Symphony No. 15 (Shostakovich)

Symphony No. 15
by Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich (far right) in 1974 (photograph by Yuri Shcherbinin)
Key	A major
Opus	141
Composed	late 1970–July 29, 1971
Published	1972
Publisher	Hans Sikorski Musikverlage
Duration	c. 45 minutes
Movements	4
Scoring	Orchestra
Premiere
Date	January 8, 1972 (1972-01-08)
Location	Large Hall of the Moscow Conservatory
Conductor	Maxim Shostakovich
Performers	All-Union Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra

The Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, composed between late 1970 and July 29, 1971, is the final symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. Originally intended as a cheerful commemoration of his 65th birthday in 1971, he began to plan and sketch the symphony in late 1970. After completing the sketch score in April 1971, he began the final orchestral score in June, during his medical therapy in the town of Kurgan. The symphony was completed on July 29 at his summer dacha in Repino. This was followed by a prolonged period of creative inactivity which did not end until the composition of the Fourteenth Quartet in 1973.

The Fifteenth Symphony was first performed privately in a reduction for two pianos for members of the Union of Soviet Composers and invited guests in August 1971. Its scheduled world premiere in September was postponed when Shostakovich suffered his second heart attack earlier that month. Following a two-month hospitalization, he recovered well enough to attend rehearsals in late December 1971 for the Fifteenth's rescheduled premiere, which took place in Moscow on January 8, 1972, performed by the All-Union Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maxim Shostakovich. The first performance outside the Soviet Union took place in Philadelphia on September 28, 1972, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy. Immediate critical reaction to the symphony was positive in the Soviet Union, but mixed in the West.

Shostakovich's extensive use of musical quotation in the Fifteenth has attracted speculation. He initially likened the first movement to a "toyshop", but later cautioned listeners against taking his description too precisely. A quotation from Gioacchino Rossini's William Tell Overture recurs throughout the first movement, while the last movement quotes from a song by Mikhail Glinka and from Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung and Tristan und Isolde. Critics have also detected in the symphony further quotations and allusions, from other composers as well as Shostakovich's own music.

Background

Origins

Shostakovich began to prepare the Fifteenth Symphony in late 1970; he originally envisioned it as a present to himself for his 65th birthday. He wrote to Boris Tishchenko that he wanted to write a "merry symphony". By no later than April 2, 1971, Shostakovich completed a sketch outline of the Fifteenth Symphony that was sparsely notated and made extensive use of shorthand. Altogether, the sketch manuscript totaled eighteen pages. It also includes an unfinished and still unpublished setting of "Yelabuga Nail", a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko about the suicide of Marina Tsvetayeva.

Composition

In June 1971, Shostakovich continued treatment for his poliomyelitis at the clinic of Gavriil Ilizarov in Kurgan, where the composer had been a patient since 1968. While there he began the final draft of the Fifteenth Symphony. He wrote to his friend, the writer Marietta Shaginyan, that he was he was on the "verge of tears" from work:

Tears flowed from my eyes not because the symphony was sad, but because my eyes were so exhausted. I even went to an ophthalmologist who suggested that I take a short break. The break was very hard for me. It is annoying to step away when one is at work.

Similarly, Shostakovich remarked to Sofia Khentova, his official biographer, that his pace of work on the symphony did not permit him rest. "It was a work which simply grabbed me, one of the few which appeared in my mind with total clarity from first note to last", he continued. "There was nothing left for me to do but write it down". Veniamin Basner, in contrast, recalled that Shostakovich complained to him that completion of the finale progressed too slowly.

Upon completion of medical treatment in Kurgan, Shostakovich continued to write the symphony at his summer dacha in Repino. He was visited there on July 13 by his friend, the critic and arts administrator Isaak Glikman. Shostakovich told him that he had completed the first two movements and was working on the third. He had not yet been able to compose a finale, however. The problem, Shostakovich told Glikman, brought to mind parallels he discerned between the Fifteenth and Ninth symphonies, particularly what he believed was their shared lack of a central idea. Shostakovich completed the Fifteenth on July 29, in Basner's presence. The symphony was his last, as well as his first purely instrumental and non-programmatic symphony since the Tenth from 1953.

"The new symphony is still warm and I like it", Shostakovich later reported to Glikman. "But, perhaps after some time has gone by, I will think about it differently". He also announced the completion of the new work in a letter to Krzysztof Meyer dated September 16. "I finished another symphony—my Fifteenth", he said. "Maybe I should not compose anymore, but I cannot live without it". Shostakovich wrote to Shaginyan on August 26 that the completion of the symphony he had "worked on day and night" left him feeling as if in a void.

Shostakovich experienced a prolonged period of creative inactivity after he completed the symphony. Aside from an arrangement of the "Serenade" by Gaetano Braga, which was intended for an unrealized opera based on Anton Chekhov's short story, "The Black Monk", Shostakovich did not compose anything until the Fourteenth Quartet in March 1973.

Music

Instrumentation and timing

The Fifteenth Symphony is scored for the following instruments:

Woodwinds

Piccolo

2 Flutes

2 Oboes

2 Clarinets in A

2 Bassoons

Brass

4 French horns

2 Trumpets

3 Trombones

Tuba

Percussion

4 timpani

Triangle

Castanets

Woodblock

Whip

Tom-Tom (soprano)

Snare Drum

Cymbals

Bass Drum

Tam-Tam

Glockenspiel

Xylophone

Vibraphone

Keyboards

Celesta

Strings

1st Violins

2nd Violins

Violas

Cellos

Double Basses

The Fifteenth Symphony's use of a large percussion section aside, it is scored for forces smaller than those employed in Shostakovich's First. The composer indicated in the score that the number of instruments listed were the minimum required, but "if there are more, then it would be better".

A typical performance lasts approximately 45 minutes.

Structure

The symphony consists of four movements, the middle two played attacca.

1. Allegretto
2. Adagio – Largo – Adagio – Largo
3. Allegretto
4. Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio – Allegretto

Description

The first movement begins with two chimes on the glockenspiel, followed by a five-note motif on solo flute, accompanied by pizzicato strings. This leads into a galloping motif for trumpet constructed out of all twelve notes of the Western chromatic scale. Hugh Ottaway observed that Shostakovich's use of such motifs in this symphony create an "enlarged tonal field in which 'chromatic' and 'diatonic' cease to be meaningful distinctions". Recurring throughout the movement are quotations from the William Tell Overture by Gioacchino Rossini.

The second movement begins with a brass chorale, followed by a cello solo. These themes alternate with a dotted funeral march introduced by a pair of solo flutes, then taken up by a solo trombone, which builds to a climax. The opening chorale is restated on muted strings, then fades away on a timpani roll, after which bassoons announce the start of the scherzando third movement.

The finale contains several musical quotations, starting with the "fate motif" from Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner, followed by the opening motif from the same composer's Tristan und Isolde. This segues into a reminiscence of Mikhail Glinka's song, "Do Not Tempt Me Needlessly". A passacaglia theme, which has drawn commentary for its resemblance to the march from Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, is introduced and builds to another climax. The symphony concludes with the celesta restating the symphony's opening motif, followed by an open A-major chord, sustained over a percussion part that recalls the scherzo of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, that is finally resolved by a three-octave C-sharp.

Premieres

Shortly after Shostakovich completed the Fifteenth Symphony, he informed his son, the conductor Maxim. Shostakovich's first choice to lead the symphony's premiere, Kirill Kondrashin, developed severe heart problems in mid-1971 and was unable to conduct. Therefore, the first performance was entrusted by the composer to Maxim.

The completed score of the Fifteenth Symphony was sent to copyists at the Union of Soviet Composers by September 9 in preparation for its world premiere, which had been announced for autumn 1971. A few days later, on September 17, Shostakovich suffered his second heart attack, which required the postponement of the symphony's first performance. He stayed in the hospital until November 28, whereupon he was released to continue recovery at a sanatorium in Barvikha. Despite continued weakness in his arms and legs, Shostakovich's health improved sufficiently to permit him to attend the rehearsals for the rescheduled premiere.

The symphony's world premiere occurred on January 8, 1972, at the Large Hall of the Moscow Conservatory; it was performed by the All-Union Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maxim Shostakovich. He also conducted the British premiere with the New Philharmonia Orchestra on November 20, 1972.

Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy vied to conduct the first performance of the Fifteenth Symphony in the United States. The rights were ultimately granted to the latter, who conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in the symphony's American premiere on September 28, 1972.

Reception

Maxim Shostakovich, conductor of the Fifteenth Symphony's premiere

Upon hearing its first performance, Shostakovich remarked that he had composed a "wicked symphony". It was received with an ovation by the audience at its premiere. Marietta Shaginyan was among the symphony's admirers. After the premiere, she met with Shostakovich at the hall's green room and made the sign of the cross over him. "You must not say, Dmitri Dmitrievich, that you are not well", she told him. "You are well, because you have made us happy!"

Tikhon Khrennikov, general secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, praised the symphony as one of Shostakovich's "most profound"; he added that it was "full of optimism [and] belief in man's inexhaustible strength". The first movement drew especial praise from Norman Kay in England, who called it a "tour-de-force of concentration, self-dissolution, and musical economy". Eric Roseberry noted that the symphony's instrumental timbres and use of passacaglia suggested that Shostakovich had been influenced by the late operas of his friend, Benjamin Britten. Yevgeny Mravinsky, who led the symphony's Leningrad premiere, found himself "overwhelmed" during his study of the score, telling his wife he would continue to return to this "autobiographical" symphony until the "end of his days".

Shostakovich's use of quotations and allusions to various works by himself and other composers has attracted speculation since its premiere. He initially described the first movement as "childhood, just a toyshop under a cloudless sky"; later, he cautioned listeners against taking "this definition too precisely". When describing the music and the process of the symphony's composition, Shostakovich said that he still felt music the way he did as a child. While he maintained that he was unable to explain his extended use of musical quotation, he also said that he "could not, could not, not include them". He reported to Glikman and Krzysztof Meyer that he made use of "exact quotations" from Beethoven, as well as Rossini and Wagner, and that he had been under the influence of Mahler's music while he composed the symphony. According to Maxim Shostakovich, he had been urged by his father not to reveal to the orchestra at the first rehearsal that there would be a quotation from Rossini in the first movement: "I want to see their faces when they come to it".

Maxim Shostakovich expressed the opinion that to him the symphony reflected "the great philosophical problems of a man's life cycle". Later he likened the work to a "chamber symphony" which described human life through the "prison of existence". Another conductor, Kurt Sanderling, heard the music as being about loneliness and death, and that no other work by Shostakovich seemed to him so "radically horrible and cruel". Alfred Schnittke, whose own music was deeply influenced by Shostakovich, held that the Fifteenth was a "crossroads in time" where "the past enters into new relationships with the present, and, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, intrudes into the reality of the music and actually forms it". To Alexander Ivashkin, Shostakovich's then unusual use of quotation signaled an awareness of the impossibility of composing a "pure" symphony, with the quotations creating a web of their own correspondences atop the "traditional skeleton of the symphony".

Bernard Jacobson wrote in 1972 that the symphony's lasting appeal was secured because it made use of "one of [Shostakovich's] greatest expressive assets—a teasing and often powerfully affective emotional ambivalence".

Influence on Blue Velvet

David Lynch cited Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 as an important influence in the making of his film Blue Velvet

Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony has also exerted influence beyond music. Director David Lynch cited it as an important influence on his 1986 film Blue Velvet: "I wrote the script to Shostakovich: No. 15 in A major. I just kept playing the same part of it, over and over again". During its filming, Lynch placed speakers on set and played the symphony in order to convey the mood he wanted. He later requested that Angelo Badalamenti compose a score for the film that was "like Shostakovich".

Sources

• Blokker, Roy; Dearling, Robert (1979). The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies. London: The Tantivy Press. ISBN 0-8386-1948-7.
• Fairclough, Pauline (2019). Dmitry Shostakovich. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78914-127-6.
• Fay, Laurel (2000). Shostakovich: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513438-9.
• Glikman, Isaak (2001). Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman, 1941–1975. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3979-5.
• Khentova, Sofia (1985). Шостакович. Жизнь и творчество, Т. 2 [Shostakovich: Life and Works, Volume 2] (in Russian). Moscow: Советский композитор [Soviet Composer].
• Meyer, Krzysztof (2011). Shostakovich: Su vida, su obra, su época [Shostakovich: His Life, his Work, his Times] (in Spanish). Madrid: Alianza Editorial. ISBN 978-84-2065268-9.
• Ottaway, Hugh (1978). Shostakovich Symphonies. London: BBC Publications. ISBN 0-563-12772-4.
• Raiskin, Iosif (2015). Дмитрий Шостакович. Симфонии общей судьбы [Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies of a Common Fate] (in Russian). Saint Petersburg: Композитор [Composer]. ISBN 9785151618243.
• Shostakovich, Dmitri (2012a). Ekimovsky, Viktor (ed.). Dmitri Shostakovich: New Collected Works. Ist Series: Symphonies. 15th Volume: Symphony No. 15, Op. 141. Explanatory article by Levon Hakobian. Moscow: DSCH Publishers. ISMN 979-0-706364-43-8.
• Shostakovich, Dmitri (2012b). Ekimovsky, Viktor (ed.). Dmitri Shostakovich: New Collected Works. Ist Series: Symphonies. 30th Volume: Symphony No. 15, Op. 141 (Author's arrangement for two pianos). Explanatory article by Levon Hakobian. Moscow: DSCH Publishers. ISMN 979-0-706364-44-5.
• Prieto, Carlos (2013). Dmitri Shostakóvich: Genio y drama [Dmitri Shostakovich: Genius and Drama] (in Spanish). Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica. ISBN 978-607-16-1483-4.

Further reading

• Saenger, Peter. "Shostakovich’s Vibrant Valediction: The composer’s 15th Symphony, his last, blends a hard-earned gravity with the buoyant spirit of youth" The Wall Street Journal. March 22, 2024.