Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music by Brian Morton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music by Brian Morton Cameron Pyke Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music. By Brian Morton. London: Haus Publishing, 2021. [220 p. ISBN 978-1-913368-43-2. £9.99] The appearance of the first paperback edition of this 2006 volume is to be welcomed. Morton presents a clear overview of the composer's life while navigating and synthesising the key contours of the considerable scholarly literature. He draws upon a broad cultural understanding: there are perceptive references, for example, to Olivier Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg as well as to Arshile Gorky and Boris Pasternak. While the author acknowledges that he is not a musicologist, a significant number of key works are discussed in terms of their music, as well as underlying meaning: this is particularly the case with the symphonies, which Morton identifies as 'the form in which his essence as a composer would be expressed' (p. 40), acknowledging that some works are 'capacious enough to sustain any number of contradictory interpretations' (p. 46). Morton's discussions of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Symphony No. 8 are particularly sensitive. Reporting the composer's excitement at the film version of Lady Macbeth (released in 1966–1967 as Katerina Ismailova), Morton comments that it was 'as if his entire musical history were somehow embedded in that great work's narrative of cultural paucity, betrayal, defiance, violence, and imprisonment' (p. 202). In contrast, Symphony No. 8 is viewed as 'a meditation on the whole idea of symphonism … a return to the modernist experiment of the equally unloved Fourth Symphony' (p. 124). Both arguments could be extended: the sympathetically drawn Katerina re-emerges in the tragic figure of Loreley in Symphony No. 14, while the composer's wider tendency to subvert symphonic form, as in the 'problematic' Symphony No. 6 (p. 105) culminates in Symphony No. 15, in the final coda of which, as the late Alexander Ivashkin argued, symphonic syntax is itself eroded. Morton himself notes 'a steadily deepening absorption in sound itself' in some of the late period works (p. 189). Morton correctly identifies the key characteristics of the composer's genius: his ability to write music, often under considerable psychological pressure, which could operate on different levels; his sardonic exploitation, drawn from Gustav Mahler and Nikolai Gogol, of the full potential of juxtaposition; his profound sense of social and ethical duty; and his stature 'among the very greatest exponents – and perhaps the last greatest exponent – of what we still uneasily call classical music' (p. 24). In presenting 'a straightforward narrative of the composer's life and the evolution of his music' (p. 22) and emphasising 'a basic consistency of attitude' (p. 14), more could have been made of what Edison Denisov called the 'arch' between the early and late works: for example, the 'unexpected revival' (Denisov) of percussion in the coda of the Cello Concerto No. 2 and subsequently. Indeed, the discussion of the 'late period' works is more cursory than that of the earlier and middle-period scores. Moreover, while Morton earlier acknowledges the 'intermingling of major works in his mind with smaller-scale works' (p. 150), it is in these final works that the cross-referencing becomes a significant stylistic feature in itself, as if the composer increasingly sought to create a personal narrative on his entire creative output, towards much of which he seems to have felt a profound dissatisfaction. I would not, then, agree that the works of the last decade are 'less obviously encrypted' (p. 199), particularly when one considers the chamber music, and notwithstanding the composer's partial return to word setting. I would also have valued acknowledgement of the influence of Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov (on Symphony No. 4) and of Mieczysław Weinberg (on the later string quartets). [End Page 347] The book is written in an accessible style, though on occasion sensationalist phrasing sits uneasily with its erudition and seriousness of purpose, and some will also find references to Shostakovich's numerology more convincing than others. The lack of footnotes and an index likewise do not do justice to the range and clarity of the book's cultural reference. Shostakovich's visit...