- Good evening, drear friends. Today it's the most famous story in Soviet music history, probably the most infamous story, and I'm sure most of you would know some bare bones of it. It's a story of a reformed composer. Stalin goes to the opera, he dislikes the opera. Two days later an article in "Pravda" appears denouncing the opera, the opera is banned. Shostakovich has to withdraw the big symphony that he was writing, No. 4, and reform his style, change his style, to write the Fifth Symphony, which is then approved by the authorities. And at the end of it, we usually decide that Stalin won the round, or we decide that Shostakovich might have sneaked some kind of message of resistance or opposition into the symphony. So these are the bare bones, and I'm not going to dispute this story, I'm just going to add some details to it, and I hope that even those of you who know it very well will find something in today's lecture that they don't know. And those of you who don't know the story well, well fasten your seat belts.(audience members chuckling) So, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk," this opera, I'm not actually going to talk about it today, because I've already given one Gresham lecture on it, which you can look up online. And this is an opera which was based on and developed by Nikolai Leskov, adapted by Shostakovich. The title doesn't have very much to do with Shakespeare, it actually has much to do with Leskov, it's an ironic title. The alternative title is "Katerina Izmailova," and this opera was premiered in 1934, under two titles almost simultaneously in Leningrad and in Moscow. And during those two years, it basically run 200 times in these two cities, and that was something absolutely unprecedented. Extraordinary, extraordinary success. Even more extraordinary when you think of all the productions abroad that took place during '35, '36 in those cities, such as Cleveland, New York, Prague, London, and so on. Then finally in December 1935, this opera is staged at the Bolshoi Theater, at the second stage, the smaller stage. But that means that Stalin comes to see it at that point. He wouldn't go to any other theater, so this explains why he saw it so late. And on the 26th of January, Stalin returns the performance, Shostakovich is called in urgently to attend, and of course he expects an audience with Stalin, because that's exactly what happened two weeks earlier to one of his colleagues, Ivan Stravinsky. He expects to be praise the same way as Stravinsky was. But in fact, Stalin leaves. It seems that he left after the third act and didn't see the final act, and Shostakovich is left in confusion and fear. Because again, that is something that had never happened before. So two days later, there is the article in "Pravda" in the main organ of the Communist Party, and the opera is actually not banned. Yeah, it runs for a few more times in both theaters, and then it is withdrawn. Yeah, so there never was an official ban, but obviously the criticism was so severe that nobody would dream of performing it. So, as I said, I'm not going to talk much about the opera today, but we'll just give you a fragment to hear, so that we can ponder why Stalin might have disliked it. Yeah, so there's a famous sex scene in the opera, which I'm not going to show you today. I usually do, but not today. Which, of course, would have offended him. Yeah, because this grand man would not be subjected to anything like that, even though maybe not much was happening on stage, but the music was exceptionally graphic. Yeah, so we knew what was going on. Another thing generally in the musical style, Shostakovich does a lot of musical provocation, so he combines things that are not really combinable. You know, like musical hooliganism, parodies of polkas and waltzes, and next to that quite the strident, dissonant, and very moving music. So how to make sense of that? I mean, even today when you listen to it, you sort of feels torn in different direction. Should you sympathize with the characters, or should you not? You know, it's really difficult, kind of aesthetically, to comprehend. And the third thing, which probably was (chuckling) maybe was a defining factor, it was extremely loud. Everyone comments that it was extremely loud, and it's not such a big theater, and it was a huge orchestra together with an addition of a brass section, which is called a banda, yeah. So I'm just going to play you one of the tracks, this is from a production by Richard Jones, a recent production at the Royal Opera House, and you will get the sense of the sonic assault.(singing in foreign language)(dramatic orchestral music)(singing in foreign language)(dramatic orchestral music) So having heard this, you might actually (chuckling) sympathize with the feelings of the person who was behind this article. This is chaos, not music, or muddle instead of music. This is on the left, and then there was another article about his ballet, which is like a week later. Yeah, the opera is inharmonious and chaotic. The music is hard to follow and impossible to memorize. The composer throws himself into dense thickets of musical chaos, at times the purest cacophony. The expressivity needed by the listener is replaced by rapid rhythms. The expression of passion is left to musical noise, and so on like so on. At first, of course, it was extremely terrifying for Shostakovich and nobody could understand why he was selected like that. That was also completely unprecedented that "Pravda" would publish something like that against a particular artist. But very soon, it turned out that it wasn't just about Shostakovich, and there was even a third article in "Pravda" which explained this, which said, actually people in all the arts should listen to this. This is the new directive. You should all get away from formalism and towards socialist-realism. It's not just about Shostakovich. Yeah, so it became a huge campaign. And then there was a spate of further articles, some of them also unsigned editorials, some are signed by people, which had similar titles;"Cacophony in Architecture,""On Painters-Daubers,""Cinematic Bunglers,""Hackwork in Film Music," and they all have these derogatory words thrown in, kind of informality, casual insults, basically, to various arts. And once people were told that they were supposed to criticize their colleagues, it started happening just by itself. It didn't need to do much more because some of the people were only too happy to promote their careers by criticizing their colleagues. But they also had to criticize themselves, yeah, so there was this ritual self-abasement happening. Now what was formalism? This word was banded about for a long time, but I know that everyone always asks me, what is formalism? How can I explain what formalism is? So I try to find out where it came from, and it seems that as a term it had been used since 1923, and it was Trotsky's article against formalist critics, it was a formalist school of literary theorists. You probably might have heard this, the name of Viktor Shklovsky, and the belief in the primacy of form in art. So that form determines content. So Trotsky criticized both formalism as a critical method, and the kind of art that also privileged form, which he called futurism. Yeah, so he doesn't actually call the art itself formalism at this point, but later the term kind of slipped and started being applied to everything that used to be called futurism, and that today would probably be called modernism. So all the modernists can avant garde art, challenging art, experiment with form was called formalism, mostly in the visual arts, but it was also applied to music. And for example, in 1935 it was applied to a symphony by Shostakovich's friend, Gavriil Popov, First Symphony, and it was actually Shostakovich's friend, Sollertinsky, whom we're going to mention more than once in this lecture, who used this term against Popov. So it was already something that happened before. Well, in 1936, because I suppose they wanted to explain what formalism was, a philosopher or somebody, one of the very few people who can be called a philosopher(chuckling) in the Soviet Union, Valentin Asmus, was commissioned to explain what that was. So I was trying to get through the thicket of words because he really tried very hard, but this is the gist of it. So let's see how he explained it. So there's some unspoken assumptions there, and one of them, the main one, is that art should always communicate a message. Because that's what it had to do in the Soviet Union, art was supposed to be for the people, it had to communicate the message. And he says that artists should convey their message through expressive means that combine the old with the new. Just like in language, if you want to say something, you will not use the words that you invented, because nobody is going to comprehend what you are saying. So you can invent some words, but not all of them. You have to combine the old with the new. The form of the artwork, he says, is outcome of the artist's struggle to express the content as well as possible. So form is not the leading principle, it's just the means of delivering the message. Artists show mastery when the form is such a perfect expression of the content that it's transparent to the readership or the audience. Attention should not be drawn to the form, you should just think about the message. It's very typical of socialist-realism when you think of that, this kind of transparent form. Innovation may be a byproduct of the artist's work, but it cannot be the goal. The appreciate of form is not separable from the appreciation of content. Formalist artists and theories, he says, wrongly believe that the struggle between tradition and invention plays out in the autonomous art world. But correctly understood, this struggle is only part of the broader social and political struggle. Artists will participate in history and the class struggle to a greater or lesser degree, and this will determine the conviction and passion of the artistic work. And here's a quote from him, when he says that when the artist's walk is unsteady, his vision blurred, he is indifferent to the outcome of our great struggle for a new socialist world, and it is here in this class position that formalist gimmickry emerges, and that's where the formalist delusions of theorists are born. So you can see that when translating it into normal language(chuckling) it means that when you write a modernist piece, a challenging modernist piece, it means that you're not believing in socialism enough. You're not the right builder of socialism. So this is basically the implication of all the Shostakovich criticism, both in 1936 and as late as 1948, that's always the implication, that if you're doing something like this, that means you are not exactly the Soviet artist. You are somehow lacking. So it's a dangerous accusation, formalism. So, what happens next? Well, obviously Shostakovich at that point is absolutely distraught. He's trying to seek an audience with Stalin, but he's never given one. Instead he's given an audience with Platon Kerzhentsev, who was basically the equivalent of a Minister of Culture, he was called Chairman of the Committee for Artistic Affairs. And he knew Kerzhentsev from the '20s, they knew each other, so it wasn't somebody that he didn't know. But Kerzhentsev is now a very powerful man, and it tells him, Shostakovich says,"What do I need to do? Do I need to write a letter? Do I need to apologize?" And interestingly, he says,"No, you don't need to." So actually Shostakovich never participated in all these discussions, he'd never had to apologize for this, he never had to deliver a speech of contrition. He says, "You have to write music. The response to this criticism will be in your music." And he also advised him to go an collect some folk songs, because yeah, remember, I was telling you last time, that folk songs were always a very secure path to socialist-realism. So yeah, "Why don't you go around the country, collect some folk songs, and change your style in that direction." The problem was, that Shostakovich had already written two movements of a new symphony, a huge symphony, Symphony No. 4. I am using here some art, as usual, and this is the painting that was produced as the symphony was being played. A live painting, that expresses a particular part, the coda of the allegro of Symphony No. 4, and you can see how intense it is, how expressionist it is. So then, the third movement, which is the final movement of the Fourth, he wrote during the most acute phase of this crisis. When people weren't talking to him, when he was getting very little support, and people who were giving him support, such as Meyerhold for example, had to at the same time criticize themselves. Meyerhold made a paper which is called,"Meyerhold Against Meyerholdism," because Meyerholdism essentially is formalism. So they had to jump through all these hoops to somehow deliver a message of support. And some of them just stayed silent. But even if you stayed silent and didn't participate in the discussion, your name would be in the paper, saying this person hasn't said anything. So you couldn't even stay silent. So, he completed the symphony, and if you imagine that the symphony would be performed at that point, it would be taken as a response to criticism. And his friend Sollertinsky, that I already mentioned, acting as spokesman in February of 1936, he said that the composer would deliver a Soviet musical tragedy, a Soviet heroic symphony, and of course he knew already this symphony. He's talking about the Fourth. Well, the symphony is extremely challenging. It's an amazing piece of music, but it lasts for more than an hour. It's also extremely loud. It has a very confused sense of narrative, it's very difficult to describe of what actually happens. For example, in the first movement, there are seven or eight or nine huge climaxes, I'm going to play you one of them. And then a huge contrast after that, with something that seems to be ridiculous and overblown, and possibly can be taken again, as offensive.(dramatic orchestral music) So when you give a lyrical tune to the tubas, you must be somehow mocking it, although it sounds terrifying at the same time. But this is the kind of that is happening. But there was something else, which was probably even more important, and that's the finale of how the symphony ends. We're talking that in socialist-realism, you always strive for a happy ending. So it seems that's what Shostakovich is doing, he's striving towards this happy ending, and it almost happens. We're getting to this huge climax, and you will see the timpanists are going in this rhythm and it's all very exciting, it's in the major key, and then something happens at the crest of that climax. And a funeral march which was there from the beginning of the finale, it starts to take over. So it sours the mood, and you get the opposite with what you expected. Not the wonderful, happy ending, triumphant ending, but a very slow and gradual fading away. So I'll just play you the how we're coming up to this climax and getting out of it.(somber orchestral music) Major key, C major.(timpanis pounding)(dramatic orchestral music)(music turns triumphant)(music turns somber) Yeah, and so it goes on for a long, long time. So imagine this in the climate of 1936. So what happened in 1936? Well first of all, other very prominent figures also experienced the fate similar to Shostakovich. For example, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, whose plays were taken off the stage. And other theater directors such as Meyerhold himself, and Tairov were criticized almost every day in the papers. Their theaters were worried they might be closed down at any moment. But then it became much more sinister, because in August of 1936, the first major show trial took place in Moscow, where former revolutionaries, the very famous Bolsheviks, became enemies of the people. And that really was an all-consuming story, everyone was discussing it or not discussing it, they were reading about it in the newspapers and could not understand what was happening. I have read a lot of diaries from that time, and it seems that most people, the absolute majority, believed what was happening. They didn't think that these accusations were fake. But they still couldn't understand the behavior of those accused, of why they basically were prepared to tell these most ridiculous stories of what they did. So there was something very strange psychologically, very disturbing. And so the country was dripped by this show trial, and then after that, in the wake of that, people were executed basically the same day, or the next day after the sentence. And after they were executed there was a wave of arrests and expulsions from the Communist Party, and denunciations of people who knew the accused. So the wave started spreading further and further. And one of the people arrested at that time, in the autumn of 1936 was Shostakovich's brother-in-law, the husband of his sister. So it came as close to actually members of his family. And there is a very interesting letter from Shostakovich's professor, Maximillian Steinberg, former professor from the conservatoire. Sorry, it's not a letter, it's a diary entry. Shostakovich visits him on the 30th of November, and he says that from Shostakovich he finds out that two people whom they knew, they were basically accountants in one of these creative organizations, composers organizations that they belonged to, got a death sentence for some financial crimes, which, of course, were completely immeasurable with the crime itself. And he says, well it is so strange, you've dealt with these people so many times without ever suspecting anything like this. He doesn't tell you whether he believes that or not, and in the same sentence, in the same paragraph, basically, he says that Mitya, Shostakovich, is in great doubt about the forthcoming performances of the Fourth Symphony. So it's basically part of this whole narrative, the context is terrifying. So, nevertheless, he went ahead with the rehearsals, and as the rehearsals progressed. You know, can you imagine rehearsing this symphony? It's very difficult, and musicians started complaining,"Why should we play this formalism?" (chuckling) And then the chairman of the Leningrad Union of Composers and another party official and head of the philharmonia all came to Shostakovich and suggested that he might withdraw it. And indeed, it would have been absolutely crazy not to. So that was actually salvation, I think, for him. That was actually a good move, it was the right move. This is a very interesting little deviation. A little meme, just to explain that this story of a reformed composer who abandons one symphony and writes a new on already existed in fiction. A playwright called Alexei Faiko created a play, and put it on in March of 1936, so well before anything was known about Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, about a composer who writes this formalist symphony, and then eventually he decides not to conduct it. He was about to go on stage, the play is called, "The Concert," and then he cancels it. And then with the help of his younger pupil, he writes a new symphony. So he becomes a reformed composer. Now look at these composer, yeah, he's on the right. I think he looks remarkably like Shostakovich. So even though the play was actually written before any of that took place, but when it arrived on the stage they certainly wanted to make, to put Shostakovich on stage. So even before Shostakovich withdrew is Fourth Symphony, he did it on stage first (chuckling) and then in real life. I think it's quite amazing. Another interesting detail about it, is that the music for this play was written by Shostakovich's close friend, Shebalin. Well, Shebalin was his friend, and his greatest student, Khrennikov, who you might know of, later became Head of the Union of Composers. And I don't know, I still need to do more research, but it seems that Shebalin wrote the formalist music, and Khrennikov wrote the reformed music, so it was a kind of double act. I also wanted to point out that basically almost everyone at that period had to change that style. Every artist in some way. Those who didn't, basically just had to stop being published or performed, and I don't know, become janitors or something like that. So completely fall out of the artistic world. So another prominent example is the film director, Sergei Eisenstein, who actually, he's known as having said this phrase,"They are not going to make a Shostakovich out of me!" When the campaign starts against him, and somebody wrote it in a diary, so that's how we know. And indeed, his film about collectivization, and the "Bezhin Meadow" was withdrawn 11 days before it was due to be finished. It was withdraw, and everyone thought it was destroyed, and later it was found, but nevertheless. He had to completely change the style, and he did this big, patriotic thing,"Alexander Nevsky" next year. So yeah, that's exactly a parallel story to Shostakovich. This is just to prove to you that almost everyone else had to do something like that. So, we come to Symphony No. 5, and I've chosen, that's another painting about the symphony. It's "Venezuelan Allegory," but you can see from the painting that it's much, much more organized. It's much more classical, like symphony. It has this forward progression, and it has some kind of classical balance. And indeed, the Fifth Symphony is different in style, even though you can still hear that this is Shostakovich. There are different models that Shostakovich follows. It's not necessarily so much milder, although a little bit of milder. But there are also references to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky who obviously they're inspirerers of socialist-realism at that time. So instead of eight or nine climaxes in one movement, you will just have a single one. And if you just have one peak, then it becomes narratively much easier to comprehend how the music develops. So in many ways, the Fifth Symphony, even the fact that it's not three movements, but the four movements as we're used to, four movements, and it ends in the major key with a triumphant climax. Yeah so in all these respects, the Fifth Symphony was much more palatable. But the chronology of it is also extremely telling. I mean, just want you to imagine what time it was written because the contest of 1937 was of course even worse than of 1936. So Shostakovich had already procrastinated, because with the Fourth Symphony, and hadn't come up with any response to the criticism. So by March Kerzhentsev started getting worried, and actually said, calling colleagues of Shostakovich,"You have to help him, you're just ignoring him, but you have to help him reform." And right after that it seems Shostakovich starts writing his Fifth Symphony. Surrounded by arrests by people he knew professionally, such as Director of the Bolshoi Theater, the mother of his wife, the astronomist Sofya Varzar, you know the trial of his brother-in-law, who is sentenced to 10 years. And probably most worrying of all for Shostakovich personally, it was the news of the arrest of his patron in the party, a very high standing patron and friend, Marshal Tukhachevsky. So Tukhachevsky is very soon arrested, executed, and we're now basically down to two days when Shostakovich visited another friend that they had in common to play that symphony, the first two movement of the Fifth Symphony. And by that stage, they probably both knew that Tukhachevsky was already gone. And in fact, that friend, Zhilyaev, Nikolai Zhilyaev, was arrested precisely for his connection to Tukhachevsky a few months later. So we can ourselves, you know, was it just pure luck that Shostakovich didn't get arrested? And there is a story that he was called for questioning, but then his interrogator was arrested himself, it came to nothing. Or perhaps Shostakovich was, to some extent, already protected. And if we investigate that train of thought, the one thing that could have protected him was participation in the writing of a film score for a film which is called"The Great Citizen." It was the film that was basically the justification of the purges. And it's a paradoxical situation, so on the one hand, yeah, Shostakovich is the victim of the purges, all the people around him are arrested and sentenced to either death or 10 years in the Gulag. And at the same time, he's collaborating, and basically promoting the purges by writing a film score for this film. And this film was basically co-written by Stalin. Stalin interfered in this scenario. So the director was Fridrikh Ermler, who was very close to Stalin. He was on good terms with the Politburo, probably involved with the Secret Service, and that's the kind of project that Shostakovich is involved in. And he writes this film score right after the Fifth Symphony, and he actually uses a very similar musical phrase in the title sequence for the film, so let's hear it. So this is the title sequence for the film.(dramatic orchestral music) So you just heard that phrase, that fanfare.(dramatic orchestral music) So I don't know whether you heard the timpani in the first extract because the sound is so bad, but actually there was a timpani there as well. So you have both the fanfare and the timpani strokes, as a quotation from the symphony. And perhaps retroactively it might have acted as a kind of insurance policy, because in the film this theme is associated with the victory of the revolution. So if that is what that theme means, then that's what the finale of the Fifth means as well. So, the symphony was premiered on the 21st of November in Leningrad by the conductor Mravinsky, and it became a huge success with the public. It's hard to say whether people gave Shostakovich a standing ovation because they loved the music so much, or because they wanted to express support for him, because that was the only way they could express the support publicly, to stand up and clap for 10 minutes. And you know, some of them were crying. Generally speaking, the reaction to the symphony was not unanimous. People actually mostly write about it, they remember the slow movement, the requiem slow movement, which seemed to have touched their hearts. And not so many people actually enjoy the very ending, which I've just played, but some people think that it's a formality, that he basically sold out. Other people heard it as not a triumph at all, but something worrying and describing this repetition of the same note as battering in, or hammering in. So people were really writing about this in their diaries and letters at the time. And eventually the critics were won out to the cause, but there was a description even by one of the listeners who says, well Shostakovichism, he's studying, and engrossed in his abstractions, and this is the banging on the door, you know the objective world is trying to get in, and telling him to get engaged into the building of socialism. So you can see how this ending also became an autobiographical narrative, and it's people who were actually seeing it as the reform itself, as the criticism of Lady Macbeth, and now the reform itself in the symphony. So they perceived as an autobiographical work. But very interesting things happened quite recently when scholars discovered something else in the symphony, and indeed, there is an autobiographical dimension, but which takes us in very different direction. It all started with people noticing a quotation almost a direct quotation from the opera, "Carmen." And I'm going to play you the famous "Habanera," and then the symphony, and I promise you, you will not be able to to unhear it. (chuckling)("Habanera" by Bizet) Yeah, so l'amour, that's what I'm talking about.(melodic orchestral music)(chuckling) Can you hear this? Yeah? And then, you know, once we've noticed that, we start looking, I mean not we, but there was a musicologist from the Ukraine who is called Alexander Benditskii, who discovered this connection with a woman, Elena Konstantinovskaya, you can see her picture here, whom Shostakovich was madly in love with around 1934, '35, to the point that he actually divorced his wife, but then we found out his wife was pregnant, so he remarried her again. But so it was a serious relationship after that, with Lala, Elena Konstantinovskaya was arrested, and he kept in touch with her. Then she was sent to Spain, the connection with "Carmen," she was sent to Spain during the the revolution as an interpreter, and there she met this dashing fellow, who's called Roman Karmen. Karmen. Whether they were really married, I don't know, but she became known as Lala Karmen. So if we start looking through the score of the Fifth, more and more of these quotations and connections with "Carmen" can be found. For example, now let's hear the continuation of that.("Habanera" by Bizet) Yeah, this little motif.(dramatic orchestral music) Yeah, so the same motif slowed down becomes the fanfare that we already connected to the Communist Party and the victory of the revolution. It seems to be coming from the "Habanera," and it's in the same key, that's what so beautiful about it. You can actually hear this connection. So once you get under this wheel, you can explain this whole symphony as basically as love symphony, a love poem for Lala Karmen. Including this very famous hammering in 250 times the same note la, this note A is repeated. La, in Russian, Lala. Lala. Now you're not believing me, but I'm absolutely convinced,(audience members chuckling) this is exactly the kind of thing that Shostakovich would do, and I'm going to prove it to you a bit further. I mean, how wonderful to think, I mean of course, it's a challenge for all of us to see this as a love symphony, because we already sort of accepting this narrative as a civic narrative. But I think it's wonderful as well, because if you read the diaries again of people at that time, Shostakovich didn't write a diary, but other people sort of spoke for him. And surrounded by these horrible things when they couldn't really talk to each other, where the social fabric was torn, the only escapes, there were two escapes, and one was in work. In a bounce of intense creative work when you could forget what was going on, this is exactly what Shostakovich is doing with his Fifth Symphony. And another thing was love. I mean, I was reading the diary Mikhail Prishvin, one of the writers who was absolutely obsessed with the trials and reading the newspapers, and then he falls in love and stops commenting on that altogether. The only thing he talks about is what he managed to kiss or touch, completely obsessed with something else. So that is something that can supplant in even the most horrible things that were going around him, and I think it's wonderful that Shostakovich creates this symphony out of his personal true impulse, because it makes it authentic, and I think that is why it's not just a socialist-realist work that is imposed on him, it's not just a change of style, but it's also an authentic piece of music, and this is why it had such success with the audience. This is another meme, so,"Shostakovich Kills Stalin a Second Time." As you can see, the rails here, it's a lovely print produced by a conductor who put the code of the Fifth Symphony on the rails, and Shostakovich is driving a Metra train over Stalin's body, which I think is rather nice. Finally, now I'm going to advertise our musical treat. Of course, we can't play the Fifth Symphony, or the Fourth Symphony, but we're going to something equally exciting. The musicians are going to perform for us"Six Romances on Verses by English Poets," which Shostakovich wrote in 1942, so five years later. They are six poems, six songs, and they are going to performed in English, although Shostakovich used the Russian translations to write these songs. And each of these songs is dedicated to a particular friend, so there's a lot of personal messages in this. The first one, "Sir Walter Raleigh to his Sonne," which tells you about the wood, the weed, the wag, this wonderful alterative line, which basically talks about the danger of execution. The danger of the gallows. And Levon Atovmyan, the friend of Shostakovich that is dedicated to, was a bit of a wag himself, as we know from his memoirs. He was proud of being a rouge, so I think there is a personal connection with the poem. There's also a personal connection with the key, because A, again the key of A, or la, Levon Atovmyan, you get the same principle as in other works, it's a cipher. So the key of the piece refers to Atovmyan. The second one, which is by Robert Burns, is a very lovely, tender poem dedicated to his wife, Nina Varzar, which is again, self-explanatory. The third one, "MacPherson's Farewell," again, another poem about execution. Strange, isn't it? That such things worry him at that time. So, that's dedicated to Isaak Glikman, another very close friend. Sometimes the connection is very difficult to know. This rather slightly bawdy poem by Burns, is dedicated to his favorite student at the time, Yury Sviridov, we don't know why. I don't know why. The fifth one I think is the most important one, because this is dedicated to Sollertinsky, I already mentioned him yet twice today, and I'm going to mention him again, because this is a Shakespeare, Sonnet 66, and he was very, very close friend, probably the closest friend of all, and basically when you read this sonnet, it's like a description of the times,"and right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd, and strength by limping sway disabled, and art made tongue-tied by authority, and folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, and simple truth miscall'd simplicity, and captive good attending captain ill," actually can refer to our present situation as well easily."Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone, save that, to die, I leave my love alone." The translation that he used replaces the word "love" with "friend" so to leave my friend alone. And this is a very, very strange song, and I think it contains a lot of interesting things. The sonnet is number 66, the tempo equals 66 beats per minute. The first interval is a six, and then it's kind of another six, ascending and descending, there is a 66 in the first phrase. There are other numerical things that you can find, for example, the 14 lines of the sonnet are divided in four plus three, three plus four, and musically there's a lot of mirror symmetry in that song. Shostakovich was a polymath and he was someone who was very interested in early music, so there's possibly allusions to maybe Handel, or Lully, some kind of early music, and also music that relies on ciphers and numerology. There is also something else, it's in the key of G again, and the Russian word for G is "sol," Sollertinsky. Of course, he has to be in G major. And this sol, this G, is repeated in the bass for most of the song. And the other note is C, again, Sollertinsky Ivan, you can imagine it as his initials. The note that is missing from the G major triad is a D. Actually, I just wanted to mention that Sollertinsky wrote a book on Shakespeare, so Shakespeare is also (laughing) it's important that this is Shakespeare. And at the very end, that's before that last line, when Shakespeare says,"save I were to leave my friend alone." And this is when we get the D in the bass, and the D is Dmitri! And that moment, the first oval, it has an E flat, which means in German system, we would call it S. D and S at the same time, D and S come in there, Shostakovich comes in the song to greet his friend. I think it's marvelous, I only discovered it two days ago. So I don't know whether anyone has noticed it, again D-S, D-S at the very end, it ends with a D. And the final song is dedicated by Shebalin, and it's almost another meme of worldly fame and disgrace. The king goes up, the king goes down. Also prophetic for Shebalin, who had just become the director of the Moscow Conservatoire, and who six years later will be disgraced and removed from that post. But of course, also a story of Shostakovich, who was extremely famous composer number one, and who survived this moment of disgrace, and then went up again only to go down again in 1948, and we will get to that a couple of lectures later. So finally, now to our wonderful musical treat. If you have your transcripts, I don't know whether you were given them. I put the poems on the sheets, we're going to have Edward Hawkins and Ceri Owen performing them for you, and I'm going to invite them now.(audience applauding)(somber piano music) Three things there be That prosper up a pace And flourish while they grow asunder far But on a day they meet all in a place And when they meet, they one another mar And they be these The wood, the weed The wag The wood is that Which makes the gallow's tree The weed is that which strings the hangman's bag The wag, my pretty knave, betokeneth thee(piano music turns dramatic) Now mark, dear boy While these assemble not Green springs the tree, hemp grows The wag is wild(piano music turns thoughtful) But when they meet It makes the timber rot It frets the halter And it chokes the child Then bless thee and beware And let us pray We part not With thee at this meeting day(thoughtful piano music)(thoughtful piano music) Or wert thou in the cauld blast On yonder lea, on yonder lea My plaidie to the angry airt I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee Or did Misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blow, around thee blow They bield should be my bossom To share it all, to share it all Or were I in the wildest waste Sae black and bare, sae black and bare The desert were a Paradise If thou wert there, if thou wert there Or were I monarch o' the globe With thee to reign, with thee to reign The brightest jewel in my crown Would be my queen Would be my queen(thoughtful piano music)(lively piano music) Sae rantingly, sae wantonly Sai dauntingly gaed he He played a spring and danced it 'round Below the gallows tree Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong The wretch's destiny Macpherson's time will not be long On yonder gallows tree Oh what is death but parting breath On many a bloody plain I've dared his face, and in this place I scorn him yet again Untie these bands form off my hands And bring me to my sword And there's no a man in all Scotland But I'll brave him at a word I've lived a life of sturt and strife I die by treachery It burns my heart I must depart And not avenged be I've lived a life of sturt and strife I die by treachery It burns my heart, I must depart And not avenged be Now farewell light, thou sunshine bright And all beneath the sky May coward shame disdain his name The wretch that dares not die Sae rantingly, sae wantonly Sae dauntingly gaed he He played a spring and danced it 'round Below the gallows tree(lively piano music)(cheerful piano music) Coming through the rye her body Coming through the rye She draigl't at her petticoatie Coming through the rye Jenny's a weet, poor body Jenny's seldom dry She draigl't at her petticoatie Coming through the rye Can a body meet a body coming through the rye Can a body kiss a body, need a body cry Can a body meet a body Coming through the glen Can a body kiss a body Need the world ken(cheerful piano music)(somber piano music) Tired with all these For restful death I cry As to behold Desert a beggar born And needy nothing Trimm'd in jollity And purest faith unhappily forsworn And guilded honor Shamefully misplaced And maiden virtue Rudely strumpeted And right perfection wrongfully disgraced And strength by limping sway disabled And art made tongue-tied by authority And folly doctor-like controlling skill And simple truth miscall'd simplicity And captive good attending captain ill Tired with all these From these would I be gone Save that, to die I leave My love alone(somber piano music)(purposeful piano music) The King of France went up the hill With 20,000 men(piano music turns dramatic) The King of France came down the hill And never went up again(audience applauding)