Vio Shostakovich Research Paper
The Life and Music of Dimitri Shostakovich:
INTRODUCTION:
Dimitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Within the space of sixty-nine years, Shostakovich made an unforgettable impact on music and became one of the most important composers of the 20th century. During his career he wrote fifteen symphonies, fifteen string quartets, six concerti and two operas along with many chamber works, piano works and pieces for theatre and film. This is an incredible output for a composer but what makes them all the more remarkable is the situation under which they were composed. His whole musical career was spent within Russia’s Communist system which left him with the constant struggle to try and find the balance between the demands …show more content…
Both his grand father and father were interested in left wing politics, involved in the revolution and trade unions. His father was a government engineer and his mother a piano teacher. It was his mother, Sofiya, who gave Shostakovich his first piano lessons. She discovered that he had a special aptitude for music at the age of eight. Shostakovich displayed a prodigious talent as a pianist with an extraordinary gift for picking up pieces by ear and replaying them.
At the age of thirteen, in 1919, Shostakovich went to study piano and composition at the Petrograd Conservatory in Petersburg. In 1925 he submitted his first symphony at the age of eighteen as his graduation piece. The symphony was so highly praised that the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra performed it in 1926. It went on to become one of his most popular works.
EARLY …show more content…
He tailored pieces to meet the demands of the government, preventing him from writing and dealing with themes he would have liked to explore. This forced him to write in the officially sanctioned neo classical mode making it difficult to incorporate more original ideas. These political factors cut short his forays into ballet and left other works abandoned. Shostakovich is a unique composer who wrote music under immense political pressure yet was able to use these situations to create some of the greatest music in the twentieth
INTRODUCTION:
Dimitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Within the space of sixty-nine years, Shostakovich made an unforgettable impact on music and became one of the most important composers of the 20th century. During his career he wrote fifteen symphonies, fifteen string quartets, six concerti and two operas along with many chamber works, piano works and pieces for theatre and film. This is an incredible output for a composer but what makes them all the more remarkable is the situation under which they were composed. His whole musical career was spent within Russia’s Communist system which left him with the constant struggle to try and find the balance between the demands …show more content…
Both his grand father and father were interested in left wing politics, involved in the revolution and trade unions. His father was a government engineer and his mother a piano teacher. It was his mother, Sofiya, who gave Shostakovich his first piano lessons. She discovered that he had a special aptitude for music at the age of eight. Shostakovich displayed a prodigious talent as a pianist with an extraordinary gift for picking up pieces by ear and replaying them.
At the age of thirteen, in 1919, Shostakovich went to study piano and composition at the Petrograd Conservatory in Petersburg. In 1925 he submitted his first symphony at the age of eighteen as his graduation piece. The symphony was so highly praised that the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra performed it in 1926. It went on to become one of his most popular works.
EARLY …show more content…
He tailored pieces to meet the demands of the government, preventing him from writing and dealing with themes he would have liked to explore. This forced him to write in the officially sanctioned neo classical mode making it difficult to incorporate more original ideas. These political factors cut short his forays into ballet and left other works abandoned. Shostakovich is a unique composer who wrote music under immense political pressure yet was able to use these situations to create some of the greatest music in the twentieth