The History of the Creation, Premiere, and Prohibition of Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony

Abstract

The research subject of this article is Dmitri Shostakovich's “Thirteenth Symphony”—one of the most monumental symphonic canvases of the twentieth century, reflecting in its essence the chronicle of historical vicissitudes that took place in the Soviet Union. After a number of compromised compositions in the late 1940s and 1950s, forcibly written ("Songs about Forests," the Eleventh Symphony, numerous miniatures), the Thirteenth Symphony made a splash in musical and near-musical circles, as many perceived it from a polemic angle with the Stalinist regime. The reader's attention is focused on the fact that in it, the composer resorts to a veiled polemic with the current government, and the figurative world of the symphony is a direct reaction of Shostakovich not only to the events to which the opus is dedicated ("Babi Yar," the words of E. Yevtushenko) but also on the reality surrounding him. The semantic contexts of the work are examined through the prism of biographical data about the composer, as a result of which a wide documentary and historical apparatus are involved—the memoirs of Shostakovich's colleagues and contemporaries, his own statements addressed both to the symphony in question and to the broad historical and cultural context of the era. It is in the broad contextual approach that the scientific novelty of the article is seen. In addition, it presents analytical material that allows a deeper understanding of the essence of the work as a whole and the reasons why the symphony was banned at the time.