Instrumentation
The symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes (first flute with B foot extension, second flute doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling cor anglais), three clarinets (third doubling E♭ clarinet), three bassoons (third doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, tambourine, tam-tam, xylophone, and strings. [2]
Composition
The symphony has four movements and a duration of approximately 50-60 minutes:
- Moderato
- Allegro
- Allegretto – Largo –Più mosso
- Andante – Allegro – L'istesso tempo
I. Moderato
The first and longest movement is a slow movement in rough sonata form. As in his Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich alludes to one of his settings of Pushkin: in the first movement, from the second of his Four Monologues on Verses by Pushkin, entitled "What Does My Name Mean to You?". [3]
II. Allegro
The second movement is a short and loud scherzo with syncopated rhythms and semiquaver (sixteenth note) passages. The book Testimony said:
I did depict Stalin in my next symphony, the Tenth. I wrote it right after Stalin's death and no one has yet guessed what the symphony is about. It's about Stalin and the Stalin years. The second part, the scherzo, is a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking. Of course, there are many other things in it, but that's the basis. [4]
Shostakovich biographer Laurel Fay wrote, "I have found no corroboration that such a specific program was either intended or perceived at the time of composition and first performance." [5] Musicologist Richard Taruskin called the proposition a "dubious revelation, which no one had previously suspected either in Russia or in the West". [6] Elizabeth Wilson adds: "The Tenth Symphony is often read as the composer’s commentary on the recent Stalinist era. But as so often in Shostakovich’s art, the exposition of external events is counter-opposed to the private world of his innermost feelings." [7]
III. Allegretto
The third movement is built around two musical codes: the DSCH theme representing Shostakovich, and the Elmira theme ( listen ⓘ ):
At concert pitch one fifth lower, the notes spell out "E La Mi Re A" in a combination of French and German notation. This motif, called out twelve times on the horn, represents Elmira Nazirova, a composer with whom he had a life-long friendship with. The motif is of ambiguous tonality, giving it an air of uncertainty or hollowness. [8]
In a letter to Nazirova, Shostakovich himself noted the similarity of the motif to the ape call in the first movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde , a work which he had been listening to around that time: [9] ( listen ⓘ )
The same notes are used in both motifs, and both are repeatedly played by the horn. In the Chinese poem set by Mahler, the ape is a representation of death, while the Elmira motif itself occurs together with the "funeral knell" of a tam tam. [10] Over the course of the movement, the DSCH and Elmira themes alternate and gradually draw closer.
IV. Andante, Allegro
In the fourth and final movement, a slow "Andante" introduction segues abruptly into an "Allegro" wherein the DSCH theme is employed again. The coda effects a transition to E Major and, at in the final measures, several instruments glissando from an E to the next E.
The DSCH-motif is anticipated throughout the first movement of the 10th Symphony: In the 7th bar of the start of the symphony the violins doubled by the violas play a D for 5 bars which is then directly followed by an E♭; 9 bars before rehearsal mark 29 the violins play the motif in an inverted order D-C-H-S (or D-C-B-E♭).
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