Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich) - Movements

Movements

1. Babi Yar: Adagio

   In this movement, Shostakovich and Yevtushenko transform the mass murder by Nazis of Jews at Babi Yar, near Kiev, into a denunciation of anti-Semitism in all its forms. (Although the Soviet government did not erect a monument at Babi Yar, it still became a place of pilgrimage for Soviet Jews.) Shostakovich sets the poem as a series of theatrical episodes — the Dreyfus affair, the Białystok pogrom and the story of Anne Frank— as extended interludes to the main theme of the poem, lending the movement the dramatic structure and theatrical imagery of opera while resorting to graphic illustration and vivid word-painting. For instance, the mocking of the imprisoned Dreyfus by poking umbrellas at him through the prison bars may be in an accentuated pair of quarter-notes in the brass, with the build-up of menace in the Anne Frank episode, culminating in the musical image of the breaking down of the door to the Franks' hiding place, which underlines the hunting down of that family.

2. Humour: Allegretto

   Shostakovich quotes his setting of the Robert Burns poem "MacPhersen Before His Execution" to colour Yevtushenko's imagery of the spirit of mockery, endlessly murdered and endlessly resurrected, denouncing the vain attempts of tyrants to shackle wit. The movement is a Mahlerian gesture of mocking burlesque, not simply light or humorous but witty, satirical and parodistic. The irrepressible energy of the music illustrates that, just as with courage and folly, humor, even in the form of "laughing in the face of the gallows" is both irrepressible and eternal (a concept, incidentally, also present in the Burns poem). He also quotes a melody of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion by Bartók ironically, as response for the criticism toward Symphony 7.

3. In the Store: Adagio

   This movement uses the hardship of Soviet women to point out the failure of the government to deliver anything on a material level. It is also a tribute to the women who have to stand in line for hours to buy the most basic foods and is a tribute to patient endurance. The dishonesty practiced against them, such as cheating them of their change and underweighing their products, arouses Shostakovich's compassion no less than racial prejudice and gratuitous violence. Written in the form of a lament, the chorus departs from its unison line in the music's two concluding harmonized chords for the only time in the entire symphony, ending on an plagal cadence functioning much the same as a liturgical amen.

4. Fears: Largo

   This movement touches on the subject of state repression, evoking the years of terror under Joseph Stalin, and is the most elaborate musically of the symphony's five movements, using a variety of musical ideas to stress its message, from an angry march to alternating soft and violent episodes. Notable here are the orchestral effects — the tuba, for instance, hearkening back to the "midnight arrest" section of the first movement of the Fourth Symphony — containing some of the composer's most adventurous instrumental touches since his Modernist period. It also foresees some of Shostakovich's later practices, such as an 11-note tone row played by the tuba as an opening motif. Harmonic ambiguity instills a deep sense of unease as the chorus intones the first lines of the poem: "Fears are dying-out in Russia." Shostakovich breaks this mood only in response to Yevtushenko's agitprop lines, "We weren't afraid/of construction work in blizzards/or of going into battle under shell-fire," parodying the Soviet marching song Smelo tovarishchi v nogu ("Bravely, comrades, march to step").

5. Career: Allegretto

   While this movement opens with a pastoral duet by flutes over a B flat pedal bass, giving the musical effect of sunshine after a storm, it is an ironic attack on bureaucrats, touching on cynical self-interest and robotic unanimity while also a tribute to genuine creativity. It follows in the vein of other satirical finales, especially the Eighth Symphony and the Fourth and Sixth String Quartets. The soloist comes onto equal terms with the chorus, with sarcastic commentary provided by the bassoon and other wind instruments, as well as rude squeaking from the trumpets. It also relies more than the other movements on purely orchestral passages as links between vocal statements.