ABSTRACT
Between 1941 and 1945 Soviet cultural activity continued, despite the extreme deprivation and upheaval of war. Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, written in 1941 and dedicated to the blockaded city of Leningrad, was emblematic of the tremendous importance Soviet society attached to the arts. Shostakovich's special 'take' on the folk-music trend was his incorporation of the musical tradition of the Jewish people, a move that partook of, but also distanced itself from, the folk-inspired patriotism of other composers. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, one of the most talented members of a new generation of wartime chamber-music composers working in Moscow, was another source of exposure to Jewish music in the 1940s. Aleksandr Dolzhansky heard the impact of war in the Second Quartet, which he described as revealing 'the fate of a people and the fate of a human person; individual and collective, personal and social'.
