#except its symphs birthday

[symphonxx]

He woke up, breathless.

Desperately gasping for air, he pulled himself out the trenches of his blanket, his hands shooting up instinctively towards his head. He was doing better. He was getting better. So why were the nightmares back again? He let out a shaky breath, hoping to calm his nerves and head back to bed when a gleam of light caught his finger.

It wasn’t a sniper’s laser, nor was it a bug, it was just his ring. His ring.. He turned his head, his gaze softening slightly at the sight beside him. Akai Shuichi, both the FBI and the Organisation’s greatest sniper, the man whose hands have single handedly taken out multiple people with few injuries, the man whose ring finger was adorned with a similar ring to his, a man whom he married. Whom he loves. He was alive, alive and as peaceful as a man can be with a whole Organisation coming for his head. Well, he’d take whatever he can get.

He gently reached over, his hands carding through Akai’s hair, watching his breath hitch lightly. Even during their time as Bourbon and Rye, Rye was always the light-sleeper. No matter how soft you could be, he would always be the first to check it out.

( He remembered that Hiro had been the one to find that out.

Hiro, who was Scotch at the time, had just come back from a mission, just to be ambushed with a pistol, the muzzle pointing towards his head as Rye snapped the safety off.

Safe to say that Rye had spent a while cleaning the wounds he had gotten in the brawl while Hiro slept. He got a good laugh out of that situation though. )

He chuckled at the memory, although it came out shakily. Shuichi’s head shifted lightly, a telltale sign that he was awake, just wary of his feelings.

He loved that about him. Loved that even in life or death, Akai Shuichi would do anything for him. No matter the situation. But what came with the adoration for that type of care, was the dread and fear that embedded itself deep into his heart.

He did not need to lose more people. Akai was a clever man, ( though not so clever in marrying the man who swore to kill him, even as a cover, i.e. him ), but he had also dived head first to save him from Gin. Almost blew his own cover of being dead, just to save him ( and Kir ) from being found out.

It scared him.

Badly.

Akai Shuichi scared him. Which was ironic. Rei hated the man so much that he swore to kill him, yet he was scared of him. One could argue that it was because Rei himself respected him, but in truth, he was afraid of being too dependent.

Dependency could cost them their lives, and with their line of work, death was a 50/50 chance.

Shuichi’s head shifted again, and this time, Rei laid back down, pushing his head into the other’s chest.

“ 零くん? ”

“ いや，別に。”

—Ø—

The sunlight shone past the small gap between the curtains, waking him up as Haro nipped at his forearm lightly.

He had been curled up into the warm embrace of his husband, their fingers intertwined and their legs tangled, the two of them completely comfortable despite the hot weather outside. Shifting carefully to not awaken the other, the reflective light from his ring caught his attention once more, causing a light smile to crawl up his face.

To start the day, he had made egg-rolls with rice and a side of miso soup. Light, but flavourful and fulfilling. It was what he usually made. Besides, it reminded him of the times Hiro would make them for him, before actually teaching him the ways of making them.

He missed Hiro. He missed Hiro’s cooking. Missed his teachings. Missed the way Hiro would eat with him, no matter how late it had been. Back at the police force, the two of them had bought a small cooker for the sole purpose of cooking in case either of them were hungry.

Then, there was their time in the Organisation.

Rye had been the last to join their little group. The Whiskey Trio, Scotch had called them at one point. That name had stuck and the other code-named operatives even took it upon themselves to call them that. Vermouth had been a notable one, addressing the three of them with that name in that honeyed voice of hers, no matter the attendance.

At that time, Scotch refrained from cooking, shutting himself in his room and only leaving when he had to. To make sure that Scotch ( and Rye ) wouldn’t die of starvation and lack of nutrients, he took up the role of being the cook. On the rare occasions that they were free of missions, Scotch would teach the two of them how to cook simple meals, with Bourbon successfully mimicking his work and Rye failing miserably.

Then he was gone.

He sucked in a harsh breath, trying to focus on the task, chopping up green onions, at hand— Ah. Oops. He had cut his pointer finger by accident, the blood dripping down onto the cutting board.

He sighed, tossing the knife into the sink. He sprinkled the rest of the green onions onto the already plated egg-rolls and left to wash his hands, wincing when the water touched the wound.

How careless of him. Getting distracted by something so pathetic. It did hurt to think about, having resentment be a replacement for his grievance. Only now did it come to bite him in the ass.

Heavy footsteps came from behind him and an equally strong pair of arms wrapped around his waist, pressing kisses into his neck as he greeted him.

“ G’Morning. ”

“ Go brush your teeth and come eat breakfast. ”

Shuichi let out a soft rumble at that, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

Shuichi came back a while later, settling down on one of the chairs as Haro came running into the kitchen, obviously hungry with the way he was barking.

Setting everything down onto the table, they made their respective prayers and ate their meal in comfortable silence. He had been checking the news when Shuichi spoke up.

“ Did you cut yourself? ”

“ Hm? Aa yea, by accident. ”

Shuichi frowned at that. In a second, he had taken hold of his hand, causing his tablet to clatter against the wooden table. He watched as Shuichi pressed a gentle kiss onto his wounded finger, blush rising up the nape of his neck to his face and ears.

“ O-oi! What are you doing?? ”

“ Kissing it better? ”

“ … ”

“ You’re so stupid. ” He grumbled but the barely hidden smile on his face gave away his true meaning.

A few years ago, if someone had told him that he would be married to Akai Shuichi himself, he might’ve taken on the role of Bourbon and shot them dead.

But now,

As he watched his husband ( Husband! ) and his beloved dog play around the living area, looking so oddly domestic for a man whose hands were capable of wielding a shotgun and firing it with one hand, he couldn’t help but smile.

Yea.

He and his husband would be fine.

————————————————————————————

Its my birthday today!!! So so, i’ll be posting this here in order to celebrate. I know i said it’ll be a two part, and i promise it is, but it’s still in the works so it’ll be a tumblr exclusive for now until part 2 is done :)

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With that being said, i hope you guys enjoyed this silly little fic and again, English is not my first language so feedback is very much appreciated! ( begging yall pls ignore the japanese its a last min decision )

[ezra-fell-and-co]

Thanks! (I will choose to think that Aziraphale has a copy of the Angel Records version stashed away somewhere anyway haha!)

That closeup of the record goes by in a blink, clearly it was late at night- below is the record I was looking at, so it's possible he got multiple recordings of the same symphony or the close up of the record is of the next one down in his stack of Shostakovitch.

But it being the Bernstein recording is even more delicious!

Because Leonard Bernstein was also a composer and conductor who was under threat from the government, on multiple fronts.

(If you are unfamiliar with Bernstein's work, to sum it up very very shortly; He is mostly known for his work with the New York Philharmonic, with whom he did many recordings. He also had a long running tv show that introduced classical music to young people called Young People's Concerts, where children in NYC were invited to Carnegie Hall and the orchestra would play for them while Bernstein explained what was happening with the music and why it was written the way it was. He's also a much beloved composer behind shows like West Side Story, On The Town, Candide, and works like his Chichester Psalms and MASS. He remains one of the biggest names in United States classical music to this day. Highly highly recommend looking into his life, music, and writings!)

He and his wife, Felicia, were supporters of groups like The Black Panthers and their public and private support of various progressive groups got them put on a FBI watchlist. (Leonard's report was over 800 pages long when it was released. I got to see a copy at the display in the 2018 Bernstein: The Power of Music and it's insane.)

Bernstein was also gay and Jewish in times where those were both Very Unpopular things to be in America. (Except of course in the musical theater realm of NYC, "To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.") He was one of the first major names to start publicly raising funds and awareness for AIDS/HIV research, starting in 1986 with a celebrity fundraising concert. Many of his works depict queer themes that reflect the time periods they were written in as well.

AND he knew Dimitri Shostakovitch. (Here's them shaking hands after a concert in Moscow, 1959)

(Sidenote: Shosty saw and enjoyed ALW's Jesus Christ Superstar, which I find delightful lmao.)

It's a 2-for-1 special!

From NPR:

There are more than 50 recordings of the Symphony No. 5, but Leonard Bernstein's performance with the New York Philharmonic stands out for its emotion and timeliness. It was made right after Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic returned from touring the Soviet Bloc in the summer of 1959. They spent 20 days in the Soviet Union and performed Symphony No. 5 in the presence of Shostakovich himself. This recording captures the excitement of that meeting.

and from Julliard, on the concert for Bernstein's 100th birthday:

The Juilliard Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall program makes the connection between Bernstein and Shostakovich explicit, pairing Bernstein’s still unjustly neglected Songfest (1977) with Shostakovich’s best-known symphony, the Fifth, a specialty of Bernstein’s. In 1966, Bernstein said of Shostakovich, “Out of this shy man, hidden behind his eyeglasses, has come some of the most powerful, brash, un-shy music ever written,” adding, “Shostakovich has a lot to say, musically, and very often what he says is noble, original, and deeply moving.” No matter to Bernstein that it was the middle of the Cold War. The occasion was one of Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, his enormously successful TV series; the program was “A Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich”—the Soviet composer turned 60 that year. On the New York Philharmonic’s historic tour to the Soviet Union in 1959, Bernstein conducted Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony—which would become one of his signature interpretations—in the presence of the composer, who made it known that he was “very taken by the performance.” Bernstein—whose parents were Jewish immigrants from the former Russian Empire—was a protégé of another Russian émigré, Serge Koussevitzky, who profoundly influenced his sense of musical values, especially as they related to the European tradition. Bernstein was one of Koussevitzky’s inaugural conducting fellows at the new Boston Symphony Orchestra’s new summer headquarters in the Berkshires, and when Koussevitzky led the BSO in Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony at the newly established Tanglewood Festival, Bernstein played the bass drum. Bernstein and Shostakovich were two composers who, albeit in very different contexts, faced considerable critical resistance from many of their own self-described “progressive” colleagues for writing “accessible” music instead of following the avant-garde drumbeat. So it’s altogether fitting to celebrate Bernstein’s birthday in part with the music of his fellow titan.

In regards to the 4th movement of Symph. 5, in the Bernstein recording he takes the allegro non troppo nearly double the listed speed, which is what Aziraphale is listening to in the scene. Wherein things start happening very fast.

Aziraphale & Shostakovich

The moment in the record shop when Aziraphale said he was picking up a Shostakovich record I had So Many Thoughts.

The symphony he's listening to is Symphony No.5 in D Minor, Op. 47, composed in 1937 and premiered in Leningrad to a thirty+ minute long standing ovation. Prior to this piece, Dimitri S. spent many nights sleeping in the hallway outside of his apartment so that his family wouldn't see if the government police in charge of enforcing Stalin's brutal rule came for him in the middle of the night. His last pieces had been received harshly by critics and called unpatriotic, which was just about the worst thing a composer living during The Great Terror (1936-1938) could do. Those who were not loyal to the regime and explicitly portrayed it in their art were branded as traitors and sent to gulags or were straight up executed.

The San Francisco Symphony describes the 5th symphony as "the story of a fall from grace and redemption.". Shostakovitch has gone from being a golden example to being eyed as a traitor almost overnight, the 5th Symphony becoming his redemption back into good graces.

So basically Dimitri S. was a man with contrasting ideologies to the powers that be, so to say, who was living under the threat of death, torture, or excommunication from his homeland. Haha, so weird that Aziraphale would want to listen to his music specifically.

(If you've never listened to Symphony No. 5, I highly encourage you to go listen!)

To set the scene-

From The Houston Symphony's 2018 Fighting the Barbarian Artist article on Symph. 5:

"In January 1934, Dmitri Shostakovich scored one of the biggest triumphs of his career with the premiere of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, a work official critics hailed as the first great Soviet opera. Based on a nineteenth-century novella by Leskov, it follows the misadventures of Katerina, the illiterate wife of a well-to-do country merchant who is driven to murder in order to be with her handsome but unworthy lover, the laborer Sergei. By turns satirical and tragic, Lady Macbeth explored themes of oppression with a potent combination of sex, violence and some truly beautiful music that played to full houses for two years. Then on January 26, 1936, Stalin went to see it. Two days later, on page 3 of Pravda (“Truth”—the newspaper that continues to serve as the official mouthpiece of the Russian Communist Party to this day), Shostakovich found an anonymous review of Lady Macbeth headlined “Muddle Instead of Music.” One representative quote declared that the opera “tickles the perverted tastes of the bourgeoisie with its fidgety, screaming, neurotic music…”" ...

There is debate about if Stalin himself wrote the review to make a point, or if he just signed off on it being printed. It's also unclear if Shostakovitch was being targeted specifically, or just because of his notoriety to prove that no matter how big a name you are you're not safe if you don't fall in line, or if he was just being used as a pawn in the ongoing power struggles of the day.

Either way, he was very aware that he was in danger. A friend of Stalin's was vanished when he wrote to Stalin in defense of Shostakovitch's work after the fateful review.

The 5th was a result of Dimitri knowing he needed to get back into good graces, so he had to give them something that they wanted. Or at least something that sounded like what they wanted.

Symphony No. 5 is very sneaky in how it subverts the expectations and requirements of Stalin's Russia.

For one, it's form- a symphony is a very structured form and very Western, popularized by Beethoven and co. It's also instrumental, which allowed Shostakovitch to hide a lot of references, subversions, and musical sarcasm/critiques without the untrained critics and government officials being any the wiser.

D minor, the main tonality of the symphony, has been described by various music theorists about what kind of emotional experience it portrays. John Mattheson in 1713 described it as "Serious, Pious, Ruminating. Melancholy, feminine, brooding worries, contemplation of negativity."

However, for our purposes, Aziraphale is listening to the fourth movement, which is also the most political. (More excellent write ups about the entire work can be read here, here, here, and here. There is a PBS documentary about it here.) ((It also shifts to an ironic D Major as one point, which Mattheson describes as "Triumphant, Victorious War-Cries. Screaming hallelujah’s, rejoicing in conquering obstacles. War marches, holiday songs, invitations to join the winning team."))

The fourth movement is bombastic, letting the brass section loose right at the start. The main theme in this section is from an unpublished song that Shostakovitch had written as a setting for a Pushkin poem. The piece as a whole and specifically this movement is a direct critique of Stalin himself.

The poem?

With sleepy brush the barbarian artist The master’s painting blackens; And thoughtlessly his wicked drawing Over it he is daubing. But in years the foreign colors Peal off, an aged layer: The work of genius is ‘gain before us, With former beauty out it comes. Thus my failings vanish too From my wearied soul, And again within it visions rise, Of my early purer days.

Which I think speaks for itself in what kind of mentality Aziraphale might have listening to the symphony.

I'm not sure which recording he listens to, but in the record shop we are shown that it's a record with a blue label on the disk. There are several recordings that have blue labels including the 1972 Moscow Philharmonic with Kiril Kondrashin and the 1989 Scottish National Orchestra with Neeme Jarvi. Leonard Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic have a very famous recording as well.

But I think the most likely is the 1962 Vienna Philharmonic with Constantin Silvestri. Why? Well, here's the record: