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Dmitri Shostakovich article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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![]() | Dmitri Shostakovich is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | |||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 5, 2004. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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![]() | Text and/or other creative content from this version of Relationship between Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Stalin was copied or moved into Dmitri Shostakovich with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
Of all composer FAs, this article is probably the worst in shape. It was last reviewed in 2007 and it hasn't been taken care of since.
Honestly, anyone quickly skimming through the article can quickly tell that it isn't worthy of being featured. Wretchskull ( talk) 12:55, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
@ CurryTime7-24: Many thanks for tidying up the material around the seventh and eighth symphonies. I want to challenge one change, and given it involves multilingual sources, it seemed better to do it on the talkpage rather than via edit summaries. The issue is who tried to call the Eighth symphony the "Stalingrad". CurryTime7-24 cited Khentova's second volume on Shostakovich p. 193 to say that the name was applied in the Western press, contradicting an earlier sourced assertion I had put in that the Soviet authorities had encouraged that nickname. Khentova vol. 2 PDF is available here.
В уже наметившейся исторической перспективе, рассматривая две симфонии как единство, за ними закрепляли наименования: Седьмую называли «Ленинградская блокада», Восьмую — «Сталинградская симфония».
In the historical perspective already noted, taking the two symphonies as a whole, they were given names: The Seventh was called the "Siege of Leningrad" and the eighth the "Stalingrad Symphony".
Although the discussion is about the playing of the symphony in the west and its reception there, I'm not sure that necessarily means that it was western media that gave the names. I note that this page from Radio Orfey says "такое название ей дали власти" ("such was the name given it by the powers-that-be"), in addition to the source I originally cited, which says:
Conversely, the Eighth, less popular and dedicated to Mravinsky, resisted an attempt of the Soviet cultural authorities to lable it as Stalingrad Symphony and escaped an official narrativization. The tag did not stick because the Party was disappointed with the music and inclined to regard it as another fit of Shostakovich's formalism. (Delazari, Ivan (2020). Musical Stimulacra: Literary Narrative and the Urge to Listen. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000327809.)
(Apologies for no page reference, only the e-book is available on google books.)
I'm guessing that the Radio Orfey website is also a reliable source for this. Is it OK to change back to say the Soviet authorities initially wanted to call the eighth the "Stalingrad"? OsFish ( talk) 06:18, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Premiered in Moscow in November, the Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Opus 65, was immediately controversial. Seemingly the second instalment of a symphonic war trilogy, the most obvious thing about it was its blatant and virtually unalleviated tone of black tragedy. Even by the relatively relaxed standards of the early forties, tragedy was anathema to Socialist Realism - particularly at a time when the People were officially deemed to require nothing but uplift or light entertainment. With the Leningrad still thundering around the world, the Soviet authorities had been expecting another major propaganda piece: a Victory symphony which would blazon the exploits of Stalinism and the Soviet nation to the ends of the earth. First performed in the echo of the Germans' massive defeat at Kursk and the Red Army's recapture of Kiev and Smolensk, Shostakovich's Eighth, with its brooding catastrophism and depressive sense of doubt, rang a very dissonant - not to say dissident - note.
Behind the scenes, Stalin's cultural apparatchiks were doubtless furious - yet they could do nothing. Temporarily the world's most famous artist, Shostakovich was beyond their reach and would continue to be so until Western radio stations tired of scheduling his Seventh Symphony. Putting a brave face on it, they floated the idea that Shostakovich's Eighth was a musical memorial to the dead of Stalingrad - and, though never adopted outside Russia, the 'Stalingrad symphony' tag is still current there fifty years later, notwithstanding the composer's disinclination to approve it.
I can understand - I suppose and sort of and reluctantly - not mentioning Mieczyslaw Weinberg at all anywhere else in the article but perhaps, unless there isn't definite evidence that it was Weinberg who provided this, he might be mentioned here. ELSchissel ( talk) 22:00, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Following the demotion from FA, this article is now unassessed. Is that right? How should i\t be assessed? -- Michael Bednarek ( talk) 01:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
I added the Modernist Music footer template, since Shostakovich is included there, but was reverted because "Shostakovich is not a modernist". I'm a layman in this respect but was just looking to create consistency - according to this List of modernist composers, Shostakovich is a modernist composer (as is Prokofiev, Stravinsky and several other Russians). So can we include the template or not? Khuft ( talk) 18:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
I should like to discuss the question of avant-garde music […] This militant trend is based on a destructive attitude towards music. Could the ideological essence of avant-garde music be made any clearer than it was by one of its gurus, who proclaimed: “Music against man!” Avant-gardism is an attempt—doomed from the outset—to achieve a new quality in music merely by rejecting norms and rules that have evolved over the ages. It is a crass theoretical delusion […] (Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and his Times, p. 287)
We Soviet artists should be happy, for that man, who is building the bright communist future, is beside us. […] How could we forget about our wide audience—the people for whom art is created? […] There are certain phenomena in Western art which are innovatory in name, but are in fact directed against man, or at best ignore him. I am thinking of the work of the most militant representatives of the so-called avant-garde music. (Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and his Times, p. 333)
The general picture of 20th-century music shows an unprecedented stratification: at the one extreme there is the refined and usually artificial fabric of modernism; at the other there is the vulgarity of the “culture industry.” […] While at the one extreme the evaluation of music is left to a mistrustful, irritable intellect; at the other, it is reduced to coarse physiology, primitive fashion. (Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and his Times, p. 335)
By the way, I got into a slightly tricky situation with [Pierre Boulez] at a banquet: imagine the arch-apostle of modernism coming up to me, seizing my hand and kissing it! I was so taken aback I didn't manage to snatch it away in time. (Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman, 1941–1975; p. 193)
Shostakovich’s own modernist period was very brief: lasting roughly from 1926–1928. Later in life he was also not above openly criticizing younger composers for their modernistic tendencies. The incident with Edison Denisov’s The Sun of the Incas may be the best known, but Rodion Shchedrin and even Shostakovich’s favorite student Boris Tishchenko were occasional targets. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 19:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 23:37, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
I’ve noticed that a lot of biography articles have an Infobox detailing all the various minutiae surrounding a composer’s life or achievements. While the various awards conferred upon Shostakovich are mentioned in the summary, would placing them along with information about his family into a separate Infobox be of any help for readers of the article in the future? Trumpetguy19 ( talk) 13:59, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
In the legacy section, the text of the second paragraph begins "Shostakovich's influence on later composers outside the former Soviet Union has been relatively slight." There is no citation for this. 174.87.204.74 ( talk) 22:47, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
So it seems classical music infoboxes are officially a thing now, but there still seems to be debate about what to include in them. The recent infobox for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky has been a template for subsequent ones. The information it displays was the result of consensus compromise pertaining specifically to Tchaikovsky's life and career. So no mention of his legal spouse, for example. With Shostakovich, however, such information is non-controversial. So why hide who his wives were or where he's buried if the parameter to display them exists? Compare with Yuri Olesha, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Anna Akhmatova. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 01:56, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
What information should be included or excluded from the infobox? — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 23:35, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
This page is almost impossible to access. It appears with a very large banner flag, a big blank graphic below it, which obscures most of the copy. 88.107.200.18 ( talk) 04:18, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
Should a listing of Shostakovich's marriages with wedding and death/divorce years be included in the infobox? Please provide your choice of either Option 1 or Option 2 along with a brief statement explaining your choice in the "Survey" section below. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 18:50, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Marriages added with wedding and death/divorce years. Please see the revised infobox on the right.
Dmitri Shostakovich | |
---|---|
Дмитрий Шостакович | |
![]() Shostakovich in 1950 | |
Born | |
Died | 9 August 1975 Moscow,
Soviet Union | (aged 68)
Occupations |
|
Works | List of compositions |
Spouses | Nina Varzar
(
m. 1932; died 1954)Margarita Kainova
(
m. 1956;
div. 1959)Irina Supinskaya (
m. 1962) |
Children | Galina and Maxim Shostakovich |
Signature | |
![]() |
Keep infobox status quo (i.e. no listing of Shostakovich's marriages).
Dmitri Shostakovich | |
---|---|
Дмитрий Шостакович | |
![]() Shostakovich in 1950 | |
Born | |
Died | 9 August 1975 Moscow,
Soviet Union | (aged 68)
Occupations |
|
Works | List of compositions |
Spouses | Nina Varzar
(
m. 1932; died 1954)Margarita Kainova
(
m. 1956;
div. 1959)Irina Supinskaya (
m. 1962) |
Children | Galina and Maxim Shostakovich |
Signature | |
![]() |
as this will obviate a lot of problems. It is deliberately simple and will not allow "infobox bloat". There is plenty scope though as you can see. Otherwise, since the spouses are not notable other than being married to Dimitri, Option 2: remove the spouses. — Iadmc ♫ talk 09:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
There are so many of his pieces mentioned in the article, why isn't the second waltz brought up anywhere? Was this done on purpose? I have no doubt it's by far his most famous work. Wikieditor662 ( talk) 00:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Dmitri Shostakovich article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2 |
![]() | Dmitri Shostakovich is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | |||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 5, 2004. | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | Text and/or other creative content from this version of Relationship between Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Stalin was copied or moved into Dmitri Shostakovich with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
Of all composer FAs, this article is probably the worst in shape. It was last reviewed in 2007 and it hasn't been taken care of since.
Honestly, anyone quickly skimming through the article can quickly tell that it isn't worthy of being featured. Wretchskull ( talk) 12:55, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
@ CurryTime7-24: Many thanks for tidying up the material around the seventh and eighth symphonies. I want to challenge one change, and given it involves multilingual sources, it seemed better to do it on the talkpage rather than via edit summaries. The issue is who tried to call the Eighth symphony the "Stalingrad". CurryTime7-24 cited Khentova's second volume on Shostakovich p. 193 to say that the name was applied in the Western press, contradicting an earlier sourced assertion I had put in that the Soviet authorities had encouraged that nickname. Khentova vol. 2 PDF is available here.
В уже наметившейся исторической перспективе, рассматривая две симфонии как единство, за ними закрепляли наименования: Седьмую называли «Ленинградская блокада», Восьмую — «Сталинградская симфония».
In the historical perspective already noted, taking the two symphonies as a whole, they were given names: The Seventh was called the "Siege of Leningrad" and the eighth the "Stalingrad Symphony".
Although the discussion is about the playing of the symphony in the west and its reception there, I'm not sure that necessarily means that it was western media that gave the names. I note that this page from Radio Orfey says "такое название ей дали власти" ("such was the name given it by the powers-that-be"), in addition to the source I originally cited, which says:
Conversely, the Eighth, less popular and dedicated to Mravinsky, resisted an attempt of the Soviet cultural authorities to lable it as Stalingrad Symphony and escaped an official narrativization. The tag did not stick because the Party was disappointed with the music and inclined to regard it as another fit of Shostakovich's formalism. (Delazari, Ivan (2020). Musical Stimulacra: Literary Narrative and the Urge to Listen. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000327809.)
(Apologies for no page reference, only the e-book is available on google books.)
I'm guessing that the Radio Orfey website is also a reliable source for this. Is it OK to change back to say the Soviet authorities initially wanted to call the eighth the "Stalingrad"? OsFish ( talk) 06:18, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Premiered in Moscow in November, the Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Opus 65, was immediately controversial. Seemingly the second instalment of a symphonic war trilogy, the most obvious thing about it was its blatant and virtually unalleviated tone of black tragedy. Even by the relatively relaxed standards of the early forties, tragedy was anathema to Socialist Realism - particularly at a time when the People were officially deemed to require nothing but uplift or light entertainment. With the Leningrad still thundering around the world, the Soviet authorities had been expecting another major propaganda piece: a Victory symphony which would blazon the exploits of Stalinism and the Soviet nation to the ends of the earth. First performed in the echo of the Germans' massive defeat at Kursk and the Red Army's recapture of Kiev and Smolensk, Shostakovich's Eighth, with its brooding catastrophism and depressive sense of doubt, rang a very dissonant - not to say dissident - note.
Behind the scenes, Stalin's cultural apparatchiks were doubtless furious - yet they could do nothing. Temporarily the world's most famous artist, Shostakovich was beyond their reach and would continue to be so until Western radio stations tired of scheduling his Seventh Symphony. Putting a brave face on it, they floated the idea that Shostakovich's Eighth was a musical memorial to the dead of Stalingrad - and, though never adopted outside Russia, the 'Stalingrad symphony' tag is still current there fifty years later, notwithstanding the composer's disinclination to approve it.
I can understand - I suppose and sort of and reluctantly - not mentioning Mieczyslaw Weinberg at all anywhere else in the article but perhaps, unless there isn't definite evidence that it was Weinberg who provided this, he might be mentioned here. ELSchissel ( talk) 22:00, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Following the demotion from FA, this article is now unassessed. Is that right? How should i\t be assessed? -- Michael Bednarek ( talk) 01:12, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
I added the Modernist Music footer template, since Shostakovich is included there, but was reverted because "Shostakovich is not a modernist". I'm a layman in this respect but was just looking to create consistency - according to this List of modernist composers, Shostakovich is a modernist composer (as is Prokofiev, Stravinsky and several other Russians). So can we include the template or not? Khuft ( talk) 18:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
I should like to discuss the question of avant-garde music […] This militant trend is based on a destructive attitude towards music. Could the ideological essence of avant-garde music be made any clearer than it was by one of its gurus, who proclaimed: “Music against man!” Avant-gardism is an attempt—doomed from the outset—to achieve a new quality in music merely by rejecting norms and rules that have evolved over the ages. It is a crass theoretical delusion […] (Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and his Times, p. 287)
We Soviet artists should be happy, for that man, who is building the bright communist future, is beside us. […] How could we forget about our wide audience—the people for whom art is created? […] There are certain phenomena in Western art which are innovatory in name, but are in fact directed against man, or at best ignore him. I am thinking of the work of the most militant representatives of the so-called avant-garde music. (Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and his Times, p. 333)
The general picture of 20th-century music shows an unprecedented stratification: at the one extreme there is the refined and usually artificial fabric of modernism; at the other there is the vulgarity of the “culture industry.” […] While at the one extreme the evaluation of music is left to a mistrustful, irritable intellect; at the other, it is reduced to coarse physiology, primitive fashion. (Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and his Times, p. 335)
By the way, I got into a slightly tricky situation with [Pierre Boulez] at a banquet: imagine the arch-apostle of modernism coming up to me, seizing my hand and kissing it! I was so taken aback I didn't manage to snatch it away in time. (Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman, 1941–1975; p. 193)
Shostakovich’s own modernist period was very brief: lasting roughly from 1926–1928. Later in life he was also not above openly criticizing younger composers for their modernistic tendencies. The incident with Edison Denisov’s The Sun of the Incas may be the best known, but Rodion Shchedrin and even Shostakovich’s favorite student Boris Tishchenko were occasional targets. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 19:05, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 23:37, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
I’ve noticed that a lot of biography articles have an Infobox detailing all the various minutiae surrounding a composer’s life or achievements. While the various awards conferred upon Shostakovich are mentioned in the summary, would placing them along with information about his family into a separate Infobox be of any help for readers of the article in the future? Trumpetguy19 ( talk) 13:59, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
In the legacy section, the text of the second paragraph begins "Shostakovich's influence on later composers outside the former Soviet Union has been relatively slight." There is no citation for this. 174.87.204.74 ( talk) 22:47, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
So it seems classical music infoboxes are officially a thing now, but there still seems to be debate about what to include in them. The recent infobox for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky has been a template for subsequent ones. The information it displays was the result of consensus compromise pertaining specifically to Tchaikovsky's life and career. So no mention of his legal spouse, for example. With Shostakovich, however, such information is non-controversial. So why hide who his wives were or where he's buried if the parameter to display them exists? Compare with Yuri Olesha, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Anna Akhmatova. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 01:56, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
What information should be included or excluded from the infobox? — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 23:35, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
This page is almost impossible to access. It appears with a very large banner flag, a big blank graphic below it, which obscures most of the copy. 88.107.200.18 ( talk) 04:18, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
Should a listing of Shostakovich's marriages with wedding and death/divorce years be included in the infobox? Please provide your choice of either Option 1 or Option 2 along with a brief statement explaining your choice in the "Survey" section below. — CurryTime7-24 ( talk) 18:50, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Marriages added with wedding and death/divorce years. Please see the revised infobox on the right.
Dmitri Shostakovich | |
---|---|
Дмитрий Шостакович | |
![]() Shostakovich in 1950 | |
Born | |
Died | 9 August 1975 Moscow,
Soviet Union | (aged 68)
Occupations |
|
Works | List of compositions |
Spouses | Nina Varzar
(
m. 1932; died 1954)Margarita Kainova
(
m. 1956;
div. 1959)Irina Supinskaya (
m. 1962) |
Children | Galina and Maxim Shostakovich |
Signature | |
![]() |
Keep infobox status quo (i.e. no listing of Shostakovich's marriages).
Dmitri Shostakovich | |
---|---|
Дмитрий Шостакович | |
![]() Shostakovich in 1950 | |
Born | |
Died | 9 August 1975 Moscow,
Soviet Union | (aged 68)
Occupations |
|
Works | List of compositions |
Spouses | Nina Varzar
(
m. 1932; died 1954)Margarita Kainova
(
m. 1956;
div. 1959)Irina Supinskaya (
m. 1962) |
Children | Galina and Maxim Shostakovich |
Signature | |
![]() |
as this will obviate a lot of problems. It is deliberately simple and will not allow "infobox bloat". There is plenty scope though as you can see. Otherwise, since the spouses are not notable other than being married to Dimitri, Option 2: remove the spouses. — Iadmc ♫ talk 09:19, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
There are so many of his pieces mentioned in the article, why isn't the second waltz brought up anywhere? Was this done on purpose? I have no doubt it's by far his most famous work. Wikieditor662 ( talk) 00:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)