Sketching the Symphonies: A Brief Report on Shostakovich’s Manuscripts in Moscow

Abstract

Shostakovich’s sketch materials have recently come to light through the publishing efforts of the Dmitri Shostakovich Archive in Moscow. The documents illuminate the composer’s creative process in different genres, at different periods of his career, and through different working methods. The emergence of this collection, however, is relatively recent—the first published indications of a significant body of manuscripts came in 2002—and therefore, the collection’s extent, the forces that shaped it, and the circumstances that governed its formation are still relatively opaque matters. As a step toward tracing this larger collection, this article offers a brief summary of the known sketches for Shostakovich’s symphonies. These include partial or complete materials for fourteen (Nos. 1–5 and 7–15) of the fifteen published symphonies (with rumors of materials for the Sixth Symphony as well), and illuminate the types of manuscripts and methods of sketching that Shostakovich used in major works. Discussion may eventually take up the provenance of all Shostakovich’s manuscript materials, but we appear to be years, if not decades, away from such work. More focused initial studies, like the one offered here, are thus crucial to that eventual account, particularly for a composer like Shostakovich, about whom there are so many conflicting and troubled narratives touching everything from his creative process to his ideological commitments.