Biography of Shostakovich g
Shostakovich - classic of music of the XX century. None of its great masters was so closely connected with the difficult fate of his native country, managed to express the screaming contradictions of his time with such force and passion to evaluate it with a harsh moral court. It is precisely in such the involvement of the composer of the pain and troubles of his people that the main significance of his contribution to the history of the music of the eyelids of world wars and grandiose social shocks that humanity did not know.
Shostakovich in nature is an artist of universal talent. There is not a single genre where he did not say his good word. He came close to that with that kind of music, which sometimes arrogantly rammed by serious musicians. He is the author of a number of songs, picked up by masses of people, and still delight his brilliant processing of popular and jazz music, which he was especially fond of at the time of the formation of a style - in E GG.
But the main area of the application of creative forces for him was the symphony. Not because the rest of the genres of serious music were alien to him - he was endowed with the unsurpassed talent of a truly theatrical composer, and work in cinema delivered him the basic means of existence. But the rude and unjust variety, made in Gogol, remained incomplete, and the ideas did not go into the stage of incarnation.
Perhaps this was precisely the properties of Shostakovich’s personality - by nature he was not inclined to open forms of protest, easily inferior to persistent insignificants due to special intelligence, delicacy and defenselessness before gross arbitrariness. But this was only in life - in his art he was faithful to his creative principles and affirmed them in that genre where he felt completely free.
Therefore, at the center of the search for Shostakovich, the conceptual symphony was, where he could openly tell the truth about his time without compromises. However, he did not refuse to participate in art enterprises born under the pressure of strict requirements for art presented by the command-administrative system-such as M. Chiaurelm, “The Fall of Berlin”, where the rampant praise of the greatness and wisdom of the “father of peoples” reached the extreme limit.
But participation in such cinema monuments, or other, sometimes even talented works that distorted the historical truth and created the myth, pleasing to political leadership, did not protect the artist from a rude reprisal in the city The leading ideologist of the Stalinist regime A. Zhdanov repeated the rude attacks contained in the long -standing article by the newspaper Pravda and accused the composer along with other masters of Soviet music of that time of commitment to anti -people formalism.
Subsequently, at the time of the Khrushchevskaya “thaw”, similar accusations also removed the outstanding creations of the composer, the public execution of which was imposed on, found the road to the listener. But the drama of the personal fate of the composer, who survived the strip of unrighteous persecution, imposed an indelible imprint on his personality and determined the orientation of his creative searches, addressed to the moral problems of human being on Earth.
This was and remained the main thing that highlights Shostakovich among the creators of music in the XX century. His life path was not rich in events. After graduating from the Leningrad Conservatory with a brilliant debut-a magnificent first symphony, he began the life of a professional composer first in the city on the Neva, then during the Great Patriotic War in Moscow.
His activity as a teacher of the conservatory was relatively brief - he left it not of his own free will. But to this day, his students retained the memory of the Great Master, who played a decisive role in the formation of their creative individuality. Already in the first symphony, the 2 properties of Shostakovich’s music are clearly noticeable. One of them affected the formation of a new instrumental style with its inherent lightness, the ease of the competition of concert tools.
Another manifested itself in an persistent desire to give music the highest meaningfulness, to reveal the deep concept of philosophical significance with means of the symphonic genre. Many composer's works, which followed such a brilliant beginning, reflected the troubled atmosphere of time, where the new style of the era was washed in the struggle of conflicting attitudes.
So in the second and third symphonies “October” -, “Pervomaiskaya” - Shostakovich paid tribute to the musical poster, they clearly affected the effects of combat, propaganda art of the x. Bezimensky and S. At the same time, bright theatricality was also manifested in them, which so conquered in the productions of E. Vakhtangov and Sun. It was their performances that influenced the style of Shostakovich’s first opera “Nose”, written based on the famous story of Gogol.From here comes not only acute satiricality, parody, reaching the grotesque in the outline of individual characters and a gullible, quickly panic and an ambulance to the court of the crowd, but also the daring intonation of “laughter through tears”, which helps us to recognize a person even in such a vulgar and deliberate insignificance, like the Gogol Major Kovalev.
Shostakovich’s style not only perceived the impacts emanating from the experience of world musical culture here the most important for the composer were M. Mussorgsky, P. Tchaikovsky and G. Mahler, but also absorbed the sounds of the then musical life - that public culture of the “light” genre that owned the consciousness of the masses. The composer’s attitude towards her is dual - he sometimes exaggerates, parodies the characteristic turns of fashion songs and dances, but at the same time ennobles them, raises them to the heights of real art.
This attitude with particular clarity was affected in the early ballets of the Golden Age and Bolt, in the first piano concert, where a solo pipe becomes a worthy rival of the piano, and later in the scratzo and finale of the sixth symphony, a brilliant virtuosity, causing the audacity of eccentrics, are combined in this composition with penetrated lyrics, amazing, amazing, amazing the naturalness of the deployment of the "endless" melody in the first part of the symphony.
And finally, it is impossible not to say about the other side of the creative activity of the young composer - he worked hard and stubbornly in cinema, first as an illustrator when demonstrating silent films, then as one of the creators of Soviet sound cinema. His song from the film "Intercepted" has gained popular popularity. At the same time, the impact of “young muses” also affected the style, language, compositional principles of his concert and philological compositions.
The desire to embody the most acute conflicts of the modern world with its grandiose shocks and fierce clashes of the opposing forces were especially affected in the capital work of the master of the period of the X. An important step along this path was the opera Katerina Izmailova, written on the plot of N. Leskov’s story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk district”. In the image of the main character, a complex internal struggle in the soul is revealed in his own way of whole and richly gifted by nature of nature-under the oppression of the “lead abominations of life”, under the rule of a blind, non -izing passion, she goes to serious crimes, followed by a cruel reckoning.
However, the composer achieved the greatest success in the fifth symphony - the most significant and fundamental achievement in the development of Soviet symphonism of the X. The strength of the fifth symphony is that the experiences of its lyrical hero are revealed in the closest connection with the life of people and-wider-all of mankind on the eve of the greatest shock, ever experienced by the peoples of the world, the Second World War.
This has determined the emphasized drama of music inherent in its aggravated expression - the lyrical hero does not become a passive contemplator in this symphony, he judges what is happening and the upcoming higher moral court. In indifference to the fate of the world, the artist’s civic position, the humanistic orientation of his music, affected. It can also be felt in a number of other works related to the genres of chamber instrumental creativity, among which the piano quintet is distinguished during the Great Patriotic War, Shostakovich became in the first ranks of artists - wrestlers against fascism.
His seventh “Leningrad” symphony was perceived around the world as a lively voice of the fighting people, which entered the battle not for life, but to death in the name of the right to exist, in defense of higher human values. In this work, as in the later eighth symphony created, the antagonism of the two opposing camps found a direct, direct expression. Never before in the art of music of evil the forces of evil have been shut up so relief, never have been with such fury and passion naked stupid mechanism of a businesslike fascist “destruction machine”.
But the composer is just as embossed in the “military” symphonies of the composer, for example, in the piano trio of I. memory of I. Solletinsky is the spiritual beauty and wealth of the inner world of a person who has troubles of his time. In the post -war years, Shostakovich's creative activity unfolded with renewed vigor. The leading line of his artistic searches was still represented in monumental symphonic canvases.
After a few lightweight ninth, a kind of intermenso, however, not deprived of, however, of obvious echoes of the recently ended war, the composer created an inspired tenth symphony, in which the theme of the artist’s tragic fate, his high measure of his responsibility in the modern world, was raised. However, the new in many respects became the fruit of the efforts of previous generations - which is why the composer so attracted the events of the turning point of Russian history.
Revolution G.Thoughts on the meaning of history, the meaning of the case of her heroes also reflected in one-part vocal-symphonic poem “The Execution of Stepan Razin”, which is based on a fragment from E. Yevtushenko’s poem “Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station”. But the events of our time, caused by steep changes in the life of the people and in their attitude, announced by the XX Congress of the CPSU, did not leave indifferent the great master of Soviet music - their living breathing is noticeable in the thirteenth symphony, also written in the words of E.
In the fourteenth symphony, the composer turned to the poetry of poets of various times and peoples of F. Lorca, G. Apolliner, V. Kuchelbecker, R. Rilke - he was attracted by the theme of the fleetingness of human life and the eternity of the creations of true art, to which even omnipotent death recedes. The same topic formed the basis of the plan of the vocal-symphonic cycle on the verses of the great Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti and finally, in the last, fifteenth symphony, the images of childhood, recreated before the eyes of the creator’s wise life, who knew the truly immeasurable measure of human suffering.
With all the meaning of the symphony in the post -war work of Shostakovich, it does not exhaust all the most significant, which was created by the composer in the final thirty years of his life and creative path. He paid special attention to concert and chamber-instrumental genres. He created 2 violin and two cello concerts and the second piano in the best works of this genre embodied the deep concepts of philosophical significance, comparable to those that are expressed with such impressive power in its symphonies.
The severity of the clash of the spiritual and soulless, the highest impulses of the human genius and the aggressive onslaught of vulgarity, the deliberate primitive is noticeable in the second cellular concert, where a simple, “street” motive is transformed beyond recognition, exposing his anti -human essence. However, in concerts and in chamber music, Shostakovich virtuoso skill is revealed in the creation of compositions that open the scope for the free competition of musical artists.
Here, the main genre that attracted the attention of the master was the traditional string quartet was written by the composer as much as symphonies - Shostakovich’s quarters amaze with a variety of solutions from the multi -part cycles of the eleventh - until the one -part composition of the thirteenth - in a number of his chamber works in the eighth quartet - in the sonata for Alta and piano - the composer returns to the composer.
The music of his former works, giving her a new sound.
Among the works of other genres, one can name the monumental cycle of preludes and a fug for piano, inspired by the Bakhov celebrations in Leipzig, the oratorio “Song of Forests”, where for the first time in Soviet music a man of responsibility of a person was raised for preserving the surrounding nature. You can also name ten poems for the A Cappella choir, the vocal cycle “From Jewish Folk Poetry”, the cycles of the poets of Sasha Black “Satire” - Marina Tsvetaeva continued in the post -war years and work in the cinema - Shostakovich’s music “The Direction” by E.
Voinich’s novel was widely fame -, as well as for the film adherents. The tragedies of V. Shakespeare “Hamlet” and “King Lear” Shostakovich had a significant impact on the development of Soviet music. It affected not so much in the direct influence of the master’s style, characteristic of him artistic means, but in the pursuit of high content of music, its connection with the indigenous problems of human life on Earth.
The humanistic, in its essence, truly artistic work of Shostakovich’s work has gained worldwide recognition, has become a clear expression of the new one that the music of the country of Soviets gave the world.