Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich)

While Shostakovich wrote this piece as his graduation exercise from Maximilian Steinberg's composition class, some of the material may have dated from considerably earlier.

Some of these fragments were associated with La Fontaine's retelling of Aesop's fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid.

The effect of hearing this music was instant and radical,[11][better source needed] with Stravinsky's compositions continuing to hold a considerable influence over Shostakovich.

Because the plot in Stravinsky's ballet chronicled the doomed antics of an animated puppet, it would have reflected his observations on the mechanical aspects of human behaviour and appealed directly to the satirist in him.

[11][better source needed] Still another musical influence, suggested by the opening clarinet phrase which becomes used considerably in the course of the symphony, is Richard Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.