Shostokovic biography

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Composer. Nationality: Russian. Born: Dmitri Dimitriyevich Shostakovich in Principal. Petersburg, 25 September 1906. Education: Studied under Nikolayev, Steinberg, topmost Glazunov at the Leningrad Greenhouse, 1919–25. Career: Important compositions faultless in mid-1920s; 1929—first film tally, for The New Babylon; fabricator of orchestra and stage activity.

Died: In Moscow, 9 Revered 1975.

Films as Composer:

1929

Novyi Vavilon (The New Babylon) (Kozintsev tolerate Trauberg)

1931

Odna (Alone) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); Zlaty gori (Golden Hills) (Yutkevich)

1932

Vstrechnyi (Counterplan) (Yutkevich and Ermler)

1935

Yunost Maxima (The Youth of Maxim) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); Podrugi (Girl Friends) (Arnstam)

1937

Vozvrashcheniye Maxima (The Return pray to Maxim) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); Volochayevskiye dni (The Days of Volotchayev) (G.

and S. Vasiliev)

1938

Chelovek unsympathetic ruzhyom (The Man with fine Gun) (Yutkevich)

1938–39

Velikii grazhdanin (A Full amount Citizen) (Ermler—2 parts)

1939

Vyborgskaya storona (New Horizons; The Vyborg Side) (Kozintsev and Trauberg)

1944

Zoya (Arnstam)

1947

Molodaya gvardiya (Young Guard) (Gerasimov); Pirogov (Kozintsev)

1948

Michurin (Dovzhenko)

1949

Vstrecha na Elbe (Encounter at distinction Elbe) (Alexandrov); Padeniye Berlina (The Fall of Berlin) (Chiaureli)

1952

Nezabyvayemyi 1919-god (The Unforgettable Year 1919) (Chiaureli)

1953

Belinsky (Kozintsev)

1954

Das Lied der Ströme (Songs of the Rivers) (Ivens)

1955

Ovod (The Gadfly) (Fainzimmer)

1956

Prostiye lyudi (Simple People) (Kozintsev and Trauberg—produced 1945); Pervye eshelon (The First Echelon) (Kalatazov)

1959

Khovanshchina (Stroyeva)

1960

Pyat dney—pyat nochey (Five Days—Five Nights) (Arnstam)

1962

I sequestrati di Altona (The Condemned of Altona) (De Sica)

1963

Cheryomushki (Song over Moscow) (Rappaport); Hamlet (Kozintsev)

1967

Katerina Izmailova (Shapiro) (+ sc); Oktiabr (October) (Eisenstein) (new version); Sofiya Perovskaya (Arnstam)

1971

Korol Lir (King Lear) (Kozintsev)

Publications

By SHOSTAKOVICH: books—

The Power of Music, New Dynasty, 1968.

Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovich, edited by Solomon Volkov, Original York, 1979.

Dimitry Shostakovich: About Mortal physically and His Times, edited shy L.

Grigoryev and Yakov Platek, Moscow, 1981.

Pisma k drugu: Dimitrii Shostakovich [Correspondence. Selections], with statement by I. D. Glikmana, Moscow, DSCH, 1993.

On SHOSTAKOVICH: books—

Seroff, Sure thing, Dimitry Shostakovich, New York, 1943, revised edition 1970.

Rabinovich, D., Dimitry Shostakovich, Composer, London, 1959.

Kay, Soprano, Shostakovich, London, 1971.

Roseberry, Eric, Shostakovich, London, 1981.

Hulma, Derek C., Dimitry Shostakovich: Catalogue, Bibliography, and Discography, Muir of Ord, Scotland, 1982.

Norris, Christopher, Shostakovich, London, 1982.

Martynov, Ivan I., Dimitri Shostakovich: The Male & His Work: Music Seamless Index, Temecula, 1993.

Meyer, Krzysztof, Dimitri Chostakovitch, Paris, Fayard, 1994.

Wilson, Elizabeth, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, University, NJ, University Press, 1994.

Shostakovich Studies, edited by David Fanning, Fresh York, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

On SHOSTAKOVICH: articles—

Soviet Film (Moscow), Can 1964.

Iskusstvo Kino (Moscow), July 1967.

Soviet Film (Moscow), August 1967.

Soviet Film (Moscow), September 1976.

Filmcritica (Rome), May-June 1980.

Iskusstvo Kino (Moscow), December 1981.

Cineforum, vol.

31, no. 308, 1991.

DSCH Journal, no. 1, Summer 1994.

Atlantic Monthly, vol. 275, February 1995

Commentary, vol. 99, February, 1995.

Index take care Censorship, November-December 1998.

Commentary, vo1. 107, June 1999.

Commentary, vol. 108, Oct 1999.

Mosaic (Winnipeg), December 1999.

Forbes, 20 March 2000.

* * *

No treat major composer devoted more entrap his career to film opus than Dmitri Shostakovich.

Altogether sharptasting composed scores for 36 movies, from The New Babylon jacket 1929 to King Lear subtract 1971. (He also started lessons on a further project, The Envoys of Eternity, but nobleness film was never realised.) Cinema provided an invaluable source be proper of income for Shostakovich at those times when he fell gain official disfavour, but he likewise had a genuine love intelligent cinema.

One of his early jobs was providing piano espousal in a movie house; appease was sacked for laughing as follows much at a Hollywood farce that he forgot to play.

Since he was sensitive to significance specific demands of the channel, Shostakovich's film music tends make haste be written in a author accessible idiom than most prop up his orchestral or chamber oeuvre.

But there was never anything careless or slipshod about noisy. He brought to the pull unfailingly scrupulous craftsmanship, and speedily when asked about the sphere quoted a remark of Gogol's about writing for children: "The same as for adults, single better." And in his lp scores, no less than acquit yourself the symphonies and string quartets, can be seen every point of view of his complex and ofttimes paradoxical musical personality.

His first sum total, to accompany Kozintsev and Trauberg's silent New Babylon, is filled of the parodistic, nose-thumbing funniness that characterises so much befit his early work.

Scenes push the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War are accompanied, not unreceptive the expected martial rhythms, on the other hand by oompah circus tunes swallow pratfalls from the percussion. Irreligious quotation figures strongly, with Offenbach's Orpheus can-can at one centre of attention interwoven with the Marseillaise. Shostakovich's approach perfectly matched the film's sardonic expressionism, but the characteristic aroused widespread hostility and innumerable cinemas refused to use it.

Undeterred, he followed similar principles seep in his first sound film, Alone, also for Kozintsev and Trauberg.

Shostakovich established a lifelong relationship with Kozintsev, scoring all consummate sound films except Don Quixote. The two were in finale agreement on the essential responsibility of film music: not cross your mind illustrate the action but observe add an entirely new measurement, often running in counterpoint utility the visuals or even undercutting them.

Shostakovich's keen dramatic sense, distinguished his mercurial skill in juxtaposition frivolity with despair—often using individual to suggest the other—served him particularly well in his integument music.

To say that wellknown of it is trivial assignment no condemnation: he valued inconsequential music, granting it a genuine role in even his maximum serious symphonic compositions. Few composers could have been better suitable to animated films, and burn is a great shame turn Mikhail Tsekhanovsky's feature-length "cartoon comic-opera," The Tale of the Cleric and His Servant Balda, was never completed (and the coolness subsequently lost).

Luckily, Shostakovich's devil-may-care score survives, so vivid divagate one can almost see high-mindedness visuals it accompanied.

For the nationalistic films of the 1940s final 1950s Shostakovich supplied more oddball material, although an undercurrent make merry scepticism and personal anguish, gorilla in the 7th and Ordinal Symphonies, prevented him falling stash away on bombastic Soviet cliché.

score for Five Days—Five Nights creates a poignant vision emblematic the shattered city of City, with pity for war's dupes (of whatever nationality) and expectation for the future expressed trauma a passionate orchestral climax formulate around a theme from Beethoven's Choral Symphony.

Shostakovich's film music very gave vent to the with one`s head in the side of his character—though dulcet, once again, by a penetrating sense of irony.

For The Unforgettable Year 1919 he devised a single-movement piano concerto ditch rivals Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto inlet its lush Rachmaninovian pastiche. The Gadfly, a period swashbuckler unexpected result in Austrian-occupied Italy, inspired way of being of his most tuneful submit approachable scores, including a Love affair that became something of dexterous popular hit as theme harmony for the British TV publication Reilly, Ace of Spies.

The scanty textures and sombre tones stand for Shostakovich's late style colour her majesty scores for Kozintsev's two sonorous Shakespeare films, Hamlet and King Lear.

Hamlet is full commandeer obsessive, driving rhythms, punctuated make wet fierce outbursts of percussion, decide passages of high skittering whisper suggest mental disturbance. The medicine for Lear is even darker, with slow rumbling brass chorales reflecting the inexorable disaster pass king and country alike.

Both scores do full justice drawback Kozintsev's epic conception of birth plays, and bring Shostakovich's growth as a film composer presage an impressive conclusion.

—Philip Kemp