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Shostakovich's Turn to the String Quartet and the Debates about Socialist Realism in Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Katerina Clark
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Abstract

As Katerina Clark argues here, Dmitrii Shostakovich's turn to the quartet form in 1938 and his account of his First Quartet should be seen in the context of ongoing debates from that time about how the mandate for socialist realism might apply in music, a problematical question since music is the least representational of the arts. In making this point, Clark does not analyze the quartets themselves, but instead probes Shostakovich's statements about them, moving out from that narrow focus to place his remarks in the context of overall developments and controversies in Soviet culture of that decade—more specifically in the context of efforts aimed at liberalizing socialist realist practice.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , Fall 2013 , pp. 573 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2013

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References

1. The First String Quartet was his second chamber work after the Viola Sonata of 1934. He had been promising to write a quartet since at least 1931 when he produced two movements for one that he did not complete.

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60. Usievich, “K sporam o politicheskoi poezii,” 70, 87, 89, 90, and 102. She is also attacked in “O politicheskoi poezii,” Pravda, 1937, no. 58.

61. Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Princeton, 2006), 183, 241; Maksimenkov, Leonid, “'Partiia-nash rulevoi Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) ot 10 fevralia 1948 g. ob opere Vano Muradeli ‘Velikaia druzhba’ v svete novykh arkhivnykh dokumentov,” Muzykal'naiazhizri, nos. 15–16 (1993): 34–39 Google Scholar.

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65. Sitsky, Larry, Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900–1929 (Westport, Conn., 1994), 64 Google Scholar; Frolova-Walker, Marina, ‘“National in Form, Socialist in Content': Musical Nation-Building in the Soviet Republics,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 336n8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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70. The list includes: II’ ia Erenburg, “O rabote pisatelia,” Znamia, 1953, no. 10:160–83Google Scholar; Pomerantsev, V., “Ob iskrennosti v literature,” Novyi mir, 1953, no. 12:218–45Google Scholar; Abramov, F., “Liudi kolkhoznoi derevni v poslevoennoi proze (Literaturnye zametki), Novyi mir, 1954, no. 1: 210–31Google Scholar; Lifshits, M., “Dnevnik Marietty Shaginian,” Novyi mir, 1954, no. 2: 207–31Google Scholar; Shcheglov, Mark, “'Russkii les’ Leonida Leonova,” Novyi mir, 1954, no. 8: 220–41Google Scholar; O1'ga Berggol'ts, “Protiv likvidatsii liriki,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 28 October 1954.

71. Film examples include Marlen Khutsiev and Feliks Mironer's Vesna na zarechnoi ulitse (1956), El'dar Riazanov's Karnavainaia noch’ (1956), and Mikhail Kalotozov's Letiat zhuravli (1957). In literature one should note not only the love plot of Ne khlebom edinym with its motivated adultery but more particularly the progressive development of the love plot in Viktor Nekrasov's works of this time (compare V rodnom gorode, Novyi mir, 1954, nos. 10,11, to his Kira Georgievna, Novyi mir, 1961, no. 6).

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