142 A. Glazunov: “Then this is no place for you. Shostakovich is one of the brightest hopes for our art”—Wilson, p. 29 (testimony of Mikhail Gnessin, slightly “retranslated” by WTV).
143 N. L. Komarovskaya: “A small pale youth…”—Ibid., p. 17.
143 Cousin Tania: “His compositions are very good…”—Victor Ilyich Seroff, in collaboration with Nadejda Galli-Shohat, aunt of the composer, Dmitri Shostakovich: The Life and Background of a Soviet Composer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1943), p. 102 (letter from Tania to Nadejda Galli-Shohat).
147 N. Malko: “As compressed as chamber music,” “he certainly knows what he wants,” etc.—Somewhat after Wilson, pp. 48-49. The anecdotes of the shoes and of the mating behavior of insects (the second one slightly altered from what actually took place) have been moved here for the sake of narrative effect. Both events occurred during his later Kharkov recital with Malko.
148 Comrade M. Kaganovich: “The ground must tremble…”—Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, ed., Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 45 (Ronald Grigor Suny, “Stalin and His Stalinism: Power and Authority in the Soviet Union, 1930-53).
148 Proletarian Musician: “His work will infallibly reach a dead end.”—Fay, p. 55 (slightly altered).
151 Shostakovich to Sollertinsky: “Overcoming the resistance of an orchestra…” —Closely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 75 (another context).
152 Mitya to Glikman: Joke about Stalin & Co. in the sinking steamship—Von Geldern and Stites, p. 329 (“Anecdotes”).
154 Shostakovich to The New York Times: “Thus we regard Scriabin…”—Seroff, p. 157 (New York Times, December 20, 1931).
154 Rabochii i Teatr: “A last warning to its composer”—Wilson, p. 90. The 1979 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which came out after the composer had won several Stalin Prizes and then safely died, confined itself to the dry statement that this ballet as well as “Dyanmiada” “did not remain in the theatrical repertoire.”
154 Great Soviet Encyclopedia: “In the 1930s, Soviet musical culture…”—Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entisklopediia, ed. A. M. Prokhorov, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskaia Entisklopediia Publishing House, 1973), ed. and trans. Jean Paradise et al. (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1976), USSR volume, entry on music.
154 A. Akhmatova: “In this place, peerless beauties quarrel…”—Hemschemeyer version, “retranslated” by WTV.
156 Footnote on “Thousands Cheer”—This movie played at the Astor in September 1943. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described it as a crowd-pleaser.
156 Shostakovich’s sister, Mariyusha, to their aunt: “Our greatest fault is that we worshipped him…”—Seroff, p. 180, slightly abridged.
157 A. Akhmatova: “Without hangman and gallows…”—Ibid., p. 665 (“Why did you poison the water… ,” 1935), “retranslated” by WTV.
157 “Music’s Kandinsky”—A two-page parallel between Shostakovich and Kandinsky is drawn by Gawriil Glikman (München), “Schostakowitsch, wie ich ihn kannte,” in Hilmar Schmalenberg, ed., Schostakowitsch-Gesellschaft e. V. (Hrsg): Schostakowitsch in Deutschland [Schostakowitsch-Studien, Band I] (Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, Studia Slavica Musica, Band 13, 1998), pp. 189-90.
159 D. Zhitomirsky: “The despair of the lost soul”—Wilson, p. 95.
161 Shostakovich to the press: “I want to write a Soviet Ring of the Nibelung!”—Seroff, p. 191 (interview with Leonid and Pyotr Tur; exclamation point added).
161 Shostakovich to Nina: “All of her music has as its purpose…”—Seroff, p. 252 (actually, from DDS’s statement “About My Opera”).
162 Nadezhda Welter: “Sometimes one was overcome with a feeling of cold fear…” —Wilson, pp. 98-99.
165 Shostakovich to Nina: “Let’s at least get to the recapitulation…”—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 163 (the original context was the symphonies of Glazunov).
166 Shostakovich to Nina: “Lady Macbeth’s crimes are a protest…”—Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, paperback repr. of 1997 ed.), p. 501 (quoting a “program essay” by Shostakovich).
166 Shostakovich to Nina: “Can music attack evil?”—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 234.
166 Shostakovich to Nina: “And Sergei, you see, my music strips him…”—Loosely after Seroff, p. 253 (from DDS’s statement “About My Opera”).
168 Shostakovich to E. Konstantinovskaya: “Well, Elena, you see how lucky it is that you didn’t marry me…”—Wilson, p. 110 (quoted from Sofiya Khentova; slightly altered).
168 Shostakovich to E. Konstantinovskaya: “Prisoners are wretches to be pitied, and you shouldn’t kick somebody when he’s down”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 110.
169 V. Shebalin: “I consider that Shostakovich is the greatest genius…”—Wilson, p. 114 (Alisa Shebalina).
170 Shostakovich to Glikman: “The things you love too much perish”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 78. The composer goes on: “You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear.”
170 Tukhachevsky: “One should practice large-scale repression and employ incentives”—Chaliand, p. 915 (“Counterinsurgency”).
172 Pravda editorial on Shostakovich: “He ignored the demand of Soviet culture…” —Seroff, pp. 206-07.
173 Tukhachevsky: “I always get whatever I ask for.”—Very loosely based on words attributed to him in another context, in Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45 (New York: Quill, 1985, repr. of 1965 ed., with new intro.), p. 33.
176 Tukhachevsky at the time of his arrest and execution: “I would have been better off as a violinist”—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 97.
176 Shostakovich’s interrogation—I have made it far more brutal than it was. One source proposes that it might never have happened: An intensely sensitive man, Shostakovich may have so feared his imminent demise that he lost his ability to discriminate between what happened in fact and what only occurred in his tormented imagination. (This, again, was a common syndrome under the Terror.)—http:/www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/basner/basner.html, 6/20/2002 (“ ‘You Must Remember!’ ” Shostakovich’s alleged interrogation by the NKVD in 1937,” p. 3).