Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich: A Theory of Musical Incongruities by Esti s> Sheinberg (review)

Abstract

736 SEER, 79, 4, 200I In addition to notes, referencesand index, this well edited book has a very useful appendix of biographical and bibliographical notes relating to some thirtywritersand topics. It will be welcomed by studentsand teachersalikeas an admirablylucid attemptto showthewaysinwhich Russianpostmodernism is related to its Western counterpart,and to what extent it really is suigeneris. This is an excellent book which deservesa verywide readership. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Sheinberg, Esti.Irony, Satire, Parody andtheGrotesque intheMusicofShostakovich. A Theoy of MusicalIncongruities. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000. xii + 378 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Illustrations.Indexes. ?49.95. AFTER the flood of books about Shostakovich's life and purported views, including those that have used him like a second-division soccer ball, Dr Sheinberghas produced a very personalyet highly analyticalmonograph of a completely differentkind. Indeed, the subtitle gives the strongest key to this ambitious book's aim and purpose: to use structuralsemantics to study the semiotic correlationsbetween variousmodes of ambiguity,namely the fourin her title, producing a literary,semantic and musical model for each of them. Sheinberg's own model, we are told in the Acknowledgements, was Robert Hatten's MusicalMeaning inBeethoven (Bloomington, 1994) (p. x). It should be stressed,however, that copious referencesto a wide varietyof theoreticaland other sourcesis a featureof thisbook. Part Two begins with a chapter on the philosophical background to the concept of irony: finite irony (irony as stimulus), infinite irony (irony as terminus),infinite irony and the comic, existentialirony, and irony as related to Hegelian alienation(theMarxistapproach).Here, aslater,many illustrative quotations are given, extravagantly, both in the original (West European languages, Russian and Hebrew from the Book of Job) and English translation. Sheinberg makes extensive use of diagrams ranging from the simplistic to the mind-bogglingly complex. In addition, the book is richly illustratednot only with many musical examples, but also with pictures that are deemed to exemplify irony, satire, parody and the grotesque. Chapter Two is entitled 'Incongruities as indicators of irony' and discusses musical irony as a meta-term for modes of musical ambiguity,indicatorsof the multilayered musical discourse, and existential irony in music, offeringa set of six criteriafor the differenttypes of ironyin music. Part Three begins with an analysis of the structure of satire in general, followed by specifically musical satire and satirizing techniques, including structural distortion and exaggeration; a substantial part of the latter is concerned with anti-Semitism, and here Sheinberg has recourse to a wide rangeof materials,includinglate nineteenth-centuryEnglishbookillustrations and newspapercartoons. In PartFour,parody is defined as satiricaland nonsatirical ,and a bold attempt is made to illustrateits structure,largely by the theories of Bakhtin enhanced with diagrams of her own. Later in Part Four, the eighth chapter, 'The historicalbackground',focuses on Shostakovich,but REVIEWS 737 also finds time to suggest a correction to Formalistterminology (p. I6o). The connections between Russian intellectualsand Shostakovichare represented diagrammaticallyas quasi-graphs:the verticalcolumn being the years I9I7 to I936 and the horizontal consisting of Shklovskii, Eikhenbaum, Tynianov, Bakhtin,Sollertinskiiand Shostakovichhimself. PartFive, 'The Grotesque', is the longest. After an introductiondevoted to 'definition, structure and content of the grotesque', Sheinberg turns to the satiricalgrotesque where Bulgakovand, particularly,Gogol' are highlighted. This is followed by a review of the grotesqueat the beginning of the twentieth century,richlyillustratedwith (blackand white)picturesby Kustodiev (forhis influence on the opera LadyMacbeth ofMtsensk) and Chagall whose work the author thinksBakhtinand Sollertinskiimust have known (p. 269). Part Six is very brief, comprising one chapter, 'Compound messages'. The ending is slightlybizarre,a citation of the Waltzfromthe FirstJazz Suite(I 938). The heavily referenced introduction is matched by a very comprehensive bibliographyand the two indexes are extensive, though not entirelyaccurate. Other glitchesinclude severalin the Russiantexts (whichare set in a curiously homemade-looking font); in general, the specificallyRussian material seems less secure than the musical analysis. To give but one example of the latter, there is no ball scene in Gogol"s Revizor, as Sheinberg suggests (p. 28). The Picasso reproduction has no page reference on the contents page, and is not discussed on the page referredto with the picture;nor is it in colour, despite being in the 'colour section' where, incidentally,five illustrationsdemonstrate graphically with blocks of colour how 'four systems act simultaneously...