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Jan. 23rd, 2022 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsBoth sophia_sol and chestnut_pod have raved recently about M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. It came in for the library for me recently and the timing turned out to be fortuitous in a couple of ways, a.) because it makes an interesting wine pairing with Bridgetower Sonata and b.) because sometimes when bad and stressful things are happening in the world in which I live, there is a kind of comfort to be found in reading about other people surviving through worse, more stressful things. And most of Dimitri Shostakovich's life has clearly been vastly more stressful than any part of mine yet, even given all the current givens.
Despite the grim subject matter, this book is written for teenagers, so the prose is very deliberately clear and uncluttered, but this doesn't make the book feel simplified or flattened -- rather the opposite, as clarity of the prose really allows Anderson to showcase the complexity of his historical project. He makes a point of discussing the ambiguity of his various sources and the motivations that both the USSR and the USA had in presenting Shostakovich and the narrative of the 7th Symphony a certain way: this is something I am always looking for in historical nonfiction and so rarely receive, and I appreciate it especially in a work that is aimed at teenagers, because I think it is one of the most interesting and the most important ways for people in general, but especially kids, to learn to think about history.
(Also -- again despite the grim subject matter -- M.T. Anderson is a very funny writer and and good at jokes. Even a story of senseless tragedy and/or triumph of the human spirit (depending of course on how you look at it and which parts you're thinking about, as is always the case) inevitably has elements of farce.)
Although the writing and performance of the 7th Symphony form the centerpiece of the book, the narrative covers the broader span of Shostakovich's life, which in itself covers WWI, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Stalin, the purges of St. Petersburg intellectuals in the 1930s, WWII, the fall of Stalin, and the Cold War. Shostakovich was a major public creative figure during most of these events -- not an easy thing to be in many times and places, but difficult in a very particular and life-threatening way in the Soviet Union under Stalin -- and Anderson, who clearly likes his subject and finds him a very sympathetic figure (I agree!), doesn't shy away from all the inherent controversies and compromises of that.
It's a very compelling narrative all throughout, but the part of the book that will stick with me the most viscerally is the Siege of Leningrad itself -- bad times! extremely bad!! - and the sheer miracle of the fact that the 7th Symphony was performed at all, by the last few starving musicians in the city, who dragged themselves to rehearsal every day and didn't always survive to the end of it. One of the things I was most struck by in the story is the fact that the musicians themselves didn't particularly care for the 7th Symphony as they practiced it, were more frustrated by it than anything else -- it's a ninety minute piece! it's supposed to be played by a full orchestra of over 100 people! ninety straight minutes on your instrument without a break takes a lot of stamina when you're not actively in the process of starving to death! -- until the night that it actually came time for the performance: the symphony hall lit up for the first time since the Siege, the whole besieged city listening and the whole army working on making sure they didn't get bombed out while they did it, a moment absolutely chock full of human-constructed beauty and narrative significance and sometimes that is actually what you need for survival.
sophia_sol and chestnut_pod have raved recently about M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. It came in for the library for me recently and the timing turned out to be fortuitous in a couple of ways, a.) because it makes an interesting wine pairing with Bridgetower Sonata and b.) because sometimes when bad and stressful things are happening in the world in which I live, there is a kind of comfort to be found in reading about other people surviving through worse, more stressful things. And most of Dimitri Shostakovich's life has clearly been vastly more stressful than any part of mine yet, even given all the current givens. Despite the grim subject matter, this book is written for teenagers, so the prose is very deliberately clear and uncluttered, but this doesn't make the book feel simplified or flattened -- rather the opposite, as clarity of the prose really allows Anderson to showcase the complexity of his historical project. He makes a point of discussing the ambiguity of his various sources and the motivations that both the USSR and the USA had in presenting Shostakovich and the narrative of the 7th Symphony a certain way: this is something I am always looking for in historical nonfiction and so rarely receive, and I appreciate it especially in a work that is aimed at teenagers, because I think it is one of the most interesting and the most important ways for people in general, but especially kids, to learn to think about history.
(Also -- again despite the grim subject matter -- M.T. Anderson is a very funny writer and and good at jokes. Even a story of senseless tragedy and/or triumph of the human spirit (depending of course on how you look at it and which parts you're thinking about, as is always the case) inevitably has elements of farce.)
Although the writing and performance of the 7th Symphony form the centerpiece of the book, the narrative covers the broader span of Shostakovich's life, which in itself covers WWI, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Stalin, the purges of St. Petersburg intellectuals in the 1930s, WWII, the fall of Stalin, and the Cold War. Shostakovich was a major public creative figure during most of these events -- not an easy thing to be in many times and places, but difficult in a very particular and life-threatening way in the Soviet Union under Stalin -- and Anderson, who clearly likes his subject and finds him a very sympathetic figure (I agree!), doesn't shy away from all the inherent controversies and compromises of that.
It's a very compelling narrative all throughout, but the part of the book that will stick with me the most viscerally is the Siege of Leningrad itself -- bad times! extremely bad!! - and the sheer miracle of the fact that the 7th Symphony was performed at all, by the last few starving musicians in the city, who dragged themselves to rehearsal every day and didn't always survive to the end of it. One of the things I was most struck by in the story is the fact that the musicians themselves didn't particularly care for the 7th Symphony as they practiced it, were more frustrated by it than anything else -- it's a ninety minute piece! it's supposed to be played by a full orchestra of over 100 people! ninety straight minutes on your instrument without a break takes a lot of stamina when you're not actively in the process of starving to death! -- until the night that it actually came time for the performance: the symphony hall lit up for the first time since the Siege, the whole besieged city listening and the whole army working on making sure they didn't get bombed out while they did it, a moment absolutely chock full of human-constructed beauty and narrative significance and sometimes that is actually what you need for survival.
