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Shostakovich's Turn to the String Quartet and the Debates about Socialist Realism in Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
As Katerina Clark argues here, Dmitrii Shostakovich's turn to the quartet form in 1938 and his account of his First Quartet should be seen in the context of ongoing debates from that time about how the mandate for socialist realism might apply in music, a problematical question since music is the least representational of the arts. In making this point, Clark does not analyze the quartets themselves, but instead probes Shostakovich's statements about them, moving out from that narrow focus to place his remarks in the context of overall developments and controversies in Soviet culture of that decade—more specifically in the context of efforts aimed at liberalizing socialist realist practice.
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References
1. The First String Quartet was his second chamber work after the Viola Sonata of 1934. He had been promising to write a quartet since at least 1931 when he produced two movements for one that he did not complete.
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60. Usievich, “K sporam o politicheskoi poezii,” 70, 87, 89, 90, and 102. She is also attacked in “O politicheskoi poezii,” Pravda, 1937, no. 58.
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71. Film examples include Marlen Khutsiev and Feliks Mironer's Vesna na zarechnoi ulitse (1956), El'dar Riazanov's Karnavainaia noch’ (1956), and Mikhail Kalotozov's Letiat zhuravli (1957). In literature one should note not only the love plot of Ne khlebom edinym with its motivated adultery but more particularly the progressive development of the love plot in Viktor Nekrasov's works of this time (compare V rodnom gorode, Novyi mir, 1954, nos. 10,11, to his Kira Georgievna, Novyi mir, 1961, no. 6).
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