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The Seventh Symphony's proportions are heroic, most obviously so in the 27-minute first movement. The deceptively simple opening melody, suggestive of peace, work, hope, is interrupted by the theme of war, "senseless, implacable and brutal." For this martial theme Shostakovich resorts to a musical trick: the violins, tapping the backs of their bows, introduce a tune that might have come from a puppet show. This tiny drumming, at first almost inaudible, mounts and swells, is repeated twelve times in a continuous twelve-minute crescendo. The theme is not developed but simply grows in volume like Ravel's Boléro; it is succeeded by a slow melodic passage that suggests a chant for the war's dead.
As in most of Shostakovich's later music, there are traces of Beethoven, Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mahler, moderns like Poulenc and Busoni. The Seventh Symphony has been described by those who have already heard it as a modern Russian version of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. It has also been called a sound-track for a psychological documentary film on Russia today.
The Composer. Dmitri Shostakovich's father was an engineer. His mother, a student of the St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) Conservatory of Music, believed that children should never be taught music before the age of nine, otherwise they become pedantic. But Dmitri Shostakovich had other ideas.
At five he was taken to see Rimsky-Korsakov's Tsar Sultan. After one hearing he could and did sing long passages from the opera. Sometimes he would sit at the piano, strike a chord and lisp: "That's the stars." Sometimes he struck a treble note, said: "That's somebody looking out the window." At 13, he entered Leningrad Conservatory. At 19, he composed his First Symphony (one of the most popular) as part of his course.
For some 80 years Russian music had been strongly influenced by "The Five"— César Cui, an engineer; Modest Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov), a government clerk and famed tosspot; Alexander Borodin (Prince Igor), a doctor; Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakov, a naval officer; Mily Balakirev, a professional musician. In opposition to the international style of Tchaikovsky, "The Five" believed that the source of Russian music should be Russian—folk songs and church music. Igor Stravinsky (Petrouchka, The Fire Bird) continued this nationalist tradition, though he later abandoned it for severe and arid abstractions.
The Russian Revolution destroyed many things, but it did nothing to destroy this nationalist musical heritage. Shostakovich admits his debt to "The Five." But he is far too much of an eclectic to stay in the nationalist groove. He is also too much of a revolutionist. His Second Symphony he subtitled October (after the October Revolution). His Third Symphony he called May Day.
Neither were as good or as popular as his First; so next he turned to satiric ballet and opera. His Lady Macbeth of Mzensk is a kind of musical Sunday supplement about small-town life in Tsarist Russia.