| Contents |
Shostakovich and the modern subject -- The end that is no end: cadences and closure in the Sixth String Quartet, op. 101 (1956) -- The space between: codas, death and the Seventh String Quartet, op. 108 (1960) -- Musical hauntings: the ritual of conjuration in Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet, op. 110 (1960) -- The indivisible remainder: novelization in the Ninth String Quartet, op. 117 (1964). |
| Abstract |
Since the publication of Solomon Volkov's disputed memoirs of Shostakovich, the composer and his music has been subject to heated debate concerning how the musical meaning of his works can be understood in relationship to the composer's life within the Soviet State. While much ink has been spilled, very little work has attempted to define how Shostakovich's music has remained so arresting not only to those within the Soviet culture, but also to Western audiences--even though such audiences are often largely ignorant of the compositional context or even the biography of the composer. This book offers a useful corrective: setting aside biographically grounded and traditional analytical modes of explication, the author uncovers and explores the musical ambiguities of four of the composer's middle string quartets, especially those ambiguities located in moments of rupture within the musical structure. The music is constantly collapsing, reversing, inverting and denying its own structural imperatives. The author argues that such confrontation of the musical language with itself, though perhaps interpretable as Shostakovich's own unique version of double-speak, also poignantly articulates the fractured state of a more general form of modern subjectivity. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 121-126) and index. |
| LCCN | 2007049841 |
| ISBN | 9780754658849 (alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 0754658848 (alk. paper) |
