Word: shostakovich
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Russia's Dmitry Shostakovich, 51, is one of the 20th century's most gifted composers, but that has not kept Soviet politicians from pounding him like a bass drum. In the '30s and '40s Communist officials let him have it fortissimo for writing music that failed to trace a melodic line straight to the heart of the average Russian. Composer Shostakovich has long since recanted his sins and been allowed once again to sing for his supper. The song he sang last week, his brand-new Eleventh Symphony, was supposed to help celebrate the 40th anniversary...
...people. The four movements were played without a break. None of the music came as a surprise to Soviet bigwigs in the audience. It had had its world première shortly before in Leningrad, and just to be absolutely sure everything sounded the way it ought to, Composer Shostakovich had previewed the symphony on the piano for a picked group of Moscow's upper-echelon music lovers and party-line watchers...
...audience could almost see flashes of fire and smell gun smoke as the bugles sounded, the drums beat, and the entire orchestra rose to a grand finale of cannon fire. The Moscow audience applauded the symphony warmly, but not with unusual enthusiasm. Wearing a dark, double-breasted suit, Composer Shostakovich walked up to the stage and took a breathless, jerky bow. Correspondents noted that he was fighting a nervous...
...jazz rhythm section. In his 36 years he has played with a lot of big outfits-Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Garwood Van, Spade Cooley. When Giuffre got out of the Army, he enrolled at the University of Southern California, became interested in Bartok, Hindemith, Shostakovich, Prokofiev. He began to write "linear" music, in which he tried to keep the rhythm section ("It should be felt rather than heard") from conflicting with other instruments. As he sees it, the drums and bass ought to play melody too, not just accompaniment, and then give way to the others...
...clearly there was also opposition to the Khrennikov line. Old Formalist Shostakovich, 50, grumbled about "dry dogmatists who apparently little know and little love music...