SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY 5
A Soviet Artist’s Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism

By Judith Eckelmeyer

(GRACE WOODS MUSIC SESSION MAY 19, 2025)

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“And yet it moves” (Galileo Galilei,1633)

Shostakovich in 1942

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) lived at a time of massive changes in his native Russia. He lived through the events of the October Revolution in 1917, the rise of socialism under Lenin, the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922 and the Communist party, and after Lenin’s death in 1924 the rise and domination of Stalin, and, after Stalin’s death in 1953, the beginning of the move to “de-Stalinize” Russia under Krushchev. His music was to reflect these changes in many of his compositions—especially his fifth symphony.

Shostakovich in 1925

Shostakovich received a classical musical training and became familiar with current musical repertoire by major composer such as Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mahler and recent Russians. He wrote his early compositions in the timeframe of 1913 to 1936; among these works were his first four symphonies and the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1930-32). The Soviet regime’s stringent, oppressive hold over the arts at that time was, for Shostakovich, embodied in the Union of Soviet Composers (USC) which operated under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture. Composers wishing to attain approval of the state (and have their music performed publicly) were “urged” to become members of the USC, and their music was required to comport with the ideal of “socialist realism”, showing struggles and triumphs of the common people (proletariat), with which the common people could identify.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mzensk Opera in four acts and nine scenes Libretto: Alexandre Preis / Dmitri Shostakovich - After Nikolaï Leskov  Musical direction: Ingo Metzmacher Director: Krzysztof Warlikowski

Shostakovich ran into a huge problem with those requirements. His opera Lady Macbeth was originally received well by press and public. However, Stalin and the Soviet newspaper Pravda firmly trashed the work: it was, in Stalin’s words, “chaos instead of music” with a lot of shrieking (1936), and the USC also denounced it. All In all, the subject matter was determined to be “pre-socialist, petty-bourgeois”, and totally out of keeping with the communist ideal. Of course it had to be withdrawn, banned from production (until much later)! So harsh was the criticism that Shostakovich, who had composed a fourth symphony in 1936 in his then-current experimental style after Gustav Mahler’s huge orchestration and loose structure, never let it see the light of day. It was not performed until 1961. ​

Dmitrij Schostakowitsch: 4. Sinfonie c-Moll op. 43 ∙ I. Allegretto poco moderato 00:00 ∙ II. Moderato con moto 27:40 ∙ III. Largo – Allegro 36:37 ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony ∙ Alain Altinoglu, Dirigent ∙ ​

On top of all this political opposition to his work, Shostakovich was dealing with a personal cloud: he had proposed marriage to Elena Konstantinova, nicknamed Lala, but she rejected him and eloped to Spain with Roman Karmen, a Soviet film director, journalist and filmmaker, among other things, who was about to document the Spanish Civil War. Shostakovich identified Karmen’s name with the Bizet opera Carmen; Marina Frolova-Walker and Jonathan Walker identified themes from that opera in his fifth symphony.

Karmen in 1975

Thus, in the wake of this extraordinarily harsh criticism and the possibility of his being thrown out of the Union of Soviet Composers—a death warrant for his career—and rejection by Lala, Shostakovich spent the end of 1936 and beginning of 1937 rethinking his musical direction. When he began composing again later in 1937, it was to write his Symphony No. 5. He completed it in three months; its premiere was in November of that year.

Fifth Symphony IV. Coda

Shostakovich was nothing if not a very practical realist. His apology to the POWERS was to state that this new symphony was “Creative reply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism”. Indeed, his style was greatly altered. The new symphony was in the 4-movement structure of the classical symphony. Themes were identifiable; in fact, Russian/Soviet cultural historian Harlow Robinson comments that the opening motto is as bold a statement as the openings of Beethoven’s Symphonies 5 and 9. The work had an identifiable key (D-minor) and a heroic ending. A brief view of the four movements:

1. The famous motto gloomily opens the uneasy first material to be followed by a long lyrical passage. The themes are fragmented and more frenzied in the “development” section of this sonata-allegro movement. The ending becomes very quiet and contemplative.
2. The second movement is a sardonically merry scherzo, put askew with occasional meter changes. (Just how merry is this, really?)
3. Movement 3, marked “largo”, is the emotional core of the symphony, intense and sorrowful, without irony. The conclusion of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” symphony has been identified as a spiritual relative. 
4. The finale is a warlike minor-key march that becomes increasingly aggressive. It is interrupted by a brief calm passage, then resumes its push to its high point—but changed to major. Superficially it’s a victory march, but there is sarcasm and irony underlying the “cheering”. 

​The audience and critics loved it and the USC were placated. 
BUT…
In the years following the performance of this Symphony No. 5, scholars and musicians have found cracks in its walls, clues that indicate the Shostakovich had written a kind of false document. For starters, there are in the symphony allusions to a very interesting Mahler song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn: “St. Anthony and the Fishes” (1893). The text tells of the saint, arriving at an empty church to preach, goes instead to the river where all kinds of fish and water creatures gather to hear his sermon. The saint’s new congregation are practitioners of every kind of deceit, trickery, and immorality, and they listen attentively and eagerly to Anthony’s words, but when the saint leaves, the fish return all their old ways, having forgotten the sermon. 

Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Der Schildwache Nachtlied (Live) · Lucia Popp · Andreas Schmidt
​Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra · Leonard Bernstein

A second external connection of the symphony’s underground message is Shostakovich’s setting of a text by the early 19th-century author Alexander Pushkin:  
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“Rebirth”
An artist-barbarian with a drowsy brush
Blackens over the painting of a genius,
And his lawless drawing
Scribbles over it meaninglessly.
But with the years the alien paints
Flake off like old scales;
The creation of the genius appears
Before us in its former beauty.
Thus the delusions fall away
From my worn-out soul,
And there spring up within it
Visions of original, pure days

Alexander Pushkin

Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin, Op. 46: I. Rebirth · Hallé · Sir Mark Elder · James Platt · Dmitry Shostakovich

Strikingly, Shostakovich set this poem to music in December of the same year that he wrote his fifth symphony.

Both external connections point to a way to understand the fifth symphony as a work to be read on more than one level. At the obvious, overt level, the symphony represents Shostakovich’s acceptance of his current circumstances and the political milieu in which he composed: the country, the people, following their leaders without question and accepting the stringent restrictions and controls of the Soviet system, see the system as a tragedy, one which Shostakovich’s music in the 5th symphony turns to optimism, courage, and the will to fight on to a better life.

However, at the covert, secret level, Symphony No. 5 can be taken is a rejection of the Soviet system. As the two external connections above suggest, resistance to the system may lie beneath the superficial level. Aside from the impervious and immutable immorality and inhumanity of the system, and its to attempts to obscure the slowly disintegrating shields of its true nature, truth and light come through the music. The fourth movement in particular is noteworthy. Shostakovich is said to have explained it as a satirical view of Stalin, empty but covered up with false brilliance as a glorious acclamation. A strong parallel may be seen in the forced rejoicing and supposed enthusiasm of Russian peasants, beaten into welcoming to the new tsar Boris Godunov in the opening scene of Mussorgsky’s opera.

Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich

Did Shostakovich truly intend a subversive message in his Symphony 5?

In 1957, musicologist Solomon Volkov published Testimony, a book purporting to be Shostakovich’s memoirs dictated to him by the composer. Volkov paints Shostakovich as firmly anti-Soviet and takes the position the Shostakovich’s music “contained veiled criticism of Soviet authorities and support of the dissident movement” (Wikipedia). A huge controversy surrounds the author, the book, and the supposed opinions of Shostakovich. Mine not to enter the fray; mine only to report that there is a thread of likelihood that the composer of this very famous 5th symphony embedded his own message within the music in subtle and various ways. 

How do you hear the music?
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In 1633 Galileo Galilei had been released from prison; he had been sent there after having been tried and condemned for heresy. His support for heliocentric theory, based on Copernicus’s Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs (1543), directly contradicted the Roman Catholic teaching of the geocentric view of the universe. A stubborn scientist, Galileo nevertheless eventually admitted error, renounced and withdrew his opinion that it is the earth that moves, not the sun, and was released. He had sworn never to express this belief in any way again.

Galileo Galilei, portrait by Francesco Porcia

Legend has it that upon his release from prison, Galileo said quietly, “And yet it moves”. The event has been disproven, but the sentiment has remained as a truism; Galileo continued to believe his view of the universe was correct, even in the face of prodigious opposition.
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So, with Shostakovich, may we consider that he intended his music to have a code that revealed his true thinking?

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Dmitrij Schostakowitsch: 5. Sinfonie ∙ (Auftritt) 00:00 ∙ I. Moderato 00:25 ∙ II. Allegretto 17:25 ∙ III. Largo 23:28 ∙ IV. Allegro non troppo 38:15 ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony ∙ David Afkham, Dirigent 

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Judith Eckelmeyer ©2025