A Shostakovich Casebook

Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Malcolm Hamrick Brown

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780253056252
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

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

Part One

1

Shostakovich versus Volkov

Whose Testimony? (1980)

LAUREL E. FAY

The recent publication in the West of an apparently “authorized” memoir by Dmitri Shostakovich¹ has created an uproar which extends well beyond the musical community. Rumors about the manuscript’s existence and its startling revelations were in circulation for at least two years before the book’s publication. Two months before its appearance, the New York Times published a tantalizing article, “Shostakovich Memoir, Smuggled Out, Is Due.”² A section of the book, entitled “Improvising under Stalin’s Baton,” appeared in the New York Times Magazine³ shortly before publication of the book itself in October 1979. The book was immediately reviewed by Harold Schonberg on the front page of the New York Times Book Review⁴ and was indicated as an editors’ choice and subsequently as one of the best books of 1979 by that newspaper.⁵ Since that time Testimony has received a large number of reviews in publications ranging from Time, Saturday Review, and the New Yorker to the [London] Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, and others.⁶

What has attracted so much attention to this book? The Shostakovich of these memoirs, at the time of his death and for many years before by far the most prominent, honored, and respected composer in the Soviet Union, reveals here with unparalleled scorn and bitterness the fear and oppression that plagued his life. His attacks are not reserved for political figures alone but encompass prominent people in all walks of life, Soviet and non-Soviet. The book has been hailed as a persuasive indictment of Soviet cultural oppression.

That Shostakovich was directly affected during his lifetime by the vicissitudes of Soviet cultural politics is not news, but his extraordinary ability to weather the crises, and his creative drive in the face of criticism, have usually been interpreted as indicative of a fundamental adherence to the Communist party line and an acceptance of the “constructive” aesthetic guidance provided by the state. If this Testimony of Shostakovich is authentic, then it will certainly lead to some radical reevaluations not only of Shostakovich’s life and music but of the history of Soviet musical and cultural life in general.

Needless to say, Soviet reaction to the publication has been swift and unambiguous. In a letter to the editor of Literaturnaia gazeta, six prominent Soviet composers, all former students and friends of Shostakovich, declare that Solomon Volkov is the actual author of the book which, they claim, “has nothing in common with the true reminiscences of D. D. Shostakovich.”⁷ Accompanying editorials savagely blast Volkov and trace the Soviets’ unsuccessful legal attempts to block the publication of Testimony.⁸ Tikhon Khrennikov, in a speech to the Sixth Congress of Composers of the USSR, branded the work as “that vile falsification, concocted by one of the renegades who have forsaken our country.”⁹ The immediate reaction of Irina Shostakovich, the composer’s widow, was skeptical: “Volkov saw Dmitrich three or maybe four times…. He was never an intimate friend of the family—he never had dinner with us here, for instance…. I don’t see how he [Volkov] could have gathered enough material from Dmitrich for such a thick book [emphasis added].”¹⁰

In previous reviews of Testimony in the West, two basic issues have come to the forefront. The first and most important one concerns the document’s authenticity. The second, which presupposes the document is indeed authentic, questions the veracity of many statements contained therein. Most reviewers, unwilling or unable to focus on the first issue, have concentrated on the second, and many factual discrepancies, both in the text of Testimony and in Volkov’s annotations, have been uncovered.¹¹ To mention only one not previously remarked upon, Shostakovich is quoted as saying in connection with his Fourth Symphony (1936):

After all, for twenty-five years no one heard it and I had the manuscript. If I had disappeared, the authorities would have given it to someone for his “zeal.” I even know who that person would have been and instead of being my Fourth, it would have been the Second Symphony of a different composer, (p. 212; emphasis added)

In his annotation to this passage, Volkov identifies the mysterious composer as Tikhon Khrennikov, the long-time head of the Composers Union and a conspicuous target of Shostakovich’s abuse. Unacknowledged either in the text or in the footnote is the well-known fact that Khrennikov’s own Second Symphony was begun in 1940, first performed in 1943, performed again in revision in 1944, and published by 1950. Obviously, something is not quite right. But in this case, as in many others, it is difficult to tell whether the discrepancy should be attributed to faulty memory or deliberate maliciousness on Shostakovich’s part or to inept scholarship on Volkov’s part. Despite the reservations raised by these flaws, as well as the wariness aroused by the tone and the occasional slangy translation of the memoirs, few Western critics have seen reason to dispute either the essential authenticity of the memoirs or Volkov’s role as the “vehicle” for their transmission.

Let us turn then to the vital issue. The definition of authenticity in this case presumably boils down to the following: that Testimony faithfully and accurately reflects the information and opinions transmitted directly to Mr. Volkov by Shostakovich personally in an arrangement that the composer himself authorized for publication. Addressing the question of the authenticity of Testimony in a letter to the editor of Books & Arts, Peter Schaeffer laments:

What I find alarming is not what the book… “discloses” about Shostakovich, improbable as it must read to the impartial observer, but that the scholarly atmosphere here in the United States is so poisoned that all traditional criteria for the objective evaluation of what in legal terms is hearsay are cheerfully thrown to the winds for the sake of acquiring yet another all-too-convenient piece of anti-Soviet propaganda and fouling the atmosphere of peaceful co-existence.¹²

Volkov’s printed response to this letter is revealing:

If the questions that Professor Schaeffer raised about the validity of Testimony were not purely rhetorical, he could easily find the answers in the book itself. These answers are contained in the lengthy preface; in the introduction, where letters from Shostakovich to me are quoted; in the photographs reproduced in the book, including those inscribed to me by the late composer; in the background note about me, appearing at the end of the book, listing my previous professional positions and publications.¹³

Professor Schaeffer’s dismay that the authenticity of Testimony has yet to be subjected to a rigorous and objective evaluation deserves attention. Such an evaluation, however, is not something that can be accomplished easily. Shostakovich is dead. Obviously we cannot turn to him for verification. Volkov points us to the book itself. In his preface and introduction he describes the methods and circumstances which led to the publication of Testimony. It is a complicated process which, at crucial points, remains essentially unverifiable. For all practical purposes, the authenticity of the manuscript rests on two types of evidence. The first requires the tacit acceptance of Volkov’s honesty and integrity. The second and more impressive piece of evidence is that each of the eight sections of the manuscript is headed¹⁴ with the inscription “Read [Chital]. D. Shostakovich.” According to the publishers of the book, the authenticity of the inscriptions has been verified by a handwriting expert. Before I continue, I should mention a third type of evidence, which, however illogically, has been used to adduce the memoir’s authenticity. This is the fact that the Soviets have denounced the book. While such a denunciation might have been predictable, given the controversial and highly political nature of the book’s contents, it simply does not follow that the book must therefore be authentic, as has been suggested.¹⁵

Simon Karlinsky has pointed out two passages in Testimony which are verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions of memoirs previously published by Shostakovich.¹⁶ I have identified, so far, five additional extensive passages in the book which, likewise, are taken from previously published Soviet sources. The page reference in Testimony and the original sources for all seven passages are given in table 1.1.¹⁷ As can be seen, the dates of the original sources range from 1932 to 1974. The subjects of the reminiscences include Musorgsky, Stravinsky, Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, and Chekhov.

Careful comparison of the original passages with their counterparts in Testimony indicates that some significant alterations have been made. In several instances, sentences which would date the reminiscences have been altered or removed from the variants in the book. In one, the sentence “I have been working on Lady Macbeth for around two and a half years” is transformed into “I worked on Lady Macbeth for almost three years” (p. 106). In another, the sentence “I am sincerely happy that the 100th anniversary of his [Chekhov’s] birth is attracting to him anew the attention of all progressive humanity” is entirely omitted from the otherwise literal quote in Testimony (p. 178).

The average lengths of the quoted passages and the fidelity of their translations can be conveyed most effectively here by the juxtaposition of a representative passage from Testimony with a direct translation (my own) of its source:

Table 1.1 Correlation of Passages from “Testimony” with Previously Published Sources

Testimony	Original Source
32–33	[D. Shostakovich] in B. M. Yarustovsky, ed., I.F. Stravinsky: stat’i i materialy [I. F. Stravinsky: Articles and materials] (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1973), pp. 7–8.
77–78	“Iz vospominanii” [From reminiscences], Sovetskaia muzyka, no. 3 (1974): 54.
106–107	“Tragediia-satira” [A tragedy-satire], Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 16 October 1932; reprinted in L. Danilevich, ed., Dmitri Shostakovich (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1967), p. 13.
154–55 178–79	“Kak rozhdaetsia muzyka” [How is a musical concept born], Literaturnaia gazeta, 21 December 1965; reprinted in Danilevich, Dmitri Shostakovich, p. 36.
226–27	“Samyi blizkii” [One of my favorites], Literaturnaia gazeta, 28 January 1960; reprinted in Danilevich, Dmitri Shostakovich, pp. 34–35
226–27	“Partitura opery” [The score of the opera], Izvestiia, 1 May 1941; reprinted in Danilevich, Dmitri Shostakovich, p. 14.
245–46	“Iz vospominanii o Mayakovskom” [From reminiscences about Mayakovsky], in V. Mayakovsky v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov [V. Mayakovsky as remembered by his contemporaries] (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1963) p. 315
Testimony, pp. 154–55	“Kak rozhdaetsia muzyka,” from L. Danilevich, ed., Dmitri Shostakovich (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1967), p. 36.

Is a musical concept born consciously or un...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Transliteration and on Translation
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index