Hi!
This wasn't the first post I had intended to make here, but this is where my AuDHD decided we were going.
CW; talk and mention of suicide, mentions of WWII and the Nazi Party.
Link to Youtube; String Quartet No. 8
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian composer and pianist who was known for his First Symphony in 1926. He also wrote the opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District" in 1934, which was later condemned by the Soviet government after its large amounts of success. His opera also almost got him killed as it is about the planning of murder by a woman, European society, and adultery.
After Shostakovich joined the RSFSR, The Russian Union of Composers, a position he was led to believe was a major honor and would make him untouchable as well as guarantee the safety and success of his children, he was stricken with self-loathing. After all, joining the RSFSR required him to join the Communist party, something he swore he would never, under any circumstances, do. He is known to have said things like: "I’m scared to death of them," and "You don’t know the whole truth."
Shostakovich wrote String Quartet No. 8 over the course of three days; July 12th, 13th, and 14th of 1960. This piece is written as a dedication "to the victims of fascism and the war" as well as a memorial to the victims of the 1945 Dresden firebombing. However, his son Maxim interprets the piece a little differently: as a reference to the victims of all totalitarianism. This piece is most often declared as Shostakovich's epitaph, and his friend, Lev Lebedinsky, has said that he planned to commit suicide around this time; "He played the quartet to me on the piano and told me with tears in his eyes that it was his last work... During the next few days, I spent as much time as possible with Shostakovich until I felt the danger of suicide had passed."
Another one of his friends, Isaak Glikman, recalled that he said through tears, "They have been hounding me, they have been pursuing me." Five days after writing his piece, Shostakovich wrote to Glikman and said, “I’ve [just finished] an ideologically deficient quartet that nobody needs. I reflected that when I die it’s not likely anyone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself. You could even write on the cover [of this string quartet]: ‘Dedicated to the memory of the composer of this quartet.’"
Shostakovich is known for crying several times during the composition of this piece. In his letter to Glikman, he wrote: "The pseudo-tragedy of the quartet is so great that, while composing it, my tears flowed as abundantly as urine after downing half-a-dozen beers. On arrival home, I have tried playing it twice, and have shed tears again."
String Quartet No. 8 has five movements, all interconnected and lasting about twenty minutes. I. Largo II. Allegro molto III. Allegretto IV. Largo V. Largo. Shostakovich uses the DSCH motif in a lot of his music, but it is very apparent in this piece. This motif uses the notes D-Eb-C-B (in German notation; D, Es, C, H | in solfege; Re, Me, Do, Ti) as a nod to the composer's initials. It's his way of signing his music. String Quartet No. 8 is known for using this motif several times, which is why, along with Lebendinsky's tidbit, a lot of people interpret this as his suicide note.
Thanks for reading the collection of my random facts!
Lain (they/them)
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