Shostakovich

Shostakovich PDF Author: Elizabeth Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571220502
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 631

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edition draws on many new writings about Shostakovich, providing both a more detailed and focused image of his life, and a wider view of his cultural background. A particular aspect of Shostakovich which is revealed is his sardonic and witty sense of humour, displayed in many of his letters to close friends.

Shostakovich

Shostakovich PDF Author: Elizabeth Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571220502
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 631

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edition draws on many new writings about Shostakovich, providing both a more detailed and focused image of his life, and a wider view of his cultural background. A particular aspect of Shostakovich which is revealed is his sardonic and witty sense of humour, displayed in many of his letters to close friends.

Shostakovich

Shostakovich PDF Author: Laurel E. Fay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195182514
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 494

Get Book Here

Book Description
For this biography the author has used many primary documents; Shostakovich's many letters, concert programmes, newspaper articles and diaries of his contemporaries. Showing his life as an example of the paradoxes of living as an artist in Russia.

Shostakovich and Stalin

Shostakovich and Stalin PDF Author: Solomon Volkov
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307427722
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that.” So said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose first compositions in the 1920s identified him as an avant-garde wunderkind. But that same singularity became a liability a decade later under the totalitarian rule of Stalin, with his unpredictable grounds for the persecution of artists. Solomon Volkov—who cowrote Shostakovich’s controversial 1979 memoir, Testimony—describes how this lethal uncertainty affected the composer’s life and work. Volkov, an authority on Soviet Russian culture, shows us the “holy fool” in Shostakovich: the truth speaker who dared to challenge the supreme powers. We see how Shostakovich struggled to remain faithful to himself in his music and how Stalin fueled that struggle: one minute banning his work, the next encouraging it. We see how some of Shostakovich’s contemporaries—Mandelstam, Bulgakov, and Pasternak among them—fell victim to Stalin’s manipulations and how Shostakovich barely avoided the same fate. And we see the psychological price he paid for what some perceived as self-serving aloofness and others saw as rightfully defended individuality. This is a revelatory account of the relationship between one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers and one of its most infamous tyrants.

Symphony for the City of the Dead

Symphony for the City of the Dead PDF Author: M.T. Anderson
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763691003
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book Here

Book Description
Originally published: Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2015.

Charles Ives Remembered

Charles Ives Remembered PDF Author: Vivian Perlis
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252070785
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through their reminiscences, Ives's relatives, friends, colleagues, and associates reveal aspects of his life, character, and personality, as well as his musical activities.

Testimony

Testimony PDF Author: Dmitriĭ Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571227921
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
With the composer's consent, the manuscript was smuggled out of Soviet Russia - but Shostakovich, fearing reprisals, stipulated that the book should not appear until after his death. Ever since its publication in 1979 it has been the subject of controversy, some suggesting that Volkov invented parts of it, but most affirming that it revealed a profoundly ambivalent Shostakovich which the world had never seen before - his life at once triumphant and tragic. Either way, it remains indispensable to an understanding of Shostakovich's life and work. Testimony is intense and fiercely ironic, both plain-spoken and outspoken.

A Shostakovich Casebook

A Shostakovich Casebook PDF Author: Malcolm Hamrick Brown
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025305625X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 407

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of writings analyzing the controversial 1979 posthumous memoirs of the great Russian composer at their significance. In 1979, the alleged memoirs of legendary composer Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) were published as Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitry Shostakovich As Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov. Since its appearance, however, Testimony has been the focus of controversy in Shostakovich studies as doubts were raised concerning its authenticity and the role of its editor, Volkov, in creating the book. A Shostakovich Casebook presents twenty-five essays, interviews, newspaper articles, and reviews—many newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union—that review the “case” of Shostakovich. In addition to authoritatively reassessing Testimony’s genesis and reception, the authors in this book address issues of political influence on musical creativity and the role of the artist within a totalitarian society. Internationally known contributors include Richard Taruskin, Laurel E. Fay, and Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, the composer’s widow. This volume combines a balanced reconsideration of the Testimony controversy with an examination of what the controversy signifies for all music historians, performers, and thoughtful listeners. Praise for A Shostakovich Casebook “A major event . . . This Casebook is not only about Volkov’s Testimony, it is about music old and new in the 20th century, about the cultural legacy of one of that century’s most extravagant social experiments, and what we have to learn from them, not only what they ought to learn from us.” —Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

The New Shostakovich

The New Shostakovich PDF Author: Ian MacDonald
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 184595064X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the posthumous publication in 1979 of alleged memoirs by Shostakovich, the controversy about the composer and his music has escalated. This book presents the case for the dissident view, arguing that the meaning of the composer's music cannot be appreciated without a knowledge of the terrible times he lived through under Soviet Communism.

Story of a Friendship

Story of a Friendship PDF Author: Dmitriĭ Dmitrievich Shostakovich
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801439797
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
This choice by the composer's close friend Isaak Glikman brought the tormented feelings of the musical genius into public view. Now those feelings resound in the first substantial collection of Shostakovich's letters to appear in English.

Rostropovich

Rostropovich PDF Author: Elizabeth Wilson
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mstislav Rostropovich, a legendary musician of the 20th century, died just a month after the English edition of this book was published in April 2007. Wilson, a British author and former student of Rostropovich, gained access to a great deal of archival information about his years as a faculty member at the Moscow State Conservatory. The book proceeds chronologically through Rostropovich's life and career, with several interpolated chapters devoted to reminiscences from other former pupils. Wilson explores Rostropovich's teaching philosophies and methods and details his warm relationships with several leading composers of the day, notably Benjamin Britten and Dmitry Shostakovich. Unfortunately, Wilson ends her narrative in 1974, the year of Rostropovich's forced departure from the Soviet Union. She acknowledges that a study of the remaining 33 years of his life--during which he was principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, and taught and performed around the globe--could fill several volumes, and one hopes that she will rise to the challenge of completing the biography of this great musician, humanist, and pedagog. Recommended for all music collections.