#shostakovich

[classycoffeesublime]

Night drive home from the theatre, discussing classical music and falling deeply in love

[masonyin]

50 composers

[dalliancekay]

Aziraphale vs Shostakovich

Now updated with a link to Michael Sheen narrating a podcast on Shostakovich

For a long time now I wanted to write something about Aziraphale's choice to listen to Shostakovich at the beginning of S2. Shostakovich is not a composer from the 1800s as some joke about Aziraphale being stuck in the past. He's not a romantic, sweet composer either. But a composer who wrote most of his work in the middle of 20th Century. Under the oppressive Soviet regime of Stalin and more.

There's so much about...the way he lived and worked and quietly rebelled, in constant fear (for himself but especially for those he loved), that just, begs to be compared to how Aziraphale feels and lives his long life. I just never felt I knew enough about Shostakovich to make a post about him and do it justice. I still don't. But... I was listening to this classical music and history course today - not focused on Symphony No. 5 (1937) in particular that Aziraphale was listening to, but Symphony No. 13 (1962) - written in the brief 'Thaw' of Khrushchev, who condemned Stalin's just ended, rule of terror. The professor (Robert Greeneberg - all his courses are amazing btw) nails it when he describes how Shostakovich's career felt:

There's a lot more in the whole chapter but I was struck by how Aziraphale copes and has coped with living in fear, in terror for 6000 years (and much more, since we see him worried already in Before the Beginning).

Imagine. Living in terror of your friends being taken away. Your spouse. Your parents... Of you being found a traitor and executed. Afraid of talking to anyone, about anything. Constantly having to praise the regime you live in or you will disappear. Never knowing who is watching. Who is listening.

Constantly. Afraid. Of. A. Knock. At. The. Door.

UPDATE

Facing The Music Listen here to Michael Sheen narrating a BBC podcast on Dmitri Shostakovich.

❤️

------------------------------------------- If you want to learn even more about Shostakovich, I recommend searching for his name and the episodes on him on this podcast as well:

Please also check out the reblogs!!

[victorian-wizard]

I am so very tempted to make my yearbook quote “He fell like a chicken into the soup”.

[chopinholic]

I made some horrible composer themed valentine's day cards. bon appetit

[soviet-amateurs]

Dmitry Shostakovich on the Red Arrow train.

Photo by Tarasevich, 1966

[halemerry]

So I was going through the season taking some screen caps for a different piece of meta when I stumbled on something interesting: the record Aziraphale listens to.

So in 1934, Shostakovich wrote an opera called Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It was popular but after Stalin himself deemed the work corrupt he wound up banned by the Soviet Union. This had a huge impact of Shostakovich's life and was a very dangerous thing to have happen to you. There are even stories of him sleeping in stairwells to avoid arrest. So by 1937 he released the Symphony No. 5 in D minor. It is a piece written to get him back into the good grace of the authorities and as such it is informally called A Soviet Artist’s Practical and Creative Response to Just Criticism. This worked. Which on the surface makes sense but I urge you to go listen to this song. It starts out very angry. Then retracts itself into a very hesitant sonata. And then the music cuts into a harsh pattern of notes. It's cuts are jarring and there's something just slightly off in nearly all the melodies. Notably, most symphonies shift to a major key by the end. This one, despite spending a great deal of time leading up to the shift into one, refuses to. It's all false triumph. It's all about pretending to folk under the authority's pressure without actually making something that would glorify it. And it worked. Stalin approved of him again.

This was what Az was listening to. Az who is about to make a series of not quite right choices that to the right eyes look like him bowing back again under authority's pressure. He's listening to a song built to deceive those with power over the composer into letting him back into the fold. Whatever Metatron did to him and whether Aziraphale was magically and/or mundanely manipulated (I suspect and) I don't think it entirely took hold.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) in an interview with The Guardian:

[rainbowpopeworld]

I’m sure this is going to be great because Michael Sheen is always amazing 🤩😍

And yes, this is the composer that Aziraphale listens to in Good Omens season 2 episode 1

Edited to add: check the comments for a link if you’re unable to listen to this one

[bussyplease]

I made this a while ago on paint at midnight in a fever like state and needed to post it here

[fuwbuki]

"Russia has no good generals. The only exception is Bagration." 

Pyotr Bagration (just imagine theres also chair and table)

Dmitry Shostakovich

This ones so stupid im sorry

JFKs "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech but in animal crossing? (i know the implication with the donut is not historically accurate but still... this ones even more stupid)

Charcoal Jared Harris as Hari Seldon i picked bc i wanted to practise beard, but kinda messed up his nose lol

[gojisaurus]

classical composers in style of Clone High i did from 2020

[cazpase]

is it you or what you are perceived as

[shosty-we-understand]

A favourite of mine, this photo shows a rather foreboding Dmitri Shostakovich vacationing on the coast of the Crimean Peninsula, circa. 1937.

[polytonalterrapin]

Listening to Shostakovich is very fun because you'll get to the Silly Part, and then you read any biography of Shostakovich and you learn that the Silly Part was written during the single shittiest moment of his life up to that point and had like five different top-ranking government officials ready to assassinate him at any given moment

[professor-beaker]

So two things about me;

1. Im aroace

2. Im a music major

This leads to the discovering of music history facts that constantly astonish me. Like, robert schumann falling in love with clara when she was a minor, them engaging in a forbidden romance and communicating mainly through notes delivered by their mutual friend and him composing pieces for her to play on tour. Then there was brahms's infatuation with clara and his distancing from them cuz he didnt want to ruin their marriage. And then there was berlioz writing a symphony about a character (based on himself) being so obsessed with an opera singer that he basically went crazy and od'd on opium. The last two movements are literally representing hallucinations from this od and depicting the singer as an old hag driving him insane.

And then meanwhile, my favorite composer, dmitri shostakovich, wrote music while under pressure from the russian government and each of his pieces conveys the pure instability and rage he felt.

Glad to know my priorities are reflected in my tastes in music.