<snip>
Can you assign an ideology to a musical structure, if there are no words in
it?
<snip?
Well, we would think not. Shostakovich and his friends certainly thought
not. Such a pity no-one managed to convince Stalin....
Mind you, composers did live consciously dangerously during that era. Though
music on the face of it doesn't carry the political dangers of poetry, that
didn't stop composers making musical settings of problematic texts. Consider
Shostakovich's Thirteenth symphony (Babi Yar), which sets poems by
Evtushenko. This ran into problems with the authorities, after several
triumphant performances indicated that it was -um- striking a chord with
audiences. The poet backed down and modified his text, thus leaving
Shostakovich in the awkward position of violating the logic of his music
(and also incidentally of his non-antiSemitic beliefs), or leaving his
symphony intact, with all the political risks this entailed. He took the
latter course, as Alison earlier suggested Bach would have done, made no
changes, and the symphony eventually crept back into performance.
It must have been a hell of a situation to live and write in. And of course
still continues, in various places under various regimes.
best
Joanna
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