Schostakowitschs Musiksprache

Shostakovich's paradox remains as exciting as ever - for audiences and scholars alike. The thirteenth volume of Schostakowitsch-Studien brings together 34 contributions from the 2019 and 2021 symposia of the German Shostakovich Society. Pioneers from its early days have their say, as do young scholars and representatives of neighboring disciplines such as film and political science. They have uncovered many hidden clues in the music itself. Detailed examinations of the Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, Twelfth and Fifteenth Symphonies, the cello sonata, the two cello concertos, the viola sonata and the cycle of preludes and fugues provide surprising insights. Both the political and cultural environment of Shostakovich's composing are illuminated and the extent to which it is permissible to impose content and narratives on Shostakovich's works is examined.

The Russian composer has frequently been the subject of films and novels, and his music is often used in ballet - all of which creates new legends. Today's music lovers listen to Shostakovich's music differently to his contemporaries, for whom the sounding world of that time was as natural as it was for the composer - "Foreign voices - own language" is what the composer Boris Yoffe called his lecture. On the other hand, today we have new editions of sheet music and manuscripts at our disposal that allow deeper insights into the workshop. All of this is also the subject of current Shostakovich research. Some English-speaking researchers have lost their way in forty years of Shostakovich wars, fighting over words rather than music. This shows how important independent German-language research remains.

Exciting discoveries were made at the symposium "Shostakovich's musical language - compositional techniques and narration", for example in the field of the grotesque (Amrei Flechsig), in the passacaglia movements (Wendelin Bitzan), in the late works (Krzysztof Meyer), in connection with the works on Dolmatowski texts (Dorothea Redepenning) and in the film music (Robert Rabenalt). Gottfried Eberle discovered astonishing bridges between his early and late works.

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The Schostakowitsch-Studien Volumes 1-11 have now been digitized and are available for free download on the website of the German Shostakovich Society: Volumes 1-11 of the Schostakowitsch-Studien