Symphony No. 14 (Shostakovich)
It is a work for soprano, bass and a small string orchestra with percussion, consisting of eleven linked settings of poems by four authors.
The strings consist of ten violins, four violas, three cellos, and two double basses, and the percussion section (two players) includes wood block, castanets, whip, soprano, alto and tenor tom-toms, xylophone, tubular bells, vibraphone, and celesta.
[2] He also makes dramatic use of tone clusters, such as the fortissimo chord illustrating the lily growing from the suicide's mouth in the fourth movement.
The Fourteenth Symphony was a creative response to Modest Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, which Shostakovich had orchestrated in 1962.
He proceeded to expand it by selecting 11 poems by Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker and Rainer Maria Rilke.
"[6]In Mussorgsky's song cycle Shostakovich found a model that spoke out against death; in his symphony, he attempted to expand this protest still further.
[4] The composer wrote in his preface to the score: I want listeners to reflect upon my new symphony ... to realise that they must lead pure and fruitful lives for the glory of their Motherland, their people and the most progressive ideas motivating our socialist society.
His writing for the voice is in small intervals, with much tonal repetition and attention paid to natural declamation.
[10] The work received its official premiere in Leningrad on 29 September 1969 by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under Rudolf Barshai.
Four singers were involved in the first presentations of the work: the sopranos Galina Vishnevskaya and Margarita Miroshnikova, and the basses Mark Reshetin [ru] and Yevgeny Vladimirov.
Wilson argues that on the contrary "through careful ordering of the texts [he] conveys a specific message of protest at the arbitrary power exercised by dictators in sending the innocent to their deaths" (p. 411).
[14]The absence from the symphony of redemption or transcendence drew protests not only in the Soviet Union but also in the West, where the work was considered both obsessive and limited spiritually.
