Testimony Quotes

“Art destroys silence.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“When I hear about someone else's pain, I feel pain too. i feel pain for everything - for people and animals.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I do not wish to listen to people denouncing their parents.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“It makes you think the best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much must perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“One must speak the truth about the past or not at all.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“But I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“The majority of my symphonies are tombstones”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Now I can't abide rudeness, even in so called great artists. Rudeness and cruelty are the qualities i hate most. Rudeness and cruelty are always connected, I feel. One example out of many is Stalin.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No. I came back to life after the Seventh.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I can think of nothing more horrible than an orchestra that has gone out of control at rehearsal. I wouldn't wish it on an enemy.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“[on Prokofiev] And, by the way, he never did learn how to orchestrate properly.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I'm training my left hand to write, in case I lose the ability in my right. That's gymnastics for the dying.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember once he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“The Seventh Symphony had been planned before the war and consequently, it simply cannot be seen as a reaction to Hitler's attack. The 'invasion theme' has nothing to do with the attack. I was thinking of other enemies of humanity when I composed the team.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. (...) But how could I do it? I was constantly under suspicion then, and critics counted what percentage of my symphonies was in a major key and what percentage in a minor key. That oppressed me, it deprived me of the will to compose.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I hate Toscanini. I’ve never heard him in a concert hall, but I’ve heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanini ‘honoured’ me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those records, too, and they’re worthless. I’ve read about Toscanini’s conducting style and his manner of conducting a rehearsal. The people who describe this disgraceful behaviour are for some reason delighted by it. I simply can’t understand what they find delightful. I think it’s outrageous, not delightful. He screams and curses the musicians and makes scenes in the most shameless manner. The poor musicians have to put up with all this nonsense or be sacked. And they even begin to see ‘something in it’. (…) Toscanini sent me his recording of m Seventh Symphony and hearing it made me very angry. Everything is wrong. The spirit and the character and the tempi. It’s a sloppy, hack job. I wrote him a letter expressing my views. I don’t know if he ever got it; maybe he did and pretended not to – that would be completely in keeping with his vain and egoistic style. Why do I think that Toscanini didn’t let it be known that I wrote to him? Because much later I received a letter from America: I was elected to the Toscanini Society! They must have thought that I was a great fan of the maestro’s. I began receiving records on a regular basis: all new recordings by Toscanini. My only comfort is that at least I always have a birthday present handy. Naturally, I wouldn’t give something like that to a friend. But to an acquaintance-why not? It pleases them and it’s less trouble for me. That’s one of life’s most difficult problems- what to give for a birthday or anniversary to a person you don’t particularly like, don’t know very well, and don’t respect. Conductors are too often rude and conceited tyrants. And in my youth I often had to fight fierce battles with them, battles for my music and my dignity.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I was a guest in the home of a conductor when I was in my early twenties. They turned on the gramophone and played a popular record of a foxtrot. I liked the foxtrot, but I didn't like the way it was played. I confided my opinion to the host, who suddenly said, 'Ah, so you don't like the way it's played? All right, if you want, write down the number by heart and orchestrate it and I'll play it. That is, of course, if you can do it and in a given amount of time: I'm giving you an hour. if you're really a genius, you should be able to write it in an hour.' I did it in 45 minutes.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined towards friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything than himself and his music.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of our time and I truly love many of his works. (...) The marvellous composer has invariably been at the centre of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and made my own transcriptions as well.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I do write quickly, that's true, but I think about my music for a comparatively long time, and until it's complete in my head I don't begin setting it down.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“The truth is that the war helped. The war brought great sorrow and made life very very hard. Much sorrow, many tears. But it had been even harder before the war, because then everyone was alone in his sorrow.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth [Symphony] was about.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“What galls me is that these sadists always have fans and followers-- and sincere ones at that. The typical example of this is Toscanini.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Our family discussed the Revolution of 1905 constantly. I was born after that, but the stories deeply affected my imagination. When I was older, I read much about how it all had happened. It think that it was a turning point -- the people stopped believing in the tsar. The Russian people are always like that -- they believe and they believe and then suddenly it comes to an end. And the ones the people no longer believe in come to a bad end.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer. Mahler & Berg are my favourite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, a Krenek and Milhaud whom I liked when I was young but cooled towards rapidly.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“I hate Toscanini. I've never heard him in a concert hall, but I've heard enough of his recordings. What he does to music is terrible in my opinion. He chops it up into a hash and then pours a disgusting sauce over it. Toscanin 'honoured' me by conducting my symphonies. I heard those recordings, too, and they're worthless.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Tragedies in hindsight look like farces. When you describe your fear to someone else, it seems ridiculous. That's human nature.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation lie as a heavy burden on the psyche. And you must, you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs

“Really, we musicians do like to talk about Mussorgsky. In fact, I think that it's the second most favourite topic after Tchaikovsky's love life.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs