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TheSymphony No. 11 inG minor,Op. 103 (subtitledThe Year 1905), byDmitri Shostakovich was written in 1957 and premiered by theUSSR Symphony Orchestra underNatan Rakhlin on 30 October 1957. The symphony's subtitle refers to the events of theRussian Revolution of 1905, which the symphonydepicts. The first performance given outside the Soviet Union took place in London's Royal Festival Hall on 22 January 1958, whenSir Malcolm Sargent conducted theBBC Symphony Orchestra. The United States premiere was given byLeopold Stokowski and theHouston Symphony on 7 April 1958. The symphony was conceived as a popular piece and proved an instant success in the Soviet Union, his greatest since theLeningrad Symphony 15 years earlier.[1] It earned him aLenin Prize in April 1958.[2]
The symphony is scored for 3flutes (3rd doublingpiccolo), 3oboes (3rd doublingcor anglais), 3clarinets (3rd doublingbass clarinet), 3bassoons (3rd doublingcontrabassoon), 4horns, 3trumpets, 3trombones,tuba,timpani,triangle,snare drum,cymbals,orchestral bass drum,tam-tam,xylophone,tubular bells, 2harps (preferably doubled),celesta andstrings.
It has become common professional performance practice for the tubular bells part (only used at the conclusion of the fourth movement) to be played on 4 largechurch bells, each chromatically tuned to the four notes required (G, C, B♭ and B♮).
The symphony has fourmovements played without break, and lasts approximately one hour.
The musicologistDavid Fanning described the Eleventh as a "a film score without the film".[5] An additional thread is provided by the nine revolutionary songs that appear in the work. Some of these date to the 19th century, others to 1905. This use of folk and revolutionary songs was a departure from Shostakovich's usual style. They were songs he knew well. His family knew and sang them regularly while he was growing up.[6][unreliable source] In his study of Shostakovich's symphonies,Hugh Ottaway praised the Eleventh as one of the great achievements inprogram music.[7]
Shostakovich originally intended the Eleventh Symphony to mark the 50th anniversary of theRussian Revolution of 1905 and would have written it in 1955. Several personal factors kept him from composing the work until 1957, including his mother's death, his tumultuous second marriage, and the arrival of many newly freed friends from theGulag.Events in Hungary in 1956 may have stirred Shostakovich out of his compositional inertia and acted as a catalyst for his writing the symphony.[8]
According to the composer's son-in-law Yevgeny Chukovsky, the original title sheet for this symphony read not "1905" but "1906", the year of the composer's birth. This causes critics to view the Eleventh Symphony as arequiem not only for the composer himself but for his generation.[citation needed] Still, because the work was composed for the Revolution, its purpose is not lost. The 1905 Revolution was not politicized by theParty, so the piece maintained its romantic aura for later generations. Because of this, the Eleventh Symphony is among a group of diverse works that embody a spirit of struggle for a just cause, such asSergei Eisenstein's filmBattleship Potemkin andBoris Pasternak's narrative poems "1905" and "Lieutenant Schmidt."[9]
"The Year 1905" recalls the start of the first Russian Revolution of 1905, which was partially fired by the events on9 January (9 January by the Julian calendar still in use in Russia at the time, modern date of 22 January 1905) of that year. Some Western critics[who?] characterized the symphony as overblown "film music"—in other words, as anagitpropbroadsheet lacking substance or depth.[1]
Shostakovich considered this work his most "Mussorgskian" symphony.[10] He wrote the Eleventh in a simple, direct manner. According toSolomon Volkov, Shostakovich allegedly told him that the symphony was "about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over."[11][full citation needed]
In the wake of the publication ofTestimony, the Eleventh has attracted speculation over its possible references to theHungarian Revolution of 1956.[12] According to Volkov, Shostakovich said the piece "deals with contemporary themes even though it's called '1905.'"[13] According to Zoya Tomashevskaya, Shostakovich also toldIgor Belsky not to forget that he "wrote the symphony in the aftermath of [the] Hungarian Uprising".[14] Shostakovich's widow Irina also said he had the Hungarian Revolution "in mind" during composition.[15] Extant evidence and the chronology of the symphony's composition suggests that this could not have been the case. WhenSofia Khentova asked Shostakovich in 1974 whether the Eleventh was a veiled reference to the Hungarian Revolution, he replied: "No, it is 1905, it is Russian history".[16]
III. Вечная память
{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)Such vital image-making within so well ordered a musical stream entitles the Eleventh to rank highly among the achievement of programme music.
