Shostakovich had another, professional reason for turning to the Psalms. Igor Stravinsky had used them in his 1930 Symphony of Psalms. Shostakovich did not hide the fact that Stravinsky was always at the center of his attention. “Stravinsky’s work had a big influence on me. Every work made a strong impression and elicited enormous interest,” Shostakovich confessed.
As soon as the score of the
Eventually, Shostakovich gave up the idea and the Seventh Symphony turned out to be a work “without words” and with a vaguely programmatic theme. But the spirit of the Psalms of David hovered over it, especially in the first movement, with its elevated intonations and in the grand orchestral chorale of the third movement. Thus, the theme of “inquisition for blood” remained in the symphony. But echoes of the German siege of Leningrad burst into the symphony, as well.
Leningrad authorities declared a state of siege. The Germans bombed the city ruthlessly from the air and bombarded it with heavy artillery from the surrounding territory. To save the Bronze Horseman from destruction, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great was placed in a special “sarcophagus” of sand and wooden boards but remained standing in the middle of the city. Inhabitants recalled the legend that the city would be impregnable as long as the Bronze Horseman retained his original spot. Along with other Leningraders, the teachers and students of the conservatory, including Shostakovich, dug antitank trenches around the city. Then Shostakovich, along with the pianist Sofronitsky, was drafted into the fire brigade that kept watch from the conservatory roof. He also wrote songs and musical arrangements to entertain soldiers at the front.
But of course, his primary occupation was the feverish work on the symphony, with the first three movements—an hour or so of music—ready by late September. In early October Shostakovich, along with other cultural figures considered to be of importance by the regime, including Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, was taken out of blockaded Leningrad by special plane on government orders. Among the few things Shostakovich took with him were his transcription of the
Before being evacuated Shostakovich had time to show what he had written to a few friends. As Bogdanov-Berezovsky recalled, the guests at Shostakovich’s apartment were stunned by what they heard.
Everyone unanimously asked him to play it again. But sirens rang out, another air raid alert. Shostakovich suggested that we not end the musicale but take a short break. He had to bring his wife and the children, Galina and Maxim, to the shelter. Left to ourselves, we sat in silence. Any words we could use seemed inappropriate after what we had heard.
A section of the first movement, later called by critics the “invasion episode,” made a particularly strong impression on its first listeners: an evil “marionette” march theme is played in eleven variations by different instruments, rising in volume like Ravel’s
However, many of the symphony’s first listeners, especially those who were part of the composer’s circle, spoke much more ambiguously about this music, preferring to discuss the images of universal evil and violence that it embodied. For instance, the conductor Mravinsky, who usually chose his words with extreme care when describing Shostakovich’s music, insisted that when he first heard the Seventh Symphony on the radio in March 1942, he had thought that the “invasion episode” was the composer’s depiction of unrestrained, shameless stupidity and crudeness.
The composer in the last years of his life often said in private conversations that his Seventh Symphony contained a protest against two tyrants—Hitler and Stalin. But how did Shostakovich explain this clearly programmatic music right after it was written, during the war years? The answer became known only a half-century later, when the Russian press began publishing the testimony of witnesses who had been forced to keep silent before the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s
