(no subject)

[skygiants]

Both 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.

Comments

[sovay]

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.

I wrote Shostakovich a ghost poem in 2016.

Hilariously, as noted, about a week afterward I was given a copy of Symphony for the City of the Dead, which I enjoyed very much.

[osprey_archer]

I'm so glad you liked this book! A few years ago I listened to it on audiobook (an amazing way to experience it, as it includes passages from the 7th Symphony), with rather low expectations even though it came recommended to the skies: I've been reading about the Soviet Union for years, was I going to learn anything new from a nonfiction book geared specifically for teenagers, etc. etc. etc.

And the answer turned out to be YES, I learned tons of new stuff, not just about Shostakovich but even about Stalinism & the Siege of Leningrad, in which I thought I was fairly well versed. As you say, one of the things that book does well is contextualize its sources - who is saying this, what motivations do they have for saying it this way, etc.? Which is important in any history, but especially with Soviet sources, and many histories either don't attempt it (my beloved Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar doesn't even try) or don't do a very good job.

Have you read Elizabeth Wein's A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II? I don't recall it doing anything particularly deep with its sources (although it has been a while since I read it! So maybe?); the point of contact is that it's another recent nonfiction book aimed at teens involving the Soviet Union in World War I.

[musesfool]

I don't remember many of the details but I do remember finding it a fantastically compelling read when I read it back in...2015? 2016?

[sophia_sol]

I'm so glad you loved this as much as I did! SO good.

[copperfyre]

Gosh, this sounds amazing! I love that it actually addresses ambiguity of sources and how we can think about them - a lot of my secondary school history classes were focused on examining sources and responding to them, and what did this mean for how we talked about them, and I’ve always been surprised? concerned? that more history written for the general public doesn’t make this a vital part of whatever its trying to say.

I’m going to see if I can get this out of the library immediately.

[nnozomi]

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.
I am not actually going to read the book, because I'm too much of a wimp to cope with the Siege of Leningrad, but this is such a wonderful expression of music and music-making at its most transformative and significant.

[starlady]

I know I had this in hard copy but I think I might have sold it unread--at least I still have the ebook. I was a huge fan of Anderson's Octavian Nothing duology and I really do need to read this one. Plus I love Shostakovitch, though I love the Eighth String Quartet more than the Seventh Symphony.

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, wow, I'm so happy to have started this little reading chain! Thrilled you read it and enjoyed it :)

[ceitfianna]

I read this book not long after it came out, I found out about it because it was nominated for an award when I still went to conferences. It really struck with me, I'm glad that you found it worthwhile too. Its just well written non-fiction.

[imbir]

I'm 75% of the way through the audiobook, which is read by the author, and not that I want Anderson to stop writing, but I wish he'd do a sideline in the audiobook business. The book is well-written and even-handed, but his reading grants it the same spark I get from his fiction.

I appreciate the weight Anderson gives to the testimonies of people on the ground during the first and second revolutions, the world wars and the Stalin era. It conscientiously foregrounds the cumulative human cost of the siege, but it also lays out the kind of brutal sentimentality and mordant nostalgia I've seen flourish in my own family in the post-WWII period of great social upheaval and political repression. It was heartwarming and made me a touch homesick to listen to primary accounts of ordinary people attempting to justify or shrug off their admirably questionable decision to sacrifice their lives for their charmingly shitty country.

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

I particularly liked that Anderson takes pains to stress how Shostakovich's celebrity status put him in danger and kept him alive, and the ways in which Shostakovich the Great 20th Century Composer is almost as much of a symbol and a construct as his symphony.

On that note, here's the truth about what really killed Shostakovich, who was apparently so upset that the first death didn't take:

"If there's a musical context for Lloyd Webber's inspiration you find it in Prokofiev as well as Puccini - it's worth remembering that when Dmitri Shostakovich, arguably the greatest composer of the 20th century, saw Superstar in London shortly before he died (twice, on successive evenings) he lamented that he could not have written something similar himself, admiring particularly the writing of a core rock band orchestration overlain with full symphonic strings, brass and woodwind."

[skygiants]

It's a fantastic photo, and a fantastic poem -- the composure of the indestructible / the routine of the unspeakable. I did keep looking at photos of him in Symphony for the City of the Dead, with his round glasses and rumpled hair, and thinking how much he looked like an endearing character actor.

[skygiants]

I'm not yet learned to fully appreciate audiobooks (though now that I've become a podcast person I think it is probably just a matter of time) but that really does sound like an ideal way to experience it -- Anderson does a really good job of the impossible task of describing music in text but I very much kept wanting to stop and go listen to ninety minutes of music in the middle at places or times when it was absolutely not convenient to do so! (I did put it on while I was writing this post and did get shivers as the bit that Anderson keeps describing as the horrible little jingle got louder and louder and louder.)

I haven't read it! I should try, I'm definitely curious what her writing style is like for nonfiction; one can certainly see her thirst for research at the center of all her historical fiction.

[skygiants]

It was one of those books where I kept wanting to look up and seize on the nearest person to make them look at an image, or tell them about a fact, or quote something -- really tremendously engaging.

[skygiants]

Thank you for recommending it, I had it on my list already from chestnut_pod but you writing about it is what reminded me to actually put it on hold at the library!

[skygiants]

Yeah, it is one of the things that is most likely to make or break a nonfiction book for me -- so many do the absolute opposite, and just leap from conclusion to conclusion in pursuing their pet argument, and it drives me up a wall! History is messy and inconclusive, please, I would like to be given the information in all its ambiguity so that I can ponder it myself, which aside from being more intellectually honest is IMO is the most interesting way to do it anyway!

[skygiants]

The book does such an incredible job of evoking it -- and, like, obviously reading the book is not anything like living through the Siege of Leningrad, but to get the description of this incredible high after these very devastating lows was extremely effective, for me, and I think is going to stick with me for a long time.

[sovay]

It's a fantastic photo, and a fantastic poem -- the composure of the indestructible / the routine of the unspeakable.

Thank you! Man, early 2016. I've read about that period in histories.

(The title of the linked post is from one of Shostakovich's letters to Isaak Glikman—their published correspondence begins in 1941 because everything earlier was lost in, wait for it, the siege of Leningrad—and is one of his other endearing qualities.)

I did keep looking at photos of him in Symphony for the City of the Dead, with his round glasses and rumpled hair, and thinking how much he looked like an endearing character actor.

I keep feeling it's only a matter of time until Daniel Radcliffe plays him.

[sophia_sol]

\o/

[skygiants]

Yeah, I also loved the Octavian Nothing books -- it's been a long time now since I read them, but I think there are a lot of echoes between the ways he writes about Leningrad, and the way he writes about Octavian's experience in the Revolutionary War in Book 2.

[skygiants]

Thank you so much for the glowing and entirely deserved recommendation, I am delighted to have benefited from it!

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's one of the best-written nonfiction books I've read in a while! Very thorough and very compelling, which is a line that many authors do not manage to walk.

[skygiants]

SHOSTAKOVICH SAW SUPERSTAR TWICE??? Thank you for sharing, this is the most incredible thing I've learned today. One contemplates a simpler life for Shostakovich, in which he could have pursued his dream of writing high-concept pop musicals.

But yes, the way he uses direct accounts to talk about how people lived through these Difficult Times is extremely good. One moment that particularly struck me is the diary entry of the woman who was found her landlady in the garden when the invasion was announced, 'smiling sardonically and making no attempt to hide her hatred for Stalin,' and the diarist was like "in most ways I agree with her, I truly can't say she's wrong, and yet --"

[skygiants]

dang, that's the best piece of fancasting I've heard in a long time

(The bits about Glikman in Symphony are also all extremely cute!)

[osprey_archer]

My recollection is that I found the first couple of chapters of A Thousand Sisters somewhat rough going because I felt they'd been too simplified for the teen audience, but after that Wein hit her stride, and I loved reading about all the friendships between the pilots.

[raven]

I picked this up on your recommendation, and I fucking loved it. Just, everything you say, the uncluttered prose, the incredible richness of narrative, the evaluation of sources, the power of the story. I read it on a nine-hour flight where luckily no one asked me why I was crying and so I didn't have to say "the siege of Leningrad", which was probably for the best, thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.

[skygiants]

I am so so glad you ended up reading and liking it (and that everyone on the plane was polite enough to recognize that when a person is having a lot of emotions about the Siege of Leningrad it is simply best to leave them to it!) It's rare that I read something that manages to be simultaneously that emotionally forceful and that intellectually satisfying.