ABSTRACT
Shostakovich shows that he is preoccupied with mortality in his compositions written near the end of his life; specifically, it appears that he believes that each work could be his last. Consider, for instance, the quotation of the “Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung in the Fourteenth Symphony, Op. 135. A curious exception is found in the Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin, Op. 146. It is a work full of the irony and cynicism that typified earlier works such as Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Op. 29. The verses are taken from Dostoyevsky’s novel The Demons: the first three are understood to be written by Lebyadkin, whereas the fourth is most likely attributed to the character Pyotr Stepanovich. Thus, this cycle is a contemplation of Dostoyevskian existentialism that focuses not on the nature of existence but on what the ideal existence should entail, and how such an existence was never possible in the reality of Soviet oppression. My discussion will examine the entirety of the cycle and explore, in particular, Shostakovich’s melodic-motivic practice (e.g., the presence of the [0134] tetrachord as signifier of the DSCH motive). I will argue that the transparency of the musical surface belies a deeper meaning in his setting of this text transmitted in the motivic design.
