*Maximilian Oseyevich Steinberg (1 883-1946), composer and teacher, son-in-law of Rimsky-Korsakov. For over forty years he was a professor at the Petersburg (later Petrograd and then Leningrad) Conservatory. Shostakovich studied composition with Steinberg from 1919 to 1930. The relations between teacher and student deteriorated as Shostakovich became more and more independent of Steinberg's teaching.
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berg was present when they were going over the lists of scholarship recipients for the following year at the Conservatory. This was an important event, much more important than exams, so the entire staff was there.
This was a period of terrible famine. The gist of the scholarship was that its possessor was able to receive some groceries. In a word, it was a question of life and death. If you're on the list, you live. If you're crossed off, it's quite possible that you may die.
Naturally, they tried to pare the lists as much as possible. The longer the list, the less likely the government was to give the Conservatory anything at all.
My name was on the list, which was in the hands of Glazunov's assistant on . administrative and organizational affairs. The list was a long one and they kept shortening it. The discussion was polite. Each professor def ended the candidacy of "his" student, and they were all irritable, but they tried to control themselves. The atmosphere was charged.
The storm broke when they finally got to my name. It was the last one on the list. The assistant suggested dropping me. "This student's name says nothing to me." And Glazunov erupted. They say that he was a wild man and that he shouted something like, "If the name says nothing to you, then why are you sitting here with us at all ? This is no place for you!"
Well, I'll omit the praise that he heaped on me since he shouted it out in a frenzied state. But this time his anger worked for me and I retained the scholarship. I was saved.
But these outbursts were very rare in Glazunov. And perhaps it's too bad that they were so rare. So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation lie as a heavy burden on the psyche. And you must, you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense.
As I reminisce about this major Russian musician and great Russian man I become agitated. I knew him and I knew him well. And today's generation virtually doesn't know him at all. For today's young musicians, Glazunov is like some Slavic wardrobe from Grandfather's furniture.
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I appreciate Glazunov's greatness, but how can I make others understand it? Especially the young. The young students pass the bust of Glazunov in the Leningrad Conservatory every day, and they don't even turn their heads-I've watched.
The bust stands, but there is no love or understanding. You can't force love, the saying goes. And what's a bust or a monument, when you think about it ? When they erected a monument in Moscow to "the best, the most talented" Mayakovsky,"' as Stalin proclaimed him, a wag said, "You call that a monument? Now, if he were seated on a horse, then you'd be talking!" Must Glazunov be put on a horse? So that the students trip on the hoofs ? Memory slips through one's fingers like sand.
A man dies and they want to serve him up to posterity. Serve him, so to speak, trussed up for our dear descendants at the table. So that they, napkin tucked under chin and armed with knife and fork, can dig in to the freshly deceased.
The deceased, as you know, have the inconvenient habit of cooling off too slowly; they're burning hot. So they are turned into aspics by pouring memories over them-the best form of gelatin.
And since deceased greats are also too large, they are cut down. The nose, say, is served separately, or the tongue. You need less gelatin that way. And that's how you get yesterday's classic as freshly cooked tongue in aspic. With a side dish of hoofs, from the horse he used to ride.
I'm trying to remember the people I knew without the gelatin. I don't pour aspic over them, I'm not trying to turn them into a tasty dish. I know that a tasty dish is easier to swallow and easier to digest.
You know where it ends up.
I think Pushkin wrote, "Oblivion is the natural lot of anyone who is not present." It's horrible, but true. You have to fight it. How can it be? You're no sooner dead than forgotten.
*Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1 930), Futurist poet, one of the leaders and symbols of "left" art in Soviet Russia. With Meyerhold and Sergei Eisenstein, he supported Soviet power from the beginning, and wrote talented, innovative poetry that praised state trade, the secret police, and the first trials. Increasing creative difficulties led to his suicide. After his death his popularity began to decline, but Stalin's personal intervention assured Mayakovsky's role as official poet number one. Boris Pasternak said: "Mayakovsky was introduced forcibly, like the potato in the reign of Catherine the Great. That was his second death. This one was not his fault."
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Take Miaskovsky, * for example. He wrote a number of symphonies, it seemed that the air was filled with them. He taught others, but now Miaskovsky is not played. He's forgotten.
I remember Miaskovsky used to tell his students: "What you have there isn't polyphony, it's muchyphony." Of course, he himself gave muchyphony its due, but he is forgotten unjustly.
And Ronya Shebalin? t He left a lot of excellent music, for example a fine violin concerto. And many of his quartets are fine. But is it possible to hear a work by Shebalin on the concert stage today? Oblivion, oblivion.
What about Misha Sokolovsky ? * He was a marvelous director, I'd go so far as to call him a genius. He created a wonderful theater, he was adored, idolized. Everyone said that Sokolovsky was a director of genius. And now he's forgotten.
It's so unfair. People suffered, worked, thought. So much wisdom, so much talent. And they're forgotten as soon as they die. We must do everything possible to keep their memories alive, because we will be treated in the same way ourselves. How we treat the memory of others is how our memory will be treated. We must remember, no matter how hard it is.
•Nikolai Yakovlevich Miaskovsky (1881-1950), composer, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory for thirty years. He composed twenty-seven symphonies-an unparalleled output among musicians of the last century and a half-and holds an honorable position in the history of modern Russian music as head of the "Moscow" school of composition. In 1 948, with Shoitakovich and Prokofiev, he was branded a composer of "anti-people formalist tendencies."
tVissarion (Ronya) Yakovlevich Shebalin (1 902-1963), composer, a student of Miaskovsky and a friend of Shostakovich (who dedicated his Second Quartet to Shebalin). He was head of the Moscow Conservatory, but was ousted in 1948 at Stalin's request as another representative of
"anti-people formalist tendencies."
* Mikhail Vladimirovich Sokolovsky (1901- 1 941), theater director, creator of the Leningrad Theater of Young Workers (TRAM), an avant-garde collec;tive close to the aesthetics of the early Brecht and Piscator, in which Shostakovich worked in the late 1 920s and early 1 930s (see p.