The last composer who mattered
Date:
09/25/2012 Contributor:
He composed the musical soundtrack to the darkest pages of the 20th century, the pages where one reads of revolution, totalitarianism and war, hot and cold. His works range from the most banal to the most profound, sometimes in the same piece, and can turn from bitterest humor to deepest despair at the stroke of a bar line. A hero, a victim, a collaborator, a dissident, his place in his late, unlamented nation's history remains a topic of sharp debate. Regarded as an irrelevant relic by the avant-garde of his later years, his music mattered then, and matters still, to the broader culture in a way his critics' never have and never will. We'll mark the 106th anniversary of the birth of the great Dmitri Shostakovich with an hour of his music (including his own performance of the Piano Concerto No. 2) at 9:00 Tuesday morning on WFCR, with two very different symphonies, Nos. 9 & 10, later in the day.
Comments
LAST? Who MATTERED?
Yowza! Glass? Britten? Cage? Babbitt? Messiaen? Stockhausen? Copland? And those are just the ones that show up in the canonic music history textbooks!
It's always fun to throw a statement out there and see what happens, but how about backing it up? Dismissing all composers who wrote anything in the last 37 years, even in "jest"...
All great composers (well,
All great composers (well, some greater than others). Yet, none spoke for their cultures and countryfolk with the urgency that Shostakovich did. His works have a broad cultural significance, broader than the boundaries of classical music, that theirs don't approach, or only do very occasionally. He's as significant a cultural figure in Soviet history as Solzhenitsyn, Pasternack, anyone you want to mention. It's very hard to make a similar claim for any composer since. By the way, Copland and Britten were basically done as composers at about the same time as Shostakovich. And the way I see it, this has as much or more to do with the place classical music occupies (or doesn't occupy) in our culture, when compared to what it meant to his contemporaries and compatriots.
Speaking for the culture
I'm not so sure. I would argue that film has been a huge part of world culture in the 20th century, and Copland was central to defining the grammar of Western film music.
I also think Cage is one of the primary reasons so many people view contemporary art music as "less-than" - even if they don't know his name, they know about the 4'33" concept, and how wacky and eccentric those ivory-tower musicians are today.
I'd say these were culture-shapers. Maybe not in as overtly political a way, though.
"cultural significance"
that significance fades, and the music remains.
his 7th symphony is awesomely great.
though in regards to Messiaen, his Turangalila symphony is greater still.
greatest of the 20th century of course.
isn't it obvious?
anonumass
Well, Anon...it's obvious to
Well, Anon...it's obvious to you. I'm awestruck by it too.
yes
sure... obvious to me... just my personal opinion.
but...
does your cultural significance idea extend to others (Beethoven, Brahms et al) or are you just limiting it to Shostakovich?
in other words, is your standard for him different from composers of earlier centuries?
curious.
anonumass
Absolutely. In fact, those
Absolutely. In fact, those are some of the composers I have in mind when thinking of Shostakovich's place in his time. When Beethoven and Brahms introduced new pieces, they may not have been loved at first, but people paid attention. They mattered. Same with Shostakovich, who was also the last composer to have his works practically walk from their premieres straight into the standard repertroire.