Most visitors to this site are initially interested in the best known of all Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets: the Eighth. If this is your prime reason for visiting these pages then just click the number eight in the navigation bar above. If, on the other hand, you are curious about his other quartets, as well as their relationship to the Eighth, then you might like to read this introduction.

There seems to be three ways that we listen to music - be it pop, jazz, classical or whatever. The first is the most common; we use it as background music, we listen but our thoughts are elsewhere. We are shopping in the supermarket, or enjoying ourselves at a nightclub, or we use it to block all other distractions whilst studying. In these cases the music creates a backcloth, an environment in which we feel well and relaxed. We are not really conscious of the music; we might not even remember afterwards what was played. We hear the music rather than listen to it.

The second way is typified by falling onto the sofa with the headphones on, gazing at the ceiling and letting ourselves be seduced by the pleasure of the sound. Let us call it the 'Liebestod' experience after the famous Wagner piece. We submerge ourselves in the music and it overwhelms us. Lost in rapture we are conscious of nothing else. Consumed by the music we let our feelings freely drift in its cross-currents. But we are mesmerized emotionally not intellectually: we are engulfed in the aural experience, not in a dispassionate analysis of the musical structure.

The third way is rarer. Here we treat the music as an intentional object for our scrutiny. We are interested in perceiving the musical ideas; seeing how they appear, develop and resurface. We follow the syntax of the piece; how it is constructed; how the various elements are related to each other; we follow the logic of music's development. We also try to understand the music in a wider context; relate it to the time of its composition; to the circumstances and conditions of its creation.

Our experience when listening to music in this third way is richer the deeper our background knowledge is. Such knowledge is always beneficial but it seems to be essential in the case of Shostakovich for two reasons. The first is that Shostakovich lived in a period of history and in a society which has vanished. His creative life was deeply influenced by Soviet communism and the Cold War, and although both have only recently disappeared it is now difficult for us to relate to those times. However understanding those political circumstances is essential for appreciating certain aspects of the works themselves and for understanding the manner in which those works were received, both during his lifetime and after his death, on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The second reason is that his instrumental compositions not only possess a syntax but also seems to have a semantic. In his compositions Shostakovich makes intensive use of musical quotations both from his own works and those of other composers. Furthermore his compositions contain encryptions achieved through numbers and the letters associated with notes. As a result Shostakovich's works give an impression of containing covert messages.

The purpose of this website is provide a very basic background information about Shostakovich's string quartets but perhaps the best way to introduce them is to start with his symphonies because these may be more familiar and, as we shall see, they provide us with an interesting perspective for viewing his quartets.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich¹ (his name in Cyrillic being: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович) wrote fifteen symphonies. As can be seen in Table 1 they were written in a variety of keys (minor keys are shown in the table by a lower-case letter) and, with one exception, received their première shortly after their completion.

Table 1: Shostakovich's Symphonies

No.	key	opus	completed	première
1	f	10	1925	1926
2	B	14	1927	1927
3	E♭	20	1929	1930
4	c	43	1936	1961
5	d	47	1937	1937
6	b	54	1939	1939
7	C	60	1941	1942
8	c	65	1943	1943
9	E♭	70	1945	1945
10	e	93	1953	1953
11	g	103	1957	1957
12	d	112	1961	1961
13	b♭	113	1962	1962
14	-	135	1969	1969
15	A	141	1971	1972

The exception is the Fourth Symphony. Its performance was delayed because of a crisis in Shostakovich's life which occurred in January 1936. It was immediately after this event, which is discussed in the article about his First Quartet, that Shostakovich started composing for string quartets. Indeed all the major events that occurred in Shostakovich's life seemed to have found a resonance in his string quartets. This makes them more biographical than his symphonies, and the intimate nature of the quartet, four voices engaged in a dialogue, seems also to make them more personal. But personal does not mean private: like his symphonies Shostakovich wrote his string quartets for public performance.

Indeed he wrote the same number of string quartets as he did symphonies - fifteen. As will become apparent when the individual descriptions of the quartets are read, Shostakovich was always aware of numerical links and the same number of symphonic and string quartet compositions was probably not a coincidence. It can be assumed that for him a complementary relationship existed between the string quartets and the symphonies. Yet an examination of the list of quartets, shown in Table 2, shows some interesting deviations from that of the symphonies.

Table 2: Shostakovich's Quartets

No.	key	opus	completed	première
1	C	49	July 38	Oct.38
2	A	68	Sept.44	Nov.44
3	F	73	Aug.46	Dec.46
4	D	83	Dec.49	Dec.53
5	B♭	92	Nov.52	Nov.53
6	G	101	Aug.56	Oct.56
7	f ♯	108	Mar.60	May 60
8	c	110	July 60	Oct.60
9	E♭	117	May 64	Nov.64
10	A♭	118	July 64	Nov.64
11	f	122	Jan.66	Mar.66
12	D♭	133	Mar.68	June 68
13	b♭	138	Aug.70	Dec.70
14	F ♯	142	Apr.73	Oct.73
15	e♭	144	May 74	Oct.74

Unlike the symphonies none of the quartets were written in the same key. Furthermore the remoteness of the key from the purely diatonic C major tends to increase with opus number. This is not a random walk but a calculated journey through tonality: a journey that took 36 years. The article entitled "The tonal structure of the cycle of quartets" examines the tonality of the quartets as an opus.

Like the symphonies, the string quartets received a première shortly after their completion. But there is again a noticeable exception. The Fourth Quartet was composed in 1949 but was first performed only four years later. Indeed the Fifth Quartet (which was also uncommonly delayed) was heard just before the Fourth. Again the delay is explained by another crisis in Shostakovich's life, What occurred in 1953 to make their performances possible is explained in the article on the Fourth Quartet.

Was it a coincidence that the Fifth Quartet was performed before the Fourth just as the Fifth Symphony was premièred before Fourth Symphony? Certainly. Was it pure chance that Shostakovich started his Fourteenth Quartet at about the time he visited Benjamin Britten, to whom he had dedicated his Fourteenth Symphony? Probably. But what about the overt use of twelve-tone serialism in the Twelfth Quartet? Or the 13 strikes of the bow on the viola in the Thirteenth Quartet? Or the significance of the 34th bar for the second violinist in the Twelfth Quartet?

Shostakovich's music is full of both numerical and musical references; detecting them and determining their possible significance is a daunting task. A numerical reference, such as hitting the viola thirteen times, is relatively easy to detect. But far more difficult are the musical references contained within his scores. These make connections, sometimes to other compositions by Shostakovich but often to those of other composers. And such citations are copious: Shostakovich's music is saturated with them. Some remained for a long time undetected because they blended in effortlessly with the music but when they are heard the question regarding their meaning arises. What is Shostakovich implying by quoting this other work?

Two very obvious examples appear in his last, the Fifteenth, Symphony. They are exceptional only in being so explicit. In the first movement of that symphony there is a reference to Rossini's famous fanfare motif from 'Guillaume Tell'. What does Shostakovich intend by this reference? He had already quoted it before, although not so overtly, in his Ninth Quartet, so does the citation in the symphony refer back to that quartet or to Rossini's opera? Moreover the final movement begins with an equally explicit quotation of the dramatic orchestration of the 'Fate' leitmotif which Wagner uses to depict Siegfried's funeral in 'Götterdämmerung'. Is Shostakovich referring to fate, or rather with irony to his own up-coming death? Or is he implying with these two quotes that fate has transformed him from the youthful embodiment of Rossini's romantic revolutionary into a worldly but compromised Shavian Socialist Hero²?

Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet is also saturated with musical citations but there they are combined with another trick, the repetition of the notes D, E flat, C and B, notes. In German musical notation E flat is written as S and B is written as H, thus the four letter spell out his initials D, S, C, H³. It seems apparent that whatever message the Eighth Quartet might contain it is one very intimate to composer. In the first movement of his final quartet, the Fifteenth, the harmonies are in D, S and C, but H is missing⁴. Could it be that Shostakovich realised that his next quartet, destined to be in B, would never be written?⁵

More questions than answers ..... something very appropriate for an introduction to Shostakovich.

If the Wagner quote does reveal irony then this is but another example of a feature typical in Shostakovich's music. Irony lives on two independent but conflicting levels: the covert message contradicting the overt. For Shostakovich contrasting layers in music was important as the quotation cited at the end of the description of the Fourth Quartet illustrates. Irony, the grotesque and Dadaism were the aesthetic lingua franca of the Soviet artists with whom Shostakovich associated in the 1920s and 1930s. And from his early work for the theatre onwards Shostakovich‘s music mimics the artistic ambiguities of these cultural movements.⁶

Whilst the quotations in Shostakovich's music tempt speculation about possible hidden meanings the self-citations in Shostakovich's music have another effect: they demand, like their tonality, that each work be considered as part of an integrated whole. It is as if any individual composition is just one window onto an overall structure. Each work is just a facet of a crystal. And this crystal is the 'super-composition'; an organic, homogeneous substance; the essence of Shostakovich life's compositions. This is the sensation that studying his string quartets imparts: fifteen interrelated works, each an independent member of a meta-composition.

There is another feature of the quartets that illustrates Shostakovich's holism. All the movements in quartets nos. 5, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 15 are to be linked together. Furthermore the last two movements of quartets 3, 4, 6, 10 and 14 are to be played without a pause occurring between them. Even the last two movements of the second quartet, whilst not marked attacca , lend themselves to being so played. Since quartet no. 13 has only one movement, there only remains quartets no. 1 and no. 12 that are played with the traditional pauses between each movement.

From the Tables 1 and 2 it can be seen also that Shostakovich started composing quartets much later in his life than symphonies. He had already completed five symphonies before he began writing string quartets. In his younger years he had concentrated on larger scale works for the opera, the ballet and for orchestras. It was only after the crisis of 1936 that he started writing more chamber music, gradually increasing his output over larger-scale works: in his last decade he was to write five quartets but only two symphonies.

The quartets are the opposite to symphonic in style. They are thin, almost barren in texture. Often just one instrument plays or only a duet. Sparseness is also noticeable in the lack of guidance given to musicians on how a piece is to be played. With the exception of muting and beat indications Shostakovich is remarkable in allowing performers freedom when interpreting his music. There is no 'authentic' voice of Shostakovich which mercifully relieves the hearer of this distraction when choosing a recording.

With such a large number of string quartets there is inevitably a temptation to seek simplicity by grouping them together. Unfortunately there is no totally satisfactory way of achieving this. One attempt might be to see the first five as developing a growing independence from the Russian tradition so apparent in the first quartet. Quartets 7, 8, and 9 could be grouped together because of an assumed association with an individuals not always explicitly named and such capriciousness would allow the sixth quartet to be housed within this group.

Quartet no. 10 seems to be destined, albeit through lack of an alternative, to become the sole member of its set.

The last four, maybe even the last five, quartets are reminiscent of the late quartets of Beethoven in that they retreat into an the inner world of the composer. These quartets, with the exception of the fourteenth, are full of death and remorse. They contain intensive, even furious funeral rhythms but also prolonged, high-pitched screams issuing from an internal torture chamber. However there is a sense of release; of wind-down; of a final transition towards equilibrium; of the attainment of inner peace. These latter works are the desolate outer planets in Shostakovich's universe, not the mercurial and martial worlds of his youth.

And they make difficult listening,

Play the first movement so that flies drop dead in mid-air and the audience leaves the hall out of sheer boredom

that was Shostakovich's instructions for the fifteenth quartet. Five movements, all linked, all 'Adagio'. Less popular but much more disturbing than the Eighth Quartet, these final quartets display an eloquence and a sensitivity that transcended the verbal incoherence that Shostakovich's health in his final years had wreaked.

But it would be wrong to conclude that these quartets are purely bleak for they also show the warmth of a relationship that had grown over time between the composer and the group of musicians - the Beethoven String Quartet - that premièred all of Shostakovich's string quartets apart from the first and fifteenth. Not only are six of the quartets dedicated to this ensemble or its individual members but the later quartets reveal fond and joking musical references to them.

As mentioned above, most people reading this web-page will be in transit to the side describing the Eighth Quartet because this is by far the most popular of all Shostakovich's quartets and probably the most played of any quartet composed in the last fifty years. (I am writing these words exactly - to the day - when it was composed a half a century ago.) But it would be a pity to stop there, for there is so much more. As there are recordings on Youtube of virtually all his compositions it is not a question of how but where to start. For a real foot-stomping surprise you might try the last movement (the fourth) of the Fourth Quartet. Pure Klezmer. Or there is the equally rhythmic though more demanding Ninth Quartet. If a simpler Borodin-like, 'Kismet', style is desired then why not begin at the First Quartet. In fifteen quartets written over decades Shostakovich composed music for all tastes....it's just a question of experimental listening!