12 - Letter from Boris Tishchenko

Summary

21 May 2008

Boris Tishchenko (1939–2010) was a postgraduate composition pupil of Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1961 to 1965.

[Extract translated from the Russian]

In the Fourteenth Symphony Shostakovich used percussion in a different way from The Nose and the Fourth Symphony. In these works percussion is very important, but still holds the auxiliary character, whereas in the Fourteenth Symphony percussion has the front role.

I am not familiar with the thoughts of the musicologist Levon Hakobian, but I have never found any ‘canonical lines’ in Shostakovich. I remember how he played the whole of the Fourteenth Symphony to me on the grand piano and then asked, ‘Is this a symphony? And if not, what should I call it?’ I answered that I didn't think it was a symphony and that the first half should be called ‘De Profundis’. Dmitri Dmitrievich listened and then still chose to do it his way, which proves the absence of a taste for ‘canonical lines’. And in general, the Fourteenth Symphony is not a ‘Shadowy Mass for the Dead’, but rather a protest against death. These are the words of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich.

By the way, I wouldn't be too far from the truth if I noted that the theme of death in ‘Malaguena’ on the same note to the words ‘Death entered and left the tavern’ has something in common with the theme of death in my Rekviem, also on the same note, to the words ‘The stars of death stood above us’.

Shostakovich praised Britten's War Requiem. The modesty of his expression is connected with his not liking superlatives, as he was a very great man, and very moderate in his emotions. I never heard from him the words ‘greatest’, ‘genius’, ‘unsurpassed’.