| artist-musician, russian studies |
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Dmitri Shostakovich and 1-5-6-5: The History of a Motive 1950-1967
by William Andrew Burnson
A thesis presented to the faculty of Bucknell University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Music with Honors in Music Composition
May 7, 2007
Abstract
This thesis unveils a prominent and recurring motive in Shostakovich's music, 1-5-6-5, which has remained undetected by Soviet-music scholarship for over half a century. The motive apparently originates in the composer's Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 and does not appear after Seven Romances on Verses by A. Blok, Op. 127. To date, the only documented recurring motive is the composer's name-cipher, D-Es-C-H. This widely known cipher has generated so much interest that dozens of composers have written pieces in homage to the motive and Shostakovich specialists have latched onto the cipher, often indiscriminately, as a means to explain the composer's deeply philosophic music. The name-cipher motive has been attributed to about a dozen of Shostakovich's works; however, my research validates only four of these attributions, and two of the four are intentional parodies of the motive. By contrast, the 1-5-6-5 motive can be found in nine works between the years 1950-1967, and the occurrences from the 1960s show, through musical metaphors, an increasingly disturbed Shostakovich.
The first two chapters discuss 1-5-6-5 within the ambit of music theory. Chapter One describes the origins of 1-5-6-5 in the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 and discusses the notion of 1-5-6-5 as a narrative cyclic element. Chapter Two describes the other eight pieces between the years 1951-1967 that allude to the 1-5-6-5 motive.
The last two chapters discuss 1-5-6-5's contemporaneous counterpart D-Es-C-H and the potential meanings of 1-5-6-5 in the later works that allude to it. Chapter Three discusses the apparently simultaneous, or near simultaneous origins of 1-5-6-5 and D-Es-C-H, narrowing the name-cipher's conception to two possible timeframes, the first in 1951 coinciding with the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, and the second corresponding to the composition of the third movement of the Tenth Symphony. To show the relative scarceness of D-Es-C-H in comparison to 1-5-6-5, each major attribution to the namecipher is scrutinized. Additionally, some cipher conspiracy theories are also analyzed to give the reader an idea of the sensationalist name-cipher "sightings." Chapter Four discusses the composer's musical purpose behind the recurring motive and its many allusions, which hint to suicide, mortality, and hopelessness.
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