10 - A debt repaid? Some observations on Shostakovich and his late-period recognition of Britten

Summary

In the Red House at Aldeburgh hangs a portrait of Anton Del'vig, the poet to whom are addressed the lines by the Decembrist, Wilhelm Küchelbecker – lines set by Shostakovich in his Fourteenth Symphony, the work he dedicated to Benjamin Britten in 1969. A gift from Shostakovich to Britten, the portrait would seem to lend confirmation to what is surely implicit in the ninth movement of the symphony: that those lines of Küchelbecker served Shostakovich as a mouthpiece for a fraternal greeting to his English friend and colleague. In the desolate context of the symphony this setting stands apart on account of its emotional warmth and tonal stability; indeed, its calm, hymnal gesture of four luminous triads that dispel the angry twelve-note ‘cluster’ of the previous movement could almost be taken as a friendly salutation à la manière de Britten. and the key – Db major – is the key of ‘the world of high ideals’ in Shostakovich's Twelfth String Quartet:

O Delvig, Delvig! What reward

for lofty deeds and poetry? …

Immortality is equally the lot

of bold inspired deeds

and sweet songs!

Thus will not die our bond,

free, joyful and proud!

In happiness and in sorrow it stands firm,

the bond of eternal lovers of the Muses.

The high seriousness and cyclic sense of completion that Shostakovich brought to his work in the final years of his life coincide with an on-going, passionate admiration for Britten and his music, whose own accomplishments during the same period (the composers died within a year of each other) correspondingly proclaim a late, valedictory style.