Igor Stravinskys collaborations with contemporaries including Picasso, Nijinsky, and Cocteau are well documented. Less familiar, however, are the anachronistic collaborations suggested in one short movement Stravinsky wrote in 1918, and involving the Germans Luther and Bach, the Swiss Ramuz, the Russian Stravinsky, and the American Kurt Vonnegut Jr.<p> Grand Choral, the penultimate movement of Stravinskys lHistoire du Soldatwritten in 1918provides a key to unlocking the mysteries of construction, ideology, and by extension, performance of the work. Grand Choral parodies J.S. Bachs Cantata 80 (1715) which, in its turn, is based on Martin Luthers 1529 hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. C.F. Ramuz, Stravinskys original collaborator on lHistoire du Soldat, based his libretto on a Russian folk tale, but in 1993, Vonnegut wrote a new text to accompany Stravinskys music, a text inspired by the true story of Private Eddie Slovik, the last American soldier executed for desertion. In essence, Vonnegut collaborates with Stravinsky in a posthumous sense, as Stravinsky does with Bach and Bach with Luther. Vonnegut and Stravinsky each write themselves into an existing work, giving it contemporary meaning and a new poignancy.<p> The principal aim of my paper is to document the process by which I studied and conducted lHistoire du Soldat with one libretto by Ramuz and another by Vonnegut. In the paper, I will first examine the historical context in which each of the collaborators contributed to lHistoire du Soldat. I will also present an analysis of Grand Choral with regard to the source material by Luther and Bach. Finally, I will document the process and findings of my study, rehearsal, and performance of each of the two versions of lHistoire du Soldat which I conducted on March 31, 2009 in Quance Theatre, on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan with a full cast of musicians, dancers and actors.

Este trabalho apresenta uma reflexão sobre a música do compositor soviético Dmítri Chostakóvitch baseada na análise da Sinfonia nº 10 op. 93. Concluída logo após a morte de Jôsef Stálin, a obra carrega notáveis marcas de seu tempo e sua leitura demanda um cuidadoso estudo das questões relativas à significação musical, em especial uma discussão do conceito de ironia aplicado à música em suas mais diversas manifestações, desde a construção de estruturas musicais expressivas até a disposição de elementos singulares, que requerem uma leitura semiótica. Esta abordagem alinha-se com a perspectiva discursiva que relaciona ironia, intertextualidade e interdiscursividade: o cruzamento de vozes e a confluência de discursos, que constituem elementos fundamentais do conceito de polifonia proposto por Mikhaíl Bakhtín, são identificados aqui como uma chave de leitura capaz de evidenciar, também na música, a ironia como elemento estruturante. A análise da Sinfonia nº 10 a partir dessa perspectiva dá fundamento a novas hipóteses interpretativas e estéticas sobre a obra de Chostakóvitch, evidenciando no texto musical as contradições que surgem no desdobramento analítico do discurso sinfônico e confrontando a crítica histórica da música de Chostakóvitch com uma interpretação semiótica baseada na teoria dos tópicos musicais, desenvolvida a partir das propostas de Leonard Ratner. / The purpose of this work is to present a reflection about the music of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich based on an analysis of the Symphony no. 10 op. 93. Written immediately after Joseph Stalin\'s death, the symphony carries remarkable traces of its time, and the unfolding of its singularities demands a careful study of musical signification\'s issues, specially a discussion about the concept of irony applied to music in its various manifestations, from the expressive construction of musical structures to the disposition of singular elements. This kind of analysis requires a wide theoretical perspective, which includes a semiotic approach. This analysis is thus aligned with the discursive perspective that relates irony, intertextuality and interdiscursivity: the voice-crossing and discourse confluence, which constitute fundamental elements of Mikhail Bakhtin\'s concept of polyphony, are taken as keys to identify irony as a structural element in music as well. The analysis of the Symphony no. 10 from this perspective grounds new interpretative and aesthetic hypotheses about Shostakovich\'s music, by revealing on the musical text the contradictions which emerge at the level of symphonic discourse, and by confronting the historical criticism of Shostakovich\'s music with a semiotic interpretation based on topic theory proposed after Leonard Ratner.

Este trabalho apresenta uma reflexão sobre a música do compositor soviético Dmítri Chostakóvitch baseada na análise da Sinfonia nº 10 op. 93. Concluída logo após a morte de Jôsef Stálin, a obra carrega notáveis marcas de seu tempo e sua leitura demanda um cuidadoso estudo das questões relativas à significação musical, em especial uma discussão do conceito de ironia aplicado à música em suas mais diversas manifestações, desde a construção de estruturas musicais expressivas até a disposição de elementos singulares, que requerem uma leitura semiótica. Esta abordagem alinha-se com a perspectiva discursiva que relaciona ironia, intertextualidade e interdiscursividade: o cruzamento de vozes e a confluência de discursos, que constituem elementos fundamentais do conceito de polifonia proposto por Mikhaíl Bakhtín, são identificados aqui como uma chave de leitura capaz de evidenciar, também na música, a ironia como elemento estruturante. A análise da Sinfonia nº 10 a partir dessa perspectiva dá fundamento a novas hipóteses interpretativas e estéticas sobre a obra de Chostakóvitch, evidenciando no texto musical as contradições que surgem no desdobramento analítico do discurso sinfônico e confrontando a crítica histórica da música de Chostakóvitch com uma interpretação semiótica baseada na teoria dos tópicos musicais, desenvolvida a partir das propostas de Leonard Ratner. / The purpose of this work is to present a reflection about the music of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich based on an analysis of the Symphony no. 10 op. 93. Written immediately after Joseph Stalin\'s death, the symphony carries remarkable traces of its time, and the unfolding of its singularities demands a careful study of musical signification\'s issues, specially a discussion about the concept of irony applied to music in its various manifestations, from the expressive construction of musical structures to the disposition of singular elements. This kind of analysis requires a wide theoretical perspective, which includes a semiotic approach. This analysis is thus aligned with the discursive perspective that relates irony, intertextuality and interdiscursivity: the voice-crossing and discourse confluence, which constitute fundamental elements of Mikhail Bakhtin\'s concept of polyphony, are taken as keys to identify irony as a structural element in music as well. The analysis of the Symphony no. 10 from this perspective grounds new interpretative and aesthetic hypotheses about Shostakovich\'s music, by revealing on the musical text the contradictions which emerge at the level of symphonic discourse, and by confronting the historical criticism of Shostakovich\'s music with a semiotic interpretation based on topic theory proposed after Leonard Ratner.