The Passacaglia on DSCH is a large-scale composition for solo piano by the British composer Ronald Stevenson.
The work takes the principle of the passacaglia or chaconne – namely, strict variations on an unchanging subject, usually a ground bass, and applies it across a very large single-movement structure that divides into a cumulative design of many different musical styles and forms.
It is based on a 13-note 'ground' derived from the musical motif D, E-flat, C, B: the German transliteration of Dmitri Shostakovich's initials ("D.
The penultimate section is a huge triple fugue over the ground bass, the first fugue on a 12-note subject derived from the bass, the second combines the DSCH motif with the BACH motif (B-flat, A, C, B), and the third, on the Dies Irae chant, is inscribed In memoriam the six million (a reference to the victims of the Holocaust of World War II).
In 1964 he recorded the work on a Petrof grand piano on two LPs issued under the auspices of the Editorial Board of the University of Cape Town, in a signed edition of 100 copies.