Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet and Russian composer and pianist. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. His chamber output includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and two pieces for string octet.
About Dmitri Shostakovich in brief
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet and Russian composer and pianist. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. His chamber output includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and two pieces for string octet. His music is characterized by sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque, and ambivalent tonality. He was heavily influenced by the neoclassical style pioneered by Igor Stravinsky, and by the late Romanticism of Gustav Mahler. He suffered for his perceived lack of political zeal, and initially failed his exam in Marxist methodology in 1926. His first major musical achievement was the First Symphony, written at the age of 19. He died in 1975 in Moscow after a long illness, and is survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son. His works include three operas, several song cycles, ballets, a substantial quantity of film music; especially well known is the Suite for Variety Orchestra, as well as the suite of music extracted from The Gadfly. He also wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party murdered by Bolshevik sailors. He received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Supreme Soviets of the Soviet Union. His father was a Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 1863–4, Bolesław Szostakowicz was exiled to Narym in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitri Karakozov’s assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II.
His paternal grandfather was of Polish Roman Catholic descent, but his immediate forebears came from Siberia. His son Dmitri Boleslavovich Shstakovich, the composer’s father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and studied physics and mathematics at Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899. He then went to work as an engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. In 1903 he married another Siberian transplant to the capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one of six children born to a Russian Siberian native. He displayed significant musical talent after he began piano lessons with his mother at the aged of nine. In 1919, at age 13, he was admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov, who monitored his progress closely and promoted him. He studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev after a year in the class of Elena Rozanova, composition with Maximilian Steinberg, and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolay Sokolov, with whom he became friends. He would get caught in the act of playing the previous lesson’s music while pretending to read different music placed in front of him. After graduation, he embarked on a dual career as concert pianist and composer, but was often unappreciated as his style was dry and dry.
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