I recently read the British novel The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes, which is a fictionalized biography of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. I had heard much of this before, but I’ll bet most of you—even you readers of this blog, who are above average on issues of religion and society—have not. Read about Shostakovich and you will be amazed at what he endured as he spent a lifetime writing music, much of it sublime.
The early part of Shostakovich’s career was under the dictatorship of Josef Stalin. His responsibility as a composer was to write not what he thought was good music but what Stalin thought was good music, something that might change from one moment to the next. Composers whom Stalin had previously liked might find themselves blotted out, metaphorically or physically, shortly thereafter. Mediocre composers would literally lecture Shostakovich on the kind of music he should write—at least, until these mediocre composers themselves vanished into the Stalin nightmare.
When I went to a performance of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony—widely considered one of the best works of the twentieth century—the conductor gave a pre-concert lecture. (Karl Haas, the host of NPR’s Adventures in Good Music back in the day, considered the finale of the Fifth Symphony to be the best example of twentieth-century musical inspiration.) The conductor said that Shostakovich kept a suitcase packed at all times, for at least a period of his life, in case one of Stalin’s stooges came for him in the middle of the night. How Shostakovich could write inspired music under such conditions is beyond the capacity for most of us to understand.
So total was the power of Soviet control over people’s minds under Stalin that they were not even allowed to cry. How could comrades who lived in the best society the world had ever seen, under its infallible leader Stalin, ever be unhappy? It would be a crime. Literally. But during the first performance of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony, the third movement was slow and emotional. It included a portion the conductor explained was the bridge of sighs (Rehearsal number 84, if you have a score), which began as an oboe solo. He said that many in the audience began to cry, in perhaps the only place in which they could do so anonymously.
Of course, Stalin did not say that he was the sole arbiter of good music. He claimed that all Russian music should celebrate the spirit of the Russian people—that is, folk music. Music, he said, must be for the people. Composers such as Shostakovich were required to write music that people liked, that is, music that Stalin thought they liked.
As a general principle, I think that, indeed, artists (including writers such as myself, and composers) should produce works that uplift people, even though readers and listeners might have to endure a lot of pain to get to the conclusion. I do not write just whatever comes into my head, and claim freedom of expression. What I write should do something good for YOU, even if you don’t see it at first. That is my fundamental belief.
Soviet composers were supposed to write music that celebrated the Russian spirit. And this is what many of them, their names now mostly forgotten, did. Examples include Reinhold Glière (The Red Poppy, especially the Russian Sailor’s Dance) who, despite his name, was Soviet, and Aram Khatchatourian, composer of the Sabre Dance. Groups such as the Osipov Balalaika Orchestra and the Kalinka children’s dance troupe performed almost nothing else. But it is difficult for me to get upset about this. I absolutely love the performances of both of these groups. How can one not love this children’s dance performance? Click on it and watch! Here, the children are dutiful little communists, but the result is spellbinding. It is my granddaughter’s favorite performance. I hesitate to write this, because we are now enemies of Russia. Of course, our enemy is Putin, not all Russians; just as in Shostakovich’s time, it was Stalin, not all Russians.
Many published writings of Shostakovich praise the Soviet empire. But the Soviet leaders wrote those things and required Shostakovich to sign them. People even today think that Shostakovich really believed that shit. The few Americans and Europeans who knew that Shostakovich was forced to sign his name to it wished that he would stand up and be a martyr for truth. But it was not just his life that was on the line, but all of his friends and family as well, who would vanish into labor camps and state orphanages. Worse yet were the American liberals who thought Stalin really had created a communist paradise. If you believe this, just consider the million Ukrainians who starved in a politically-determined famine commanded by Stalin, as explained by Roger Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow.
Was it possible that, deep inside the rough exterior of the communist dictators, there was a soft heart? In Barnes’s novel, the answer was no. As granite encloses yet more granite, there is no cave of conscience to be found. Many world leaders, from Stalin to Hitler to Trump, have no core of conscience. The best we can hope for, suggests Barnes, is that the noise of time results in the whisper of history.
I wrote three quatrains as I was finishing Barnes’s novel:
Defiant beauty
Even when Soviet boots crushed
His wildflower
Into the spring mud.
His message was a beam
Of deadly ultraviolet light
Invisible
To everyone, including himself.
He was a sunflower
Turning his wizened head
Toward a sunrise
That was no longer there.
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