Shostakovich: String Quartet No.8 in C minor, Op.110 (1960)
Largo
Allegro molto
Allegretto
Largo
Largo
The strongly introspective side of Shostakovich’s musical personality, which had so pervaded the seventh quartet, quickly found a further outlet – although his inspiration this time was drawn from an altogether more far reaching source. In May 1960, immediately after the completion of No.7, the composer was in Dresden with the Mosfilm Group, working on a film (Five Days – Five Nights) about the rescue of treasures in the Dresden Gallery. The city was still in a ravaged state after its sufferings at the hands of retaliatory British bombers one night in 1945. Being surrounded by such man inflicted devastation, he could not help but be reminded of the siege of his beloved Leningrad earlier in the same war – an event which he himself experienced at first hand as a voluntary fire fighter. His reaction to this two-tiered experience – the horror of Leningrad on the one hand, together with the grim jolt to his memory which now recalled it – was an astonishing burst of concentrated creativity which saw the eighth quartet completed in just three days: a particularly remarkable achievement considering the diverse sources of some of the musical material. There is certainly an impression of white hot inspiration from beginning to end which, together with its unusual autobiographical and programmatic overtones, has won for this quartet a popularity far exceeding any of the others: it would be no more than the slightest of exaggerations to claim for it more performances in the West than of the other fourteen put together; and even if it is not entirely representative of his quartets up to that time it does provide an excellent introduction to his music through the medium of the string quartet.
Maxim Shostakovich has said, “My father preferred to keep silent those thoughts and feelings which he put into his music.” He was referring, of course, to verbal statements; but such statements would in any case have been superfluous in the context of a work in which the “thoughts and feelings” could hardly be more explicit. In this sense the eighth quartet is virtually unique among his supposedly abstract compositions. It was reputedly dedicated (but not inscribed so on the score) “to the memory of the victims of fascism and war”, yet the tribute is a deeply personal one: a reflection upon, and a powerfully subjective response to, events which affected the whole world. Yet, as Shakespeare has taught us so often, the most universal drama must by nature contain within itself smaller dramas: every individual has his/her own story to tell. The individual here is represented by a musical cryptogram derived from Shostakovich’s own name – a kind of melodic signature in the tradition of Bach, Schumann, and others. In the Cyrillic alphabet Shostakovich’s initials are day-sha which, in German transliteration, appear as D Sch; these letters correspond to the notes D, Es (German for E flat), C, H (German for B). This was by no means the first time Shostakovich had used the DSCH motif: he rammed home his identity pretty unambiguously in sections of the first violin concerto and the tenth symphony. But this quartet is built almost entirely on those four notes, either directly or by implication. In addition – as if to emphasise the autobiographical aspect of the work – he inserts a selection of self quotations from earlier compositions at significant points along the score. It is not always easy to grasp the meaning of all these references within their new context, but it must be said that they have been integrated with extraordinary skill: anyone unfamiliar with any of the material would surely be unaware of the process, so natural is the flow of the music.
The quartet begins with the DSCH motif itself as the subject of a fugal lament, as if to pay homage to the great German Beethoven and his C sharp minor quartet (Op.131). The opening of the first symphony soon darts out of the texture, leading to the first of a number of enormous pedal points – Sibelius-like in scale – which are a feature of this quartet; over the next of these the first violin sings a version of the first subject of the fifth symphony. The relentlessly driving music of the ensuing Allegro molto seems to portray the futility and inhuman brutality of war, with DSCH much in evidence, often appearing simultaneously at different speeds. This movement’s second subject is perhaps the most obvious of the self quotations: from the finale of the second piano trio, the theme associated with the Jewish death camp at Majdanek. When it finally halts in mid air the suspense is broken by an extremely silly version of DSCH, now subjected to a sardonic send-up as an all too obvious waltz, and followed – even more bitingly – by some “oompah” treatment. This cleverly twists into the opening of the first cello concerto, which dramatically changes costume for the fourth movement.
Here Shostakovich dares to push musical pictorialism to a degree hardly respectable in such a “pure” form as the string quartet. But the topic is not exactly respectable either, although those who perpetrate it are supposed to be….. Reputedly depicted are the sounds of bombers and gunfire, achieved with alarming economy. At length the drone of the former disappears in a cryptic reference to the ancient Dies Irae plainchant, whereupon the three lower instruments solemnly intone a decidedly Russian-sounding melody. In this movement DSCH is used only for purposes of transition, now leading us out of the blitz onto another pedal point which supports the emotional climax of the work: the violins sing a serene duet – an old Russian funeral anthem, Tormented by the weight of bondage you glorify death with honour. This dates from about 1870, was a favourite of Lenin’s, and became adopted as a symbol of the Revolution; no Russian of that generation would fail to understand its meaning. A motif from the finale of the tenth symphony then leads to the most poignant quotation of all, high on the cello: an aria from Act III of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtzensk District, in which the heroine Katerina sings to her lover Sergei, “…..A woman sometimes feeds the whole family, don’t you know how women sometimes have fought the enemy in wartime? Other times women for their husbands and loved ones have laid down their lives”.
As the scene change in a film restores the present after a flashback, so DSCH returns us to the music of the first movement, on which the final Largo is based. By means of a more fully developed fugue its simple inherent expressiveness engenders a despairingly impassioned climax, before the original lament finally returns, muted, numbed, but dignified.
© Alan George
