The History of the Creation, Premiere, and Prohibition of Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony

Petrov Vladislav Olegovich Doctor of Art History Professor at the Department of Theory and History of Music of Astrakhan State Conservatory 414000, Russia, Astrakhanskaya oblast', g. Astrakhan', ul. Sovetskaya, 23 petrovagk@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

By the early 1960s, Dmitri Shostakovich had become the "number-one composer" in the Soviet Union, performing at home and abroad. Knowing this and provoking this popularity, the authorities dragged Shostakovich into various kinds of ideological events. And, characteristically, Shostakovich, who had previously dared to say unpleasant things to Stalin and others in power, actively opposing arrests and murders, succumbed to the regime in more "easy" political conditions, became ideologically loyal, for which many condemned him (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for example). However, in 1962, the “Thirteenth Symphony” appeared in E. Yevtushenko’s text, completely contrasting to the previous two, written on a revolutionary plot. The purpose of this article is to present our own view on the concept of the symphony.

Note that the symphony has five parts: "Babi Yar," "Humor," "In the Store," "Fears," and "Career." The parts are different in artistic value, content, and form. Thus, the form of the first part is dictated by Yevtushenko's poems and is a series of scenes (the Dreyfus affair, the pogrom in Bialystok, the tragedy of Anne Frank, etc.) that are "connected" by a refrain—the author's reflections. The second movement contrasts with the previous one and has the character of a grotesque scherzo. The third part, which is the emotional culmination of the whole cycle, tells about the submissiveness of women. The fourth movement stands out for its dissonance—it uses a serial technique (an eleven-tone row in the initial solo of the tube). The fifth part "resolves the conflict." It tells about the possibility of choosing—serving the truth or compromising for the sake of a quiet life. Wasn't Shostakovich referring to his own life?

A word to the composer: "I first wrote something like a symphonic vocal poem based on the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s ‘Babi Yar.’ Then I had the idea to continue working, using other poems of this poet. For the second part, I took the poem ‘Humor.’ For the third poem, ‘In the Store.’ In the poem ‘Fears,’ which is the basis of the fourth movement, Yevtushenko wrote specifically, referring to my symphony. And for the finale, I chose the poem ‘Career.’ There is no plot connection between these poems. They are published at different times and are devoted to different topics. But I wanted to combine them musically" ^{[1, p. 451]}. Shostakovich dared, within the framework of the persecution of the Jews still in force in the USSR, to touch on the topic of their extermination in “Babi Yar” ^[1]. Yevtushenko's work itself, published in the Literaturnaya Gazeta on September 19, 1961, became an international sensation, and "by setting it to music, Shostakovich entered into an open confrontation with the authorities, whose anti-Semitic policy dated back to Stalin" ^[2]. Although, both Yevtushenko and Shostakovich made some concessions, a compromise—the text was changed between numbers 2–3 and 24–26 of the score:

Old text:

I think I'm a Jew now –

Here I am, wandering through ancient Egypt.

But I'm dying on the cross, crucified

And I still have nail marks on me!

And I myself am like a continuous silent scream

over thousands of thousands killed,

I am every old man shot here,

I am every child shot here.

New text:

I'm standing here, as if at a crinitsa,

giving faith in our brotherhood to me.

Here Russians and Ukrainians lie,

they lie in the same land with the Jews.

I'm thinking about the feat of Russia

fascism blocked the way by itself,

down to the tiniest dewdrop

I am close to the whole essence and fate.

After a number of compositions in the late 1940s and 50s that contained compromises, forcibly written "Songs about Forests," the Eleventh Symphony, numerous miniatures, the Thirteenth made a splash in musical and near-musical circles, as many perceived it from the angle of polemic with the Stalinist regime, however, not only with Stalin. Even before the premiere of the Thirteenth Symphony, in December 1962, Khrushchev spoke about the alienness of this work of Shostakovich to Soviet society at a meeting on ideological issues and thus passed an early sentence on him: "In the best traditions of dense ignorance and aggressiveness, with his inherent ‘spontaneity,’ Khrushchev developed not only ideas, tactics—the vocabulary of Zhdanov and Stalin—notes B. Schwartz, who witnessed that story—He shouted that the composer Shostakovich had composed some kind of symphony, ‘Babi Yar,’ raising an unnecessary ‘Jewish question.’ And in general, ‘Babi Yar’ is a harmful job. Did Khrushchev notice or understand how quickly he stepped into the rut of his own predecessors, who were exposed by him?" ^{[3, p. 159]}. Under pressure from above, many musicians refused to perform the symphony. Among them was E. Mravinsky, who always performed the premiere symphonies of Shostakovich and A. Vedernikov. B. Gmyre was banned from participating in the Moscow performance of the Thirteenth Symphony by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the day of the premiere was December 18, 1962. K. Kondrashin, the first conductor of the symphony, recalls: "They are afraid to ban the symphony from above, but already by the way Mravinsky behaved, it is clear that some steps are being taken to ensure that there is no premiere. A dress rehearsal is scheduled for ten o'clock. The atmosphere is very disturbing. Dmitry Dmitrievich, of course, was terribly nervous. Some unfamiliar faces sometimes appeared in the hall at previous rehearsals, but musicians always come to rehearsals, so it is unknown who was or is sitting there. Nechipailo has to rehearse. He is announced for the evening as a performer. The magnificent choirmaster Yurlov organized the choir, so everything was fine from this side. At about a quarter to ten, the phone rings, and Nechipailo says that he is ill and cannot sing in the evening. I think he was pressed. We all rush to look for Gromadsky—he lives far from the center, and he does not have a phone. He knows that he does not need to sing in the evening, and therefore it is yet to be known whether he will come to listen to the concert, much less the rehearsal. Twenty minutes passed—and Gromadsky appeared! He is immediately told that he must rehearse and sing in the evening. He is a former sailor, a brave man. I went out and started rehearsing. I was wrong because I wasn't very well prepared. We rehearsed the first part, and then the orchestra director entered: ‘Kirill Petrovich, there's a phone call for you.’ I stop the rehearsal and go to the artist's room to the phone. The Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Georgy Popov, called: – Well, how is the symphony? – We're rehearsing. Another soloist will sing. – Do you have any doubts about the first part? – It doesn't cause me. – Uh-huh... and how do you feel? – I feel great. – Do you have any political doubts about Babi Yar? – Nothing. I think this is very timely and important. – Maybe we should play a symphony without the first movement? Maybe you can tell the composer? – ...the symphony is conceived as a single whole. And if we throw out a part, then it can't be played, especially now. If we throw out the first part, which everyone knows about, we will only emphasize the hype, which will cause completely unnecessary curiosity. – Well, as you know" ^{[4, pp. 404–405]}.

Yu. Loshkareva writes: "The conservatory was cordoned off by a reinforced police squad. Sometimes the cordon was broken through. The hall was filled to the limit. The diplomatic corps and representatives of the foreign press attended the concert. Mozart's symphony was performed in the first movement. The intermission seemed endless. The tension was building. Everyone was waiting for the start of the second section. Finally, a choir appeared on the stage, followed by an orchestra, a soloist, and a conductor. The hall froze… And here he is—Babi Yar—a symbol of sorrow and protest, once given to us as a test of conscience and will. ‘There are no monuments over Babi Yar...’. The monument was created here and now—from music and words, an immortal monument to the innocently murdered, humiliated, and insulted by rapists of all times. The poems and music carried such a powerful charge of ‘dramatic humanity’ that after the first part—after ‘Babi Yar’—applause broke out. And then everyone heard (saw) four more movements (acts) of the Thirteenth Symphony—'Humor,’ ‘In the Store,’ ‘Fear,’ ‘Career,’ and this ‘anti-Stalinist message’ sounded so clearly, so mercilessly, and truthfully that people—then, in December 1962!—experienced a shock. But now the voices of the bells and celeste faded under the arches of the hall, silence fell ... painfully long" ^[5]. The audience applauded Shostakovich and Yevtushenko for fifty minutes.

B. Schwartz, who was present at the premiere, noted: "From the first sounds, the symphony captured the hearts of listeners. In the shocked hall, they were neither indifferent nor forgetful. This music seemed to light an unquenchable torch in memory of all the defenseless who died: some—without having time to see and hear the world in which they lived, others—without completing the intended. Those whose lives were cut short seemed to cry out to the composer with their mouths covered with earth: to tell the living about them, not to fall into the sin of unconsciousness. This music deprived us of the right to forget; with every sound, it said that not letting the innocent be killed is not a feat—a duty. It exposed the madness of evil that condemns many thousands of people to suffering and death. The living dare not forget about this. This symphony is about death. And about the life that goes on, no matter what. And about what people should protect in themselves, what people can rely on" ^{[3, p. 161]}.

Maria Yudina's statement is known from a letter to Shostakovich addressed after the premiere: "I can also say thanks from the deceased Pasternak, Zabolotsky, countless other friends, from the tortured Meyerhold, Mikhoels, Karsavin, Mandelstam, from the unnamed hundreds of thousands of ‘Ivan Denisovich,’ all of whom Pasternak said ‘tortured alive.’ You know everything yourself. They all live in you. We all burn in the pages of this score. You gave it to us, your contemporaries—for future generations."

Is it possible to remain indifferent to all those whose relatives, acquaintances, and friends disappeared from the face of the earth in the ‘30—50s after hearing the following lines by Yevtushenko, which formed the basis of the fourth movement of the “Thirteenth Symphony”:

"I remember them in power and strength

At the court of triumphant lies.

Fears were everywhere as shadows slid,

They penetrated into all floors."

Such a composition as the “Thirteenth Symphony” could only be written by an artist who had experienced incredible pain for the fate of the country and his generation. In this context, Khentova's remark is true, "In order to speak about the deepest pains with such open, merciless journalism through individual phenomena, large accumulations, long accumulative evolution, inner emancipation, maturity, to which the creator came, having experienced and realized a lot" were needed ^{[6, p. 3]}. This is the composer's first composition in which music has no hidden meanings that speak of all the horrors and utopianness of time. It is aimed at revealing the manifest program embedded in Yevtushenko's texts. For the first time, the composer so openly (with the inclusion of text in the composition) opposed the current system. And Yevtushenko dedicated the following remarkable lines to him, which can become an epigraph to Shostakovich’s biography as a whole:

"...On stage

a thin, bespectacled man. Not God,

awkwardness in the fingers in a convulsive clutch.

And in a tie. Sticking out somehow sideways.

He looks awkwardly, breathing unevenly.

And he bows, too, so awkwardly.

I didn't learn. This won."

Yevtushenko said after the premiere of the composition: "In the ‘Thirteenth Symphony,’ I was stunned first of all by the fact that if I (a complete musical ignoramus) suddenly had my hearing, I would have written absolutely the same music. Moreover, Shostakovich's reading of my poems was so intonationally and meaningfully accurate that it seemed that he, invisible, was inside me when I wrote the poems and composed the music along with the birth of the lines." However, according to his own words, the poet did not understand the finale of Shostakovich's symphony: the way out of the words "So long live the career, when the career is like Shakespeare and Pasteur, Newton and Tolstoy... Leo!" (hymn to careerists)—into a blurred musical "live rejoicing!" ("pure" and enlightened code). Only later, he noted that at that time, he "seemed too neutral, too going beyond the text. I was a fool then and realized only later how such an end was needed precisely because that was what was missing in the poems—an outlet to the ocean harmony of life."

Director G. Kozintsev also spoke about the disposition of "Yevtushenko & Shostakovich": "I reread Yevtushenko's Humor after the Thirteenth Symphony. It is worth comparing not only the form but also the power of generalization of phenomena in Shostakovich—his images of “humor" with Yevtushenkov's juggling with light rhymes and especially rhythms. What is the difference? Yevtushenko's is easily composed and wittily invented. Shostakovich has suffered. Yevtushenko: ‘I make a career by not doing it.’ Shostakovich has the power of affirmation and the power of denial. He has a prison and humor—fearless and joyful—a winning, resilient force. Yevtushenko has coquetry with witty antitheses. In Shostakovich, each opposing principle acquires a huge scope of history. In other words: capable lightness, shallow play or scherzo on the historical tragedy… Shostakovich was able to fill Yevtushenko's images with strength and passion; shallow poems became tragic; wordplay—true suffering" ^{[7, p. 433]}.

Already in April 1963, a well-known review of the symphony's premiere by A. Ladygina appeared, which played a significant role in shaping public opinion and banning the work for performance. In particular, it notes that "... the ideological meaning of the Thirteenth Symphony contains significant flaws. The social order remained unfulfilled. D. Shostakovich was changed by his always inherent sense of time, a sense of high responsibility in the face of the tasks that are being solved today in our country. Moreover, his work, as if on purpose, performed in those days when the country was animatedly discussing the materials of the December and March meetings of the leaders of the party and the government with figures of Soviet art, testifies to the composer's misunderstanding of the requirements of the party… It is difficult to write about this, but D. Shostakovich did not understand what society needed, what would objectively serve the Soviet people, inspiring them in the struggle for communism, and what would become a kind of hindrance, an ideological obstacle, a means of arousing unnecessary passions" ^{[8, p. 175]}.

The authorities banned the symphony. In the secret reply of the Central Committee of the CPSU to T. Khrennikov's letter, in which the question was asked about the expediency of a wide performance of the Thirteenth Symphony, the following is written: "In certain circles, Shostakovich’s new work was presented as a ‘symphony of the composer's civic courage,’ and the author himself was praised for ‘courage.’ The fallacy of the ideological conception of the symphony, the political immaturity of the majority of E. Yevtushenko's poems in it is sharply criticized in letters sent to the Central Committee of the CPSU (one of such denunciations was sent by T. Khrennikov himself—V.P.). In connection with the above, it would be considered inappropriate to widely perform this symphony in concert organizations of the country. It would be considered inappropriate to satisfy applications and transfer the score of the Thirteenth Symphony to foreign countries" ^{[9, 10, 11]}. We would like to point out that Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony is now one of the most performed and has firmly entered the repertoire of the most famous orchestras in the world. We state that being polemical for musicologists so far, it still contains a veiled polemic with the current government, and the figurative world of the symphony under consideration is a direct reaction of Shostakovich not only to the events to which the opus is dedicated ("Babi Yar," the words of E. Yevtushenko) ^[12] but also on the reality surrounding him.

^[1] Let me remind you that Shostakovich composed works based on Jewish folk melodies back in the 1940s. It is known that it was at this time that the genocide of Jews flourished in the USSR, and turning to the folklore of this nation was, indeed, a bold and unpromising step for a broad public understanding. All these works were performed and published only after Stalin's death (for example, the cycle "From Jewish Folk Poetry" in 1955). But how else, if the song "Lullaby" from the "From Jewish Folk Poetry" contains the words "Your father is now in Siberia; the tsar is holding him in prison"? It really was a challenge. There was the truth about the existing reality—Stalin was preparing the deportation of all Jews to Siberia.