Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 "The Year 1905"
Symphony No. 11 in G minor, op. 103 The Year 1905
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Early on January 22, 1905 (January 9 on the Julian calendar then used in Russia), thousands of men, women, and children began a slow march through St. Petersburg to the Winter Palace. The march was not a rebellious act — the crowd even sang “God Save the Tsar” as they marched. Their goal was simply to peacefully petition the Tsar for better working conditions.
Unfortunately for the marchers, he wasn’t home when they arrived. Confusion grew as people continued to gather, and nervous troops began firing into the crowd. Over a thousand people were killed by soldiers on what would be known as Bloody Sunday.
One of the men who survived the massacre at the Winter Palace was Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich. His son, born the following year, would grow up listening to his father tell tales of that day and the failed Revolution of 1905.
50 years later, this boy, also named Dmitri, was an internationally renowned composer, but his reputation had only recently been rehabilitated after condemnation by Stalinist authorities in 1948. Although it wouldn’t be completed until 1957, his new symphony honoring the heroes of the Revolution quickly became the composer’s greatest popular success since his 1941 Leningrad Symphony, earning him the Lenin Prize in 1958.
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 The Year 1905 is an almost cinematic work, often described as a “film score without a film.” Enhancing the score’s vivid narrative is the inclusion of nearly a dozen 19th- and 20th-century revolutionary songs which would have been well-known to Soviet audiences — unlike anything Shostakovich had done in his previous works.
The piece is composed in the traditional four-movement symphonic structure, each with a title explicitly describing the story to be told. We begin at morning in “The Palace Square.” Though things seem calm and peaceful, an undercurrent of foreboding segues into “The 9th of January”. Gunfire erupts from the snare drums, explosions from the bass drums and timpani, marches and fanfares from the trumpets, and violent glissandos in the low brass conjure the horrors of which Shostakovich had so frequently heard his father tell tales.
As the chaos subsides, the revolutionary march “You Fell As Victims” serves as the basis of “Memory Eternal” — a heartfelt lament for those lost in the struggle.
The finale is labeled as a “Tocsin” (alarm bell) and invokes three revolutionary folk songs: “Whirlwind of Danger,” “Rage, Tyrants,” and “Sparks”. As with much of Shostakovich’s music, the interpretation of this warning is left ambiguous. Though it might easily be explained as foreshadowing the eventual success of the Revolution of 1917, Shostakovich had a penchant for transparently ironic but plausibly deniable criticism of the Soviet government. Concluding a tribute symphony with an alarm is a curious choice, especially if the symphony is composed as Soviet troops brutally repress an uprising in Hungary that bears a striking resemblance to the Revolution of 1905. Whether this tocsin was sounded in honor of the past or as a warning of the future is for you to decide.
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