Soviet-styled Support For The Arts Trendy Again!
Devoted readers of Gadzooks might recall my admiration for the politically charged compositions of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The sentiment was no less this past week when I attended a recent performance of his rarely heard Symphony No. 7, the “Leningrad” by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
The “Leningrad” was composed under duress and in its day, the piece was considered to be a Master work. The composition has since been questioned in terms of its “authenticity” as the idea of the Soviet regime celebrating its moral victory over their German invaders (this was written in 1941) has, in recent times, rendered the work as merely a piece of Soviet propaganda and that Shostakovich was, merely, a mouthpiece for the Stalinist regime.
But, as I have pointed out previously, Shostakovich is the trickster and it is likely that while he was shaking his fists at the nasty German fascists, he was, simultaneously, giving a backhander to Stalin and his brutal totalitarian ways.
I had a lot of time to think about it during the whopping 70 minutes it took to play the work. And perhaps, that explains a lot of why it doesn’t get played very often; it’s too damn long. And frankly, the last movement just went on and on and on.
The small, but very attentive, audience started bailing on the orchestra. A number of people snuck out before the piece ended. Really, can you expect the elderly person to have a bladder that can last long? Could any concert-goer in the middle of this never ending winter be expected to sit 30 minutes without having a coughing fit? I think not.
But the first movement was amazing. It had this long bit that took about 20 minutes with the snare drum playing a steady pattern that kept building and building. The percussion section had all sorts of great moments. You have to love war-inspired music for giving us the opportunity for a lot of banging.
When the piece finally ended, those of us who survived, were pretty enthusiastic about the whole experience. It was a rare moment of both the orchestra and the audience sharing the experience of having been through an ordeal. We were clapping for our lives.
And I have not very often witnessed a snare-drum player getting his own bow, let alone the hoots and hollers that came from the audience for him. He blushed in the limelight and I wished we could have all gone out for a beer together - even the ushers and oboists!
But the political complexities of Shostakovich’s music got me to thinking about the way in which artists are required to acquiesce to the sort of crazy ideas of the regimes under which they create.
We hardly live under the gun like those in the 1940s - but even today, we see how artist’s are constantly having to struggle, on one hand, to justify the significance of their practices, while on the other, be told by people who, often, without even taking the time to engage in the work, how to do it.
A perfect example of this is the hot topic of Bill C-10 - the seemingly innocent income tax amendment act - that snuck in a line that pretty much sets up a panel of Heritage Canada reps as the decision-makers for what art is for film and video production in this country, an innocent line that has the Canada Family Action Coalition whistling Dixie.
The Bill made it through the House and is now before Senate. The implications of the amendment might mean that Canadian film and video will become awash in pablum for the next 50 years. There is also a scary agenda being put forth by the Harperistas here: a state-controlled aesthetic. Are Canadian artists, like Shostakovich, destined to be mouthpieces for the government? Will all Canadian art be merely propaganda?
That seems rather drastic. But in the meantime, please join in the voices urging the Canadian Senate to return Bill C-10 to the House of Commons.
And if you feel like witnessing what can happen to an artist stuck in the devastating role of propagandist for a totalitarian regime, the TSO will be performing Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony again on Thursday, March 6 at 8PM.