Dmitri Shostakovich: Working

Dmitri Shostakovich was Russian composer and pianist. Explore interesting quotes on working.
Dmitri Shostakovich: 64   quotes 34   likes

“A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude toward his own work, he ceases to be an artist.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

New York Times, October 25, 1959.

“I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist…Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

Letter to Isaac Glikman, February 26, 1960; Josiah Fisk & Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (1997) p. 354.

Thinking

“You ask if I would have been different without "Party guidance"? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

In conversation with Flora Litvinova, 1970; cited from Elizabeth Wilson Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994) pp. 425-6.

Idea

“I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

In discussion with an opera audience, January 14, 1930; cited from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 55.

Nature

“Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention…All his works are marked by emotional extremes – tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

Michael Kennedy The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (1980) p. 593.

Music