Zitate von Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Schostakowitsch

„Ein großartiges Musikstück ist wunderschön, unabhängig davon, wie es aufgeführt wird. Jedes Präludium oder jede Fuge von Bach kann in jedem Tempo gespielt werden, mit oder ohne rhythmische Nuancen, und es wird immer noch großartige Musik sein. So sollte Musik geschrieben werden, damit niemand, egal wie philisterhaft, sie ruinieren kann.“

—  Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Schostakowitsch

„Football is the ballet of the masses.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

„What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

„For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villains. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They're gray. A dirty shade of gray. And it's in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich, buch Testimony

Page 94
Testimony (1979)

„I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich, buch Testimony

Page 155
Testimony (1979)

„I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist…Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

Letter to Isaac Glikman, February 26, 1960; Josiah Fisk & Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 354.

„Art destroys silence.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich, buch Testimony

Testimony: The Memoirs

„When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich, buch Testimony

Page 175
Testimony (1979)

„Not since the time of Berlioz has a symphonic composer created such a stir. In far-away America, great conductors vie with each other for the jus primae noctis of his music. The score of his Seventh Symphony, the symphony of struggle and victory, has been reduced to a roll of microfilm and flown half-way across the world…to speed the day of the American première. How the old romantics would have loved to be the center of such a fantastic adventure!“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

Nicolas Slonimsky in The Musical Quarterly, 1942; reprinted in his Writings on Music (2005), p. 84.

„You ask if I would have been different without "Party guidance"? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

In conversation with Flora Litvinova, 1970; cited from Elizabeth Wilson Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994) pp. 425-6.

„The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

In conversation with Isaac Glikman, July 4, 1966; Josiah Fisk & Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 355.

„I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

In discussion with an opera audience, January 14, 1930; cited from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 55.

„A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

Letter to Isaac Glikman, August 28, 1955; Josiah Fisk & Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 364.

„I write music, it's performed. It can be heard, and whoever wants to hear it will. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich, buch Testimony

Page 196
Testimony (1979)

„A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude toward his own work, he ceases to be an artist.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

New York Times, October 25, 1959.

„I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible, and if I don't succeed I consider it's my own fault.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

New York Times, February 9, 1942.

„I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing," and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich, buch Testimony

Page 183.
Testimony (1979)

„What do you think of Puccini?
[ Britten: "I think his operas are dreadful." ]
No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas, but dreadful music.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

Quoted in Lord Harewood The Tongs and the Bones (1981) p. 133.

„There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolstering the rule of the upper classes. Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement. If you read his letters, you will see how often he wrote to his friends that he wished to give new ideas to the public and rouse it to revolt against its masters.“

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

New York Times, December 20, 1931.