Shostakovich 8th String Quartet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Shostakovich 8th force quad - Essay ExampleBorn on September 25, 1906, into the family of an engineer, in St Petersburg, Shostakovich didnt appear to be, in his first years of childhood, as talented as he proved to be later on. But as his parents loved unison actually much and considered that it was necessary in the solve of a childs education, Shostakovich the child received musical lessons. The young Shostakovich showed expectant interest in music and began poring over it seriously, and more than just interpreting other composers music, he started composing his own pieces of work.As most of the enormous composers, Shostakovich spoke through his music. As for his personal life, he didnt like to show too much of it. He was an intensely private person who guarded his personal life and feelings jealously. What all but a very few close friends and family members were permitted to experience of the man was the stiff faade of a civic-minded public servant and consummate music prof essional. (Fay, 2000 p.2) Its only after his death that the publication of memoirs, diaries, letters, revealed facts about him and his life, some of them controversial.Christopher Norris (1984) shows that Shostakovichs performances of his own music reveal a great flexibility of tempi and the tendency to exaggerate the extremes of his metronome marks. The same source reveals the fact that the members of the Beethoven String Quartet were life-long friends of Shostakovich and this is what gives flexibility to their interpretation. Norris emphasizes on the fact that there are many exemplifications in Shostakovichs chamber music, of movements of unrelenting loudness. And he presents some of these examples the second movements of the eighth and Tenth Quartets and the Violin Sonata, and most of the third movement of the Third Quartet.Norris analyses in detail the String Quartets. When dealing with the eighth, he begins by showing that the composer is careful about the placing of accents a nd stresses. And he gives an example when the lower three instruments are intoning the revolutionary song Tormented by the weight of bondage loud espressivo in octaves, the first violins independent part has accents on every note to help the balance.(Norris, 1984 p.23) The composers commentator in like manner remarks the conflict between dissonance and consonance and the task of the performer who must interpret the music victimisation the appropriate fingering, stress, balance, rubato and vibrato, to highlight the patterns of tension and release. (Norris, 1984 p.23) Norris admits that sometimes the consonance and dissonance are no more than the sequel of purely horizontal lineality, but he considers that most of the times, the context is deliberately tonal. About Shostakovichs musical style, Martynov says AT A FIRST HEARING of Shostakovichs music one is struck by the remarkable facility of his style. So effortless is his manner of solving the most complex problems of composition that it would seem nothing is impossible to him. fewer of his contemporaries can compare with him in this. Such creative ease, moreover, is a sure sign of great talent and consummate skill. (1947 p.154). He points out the fact that the Russian composer worked with extraordinary facility and speed his String Quartet was written