Life During Wartime

I've finally hit the halfway mark in The Rest is Noise and we're moving into the 1950s and beyond. The recent chapters have been incredibly fascinating and heartbreaking as they've discussed music during Hitler and Stalin's dictatorships and the way these governments manipulated composers and the use of music. Many composers were silenced either through threats, fear or murder while others were propped up like puppets to glorify the nations. Composers had few options. They could leave the country and the life they knew and loved, refuse to play along and suffer the consequences or they could swallow their morality and give themselves over to the control of the state. It's an aspect of the horror of World War II that I had never read about.

Dmitri Shostakovich's tale is deeply disturbing and highlights the hoops some jumped through to continue following their passion even as it was twisted and manipulated by the governments they despised. The Soviet government officially denounced him twice during his lifetime so had to learn to subvert his true emotions and code his beliefs inside music that would pass muster with the cultural gatekeepers of the era. After his second denunciation in 1949, he was forced to publicly repent as most of his works became banned from public performance.

In 1941, Shostakovich completed his seventh symphony which he dedicated to the city of Leningrad. In its time it was viewed as a symbol of resistance and a condemnation of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. It is also viewed by some as a depiction of Shostakovich's disgust a totalitarianism of all kinds, including that practiced by his own country but this is a more modern interpretation. During the war, the Leningrad symphony made Shostakovich a symbol for Soviet propaganda. It debuted in New York on July 19, 1942 with professional badass Arturo Toscanini conducting. To get there the score had to be transferred to a microfilm which was put in a tin can, flown to Tehran, taken to Cairo in a car, then put on another plane to South America and lastly flown to NYC. But the most amazing story about the symphony concerns its debut performance in Leningrad itself. As author Alex Ross writes:

"Besieged Leningrad heard the symphony on August 9, 1942, under the most dramatic circumstances imaginable. The score was flown in by military aircraft in June, and a severely depleted Leningrad Radio Orchestra began learning it. After a mere fifteen musicians showed up for the initial rehearsal, the commanding general ordered all competent musicians to report from the front lines. The players would break from the rehearsals to return to their duties, which sometimes included the digging of mass graves for victims of the siege. Three members of the orchestra died of starvation before the premiere took place. the opposing German general heard about the performance in advance and planned to disrupt it, but the Soviets preempted him by launching a bombardment of German positions...An array of loudspeakers then broadcast the Leningrad into the silence of no-man's land."