As a little boy, Dmitriĭ Dmitrievich Shostakovich pressed his ear against the wall to hear his neighbors play chamber music. He matured into one of the most prominent Soviet era composers. While the majority of academic interest Shostakovich centers on his symphonic works, his string quartets provide a window into a more intimate facet of Shostakovich’s life. This thesis explores first, why Shostakovich turned to the string quartet after some of the most fearful years of his life: his demise and rise after the scathing Pravda letter that all but threatened his life. Second, this thesis analyzes three of Shostakovich’s String Quartets: No. 1, No. 8, and No. 15. String Quartet No. 1, despite its simplicity, illuminates tender expressivity. Following years of intense artistic and personal scrutiny, Shostakovich sought an escape into an aural world of innocence. However, the quartet proves more complex than its surface suggests. Obscured harmonic complexities, intimate dialogue between instruments, and subtle recollection of prior movements lend the quartet a deeper meaning than its aural simplicity suggests. Decades later, amidst personal crisis, Shostakovich turned to the quartet, again. Composed in 1960, the year of his invocation into the communist party, String Quartet No. 8 demonstrates how Shostakovich utilized the string quartet as an avenue for personal self-expression. The intertwining of his musical signature with constant self-quotations and allusions confirms the deep, personal reflection the quartet provided Shostakovich. This study recounts the quotations previously uncovered by David Fanning, but goes beyond identification and relates the content of the quotations to Shostakovich’s emotional turmoil at the time of his party invocation. Finally, enduring anguishing physical pain and facing death, Shostakovich turned to the string quartet at the end of his life. String Quartet No. 15 provided Shostakovich an external outlet for his internal dialogue on death. Sentiments of meditation, fury, resistance, anguish, and resignation musically intertwine during Shostakovich’s longest and most painful string quartet. This study demonstrates how Shostakovich used the string quartet as a medium for deeper self-expression.

The objective of this thesis is to explain how Dmitrii Shostakovich used Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poetry to create the Thirteenth Symphony. This collaboration between two arts, poetry and music, reflects more than just separate ideas. The five movements of the symphony bring to public conscience the political opinions of Shostakovich regarding life in the Soviet Union.

In this dissertation, I develop and apply an original voice-leading method to the music of Shostakovich. Between the years of 1926 and 1948, his music involved extreme chromaticism that required analytical views from both Russia and the West. In the mid-twentieth century, Russian theorists such as Lev Mazel' and Alexandr Dolzhansky wrote about the modal language of Shostakovich's works, but their writings lacked how to identify them within extremely chromatic passages. In the West, scholars describe his music as both tonal and atonal, sometimes combined within one work. I unify these two views with my voice-leading system consisting of an intervallic resolution of the doubly augmented prime (DAP), which appears seemingly random on the musical surface, but occurs for specific compositional reasons. First mentioned by name in Aleksei Ogolevets' 1946 "An Introduction into Contemporary Musical Thought," the DAP served no harmonic or modal purpose. While Ogolevets mentions and includes examples that show this interval, he does not discuss its resolutions nor how it functions in musical contexts. This structure, however, has broader conceptual and analytical implications. Therefore, I develop a method based on the voice leading and semitonal resolutions of the DAP, which I apply to the music of Shostakovich. The DAP contributes to his compositional style by functioning in three ways: 1) identifying one mode or two simultaneous modes, 2) completing traditional triadic harmonies, and 3) facilitating both tonal and modal modulations.

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Este trabalho apresenta um estudo comparativo das Sinfonias n° 4 e 5 de Dmitri Chostakovitch, analisando as características das duas obras à luz dos acontecimentos que separam a composição das duas sinfonias, em especial o banimento da obra do compositor a partir da publicação do artigo Caos em vez de música em caráter oficial no jornal Pravda em 1936, motivado pelo comparecimento de Stálin à uma apresentação da ópera Lady Macbeth do Distrito de Mtsensk. Este trabalho propõe-se a realizar uma análise que possa evidenciar os diferentes aspectos do impacto da perseguição governamental no discurso musical de Chostakovitch e sua significação para a música do século XX. / This work presents a comparative study of the Symphonies No. 4 and 5 of Dmitri Shostakovich, analyzing the characteristics of the two works in connection with the events that separated the composition of the two symphonies, especially the ban of his works after the publication of the article Chaos instead music in the official media Pravda in 1936, motivated by the presence of Stalin to a performance of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. This work intends to show the various aspects of the impact of government persecution in the musical discourse of Shostakovich and its significance to the music of the twentieth century.

This dissertation contains a comparison from a historical and theoretical perspective of the passacaglia from the Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 67, written by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), and the passacaglia from the Piano Trio in A Minor, written by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937).Before the history and theory discussion of these two movements begins, a background is given on the passacaglia form and its origins. References are made to the beginnings of the passacaglia in Italy and Spain, as well as the gradual evolution of the form into the keyboard music of the 17th century. Early published examples of passacaglias are displayed in chapter two.The third and fourth chapters of this dissertation are the focus of the comparison, where historical and theoretical information is discussed and deciphered. In the history section, details of the life of the composer during the time he wrote the piece are provided. The theory section contains a concentrated examination and comparison (enhanced by musical examples) of melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and form, as used by Ravel and Shostakovich in these two passacaglias.It was concluded in this dissertation that both of these master composers used the passacaglia form successfully in their piano trios. As a result, they contributed musical masterpieces in the genre of the piano trio for musicians and scholars alike to investigate, study, and perform. / School of Music

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Este trabalho apresenta um estudo comparativo das Sinfonias n° 4 e 5 de Dmitri Chostakovitch, analisando as características das duas obras à luz dos acontecimentos que separam a composição das duas sinfonias, em especial o banimento da obra do compositor a partir da publicação do artigo Caos em vez de música em caráter oficial no jornal Pravda em 1936, motivado pelo comparecimento de Stálin à uma apresentação da ópera Lady Macbeth do Distrito de Mtsensk. Este trabalho propõe-se a realizar uma análise que possa evidenciar os diferentes aspectos do impacto da perseguição governamental no discurso musical de Chostakovitch e sua significação para a música do século XX. / This work presents a comparative study of the Symphonies No. 4 and 5 of Dmitri Shostakovich, analyzing the characteristics of the two works in connection with the events that separated the composition of the two symphonies, especially the ban of his works after the publication of the article Chaos instead music in the official media Pravda in 1936, motivated by the presence of Stalin to a performance of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. This work intends to show the various aspects of the impact of government persecution in the musical discourse of Shostakovich and its significance to the music of the twentieth century.

As attention on the music of Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) has increased in the years after his death, so has the need for an analytical study of his musical style and language. This thesis surveys Weinberg’s changing style through a genre that spans almost his entire output: the string quartet. His close friendship and artistic affinity with Shostakovich helps make his music accessible to a wider audience, though closer examination reveals Weinberg’s individuality and a quite distinct language from that of his mentor. In support of this contention, a wide range of analytical approaches is deployed in this dissertation, along with a pragmatic methodology for presenting a holistic overview of Weinberg’s quartets. Weinberg’s quartet cycle occupies an important place in twentieth-century music, with parallels to Shostakovich, Bartók, and other Soviet composers, including Myaskovsky, Shebalin, Levitin, and Boris Chaykovsky; correspondences and distinctiveness are explored in the second chapter. The third chapter surveys Weinberg’s musical narratives, with recourse to theories from Kofi Agawu, Boris Asafiev, and Jacques Derrida. Form is the focus of the fourth chapter, where ideas from Mark Aranovsky, and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy are deployed to highlight Weinberg’s problematising of traditional forms in his music. Chapter five explores Weinberg’s multi-faceted approach to harmony, with concepts expanded from Lev Mazel, Yury Kholopov, and the neo-Riemannian school of analysis. The picture that emerges is of Weinberg’s individuality and distinctive voice, manifested in a controlled experimentalism and a tendency towards extended lyricism. His affinity with better-known composers may prove an approachable entry-point for wider audiences, but many of the most striking elements in his quartet cycle are of his own invention. His quartets stand as an important contextual dimension for understanding Shostakovich’s cycle, and also for appreciating the broader repertoire of Soviet chamber music. As his centenary approaches, engagement with Weinberg’s music continues to increase: this thesis provides contexts and analysis-based conclusions to complement this ongoing revival.