At the same time in turning his attention to serious, significant music, the composer must bear in mind that in the Soviet Union music is addressed to millions of people who formerly had little or no contact with music. It is this new mass audience that the modern Soviet composer must strive to reach. ‘I believe the type of music needed is what one might call “iight-serious” or “serious” light music.” It is by no means easy to find the right idiom for such music. It should be primarily melodious, and the melody should be clear and simple without however becoming repetitive or trivial. Many composers find it difficult enough to compose any sort of melody, let alone a melody having some definite function to perform. The same applies to the technique, the form - it too must be clear and simple, but not stereotyped. It is not the old simplicity that is needed but a new kind of simplicity. And this can be achieved only after the composer has mastered the art of composing serious, significant music, thereby acquiring the technique of expressing himself in simple, yet original terms.’ (Izvestia, 16th November 1934) The doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’ as applied to music remained relatively open until matters were ‘clarified’ by the dramatic Pravda article on 28th January 1936 ‘Chaos instead of Music’, when Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was savagely condemned, in an article allegedly penned by Stalin himself. To ensure that the message was unequivocal the article was followed up a couple of weeks later with a similar condemnation of Shostakovich’s score for The Limpid Stream. Surprisingly, Shostakovich’s initial reaction was to continue with the composition of his Fourth Symphony and he still had hopes that this would be premiered in Leningrad at the end of the same year, 1936. We do not know at what point in the score of his Fourth Symphony Shostakovich had reached when the Pravda article appeared; it is possible that he may well have had the whole Symphony in mind when he started work in 1935, but one cannot help wondering if the stark, bleak coda was composed in response to the savage criticism. Surely this is the most frightening conclusion of any symphony in the repertoire and it portrays the full horror of Stalin’s Terror, at its height in 1936. Düring this time Shostakovich lived with a suitcase packed as he expected at any time to be taken away to the prison camps strewn across Russia. The Fourth Symphony was rehearsed in late 1936 with the planned premiere set for 30th December with the Leningrad Philharmonie Orchestra underthe Austrian-born conductor Fritz Stiedry, who had recently premiered Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings with the composer as soloist. Various reasons have been given for withdrawing the Symphony shortly betöre the planned premiere: Shostakovich reportedly said that he wanted to re- write the Finale; there were also suggestions that the conductor and orchestra were struggling with the work. Undoubtedly, there was pressure from the local authorities who must have grown increasingly uneasy about what they were hearing during the rehearsals. Whilst there was pressure for cancellation, it was probably very wise in retrospect that the Fourth was not performed, as it would probably have been his last symphony. If Stalin had not liked Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, whatever would he have made of the cacophonous Fourth Symphony and in particular its unforgivingly dark ending? And so in 1937 Shostakovich embarked on his Fifth Symphony. And please note that he called his new symphony his ‘Fifth’ and merely put the Fourth Symphony aside with the plan that it would be performed at a later date, not knowing that it would wait another quarter of a Century, receiving its belated Moscow premiere in December 1961 during the Khrushchev artistic thaw. Shostakovich did not make any revisions to the score that he completed in 1936.
