The story of the composition of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony at the height of the Lady Macbeth affair (1935–6), its withdrawal at an advanced stage of rehearsal (avowedly because of the composer's dissatisfaction with the finale) and the subsequent proffering of the Fifth Symphony as “a Soviet artist's reply to just criticism“, is well known. But only since the recent re-emergence of the Fourth Symphony has it been possible to discover to what extent this work represents “the path not taken”, and to assess whether the jolt that his music suffered at this period was fundamentally beneficial, or harmful, or neither.

Art (and especially music) has a fundamental catalytic function, which is to effect sublimation by all its means of expression. It should aim to lead by constant points of reference towards that total exaltation in which, unaware of self, the individual will identify with an immediate, rare, vast and perfect truth. If a work of art achieves this even for an instant, it has fulfilled its purpose. This massive truth does not consist in objects, nor feelings, nor sensations; it lies beyond them, as Beethoven's Seventh lies beyond music. For this reason, art is capable of leading to those regions still occupied by certain religions.

To take a backward glance at the amazing kaleidoscope of change which has characterised so much artistic activity since the turn of the century, to look down from our present vantage point over the richly patterned landscape, indistinct and volatile, of the evolving ideologies, schools and styles, is to watch an inexorable tide of dark waters rising above a peaceful land, covering gardens, orchards, villages and churches, flowing in fast streams and eddies, linking and dispersing, fingers of flood groping forward, when unable to flow no further—dissipating, joining further washes pressing forward, swelled by secondary streams, a total immersion of previous landmarks, drowned in the rising waves, a saturation of ideas, a primordial cleansing, destruction, obliteration, finally—regeneration.