I ask myself: why Shostakovich? – Because it is never just ‘pure’ music that he affirms. In the end, emphasising the materiality of the artwork (my own discourse) is insufficient with respect to Shostakovich. Is this the abyss that separates the Romantics from Shostakovich? – ‘Pure’ music, ‘pure’ materiality is not enough. No – it is the tune itself that has to be deranged. The old forms must be destroyed – not replaced or supplanted (after all, he was not a serialist) but destroyed in the body of the music. So that the music destroyed itself in some sense. Laughed at itself. Laughed at the imposture that music is. Until all that survives is the 15th String Quartet.
But what about the D, S, C, H motif as we hear it in the 10th Symphony or the 8th Quartet (a way for the composer to spell his own name)? Is it a question, here, of autobiography – of programme music (think of the dismal 12th Symphony)? No – but of a resonance to which his music always returns, over and again. But it is a question of finding that resonance. And it can only be found in desolation. The ruin that was close to him as soon as he began to compose. He knew this before his Lady Macbeth was banned. But he knew, later, that it was that resonance to which he had to lead his greatest work.
D, S, C, H: the tone Shostakovich imposes upon resonance. When D, S, C, H names only the way resonance resonates through a space without name.
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