Composing for the Desk Drawer

Artists are constantly made aware of the political forces that alternately support and restrict their work. At times and in certain places, the creative artist enjoys comparative freedom to explore, challenge, fail, revise, imagine, transcend—all while maintaining an existence that hovers between scraping by and thriving. At other times, perhaps in other places, that same artist would not enjoy that same degree of support, that same level of comfort, that same emotional security knowing that bounds could be pushed without threat to life and limb.

Today, in a country enjoying almost unrivaled personal freedom but also witnessing the highs and lows of our political process in action, we consider the case of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich. In thinking about Shostakovich, however, I hope we might spare a few thoughts for other artists who worked in, with, against, and around the Soviet Union made so paranoid and repressive by Joseph Stalin. We might pause to reflect on artists who found themselves in similar situations—perhaps even worse situations—in other lands and eras, as well as those artists who are pursuing creative freedom in America, living in our towns and cities, perhaps sitting in this very room today.

Shostakovich was a precocious child, and his early talent garnered him a place at Conservatory. Many stories are told of how he witnessed dramatic events in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the first Soviet leaders. These stories are often apocryphal and have been invented ex post facto in order to show a heritage to Shostakovich’s later anti-establishment behavior. The truth, of course, is much less striking. However, as our story of his young maturity progresses, there will be no need to embellish what turns out to be a harrowing, emotional roller-coaster ride buffeted by political fancies.

The crux of our story begins in the autumn of 1930. A 24-year-old Shostakovich had quietly begun work on a new opera—nothing noteworthy in itself. Shostakovich had both the talent and already the experience to tackle such an ambitious project. The striking aspect of this creative project was timing. Throughout the 1920s Soviet music had become increasingly narrow in its expressive range. Official support came with dictates to valorize the goals and everyday heroes of communist society—especially important, it was felt, in the early years of this social experiment. Many composers, including Shostakovich, resisted the pressures to conform and continued to draw inspiration from radical visions promulgated by foreign and ex-pat artists living abroad. As he himself expressed it, he rejected all of the conventional plot scenarios pushed across his desk, instead opting for an 1864 tale by Nikolai Leskov with parallels to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Now his efforts seemed to be worthwhile, as the existing artistic organizations were being overhauled or shut down altogether. The time was ripe for a new voice of Soviet music, a voice that had survived modest repression to carry the torch forward. It was 1932 and Shostakovich was incredibly mistaken or naïve to think change meant change for the better…

Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District is a dark depiction of lust, crime, and betrayal—not exactly the more redeeming sides of human nature. The composer’s music brilliantly captures the powerful, raw attraction between the heroine and her lover. Audiences responded enthusiastically to the work, and it was generally agreed to be one of the most remarkable creations of its time. Shostakovich’s bright star seemed destined to reach the highest echelon, and the work itself was celebrated across Europe. The composer hatched staggering new plans based on his success: a Soviet Ring of the Nibelungen, for instance. And then, on January 26th, 1936, in what one might interpret as the crowning compliment, Comrade Stalin announced that he and a few close advisors would be attending a performance of Lady Macbeth at Moscow’s famed Bol’shoi Theater.

At this point in time, Stalin’s mania was not readily apparent. This is not the Stalin of the Great Purge, though that too was only months away. Shostakovich still felt a measure of respect for Comrade Stalin. As recently as November 1935, the composer attended a party conference at which Stalin delivered a resounding oration. Joining in the shouts of praise, Shostakovich wrote that “Today is the happiest day of my life: I saw and heard Stalin.” Within two months that opinion would start to change very quickly.

It is true to say that Joseph Stalin did not hold the highest standards for music. You would not describe him as a connoisseur of opera, ballet, and chamber music, though he always enjoyed works that tapped a vein of what has been called “Soviet realism”—excessively optimistic depictions of Russian men and women engaged in building the future communist utopia. Such were clearly not the ambitions of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth. When Stalin and his gang departed the theater in the middle of performance, it was an ominous sign. The composer noticed. Two days later an unsigned article appeared that roundly condemned the opera and the composer for, essentially, losing sight of what really mattered in artistic work. But this was more than just criticism. Thinly veiled threats made it clear that the article’s author held a high position, and young Shostakovich’s experiments in radical theater were not universally approved.

Within days Shostakovich’s network of supporters started to distance themselves from him. Not everyone, of course, but the temperature in the room plummeted when Shostakovich was around. Just a few months after the Pravda article, Stalin vigorously pursued his plans to weed out dissention with the infamous Moscow trials. In summer 1936 the Purge rolled through Soviet society like a tornado. And it came to the composer’s own doorstep…

(c) Jason Stell