Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Composed in 1935-36 and intended to be his artistic 'credo', Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not performed publicly until 1961. Here, Dr Pauline Fairclough tackles head-on one of the most significant and least understood of Shostakovich's major works. She argues that the Fourth Symphony was radically different from its Soviet contemporaries in terms of its structure, dramaturgy, tone and even language, and therefore challenged the norms of Soviet symphonism at a crucial stage of its development. With the backing of prominent musicologists such as Ivan Sollertinsky, the composer could realistically have expected the premiere to have taken place, and may even have intended the symphony to be a model for a new kind of 'democratic' Soviet symphonism. Fairclough meticulously examines the score to inform a discussion of tonal and thematic processes, allusion, paraphrase and reference to musical types, or intonations. Such analysis is set deeply in the context of Soviet musical culture during the period 1932-36, involving Shostakovich's contemporaries Shebalin, Myaskovsky, Kabalevsky and Popov. A new method of analysis is also advanced here, where a range of Soviet and Western analytical methods are informed by the theoretical work of Shostakovich's contemporaries Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin and Ivan Sollertinsky, together with Theodor Adorno's late study of Mahler. In this way, the book will significantly increase an understanding of the symphony and its context.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Soviet symphony in the 1930s: political and aesthetic background
• Analytical approaches to the Fourth Symphony
• First movement: allegretto poco moderato
• Second movement: moderato con moto
• Third movement: largo - allegro
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An entire book devoted to a single symphony may appear to be overkill, but Dmitri Shostakovitch's Fourth is a special case. It figured in its composer's discomfiture at the hands of Stalin and his henchmen shortly before the purges of the mid-1930s, which did so much damage to the Soviet Union shortly before WW II. Fairclough's consideration of this work, which Shostakovitch himself declared to be his "artistic credo," combines close technical analysis with extramusical ideas stemming from deconstructionist theory. Like most Soviet artworks, the Fourth carries with it lots of baggage, mostly political or what would have seemed political in that society at that time. Fairclough (Univ. of Bristol, UK) attempts to tease out these connections, and insofar as it is possible to be definitive in such an elusive endeavor she succeeds. She does not claim too much and states emphatically that the symphony cannot be reduced to a verbal narrative. Nevertheless, she considers the implications of the Fourth to be unmistakable and takes care in tying musical to extramusical intimations. Musical examples are extensive and the modified Schenker graphs useful, but readers will wish to have the score of the symphony at hand. The bibliography and index are excellent. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. F. Goossen emeritus, University of Alabama

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Dr Pauline Fairclough is Lecturer in Music in the Department of Music at the University of Bristol, UK.