Shostakovich’s Troubled Life and Career

Life of Shostakovich
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation Life of Shostakovich
1.0 Shostakovich’s Troubled Life and Career
1.1 Early Life and Career
Dmitry Shostakovich was a music composer and an artist who was born in Saint Petersburg in Russia as the second child of Dimitri Boleslavovich and his wife, Sofiya Visielevna. Shostakovich started showing great musical talents when he was very young when he started playing the piano with his mother Sofiya at the age of nine. Shostakovich joined the Petrograd school of music at the age of thirteen where he practiced and perfected the art of playing the piano. After graduation, he initially started as a pianist, but his concert was not greatly appreciated. Later in life, he became a wholly formed composer whose achievements were unmatched. Shostakovich became famous, and a public figure at the age of nineteen in 1925 when his first symphony music which he had composed as his graduation piece was performer met in Leningrad (former Saint Petersburg the Russian capital). The socialist regime actively and greatly promoted the Shostakovich work of art as it was perceived to be the symbol of the Soviet Union cultural achievement.
1.2 Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Shostakovich composed the Lady Macbeth, which is an opera consisting of nine scenes and four acts. This opera was first performed on the stage on 22nd January 1934, and it incorporated the scenes of expressionism. It gave a story of a lone young woman who fell in love with one of her husband's workers where the love story ended with the murder of the husband. The opera gained fame and success, and at one time, even Stalin went to see Shostakovich perform the lady Macbeth on stage. Shostakovich was a bit worried when the Soviet leader left the theater together with his men even before the final curtain. After this event happened, it was only two days later that the communist party's national newspaper published striking headlines “ muddle instead of music” in the attack of Shostakovich. A little later, Shostakovich experienced a troubled life after the Soviet authorities constantly warned him that he would have a bad end due to the Lady Macbeth symphony which greatly criticized Stalin's administration. However, nothing went wrong with him, and he did not experience a bad end.
1.3 The Greatest Soviet Composer
Shostakovich was the greatest composer of the Soviet regime to the extent that Stalin’s regime actively promoted his music work. His biography shows that he was most of the times involved in dramatic confrontations and hurting compromises with the Russian authorities. Shostakovich compositions and pieces of art were used to bring to light the plight of the Soviet Union artists who were directly oppressed by the harsh political control. He was such a great composer as he used phrases with hidden meaning, such that some people thought that his work was supporting the communist regime while others thought that he was attacking it. The regime had threatened him that he would have a bad end. Throughout his life, he lives tortured with the fear of a “bad end” but continued with his career with courage that no other modernist artist or composer had. ...