On
Monday we discussed the initial success of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth that
quickly turned into a controversy. Following Stalin’s attendance of a
performance in 1936, the work was denounced in an article published in Pravda,
the Communist Party newspaper, calling it “chaos instead of music.” The
government accused the opera saying it contained modernist elements and an
obscene portrayal of sexual and violent circumstances. Here is an excerpt from
the article:
“From
the first minute, the listener is shocked by deliberate dissonance, by a
confused stream of sounds. Snatches of melody, the beginnings of a musical
phrase, are drowned, emerge again, and disappear in a grinding and squealing
roar. To follow this ‘music’ is most difficult; to remember it, impossible.”
Following
the publication of this article, Shostakovich feared for his life as the
government often times banished or executed people they felt produced work not
in line with socialist realism.
How
did Shostakovich respond to this criticism? By writing more music, of course!
Join me tomorrow as I discuss the follow-up to this denunciation.
