A question about Shostakovich's first symphony.

[Enrique]

A question to those of you who know Shostakovich's first symphony. Do the final bars (measures) in the finale seem to you sensationalist? Is Shostakovich here looking for an effect, or is the effect, certainly present, the result of something else? Put otherwise, is this effect for the effect? As the old acquaintance of mine this symphony is, the finale seems to me certainly grandiose, electrifying, and a whole series of similar epithets, not including showy, bombastic or overblown.

Of course, if you would never have heard the work before and were confronted with only the finale, you could easily say: it's not worth a cent. To feel it's impact you should have listened to the rest of the symphony first and so, judgements about the final coda imply judgements about the whole work if I am not wrong.

[Peter]

I don't know it very well but wasn't he only 19 when he wrote this and it is in that light surely it has to be viewed as an astonishing achievement? Tchaikovsky had much the same view of the finale to his own 5th symphony!

[Enrique]

semoi@server:/almacen/sma_/info/clear/cl1/correo/lvb$ cat frag2.stripped

I don't know it very well but wasn't he only 19 when he wrote this and it is in that light surely it has to be viewed as an astonishing achievement? Tchaikovsky had much the same view of the finale to his own 5th symphony!

You are right, Peter. It could not be seen as the work of a full-grown composer he being so very young. Nonetheless, we could use as a reference, the merits or worth of the whole work itself, forgetting about the symphonies that were to come for a moment, and then judge the finale using this "stick". That is, to reformulate my initial question in the following terms: what is the merit or worth of the finale in relation to that of the rest of the symphony? Is it a worthy crown for the symphony?

That work was immediately perceived, at the moment of its premmiere, by the critics as something that promised to put Shostakovich in tha vanguard of contemporary music, I have read somewhere, but statements of this kind can usually be the result of a strong bias in the mind of their authors.

Forgetting about Shostakovich, could you expand on your statement about Tchaikovsky? Did he saw the finale as being below the worth of the whole composition? I remember having heard you say that is a part of the symphony which puts your enthusiasm a bit below that produced by the rest of the work. By the way, I think there are too many people here that put the Fifth above the Sixth.

[Peter]

semoi@server:/almacen/sma_/info/clear/cl1/correo/lvb$ cat frag2.stripped


You are right, Peter. It could not be seen as the work of a full-grown composer he being so very young. Nonetheless, we could use as a reference, the merits or worth of the whole work itself, forgetting about the symphonies that were to come for a moment, and then judge the finale using this "stick". That is, to reformulate my initial question in the following terms: what is the merit or worth of the finale in relation to that of the rest of the symphony? Is it a worthy crown for the symphony?

That work was immediately perceived, at the moment of its premmiere, by the critics as something that promised to put Shostakovich in tha vanguard of contemporary music, I have read somewhere, but statements of this kind can usually be the result of a strong bias in the mind of their authors.

Forgetting about Shostakovich, could you expand on your statement about Tchaikovsky? Did he saw the finale as being below the worth of the whole composition? I remember having heard you say that is a part of the symphony which puts your enthusiasm a bit below that produced by the rest of the work. By the way, I think there are too many people here that put the Fifth above the Sixth.

Tchaikovsky often found himself profoundly dissatisfied with his music and the 5th symphony was a work that he went from loving to hating and back and forth many times - Brahms (whose music Tchaikovsky detested) also considered the finale of the 5th as weak, only confirming Tchaikovsky's view of it as 'vulgar'.

[Enrique]

Tchaikovsky often found himself profoundly dissatisfied with his music and the 5th symphony was a work that he went from loving to hating and back and forth many times - Brahms (whose music Tchaikovsky detested) also considered the finale of the 5th as weak, only confirming Tchaikovsky's view of it as 'vulgar'.

I have just created the REMARKABLE folder in my control panel and moved this thread to it. This post of you justifies it. Have Tchaikovsky's letters been published in a way accessible to the general public? If so, is any of them easily obtainable at present?

If Brahms considered the finale weak, it means he considered the symphony good enough I think. Four years elapsed from the Pathetique premmiere up to Brahms' death. Did Bramhs listened to any actual performance of it or, for that matter, to any of the large scale symphonic works of Tchaikowsky's?

[Peter]

I have just created the REMARKABLE folder in my control panel and moved this thread to it. This post of you justifies it. Have Tchaikovsky's letters been published in a way accessible to the general public? If so, is any of them easily obtainable at present?

If Brahms considered the finale weak, it means he considered the symphony good enough I think. Four years elapsed from the Pathetique premmiere up to Brahms' death. Did Bramhs listened to any actual performance of it or, for that matter, to any of the large scale symphonic works of Tchaikowsky's?

Yes Tchaikovsky's letters to his family and friends have been published - I also have the diaries and his unique correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck. I'm not sure how much of Tchaikovsky Brahms was familiar with, but he was present at the rehearsal of the 5th symphony - the two men got on well and liked each other, but Tchaikovsky couldn't tolerate Brahms as a composer.

[Enrique]

That's incredible! So, there was a tete a tete between the two of them (I want to believe Tchaikowsky was present at the rehearsal)!

[Peter]

That's incredible! So, there was a tete a tete between the two of them (I want to believe Tchaikowsky was present at the rehearsal)!

Indeed there was - they happened by chance to be staying in the same hotel in Hamburg prior to the rehearsal which Brahms stayed on an extra day specially to attend. Also (without checking the date) they both spent New years's eve 1887 at the home of the violinist Brodsky in the company of Grieg and Ethyl Smyth. I have a slight connection here in that my piano teacher's mother was a pupil of Brodsky and she also owned the autograph score of Ethyl Smyth's violin sonata.