 The gestation of Shostakovich 's Thirteenth Symphony , Babi Yar , was only slightly less straightforward . He set the poem Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko almost immediately upon reading it , initially considering it a single @-@ movement composition . Discovering three other Yevtushenko poems in the poet 's collection Vzmakh ruki ( A Wave of the Hand ) prompted him to proceed to a full @-@ length choral symphony , with " A Career " as the closing movement . Musicologist Francis Maes comments that Shostakovich did so by complementing Babi Yar 's theme of Jewish suffering with Yevtushenko 's verses about other Soviet abuses : " ' At the Store ' is a tribute to the women who have to stand in line for hours to buy the most basic foods , ... ' Fears ' evokes the terror under Stalin . ' A Career ' is an attack on bureaucrats and a tribute to genuine creativity " . Music historian Boris Schwarz adds that the poems , in the order Shostakovich places them , form a strongly dramatic opening movement , a scherzo , two slow movements and a finale . 
