“Muddle Instead of Music”: Shostakovich and Censorship | Decoding Shostakovich

Matthew Heck, lecturer
Christine Lee, cello
Gilbert Kalish, piano

SHOSTAKOVICH Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, op. 40

On January 28, 1936, the editorial “Muddle Instead of Music” appeared in Pravda, denouncing Dmitri Shostakovich’s wildly successful opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and turning the promising composer’s fortunes upside down. Shostakovich was accused of “formalism,” a catch-all term defined by what it was not. It was not “Socialist Realism,” the politically approved aesthetic. In this talk, Matt Heck explores formalism from a number of perspectives—as an international artistic movement and a convenient euphemism for “Western” among Soviet authorities.