Memory Score
Details
“… This is how I hear the War”
From the history of the composer’s hand-written score of the Seventh Symphony
The manuscript of the Seventh symphony by D.D. Shostakovich, which is to be represented in the exhibition as a part of the Memory Score project, has its own interesting and unusual history – the “Leningrad” period, when the first three movements of the symphony were created, the “Kuibyshev” period, when the composition was finished and the fateful decision about its performance amidst the raging war was made, and the “Moscow” period, when the artist’s original score was handed into the state storage and got the status of the cultural artefact of the country and the whole world.
The news of Shostakovich composing a new symphony began to circulate among the public quite soon: the composer played it on the piano to his close friends (I.I. Sollertinskiy, I.D. Glikman, V.M. Bogdanov-Berezovskiy) and to his Conservatory pupils (Orest Evlakhov, Yury Levitin, Dmitry Tolstoy and others). Bogdanov-Berezovskiy remembered the huge symphony score sheets, used by the author in his performance.
On 1 October, following the special order of the city authorities, Shostakovich and his family were urgently evacuated from Leningrad to Moscow by plane. Among the few things taken by him was the score of the unfinished Seventh symphony.
The further history of the composer’s hand-written score is connected with Shostakovich’s evacuation to Kuibyshev, together with the Bolshoi Theatre artists. At some point the only copy of the symphony score was nearly lost. The conductor B.E. Khaikin later remembered: “Shostakovich did not know where the bundle with his new – Seventh – symphony was, and Shebalin had lost his copy of the symphony, too. <…> Shostakovich was sitting without motion, he was devastated by the thought that the symphony might have got lost…” Another memoir writer F. Petrov wrote the following: “On the way it emerged that Shostakovich had lost the score of the Seventh symphony. At Razuvaevka station we were walking along the platform inspecting every carriage in the hope to find the score. We found it eventually in one of the carriage vestibules. It looked as if D. Terekhov, the Bolshoi’s branch administrator, shoved it in there at the last moment.”
In December 1941 Shostakovich played the symphony by his original score in the family circle in Kuibyshev, and also in the family of the famous harpist V.G. Dulova, where it was performed four-hands by the composer and L.N. Oborin. In preparation for the first night another hand-written copy of the score was made, as well as copies for the orchestral parts, both being currently preserved in the Bolshoi Theatre. Before the symphony came out in publication, the copyists narrowly managed to make copies for performances in other USSR cities, including the rehearsals for the Seventh’s performance in the besieged Leningrad. One of Shostakovich’s closest friends I.D. Glikman quotes the composer who repeated the words of Khlestakov, a character in Gogol’s comedy The Inspector: “The symphony has become fashionable. Messengers arrive here from different places and ask for my assistance in making the symphony score copies. I, naturally, cannot oblige, and I have to shoo them away. Messengers, messengers, messengers. 35 thousand messengers!”
The original copy of the Seventh symphony is interesting in more than just its authenticity and connection to the historic and cultural events. We can see the composer’s characteristic hand – very neat and clear; we pay attention to the look of the manuscript: it is not bound and consists mainly of single sheets, numbered by Shostakovich himself (139 pages). The symphony is written on the good quality paper of the Turkish make; it drew the attention of S.S. Prokofiev, and he mentioned it in his letter to Shostakovich about the impressions of the Seventh.
The researchers find it important to notice the corrections made by the composer in the original score. There are almost no strikethroughs, the mistakes spotted by the composer are tidily scraped off by the razor, and the new text is put over the old one. It was a characteristic feature of his work: he could not stand crossings and careless insertions. When the corrections were difficult to make out, Shostakovich copied them in the lower part of the music sheet.
Some amendments were made by the composer during the symphony’s preparation for the publication. The front page is of special interest: it has a lot of different notes, including the author’s title, as well as his variants of its translation into English and German. Some notes are made by A.A. Kartsev, copy editor and proofreader at the Muzgiz publishing house; the title page also bears his permission to publish the score, certified by director M.A. Grinberg. There is a necessary stamp of the Chief Repertoire Committee (CRC) of the USSR, signed by A.A. Ikonnikov, CRC commissioner. During the war years in the conditions of total censorship all publications of musical works had to receive official approval.
Some sheets of the score retain the proofreader’s notes and Shostakovich’s own remarks; for example, he is writing: “In publication I request the parts Tr-ni e Tuba to be typeset in their places, i.e. between Corni Timp. DShostakovich”; or: “In publication the parts Cîrni additional to be typeset in their places, i.e. between Xyl. and V-ni I. DShostakovich.”
Today the slightly faded autograph score of the Seventh Symphony is preserved in the Russian National Museum of Music in Moscow. The history of its coming into the museum’s possession is the following: in spring 1943 Shostakovich and his family moved from Kuibyshev to the capital, and he became professor in the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Shostakovich handed his score over to the Rubinstein Museum of Musical Culture, opened in 1941 and affiliated with the Moscow Conservatory (later – the Glinka State Museum of Musical Culture, presently – the Russian National Museum of Music). However, the provisional agreement about handing over the materials from Shostakovich’s personal archives was reached one year earlier. On 2 April 1942 Shostakovich wrote a letter to B.E. Khaikin, chief conductor of the Leningrad Malyi opera theatre, asking him to send on the manuscripts of his compositions from the Leningrad Philharmonia to E.N. Alexeeva, who was then appointed director of the new museum. On 12 April 1943 the autograph score of the Seventh Symphony was listed in the first book of Museum acquisitions by ¹1422, and received the required number and code.
Larisa Miller, Head of the Manuscript Research Department, Scientific Musical Library of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg