Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович цитаты

„Любителями и знатоками музыки не рождаются, а становятся… Чтобы полюбить музыку, надо прежде всего её слушать.“

„Всякий работник, будь то писатель, художник, композитор, учёный, деятель науки и культуры, не может создавать, оторвавшись от общественной работы, от жизни. Без впечатлений, восторгов, вдохновенья, без жизненного опыта - нет творчества.
Без творческих поисков нет подлинного искусства.“

„Мне безмерно больно за тех, кого убил Гитлер, но не
меньше боли — и за убитых по приказу Сталина. Я страдаю
за каждого замученного, расстрелянного или заморенного
голодом.“

„Пуччини писал чудесные оперы, но ужасную музыку.“

„Если мне отрубят обе руки, я буду всё равно писать музыку, держа перо в зубах.“

„Ещё в 1936 году, в связи с появлением оперы Д. Шостаковича «Леди Макбет Мценского уезда», в органе ЦК ВКП(б) «Правда» были подвергнуты острой критике антинародные, формалистические извращения в творчестве Д.Шостаковича и разоблачён вред и опасность этого направления для судеб развития советской музыки. «Правда», выступавшая тогда по указанию ЦК ВКП(б), ясно сформулировала требования, которые предъявляет к своим композиторам советский народ.“

„…Странно обстоит дело с тремя советскими симфониями Шостаковича (Одиннадцатой, Двенадцатой и Тринадцатой). Почему он настолько прямо обратился к официальной эстетике, причём, в то время, когда уже никто его ни к чему не мог и не пытался принуждать? Было ли это желанием наконец увенчать успехом многолетние коллективные усилия по созданию парадигматической социалистически-реалистической симфонии? Искренней попыткой пересоздания чистой, не испорченной сталинизмом, но верной ленинским принципам, советской картины мира? …эти произведения строго следуют концепции симфонии как объективного зеркала исторических событий. Нарративные композиционные средства, программная наглядность музыки, прямая переводимость ее на вербальный язык не просто достигают здесь своей кульминации: здесь виртуозно и эстетически убедительно воплощается казавшееся абсурдным представление ненавидимого Шостаковичем Сталина о советской песенной симфонии!»…“

„Прикрываясь фиговым листком — ложно понятым лозунгом об освоении классического наследия, театр делает своё вреднейшее дело, возобновляя всякие «Юдифи», «Корсары» и тому подобный хлам…“

„Заходит солнце. Видно из моего окна. Снизу доносятся звуки прелюдии c-moll Шопена. Полный арсенал поэзии, а главное ни с чем не сравнимое чувство одиночества. Из-за него я прощаю холод, дождь, сырость, примиряюсь с отъездом из Ленинграда, примиряюсь с тем, что мой чемодан в кладовой, а кладовщик выходной и ушёл вместе с ключами, прощаю запор и многое другое. Роскошный вид из окон успокаивает мою больную душу.“

„Симфония о Ленине задумана как четырёхчастное произведение… Первая часть — юношеские годы Ильича; вторая — Ленин во главе октябрьского штурма; третья — смерть Владимира Ильича и четвёртая — без Ленина по ленинскому пути. Уже готов ряд музыкальных фрагментов, которые <…> войдут в <…> 7-ю симфонию памяти гениального вождя человечества.“

“Football is the ballet of the masses.”

“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.”

“What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.”

“Art destroys silence.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.”

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

“The withering away of illusions is a long and dreary process, like a toothache. But you can pull out a tooth. Illusions, dead, continue to rot within us. And stink. And you can't escape them. I carry all of mine around with me.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture.”

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

“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."”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.”

“Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.”

“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.”

“The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.”

“The Allies enjoyed my music, as though trying to say: Look how we like Shostakovich's symphonies, and you still want something more from us, a second front or something.”

“The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.”

“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.”

“People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.”

“Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it, it's multifaceted, it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It's almost always laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They express despair in dance music.”

“He is thinner, taller, younger – more boyish-looking – than expected, but he is also the shyest and most nervous human being I have ever seen. He chews not merely his nails but his fingers, twitches his pouty mouth and chin, chain-smokes, wiggles his nose in constant adjustment of his spectacles, looks querulous one moment and ready to cry the next. His hands tremble, he stutters, his whole frame wobbles when he shakes hands…There is no betrayal of the thoughts behind those frightened, very intelligent eyes.”

“Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention…All his works are marked by emotional extremes – tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.”