[lit-ideas] Re: TUESDAY'S FORCAST


--- On Thu, 30/7/09, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Then the collaborators. Prokofiev and Shostakovitch
> straining to please Stalin; 

Proko aside, this is surely unfair to Shostie whose most obviously 
straining-to-please work is an ironic and bitterly coded commentary on the 
evils of totalitarianism written by a composer living within it; with its 
genuine sympathies not with the murderous Man Of Steel but with the tragically 
longsuffering and heroic Russian people. Such anyway is argued by leading 
Shosty biographer Ian MacDonald (afair) e.g. finale of Sym.5 "as an internal 
send-up of the heroic style" [GroveMusic]; and Sym.13's attack on 
anti-semitism.. Taken ironically some of his work is "straining-to-please" but 
only as we might with a boss we hate yet cannot avoid serving. 

Donal





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