Download NCEA Level 3 Music Studies 90497

NCEA Level 3 Music Studies 90497 - Examine the contexts which influence the expressive
qualities of music
Dmitri Shostakovich - 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950-1)
The twenty-four Preludes and Fugues for the pianoforte by Dmitri Shostakovich are rarely
performed in their entirety nowadays, and when they are, it is considered a technical and pianistic
feat. In them, Shostakovich definitively proved that not only was he a master of contrapuntal writing
in the style of the Baroque masters (J. S. Bach with the Well-Tempered Clavier particularly comes
to mind in this context), but that he could execute such complex polyphony while also
communicating an extremely cathartic emotional landscape, the scale of which is not often seen in
solo piano works.
Let us begin with a general analysis of the work as a whole. It is, as the title suggests, a
comprehensive cycle of twenty-four separate, but thematically and structurally linked pieces. Each
of these pieces consist of two “movements”, the first being a stylistically improvisatory prelude,
which links thematically with a more complicated, contrapuntal, polyphonically-textured fugue in
the same key. Each prelude-fugue pair is linked to the next by use of the “circle of fifths”, a device
often encountered in classical theory of music. Put simply, the first pair is in the tonic major,
followed by a pair in the submediant (or relative) minor using the same key signature, followed by a
pair in the major key a fifth above the major key of the original pair, and so on. Enharmonic
changes are used where necessary. In Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues, the order of keys is
such that the cycle begins in C Major and ends in D Minor; in this way, all of they possible keys are
covered. This is a very typical way of ordering such a cycle, and it is the same format used by
Frederic Chopin in his cycle of 24 Preludes for the piano. Some would consider the structure of the
overall work to be irrelevant, given that it is essentially a collection of disparate pieces, joined only
loosely by an opus number and a cycle of keys. However, this specific ordering already reveals to
the astute listener that Shostakovich is drawing inspiration from the old masters of piano writing Chopin was known, in his day, as the “poet of the piano” - so we can expect at least some of the
expressive qualities of the music to be informed by his stylistic antecedents. The pieces
themselves vary considerably in pace, length, technical difficulty and compositional complexity. For
example, the A Minor Prelude and Fugue are marked Allegro and Allegretto respectively, and
require a very secure level of finger dexterity in order for a successful performance to be had,
whereas the arguably more profound and complex F-sharp Major Prelude and Fugue are much
slower, being marked, respectively, Moderato con moto and Adagio, calling on a huge amount of
tone control and temporal stability in order for each of the slow-moving fugue’s five voices to be
heard distinctly. The complete work is considered a tour-de-force in any pianist’s repertoire, and
can take in excess of two and a half hours to play in its entirety.
Let us now examine the more general socio-historio-political contexts of the work, and of
Shostakovich’s oeuvre in general. Since 1917, Russia had been governed by a group of extreme
social Marxists known as the Bolsheviks. The early Soviet government, as we have already seen,
favoured and encouraged experimental and avant-garde music as it was, to put it idealistically, the
will of the people - the vox populis - that dictated cultural policy. And in post-revolutionary, postRomantic Russia, the people wanted to create and hear forward-thinking music that reflected the
multitude of ideologies that were becoming apparent within this society. Shostakovich was a young
man during this period, and, already a talented pianist and composer, his work reflected the
experimental nature of the musical landscape of the day, even incorporating rudimentary atonality
and twelve-tone methods in his writing (although his music always tended to return to a more basic
tonality).
Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet leader, in 1924, Soviet music began to move
towards a new horizon, one much darkened by the shadow of one tyrannical figure - Josef Stalin.
Under Stalin, socialist realism became the aesthetic to which Soviet composers were expected to
conform. Music was to be either proletarian (relevant and understandable to those of the working
class), typical (representative of everyday life in the Soviet Union), realistic (in the most basic
representational sense - in music, this criterion led to the increased incorporation of folk music into
otherwise classical compositions), or partisan (supporting the aims of the State and the Bolshevik
party). Combined with Stalin’s unpredictable nature when it came to cultural matters, as well as the
cut-throat nature of his second-in-command Andrei Zhdanov and his Soviet Composers’ Union,
being a composer suddenly became a very difficult job. Shostakovich’s music indeed suffered from
this constant repression, and it certainly didn’t help that his work was constantly being banned for
being too “formalist” in structure and tonality.
The Stalinist period is the period in which we find Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues. An
experienced composer within the Soviet Union (having already composed 86 previous opuses),
and relatively popular even in the West, he knew that if any anti-Stalinist comment was to be made
in any of his works, it would have to be undertaken with the utmost subtlety. Music critic, historian
and musicologist Alex Ross considers the Preludes and Fugues to be the work of “the other
Shostakovich”, maintaining that the wary composer used his less public and flamboyant solo and
chamber works to express his true feelings about life in the Soviet Union and his own personal
state.
While it is difficult to tell if the work is deliberately anti-Stalinist, many of its expressive qualities
suggest that it may, at a fundamental level, be non-conformist, both aurally and ideologically.
Certainly, one is prepared to admit that on the surface level, a large bulk of the work seems to
conform with the tenets of socialist realism as outlined by Stalin in his 1932 decree “On the
Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organisations”. For example, the “realistic” criterion of the
decree is adhered to in pieces such as the A Major Prelude, the E Major Prelude, and the B Major
Prelude, all of which are centred heavily on a foundation of traditional folkloric melody and are
predominantly diatonic in their harmonic treatments (with the exception of a few idiosyncratic
moments of chromatic savagery in the B Major Prelude). The A Major Fugue, all tonic,
subdominant, dominant and submediant major broken chords organised in a fugal pattern, bursts
with the juxtaposition of partisanic optimism with a certain delicate beauty, the likes of which are
not often seen in Soviet music of this period (or indeed of any period).
However, the fact remains that the work was not well received by the Soviet Composers’ Union
when it was first played for them by Shostakovich himself in a special meeting of the General
Assembly in May 1951. Looking closely at a number of the fugues, it is not difficult to see why they
were so offended. Many of the more complicated fugues seem to represent a return to the
harmonically experimental style of Shostakovich’s youth, with the brusque waltz-step of the D-flat
Major Fugue being a tour-de-force of fugal chromaticism, with the subject almost resembling a
serialist tone row, the only semitone omitted being G-natural, which, oddly enough, is the tritonal,
or most dissonant, interval above the tonic. The fugue, at the very beginning, is marked ff
marcatissimo sempre al Fine (always very loud, marked and accented until the end of the piece),
and what follows is so brutal, so harsh, so primal in its musical energy, that the tritonal interval is
hardly even needed to complete the shrill tone palette Shostakovich utilised. The tone of this
fugue, and the E-flat Minor Fugue in the same Book, seems almost accusatory, holding aloft a
defiant fist at the Soviet system that forced composers to create music that was not their own, but
that rather should be attributed to the State, so great was their hand in writing it. Perhaps
Shostakovich drew confidence from his critical successes during the Second World War;
nonetheless, he was not rewarded for his efforts in this monumental piano work, and murmurings
of Shostakovich creating “muddle instead of music” began again to circulate throughout the Soviet
musical scene.
The form of the work itself is perhaps a subtle criticism of the Soviet Composers’ Union’s stance
on allowable musical influences. Shostakovich is the only notable composer to have composed
pieces specifically titles “fugues” in the Soviet Union, and certainly, he was only Soviet composer
to ever write a sequence of 24 preludes and fugues. The reason for this was that outside musical
influences were dismissed by the Union as being “deplorable examples of Western decadence”,
and the fugal form, shunted into popularity by the “decadent Western” composer J. S. Bach during
the Baroque period, was no exception to this rule. The fugue was deemed “Western and archaic”,
and therefore unusable by the forward-thinking Soviet composer. If we agree with Alex Ross’s
comment that Shostakovich used the solo composition as a vehicle for his innermost thoughts, we
must also consider that every single aspect of this composition was thoroughly thought over before
being presented to the publishers and censors - and that his effective refusal to recognise the
Union’s “recommendations” in something as obvious as the form of the entire work was entirely
intentional.
During performance of what is generally regarded as the most emotionally challenging and
cathartic of the pieces contained in this opus, the Prelude and Fugue No. Twenty-four in D Minor, it
is impossible to ignore the social, historical, cultural and political weight behind each note. From
the bell-like tollings of the opening bars of the Prelude, to the cautious entry of the first fugal
subject, to the rousing double-fugue, tierce-de-Picardie finale of the technically demanding Fugue,
each note has an emotional string attached to it. The Fugue is constantly leading the performer
and audience alike down blind alleys as it momentarily modulates into tonally unrelated keys,
sidesteps awkwardly into moments of serene una corda beauty, and bludgeons its way savagely
back into chromatic, dissonant savagery, just as Shostakovich himself was led down blind alleys of
ideology by Soviet policies. I think it is this facet of Shostakovich’s most weighty and underappreciated solo piano work that is most often overlooked by performers, but it is also the facet
that deserves the most attention, as ultimately, understanding of the socio-political circumstances
that fuelled the composition of this piece is what will inform the performers of the significance
behind the expressive qualities contained therein.