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In Reply to: RE: I understand what you're trying to say, but. . . posted by Chris from Lafayette on January 21, 2016 at 20:45:34
I have both Volkov's Testimony and Fay's biography and enjoyed both. String Quartets 13 and 14 both employ tone rows (they are my least favorite) though I suppose one wouldn't say they are atonal per se. Highly chromatic - yes.
My appreciation of Prokofiev continues to grow - at one point some years ago I would have placed DSCH above Proko as a composer but no longer. However, in my book, both are truly unique composers with their own voices that are readily apparent in their works.
Follow Ups:
And I was thinking that he might have employed tone rows (after Stalin was safely out of the way!), but I'd never heard an actual row used in one of Shostakovich's compositions. (So you can infer correctly that I've never heard either the 13th or 14th quartets!) The 13th must be an interesting piece, since, as you say, it uses a tone row (perhaps as a kind of isolated element) and yet is said to be in the key of B-flat minor.
Of course, the first use of a tone row in music (at least that I'm aware of) is the very opening of Liszt's Faust Symphony, even though, like the Shostakovich Quartet, it's written in a definite key (C-minor in this case). So Liszt's use of a 12-tone row precedes Schoenberg's use of it by more than 50 years, but of course, Liszt's developmental procedures really have nothing to do with the way Schoenberg used the row for for his own theories of development and structure. It's also probable IMHO that the row that Liszt came up with would be disallowed by Schoenberg, since Liszt's row is too suggestive of particular keys - something Schoenberg was definitely trying to avoid (even though the row in the Berg Violin Concerto also suggests a key - G minor - too).
Shostakovich: A Life Remembered by Elizabeth Wilson was published by Princeton University Press in 1994 and THAT's the other DSCH bio that I have along with Testimony. Don't have the Fey. Been a while since I read it so when your post mentioned Shostakovich: A Life I immediately made the association with Wilson's tome.
Perhaps the insider's rule for composing in the 12-tone method is "if it sounds good, you ain't doin' it right". Take THAT, second Vienna...
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