A visit to a mass song event in the Estonian SSR that same year helped him to settle on composing Loyalty as an a capella work for men's chorus.

He said in a 1951 interview with Vechernyaya Moskva that his first such composition, numbers in film scores notwithstanding, was the Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets from 1950, which developed his interest to continue writing for choirs.

And the best gift for the anniversary will be new beautiful works lauding the image of the beloved leader, the greatness of the achievements of the Soviet people building communism.

[5] In July of that same year, he visited Estonia and attended the XVII Estonian Song Festival, which closed with a rendition led by Gustav Ernesaks of his setting of Lydia Koidula's "Mu isamaa on minu arm".

[6] Shostakovich requested new texts for Loyalty from Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, with whom he had collaborated previously on Song of the Forests and The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland, among other works.

The last time a major Russian composer used such a clef similarly was when Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky used it in two choruses for his opera The Queen of Spades, which may have possibly been a model for Shostakovich's use.

[13] In spite of the physical fatigue he felt as a result of medical treatment, the composer worked on Loyalty, the Thirteenth Quartet, and his score to Grigori Kozintsev's film King Lear simultaneously.

[1] After Shostakovich's death, "I Wish to Learn Everything About Him" was arranged for children's choir by Vladislav Sokolov [ru] and included in the collection Crimson Stars: Songs and Choruses for Schoolchildren.

Shostakovich arrived in Tallinn a few days before the premiere in order to supervise the rehearsals, which Ernesaks recalled increased tension and nervousness among the choristers: The preparations were difficult.

[18]The world premiere of Loyalty took place December 5, 1970, at the Estonia Theatre, with Ernesaks conducting the Estonian SSR State Academic Male Choir.

[20] According to Ernesaks, Shostakovich "modestly accepted the audience's enthusiasm" and remarked that in the future he hoped to acquaint himself better with the male choir as an "instrument", which he felt he did not know well enough.

"[19] In 1971, the Estonian SSR State Academic Male Choir conducted by Ernesaks made the premiere recording of Loyalty for Melodiya, which was prepared for a special edition LP issued in commemoration of that year's 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

[17] Conductor Arvo Ratassepp [et], who reviewed the world premiere concert for Serp i Molot [ru], called the performance the greatest event in the musical life of Estonia:[22] We hope that this is only the beginning ...

[22]Georgy Sviridov wrote an appreciative review of the Moscow premiere of Loyalty in Pravda, holding up the cycle's first ballad for especial praise.

[19] Sviridov also exalted the "ideal coordination" and the "virtuosic command of the entire palette of expressive means" demonstrated by the Estonian SSR State Academic Male Choir conducted by Ernesaks, calling their performance the "vibrant event" of the 1970 musical season.

"[23] In her biography of Shostakovich, Pauline Fairclough described Dolmatovsky's texts as "truly dreadful" and that their "favorable comparisons of Lenin to Confucius, Buddha, and Allah achieved new levels of ludicrous flattery.

[25]Reviewing the BMG CD, Mark Stryker wrote in the Detroit Free Press that the work's "anthem-like songs" were "curious, but compelling.

"[26] In his defense of Loyalty, Gerard McBurney wrote: Anyone who likes to see Shostakovich in simplified terms as a "secret resister" to the Soviet regime, will have something of a problem with this 20-minute cycle of ballads for unaccompanied male-voice chorus, to maudlin texts by the patriotic poet Dolmatovsky in celebration of the life and work of Lenin.

For whatever Shostakovich truly thought about Leninism and Communism and this kind of socialist-realist poetry—and these are matters that will be debated for many years to come—these a capella chorus works cannot easily be dismissed as mere cynical time-serving.