The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich

摘要

This is unequivocally Shostakovich for the scholar and scholarly reader. The 15 chapters are broadly grouped into four sections: instrumental works; music for stage and screen; vocal and choral works; performance, theory, reception. The book is a "western" approach to the complex life and work of a man about whom much has been written in his native Russian tongue. Earlier writings in English are of their time, and the need was perceived for a twenty-first century post-glasnost appraisal by western academics of Shostakovich's prodigiousrnoutput. This sets his work against the political and wider musical background of its time and of Shostakovich's own musical influence, setting perceptions against new scholarly appraisal in the light of history.