Saint-Saëns & Shostakovich

These words written by Camille Saint-Saëns are among the overwhelming anecdotal evidence that indicate his neutral, dispassionate attitude towards composing and musical expression. Throughout his long life he was constantly active composing, conducting, teaching and writing. His musical language hardly changed at all from when he started composing at the time when Robert Schumann was writing his major song cycles, to when he had to renounce his pen in the year that Arnold Schönberg made his first forays into twelve-tone music. 

Saint-Saëns wrote five symphonies. The third of them, known for its striking organ part, was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London in 1886, when the composer was at the height of his popularity. The inclusion of the organ was probably to make maximum use of St. James’s Hall, not only because it contained a large-scale organ, but also because of the exceptional acoustics. The composer conducted the first performance in May 1886.

The symphony is interesting in that the composer deviates from standard symphonic form by presenting the four movements as two, with the aid of transitional passages. The work is dedicated to the memory of Franz Liszt, who died in the same year, and makes use of his principle of thematic metamorphosis. A basic motif – the nervous semiquavers in the strings after the slow introduction – makes its mark on the composition as a whole, while constantly changing character to adapt to its surroundings. The organ appears in the second part of the first movement – a tranquil Poco adagio, gradually gaining in grandeur – and naturally enough as a central element in the overwhelmingly rich finale.

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The regime in the Soviet Union was highly unpredictable. Three months after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 the newspaper Pravda presented the following remarkable item: To mould all art according to a single model is to obliterate individuality. Social realism provides the very greatest freedom for personal expression. It is therefore important to encourage all to deviate in the world of art and to embrace the right of artists to independence.

During the dictator’s regime of terror Dmitri Shostakovich had experienced the disappearance of his works from concert repertoire and ‘letters from workers’ to newspapers condemning his compositions, purely for his having made use of his individual voice!

In his tenth symphony he sums up the Stalin era. Twenty years after he wrote it, he revealed that the brief second movement – a merciless, brutal Perpetuum mobile – is intended as a portrait of the tyrant. At the time of publication he was however extremely reserved in his comments on the symphony. He was unwilling to disclose anything beyond the fact that he ‘wanted to describe human emotions and passions’. When asked for the work’s programme, he replied, ‘No, let people listen and find out for themselves.’

The first movement may be perceived as a portrayal of icy fear. A clarinet motif early in the movement turns out to have an important role. It is a direct quotation from Gustav Mahler – appropriately enough to the words Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not (Man lies in greatest need) in the Resurrection Symphony. After the wild outburst of the Stalin portrait, the third movement is somewhat enigmatic, a quasi-scherzo, in which the mood vacillates between various expressions. The composer introduces his personal signature D-S-C-H (D, E flat, C, B). The Stalin monster departs, and the nervous composer takes the stage. The movement dies out in a ghostly atmosphere. In the last movement, after a long, tentative introduction Shostakovich eventually changes the mood. Just as the music seems to be drowning in melancholy, it suddenly takes on Haydnesque brightness and gaiety. When the Stalin motif threatens to take over, it is met by DSCH in full force, totally devoid of the composer’s former reticence, and brings the symphony to a resounding close.

Text: Hans Henrik Rowe