Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad Symphony, was begun in Leningrad, completed in the city of Samara (then known as Kuybyshev) in December 1941, and premiered in that city on March 5, 1942. At first dedicated to Lenin, it was eventually submitted in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played under dire circumstances on August 9, 1942, nearly a year into the siege by German forces.Galina Ustvolskaya's interview in the book by Olga Gladkova "Music as Bewitchment" (1999)."Dmitri Shostakovich o vremeni i o sebe – Dmitri Shostakovich: on his time and himself. Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1980, page 75.
The performance was broadcast by loudspeaker throughout the city and to the German forces in a show of resilience and defiance. The Leningrad soon became popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to fascism and totalitarianism, thanks in part to the composer's microfilming of the score in Samara and its clandestine delivery, via Tehran and Cairo, to New York, where Arturo Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a broadcast performance on July 19, 1942, and Time magazine placed Shostakovich on its cover. That popularity faded somewhat after 1945, but the work is still regarded as a major musical testament to the 27 million Soviet people who lost their lives in World War II, and it is often played at Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried.
Length and form Shostakovich's longest symphony, the work typically takes approximately 80 minutes to perform. It has four movements. Shostakovich at first gave them titlesIakubov, Manashir. "Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, How It Was Composed", in Iakubov, Manashir (ed.) Dmitri Shostakovich New Collected Works, 1st Series, Vol. 7, 'Symphony No 7 Op. 60 Score', (Moscow: DSCH Publishers, 2010), 260—"War", "Reminiscence", "Home Expanses", and "Victory"—but he soon withdrew these and left the movements with their tempo markings alone.
I. Allegretto The first movement is in a modified sonata form that the musicologist Hugh Ottaway described as "misplaced and misshapen". It begins with a broad theme played by the strings in unison, which is later echoed by the woodwinds. This is followed by a slower section played by flutes and strings, which segues into a 22-measure ostinato march that Shostakovich anticipated would be compared to Ravel's Boléro. At the end of the twelfth statement of the theme, the brass present an inverted version of the theme, which is developed into a climax. After this a slower, two-part section follows, with a bassoon solo introduced by a solo clarinet; then a soft recapitulation of the opening theme is played by the strings. The movement's brief coda repeats fragments of the "invasion" theme, played by a solo muted trumpet and percussion.
II. Moderato (poco allegretto) The second movement is the symphony's shortest. Shostakovich referred to it as a "very lyrical scherzo". It begins in the latter vein with a quiet, playful theme in the strings. Moments later, a solo oboe plays a high variation on the tune. Other instruments continue with tunes of their own for several moments. Then, in the middle of the movement, woodwinds interject with a brash, shrill theme, followed by brass, then strings, then woodwinds. This eventually leads to a quick, majestic passage that is another ostinato, but different from the invasion theme in the first movement. The remaining third of the movement is much like the beginning of the second movement.Steinberg, 557.
III. Adagio The third movement begins with slow, sustained woodwind notes, accentuated by the horns. This simple theme cadences, and is followed by a declamatory theme played by violins. Winds and brass repeat the string theme, which the strings take over with another brief variation. This transitions directly into a faster passage. The violins return with the opening theme of the movement. This builds into a somewhat frantic passage underlaid by an ostinato in the lower strings. This leads into a loud development section. The passage ends quickly, with the woodwinds bringing back the original theme, again echoed by the strings, just as in the beginning. The final third of the movement continues in this vein.Steinberg, 557–558.
IV. Allegro non troppo The finale begins without interruption with a quiet melody in the strings. The high strings hold the high notes, and are joined briefly by woodwinds. The low strings suddenly begin a quick march-like tune that is answered by violins and the rest of the orchestra. A transitional passage follows, with three-note figures played by high strings, accented by slap pizzicati in the cellos and basses. A slower and sharply accented section follows, which leads to a development section, with themes from earlier movements. Woodwinds build on one of these until violins take over with another theme that builds to the climax. The symphony ends in the key of C major.
Instrumentation
The work is written for a large orchestra consisting of:
Woodwinds
2 oboes cor anglais
bass clarinet 2 bassoons contrabassoon
Brass 8 horns 6 trumpets 6 trombones tuba
Percussion 5 timpani bass drum
cymbals tam-tam triangle tambourine xylophone
Keyboard piano
Strings 2 harps; and a minimum of: 16 1st violins 14 2nd violins 12 violas 10 cellos 8 double basses
According to the score, horns 5-8, trumpets 4-6, and trombones 4-6 are separate from the rest of the brass section.
Composition "Music about terror" There are conflicting accounts of when Shostakovich began the symphony. Officially, he was said to have composed it in response to the German invasion. In his memoirs, the violinist Rostislav Dubinsky said that Shostakovich had already completed the first movement a year earlier. According to statements attributed to the composer in Solomon Volkov's Testimony, he had planned the symphony before the German attack and had "other enemies of humanity" in mind when he composed the "invasion theme" of the first movement.Volkov, Testimony, 155. In the book, he is also reported to have said that in dedicating the symphony to Leningrad, he had in mind not the city under German siege, but the city "Stalin destroyed and Hitler merely finished off."Volkov, Testimony, 156.
Shostakovich did not like talking about what he called "creative plans", preferring to announce his works upon their completion.Volkov, St. Petersburg, 427. He did like to say, "I think slowly but I write fast." In practice this meant that Shostakovich usually had a work completed in his head before he began writing it down.Volkov, Shostakovich and Stalin, 171. The Leningrad Symphony would not have made its announcement without the composer's consent, so Shostakovich likely had a clear idea at that time of what his Seventh Symphony would portray.
Soviet music critic Lev Lebedinsky, a friend of the composer's for years, confirmed after the dawn of glasnost ("openness") under Mikhail Gorbachev that Shostakovich had conceived the Seventh Symphony before Hitler invaded Russia:
Another important witness was the daughter-in-law of Maxim Litvinov, the man who served as Soviet foreign minister before the war, then was dismissed by Stalin. She heard Shostakovich play the Seventh Symphony on the piano in a private home during the war. The guests later discussed the music:
While Shostakovich could speak like this only in a narrow circle of friends, it did not stop him from hinting to the Soviet Press about a hidden agenda for the Seventh Symphony.Volkov, St. Petersburg, 430. He insisted, for instance, that the "central place" of the first movement was not the "invasion section" (the part journalists usually asked about first). Rather, the movement's core was the tragic music that follows the invasion section, which the composer described as "a funeral march or, rather, a requiem." He continued, "After the requiem comes an even more tragic episode. I do not know how to characterize that music. Perhaps it is a mother's tears or even the feeling that the sorrow is so great that there are no more tears left."Sovietskoe iskusstvo [Soviet Art], October 9, 1941.
"Inquisition for blood" The Nazi attack and consequent relaxing of Soviet censorship gave Shostakovich the hope of writing the work for a mass audience. Shostakovich's plan was for a single-movement symphony, including a chorus and a requiem-like passage for a vocal soloist, with a text taken from the Psalms of David. With the help of his best friend, critic Ivan Sollertinsky, who was knowledgeable about the Bible, he selected excerpts from the Ninth Psalm. The idea of individual suffering became interwoven in Shostakovich's mind with the Lord God's vengeance for the taking of innocent blood (Verse 12, New King James Version).Volkov, Shostakovich and Stalin, 175.
A public performance of a work with such a text would have been impossible before the German invasion. Now it was feasible, at least in theory, with the reference to "blood" applied at least officially to Hitler. With Stalin appealing to the Soviets' patriotic and religious sentiments, the authorities were no longer suppressing Orthodox themes or images.Volkov, St. Petersburg, 427–428.
"Invasion" theme Musicologist Ludmila Mikheyeva (who is also Ivan Sollertinsky's daughter-in-law) maintains that Shostakovich played the theme and its variations for his students before the war with Germany began.<ref>See 111 sinfonii: spravochnik-putevoditel''' (St. Petersburg, 2000), 618.</ref>
While the word "invasion" was used by commentators in numerous articles and reviews, Shostakovich never used it to describe the episode or theme. "I did not set myself the goal of a naturalistic depiction of military action (the roar of planes, the crash of tanks, cannon fire). I did not compose so-called battle music. I wanted to convey the context of grim events."Quoted in D. Shostakovich o vremeni i o sebe 1926–1975 (Moscow, 1980), 96.
The "invasion theme" does not sound threatening, at least at first. For its latter half, Shostakovich quotes Graf Danilo's entrance song, "Da geh' ich zu Maxim," from Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow. The Merry Widow was Hitler's favorite operetta, happily for Soviet propagandists writing about the symphony. A version of this song may have already existed in Russia. Set to the words "I'll go and see Maxim", it was reportedly sung jokingly in the Shostakovich household to the composer's son.MacDonald, 159–160. Arthur Lourié called the theme a "trite, intentionally silly motif", adding, "This tune can be whistled by any Soviet man on the street. ..."Novyi zhurnal, 4 (1943), 371. Conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky echoed Lourié when he called it a generalized image of spreading stupidity and triteness.Mravinsky, in conversations with Solomon Volkov, Leningrad, 1969.
Tensions not resolved Two weeks before he planned to complete the symphony-requiem, Shostakovich played what he had finished to date for Sollertinsky, who was being evacuated with the Leningrad Philharmonic. While playing the music, Shostakovich realized that what he had written was not a complete work in itself but actually the beginning of something much larger, since the tensions brought up in the symphony-requiem had not been resolved. The question now became whether to stay in the city to continue working or to evacuate and resume the work after a long hiatus. By the time he decided to evacuate, it was too late—the Germans had cut off the rail link to the city. He and his family were trapped.