Symphony No. 7 (Shostakovich)
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad, was begun in Leningrad, completed in the city of Samara (then known as Kuybyshev) in December 1941, and premiered in that city on March 5, 1942. At first dedicated to Lenin, it was eventually submitted in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played under dire circumstances on August 9, 1942, during the siege by German and Finnish forces. The Leningrad soon became popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to fascism and totalitarianism, thanks in part to the composer's microfilming of the score in Samara and its clandestine delivery, via Tehran and Cairo, to New York, where Arturo Toscanini led a broadcast performance (July 19, 1942) and Time magazine placed Shostakovich on its cover. That popularity faded somewhat after 1945, but the work is still regarded as a major musical testament to the 27 million Soviet people who lost their lives in World War II, and it is often played at Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried.

Length and form
Shostakovich's longest symphony—one of the longest in the whole repertory—typically takes some 75 minutes to perform—but there have been wide interpretive differences over the years: Leonard Bernstein's acclaimed 1988 recording stretches to 85 minutes. The work has four movements. Shostakovich at first gave them titles—War, Reminiscence, Home Expanses, and Victory—but he soon withdrew these and left the movements with their tempo markings alone:

I. Allegretto
This is in modified sonata form and lasts  for around half an hour; there are the usual two contrasting subjects, but no development section, this being replaced by the 'invasion' theme. It begins with a rousing, majestic theme played by all the strings and later echoed by the woodwinds. The theme rises in pitch through the first moments of the piece, with octave-long runs in the strings. This is followed by a slower, more tranquil section driven by flutes and lower strings, which peters out only to be replaced—slyly—by the "invasion" march: a 22-bar, snare-drum-led ostinato that will pervade much of the movement. On the surface, it resembles the structure of Ravel's Bolero, but the march is derived from Da geh' ich zu Maxim from Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow for its latter half and a theme from Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the work for which the composer suffered his first official denunciation in 1936. The prominent sequence of six descending notes in the seventh bar, from Lehár, has been said by the musicologist Ian MacDonald to resemble the third bar of Deutschlandlied. The march is repeated twelve times, always louder and more accented. Other instruments accompany with undertones that forebode increasing action and excitement. At the end of the twelfth repetition, the brass (particularly the trumpets) interject very loudly with a new, more frantic theme, announcing the arrival of the invaders. The passage has rising and falling scales, one after the other. The snare drum beats at an increased rate, and several exchanges between the brass occur, with dramatic minor sweeping movements in the trombones and horns resembling danger sirens. This climaxes in a somewhat slower, but loud and chaotic passage driven by competing blaring brass and frantic strings. A slower, two-part section follows: a very prominent bassoon solo (introduced by a solo clarinet), then a soft, moving recapitulation of the first theme played by the strings. The short coda presents the invasion theme one last time, played by a solo trumpet and percussion.

II. Moderato (poco allegretto)
This is the symphony's shortest movement. Shostakovich referred to it as both a scherzo and a lyric intermezzo. It begins in the latter vein with a quiet, playful theme in the strings. Some aspects of the interplay of the violins are evocative of a fugue. Moments later, a solo oboe plays a high variation on the tune. Other instruments continue with tunes of their own for several moments. Then, in the middle of the movement, woodwinds interject with a brash, shrill theme, followed by brass, then strings, then woodwinds. This eventually leads to a quick, majestic passage that is another ostinato, but different from the invasion theme in the first movement. The remaining third of the movement is much like the beginning of the second movement.

III. Adagio
The third movement (15–20 minutes) is structured much like the second, with a slow initial theme, a faster middle section that evokes the first movement, and a recapitulation of the initial theme. Shostakovich stated elsewhere that he had hoped to portray Leningrad by twilight, its streets and the embankments of the Neva River suspended in stillness. Woodwinds begin with slow, sustained notes, accentuated by the horns. This simple theme cadences, and is followed by a declamatory theme played by violins. Winds and brass repeat the string theme, which the strings take over with another brief variation. This transitions directly into a faster and fiercer passage. The violins return with the opening theme of the movement. This builds into a somewhat frantic passage underlaid by an ostinato in the lower strings (a deliberately awkward "oomph-pah" motif). This leads into a loud development section evoking the first movement. However, the passage ends quickly, with the woodwinds bringing back the original theme, again echoed by the strings, just as in the beginning. The final third of the movement continues in this vein.

IV. Allegro non troppo
This begins with a quiet, searching melody in the strings that slowly rises in pitch. The high strings hold the high notes, and are joined briefly by woodwinds. The low strings suddenly begin a quick march-like tune that is answered by increasingly frantic violins and point-like interjections from the rest of the orchestra. This section gathers frenzy for several minutes. A brief break comes in the form of a transition passage with repetitive three-note figures played by high strings, accented by slap pizzicati in the cellos and basses. A slower and sharply accented section follows. Several minutes of quiet foreboding occur from this point, with themes from earlier movements, particularly the first. Woodwinds build on one of these until violins take over with another familiar theme that builds to the ferocious climax. The symphony ends in the key of C major, and by no means joyously. (The tremendous coda bears some resemblance to the equally colossal ending to Symphony No. 8 by Anton Bruckner, and the opening theme from that symphony is even quoted here.) Near the conclusion, there is a piercing interjection of repetitive statements, shattering hopes of a happy ending. Previous themes return, only this time laboriously augmented, and the colossal C-major finish is ambiguous if not blatantly ironic, though triumphantly cathartic.

Instrumentation

The work is written for a large orchestra consisting of:

Woodwinds

3 Flutes (2nd doubling alto flute; 3rd doubling piccolo)
2 Oboes
Cor anglais
3 clarinets in B and A (3rd doubling E-flat clarinet)
Bass clarinet
2 Bassoons
Contrabassoon

Brass
8 Horns
6 Trumpets
6 Trombones
 Tuba

Percussion
5 Timpani
Bass Drum
Snare Drum (at least one; two to three recommended)
Cymbals
Tam-Tam
Triangle
Tambourine
Xylophone

Keyboard
Piano

Strings
2 Harps; and a minimum of:
16 1st Violins
14 2nd Violins
12 Violas
10 Cellos
8 Double basses

Overview

Composition

"Music about terror"
There are conflicting accounts as to when Shostakovich began the symphony. Officially, he was said to have composed it in response to the German invasion. Others, such as Rostislav Dubinsky, say that he had already completed the first movement a year earlier. The composer stated, according to Testimony, that he had planned the symphony before the German attack and that he had "other enemies of humanity" in mind when he composed the "invasion theme" of the first movement. He had no problem calling the work the "Leningrad" Symphony. "Which Leningrad?" became the question after the publication of Testimony in the West. The Leningrad that Shostakovich reportedly had in mind was not the one that withstood the German siege. Rather, it was the one "that Stalin destroyed and Hitler merely finished off." However,  the authenticity of the US-published book is very much disputed.

The Leningrad Symphony Orchestra announced the premiere of the Seventh Symphony for its 1941–1942 season. The fact this announcement was made before the German invasion would seem to confirm the statement in Testimony. Shostakovich did not like talking about what he called "creative plans," preferring to announce his works once they were completed. He did like to say, "I think slowly but I write fast." In practice this meant that Shostakovich usually had a work completed in his head before he began writing it down. The Leningrad Symphony would not have made its announcement without the composer's consent, so Shostakovich likely had a clear idea at that time of what his Seventh Symphony would portray.

Soviet music critic Lev Lebedinsky, a friend of the composer's for many years, confirmed after the dawn of glasnost ("openness") under Mikhail Gorbachev that Shostakovich had conceived the Seventh Symphony before Hitler invaded Russia:

Another important witness was the daughter-in-law of Maxim Litvinov, the man who served as Soviet foreign minister before the war, then was dismissed by Stalin. She heard Shostakovich play the Seventh Symphony on the piano in a private home during the war. The guests later discussed the music:

While Shostakovich could speak like this only in a very narrow circle of friends, it did not stop him from hinting to the Soviet Press about a hidden agenda for the Seventh Symphony. He insisted, for instance, that the "central place" of the first movement was not the "invasion section" (the part journalists usually asked about first). Rather, the movement's core was the tragic music which followed the invasion section, which the composer described as "a funeral march or, rather, a requiem." He continued, "After the requiem comes an even more tragic episode. I do not know how to characterize that music. Perhaps it is a mother's tears or even the feeling that the sorrow is so great that there are no more tears left."

"Inquisition for blood"
Regardless of when Shostakovich initially conceived the symphony, the Nazi attack and consequent relaxing of Soviet censorship gave Shostakovich the hope of writing the work for a mass audience. A model on how to do this was Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Stravinsky's compositions held considerable influence over Shostakovich and he had been deeply impressed with this particular work. Moreover, Stravinsky had initially set the Russian text of the Psalms, only later switching to Latin. As soon as Shostakovich received the score, he transcribed it for piano four-hands. He often performed this arrangement with students in his composition class at Leningrad Conservatory.

Shostakovich's plan was for a single-movement symphony, including a chorus and a requiem-like passage for a vocal soloist, with a text taken from the Psalms of David. With the help of his best friend, critic Ivan Sollertinsky, who was knowledgeable about the Bible, he selected excerpts from the Ninth Psalm. The idea of individual suffering became interwoven in Shostakovich's mind with the Lord God's vengeance for the taking of innocent blood (Verse 12, New King James Version). The theme not only conveyed his outrage over Stalin's oppression, but also may have inspired him to write the Seventh Symphony in the first place. "I began writing it having been deeply moved by the Psalms of David; the symphony deals with more than that, but the Psalms were the impetus," the composer said. "David has some marvelous words on blood, that God takes revenge for blood, He doesn't forget the cries of victims, and so on. When I think of the Psalms, I become agitated."

A public performance of a work with such a text would have been impossible before the German invasion. Now it was feasible, at least in theory, with the reference to "blood" applied at least officially to Hitler. With Stalin appealing to the Soviets' patriotic and religious sentiments, the authorities were no longer suppressing Orthodox themes or images. Yet for all the importance he placed on them, Shostakovich may have been right in writing the symphony without a text, in view of the censorship that would eventually be reimposed.

"Invasion" theme
Something else Shostakovich played for his composition students were the 12 variations of what later became known as the "invasion" theme. This has been taken historically, especially in the West, as portraying the invading Wehrmacht, and was listed as such in the official program. For many years this was considered irrefutable. New information now casts some doubt. For instance, musicologist Ludmila Mikheyeva (who is also Ivan Sollertinsky's daughter in law) maintains that Shostakovich played the theme and its variations for his students before the war with Germany began. During the war, the work was very popular both in the West and in the Soviet Union as the embodiment of the fighting Russian spirit. The American premiere, in July 1942, was by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini, broadcast on radio by NBC and preserved on transcription discs; RCA issued the recording on LP in 1967 and later reissued it on CD. The symphony was played 62 times in the United States in the 1942–43 season.

Shostakovich's contemporaries were dismayed, even angered by its lack of subtlety, crudity, and overblown dramatics. Virgil Thomson wrote that, "It seems to have been written for the slow-witted, the not very musical and the distracted," adding that if Shostakovich continued writing in this manner, it might "eventually disqualify him for consideration as a serious composer. Sergei Rachmaninoff's only comment after hearing the American premiere on the radio was a grim "Well, and now let's have some tea."

Disdainful remarks about the symphony being nothing more than a bombastic accompaniment for a bad war movie were voiced immediately after the London and New York premieres. However, in the cultural and political ear of the period, they had no effect. The American public-relations machine had joined the Soviet propaganda arm in portraying the Seventh as a symbol of cooperation and spiritual unity of both peoples in their fight against the Nazis.

Decline in appreciation
Once the novelty of the Seventh Symphony had worn away, audience interest in the West quickly dissipated. One reason may have been the work's length. At about 70 minutes, it was longer than any previous Shostakovich symphony. While it could be argued that he could have made the symphony 30 minutes shorter by condensing his message, the long passages of sparsely accompanied solos for wind instruments present listeners with the opportunity to study them, appreciate the inner character of the music as each instrument soliloquises on a given mood. To utilize this to the extent that Shostakovich did, combined with a wordless narrative style of mood-painting, necessitated an expansive time frame. Even so, this extended time span may have seemed excessive to some critics, especially since Western critics were unaware of the anti-Stalinist subtext hidden in the work. Hearing it only in the context of wartime propaganda, Western critics dismissed the symphony as a series of bombastic platitudes, and as such not worth serious consideration. The critic Ernest Newman famously remarked that, to find its place on the musical map, one should look along the seventieth degree of longitude and the last degree of platitude.

The Seventh Symphony was actually a convenient target from the start for Western critics. It was considered a strange, ungainly hybrid of Mahler and Stravinsky—too long, too broad-gestured in narrative and overly emotional in tone. Shostakovich placed the work's emphasis on the effect of musical images rather than on symphonic coherence. Those images—stylized fanfares, march rhythms, ostinati, folkloric themes and pastoral episodes—could easily be considered models of socialist realism. Because of his emphasis on these images, Shostakovich can be said to have allowed the work's message to outweigh its craftsmanship. For all these reasons, the music was considered both naïve and calculated in the West.

Soviet audiences did not come to the music with the same expectations as Western listeners. What mattered to Soviet listeners was the message and its serious moral content. The Seventh maintained its position with that audience because its content was so momentous. Nevertheless, as early as 1943 Soviet critics claimed the "exultation" of the Seventh's finale was unconvincing, pointing out that the part of the symphony they found most effective—the march in the opening movement—represented not the defending Red Army but the Nazi invaders. They believed that Shostakovich's pessimism had short-circuited what might have otherwise been a masterpiece in the vein of the 1812 Overture. The tragic mood of Shostakovich's next symphony, the Eighth, intensified the critical discord. Later, negative views from the West prejudiced the thinking of the Soviet elite toward the Seventh.

Re-evaluation
When Testimony was published in the West in 1979, Shostakovich's overall anti-Stalinist tone and specific comments about the anti-totalitarian content hidden in the Fifth, Seventh and Eleventh Symphonies were held suspect initially. They were in some ways a complete about-face from the comments the West had received over the years, many times in the composer's words. Questions also arose over Solomon Volkov's role—to what degree he was a compiler of previously written material, a transcriber of the composer's actual words from interviews, or an author essentially putting words into the composer's mouth.

Two things happened. First was the composer's son Maxim's view on the accuracy of Testimony. He initially stated to the Sunday Times, after his defection to the West in 1981, that it was a book "about my father, not by him". Later, though, he reversed his position. In a BBC television interview with composer Michael Berkeley on 27 September 1986, Maxim admitted, "It's true. It's accurate. ... The basis of the book is correct." Second, with the dawning of glasnost, those who were still alive and had known Shostakovich when he had written the Leningrad Symphony could now share their own stories with impunity. By doing so, they helped corroborate what had appeared in Testimony, allowing the West to reevaluate the symphony in light of their statements.

In recent years the Seventh Symphony has again become more popular, along with the rest of Shostakovich's work.

In popular culture

It has been alleged that Béla Bartók quoted the march theme of the first movement in the "Intermezzo Interotto" of his Concerto for Orchestra in response to the Hungarian composer's frustration about the positive reception of the piece. The quotation is clearly the "invasion" theme, and Bartók interjects his very romantic and lyrical melody in the movement with a much slower interpretation of Shostakovich's invasion ostinato. The resemblance has been variously interpreted by later commentators as an accusation of tastelessness, as a commentary on the symphony's over-popularity in Bartók's eyes, and as an acknowledgement of the position of the artist in a totalitarian society. However, it is much more likely that Bartók (as his pianist friend György Sándor has said) was, like Shostakovich, parodying the very popular Lehár theme directly. This view has been confirmed by Bartók's son Peter, in his book "My father": Bartók had respect and admiration for Shostakovich's works, and was mocking Lehár's music and behind it the Nazis.

In the Ken Russell film Billion Dollar Brain (1967), music from the Leningrad Symphony accompanies the failed military invasion of the then Latvian Soviet Republic by Texas millionaire Midwinter (a pivotal scene reflecting the Battle of the Neva from Aleksandr Nevsky). Incidentally, earlier on, Michael Caine as Harry Palmer attends the end of a concert of what is claimed to be the Leningrad Symphony, whereas in fact the finale from Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony is heard.

American rock band Fall Out Boy also used elements of Symphony No. 7 in their song "The Phoenix" from their 2013 album Save Rock and Roll. The same sample had been used by the German hip hop artist Peter Fox in his song "Alles neu" in 2008, and by Plan B in "Ill Manors" in 2012.

Film version
On 31 January 2005 a film version of the Symphony was premiered in St. Petersburg, with the St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Shostakovich's son Maxim Shostakovich accompanying a film directed by Georgy Paradzhanov, constructed from documentary materials, including film of the siege of Leningrad. Many survivors of the siege were guests at the performance. The composer's widow Irina acted as script consultant to the project, and its musical advisors included Rudolf Barshai and Boris Tishchenko. The film and performance were repeated, with the same artists, in London on 9 May 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall.

Notable recordings

Recordings of this symphony include:

Notes

References
Barnes, Julian, 'The Noise of Time', Vintage 2016 []
Blokker, Roy, with Robert Dearling, The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies (Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1979). .
Dubinsky, Rostislav (1989). Stormy Applause. Hill & Wang 1989. .
Programme note for the Symphony for performance by the London Shostakovich Orchestra
Fay, Laurel, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 1989). .
Geiger, Friedrich, notes for Teldec 21467: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 "Lenningrad"; New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur.
MacDonald, Ian, The New Shostakovich (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). .
Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). .
Moynahan, Brian, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony. (Eastbourne, UK: Quercus Publishing, 2013) 
Sollertinsky, Dmitri & Ludmilla, tr. Graham Hobbs & Charles Midgley, Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980). .
Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (New York: Harper & Row, 1979.). .
Volkov, Solomon, tr. Antonina W. Bouis, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1995). .
Volkov, Solomon (2004). Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. Knopf. .
Wilson, Elizabeth (1994). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton University Press. .
Ed Vulliamy, "Orchestral manoeuvres (part one)". The Guardian, 25 November 2001.
Ed Vulliamy, "Orchestral maneouvres [sic] (part two)". The Guardian, 25 November 2001.
 Review of film version of the Symphony, St. Petersburg, 31 January 2005
 Programme, Shostakovich 7th Symphony/Cinemaphonia, Albert Hall, London May 9, 2005.

External links
 Full orchestral score from the New York Philharmonic's archives

Symphony No. 07 (Shostakovich)
Culture in Saint Petersburg
1941 compositions
Compositions in C major