ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh String Quartet. The Seventh is Shostakovich's shortest quartet, consisting of three, rather fleeting, movements, and usually lasting about twelve minutes. The Seventh String Quartet strips away the cloaks meant to mask the inadequacies of the musical analytical enterprise. Described by Jacques Lacan as "the mystery of the speaking body," encounters with the real can be seen as the force that creates the ungraspable entity within Shostakovich's music that evades discourse. The idea of an ungraspable entity that affects discourse is one elucidated by the Lacanian psychoanalytical concept of the "real." In addition to the real and symbolic, Lacanian theory also includes the imaginary realm, which occurs between the real and symbolic during the subject's formation. The type of object created depends on where the manifestation of the real appears within the relationship between the imaginary, symbolic, and real.
