The Sound of Tears

Shostakovich

The other night, we attended a classical-music concert at a local venue. One of the pieces played was the Chamber Symphony for Strings in C Minor, Op. 110, by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Somehow, it's also called String Quartet No. 8. You can see by the preceding sentence that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Fortunately, though, this particular chamber orchestra took this particular opportunity to enlighten its audience about this piece and its creator. It's a fascinating story that brings both composer and composition to life.

   While much of what I've found online corresponds to the information we got at the concert, there was one point that I couldn't find but that made perfect sense, given the time (1960) and country (the Soviet Union) in which Shostakovich wrote the piece. Apparently, although he dedicated String Quartet No. 8 "to the victims of fascism and war," his children contend that, in reality, he was dedicating it to all the victims of totalitarianism, including himself. Indeed, his own initials show up in
musical notation throughout. The repeated three loud musical outbursts in the piece could be imagined to allude to the pounding of the dreaded KGB on a door.
   Shostakovich actually wrote this Quartet while in Dresden working on a joint East German-Soviet film about the bombing of that city in World War II. Depressing enough, but it was also soon after he had suffered the first symptoms of a muscular disease and had reluctantly joined the Communist Party. In all, it is a dark piece but with moments ~ fleeting moments only ~ of hope. He wrote to a friend that it "is so powerful that when I was writing it, tears flowed freely. Since coming home, I've tried to play it through twice, but again the tears started flowing": http://cso.org/uploadedFiles/1_Tickets_and_Events/Program_Notes/ProgramNotes_Shostakovich_ChamberSymphony.pdf and http://www.classicfm.com/composers/shostakovich/guides/dmitri-shostakovich-life/#3c7xJIwbBIjuPjB4.97
   You can hear the Symphony for yourself here (video): http://yhoo.it/1zXomKq