Dmitri Shostakovich
Shostakovich wrote fifteen symphonies in a state where music was public property and could be used against you. In 1936 the newspaper Pravda attacked his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District; he withdrew the symphony he was working on and wrote the Fifth instead. That pressure shaped how he writes: the surface can be a march or a celebration while the harmony and the scoring pull the other way.
The sound is built from long single lines rather than thick chords. A melody often starts alone in one instrument, is answered by another, and only later gets the full orchestra. Underneath there is usually an ostinato, a short figure repeated until it becomes oppressive. When a theme returns it comes back louder, faster and coarser than it began.
He signs his own name in some works with the notes D, E flat, C, B, which spell DSCH in German notation. It appears in the Tenth Symphony and the Eighth Quartet and is worth listening for once you know the shape.
What to listen for
- A quiet solo line over a repeated bass figure. It is his default way of starting a slow movement.
- The same theme returning in distorted form: too loud, too fast, scored for shrieking woodwind or hammering brass.
- Loud endings that do not feel settled. Listen to whether the brass and drums are confirming the key or drowning it.
- Long stretches for a single instrument family, then a sudden full orchestra entry.
Source: Dmitri Shostakovich