Years up to war Sixth Symphony

Testimony 1988 Tony Palmer Film

The Fifth

�  “Most avowedly ‘correct’ and self-reforming. The Symphony was planned to represent the ‘maturing of a human personality,’ passing from private or neurotic discord to a reaffirmation of purpose, identified of course with social progress at large.” (Norris, p175).

�  Co-insided with period of show trials and repression before the war – 1936 -9 ‘Great Terror’. Old Bolshevics removed and many executed. Marshal Tukhachevsky shot after arrest. Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamemev.

�  Sixth (1939) not a continuation of 5th. Connects more with the 4h – in 3 movement. Great sense of build over a long expanse to highly charged ending.

�  B minor tp D minor to B major at the end of last movement.

Sixth Symphony – Not the Lenin Symphony?

�  1939: Bizarre succession of unrelated moods parallels the contradictory spirit of the times. Disappointed those that had loved the 5th. Three movements.

�  It does not really connect with the Fifth. The Sixth Symphony is unusual in structure, beginning with a long and introspective slow movement, followed by two short movements: a scherzo and a galop (like a rondo).

�  The third movement galop is the movement Shostakovich himself thought was most successful. On average, the first movement is 15–20 minutes long, the second movement is 4–6 minutes long, and the third movement is 5–7 minutes long.

�  Was to be a Lenin symphony it did not end up that way.

�  Approachable but very creative. Darkness to light.

�  All mvts ABAB sonata form without a real development section.

�  In all mvts the two themes are in different metres (eith 2 or 3) and different key – major/minor.

Second Movement

Third Movement

War

�  Soviet Russia is plunged into War when German unexpectedly attacks in 1941. They had been allies – and had both taken Poland and this started the war.

�  However Russia is unprepared for a major war and the Germans easily overrun eastern Europe.

�  The war is a disaster for Stalin at first – he mobises the whole country and suprisingly the internal terror eases in this period.

�  Is OK to have friends in the West?