THE TRAGEDY OF SHOSTAKOVICH

...In Pavlenko, he will have a worthy and zealous helper...

...The most successful works by these composers were Shostakovich's mugk to the film, "The Young Guard...

...That promise was never realized...

...Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement...

...The conversation they have is characterized as "soul-burning," and the scene in concluded with a vision of Stalin flashing a smile "as though a ray of sun flitted across his face...

...The last plenary session of the Board of the Union of Soviet Composers, held last Christinas, sent a letter to Stalin which included the following engaging sentiments: "We send you, leader and teacher of the peoples of the Soviet land and of the whole o£ laboring mankind, our warm greetings and thanks for the fatherly care and attention displayed by you towards Soviet music and our creative work . . . the historic decree (that is, last year's resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party which denounced Shostakovich and the the other five* marked a turning point in the life of the Union of Soviet Composers by clearing the atmosphere of staleness and stagnation, and became the foundation of a true reorganization of the union's activities . . . the overwhelming majority of Soviet composers have correctly understood the Party's wise instructions, are deeply inspired by them and determinedly shook off the formalistic influences in musical composition . . . (however) the most important subjects of the heroic epic of our age, the lioole features of progressive Soviet man, the builder of Communist Society, were very inadequately reflected in new works and the composers are still greatly in debt to the Soviet people (and) Soviet composers have not yet overcome the intolerable delay in the creation of Soviet Opera, this highest and most democratic truly popular form of musical art...

...His situation is precarious and unenviable in the extreme...

...Extracts from Katchaturian's music to a new "Lenin" film, Miaskovsky's "Symphony on Russian Folk Themes," and Shebalin's Seventh Quartet show that these composers are trying to take the road of realism and are not altogether unsuccessful...

...Long-winded, interminably meandering, with the former wit become heavyhanded and obvious, where simplicity becomes over-simplification, and the repetitiousness is appalling, they are assuredly among the emptiest and most banal products in the whole realm of modern music...

...But not until 1937 did literary fame come his way with the publication of his novel fn the East (translated into English as Red Planes Fly East...

...This enables Piivlenko to present, several American characters, including a major for whom the war means only a good chance of publicizing and selling the products of bis factory...

...Tliere are also glimpses of the Big Three...

...It is a tragic commentary on the perversity of the human mind that a conference of intellectuals which should be dedicated to the spirit of free inquiry in a free world should be falling all over itself to parade as stooge figures representatives of that culture where the intellect is in chains...

...SHOSTAKOVICH as composer is essentially a tragic figure...

...and a number of choral works by Muradelli...

...No gorgeous splash of tone color, as in an orchestral piece, can fill up a creative vacuum...

...In 1924 he was nominated delegate to the Party Congress in Moscow and soon after that was sent on a somewhat mysterious mission abroad, visiting Turkey, Syria, Greece and Italy...

...His monarchistic patriotism had a bad effect on his mind...

...Pavlenko entered the ranks of Soviet writers in 1924 when he published his Asiatic Tales (which he probably prefers to forget now: they were full of "exoticism" and "formalism...

...The hero's legs "refuse to obey him" when he espies Stalin talking to a gardener, "With awe" he watches Stalin approach him...

...Denied "access" to the new, tightly-knit logical structure of Schocnberg, the extraordinary bite and rhythmic verve of Bartok, the contrapuntal ingeniousness of Ilindemith, the delicate wizardry of the impressionists and their followers...

...In accordance with the Roosevelt myth, so carefully cultivated in the Soviet Union, the late President is shown sympathetically (there is, however, a quip about the United Slates "deserving a worse President...

...Most of them, of course were bolstering the role of the upper classes...

...That they have been hailed so strongly in certain quarters is duo largely to the political sympathies of the enthusiasts...

...This dealt, among other things, with an irnaginary future war between USSR and Japan, ending, of course, in a victory for the Soviet Union and bringing one step nearer the triumph of the world revolution...

...The spirit that im,bucs it is the true antiWestern spirit...

...As for Shostakovich, one can only imagine what he must really feel in the deep and secret recesses of his mind at being forced to parade the virtues of the "free and progressive" culture of the Soviet Union (of whose freedom he Is the living disproof) and become the unwilling instrument of its...

...But his latest work (the novel Happiness, written in 1947) displays an equally strong anti-Americanism...

...The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory...

...We assure you, dear Josef Vissarionovich, that the Soviet composers will exert all their effors to solving these most important tasks and by following the path traced by the Bolshevik Partywill create musical works which will be worthy of the recognition and affection of our people...

...Self-realization is impossible under a condition when- the torn poser is continuously subordinated to the judgment of an official board oi isthetic censors, where he is alternately shelved and resurrected, depending upon the character of tinmomentary esthetic line, and where the possibility of getting the minimum material returns neressary to sustain him depends upon the whim or the taste of the masters of the monolithic, all-powerful state...

...the power of stirring specific emotion...

...His iin - deniable creative talent has been (•ai rificed upon the altar of state and ]>olitical interference with art...

...Ont can only sense the heavy heart with whkh he will be returning to a regimented society after having breathed for the first time In his life the free air of a culture where music, at least, is not written according to the prescriptions laid down by a committee of the state...

...Hit article, "Poli lies, Music and OHn Downti," appeared in the issue oi January 15, 1949...

...No one can deny that Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony produces a feeling's of despair while Beethoven's Third awakens Ui to the joy of struggle...

...But the plenary meeting nevertheless found that there were still some formalist elements in their work and that their transformation was proceeding slowly...

...He had been "purged" more often than any other leading Russian composer—in 1936 for his 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk," in 1946 for his Ninth Symphony, and last year, together with Prokofieff, Katchaturian, Miaskovsky, et al...

...It held out great promise for the future...

...He enjoyed considerable confidence in high Communist quarters...

...Here was freshness and vitality, an eager and youthful zest for innovation, a genuine gift for musical wit and satire, and a sense of structural development...

...In a totalitarian state one goes along if one wants to continue to function...

...An active member of the Communist Party in the Northern Caucasus, he carried on anti-British propaganda in Baku...

...Fruni Th« Book ol Muilcal Document*, bj 1'iiul Netll Philosophical I,ib p >?7...

...The work was imbued with both the nascent Soviet patriotism and the old Bolshevik international spirit, with a definite anti-British angle...

...We get an embarrassingly regular procession of gigantic inflated concoctions, his eight other symphonies, with juicy, programmatic political titles for the most part -October, May 1st, Invasion, Postwar, Leningrad, etc...

...How great Shostakovich's talent was could be seen from his.'Nfirst Symphony, written in J925, when the composer was but 19 years of age...

...In this it is being aided and abetted by the Soviet Union, which seeks to impress and befuddle the innocents by its seeming willingness to "cooperate...

...it is no longer an end in itself, but a vital weapon to the struggle...

...in those who listen to it...

...It is significant that ProkoflefTs name is not among those mentioned...

...Were this a genuine conference of intellectuals and liberals interested in fostering world peace, it would do two things: condemn the imperialist-aggressive drive of the Soviet Union for world domination, and send a protest ringing to the heavens against the enforced subordination of music, art, literature, science and philosophy to tha political dictates of u totalitarian state...

...which meant, of course, a warning to Russian composers: "Use these techniques at your peril...

...music tends to an unhealthy eroticism also to mysticism and passivity, and escape from the realities of life . . . good music lifts and heartens and lightens people for work and effort...

...But the author of that introduction, a Swiss Communist, does not specify what was Pavlenko's mission...

...Whether Shostakovich genuinely believes these infantilisms, or whether he felt it expedient to give voice to the expected cliches, is not too important Either way the regime has wrought its devastation...

...It is evident from this that the five composers mentioned have already achieved some measure of rehabilita...

...Poor Prokofleff, who must now realize how fatal was the step he took when he returned to the Soviet Union in 11)33...

...We, as revolutionists, have a different conception of music...

...As for Shostakovich, who must be • (^ooteit from A Worth's in Help In thr "Miiiii'licstci Cu.ndi.in Weekly'1 of i/u/vi...

...My emphasis—J...

...pretty expert by now in the degradiog game, he has practically won his way back into official graces...

...The career of no other modern composer to clearly illustrates the truth that Jrcedom is the breath of life for successful creation...

...In this genre, music is practically reduced to essentials...

...Even the most carping of Soviet critics could find nothing in the novel smacking of "servility before the West...

...Pavlenko's strong anti-British bias (the novel shows Britain as the symbol of the dying capitalist world) goes back to the early years of the Revolution...

...no padding of pretentiousness covers up the paucity of ideas...

...On the other hand, Wagner's biographers show that he began his career as a radical and ended it as a reactionary...

...SIMILAR IS THE CASE with Shostakovich's chamber music...

...IT IS EXCEEDINGLY ironic to see the narrow political conceptions of music held by the upper reaches of the Soviet bureaucracy reflected so vulgarly by Shostakovich, himself the outstanding victim of its cutting edge: "There can be no music without an ideology...

...That this man is himself an outstanding victim of its barbaric cultural repression, who will therefore draw sympathy around himself, is not the least Machiavellian aspect of the entire situation...

...It chooses a man as its representative whose worldwide reputation is calculated to soften up the gullible...

...Innovation is kept- within cautious limits, and the undeniable facility of craftsmanship gets nowhere...

...J. C.) Perhaps it is a personal prejudice, but I do not consider Wagner an important composer...

...Modern music is especially rich in this field, having made enormous strides in the treatment of the stringed instruments, in the new timbres and colors evoked, in the extended harmonic combinations...

...One might suppose Pavlenko was sent to the New York meeting because of his inveterate Anglophobia and his tendency to play the Americans against the British...

...The corning conference will undoubtedly see a barefaced attempt by these individuals to put over the Communist political line on world affairs...

...Prom the report in the January 4th issue of Prai'da summing up this plenary session by Tikhon Khrennikov, who succeeded Katchaturian as Secretary General of the Composers' Union, we get some idea of how much progress the ostracized composers have made up the "come-back" trail: "The • new works of the composers who were denounced by the Central Committee decree as formalists naturally attracted special attention at the plenary meeting...

...The signal of that is- his inclusion by the Soviet Government in the Russian delegation coming to this weekend's Conference on World Peace arranged by the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professins, * « » THIS ORGANIZATION contains many innocent liberal intellectuals, but its dominating and policy-deciding element is mode up by Wallaceites and fellow-travelers...

...Fadeev, head of the delegation, is now Secretary-General of the Union of Soviet Writers and has bee"n largely instrumental in instigating the new antiWestern and xenophobian policy in the field of culture...

...The novel is set in Crimea dining the Yalta Conference and in Hungary and Austria during the final stages of the war...

...Introducing Peter Pavlenko By Gleb Struve AMONG THE SOVIET DELEGATES to the Waldorf-Astoria peace offensive this weekend, the best-known men, besides Shostakovich, are the writers Alexander Fadeev and Peter Pavlenko...

...We can rest assured that in the person of Pavlenko the Soviet Government, will be represented at Waldorf-Astoria by a worthy spokesman...

...There is, on the other hand, plenty of servility before Stalin, who is shown interviewing the hero of the novel in the grounds of the Livadia Palace Here, indeed, all bounds of hero-worship are exceeded...

...How account for the fact, then, that Wagner's later works are universally granted to be greater and more fruitful for the subsequent development of music...

...With the fruitful study of the greatest modern composers denied him, with harmonic experimentation denounced and polyphony practically tabu, Shostakovich had painfully to suppress the demands of his own talents, and, perforce, function within the narrow limits prescribed by the bureaucracy...

...Shostakovich did...

...His article, "The Soviets Purge Literary Scholarship," will appear soon in The Xew Leather...

...The venom of the official party hacks is today turned more against him than any of the others because he hasn't kowtowed so slavishly and, rumor has it, was not above openly expressing his contempt for the decree...

...Shostakovich's work in this field furnishes us merely with eclectic footnotes to the romantics and post-romantics...

...Even the Symphonic form, which appears more tlui<: any other to be divorced from literary elements, can he said to have a bearing on politic...

...It was hailed by Soviet critics, as a valuable contribution to the literature of military preparedness...

...Churchill, and the impression he leaves on the Russians, are portrayed much less flatteringly...

...The result has been endless repetition and basic regression from the high point of his First Symphony—a sort of progress in reverse...

...These facts are mentioned in the introduction to the German translation of Pavlenko's novel about the Paris Commune (The Barricades), published in Switzerland in 1933...

...Gleb Struve, Professor of Russian History at the University of California, is now a visiting lecturer at Harvard...

...tion, though the warning to continue good behavior is obvious...

...totalitarian drive for control over the minds of men...

...C.) Thin we regard Scriabin as our bitterest musical enemy, because Scriabin...

...As the most talented of the Soviet crop of composers (Prokofieff first returned to Russia in 1933) and the one with the greatest reputation outside Russia, he was subject to greater pressure than the others by the esthetic watchdogs of the state...

...Lenin himself said that 'music is a means of unifying broad masses of people' . . . music ha...

...THE SOVIET COMPOSERS are still meeting, still dutifully denouncm,', formalism, still fulsomely rendering their obeisance to the "Great Vozhd...

...It couldn't be, for Shostakovich soon came up against the demand for simplicity and popularity, predicated upon the damning of everything new and vital in the music of the West...