John Dalmas:

>...  All the same adjectives we have heard since the work's premiere
>in this country in 1942 are trotted out again:  bland, dull, boring,
>embarrassing.  Surely the same might be said of a few other works of the
>last hundred years to which instead we continue to pay reverent lip service
>(the Sibelius Fourth comes to mind).  Why is the "Leningrad" such fair
>game? Any comments?

While I strongly disagree with you about the Sibelius 4th - to me
deserving every nice thing ever said about it - I too find the continued
disparagement of the 7th somewhat puzzling.  To a large extent, it strikes
me as a holdover of the prevalent view of the composer during the 1940s -
a party hack who sold out to the Stalinists and produced cheap propaganda
instead of high art.  The same things and worse, by the way, were said of
the Piano Quintet and the string quartets from this time.  Shostakovich
was an incredibly hot ticket in the US at this time, with Stokowski,
Koussevitzky, and others programming his work left and right.  It was
broadcast during the war many, many times (I'm not sure of the number), and
some may have simply become sick of hearing it.  Bartok - an icon of Good
Taste - was known to dislike the work.  Some of this seems to me Charlie
the Tuna aligning himself with Bartok.

The objections center mainly on the first movement, particularly the
"German" theme, which Bartok appropriated satirically for the Concerto
for Orchestra.  People keep telling you it's a banal tune, without any
hint of understanding that it's supposed to be banal.  In fact, it's a
joke few commentators and composers (like Bartok) have gotten the joke.
Shostakovich himself appropriated the theme from Lehar's Merry Widow ("I'm
Going to Maxim's"), as a kind of battle song of invading Germans.  Maxim's,
of course, is one of Paris's most famous restaurants, and thus the Germans
are characterized as arrogant idiots:  they believe that conquering Russia
will be as easy as conquering France.

And then, of course, there are those who simply dislike the work.

Steve Schwartz