Testimony Shostakovich

1. Dmitri Shostakovich Biography
2. Testimony Shostakovich Dvd
3. Testimony Shostakovich Chicago Citation
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1. More than Dmitri Shostakovich’s music will be incorporated in the soundscape; anticipate a selection of relevant Russian greats. The original ‘TESTIMONY’ was an international best seller in the late ’70s, his memoirs dictated to a young musicologist, Solomon Volkov.
2. This is the powerful memoirs which an ailing Dmitri Shostakovich dictated to a young Russian musicologist, Solomon Volkov. When it was first published in 1979, it became an international bestseller. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Vladimir Ashkenazy, as well as black-and-white photos.
3. Of Russia and a masterful composer. It was not until the publication in 1979 of a book called Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich surfaced that debates began to take form that would eventually charge into the realm of violent disputes from many sides. This book, written by Solomon Volkov, portrayed Shostakovich as a bitter dissident.

Testimony: The Story of Shostakovich is a 1988 British musical drama film directed by Tony Palmer and starring Ben Kingsley, Sherry Baines and Robert Stephens.The film is based on the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) as dictated in the book Testimony (edited by Solomon Volkov, ISBN 0-87910-021-4) and filmed in Panavision.

This article attempts to reconstruct the persona of the ‘Old Shostakovich’ in Britain—the pre-Testimony Shostakovich that is now a distant memory. Through examining widely disseminated sources such as newspaper reviews, radio broadcasts, articles in popular magazines, and programme notes, it traces Shostakovich's reception history in a culture that effected a shift from staunchly defending music's independence from politics to insisting upon political readings of Shostakovich's music. The reconstruction of the history of Shostakovich's British reception charts a range of changing attitudes: critical responses to the role of music in society; Britain's growing awareness of the social and cultural effects of Stalinism; and—most important—Shostakovich's developing stature as his music became more frequently played. Given the scale of this task, the article focuses on the reception of the Fifth Symphony, arguably the work that has accumulated the heaviest layer of interpretative commentary and has been the most controversial in Britain from its first performance there in 1939 until the present day.

Abstract

The life, politics, and music of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich have been subjects of extreme controversy. Despite the turmoil of his dealings with Stalin, many people thought of him as a loyal servant of Russia and a masterful composer. It was not until the publication in 1979 of a book called Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich surfaced that debates began to take form that would eventually charge into the realm of violent disputes from many sides. This book, written by Solomon Volkov, portrayed Shostakovich as a bitter dissident. One year later, an American researcher and specialist in Russian and Soviet music by the name of Laurel Fay responded to Testimony with an article in The Russian Review entitled “Shostakovich Versus Volkov: Whose Testimony?” in which she brought forth evidence of falsification. Presently, Shostakovich researchers are often split into two schools of thought: revisionist and anti-revisionist. The revisionists agree with Volkov’s portrayal in Testimony that Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissenter. The anti-revisionist views cover a much broader spectrum, but many reject the authenticity of Testimony and are of the opinion that to think of the Russian composer as a dissenter is irrelevant or entirely false, some to more extent than others. Testimony seems to lie at the heart of these debates, and it is around these purported memoirs and the evidence for and against them that this paper will be focusing on. While the memoirs of Testimony and its claims of authenticity must be treated with caution, the Testimony-portrayal of Shostakovich corresponds with the views of his friends and family and therefore provides valuable insight into the composer’s life and state of mind.

Volume

10

Issue

1

Article Number

1

DOI

10.15385/jmo.2019.10.1.1

Recommended Citation

Bahorik, Hanna (2019) 'Shostakovich and the Memoirs,' Musical Offerings: Vol. 10 : No. 1 , Article 1.
DOI: 10.15385/jmo.2019.10.1.1
Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/musicalofferings/vol10/iss1/1

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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Dmitri Shostakovich Biography

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