Talk:Dmitri Shostakovich

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Ballet

Went and saw the West Australian Ballet last night (29/09/2007) doing a performance of Alice - which in the first act was Alice in Wonderland and the second act was Through the Looking Glass. The score was Shostakovich's The Limpid Stream, and was so incredibly well used. Grover 02:04, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge discussion of Tchaikovsky's personal life

I strongly feel the persons "personal life" belongs to this very article. That is the very point of bio articles. -- Cat ^chi? 15:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. Why on eath would we want to merge Tchaikovsky's personal life into the Shostakovich article? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 16:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

My mistake. Please disregard. I clicked the wrong page. -- Cat ^chi? 16:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Shostakovich's Prelude XXI Bb Major (Allegro) - (Part of opus 87).ogg

Image:Shostakovich's Prelude XXI Bb Major (Allegro) - (Part of opus 87).ogg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that my image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Stupid image

I am a faithful frequenter of the Shosti page, and I found this idiotic picture of a dreamy boy tarnishing the front of the article! It was irritating to remove, and I hope that something like that won't happen again. And this is a featured article, so Wikipedia should be a bit more attentive to what people randomly insert into the editing page, blemishing the face of twentieth century genius. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shelleyesque (talk • contribs) 04:18, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Shostakovichtimecover.jpg

Image:Shostakovichtimecover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The cyrillic name

The article lists his name Дми́трий Дми́триевич Шостако́вич. I did not know cyrillic used acute accents, nor needed unicode combining diacritical marks. Is this wrong?

I tracked the change down to ru:. It propagated 4 days later to en: (by the same IP, no less), and currently I can find the form in a whole lot of the other-language projects. fr: is still using Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович. --MinorContributor (talk) 21:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it is used for indicating stress, but is it really appropriate here? --MinorContributor (talk) 21:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Matter of opinion, I'd say. The Cyrillic alphabet as used in the Russian language does not contain any accents. Й is a separate letter from И, not just an accented version of it. And there's endless debate about whether Ё is a formal letter at all, as distinct from Е. The umlauted version is used to ensure the letter is pronounced -yo rather than -ye, but traditionalists would argue that people should just know when to say -yo and when to say -ye; just as, before the orthography was revised, people were supposed to know not to confuse the spelling of "миръ" (peace) with "мiръ" (world) - the pronunciations are identical (see War and Peace#Title). All that aside, accents are regularly used in pedagogical texts, mainly for the benefit of learners of the language, because the stress in Russian is notoriously unpredictable. Which is why they appear in encyclopedias and the like. But I've never heard anyone have trouble in pronouncing Shost's names, so it's debatable whether there's any use for the accents in this case. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there a wikipedia policy on this? WP:RUS doesn't touch the subject of marking stress. I'd think stress markings belong to an IPA version of the name. I can imagine a bunch of people (I'm one) not knowing Russian copying the name (with stress markings) for their report or something... --MinorContributor (talk) 15:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I removed them, because they are likely to cause rendering errors in browsers. Whoever is learning Russian and wants to know the stress can look it up from ru:. (I noticed that someone uploaded an image with the stress markings copied into the file name. This reinforces my point.) --MinorContributor (talk) 12:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I support this change. Usually you see his name in Cyrillic without the indicated stresses. Eusebeus (talk) 15:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Moving the quotes to Wikiquote?

Shouldn´t the Quotations-part be moved to Wikiquote? Jopparn (talk) 13:55, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted this section, replanting all on Wikiquote. Quotes lists are not considered encyclopedic in Wikipedia. That said, Shostakovich has some great quotes and one or two may be worth including in this article, as long as they are used in context to illustrate a point.

None of those quotes were sourced. If someone knows where they come from, Wikiquote could use help in sourcing them. / edg ☺ ☭ 15:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Tweaks to intro

I've rearranged a couple of paragraphs in the intro, and broken one paragraph into two, to help the flow and keep related ideas together. Also, I put the information about his music ahead of the controversy about his relationship with the Soviet system. I reckon the first question newcomers will have is "What kind of music did he write?" so the intro should cover that first. What does everyone else think? Perodicticus (talk) 11:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Shouldn't there be a couple of footnotes on where the info on his compositional style and orchestration came from? Jonyungk (talk) 22:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Is Dimitri Shostakovich's Waltz #2 in the public domain?

Is Dimitri Shostakovich's Waltz #2 in the public domain? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.131.114.10 (talk) 21:23, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, none of Shostakovich's works are in the public domain. His First Symphony was premiered in 1926; while it is possible that some of his student works were written before 1923, any later works would not be in the public domain as he has not been dead for 70 years. The waltz in question is from the Suite for Variety Orchestra, which was written much later and is therefore not in the public domain. --Opus 113 (talk) 03:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox

Would anyone be able to add any information on this court case? I only know what I've read on Wikipedia. Perodicticus (talk) 14:09, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Wrong person first name. Check the Dmitry article

There are some mistakes made (or transferred from unreliable sources) in translation of russian names in Wikipedia --DpakoH (talk) 22:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Prankster entry on the Shostakovich page

The following entry appears as the final paragraph of Wikipedia's Shostakovich entry and was submitted in late February 2010. It was obviously submitted in the spirit of an April Fool's Day prank, as none of the major references on the composer (Fay, Wilson, etc.) make mention of such a claim, nor do any of the biographical works make any mention of Tesla, or any amateur electronic or magnetic tape devices used by the composer (see note below). The concluding Rubenstein quote is no doubt designed to reach an absurd extreme to make the hoax evident to anyone. I hope that in deference to matters of gullibility and credibility, Wikipedia discontinues its unwitting participation in the prank:

"Shostakovich's fascination with the work of electrical engineer Nikola Tesla and his own hobby of electrical experimentation was to result in perhaps his most experimental musical recording: 'глупо муравей', named after his father's playful nickname for the Cossacks, surfaced in the early 1990s. The work is notably experimental; indeed, Shostakovich is said to have created the piece with his own amateur electromagnetic devices, using magnetic tape to create its unique sounds. Arthur Rubinstein is said to have been heard saying it was "the most profound piece of music man has of yet created."[citation needed]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich

With regard to composition for nonstandard orchestral instruments. Shostakovich did include a short passage for Theremin in the music to the 1931 film 'Alone', and the flexatone is used in the earlty film score 'New Babylon' and early opera "Nose".

Louis Blois 69.22.195.30 (talk) 12:49, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Znmeb (talk) 21:19, 3 April 2010 (UTC) Could we simply ask Maxim Dmitrievich about this? ;-)

Znmeb (talk) 21:08, 3 April 2010 (UTC) The Flexatone is much better known for its use in the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, of course, and is not electronic. ;-)

69.22.195.30 (talk) 13:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC) I'm frankly surprised that even with as blatant a tipoff to chicanery as the hyperbole of the Rubinstein quote, in addition to there being no factual references for any but all of the absurd claims, Wiki editors are unable to smell a rat so brazenly pungent. With guardians of Wiki content so painfully oblivious, does this not open the doors to others to perpetrate similar deeds of misinformative mischief? I suppose it's time to just throw up one's hands and laugh along in the same spirit of schadenfreude as the perpetrator. Unfortunately at the expense of Wiki's credibility.

I would like to add that Prof. Blois is a noted expert on Shostakovich and his judgment is to be trusted totally in this matter. I am frankly baffled by the gullibility of the editors that continue to try and reinstate this piece of absolute nonsense. I concur that Wikipedia's credibility has just taken a big nose dive. Alan1507 (talk) 16:24, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

His patron Tukhachevsky - reason for execution

It is a dubious (and uncited) assertion to state that Tukhachevsky was repressed because of his definite opposition to Stalin. Such opposition has never been proved (quite the reverse with recent research) and the reasons for his execution remain, as with so many victims of the Terror, much debated by historians.

For that reason I'm changing that statement to a non-contentious one.Lewvalton (talk) 00:09, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

citation clean-up?

The article (and the one on the TESTIMONY book) has had citation-needed and related notices for a long time. Will these ever be fixed? Btw, there seems to be some original conclusions in the Testimony article that should be dropped.98.67.179.66 (talk) 16:55, 1 December 2010 (UTC)HammerFilmFan

I am surprised that this article does not contain a single reference to Krzysztof Meyer's 1995 book Schostakowisch: sein Leben, sein Werk, seine Zeit (of which I own a Dutch translation), or is there no English translation of this book available? Francesco Malipiero (talk) 17:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

There is not (see Krzysztof Meyer: writings.) — Robert Greer (talk) 15:12, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Marked in WP:USSR twice

This article is templated twice as a WP:USSR article, once as top-importance and once as mid-importance. I don't know which of these should stand, or if it should be high-importance instead, but in any event it should only be listed once. I also am not sure whether this should be a high-importance WP:SOCIALISM article, as Shostakovich did not make any major contributions to socialist philosophy or politics, but maybe he qualifies as high-importance based on his relationship with the Soviet authorities. --Opus 113 (talk) 03:58, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I've now removed the mid-importance WP:USSR template.--Opus 113 (talk) 05:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Russian Siberian native…

Vasiliy Yakovlevich Kokoulin, "a Russian Siberian native", I read just everywhere. There are lots of Siberian natives. Which ethnic group did Vasiliy Yakovlevich belong to ?

I’d consider this piece of information as pertinent as the mentioning of Pushkin’s African ancestor. Hirpex (talk) 18:53, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

section on "Later life"

In the paragraph starting with "A preoccupation with his own mortality permeates Shostakovich's later works, among them the later quartets and the Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 ...", I just wonder whether also including a reference to the 1975 viola sonata Op. 147 might not be appropriate here. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Elizabeth Wilson's book

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is, quite rightly, cited extensively throughout the article. The only problem is that there are now two editions of the book, of which the paginations don't match. Could people double check those citations which don't provide a publication date and try to establish which version such a citation relates to. Alfietucker (talk) 03:27, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion, for which a week's notice was given both on the articles Relationship between Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Stalin and Dmitri Shostakovich, was unanimous agreement to merge the former article into the latter. Alfietucker (talk) 16:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

---

I propose that Relationship between Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Stalin be merged into Dmitri Shostakovich. There is a lot of duplication of information between these articles, and the "Relationship" article at present is entirely based on a single contentious source. I admit to having perhaps more time for Solomon Volkov's book Testimony than do many Shostakovich specialists and scholars, so this is not a move against that source in principle. But it seems to me that the material covered in that separate page is already substantially covered, and in a more NPOV fashion, in Dmitri Shostakovich. I have to admit, too, that finding what looked suspiciously like a hidden WP:POVFORK to the "Relationship" article in the lede of the present article (added here[1]) - which I have removed - has made me concerned that the "Relationship" article is little more than a POV corner for those loathe to submit Volkov's book and its content to balanced appraisal. Alfietucker (talk) 22:56, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Support, for the reasons you set out. The "Relationship" article appears to be an essay based on the Volkov book rather than an encyclopedic entry. --Deskford (talk) 23:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support, again for the reasons you set out, as well as for the absurdity of an article title like "Relationship between Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Stalin". Who would possibly think to search for a title like that? Milkunderwood (talk) 23:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support as above. Eusebeus (talk) 18:36, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support the size of the articles indicates we've got room to increase with the parent article. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:29, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Time for a Featured Article Review?

First, many thanks to all of you who backed the proposed merger - now done. Essentially I've included all parts of the former article "The Relationship" which didn't duplicate what was already in this article and which either had a citation or seemed to have a fair chance of getting one. I have also made another complete "sweep-through" of this article, having previously done about two-thirds of it before proposing the merge.

Unfortunately this second "sweep-through" has rather confirmed my initial impression that the article, even before this merger, had rather slipped below the standard implied by its Featured Article status. 1) The prose is often short of "engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard", being often quite pedestrian; 2) it can't be said to be "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature. Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate". Quite apart from the fact there have been several books published in the last five years or so which the article doesn't even mention (no mention of any of Pauline Fairclough's books; no sign of the latest, comprehensively overhauled edition of Ian MacDonald's book; no Shostakovich and His World; no Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich etc etc), there simply isn't enough in-line citations, and there are several claims (some of which I have edited out) which AFAIK aren't supported by any authoritative source.

Are there any Shostakovich specialists/enthusiasts out here who are prepared to help try to bring this article up to scratch in the next week or two? Because unless we do, I think we will need to consider whether we go forward to FAR or even FARC process. I for one would rather face this and work in the long term for an article worthy to stand, for instance, with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, rather than complacently allow this representation of DSCH to drift or degenerate further and be an embarrassment rather than a spur to inspire promotion and knowledge about this great composer. OK, I'm getting off my soapbox now. Alfietucker (talk) 23:22, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

• Although I myself took this to FARC several (four!) years ago, my thinking has subsequently (d)evolved somewhat. In general, the purpose of FA status is to offer a "best state" for the article in question and judge closely any changes from the perspective that this standard would require. The real question then is whether one could introduce (significant) changes to DSCH without engendering an opposition backed by the implied authority of the article's FA status. I doubt that is the case here, which is to say that improvements can be offered and parts of the article reconsidered without stripping it of FA since such efforts would likely find support from other interested editors and the CM constituency in general. Rather than FARC, a better first stop would be to raise the prospects of revision to WT:CM to gauge the sentiment of those editors who are likely to be interested. I suspect such an initiative would spark support, possibly enthusiasm. The TLDR is that this can be accomplished outside of the FARC process. Eusebeus (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, Eusebeus. My concern is that the article as it stands is not worthy of FA status, certainly compared with others which have earned that status. Certainly it doesn't seem good for the reputation of what editors including myself are trying to achieve here (let alone Wikipedia as a whole) if newcomers find this article and its present FA ranking. Given the reasons I've given above - in short, the amount of scholarship and research that has been published since the article originally obtained its FA status, and the fact that more than half the article needs some serious work on the quality of its writing - I think it's going to take a month *at least* to fix Dmitri Shostakovich and raise it to FA status. That's assuming that two or three editors can find the time to work on it with any consistency.

That said, if we can rustle up a group of editors from CM in the next 3-4 weeks (allowing for the Christmas/holiday break) to fix the article, that would be a positive move. I'm happy to draft a proposal there (though just to say I'm "on the road" at present, so not in a position to do any substantial work just now on the article itself). But unless we can get things rolling soon, I still think we may have to go down the FA review process (if not necessarily FARC). Alfietucker (talk) 15:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

rumor of recording

The following has been removed from the article, and moved to the Discussion page to save the information:

• There are also rumors about that Shostakovich recorded a piano sonata which he wrote in his early days but never showed in public or published so people could buy the music. The piano sonata is said to have the key d sharp minor and is a very diffucult piece.The recording he made however was his own but the recording company should have the recording left as well. Unfortunately the company broke up and vanished, but somwhere out there the recording might exist. (posted anonymously 28 December 2011)

Milkunderwood (talk) 05:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

2004 discovery of 300 pages of manuscript

I began by creating an article, Orango (opera) and then came here to move references to that work from the future tense to the past tense. I ended up expanding that note into a new sub-section, Posthumous publications. This seemed somewhat out of place so I have tried to draw together material on his music - not sure if I have achieved this or just hacked the piece!

The Notes/References now are inconsistent in terms of style, but were like this before my edit.

Otherthinker (talk) 05:36, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Agnostic/atheist?

I don't really understand why the article states that Shostakovich was an agnostic, when it follows up with a quote from the man himself saying "no" in response to being asked if he believes in God. Surely that makes him an atheist (he is also on the List of atheists here on Wiki). I also don't really think the source that's given for the claim that he was an agnostic is very reliable. Grungedude22 (talk) 00:22, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, he said "I am sorry", meaning that he would believe otherwise, so it is more leaning towards agnosticism than atheism.--GoP_T^CN 08:33, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

He might have been sorry for any Christians being offended by his views. The word "sorry" doesn't tell us whether he was agnostic or atheist or something else. Therefore I think we should just give the quotation without interpreting it. I've removed the link to Mark Harrison's article at MusicWeb: it gives only the bare statement that Shostakovich was agnostic, without any explanation or supporting evidence, and I'm not at all sure that the article is a reliable source. If I'm wrong on this last point, feel free to restore the link. However, I don't think we can say for a fact that Shostakovich was agnostic, only that Harrison believes he was agnostic. Jowa fan (talk) 04:13, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Regardless of what he meant by his apology, I don't see how the definition of atheism changes whether the person is "sorry" for their lack of belief in a god or not. If he'd said that he had some doubts, or that he didn't know what to believe, wasn't sure, etc. then I'd see the reason for stating that he was agnostic, but he didn't; he simply said that he didn't believe in a god.