Shostakovich Quotes

When I hear about someone else's pain, I feel pain too. i feel pain for everything - for people and animals. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

What galls me is that these sadists always have fans and followers-- and sincere ones at that. The typical example of this is Toscanini. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. ~ Edward Abbey

I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Those who have ears to hear, will hear ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El Sistema and the old man Abreu. When we were in Venezuela, I had the chance to go to his building. He had, like, five or six orchestras playing of kids from the hood playing, like, Mahler's third symphony and Shostakovich fifth and Beethoven. Man, it's unbelievable. I mean, they could play. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Outside Soviet Russia, and following the last symphonies of Mahler, Nielsen and Sibelius, an element of obsolescence has unmistakably attached itself to the genre. One could, perhaps, be forgiven for regarding Stravinsky's two ironic stylizations of the symphony as a fitting farewell salute. And yet the Shostakovich symphonies have, in Philip Larkin's phrase, 'penetrated the public mind' to an extent that has put them on a level with Beethoven. ~ Pauline Fairclough

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The 'secret' of Shostakovich, it was suggested - by a Chinese neurologist, Dr Dajue Wang - was the presence of a metallic splinter, a mobile shell-fragment, in his brain, in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was very reluctant, apparently, to have this removed:
Since the fragment had been there, he said, each time he leaned his head to one side he could hear music. His head was filled with melodies - different each time - which he then made use of when composing.
X-rays allegedly showed the fragment moving around when Shostakovich moved his head, pressing against his 'musical' temporal lobe, when he tilted, producing an infinity of melodies which his genius could use. ~ Oliver Sacks

In the background, classical music plays from a paint-splattered radio, the New York station with the ancient announcer more frequently heard in doctors' waiting rooms and other places where signs prohibit the use of cell phones – the last bastions of Beethoven or Chopin or, on racier days, Shostakovich. ~ Kate Walbert

A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The friendship of Shostakovich cast a brilliant light over my whole life and whose spiritual qualities captured my soul once and for all time. ~ Galina Vishnevskaya

If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

It meant different things to different people, but somehow it meant them all intensely. Shostakovich's words just confuse the issue. His symphony itself is what remains. Listen to it. It is your symphony to write with him. ~ M T Anderson

Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined towards friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything than himself and his music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I know now, like drumbeats. Portentous, and a little sinister, like tympani strikes at the start of a gloomy symphony. Shostakovich, maybe. ~ Lee Child

I write music, it's performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The truth is that the war helped. The war brought great sorrow and made life very very hard. Much sorrow, many tears. But it had been even harder before the war, because then everyone was alone in his sorrow. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Now I can't abide rudeness, even in so called great artists. Rudeness and cruelty are the qualities i hate most. Rudeness and cruelty are always connected, I feel. One example out of many is Stalin. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

He asked me, "Young man, do you love art? Great, lofty, immortal art?" I felt uncomfortable, and I replied that I did. That was a fatal mistake, because Volynsky put it this way: "If you love art, young man, how can you talk to me now about filthy lucre?"
He gave me a beautiful speech, itself an example of high art. It was passionate, inspired, a speech about great immortal art, and its point was that I shouldn't ask Volynsky for my pay. In doing so I defiled art, he explained, bringing it down to my level of crudity, avarice, and greed. Art was endangered. It could perish if I pressed my outrageous demands.
I tried to tell him that I needed the money. He replied that he couldn't imagine or understand how a man of the arts could be capable of speaking about such trivial aspects of life. He tried to shame me. But I held my own. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Football is the ballet of the masses. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko 's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer. ~ Dave Brubeck

Torture is a good way to get people to talk but a poor method of finding out the truth; people confess whether there is any reality to the confession or not.

-Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad ~ M T Anderson

Brancusi has his medium: Picasso, Faulkner, Shostakovich, theirs. Mine happens to be cloth. ~ Charles James

But I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler , but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin 's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth [Symphony] was about. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I was a guest in the home of a conductor when I was in my early twenties. They turned on the gramophone and played a popular record of a foxtrot. I liked the foxtrot, but I didn't like the way it was played. I confided my opinion to the host, who suddenly said, 'Ah, so you don't like the way it's played? All right, if you want, write down the number by heart and orchestrate it and I'll play it. That is, of course, if you can do it and in a given amount of time: I'm giving you an hour. if you're really a genius, you should be able to write it in an hour.' I did it in 45 minutes. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. ~ Brian Eno

Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No. I came back to life after the Seventh. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember once he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I had been playing Shostakovich on the stereo, but without conviction. ~ John Le Carre

For those who listened attentively to his strong voice, filled with anxiety and, at times, breaking with despair, Shostakovich had become a crucial symbol of intellectual integrity. For many years his music remained a safety valve that, for a few short hours, allowed listeners to expand their chests and breathe freely. At the time, his music was that truly indispensable lungful of freedom and dissidence, not only in its content, but also - which is no less important - in its musical form ~ Anonymous

I do write quickly, that's true, but I think about my music for a comparatively long time, and until it's complete in my head I don't begin setting it down. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of our time and I truly love many of his works. ( ... ) The marvellous composer has invariably been at the centre of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and made my own transcriptions as well. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Cinnamon Girl" wasn't right for this day, for this time, for what was about to happen. If he were to have music, he thought, maybe Shostakovich, a few measures from the Lyric Waltz in Jazz Suite Number 2. Something sweet, yet pensive, with a taste of tragedy; Qatar was an intellectual, and he knew his music. ~ John Sandford

Most people are average, neither black nor white, but grey. A dirty shade of grey. To the best of my ability I tried to write about these people, about their completely average, commonplace dreams and hopes, and about their suspicious tendency towards murder. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I'm training my left hand to write, in case I lose the ability in my right. That's gymnastics for the dying. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist ... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

This quality of Jewish folk music [- it can appear to be happy when it's tragic-] is close to my idea of what music should be. The should always be two layers in music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true! ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Best listened to in a windowless room, better than best in an airless room - correctly speaking, a bunker sealed forever and enwrapped in tree-roots - the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody. The soul strips itself of life in a dusty room. ~ William T. Vollmann

Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer. Mahler & Berg are my favourite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, a Krenek and Milhaud whom I liked when I was young but cooled towards rapidly. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

One must speak the truth about the past or not at all. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation lie as a heavy burden on the psyche. And you must, you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich