ABSTRACT
At the heart of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich's symphonic language, and the driving force behind his process-based approach to form, are the principles of diversity and unity. Every movement in every one of Shostakovich's symphonies contains some form of thematic contrast. Even the fourth movement of the Ninth, which functions as little more than a transition in the context of the symphony as a whole, juxtaposes a brass theme with a bassoon cadenza. By far the most immediate and accessible patterns in Shostakovich's music are those concerned with timbre, both in terms of orchestration and climactic shape. Frequently in Shostakovich's symphonies, the characteristics of small musical cells or melodies are projected into longer-range formal patterns, giving rise to structures that are 'self-similar'. Sibelius famously compared symphonic form to a river, the movement of the water determining the shape of the river bed. That conception seems appropriate for Shostakovich's music, in which the attributes of content seem frequently to determine form.
