On September 8, 80 years ago, the siege of Leningrad (today's St. Petersburg) began for two years, four months, two weeks and five days.
It was one of the worst battles in world war II history. The Nazis mobilized tanks and heavy troops to surround Leningrad. During this period, Leningrad was cut off from all food and drinking water, and all kinds of supplies could only be imported along the treacherous frozen lake, and from time to time they had to withstand shelling by Nazi troops. Afterwards, according to official Soviet statistics, 600,000 people starved to death in Leningrad alone.
For fans of classical music, it also has a special significance today, because when Leningrad was besieged, the most important composer of the Soviet Union, Shostakovich, was in Leningrad.
What is Shostakovich, who is trapped in Leningrad, doing? The answer: He is writing the seventh symphony of his life.
The second week after the siege, Shostakovich went on radio to announce that he was writing Symphony No. 7. He said:
I want the listener in front of the radio to know that life in our city is still going on normally.
In March of the following year, the song was completed. It premiered in the rear city of Kubyshev, then in Moscow, and finally in Leningrad in August.
It took 5 months to perform in Leningrad because the city could not put together a symphony orchestra. Forced to do so, the orchestra openly recruited "people who know how to play an instrument" to the public, and after several rehearsals, it premiered at the Leningrad Grand Theater.
The citizens of Leningrad endured hunger and rushed to the premiere. The cannon fire outside the arena was clearly audible, the scrawny conductor swung his baton vigorously, and the players performed as if they had exhausted the last bit of strength. After the performance, many musicians were carried out of the theater on stretchers.
The legendary premiere left no recordings, but according to some surviving memories, the show was perfect even in such harsh circumstances.
The score of Symphony No. 7 was photographed and transported to the United States by Soviet aircraft, followed by Toscanini conducted by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded as a radio version, and broadcast to the world. Soon, Symphony No. 7 became the music of the anti-fascist camp around the world.
In the first movement of this four-movement symphony, Shostakovich wrote an extremely terrifying piece of music. The drums kept beating out a fixed, rapid rhythm that sounded like a constant gunshot. On top of this rhythm, Shostakovich let a disturbing, heavy melody repeat and repeat. The melody did not develop at all, did not change at all, the only change was that at the beginning, only a few instruments were playing, and then different instruments slowly joined, so that the original faint, subtle uneasiness finally became a solemn, breathless huge uneasiness.
Many people say that this music symbolizes the advancing Nazi army. However, I am afraid that things are not so simple. After Stalin's death, the late Shostakovich once said an intriguing passage:
The war brought suffering to the Soviet people, but it also unexpectedly brought the right to tell the pain.
This means that under Stalin's rule, the people had no right to complain of suffering. Once you talk about pain, it means that soviet rule is not good enough, which means that you criticize the government. Criticizing the government means that you are on the side of the enemies of the people.
When Shostakovich was 30 years old, Stalin himself attended to see his operas. For Shostakovich, who had already had a smooth sailing on the musical road, this was originally another opportunity to make a splash, but the next day Pravda published a music review that criticized Shostakovich to the point of no end, and even said that Shostakovich "has chosen to move closer to bourgeois tastes."
The review is unsigned, but is generally considered to have been written in accordance with (or speculated) on Stalin's opinion— that Stalin did not like the style of the opera.
After the music review was published, Shostakovich found that the neighbors who usually greeted him stopped paying attention to him, and his friends avoided him. Everyone is afraid to get involved with the object of criticism named by Pravda. The theater took his work off the shelves urgently, and for a while no one was able to ask him to write music.
During this time, Shostakovich put a suitcase in front of his house containing his belongings and a change of clothes, so that one day, when someone was going to come and take him, he would not have to let his wife and children see his mess, but would take the suitcase and leave.
Under the coercion of the political environment, Shostakovich, of course, bowed his head. He apologized and confessed his mistakes several times, and changed his musical style several times in order to avoid being listed as the "enemy of the people" again.
The following year, Shostakovich handed over his Symphony No. 5, which was also his first symphony after changing his style. In this work, Shostakovich changed the ambiguity, complexity, and disharmony that were often found in his past works, but wrote many pleasant and beautiful passages. However, Shostakovich has only just experienced an unprecedented period of low in his life!
So, in the face of this beautiful music, Michael Tilson Thomas, a conductor who once conducted Symphony No. 5, felt:
I think it's like someone whipping you with a whip, but you still have to say, 'I'm so happy!' I'm so happy! ’
After reviewing Shostakovich's life story, listening to the first movement of Symphony No. 7 again, the terrible passage that is constantly repeated, is likely to reveal a different meaning to us.
Some people say that this music was conceived long before the siege of Leningrad, so what it symbolizes is not the artillery fire of the Nazi attack on Leningrad, but shostakovich's war, which he can finally write about the repression and panic he constantly felt under Stalin's regime.
"I've been waiting for the execution all my life." Shostakovich is said to have said such a sentence in his later years. When we listen to Shostakovich's music today, it seems impossible not to look back at the political environment at that time, nor to speculate about what Shostakovich was telling us through his music under Stalin's rule.