to major keys. All its main passages are based on French
revolutionary songs. Beethoven’s only
opera, Fidelio, contains a scene of
prisoners emerging from prison singing about freedom, a prison like the
Bastille. His play Egmont is even more explicit, based on a hero of Dutch nationalism
fighting Spanish occupation, and follows the execution of the hero with the Victory symphony… showing his undying
and rebellious optimism.
Beethoven’s music – like the Sixth Pastorale – also had lyric and quiet moments, but these are dynamic
intervals between the tumult. Beethoven’s career ended with the 9th Symphony, written after a period of silence due to the
defeat of revolutionary France at Waterloo and the consequent Europe-wide monarchist
reaction. The 9th has been called the ‘Marseillaise of Humanity.’ It starts in a nebulous manner, then
becomes dynamic, violent and triumphant.
When it was first played in 1824 it brought forth 5 ovations – more than
His Majesty ever got in Austria. 25,000
people turned out for his funeral in Vienna in 1827.
And Now
For Something Completely Different
What other kinds of music shares some of Woods’ descriptions? “Thunderous, dissonant, shocking, full of feeling, rugged, a musical explosion, energetic, rages, violent, dynamic, hammer-blows…” are all Woods’ adjectives for Beethoven’s music. I’d say these descriptors describe some jazz, blues and most of all rock, especially that of the 1960s and 1970s but even up to today. These styles were born out of periods of social & political upheaval too. As to dynamism, quiet/loud and contradictory themes, these can be found in the music of many musicians and bands in those days. Woods himself dislikes modern popular music like rock, but I’d say Beethoven was in spirit the disruptive classical ‘rocker’ of his time.
Shostakovich
Shostakovich was a child of the Bolshevik revolution, born
in 1906. He lived through the
revolution, the civil war, two world wars, Stalinism and part of the cold war,
dying in 1975. Woods’ portrays him as a
supporter of the revolution, an opponent of Stalin and also opposed to capital
by looking at his musical works and the accurate parts of his worked-over memoir.
Shostakovich was accused of making ‘formalist,’ tragic and difficult music - for not being cheery enough or ‘representing the Soviet working class.’ Yet the civil war, the gulag, purges and forced collectivization, WWII and anti-Semitic undertones were not cheery times. He was attacked in 1937 by Stalin personally during the purge years and again after WWII by Zhdanov. His saving grace was writing film scores for films that praised the Leader, for instance ones that praised Stalin as the architect of the military victory in the Civil War. Stalin was a movie buff, especially when he was the star.
Shostakovich was a political musician. He said “…any
artist that isolates himself from the world is doomed.” His 11th
Symphony was based on Russian revolutionary songs, centering on the 1905
insurrection against the Czar. His 1st
Symphony in 1926 made him famous. The 2nd
Symphony in 1927 was dedicated ‘To
October,’ and starts with a factory whistle and ends with the words
‘October, commune, Lenin.’ His 1930 3rd Symphony was dedicated
to May Day. But by that period, the
cultural shift to the right had begun inside the USSR. The revolutionary poet Maykovsky committed
suicide in 1930.
Shostakovich wrote a satirical opera, “The Nose” based on a famous anti-bureaucratic story by Gogol, but
the opera’s epilogue says that “reality is
worse.” (Woods calls opera an “archetypal bourgeois medium” up to that
point.) The Russian Association of Proletarian
Musicians (RAPM) denounced The Nose
as ‘formalist’ and official reviews were hostile. He did another opera called “Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District” in
1934, the same year Stalin had Kirov killed and used the event to attack his
enemies, blaming them for the assassination. Pravda attacked his opera as “coarse,
primitive and vulgar” - Stalin himself might have been the author. Socialist realism opposed innovation, satire,
experimentation and anything deviating from the official Party line … and this
opera was it. Its feminism was also
derided, as were the negative portrayals of the police and authorities, along
with a depiction of a very familiar party of prisoners. Pravda
actually called Shostakovich an “Enemy of the People.” No sh*t. His 4th
Symphony was only publicly performed in 1961.
The 1930s purges reached into the ranks of the top artists. Soviet theater director Vsevolod Meyerholt was sent to a concentration camp, then murdered. Isaak Bebel and Osip Mandelshtam were imprisoned. His friend General Tukachevsky was killed. In response, Shostakovich wrote the tragic 5th Symphony – not a cheery or smug work, but one reflecting suffering. The 6th also reflected tragedy, menace and sarcasm. He was to write a Lenin symphony in 1940 but it never happened.
The War and After
Living in Leningrad, he stayed in the city, joined the fire
brigade and endured the Nazi siege. Out
of this he wrote his famous 7th Symphony, the Leningrad. It is a marvelous
musical version of the approach of the Nazi armies, the siege, the deaths and
eventually the victory. The 8th
Symphony, written in 1943, was bleak, reflecting the decimation
wrought by the fascist armies in the USSR.
It was banned until 1960. The 9th
Symphony was also not full of cheery uplift either. Woods calls it “comical, ironic, even trivial” but also “anxious, sinister, menacing, even diabolical.” In 1948
Shostakovitch’s music was denounced as ‘disgusting,
a cacophony’ and a ‘brain-twister’ by Zhdanov’s crew. Prokofiev was also denounced by Zhdanov and
his wife sent to prison. Shostakovich
was fired from teaching at the Moscow Conservatory; his works banned, he was
forced to publicly repent; his privileges withdrawn. His only source of funds was his film scores.
In 1948 he wrote a cantata called Rayok that made fun of
the ‘musical activism’ of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party. This
cantata was a secret until 1975. He also
wrote a Jewish song cycle “From Jewish
Folk Poetry” as his response to the anti-Semitic attacks on ‘rootless cosmopolitans’- though he was not Jewish. He would not write the 10th
Symphony until after Stalin’s death in 1953. It is ‘stormy and savage’ in depicting what might be Stalin. The 1957 11th,
as already mentioned, was based on Bloody Sunday in 1905, but has echoes of the
Hungarian uprising crushed by Soviet tanks.
It is a musical diatribe against tyrants. He himself said it dealt with ‘contemporary themes’ too. The 12th Symphony is subtitled “October.” The 1962 13th Symphony dealt with
anti-Semitism, and was subtitled “Baba
Yar.” It not only depicts the Nazi
massacre, but Soviet queues, fear of the ‘midnight knock’ and a subtle
criticism of bureaucracy under Brezhnev.
He wrote two more symphonies after this.
Woods makes a valuable defense and analysis of these two
composers and their political times and leanings. Worth buying!
Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Reason
in Revolt” & “The History of Philosophy” (both by Woods); “Jazz,” “Rock and
Roll,” “Blues,” “Classical,” “Folk” and “Music,”
or “How the Beatles Rocked the
Kremlin,” “Zhdanov,” Beethoven,” "Leningrad."
And I bought it at May Day Books, which has many
inexpensive pamphlets.
The Kultur Kommissar
July 4, 2023 – Happy Partial Revolution Day!
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